BLACKWOOD'S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
No. CCCCVIII. OCTOBER, 1849.Vol. LXVI.

CONTENTS.

EDINBURGH:

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BLACKWOOD'S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCCVIII. OCTOBER, 1849.Vol. LXVI.

[THE CAXTONS.—PART THE LAST.]

CHAPTER CI.

Adieu, thou beautiful land! Canaan of the exiles, and Ararat to many a shattered ark! Fair cradle of a race for whom the unbounded heritage of a future, that no sage can conjecture, no prophet divine, lies afar in the golden promise-light of Time!—destined, perchance, from the sins and sorrows of a civilisation struggling with its own elements of decay, to renew the youth of the world, and transmit the great soul of England through the cycles of Infinite Change. All climates that can best ripen the products of earth, or form into various character and temper the different families of man, "rain influences" from the heaven, that smiles so benignly on those who had once shrunk, ragged, from the wind, or scowled on the thankless sun. Here, the hardy air of the chill Mother Isle, there the mild warmth of Italian autumns, or the breathless glow of the tropics. And with the beams of every climate, glides subtle Hope. Of her there, it may be said as of Light itself, in those exquisite lines of a neglected poet—

"Through the soft ways of heaven, and air, and sea,
Which open all their pores to thee
Like a clear river thou dost glide—

All the world's bravery, that delights our eyes,
Is but thy several liveries;
Thou the rich dye on them bestowest;
Thy nimble pencil paints the landscape as thou goest."[1]

Adieu, my kind nurse and sweet foster-mother!—a long and a last adieu! Never had I left thee but for that louder voice of Nature which calls the child to the parent, and woos us from the labours we love the best by the chime in the Sabbath-bells of Home.

No one can tell how dear the memory of that wild Bush-life becomes to him who has tried it with a fitting spirit. How often it haunts him in the commonplace of more civilised scenes! Its dangers, its risks, its sense of animal health, its bursts of adventure, its intervals of careless repose—the fierce gallop through a very sea of wide rolling plains—the still saunter, at night, through woods never changing their leaves—with the moon, clear as sunshine, stealing slant through their clusters of flowers. With what an effort we reconcile ourselves to the trite cares and vexed pleasures, "the quotidian ague of frigid impertinences," to which we return! How strong and black stands my pencil-mark in this passage of the poet from which I have just quoted before!—

"We are here among the vast and noble scenes of Nature—we are there among the pitiful shifts of policy; we walk here, in the light and open ways of the Divine Bounty—we grope there, in the dark and confused labyrinth of human malice."[2]

But I weary you, reader. The New World vanishes—now a line—now a speck: let us turn away, with the face to the Old.

Among my fellow-passengers, how many there are returning home disgusted, disappointed, impoverished, ruined, throwing themselves again on those unsuspecting poor friends, who thought they had done with the luckless good-for-naughts for ever. For don't let me deceive thee, reader, into supposing that every adventurer to Australia has the luck of Pisistratus. Indeed, though the poor labourer, and especially the poor operative from London and the great trading towns, (who has generally more of the quick knack of learning—the adaptable faculty—required in a new colony, than the simple agricultural labourer,) are pretty sure to succeed, the class to which I belong is one in which failures are numerous, and success the exception—I mean young men with scholastic education and the habits of gentlemen—with small capitals and sanguine hopes. But this, in ninety-nine times out of a hundred, is not the fault of the colony, but of the emigrants. It requires, not so much intellect as a peculiar turn of intellect, and a fortunate combination of physical qualities, easy temper, and quick mother-wit, to make a small capitalist a prosperous Bushman.[3] And if you could see the sharks that swim round a man just dropped at Adelaide or Sydney, with one or two thousand pounds in his pocket! Hurry out of the towns as fast as you can, my young emigrant; turn a deaf ear, for the present at least, to all jobbers and speculators; make friends with some practised old Bushman; spend several months at his station before you hazard your capital; take with you a temper to bear everything and sigh for nothing; put your whole heart in what you are about; never call upon Hercules when your cart sticks in the rut, and, whether you feed sheep or breed cattle, your success is but a question of time.

But, whatever I owed to nature, I owed also something to fortune. I bought my sheep at little more than 7s. each. When I left, none were worth less than 15s., and the fat sheep were worth £1.[4] I had an excellent shepherd, and my whole care, night and day, was the improvement of the flock. I was fortunate, too, in entering Australia before the system miscalled "The Wakefield"[5] had diminished the supply of labour and raised the price of land. When the change came, (like most of those with large allotments and surplus capital,) it greatly increased the value of my own property, though at the cost of a terrible blow on the general interests of the colony. I was lucky, too, in the additional venture of a cattle station, and in the breed of horses and herds, which, in the five years devoted to that branch establishment, trebled the sum invested therein, exclusive of the advantageous sale of the station.[6] I was lucky, also, as I have stated, in the purchase and resale of lands, at Uncle Jack's recommendation. And, lastly, I left in time, and escaped a very disastrous crisis in colonial affairs, which I take the liberty of attributing entirely to the mischievous crotchets of theorists at home, who want to set all clocks by Greenwich time, forgetting that it is morning in one part of the world at the time they are tolling the curfew in the other.

CHAPTER CII.

London once more! How strange, lone, and savage I feel in the streets. I am ashamed to have so much health and strength, when I look at those slim forms, stooping backs, and pale faces. I pick my way through the crowd with the merciful timidity of a good-natured giant. I am afraid of jostling against a man for fear the collision should kill him. I get out of the way of a thread-paper clerk, and 'tis a wonder I am not run over by the omnibuses;—I feel as if I could run over them! I perceive, too, that there is something outlandish, peregrinate, and lawless about me. Beau Brummell would certainly have denied me all pretension to the simple air of a gentleman, for every third passenger turns back to look at me. I retreat to my hotel—send for bootmaker, hatter, tailor, and haircutter. I humanise myself from head to foot. Even Ulysses is obliged to have recourse to the arts of Minerva, and, to speak unmetaphorically, "smarten himself up," before the faithful Penelope condescends to acknowledge him. The artificers promise all despatch. Meanwhile I hasten to re-make acquaintance with my mother country over files of the Times, Post, Chronicle, and Herald. Nothing comes amiss to me, but articles on Australia; from those I turn aside with the true pshaw-supercilious of your practical man.

No more are leaders filled with praise and blame of Trevanion. "Percy's spur is cold." Lord Ulverstone figures only in the Court Circular, or "Fashionable Movements." Lord Ulverstone entertains a royal duke at dinner, or dines in turn with a royal duke, or has come to town, or gone out of it. At most, (faint Platonic reminiscence of the former life,) Lord Ulverstone says in the House of Lords a few words on some question, not a party one; and on which (though affecting perhaps the interests of some few thousands, or millions, as the case may be) men speak without "hears," and are inaudible in the gallery; or Lord Ulverstone takes the chair at an agricultural meeting, or returns thanks when his health is drank at a dinner at Guildhall. But the daughter rises as the father sets, though over a very different kind of world.

"First ball of the season at Castleton House!" Long descriptions of the rooms and the company; above all, of the hostess. Lines on the Marchioness of Castleton's picture in the "Book of Beauty," by the Hon. Fitzroy Fiddledum, beginning with, "Art thou an angel from," &c—a paragraph that pleased me more on "Lady Castleton's Infant School, at Raby Park;" then again—"Lady Castleton, the new patroness at Almacks;" a criticism more rapturous than ever gladdened living poet, on Lady Castleton's superb diamond stomacher, just re-set by Storr and Mortimer; Westmacott's bust of Lady Castleton; Landseer's picture of Lady Castleton and her children, in the costume of the olden time. Not a month in that long file of the Morning Post but what Lady Castleton shone forth from the rest of womankind—

"——Velut inter ignes
Luna minores."

The blood mounted to my cheek. Was it to this splendid constellation in the patrician heaven that my obscure, portionless youth had dared to lift its presumptuous eyes? But what is this? "Indian intelligence—Skilful Retreat of the Sepoys, under Captain de Caxton!" A captain already—what is the date of the newspaper? Three months ago. The leading article quotes the name with high praise. Is there no leaven of envy amidst the joy at my heart? How obscure has been my career—how laurel-less my poor battle with adverse fortune! Fie, Pisistratus! I am ashamed of thee. Has this accursed Old World, with its feverish rivalries, diseased thee already? Get thee home, quick, to the arms of thy mother, the embrace of thy father—hear Roland's low blessing, that thou hast helped to minister to the very fame of that son. If thou wilt have ambition, take it, not soiled and foul with the mire of London. Let it spring fresh and hardy in the calm air of wisdom; and fed, as with dews, by the loving charities of Home.

CHAPTER CIII.

It was at sunset that I stole through the ruined courtyard, having left my chaise at the foot of the hill below. Though they whom I came to seek knew that I had arrived in England, they did not, from my letter, expect me till the next day. I had stolen a march upon them; and now, in spite of all the impatience which had urged me thither, I was afraid to enter—afraid to see the change more than ten years had made in those forms, for which, in my memory, time had stood still. And Roland had, even when we parted, grown old before his time. Then, my father was in the meridian of life, now he had approached to the decline. And my mother, whom I remembered so fair, as if the freshness of her own heart had preserved the soft bloom to the cheek—I could not bear to think that she was no longer young. Blanche, too, whom I had left a child—Blanche, my constant correspondent during those long years of exile, in letters crossed and re-crossed, with all the small details that make the eloquence of letter writing, so that in those epistles I had seen her mind gradually grow up in harmony with the very characters—at first vague and infantine—then somewhat stiff with the first graces of running hand, then dashing off, free and facile; and, for the last year before I left, so formed, yet so airy—so regular, yet so unconscious of effort—though, in truth, as the caligraphy had become thus matured, I had been half vexed and half pleased to perceive a certain reserve creeping over the style—wishes for my return less expressed from herself than as messages from others; words of the old childlike familiarity repressed; and "Dearest Sisty" abandoned for the cold form of "Dear Cousin." Those letters, coming to me in a spot where maiden and love had been as myths of the bygone, phantasms and eidola, only vouchsafed to the visions of fancy, had, by little and little, crept into secret corners of my heart; and out of the wrecks of a former romance, solitude and reverie had gone far to build up the fairy domes of a romance yet to come. My mother's letters had never omitted to make mention of Blanche—of her forethought and tender activity, of her warm heart and sweet temper—and, in many a little home picture, presented her image where I would fain have placed it, not "crystal-seeing," but joining my mother in charitable visits to the village, instructing the young, and tending on the old, or teaching herself to illuminate, from an old missal in my father's collection, that she might surprise my uncle with a new genealogical table, with all shields and quarterings, blazoned or, sable, and argent; or flitting round my father where he sat, and watching when he looked round for some book he was too lazy to rise for. Blanche had made a new catalogue and got it by heart, and knew at once from what corner of the Heraclea to summon the ghost. On all these little traits had my mother been eulogistically minute; but somehow or other she had never said, at least for the last two years, whether Blanche was pretty or plain. That was a sad omission. I had longed just to ask that simple question, or to imply it delicately and diplomatically; but, I know not why, I never dared—for Blanche would have been sure to have read the letter—and what business was it of mine? And, if she was ugly, what question more awkward both to put and to answer? Now, in childhood, Blanche had just one of those faces that might become very lovely in youth, and would yet quite justify the suspicion that it might become gryphonesque, witch-like, and grim. Yes, Blanche, it is perfectly true! If those large, serious black eyes took a fierce light, instead of a tender—if that nose, which seemed then undecided whether to be straight or to be aquiline, arched off in the latter direction, and assumed the martial, Roman, and imperative character of Roland's manly proboscis—if that face, in childhood too thin, left the blushes of youth to take refuge on two salient peaks by the temples (Cumberland air, too, is famous for the growth of the cheek-bone!)—if all that should happen, and it very well might, then, O Blanche, I wish thou hadst never written me those letters; and I might have done wiser things than steel my heart so obdurately to pretty Ellen Bolding's blue eyes and silk shoes. Now, combining together all these doubts and apprehensions, wonder not, O reader, why I stole so stealthily through the ruined courtyard, crept round to the other side of the tower, gazed wistfully on the sun setting slant on the high casements of the hall, (too high, alas, to look within,) and shrunk yet to enter;—doing battle, as it were, with my heart.

Steps!—one's sense of hearing grows so quick in the Bushland!—steps, though as light as ever brushed the dew from the harebell! I crept under the shadow of the huge buttress mantled with ivy. A form comes from the little door at an angle in the ruins—a woman's form. Is it my mother?—it is too tall, and the step is more bounding. It winds round the building, it turns to look back, and a sweet voice—a voice strange, yet familiar—calls, tender, but chiding, to a truant that lags behind. Poor Juba! he is trailing his long ears on the ground: he is evidently much disturbed in his mind; now he stands still, his nose in the air. Poor Juba! I left thee so slim and so nimble—

"Thy form, that was fashioned as light as a fay's,
Has assumed a proportion more round."

Years have sobered thee strangely, and made thee obese and Primmins-like. They have taken too good care of thy creature comforts, O sensual Mauritanian! still, in that mystic intelligence we call instinct, thou art chasing something that years have not swept from thy memory. Thou art deaf to thy lady's voice, however tender and chiding. That's right,—come near—nearer—my cousin Blanche; let me have a fair look at thee. Plague take the dog! he flies off from her: he has found the scent—he is making up to the buttress! Now—pounce—he is caught! whining ungallant discontent. Shall I not yet see the face? it is buried in Juba's black curls. Kisses too! Wicked Blanche, to waste on a dumb animal what, I heartily hope, many a good Christian would be exceedingly glad of! Juba struggles in vain, and is borne off. I don't think that those eyes can have taken the fierce turn, and Roland's eagle nose can never go with that voice which has the coo of the dove.

I leave my hiding-place, and steal after the Voice, and its owner. Where can she be going? Not far. She springs up the hill whereon the lords of the castle once administered justice—that hill which commands the land far and wide, and from which can be last caught the glimpse of the westering sun. How gracefully still is that attitude of wistful repose! Into what delicate curves do form and drapery harmoniously flow! How softly distinct stands the lithe image against the purple hues of the sky! Then again comes the sweet voice, gay and carolling as a bird's—now in snatches of song, now in playful appeals to that dull four-footed friend. She is telling him something that must make the black ears stand on end, for I just catch the words, "He is coming," and "home!"

I cannot see the sun set where I lurk in my ambush, amidst the brake and the ruins; but I feel that the orb has passed from the landscape, in the fresher air of the twilight, in the deeper silence of eve. Lo! Hesper comes forth: at his signal, star after star, come the hosts—

"Ch'eran con lui, quando l'amor divino,
Mosse da primà quelle cose belle!"

and the sweet voice is hushed.

Then slowly the watcher descends the hill on the opposite side—the form escapes from my view. What charm has gone from the twilight? See, again, where the step steals through the ruins and along the desolate court. Ah! deep and true heart, do I divine the remembrance that leads thee? I pass through the wicket, down the dell, skirt the laurels, and behold the face, looking up to the stars—the face which had nestled to my breast in the sorrow of parting, years, long years ago: on the grave where we had sat, I the boy, thou the infant—there, O Blanche! is thy fair face—(fairer than the fondest dream that had gladdened my exile)—vouchsafed to my gaze!

"Blanche, my cousin!—again, again—soul with soul, amidst the dead! Look up, Blanche; it is I."

CHAPTER CIV.

"Go in first, and prepare them, dear Blanche: I will wait by the door. Leave it ajar, that I may see them."

Roland is leaning against the wall—old armour suspended over the gray head of the soldier. It is but a glance that I gave to the dark cheek and high brow: no change there for the worse—no new sign of decay. Rather, if anything, Roland seems younger than when I left. Calm is the brow—no shame on it now, Roland; and the lips, once so compressed, smile with ease—no struggle now, Roland, "not to complain." A glance shows me all this.

"Papæ!" says my father, and I hear the fall of a book, "I can't read a line. He is coming to-morrow!—to-morrow! If we lived to the age of Methusalem, Kitty, we could never reconcile philosophy and man; that is, if the poor man's to be plagued with a good affectionate son!"

And my father gets up and walks to and fro. One minute more, father—one minute more—and I am on thy breast! Time, too, has dealt gently with thee, as he doth with those for whom the wild passions and keen cares of the world never sharpen his scythe. The broad front looks more broad, for the locks are more scanty and thin; but still not a furrow!

Whence comes that short sigh?

"What is really the time, Blanche? Did you look at the turret clock? Well, just go and look again."

"Kitty," quoth my father, "you have not only asked what time it is thrice within the last ten minutes, but you have got my watch, and Roland's great chronometer, and the Dutch clock out of the kitchen, all before you, and they all concur in the same tale—to-day is not to-morrow."

"They are all wrong, I know," said my mother, with mild firmness; "and they've never gone right since he left."

Now out comes a letter—for I hear the rustle—and then a step glides towards the lamp; and the dear, gentle, womanly face—fair still, fair ever for me—fair as when it bent over my pillow, in childhood's first sickness, or when we threw flowers at each other on the lawn at sunny noon! And now Blanche is whispering; and now the flutter, the start, the cry—"It is true! it is true! Your arms, mother. Close, close round my neck, as in the old time. Father! Roland, too! Oh joy! joy! joy! home again—home till death!"

CHAPTER CV.

From a dream of the Bushland, howling dingoes,[7] and the war-whoop of the wild men, I wake and see the sun shining in through the jasmine that Blanche herself has had trained round the window—old school-books, neatly ranged round the wall—fishing rods, cricket-bats, foils, and the old-fashioned gun,—and my mother seated by the bedside—and Juba whining and scratching to get up. Had I taken thy murmured blessing, my mother, for the whoop of the blacks, and Juba's low whine for the howl of the dingoes?

Then what days of calm exquisite delight!—the interchange of heart with heart; what walks with Roland, and tales of him once our shame, now our pride; and the art with which the old man would lead those walks round by the village, that some favourite gossips might stop and ask, "What news of his brave young honour?"

I strive to engage my uncle in my projects for the repair of the ruins—for the culture of those wide bogs and moorlands: why is it that he turns away, and looks down embarrassed? Ah, I guess!—his true heir now is restored to him. He cannot consent that I should invest this dross, for which (the Great Book once published) I have no other use, in the house and the lands that will pass to his son. Neither would he suffer me so to invest even his son's fortune, the bulk of which I still hold in trust for that son. True, in his career, my cousin may require to have his money always forthcoming. But I, who have no career,—pooh! these scruples will rob me of half the pleasure my years of toil were to purchase. I must contrive it somehow or other: what if he would let me house and moorland on a long improving lease? Then, for the rest, there is a pretty little property to be sold close by, on which I can retire when my cousin, as heir of the family, comes, perhaps with a wife, to reside at the Tower. I must consider of all this, and talk it over with Bolt when my mind is at leisure from happiness to turn to such matters; meanwhile I fall back on my favourite proverb,—"Where there's a will there's a way."

What smiles and tears, and laughter and careless prattle with my mother, and roundabout questions from her, to know if I had never lost my heart in the Bush; and evasive answers from me, to punish her for not letting out that Blanche was so charming. "I fancied Blanche had grown the image of her father, who has a fine martial head certainly, but not seen to advantage in petticoats! How could you be so silent with a theme so attractive?"

"Blanche made me promise."

Why? I wonder. Therewith I fell musing.

What quiet delicious hours are spent with my father in his study, or by the pond, where he still feeds the carps, that have grown into Ceprinidian leviathans. The duck, alas! has departed this life—the only victim that the Grim King has carried off; so I mourn, but am resigned to that lenient composition of the great tribute to Nature. I am sorry to say the Great Book has advanced but slowly—by no means yet fit for publication, for it is resolved that it shall not come out as first proposed, a part at a time, but totus, teres, atque rotundus. The matter has spread beyond its original compass; no less than five volumes—and those of the amplest—will contain the History of Human Error. However, we are far in the fourth, and one must not hurry Minerva.

My father is enchanted with Uncle Jack's "noble conduct," as he calls it; but he scolds me for taking the money, and doubts as to the propriety of returning it. In these matters my father is quite as Quixotical as Roland. I am forced to call in my mother as umpire between us, and she settles the matter at once by an appeal to feeling. "Ah, Austin! do you not humble me, if you are too proud to accept what is due to you from my brother."

"Velit, nolit, quod amica," answered my father, taking off and rubbing his spectacles—"which means, Kitty, that when a man's married he has no will of his own. To think," added Mr Caxton, musingly, "that in this world one cannot be sure of the simplest mathematical definition! You see, Pisistratus, that the angles of a triangle so decidedly scalene as your Uncle Jack's, may be equal to the angles of a right-angled triangle after all!"[8]

The long privation of books has quite restored all my appetite for them. How much I have to pick up!—what a compendious scheme of reading I and my father chalk out. I see enough to fill up all the leisure of life. But, somehow or other, Greek and Latin stand still: nothing charms me like Italian. Blanche and I are reading Metastasio, to the great indignation of my father, who calls it "rubbish," and wants to substitute Dante. I have no associations at present with the souls

"Che son contenti
Nel fuoco;"

I am already one of the "beate gente." Yet, in spite of Metastasio, Blanche and I are not so intimate as cousins ought to be. If we are by accident alone, I become as silent as a Turk, as formal as Sir Charles Grandison. I caught myself calling her Miss Blanche the other day.

I must not forget thee, honest Squills!—nor thy delight at my health and success; nor thy exclamation of pride, (one hand on my pulse and the other griping hard the "ball" of my arm,) "It all comes of my citrate of iron; nothing like it for children; it has an effect on the cerebral developments of hope and combativeness." Nor can I wholly omit mention of poor Mrs Primmins, who still calls me "Master Sisty," and is breaking her heart that I will not wear the new flannel waistcoats she had such pleasure in making—"Young gentlemen just growing up are so apt to go off in a galloping 'sumption!" "She knew just such another as Master Sisty, when she lived at Torquay, who wasted away, and went out like a snuff, all because he would not wear flannel waistcoats." Therewith my mother looks grave, and says, "One can't take too much precaution."

Suddenly the whole neighbourhood is thrown into commotion. Trevanion—I beg his pardon, Lord Ulverstone—is coming to settle for good at Compton. Fifty hands are employed, daily in putting the grounds into hasty order. Fourgons, and waggons, and vans have disgorged all the necessaries a great man requires, where he means to eat, drink, and sleep—books, wines, pictures, furniture. I recognise my old patron still. He is in earnest, whatever he does. I meet my friend, his steward, who tells me that Lord Ulverstone finds his favourite seat, near London, too exposed to interruption; and, moreover, that as he has there completed all improvements that wealth and energy can effect, he has less occupation for agricultural pursuits, to which he has grown more and more partial, than on the wide and princely domain which has hitherto wanted the master's eye. "He is a bra' farmer, I know," quoth the steward, "so far as the theory goes but I don't think we in the north want great lords to teach us how to follow the pleugh." The steward's sense of dignity is hurt; but he is an honest fellow, and really glad to see the family come to settle in the old place.

They have arrived, and with them the Castletons, and a whole posse comitatus of guests. The County Paper is full of fine names.

"What on earth did Lord Ulverstone, mean by pretending to get out of the way of troublesome visitors?"

"My dear Pisistratus," answered my father to that exclamation, "it is not the visitors who come, but the visitors who stay away, that most trouble the repose of a retired minister. In all the procession, he sees but the images of Brutus and Cassius—that are not there! And depend on it, also, a retirement so near London did not make noise enough. You see, a retiring statesman is like that fine carp—the farther he leaps from the water, the greater splash he makes in falling into the weeds! But," added Mr Caxton, in a repentant tone, "this jesting does not become us; and, if I indulged it, it is only because I am heartily glad that Trevanion is likely now to find out his true vocation. And as soon as the fine people he brings with him have left him alone in his library, I trust he will settle to that vocation, and be happier than he has been yet."

"And that vocation, sir, is—"

"Metaphysics!" said my father. "He will be quite at home in puzzling over Berkeley, and considering whether the Speaker's chair, and the official red boxes, were really things whose ideas of figure, extension, and hardness, were all in the mind. It will be a great consolation to him to agree, with Berkeley, and to find that he has only been baffled by immaterial phantasma!"

My father was quite right. The repining, subtle, truth-weighing Trevanion, plagued by his conscience into seeing all sides of a question, (for the least question has more than two sides, and is hexagonal at least,) was much more fitted to discover the origin of ideas than to convince Cabinets and Nations that two and two make four—a proposition on which he himself would have agreed with Abraham Tucker, where that most ingenious and suggestive of all English metaphysicians observes, "Well persuaded as I am that two and two make four, if I were to meet with a person of credit, candour, and understanding, who should sincerely call it in question, I would give him a hearing; for I am not more certain of that than of the whole being greater than a part. And yet I could myself suggest some considerations that might seem to controvert this point."[9] I can so well imagine Trevanion listening to "some person of credit, candour, and understanding," in disproof of that vulgar proposition that twice two make four! But the news of this arrival, including that of Lady Castleton, disturbed me greatly, and I took to long wanderings alone. In one of these rambles, they all called at the Tower—Lord and Lady Ulverstone, the Castletons, and their children. I escaped the visit; and on my return home, there was a certain delicacy respecting old associations, that restrained much talk before me on so momentous an event. Roland, like me, had kept out of the way. Blanche, poor child, ignorant of the antecedents, was the most communicative. And the especial theme she selected—was the grace and beauty of Lady Castleton!

A pressing invitation to spend some days at the castle had been cordially given to all. It was accepted only by myself: I wrote word that I would come.

Yes; I longed to prove the strength of my own self-conquest, and accurately test the nature of the feelings that had disturbed me. That any sentiment which could be called love remained for Lady Castleton, the wife of another, and that other a man with so many claims on my affection as her lord, I held as a moral impossibility. But, with all those lively impressions of early youth still engraved on my heart—impressions of the image of Fanny Trevanion, as the fairest and brightest of human beings—could I feel free to love again? Could I seek to woo, and rivet to myself for ever, the entire and virgin affections of another, while there was a possibility that I might compare and regret? No; either I must feel that, if Fanny were again single—could be mine without obstacle, human or divine—she had ceased to be the one I would single out of the world; or, though regarding love as the dead, I would be faithful to its memory and its ashes. My mother sighed, and looked fluttered and uneasy all the morning of the day on which I was to repair to Compton. She even seemed cross, for about the third time in her life, and paid no compliment to Mr Stultz, when my shooting-jacket was exchanged for a black frock, which that artist had pronounced to be "splendid;" neither did she honour me with any of those little attentions to the contents of my portmanteau, and the perfect "getting up" of my white waistcoats and cravats, which made her natural instincts on such memorable occasions. There was also a sort of querulous pitying tenderness in her tone when she spoke to Blanche, which was quite pathetic; though, fortunately, its cause remained dark and impenetrable to the innocent comprehension of one who could not see where the past filled the urns of the future, at the fountain of life. My father understood me better—shook me by the hand, as I got into the chaise, and muttered, out of Seneca—

"Non tanquam transfuga, sed tanquam explorator!"

'Not to desert, but examine.'

Quite right.

CHAPTER CVI.

Agreeably to the usual custom in great houses, as soon as I arrived at Compton I was conducted to my room, to adjust my toilet, or compose my spirits by solitude:—it wanted an hour to dinner. I had not, however, been thus left ten minutes, before the door opened, and Trevanion himself, (as I would fain still call him) stood before me. Most cordial were his greeting and welcome; and, seating himself by my side, he continued to converse, in his peculiar way—bluntly eloquent, and carelessly learned—till the half hour bell rang. He talked on Australia, the Wakefield system—cattle—books, his trouble in arranging his library—his schemes for improving his property, and embellishing his grounds—his delight to find my father look so well—his determination to see a great deal of him, whether his old college friend would or no. He talked, in short, of everything except politics, and his own past career—showing only his soreness in that silence. But (independently of the mere work of time,) he looked yet more worn and jaded in his leisure than he had done in the full tide of business; and his former abrupt quickness of manner now seemed to partake of feverish excitement. I hoped that my father would see much of him, for I felt that the weary mind wanted soothing.

Just as the second bell rang, I entered the drawing-room. There were at least twenty guests present—each guest, no doubt, some planet of fashion or fame, with satellites of its own. But I saw only two forms distinctly—first, Lord Castleton, conspicuous with star and garter, somewhat ampler and portlier in proportions, and with a frank dash of gray in the silky waves of his hair, but still as pre-eminent as ever for that beauty—the charm of which depends less than any other upon youth—arising, as it does, from a felicitous combination of bearing and manner, and that exquisite suavity of expression which steals into the heart, and pleases so much that it becomes a satisfaction to admire! Of Lord Castleton, indeed, it might be said, as of Alcibiades, 'that he was beautiful at every age.' I felt my breath come thick, and a mist passed before my eyes, as Lord Castleton led me through the crowd, and the radiant vision of Fanny Trevanion, how altered—and how dazzling!—burst upon me.

I felt the light touch of that hand of snow; but no guilty thrill shot through my veins. I heard the voice, musical as ever—lower than it was once, and more subdued in its key, but steadfast and untremulous—it was no longer the voice that made "my soul plant itself in the ears."[10] The event was over, and I knew that the dream had fled from the waking world for ever.

"Another old friend!" as Lady Ulverstone came forth from a little group of children, leading one fine boy of nine years old, while one, two or three years younger, clung to her gown. "Another old friend!—and," added Lady Ulverstone, after the first kind greetings, "two new ones, when the old are gone." The slight melancholy left the voice, as, after presenting to me the little viscount, she drew forward the more bashful Lord Albert, who indeed had something of his grandsire's and namesake's look of refined intelligence in his brow and eyes.

The watchful tact of Lord Castleton was quick in terminating whatever embarrassment might belong to these introductions, as, leaning lightly on my arm, he drew me forward, and presented me to the guests more immediately in our neighbourhood, who seemed by their earnest cordiality to have been already prepared for the introduction.

Dinner was now announced, and I welcomed that sense of relief and segregation with which one settles into one's own "particular" chair at your large miscellaneous entertainments.

I stayed three days at that house. How truly had Trevanion said that Fanny would make "an excellent great lady." What perfect harmony between her manners and her position; just retaining enough of the girl's seductive gaiety and bewitching desire to please, to soften the new dignity of bearing she had unconsciously assumed—less, after all, as great lady than as wife and mother: with a fine breeding, perhaps a little languid and artificial, as compared with her lord's—which sprang, fresh and healthful, wholly from nature—but still so void of all the chill of condescension, or the subtle impertinence that belongs to that order of the inferior noblesse, which boasts the name of "exclusives;" with what grace, void of prudery, she took the adulation of the flutterers, turning from them to her children, or escaping lightly to Lord Castleton, with an ease that drew round her at once the protection of hearth and home.

And certainly Lady Castleton was more incontestably beautiful than Fanny Trevanion had been.

All this I acknowledged, not with a sigh and a pang, but with a pure feeling of pride and delight. I might have loved madly and presumptuously, as boys will do; but I had loved worthily;—the love left no blush on my manhood; and Fanny's very happiness was my perfect and total cure of every wound in my heart not quite scarred over before. Had she been discontented, sorrowful, without joy in the ties she had formed, there might have been more danger that I should brood over the past, and regret the loss of its idol. Here there was none. And the very improvement in her beauty had so altered its character—so altered—that Fanny Trevanion and Lady Castleton seemed two persons. And, thus observing and listening to her, I could now dispassionately perceive such differences in our nature as seemed to justify Trevanion's assertion, which once struck me as so monstrous, "that we should not have been happy had fate permitted our union." Pure-hearted and simple though she remained in the artificial world, still that world was her element; its interests occupied her; its talk, though just chastened from scandal, flowed from her lips. To borrow the words of a man who was himself a courtier, and one so distinguished that he could afford to sneer at Chesterfield,[11] "She had the routine of that style of conversation which is a sort of gold leaf, that is a great embellishment where it is joined to anything else." I will not add, "but makes a very poor figure by itself,"—for that Lady Castleton's conversation certainly did not do—perhaps, indeed, because it was not "by itself"—and the gold leaf was all the better for being thin, since it could not cover even the surface of the sweet and amiable nature over which it was spread. Still, this was not the mind in which now, in maturer experience, I would seek to find sympathy with manly action, or companionship in the charms of intellectual leisure.

There was about this beautiful favourite of nature, and fortune a certain helplessness, which had even its grace in that high station, and which perhaps tended to insure her domestic peace, for it served to attach her to those who had won influence over her, and was happily accompanied by a most affectionate disposition. But still, if less favoured by circumstances, less sheltered from every wind that could visit her too roughly—if, as the wife of a man of inferior rank, she had failed of that high seat and silken canopy reserved for the spoiled darlings of fortune—that helplessness might have become querulous. I thought of poor Ellen Bolding and her silken shoes. Fanny Trevanion seemed to have come into the world with silk shoes—not to walk where there was a stone or a briar! I heard something, in the gossip of those around, that confirmed this view of Lady Castleton's character, while it deepened my admiration of her lord, and showed me how wise had been her choice, and how resolutely he had prepared himself to vindicate his own. One evening, as I was sitting a little apart from the rest, with two men of the London world, to whose talk—for it ran upon the on-dits and anecdotes of a region long strange to me—I was a silent but amused listener; one of the two said—"Well, I don't know anywhere a more excellent creature than Lady Castleton; so fond of her children—and her tone to Castleton so exactly what it ought to be—so affectionate, and yet, as it were, respectful. And the more credit to her, if, as they say, she was not in love with him when she married, (to be sure, handsome as he is, he is twice her age!) And no woman could have been more flattered and courted by Lotharios and lady-killers than Lady Castleton has been. I confess, to my shame, that Castleton's luck puzzles me, for it is rather an exception to my general experience."

"My dear * * *," said the other, who was one of those wise men of pleasure, who occasionally startle us into wondering, how they come to be so clever, and yet rest contented with mere drawing-room celebrity—men who seem always idle, yet appear to have read everything; always indifferent to what passes before them, yet who know the characters and divine the secrets of everybody—"my dear * * *," said the gentleman, "you would not be puzzled if you had studied Lord Castleton, instead of her ladyship. Of all the conquests ever made by Sedley Beaudesert, when the two fairest dames of the Faubourg are said to have fought for his smiles in the Bois de Boulogne—no conquest ever cost him such pains, or so tasked his knowledge of women, as that of his wife after marriage! He was not satisfied with her hand, he was resolved to have her whole heart, 'one entire and perfect chrysolite;' and he has succeeded! Never was husband so watchful, and so little jealous—never one who confided so generously in all that was best in his wife, yet was so alert in protecting and guarding her wherever she was weakest! When, in the second year of marriage, that dangerous German Prince Von Leibenfels attached himself so perseveringly to Lady Castleton, and the scandal-mongers pricked up their ears in hopes of a victim, I watched Castleton with as much interest as if I had been looking over Deschappelles playing at chess. You never saw anything so masterly: he pitted himself against his highness with the cool confidence, not of a blind spouse, but a fortunate rival. He surpassed him in the delicacy of his attentions, he outshone him by his careless magnificence. Leibenfels had the impertinence to send Lady Castleton a bouquet of some rare flowers just in fashion. Castleton, an hour before, had filled her whole balcony with the same costly exotics, as if they were too common for nosegays, and only just worthy to bloom for her a day. Young and really accomplished as Leibenfels is, Castleton eclipsed him by his grace, and fooled him with his wit: he laid little plots to turn his mustache and guitar into ridicule; he seduced him into a hunt with the buckhounds, (though Castleton himself had not hunted before, since he was thirty,) and drew him, spluttering German oaths, out of the slough of a ditch; he made him the laughter of the clubs; he put him fairly out of fashion—and all with such suavity and politeness, and bland sense of superiority, that it was the finest piece of high comedy you ever beheld. The poor prince, who had been coxcomb enough to lay a bet with a Frenchman as to his success with the English in general, and Lady Castleton in particular, went away with a face as long as Don Quixote's. If you had but seen him at S—— House, the night before he took leave of the island, and his comical grimace when Castleton offered him a pinch of the Beaudesert mixture! No! the fact is, that Castleton made it the object of his existence, the masterpiece of his art, to secure to himself a happy home, and the entire possession of his wife's heart. The first two or three years, I fear, cost him more trouble than any other man ever took, with his own wife at least—but he may now rest in peace; Lady Castleton is won, and for ever."

As my gentleman ceased, Lord Castleton's noble head rose above the group standing round him; and I saw Lady Castleton turn with a look of well-bred fatigue from a handsome young fop, who had affected to lower his voice while he spoke to her, and, encountering the eyes of her husband, the look changed at once into one of such sweet smiling affection, such frank unmistakeable wife-like pride, that it seemed a response to the assertion—"Lady Castleton is won, and for ever."

Yes, that story increased my admiration for Lord Castleton: it showed me with what forethought and earnest sense of responsibility he had undertaken the charge of a life, the guidance of a character yet undeveloped; it lastingly acquitted him of the levity that had been attributed to Sedley Beaudesert. But I felt more than ever contented that the task had devolved on one whose temper and experience had so fitted him to discharge it. That German prince made me tremble from sympathy with the husband, and in a sort of relative shudder for myself! Had that episode happened to me, I could never have drawn "high comedy" from it!—I could never have so happily closed the fifth act with a pinch of the Beaudesert mixture! No, no; to my homely sense of man's life and employment, there was nothing alluring in the prospect of watching over the golden tree in the garden, with a "woe to the Argus, if Mercury once lull him to sleep!" Wife of mine shall need no watching save in sickness and sorrow! Thank Heaven, that my way of life does not lead through the roseate thoroughfares, beset with German princes laying bets for my perdition, and fine gentlemen admiring the skill with which I play at chess for so terrible a stake! To each rank and each temper, its own laws. I acknowledge that Fanny is an excellent marchioness, and Lord Castleton an incomparable marquis. But, Blanche! if I can win thy true simple heart, I trust I shall begin at the fifth act of high comedy, and say at the altar—

"Once won, won for ever!"

CHAPTER CVII.

I rode home on a horse my host lent me; and Lord Castleton rode part of the way with me, accompanied by his two boys, who bestrode manfully their Shetland ponies, and cantered on before us. I paid some compliment to the spirit and intelligence of these children—a compliment they well deserved.

"Why, yes," said the marquis, with a father's becoming pride, "I hope neither of them will shame his grandsire, Trevanion. Albert (though not quite the wonder poor Lady Ulverstone declares him to be) is rather too precocious; and it is all I can do to prevent his being spoilt by flattery to his cleverness, which, I think, is much worse than even flattery to rank—a danger to which, despite Albert's destined inheritance, the elder brother is more exposed. Eton soon takes out the conceit of the latter and more vulgar kind. I remember Lord—— (you know what an unpretending good-natured fellow he is now) strutting into the play-ground, a raw boy with his chin up in the air, and burly Dick Johnson (rather a tuft-hunter now, I'm afraid) coming up, and saying, 'Well, sir, and who the deuce are you?' 'Lord——,' says the poor devil unconsciously, 'eldest son of the Marquis of——.' 'Oh, indeed!' cries Johnson; 'then, there's one kick for my lord, and two for the marquis!' I am not fond of kicking, but I doubt if anything ever did —— more good than those those kicks! But" continued Lord Castleton, "when one flatters a boy for his cleverness, even Eton itself cannot kick the conceit out of him. Let him be last in the form, and the greatest dunce ever flogged, there are always people to say that your public schools don't do for your great geniuses. And it is ten to one but what the father is plagued into taking the boy home, and giving him a private tutor, who fixes him into a prig for ever. A coxcomb in dress," said the marquis smiling, "is a trifler it would ill become me to condemn, and I own that I would rather see a youth a fop than a sloven; but a coxcomb in ideas—why, the younger he is, the more unnatural and disagreeable. Now, Albert, over that hedge, sir."

"That hedge, papa? The pony will never do it."

"Then," said Lord Castleton, taking off his hat with politeness, "I fear you will deprive us of the pleasure of your company."

The boy laughed, and made gallantly for the hedge, though I saw by his change of colour that it a little alarmed him. The pony could not clear the hedge; but it was a pony of tact and resources, and it scrambled through like a cat, inflicting sundry rents and tears on a jacket of Raphael blue.

Lord Castleton said, smiling, "You see I teach them to get through a difficulty one way or the other. Between you and me," he added seriously, "I perceive a very different world rising round the next generation from that in which I first went forth and took my pleasure. I shall rear my boys accordingly. Rich noblemen must now-a-days be useful men; and if they can't leap over briars, they must scramble through them. Don't you agree with me?"

"Yes, heartily."

"Marriage makes a man much wiser," said the marquis, after a pause. "I smile now, to think how often I sighed at the thought of growing old. Now I reconcile myself to the gray hairs without dreams of a wig, and enjoy youth still—for" (pointing to his sons) "it is there!"

"He has very nearly found out the secret of the saffron bag now," said my father, pleased, and rubbing his hands, when I repeated this talk with Lord Castleton. "But I fear poor Trevanion," he added, with a compassionate change of countenance, "is still far away from the sense of Lord Bacon's receipt. And his wife, you say, out of very love for him, keeps always drawing discord from the one jarring wire."

"You must talk to her, sir."

"I will," said my father angrily; "and scold her too—foolish woman! I shall tell her Luther's advice to the Prince of Anhalt."

"What was that, sir?"

"Only to throw a baby into the river Maldon, because it had sucked dry five wet-nurses besides the mother, and must therefore be a changeling. Why, that ambition of hers would suck dry all the mothers' milk in the genus mammalian! And such a withered, rickety, malign little changeling too! She shall fling it into the river, by all that is holy!" cried my father; and, suiting the action to the word, away went the spectacles he had been rubbing indignantly for the last three minutes, into the pond. "Papæ!" faltered my father aghast, while the Ceprinidæ, mistaking the dip of the spectacles for an invitation to dinner, came scudding up to the bank. "It is all your fault," said Mr Caxton, recovering himself. "Get me the new tortoise-shell spectacles and a large slice of bread. You see that when fish are reduced to a pond they recognise a benefactor, which they never do when rising at flies, or groping for worms, in the waste world of a river. Hem!—a hint for the Ulverstones. Besides the bread and the spectacles, just look out and bring me the old black-letter copy of St Anthony's Sermon to Fishes."

CHAPTER CVIII.

Some weeks now have passed since my return to the Tower: the Castletons are gone, and all Trevanion's gay guests. And since these departures, visits between the two houses have been interchanged often, and the bonds of intimacy are growing close. Twice has my father held long conversations apart with Lady Ulverstone, (my mother is not foolish enough to feel a pang now at such confidences,) and the result has become apparent. Lady Ulverstone has ceased all talk against the world and the public—ceased to fret the galled pride of her husband with irritating sympathy. She has made herself the true partner of his present occupations, as she was of those in the past; she takes interest in farming, and gardens, and flowers, and those philosophical peaches which come from trees academical that Sir William Temple reared in his graceful retirement. She does more—she sits by her husband's side in the library, reads the books he reads, or, if in Latin, coaxes him, into construing them. Insensibly she leads him into studies farther and farther remote from Blue Books and Hansard; and, taking my father's hint,

"Allures to brighter worlds, and leads the way."

They are inseparable. Darby-and-Joan-like, you see them together in the library, the garden, or the homely little pony-phaeton, for which Lord Ulverstone has resigned the fast-trotting cob, once identified with the eager looks of the busy Trevanion. It is most touching, most beautiful! And to think what a victory over herself the proud woman must have obtained!—never a thought that seems to murmur, never a word to recall the ambitious man back from the philosophy into which his active mind flies for refuge. And with the effort her brow has become so serene! That careworn expression, which her fine features once wore, is fast vanishing. And what affects me most, is to think that this change (which is already settling into happiness) has been wrought by Austin's counsels and appeals to her sense and affection. "It is to you," he said, "that Trevanion must look for more than comfort—for cheerfulness and satisfaction. Your child is gone from you—the world ebbs away—you two should be all in all to each other. Be so." Thus, after paths so devious, meet those who had parted in youth, now on the verge of age. There, in the same scenes where Austin and Ellinor had first formed acquaintance, he aiding her to soothe the wounds inflicted by the ambition that had separated their lots, and both taking counsel to insure the happiness of the rival she had preferred.

After all this vexed public life of toil, and care, and ambition,—to see Trevanion and Ellinor drawing closer and closer to each other, knowing private life and its charms for the first time,—verily it would have been a theme for an elegiast like Tibullus.

But all this while a younger love, with no blurred leaves to erase from the chronicle, has been keeping sweet account of the summer time. "Very near are two hearts that have no guile between them," saith a proverb, traced back to Confucius. O ye days of still sunshine, reflected back from ourselves—O ye haunts, endeared evermore by a look, tone, or smile, or rapt silence, when more and more with each hour, unfolded before me that nature, so tenderly coy, so cheerful though serious, so attuned by simple cares to affection, yet so filled, from soft musings and solitude, with a poetry that gave grace to duties the homeliest;—setting life's trite things to music. Here nature and fortune concurred alike: equal in birth and pretensions—similar in tastes and in objects,—loving the healthful activity of purpose, but content to find it around us—neither envying the wealthy, nor vying with the great; each framed by temper to look on the bright side of life, and find founts of delight, and green spots fresh with verdure, where eyes but accustomed to cities could see but the sands and the mirage. While afar (as man's duty) I had gone through the travail that, in wrestling with fortune, gives pause to the heart to recover its losses, and know the value of love, in its graver sense of life's earnest realities; heaven had reared, at the thresholds of home, the young tree that should cover the roof with its blossoms, and embalm with its fragrance the daily air of my being.

It had been the joint prayer of those kind ones I left, that such might be my reward; and each had contributed, in his or her several way, to fit that fair life for the ornament and joy of the one that now asked to guard and to cherish it. From Roland came that deep, earnest honour—a man's in its strength, and a woman's in its delicate sense of refinement. From Roland, that quick taste for all things noble in poetry, and lovely in nature—the eye that sparkled to read how Bayard stood alone at the bridge, and saved an army—or wept over the page that told how the dying Sidney put the bowl from his burning lips. Is that too masculine a spirit for some? Let each please himself. Give me the woman who can echo all thoughts that are noblest in man! And that eye, too—like Roland's,—could pause to note each finer mesh in the wonderful webwork of beauty. No landscape to her was the same yesterday and to-day,—a deeper shade from the skies could change the face of the moors—the springing up of fresh wild flowers, the very song of some bird unheard before, lent variety to the broad rugged heath. Is that too simple a source of pleasure for some to prize? Be it so to those who need the keen stimulants that cities afford. But if we were to pass all our hours in those scenes, it was something to have the tastes which own no monotony in Nature.

All this came from Roland; and to this, with thoughtful wisdom, my father had added enough knowledge from books to make those tastes more attractive, and to lend to impulsive perception of beauty and goodness the culture that draws finer essence from beauty, and expands the Good into the Better by heightening the site of the survey: hers, knowledge enough to sympathise with intellectual pursuits, not enough to dispute on man's province—Opinion. Still, whether in nature or in lore, still

"The fairest garden in her looks,
And in her mind the choicest books!"

And yet, thou wise Austin—and thou Roland, poet that never wrote a verse,—yet your work had been incomplete, but then Woman stept in, and the mother gave to her she designed for a daughter the last finish of meek everyday charities—the mild household virtues,—"the soft word that turneth away wrath,"—the angelic pity for man's rougher faults—the patience that bideth its time—and, exacting no "rights of woman," subjugates us, delighted, to the invisible thrall.

Dost thou remember, my Blanche, that soft summer evening when the vows our eyes had long interchanged stole at last from the lip? Wife mine! come to my side,—look over me while I write; there, thy tears—(happy tears, are they not, Blanche?)—have blotted the page! Shall we tell the world more? Right, my Blanche, no words should profane the place where those tears have fallen!

And here I would fain conclude; but alas, and alas! that I cannot associate with our hopes, on this side the grave, him who, we fondly hoped, (even on the bridal-day, that gave his sister to my arms,) would come to the hearth where his place now stood vacant, contented with glory, and fitted at last for the tranquil happiness, which long years of repentance and trial had deserved.

Within the first year of my marriage, and shortly after a gallant share in a desperate action, which had covered his name with new honours, just when we were most elated, in the blinded vanity of human pride—came the fatal news! The brief career was run. He died, as I knew he would have prayed to die, at the close of a day ever memorable in the annals of that marvellous empire, which valour without parallel has annexed to the Throne of the Isles. He died in the arms of Victory, and his last smile met the eyes of the noble chief who, even in that hour, could pause from the tide of triumph by the victim it had cast on its bloody shore. "One favour," faltered the dying man; "I have a father at home—he too is a soldier. In my tent is my will: it gives all I have to him—he can take it without shame. That is not enough! Write to him—you—with your own hand, and tell him how his son fell!" And the hero fulfilled the prayer, and that letter is dearer to Roland than all the long roll of the ancestral dead! Nature has reclaimed her rights, and the forefathers recede before the son.

In a side chapel of the old Gothic church, amidst the mouldering tombs of those who fought at Acre and Agincourt, a fresh tablet records the death of Herbert de Caxton, with the simple inscription—

HE FELL ON THE FIELD:

HIS COUNTRY MOURNED HIM,

AND HIS FATHER IS RESIGNED.

Years have rolled away since that tablet was placed there, and changes have passed on that nook of earth which bounds our little world: fair chambers have sprung up amidst the desolate ruins; far and near, smiling corn-fields replace the bleak, dreary moors. The land supports more retainers than ever thronged to the pennon of its barons of old; and Roland can look from his tower over domains that are reclaimed, year by year, from the waste, till the ploughshare shall win a lordship more opulent than those feudal chiefs ever held by the tenure of the sword. And the hospitable mirth that had fled from the ruin has been renewed in the hall; and rich and poor, great and lowly, have welcomed the rise of an ancient house from the dust of decay. All those dreams of Roland's youth are fulfilled; but they do not gladden his heart as does the thought that his son, at the last, was worthy of his line, and the hope that no gulf shall yawn between the two when the Grand Circle is rounded, and man's past and man's future meet where Time disappears. Never was that lost one forgotten!—never was his name breathed but tears rushed to the eyes; and, each morning, the peasant going to his labour might see Roland steal down the dell to the deep-set door of the chapel. None presume there to follow his steps, or intrude on his solemn thoughts; for there, in sight of that tablet, are his orisons made, and the remembrance of the dead forms a part of the commune with heaven. But the old man's step is still firm, and his brow still erect; and you may see in his face that it was no hollow boast which proclaimed that the "father was resigned:" and ye, who doubt if too Roman a hardness might not be found in that Christian resignation, think what it is to have feared for a son the life of shame, and ask, then, if the sharpest grief to a father is in a son's death of honour.

Years have passed, and two fair daughters play at the knees of Blanche or creep round the footstool of Austin, waiting patiently for the expected kiss when he looks up from the Great Book, now drawing fast to its close; or, if Roland enter the room, forget all their sober demureness, and, unawed by the terrible "Papæ!" run clamorous for the promised swing in the orchard, or the fiftieth recital of "Chevy Chase."

For my part, I take the goods the gods provide me, and am contented with girls that have the eyes of their mother; but Roland, ungrateful man, begins to grumble that we are so neglectful of the rights of heirs-male. He is in doubt whether to lay the fault on Mr Squills or on us: I am not sure that he does not think it a conspiracy of all three to settle the representation of the martial De Caxtons on "the spindle side." Whosoever be the right person to blame, an omission so fatal to the straight line in the pedigree is rectified at last; and Mrs Primmins again rushes, or rather rolls—in the movement natural to forms globular and spheral—into my father's room with—

"Sir, sir—it is a boy!"

Whether my father asked also this time that question so puzzling to metaphysical inquirers, "What is a boy?" I know not; I rather suspect he had not leisure for so abstract a question: for the whole household burst on him, and my mother, in that storm peculiar to the elements of the Mind Feminine—a sort of sunshiny storm between laughter and crying—whirled him off to behold the Neogilos.

Now, some months after that date, on a winter's evening, we were all assembled in the hall, which was still our usual apartment, since its size permitted to each his own segregated and peculiar employment. A large screen fenced off from interruption my father's erudite settlement; and quite out of sight, behind that impermeable barrier, he was now calmly winding up that eloquent peroration which will astonish the world whenever, by Heaven's special mercy, the printer's devils have done with "The History of Human Error." In another nook my uncle had ensconced himself—stirring his coffee, (in the cup my mother had presented to him so many years ago, and which had miraculously escaped all the ills the race of crockery is heir to,) a volume of Ivanhoe in the other hand: and, despite the charm of the Northern Wizard, his eye not on the page. On the wall behind him, hangs the picture of Sir Herbert de Caxton, the soldier-comrade of Sidney and Drake; and, at the foot of the picture, Roland has slung his son's sword beside the letter that spoke of his death, which is framed and glazed: sword and letter had become as the last, nor least honoured, Penates of the hall:—the son was grown an ancestor.

Not far from my uncle sat Mr Squills, employed in mapping out phrenological divisions on a cast he had made from the skull of one of the Australian aborigines—a ghastly present which (in compliance with a yearly letter to that effect) I had brought him over, together with a stuffed "wombat" and a large bundle of sarsaparilla. (For the satisfaction of his patients, I may observe, parenthetically, that the skull and the "wombat"—that last is a creature between a miniature pig and a very small badger—were not precisely packed up with the sarsaparilla!) Farther on stood open, but idle, the new pianoforte, at which, before my father had given his preparatory hem, and sat down to the Great Book, Blanche and my mother had been trying hard to teach me to bear the third in the glee of "The Chough and Crow to roost have gone,"—vain task, in spite of all flattering assurances that I have a very fine "bass," if I could but manage to humour it. Fortunately for the ears of the audience, that attempt is now abandoned. My mother is hard at work on her tapestry—the last pattern in fashion—to wit, a rosy-cheeked young troubadour playing the lute under a salmon-coloured balcony: the two little girls look gravely on, prematurely in love, I suspect, with the troubadour; and Blanche and I have stolen away into a corner, which, by some strange delusion, we consider out of sight, and in that corner is the cradle of the Neogilos. Indeed it is not our fault that it is there—Roland would have it so; and the baby is so good, too, he never cries—at least so say Blanche and my mother: at all events he does not cry to-night. And indeed, that child is a wonder! He seems to know and respond to what was uppermost at our hearts when he was born; and yet more, when Roland (contrary, I dare say, to all custom) permitted neither mother, nor nurse, nor creature of womankind, to hold him at the baptismal font, but bent over the new Christian his own dark, high-featured face, reminding one of the eagle that hid the infant in its nest, and watched over it with wings that had battled with the storm: and from that moment the child, who took the name of Herbert, seemed to recognise Roland better than his nurse, or even mother—seemed to know that, in giving him that name, we sought to give Roland his son once more! Never did the old man come near the infant but it smiled and crowed, and stretched out its little arms; and then the mother and I would press each other's hands secretly, and were not jealous. Well, then, Blanche and Pisistratus were seated near the cradle, and talking in low whispers, when my father pushed aside the screen and said—

"There—the work is done! and now it may go to press as soon as you will."

Congratulations poured in—my father bore them with his usual equanimity; and standing on the hearth, his hand in his waistcoat, he said musingly, "Among the last delusions of Human Error, I have had to notice Rousseau's phantasy of Perpetual Peace, and all the like pastoral dreams, which preceded the bloodiest wars that have convulsed the earth for more than a thousand years!"

"And to judge by the newspapers," said I, "the same delusions are renewed again. Benevolent theorists go about, prophesying peace as a positive certainty, deduced from that sibyl-book the ledger; and we are never again to buy cannons, provided only we can exchange cotton for corn."

Mr Squills, (who, having almost wholly retired from general business, has, from want of something better to do, attended sundry "Demonstrations in the North," since which he has talked much about the march of improvement, the spirit of the age, and "US of the nineteenth century.")—I heartily hope that these benevolent theorists are true prophets. I have found, in the course of my professional practice, that men go out of the world quite fast enough, without hacking them into pieces, or blowing them up into the air. War is a great evil.

Blanche, (passing by Squills, and glancing towards Roland.)—Hush!

Roland remains silent.

Mr Caxton.—War is a great evil; but evil is admitted by Providence into the agency of creation, physical and moral. The existence of evil has puzzled wiser heads than ours, Squills. But, no doubt, there is One above who has His reasons for it. The combative bump seems as common to the human skull as the philoprogenitive; if it is in our organisation, be sure it is not there without cause. Neither is it just to man, nor wisely submissive to the Disposer of all events, to suppose that war is wholly and wantonly produced by human crimes and follies—that it conduces only to ill, and does not as often arise from the necessities interwoven in the framework of society, and speed the great ends of the human race, conformably with the designs of the Omniscient. Not one great war has ever desolated the earth, but has left behind it seeds that have ripened into blessings incalculable.

Mr Squills, (with the groan of a dissentient at a "Demonstration.")—Oh! oh! OH!

Luckless Squills! Little could he have foreseen the shower-bath, or rather douche, of erudition that fell splash on his head, as he pulled the spring with that impertinent Oh! oh! Down first came the Persian War, with Median myriads disgorging all the rivers they had drunk up in their march through the East—all the arts, all the letters, all the sciences, all the notions of liberty that we inherit from Greece—my father rushed on with them all, sousing Squills with his proofs that, without the Persian War, Greece would never have risen to be the teacher of the world. Before the gasping victim could take breath, down came Hun, Goth, and Vandal, on Italy and Squills.

"What, sir!" cried my father, "don't you see that, from those eruptions on demoralised Rome, came the regeneration of manhood; the re-baptism of earth from the last soils of paganism; and the remote origin of whatever of Christianity yet exists, free from the idolatries with which Rome contaminated the faith?"

Squills held up his hands, and made a splutter. Down came Charlemagne—paladins and all! There my father was grand! What a picture he made of the broken, jarring, savage elements of barbaric society. And the iron hand of the great Frank—settling the nations, and founding existent Europe. Squills was now fast sinking into coma, or stupefaction; but, catching at a straw, as he heard the word "Crusades" he stuttered forth, "Ah! there I defy you!"

"Defy me, there!" cries my father; and one would think the ocean was in the shower-bath, it came down with such a rattle. My father scarcely touched on the smaller points in excuse for the Crusades, though he recited very volubly all the humane arts introduced into Europe by that invasion of the East; and showed how it had served civilisation, by the vent it afforded for the rude energies of chivalry—by the element of destruction to feudal tyranny that it introduced—by its use in the emancipation of burghs, and the disrupture of serfdom. But he showed, in colours vivid as if caught from the skies of the East, the great spread of Mahometanism, and the danger it menaced to Christian Europe—and drew up the Godfreys, and Tancreds, and Richards, as a league of the Age and Necessity, against the terrible progress of the sword and the Koran. "You call them madmen," cried my father, "but the frenzy of nations is the statesmanship of fate! How know you that—but for the terror inspired by the hosts who marched to Jerusalem—how know you that the Crescent had not waved over other realms than those which Roderic lost to the Moor? If Christianity had been less a passion, and the passion had less stirred up all Europe—how know you that the creed of the Arab (which was then, too, a passion) might not have planted its mosques in the forum of Rome, and on the site of Notre Dame? For in the war between creeds—when the creeds are embraced by vast races—think you that the reason of sages can cope with the passion of millions? Enthusiasm must oppose enthusiasm. The crusader fought for the tomb of Christ, but he saved the life of Christendom."

My father paused. Squills was quite passive; he struggled no more—he was drowned.

"So," resumed Mr Caxton, more quietly—"so, if later wars yet perplex us as to the good that the All-wise One draws from their evils, our posterity may read their uses as clearly as we now read the finger of Providence resting on the barrows of Marathon, or guiding Peter the Hermit to the battle-fields of Palestine. Nor, while we admit the evil to the passing generation, can we deny that many of the virtues that make the ornament and vitality of peace sprang up first in the convulsions of war!" Here Squills began to evince faint signs of resuscitation, when my father let fly at him one of those numberless waterworks which his prodigious memory kept in constant supply. "Hence," said he, "hence not unjustly has it been remarked by a philosopher, shrewd at least in worldly experience—(Squills again closed his eyes, and became exanimate)—'It is strange to imagine that war, which of all things appears the most savage, should be the passion of the most heroic spirits. But 'tis in war that the knot of fellowship is closest drawn; It is in war that mutual succour is most given—mutual danger run, and common affection most exerted and employed; for heroism and philanthropy are almost one and the same!'"[12]

My father ceased, and mused a little. Squills, if still living, thought it prudent to feign continued extinction.

"Not," said Mr Caxton, resuming—"not but what I hold it our duty never to foster into a passion what we must rather submit to as an awful necessity. You say truly, Mr Squills—war is an evil; and woe to those who, on slight pretences, open the gates of Janus,

——'The dire abode,
And the fierce issues of the furious god.'"

Mr Squills, after a long pause, (employed in some of the more handy means for the reanimation of submerged bodies, supporting himself close to the fire in a semi-erect posture, with gentle friction, self-applied, to each several limb, and copious recourse to certain steaming stimulants which my compassionate hands prepared for him,) stretches himself, and says feebly, "In short, then, not to provoke further discussion, you would go to war in defence of your country. Stop, sir—stop, for God's sake! I agree with you—I agree with you! But, fortunately, there is little chance now that any new Boney will build boats at Boulogne to invade us."

Mr Caxton.—I am not so sure of that, Mr Squills. (Squills falls back with a glassy stare of deprecating horror.) I don't read the newspapers very often, but the past helps me to judge of the present.

Therewith my father earnestly recommended to Mr Squills the careful perusal of certain passages in Thucydides, just previous to the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, (Squills hastily nodded the most servile acquiescence,) and drew an ingenious parallel between the signs and symptoms foreboding that outbreak, and the very apprehension of coming war which was evinced by the recent Io pæans to peace. And, after sundry notable and shrewd remarks, tending to show where elements for war were already ripening, amidst clashing opinions and disorganised states, he wound up with saying,—"So that, all things considered, I think we had better just keep up enough of the bellicose spirit, not to think it a sin if we are called upon to fight for our pestles and mortars, our three per cents, goods, chattels, and liberties. Such a time must come, sooner or later, even though the whole world were spinning cotton, and printing sprigged calicoes. We may not see it, Squills, but that young gentleman in the cradle, whom you have lately brought into light, may."

"And if so," said my uncle abruptly, speaking for the first time—"if indeed it is for altar and hearth!"

My father suddenly drew in and pished a little, for he saw that he was caught in the web of his own eloquence.

Then Roland took down from the wall his son's sword. Stealing to the cradle, he laid it in its sheath by the infant's side, and glanced from my father to us with a beseeching eye. Instinctively Blanche bent over the cradle, as if to protect the Neogilos; but the child, waking, turned from her, and, attracted by the glitter of the hilt, laid one hand lustily thereon, and pointed with the other, laughingly, to Roland.

"Only on my father's proviso," said I hesitatingly. "For hearth and altar—nothing less!"

"And even in that case," said my father, "add the shield to the sword!" and on the other side of the infant he placed Roland's well-worn Bible, blistered in many a page with secret tears.

There we all stood, grouping round the young centre of so many hopes and fears—in peace or in war, born alike for the Battle of Life. And he, unconscious of all that made our lips silent, and our eyes dim, had already left that bright bauble of the sword, and thrown both arms round Roland's bended neck.

"Herbert," murmured Roland; and Blanche gently drew away the sword,—and left the Bible.

[LYNMOUTH REVISITED.]

BY THE SKETCHER.

Nearly sixteen years ago, there appeared in the pages of Maga, descriptions of the scenery of Lynmouth, North Devon. As Sketcher, I then proposed to myself to analyse the impressions which landscape scenery makes upon the minds of artists and lovers of nature, and to show that there must be in the artist a higher aim than imitation; and that the pleasure of the unpractising admirer will be in proportion to his power of extracting from the insensitive matter of nature, the poetic life of thought; to rescue both art and nature from the degradation they suffer when disconnected with the higher senses; to show that nature, to be the worthy object of art, should be suggestive. Its charm is to elicit, to draw out finely, and to embellish what is already, in a ruder state, in the mind. If there be poverty within, there is no room for the reception of the riches so profusely surrounding us in the external world. Neither artists nor amateurs are generally sufficiently aware, that a previous education is necessary to make sketching effective and expressive. We find ourselves everywhere. Whatever be the scenery, the sketcher brings little back that he does not take with him. Hence the diversity in the character of sketches—of different sketchers—and the one character that pervades the portfolio of each. I have heard of an artist who visited our lakes, and brought back with him only cottages! Morland would have added, or rather made the principal, the stye and pigs; and even Gainsborough's sketch-book may have shown little more than ragged pollards, and groups of rustic children. To know what is in nature, you must know what is in yourself. If you are ignorant of art, your sketches can only be accidentally good. It is possible to be a very close observer, even of minute beauties, and yet be a very bad sketcher. One of an original genius will convert, and, by a bold dissimilitude in non-essentials, incorporate into his own previous conceptions whatever is before him; and thus, by preserving the great suggestive characteristics, represent nature with a far greater truth, exhibiting her very life and feeling, than they who aim at truth through exact and minute imitation.

Let this be exemplified in Salvator Rosa. Do his wild scenes of rock, and rugged rock-engendered trees, exist to the general eye, exactly in their form, and colour, and composition, as he has represented them? The exact sketcher would have found a less correspondence in branches and foliage—a less marked living feeling between the rocks and trees; he would have found much in the colouring, especially in the green leaves, where they are so few and scattered, of an inconsistent gaiety. These would have been distracting; but his educated eye, toned by a one bold feeling, rejected these, and seized the wilder characteristic, to which he resolutely, under the impulse of his genius, made all the rest subservient and suggestive. He embodied what he saw with what he felt, and marred not the savage freedom by attractive littlenesses, but gave it full play; and with an execution as bold and free, which the minute critic would pronounce not natural, though most natural, as most expressive of that spontaneous out-flung unconstrained-ness of nature's growth, which really pervades all, he harmoniously brought all the parts under the dominion of one poetic feeling. Take his foliage, even in form—to say nothing of its actual unnaturalness of colour in the exact sense—there is a raggedness, as torn and storm-beaten, in the individual leafage, which the untutored sketcher will in vain look for in his beat; but all this stamps one great truth, and that speaks more of nature than many small ones. I do not mean here to give the palm to Salvator Rosa, as if he were "Lord of Landscape;" I mention him as a strong example, as the boldest deviator from that which the unpoetic eye sees, and minds totally uncharmed by poetry can conceive. I think it well here to lay some stress upon these preliminary remarks, because much has been written, with a great fascination of language, recommending, as I believe too strongly, a close observation in detail of the phenomena of nature; overlooking the great phenomenon—the accordance of external nature with the heart, feelings, and very life and soul of man. One writer in particular, with great ability, and audacious confidence, because in his blindness he, uneducated to it, sees not in nature what such great men as Salvator Rosa and Gaspar Poussin, have extracted from it, and yet made it nature's and their own, flings upon their established fame the brutum fulmen of his contempt and abuse. Damnat quod non intelligit. He knows not the true principles of art which exist to perfection in their works, nor knows how strictly these principles belong to art and nature only through and by their connexion with the mind of man. You may study meteorology in the Penny Magazine, or geology and botany, most scientifically; but it will further you a very little way, while your portfolio is under your arm, and your eye in search of a picturesque which you have not learned to find. Nay, it may happen, for it often does happen, that the more you sketch the farther you are from art. It is possible, also, for the most accomplished artist to sketch too much; and to stay the power of his invention, by referring too constantly to the preciseness and individuality of scenery. He dares not so much trust his palette as his portfolio, as it were his register of nature, to which he has bound himself beyond the usual apprenticeship.

It has been remarked by sketchers, amateurs, and artists by profession, that, upon a sketching expedition, "their hands are not in" for some days. I doubt if the fault be so much in the hand as in the eye; for in most cases the hand had come from the immediate practice of the studio: but the eye is distracted by the many beauties which now force themselves into observation, and which in the home-practice, and in following the mind's bent on the canvass, the memory did not vividly present as not wanted. It is more difficult, therefore, at first to generalise, to escape the fascinations of local form and colour, which keep the eye from the instant acknowledgment of a whole. We are thus at first apt to begin with the detail, instead of leaving it to the last, by which means we have more than we want, or less accurately and accommodatingly what is wanted. When we have learned again to reject, and to see, we are surprised with a facility we at first despaired of. We do, then, because we know what to do.

I would recommend therefore, before setting out on such expeditions, where it be practicable, to visit daily, and all day, during a week or fortnight, the best galleries of pictures, such as contain all schools, that as much as possible there may be no bias, but such as every one must find in himself before he reaches the gallery. I would do this to confirm, and fasten upon the memory, the principles of art,—breadth, greatness, truth, expression, colouring, sentiment, and how obtained. Here will be a grammar without its drudgery; for every lesson will be a delight, if we go to it with no conceited opinions of our own, and no cavilling spirit bringing ourselves down to an admission that these great men of former days had some foundation upon which they built their fame, their acknowledged fame—so searching, we shall see the reasons of their doings—why they, each for their own purpose, adopted this or that style of colour, or of composition, or chiaroscuro. Going then immediately to nature from art, we shall see how very true art is—a secret that, without this immediate comparison, would be very apt to be hidden from us. No man in his senses would begin a science from his own observation alone. It was not the first shepherd who, studying the stars, laid open the study of astronomy. We shall learn nothing by despising all that has been learnt before we were born. So it is in art; some principles have been established, which it is well to know thoroughly; and, the more we know them, the more enthusiastic will be our admiration, the love of art through nature, and of nature through art.

During my former visits to the beautiful scenery of Lynmouth, I had seldom taken any whole view, but chiefly studied parts for use in the detail of compositions; and this I think to be a good practice for the landscape painter, which term I use here in contradistinction to the painter of views, there is so great a pleasure in as it were creating—in being the ποιητης, the maker—that, to one accustomed to and at all skilled in composing, it becomes an irksome task to make a "view." The continued habit of view-painting must necessarily check invention, and limit unworthily the painter's aim. In revisiting Lynmouth, I changed my purpose and this, not under the idea of making pictures of any of the sketches, but for the practice of noting how a picture, framed in from nature, as if it were a work of art, would be brought to its completion; for sketching, with such an object, I cannot but think of as great importance as the other method. We must learn from nature to make a whole, as well as the use of the parts separately. With this purpose the sketcher will look out for subjects, not detail; he will be curious to see how nature composes now, and when it is that scenes are most agreeable—made so by what combination of lines, by what agreement of colours, by what proportions of light, and gradations of shadow: for he will often find, when nature looks her best, that light and shade are employed as substitutes for lines which, in the actual and true drawing of them, would be unfortunate. How often is it that a scene strikes the eye at once for its great beauty, that, when we come to it again, seems entirely to have lost its charm! Now these spots should be visited again and again, till the causes be ascertained of the charm and of the deterioration: for here must lie the principles of art, nature assuming and putting off that which is most agreeable to us, that in which our human sympathies are engaged. Sketchers often pass hastily these spots that are no longer beautiful; but they are wrong, for they can learn best, by accurate observation of the changes presented to them. And they will thus learn to remedy deficiencies, and acquire a better power of selecting scenes, by knowing where the deficiencies lie; the mind's eye will not dwell upon them, or will fill them up, and the composition show itself to them in a manner quite otherwise than it would have appeared, had no such previous observations been made. There are sometimes good lines marred by bad effects, and bad lines remedied by skilful management of effects—of light and shadow. It must be a practised eye that can properly abstract and separate lines from effects, and effects from lines. We play with colour, but our serious business is with light and shade; the real picture is more frequently in black and white, than those who addict themselves to colour will credit. I will here but refer to some passages in the early numbers of The Sketcher, on the composition of lines, wherein I showed, and I believe truly explained, the principle of composition upon which many of the old masters worked. And I particularly exemplified the principle in the pictures of Gaspar Poussin, whom Thompson calls learned Poussin, (unless he meant Nicolo, who, though in other respects he may with equal justice be called learned, is, in this art of the composition of lines, in no way to be compared with his brother-in-law.) I showed that there was one simple rule which he invariably adopted. We may likewise go to nature, and find the rule there, when nature, as a composition, looks her best.

I think it will be found that any scene is most pleasing when its variety is in the smallest portion—that is, when the greatest part of the picture is made up of the most simple and pervading lines, and the intricacies, all variety, and alternations, and interchanges of lines and parts, shall be confined to a very small portion; for thus a greatness, a largeness, an importance, is preserved and heightened, and at the same time, monotony is avoided—though there be much in it, the piece is not crowded. There is a print from a picture by Smith of Chichester, who, by the bye, obtained the prize, against Richard Wilson, which attracted my attention the other day at a print-seller's window. It was meant, I presume, as an imitation of Claude, Claude reduced to the then English vulgarity. If multiplicity of parts would make a picture, doubtless Richard Wilson, with his simple, sweeping, free lines, could have no chance in competition with such a painter. Every niche was crowded—and equally so—every niche might have made a picture, such as it was, but all the niches made none, or a bad one. Why, the variety was universal; it should have been confined to the smaller space. The picture is objectionable in other points of view; but this ignorance of the very nature of composition was fatal. Yet this work was evidently an imitation of Claude, whose variety, however, of distance, the modern imitator brought into his very foreground. He could not see the simplicity of Claude. Not that Claude himself was a learned composer; his lines are often incongruous, and there is not unfrequently a poverty of design, scarcely concealed by the magic of his colouring. Now, I find, in looking over my sketches, that I had selected those scenes where the passages of variety lay in the distance, and, it being a narrow valley, they occupied but a small space; but, though small, it was mostly the place of interest—there was the more vivid light or the deeper shade, the change, the life of the picture, and the embellished way of escape out of a defile, that from its closeness would have been otherwise painful. In saying "painful," I seem to point to a defect in this Lynmouth valley. Indeed, it will not suit those who do not love close scenery. That certainly is its character. Yet is it not so close, but that there is room for this kind of variety. I think what I have said upon this point, of interest and variety lying in the smaller portion of the canvass—for I here speak even of nature as a picture—may be applicable generally to light. I imagine those scenes will be found most pleasing, where the light is by far the smallest portion, the half-tone by far the larger, and the dark but to show the power of both. Take, for instance, a garden scene—a broad walk, trees on each side—all is in broad light, but all is in painful glare, monotony, and sameness of endless detail. Let a shadow pass over it, a broad shadow—or rather a half-tone of light, that shall only show the local colour subdued—how, let a gleam pass across it, and just touch here and there the leafage, and seem to escape behind it—how small is the light, but it has given life to the picture. I cannot but think it a fault of our day that half-tone is neglected; light is made a glare, and therefore the very object of light is lost. I believe it was the aim at a mere novelty that first introduced this false principle. It was recommended to Guido, but he failed in it: pictures so painted by him are far from being his best. Rubens erred in it; but modern artists have carried the false principle to the utmost limit; and, in doing so, are liable to a palpable incongruity; an impossibility in nature, which they profess to imitate. For it is the property of light to take away colour; yet in this school, the whitest light, and the most vivid colours, are in the same piece. The old painters, aware of this property of light, in their out-of-door scenes, avoid, not to say a white, but even a light sky—especially the Venetian—so that their great depth and power of colour was rendered natural, by the depth of their skies. Their blues were dark—intensely so—but they were sustained by the general colour. If it be said the Italian skies are notoriously the bluest, Mr Ruskin has, in contradiction, pronounced them to be white, but I believe the fact is, that the great painters considered colour, as a beauty in art, sui generis, and that there was no need of a slavish adherence, in this respect, to nature herself. Indeed, they delighted, even when aiming at the richest colouring, to subdue all glare, and to preserve rather a deep half-tone.

I believe they studied nature through coloured glasses; and we learn from Mrs Merrifield that Gaspar Poussin used a black mirror, which had been bequeathed to him by Bamboccio. The works of some of the Flemish painters evidently show that they used such a mirror.

Have I not, then, reached Lynmouth yet? I found it in full leafage, and the little river as clear as amber, and like it in colour. It is always beautiful, and variable too—after rain it assumes more variety of colour, and of great richness. For most part of the time of my visit, it was more shallow than I had ever seen it. I was pleased that it was so, though I heard many complaints on that score. To those who sketch close to the water, it is, in fact, an advantage; for where the scenery is so confined, it is a great thing to be able to reach the large stones in mid-stream, and thus many new views are obtained; and when you are pretty close to water, whether it be a fall, or still, there is really but very little difference whether the river be full or not—the falls still retain sufficient body, and the still pools are sufficiently wide.

There are but two parties who know anything of the painter-scenery of Lynmouth—the sketchers and the anglers. The common road generally taken by tourists shows not half the beauty of the place. Did Lynmouth appear less beautiful?—certainly not. I easily recognised the chosen spots, and was surprised to find what little change had taken place. I knew individual trees perfectly, and, strange to say, they did not seem to have acquired growth. There were apparently the same branches stretching over the stream.

In one spot where large ledges of rock shoot out in mid-stream, down whose grooves the river rushes precipitously, (I had, sixteen years ago, sketched the scene,) there was growing out of the edge of the rock a young ash-tree shoot—to my surprise, there it was still, or the old had decayed, and a similar had sprang up. There is something remarkable in this continued identity, year after year, as if the law of mutability had been suspended. Yet there were changes. I remember sketching by a little fall of the river, where further progress was staid by a large mass of projecting rock. I felt sure there must be fine subjects beyond, and in my attempt to reach it from the opposite side by climbing, and holding by the boughs of a tree, one broke off, and I fell into the cauldron. I found now that the whole mass of this ledge of rock had given way, and opened a passage, and one of no great difficulty. Here, as I suspected, were some very fine studies. The place where I descended is about half a mile, or less, from Lynmouth, where the road turns, near to a little bridge across a watercourse intercepting the road. The view of this little fall from above is singularly beautiful; and, being so much elevated, you see the bed of the river continuous for a long distance, greatly varied. I know no place where there are such fine studies of this kind, though they are rarely taken, being only parts for composition—the whole not making a view.

Was Lynmouth, then, to me as it was?—not quite. The interval of years had not, I trust, been lost. If there was little change in the place, there was a change in the mind's eye and head of the sketcher. Though I recognised nearly all the spots where I had sketched, I found many new—some that might have escaped me, because I had not taken the feeling with me, at least not in the degree, in which I now possessed it. During all the years that had intervened, I had scarcely painted a single view. I could not but observe that the new scenes were those more especially suggestive, leading to the ideal.

A friend who was part of the time with me observed that he had thought some of my pictures, which he had seen, compositions without the warranty of nature; but he now saw that nature supplied me with what I wanted, and acknowledged that the sketches were correct. It was then I observed that the sketcher may find almost everywhere what he has learnt to look for. The fact is, that it is not whole and large scenery, nor the most beautiful, that best suits the painter, but those parts which he can combine. The real painter looks to nature for form and colour, the elements of his art: upon these he must work; and they seldom reach any great magnitude, or are diffused over large space.

Why is it, that generally what we term beautiful scenery was seldom the ground of the old painters? They were not, generally speaking, painters of views; and why not? There the pictures were made for them. They, and all the world had the thing before them to love and to admire—it was already done; there was no room for their genius, which is a creative, not an imitative faculty. The scene for every eye was not theirs. They found that, by their art, they could take nature's best feeling, even from her fragments. It requires not an Alp to portray grandeur. Fifty feet of rock, precipitous or superimpending, will better represent the greatness of danger; for it is a more immediate and solid mass to crush the intruder, and the form may frown with a demon malice. The whole awe of darkness may be felt in a cavern of a few feet space. Indeed, it may be almost said that largeness is not to be obtained on the canvass, by the largeness of whole extensive scenes in nature, but by the continuous lines of near masses: whatever is actually largest in nature—the forest and the mountain—in art may with advantage occupy the smallest space. For the best magnitude here is in perspective, and in that aerial tone which, as a veil, half conceals, and thereby makes mysterious, and converts into one azure whole the parts which would, otherwise seen, but break up the great character. The Arabian genii were greatest when dimly seen through smoke and vapour.

Art, indeed, differs from nature in this, as regards the pleasure derived through the eye, that nature allows you many unperspective views at many instant glances, and therefore surprises you, if I may so express it, with a perspective impossibility, of which the judgment at the time is not cognisant; whereas art is bounded by a rule, looks not all around, and comprehends by mind beyond the eye, but is constrained to frame in the conception. It must, therefore, make to itself another power—and this power it finds in form, in light and shade, and colour, all which are in greater intensity and force in the fragmentary parts than in the whole and large scenes. It is a step for the young artist to believe that art and nature are not and should not be the same—that they are essentially different, and use their materials differently, have other rules of space and largeness. If art be more limited, its power is greater by being more condensed,—and its impressions more certain, because more direct, and not under the vague and changeable process of making an idea from many perspectives.

If there be truth in these remarks, we may see why the old masters left untouched those scenes which are the delight of tourists. To copy the scene before them was to put their creative faculty in abeyance. It was only to work after a given pattern—and that pattern imperfect—of a whole which defied the laws of optics. I here speak almost entirely of the Italian masters, both the historical, and more strictly the landscape painters. The Flemish and Dutch schools had mostly another aim, and were more imitative; hence they are more easily understood, but felt with a far less passion. But even these, far from undervaluing the conventional aids of art, applied as much of them as the nature of their subjects would admit.

But the sketcher must not consider himself in his studies when he is out with his portfolio. However he may select, he must be faithful. And this fidelity I have seen painters of great skill often unwisely contemn, become too conventional, both in their drawing and colouring. It requires much practice of the eye, as well as that knowledge which constitutes taste, to frame in as it were pictures, from the large space that fills the eye. Nothing is more useful than to carry in the portfolio a light frame of stiff paper or wood, and to hold it up, so as actually to frame in pictures, and thus to experimentalise upon the design, and see what shiftings of the frame make the best choice. It is an assistance even to the most practised in composition.

Lynmouth is greatly improved of late years in accommodation; many new lodging-houses are built, and there are some residents who have shown great taste in laying out their grounds, and in their buildings. The little pier has been rendered picturesque, by the erection of a small look-out house after a model from Rhodes. There is not much here at any time that would deserve the name of shipping; but a few fishing boats, and such small craft compose well with the little pier. The evenings are very fine, the sun setting over the Channel; and the Welsh coast in the distance assumes, occasionally, a very beautiful ultramarine blue, like a glaze over warm colouring. When the tide comes in, and the little vessels are afloat, these are good subjects, the water being of a gray green, softening the reflections. I began a sketch when the boats were aground; but the tide, coming in rapidly, soon so altered the position of the vessels that I did not proceed. When the tide receded, leaving the vessels aground, they were not in the same direction in which I had sketched them; and an artist who was present remarked, that the beauty of the scene as a composition was gone, and referred to the sketch. This led to some discussion, as to the cause—Why should it be less good now, said he, than when you drew it? I believe I saw the reason, and pointed it out. There was a sloop, larger by much than all the rest, which were indeed, though having masts, but boats. The larger vessel was the principal object, even more so than the buildings on the pier, towards which it leaned; and this leaning was important, for a union and certain connexion of parts was everything here, for it made one of many things. Accordingly, the smaller boats on each side the larger vessel inclined their masts towards it; so that this manifest uniting, and the belonging of one to the other, was the pleasing idea, and invested the whole with a kind of life and sensitiveness; but in the alteration, after the receding of the tide, this communication of the one with the other was gone, and, on the contrary, there was left an uncomfortable feeling of disunion.

This reasoning was admitted, and we further discussed the principle involved in the remarks, as applicable to all scenes and subjects. It is this correspondence of part with part which animates the works of nature, invests them with an ideal sensitiveness; and through this fond belief of their life, our own sensitiveness is awakened to a sympathy with them. Whatever inanimate objects we in our fancy invest with life, through our own sympathy, we clothe with a kind of humanity; and thus we look on trees and rocks, and water, as to a degree our fellow creatures, in this great wild world. We love accordingly. Nihil humanum a me alienum puto. The very winds speak to us as human voices, as do the trees in their whisperings or complainings; and the waters are ever repeating their histories and their romances to our willing ears. As we walked we tested the principle, and were believers in its truth. "Mark," said our friend, "that bank of fern—how graceful, how charming, is their bending, their interchange, their masses and their hollow shades, their little home-depths, wherein they grow, and retire as their home-chambers: there is throughout the pleasing idea of a family enjoying their quiet existence, and all in one small green world of their own." He enjoys nature most worthily, and most intensely, who carries with him this sense of nature's life, and of a mutuality, a co-partnership with the blessings of existence with himself. There are some fine rocks at the base of the precipitous cliffs—of fine form and colour; I never went sufficiently near to sketch them, having no fancy to be caught by the tide. I have seen sketches made amongst them that prove them to afford very good subjects. Many years ago, while sitting under these cliffs, I heard a groan; I thought at the time it must have been a delusion, but on that evening a man had fallen over the cliffs. His body was, I think, found the next day. It fell from Countesbury Hill, the road on which is certainly not sufficiently protected. And this reminds me to speak of an alarming occurrence on the road, about half a mile from Lynmouth. We were a small party, and had taken shelter from rain against the receding part of the rocks cut for the widening the road. I and another were reading a newspaper. Looking up, we suddenly saw a woman on horseback very near us. The animal started, and was frightened at the newspaper. Our endeavour to conceal it made the matter worse; the horse retreated from us, and I think his hind legs could not have been many inches from the precipice. It was a trying moment; one step more back would have been certain death to both the woman and the horse. We were truly happy when, by a little management, we contrived to get them past us. The road, too, is in these dangerous places very narrow; yet the people venture to drive at a good pace, and without reins, their uncouth and apparently unmanageable teams—neither quite dray nor cart—fearlessly. It is surprising that accidents do not often occur, especially as there is some danger from the falling of masses of stone from above; and even such as the sheep remove with their feet may frighten horses, and precipitate all to sure destruction. There are great rents in huge masses of rock, close to the road, and some apparently are kept firm with but little earth, and seem to threaten a move. I have had some blows on the back occasionally from small stones, cast down by passing sheep, while I have been sketching down by the water; and once so large a one took the corner of my portfolio, that with my best speed I quitted the place. That was some years ago; but I have recently seen not very small fragments fall very near me. I would, therefore, caution the sketcher to choose as safe a position as he can, which he may generally find under some projection of rock. Some of the masses in the bed of the river are of enormous size; and let me here remark upon the fine, bold character these masses in the river possess—they are very fine in form, and the beauty and variety in their colouring are quite wondrous. Some are very dark, entirely covered with brown, and some with, bright golden moss. But most of them when dry are gray—but one name will not describe that gray, varying as it does from the blue to the green and pink hues. They are commonly in bold relief against the dark water—yet themselves show dark, edged by the white foam, where the water, sloping insinuatingly, falls and rushes by them. Here and there, in some deep-shaded, wild, lonely places, they are of gigantic size, and look like huge Titans turned to stone, amid the fragments that had hurled them down. The sketcher may easily imagine himself in the territory of magic. Shall I confess that, in such places, I do not like to sketch alone? And why not? Why should there be a something like a superstitious awe of the spot, the "severi religio loci?"

Doubtless it is because we do feel contradicting knowledge, in this consciousness of all nature in its own life and power. Nor can we divest ourselves of a kind of natural poetry—a feeling that the rocks, the wild trees, and the somewhere though unseen "genius loci" all look at us, and we fancy ourselves but under sufferance, and know not how long our presence may be endured. It is surprising how a sense of such presences possesses us when alone. I could often have fancied voices, and mocking ones too, in the waters, and threats that thundered in the ear, and went off as if to fetch and bring whole cataracts down upon me. In such places I do not like to be caught by the dusk of the evening, being quite alone.

The fact is, nature, to a real lover and sketcher, is at all times powerful. Scenes affect him as they affect no other. I have often surprised people by the assertion that I could not live in the midst of fine scenery; it is too powerful, it unnerves one with an unrelaxing watchfulness. The presence of the mountain will not be shaken off. It becomes a nightmare upon the spirits, holds communion with the wild winds and storms, and has fearful dealings I would not dream of in the dark, howling, dismal nights. Nor, when the sombre light of a melancholy day just obscures the clouds that have been gathering round it, would I in imagination draw the curtain to behold the unearthly drama.

There is something terrific in the sound of unseen rushing water. When all else is still in the dark night, and you are uncertain of the path, and feel the danger that a false footing may plunge you into an abyss of waters, that seem to cry out and roar for a victim, have you not felt both fear and shame? Recently I experienced this in Lynmouth, having in the darkness lost my way. To the poet and the painter, here is a source of the sublime. Plunge your pencil boldly into this eclipse, and work into it a few dim lights formless and undefined—the obscure will be of a grand mystery. The night-darkness that settles over fine mountainous scenery does not remove the sense of its presence; as its lakes blacken, they become fabulous, of unknown depths, below which may be infernal "bolge." But I am wandering into strange regions now, and far from Lynmouth, whose scenes, after all, are not of a very severe beauty, unless we will to make it so. It will then answer the demand imagination makes upon it. Many are the scenes of a purely quiescent kind, still and calm, and of gentle repose, where the shallow river shows its amber bed, wherein the gleams rest upon the well-defined ledges beneath, whose gray shadows melt into golden tints; and beyond, in the deeper pools, the green of the trees is reflected greener still, across which here and there is a gray streak, showing the river's silent onward movement; and further on, some dark stones send their brown and purple hues, mirrored and softened down into the green, just dotted here and there with white. Then the trees shoot out lovingly from the bank overhead, and reach and communicate pleasantly with those on the opposite side; and here a bough sends down and just forbears to touch the stream, Narcissus-like, loving its own image. The gray stones in the foreground, half beneath the water, are of a delicate hue, blue intermingling with pale greenish and lakey tints; for there is nothing violent in all this scene of peaceful repose. Very many spots of this kind are there that court the sketcher. Let him wind his way over masses of stone, and roots of trees, beyond these—the scene how changed! The masses of stone are huge, blocking up, in various positions, the free passage of the river, which chafes and foams between them, throwing off its whiteness into the brown and green water depths. One broad shadow is over the dark stones; and beyond that rise the tops of other masses, gray illuminated; and beyond them, a gleam or two of falling water. Wilder are the trees that shoot out, from rocky fragments near, and lock their branches with those on the other side; while in the hollow space beneath their arching boles, distant and fantastic stems cross the stream. Opposite are huge masses, ledges with precipitous and brown-mossed sides; above which the high rocky bank sends forth large trees, their roots twisting about the rocks and coming out again through the fissures, and met by green weed leafage. The trees are darker than the dun-red ground, but edged with greenish light; and above them the yellow sunlight gleams through, and the dotted blue of sky is just seen; and, as avoiding the light, a huge branch, or limb rather, shoots down, edged with the light on its upper surface, and dark underneath, and throws a scanty defined leafage across over the depth of the river. But this precipitous bank again terminates towards the ledges in fine masses, rocks that project and recede, partially luminous with reflected light, and then falling back into extreme brown and purple darkness, down into which the ivy falls clustering and perpendicular, with innumerable briar-like shoots and tendrils. Here are severer studies. They are to be found by crossing the Lyn by the wooden bridge, not far from Lynmouth, and following the path through the wood some way, and seeking the bed of the river by a scarcely-discernible sheep-path, till it be lost at the edge of a downward way, not very difficult of descent. Within a very small space, there are fine and very different subjects. One of scarcely less grandeur than the last described, if it had not more beauty blended with it; but it must be seen in the sun's eye—the best time will be about 3 o'clock. Reach a large stone that juts out from the river's side, climb it, and look down the stream. You must sketch rapidly, for the charm will not last—it is most lovely in colour, and the forms are very beautiful. The opposite side of the river may be termed a mountain side, broken into hollows, in which rock and vegetation deepen into shade. The top is covered with trees, very graceful, the sun edges their tops, and rays flow through them, touching with a white and silver light the ivied rock, which is here perpendicular. Beyond this mountain-side, which juts out, is another clothed cliff, terminating at the base in bold and bare rock; beyond this, and high above, shooting into the sky, are piled rocks of a wild and broken character, gray, but dark against the distant mountain range, of an ultramarine haze, over warm and slightly marked downward passages; above is the illumined and illuminating sky. On the side of the river from which this lovely view is seen, are large masses, backed by trees, which shoot across, but high overhead, so that in the sketch the leafage would drop as it were from the sky into the middle of the picture. The river itself is quite accordant in colour, and in the forms and light and shade of the stones, that, though so large, are dwarfed by the large precipitous rocks perpendicular above them. The course of the stream is away from the eye of the spectator—is in parts darkly transparent and deep—here and there showing the white foam, and in other parts its amber and reddish bed.

A little further back from this point of view is another of the same scene; I am doubtful which would make the best picture. On the very same stone from which I sketched the scene described, turning with my back to the opposite side of the river, I was much struck with the fine forms and solemn light and shade of a rock, that was cavernously hollow at its base, and very near the stream. Above it, and declining into the middle of the picture, the sunlit boles of coppice-trees, rising among the light-green leafage, made the only positive sunlight of the picture: whatever else of light there was, was shade luminous. This rock was united with another across the picture, that thus made a centre and opening for the coppice, dotted with the blue sky; but all that side of the picture was in very dark shadow, being rock perpendicular, through the depth of which light and boldly formed trees rose to the top of the picture, and threw down leafage into the deep shade. The colouring of the cavernous hollow was remarkable: it was dark, yet blending gray, and pink, and green. The scene was of an ideal character; and I doubt if the sketch, though taken with as much truth as I could reach, would be thought to be from nature. The same rocky mass, taken in another direction, supplies a very different but perhaps equally good subject for the pencil. I say these sketches are of an ideal kind. It may be asked—Are they not true?—are they not in nature? They are; but still for a better use than the pleasure of the imitation a mere sketch offers. These are the kinds of scenes for the painter's invention, into which he is to throw his mind, and to dip his pencil freely into the gloom of his palette, and concentrate depths, and even change the forms, and even to omit much of the decorative detail, and make severity severer. He would give the little trees a wilder life, a more visible power, as if for lack of inhabitant they only were sentient of the scene. If a figure be introduced, they would be kept down, but shoot their branches towards him, for there would be an agreement, a sentient sympathy. But what figure? It is not peaceful enough for a hermit; too solemn for the bandit, such as Salvator would love to introduce; an early saint, perhaps a St Jerome—no unapt place for him and his lion: and somehow it must be contrived to have the water perhaps entering even into the retreat, and reflecting the aged, the hoary bearded saint. Is not then the subject ideal, and the sketch only suggestive? And here let me remark, with regard to that favourite word "finish,"—an elaborate finish of all the detail, either of objects or colouring, would ruin the sketch; it would lose its suggestive character, which is its value. I have here described, I know how inadequately, several very striking scenes; yet are they scarcely a stone's throw apart. I mention them exclusively on that account, for, where there is so much, it must be the more worth the while of the sketcher to take some pains to find out the spot.

What do we mean by the "ideal" of landscape? The "naturalists" ask the question in a tone of somewhat more than doubt. The sketcher is apt to be caught in the snare of nature's many beauties, and, growing enamoured of them in detail, to lose the higher sense in his practical imitation. This is a danger he must avoid, by study, by reflection, by poetry. If the "ideal" be in himself, he will find it in nature. If he sees in mountains, woods, and fields but materials for the use of man, and what the toil of man has made them, he may be a good workman in his imitation, but he will be a poor designer. The "ideal" grows out of a reverence, which he can scarcely feel. If the earth be nothing to him but for the plough, and the rivers for the mill, and its only people are the present people—doomed to toil, bearing about them parochial cares, and tasteless necessity, ignorant and regardless of the history of the earth they tread—he may boast of his love of nature; but his love is, in fact, the love of his technical skill, of his imitation. He thinks more of the how to represent, than what the scene may represent. The ideal ranges beyond the present aspect, and he who has a belief in it will reverence this ancient earth, the cradle wherein he and all living things took form from their creation. He will see visions of the past, and dream dreams of its future aspects and destiny; and will learn, in his meditations, to recall the people of old, and imprint its soil with imaginary footsteps. The painter is no true artist if he feel not the greatness of nature's immortality—at least, that as it rose from the creation so will it be, throwing forth its bounty, and beaming with the same vigorous beauty, till it shall pass away as a scroll. The painter-poet must be of a loving superstition, must acknowledge powers above his own—beings greater between him and the heavens. They may be invisible as angels, yet leave some understanding of their presence. They will voice the woods and the winds, and tell everywhere that all of nature is life. Are there not noble elements here for the landscape painter, and can neither history nor fable supply him with better figures than toil-worn labourers, drovers taking their cattle or sheep to the butchers, and paupers walking the poorhouse? I like not the "naturalist's" poverty of thought. If the art be not twin sister with poetry, her charm is only for the eye. Nothing great ever came from such hands.

"And deeper faith—intenser fire—
Fed sculptor's chisel—poet's pen;
What nobler theme might art require
Than gods on earth, and godlike men?
Yea, gods then watched with loving care
(Or such, at least, the fond belief)
E'en lifeless things of earth and air—
The cloud, the stream, the stem, the leaf:
Iris, a goddess! tinged the flower
With more than merely rainbow hues;
Great Jove himself sent down the shower,
Or freshen'd earth with healing dews!"

Kenyon's Poems.

How do such thoughts enhance all nature's beauties! The sketcher's real work is to see, to feel them all, and to fit them to the mind's poetic thoughts.

I seem to be forgetting that the reader and myself are all this while at the water's edge, and under deep-brow'd rocks; that sunshine has left us, and it is time to climb to the path that leads toward Lynmouth. For such an hour we are on the wrong side of the stream. Now the woods are mapped, and edged only by the sun hastening downward. Yet after awhile we shall not regret that we are in this path. Escaping the closer and shaded wood, we shall reach a more open space, and see the flood of evening's sunlight pouring in. Here it is; my sketch was poor indeed, for there was neither time nor means to do anything like justice to the scene. Here is a narrow, winding rocky path, a little above the river, from whose superimpending bank, trees that now look large shoot across the landscape, and a bold stem or two rises up boldly to meet them; the river stretches to some distance, wooded on this side to the edge, and wooded hills in front, and in perspective. The distant hills are most lovely in colour, pearly and warm gray; the river, the blazing sky reflected, yet showing how rich the tone, by a few yellowish-gray lighter streaks that mark its movement. The fragments of rock in the river are of a pinkish-gray, and, though not dark, yet strongly marked against the golden stream,—the whole scene great in its simplicity of effect and design. In broad day the scene would be passed unnoticed; it would want that simplicity which is its charm, and be a scene of detail; but now the lines are the simplest, and, happily, where the river really turns, its view is lost in the reflection of the shaded wood. And here, in this smallest portion of the picture, the hills on each side seem to meet and fold, giving the variety in the smallest space, upon which I have made remarks in this paper. This beautiful picture of nature I visited several evenings, and it little varied. But the charm lasts not long—the sun sets, or is behind the wooded hill, before its actual setting, yet leaves its tinge of lake blushing above the gold in the sky—the life of the scene has faded, and it is still and solemn. I cannot better describe the impression it left, than by a quotation from an old play, in which the lover sees his mistress, who had swooned, or was in a deathlike sleep:—

"Antonio.

At the first sight I did believe her dead—
Yet in that state so awful she appeared,
That I approached her with as much respect
As if the soul had animated still
That body which, though dead, scarce mortal seemed.
But as the sun from our horizon gone,
His beams do leave a tincture on the skies,
Which shows it was not long since he withdrew;
So in her lovely face there still appeared
Some scattered streaks of those vermilion beams
Which used t'irradiate that bright firmament.
Thus did I find that distressed miracle,
Able to wound a heart, as if alive—
Incapable to cure it, as if dead."

Thus is there sympathy between our hearts and nature—a sympathy, the secret of taste, which, above all, the sketcher should cultivate as the source of his pleasure, and (may it not be added?) of his improvement.

I will not proceed further with description of scenes; Lynmouth will be long remembered. I scarcely know a better spot for the study of close scenery. On reviewing my former impressions with the present, I should not say that Lynmouth has lost, but I have certainly gained some knowledge, and, I think, improved my sympathies with nature; and if I have not enjoyed so enthusiastically as I did sixteen years ago, I have enlarged my sight and extended my power. I am practically a better sketcher. The hand and the eye, work together; the improvement of one advances the other.

I know no better method of sketching than the mixture of transparent and semi-opaque colouring. It best represents the variety and the power of nature; and as it more nearly resembles in its working the practice of oil-painting, so is it the more likely to improve the painter. I have remarked that, even in depth of colour, the semi-opaque is very much more powerful than the transparent, however rich; for the one has, besides its more varied colour, the solidity of nature; whereas the most transparent has ever an unsubstantial look—you see through to the paper or the canvass. Semi-opaque, (or degrees of opacity, till it borders on the transparent,) as it hides the material, and throws into every part the charm of atmosphere, so it will ever bestow upon the sketch the gift of truth.

I did not begin this paper on Lynmouth Revisited with any intention of entering upon the technicalities of art; so I will refrain from any further remarks tending that way, which leads to far too wide a field for present discussion.

[WHAT HAS REVOLUTIONISING GERMANY ATTAINED?]

It is now rather more than a year since we asked, "What would revolutionising Germany be at?" A full year has passed over the dreamy, theorising, restless, and excited head of Germany, then confused and staggering, like "a giant drunken with new wine," but loudly vaunting that its strong dose of revolution had strengthened and not fuddled it, and that it was about to work out of its troubled brains a wondrous system of German Unity, which was to bring it infinite and permanent happiness; and now we would once more ask, What is the result of the attempted application of German revolutionising theory to practice? In fact, what has revolutionising Germany attained? Our first question we asked without being able to resolve an answer. The problem was stated: an attempt was made to arrive at something like a solution out of the distracting hurly-burly of supposed purposes and so-called intentions; but, after every effort to make out our "sum" in any reasonable manner, we were obliged to give it up, as a task impossible to any political mathematician, not of German mould; to declare any definite solution for the present hopeless,—and to end our amount of calculation by arriving only in a cercle vicieux at the statement of the problem with which we started, and asking, as despairingly as a tired schoolboy with a seemingly impracticable equation before him, "What, indeed, would revolutionising Germany be at?" Are we any further advanced now? We will not attempt the difficult sum again, or we might find ourselves obliged to avow ourselves as much deficient in the study of German political mathematics as before. But we may at least try to undertake a mere sum of addition, endeavour to cast up the amount of figures the Germans themselves have laid before us, and make out, as well as we can, what, after a year's hard—and how hard!—work, revolutionising Germany has attained. The species of sum-total, as far as the addition can yet go, to which we may arrive, may be still a very confused and unsatisfactory one; but in asking, "What has revolutionising Germany attained?" we will not take it entirely to our own charge, if the answer attempted to be made is thus confused and unsatisfactory. German political sums are all too puzzling for English heads.

Last year Germany was, as yet, very young in its revolutionary career. It galloped over the country like an unbroken colt, or rather like a mad bull, "running a-muck" it scarcely knew, and seemingly little cared, at what, provided that it trampled beneath its hoofs all that stood, and, with proper culture, might have flourished and borne fruit. It tried to imitate the frantic caperings of its fellow-revolutioniser in the next paddock, just over the Rhine; but it imitated this model in so clumsy a fashion, that it might have been very aptly compared to the ass in the fable, had not the demonstrations it sought to make been destructive kicks, and not mistaken caresses; and the model it sought to copy resembled the bloodhound rather than the lap-dog. It kicked out to the right and to the left, and, with its kicks, inflicted several stunning blows, from which the other states, upon whose heads the kicks fell, found some difficulty in recovering. Even the maddest of the drivers who spurred it on, however, found it necessary to present some goal, at which it was eventually to arrive in its mad career—that goal was called "German Unity" in one great powerful united Germany. Where this visionary goal existed, or how it was to be attained—by what path, or in what direction, none seemed to know; but the cry was, "On, on, on!" That it should miss this goal, thus visionary and indistinct, and plunge on past it, through the darkness of anarchy, to another winning-post, just as indistinct and visionary, called "a universal republic," was a matter of little consideration, or was even one of hope, to those of its principal drivers who whipped, and spurred, and hooted it, with deafening and distracting cries, like the Roman drivers of the unridden horses in the Corso races. A breaker-in was attempted, however, to be placed, and not, at first, precisely by those who most wished to check it, upon the back of the tearing beast, in order to moderate its paces, and canter it as gently as might be, onwards to the denied goal—which still, however, lay only in a most misty distance, to which none seemed to know the road. In this rider, called a central Frankfort parliament, men began to place their hopes, they trusted confidently that it might ride the animal to its destination, although they knew not where that lay. The revolution, then, was decked out with colours of red, and black, and gold—the colours of an old German empire, and of a new derived German unity—and the rider mounted into the saddle. How the rider endeavoured to show the animal's paces—how he strove to guide him forwards—how sometimes he seemed, indeed, to be proceeding along a path, uncertain, it is true, but apparently leading somewhere—how often he stumbled—how often, in his inexperience, he slipped in his saddle—how, at last, he slipped and fell from it altogether, in vain endeavouring, maimed, mutilated, bruised, and half stunned, to spring into the saddle again, are matters of newspaper history that need no detail here. It suffices to say, that the rider was unhorsed—that the animal gave a last desperate plunge, kicking and wounding the only one of the states around that strove to the last to caress and soothe it with gentle treatment—that it now stands perspiring, shaking, quivering in every limb—snorting in vain struggle, and champing the bit of the bridle which Prussian military force has thrown upon it. To what, then, has Germany attained in its revolutionising career? It has, at all events, not reached that imaginary goal to which men strove to ride it without direction-post. The goal is as far off as ever, perhaps farther off than before, as may be shown. It remains just as vague, and visionary, and misty. Not one step seems to have been taken towards it. Has no farther step whatever been taken, then, after all this mad rushing hither and thither? And if any, how, and whither? We shall endeavour to see, as far as we are able. Our readers must, then, judge whether it be forwards or backwards, or whether, in fact, it be any step at all.

The Frankfort parliament has fallen from its seat. Last year, when we gave a sketch of its sittings in that Lutheran church of St Paul in Frankfort—now bearing a stamp which its sober-minded architect probably never dreamt of, as a historical building—it was young, still in hopes; and amidst its inexperience, its vapouring declamation upon impracticable theories, its noise and confusion, its clamorous radicalism, and its internal treachery, that sought every pretext for exciting to anarchy and insurrection, it put forward men of note and ability—who, however lacking in practical experience, gave evidence of noble hearts, if not sound heads, and good intentions, if not governmental power. It contained, amidst much bad, many elements of good; and, if it has no other advantageous result, it has proved a school of experience, tact, and reason—as far at least as Germans, in the present condition of their political education, have been able to profit by its lessons and its teaching. De mortuis nil nisi bonum as far as possible! It is defunct. What its own inability, want of judgment, internal disorganisation, and "vaulting ambition, that o'erleaps its sell," commenced, was completed by the refusal of the principal northern German states to acknowledge its ill-digested constitution. It sickened upon over-feeding of conceit, excess of supposed authority, and a naturally weak constitution, combined with organic defects, weakened still more by a perpetual and distracting fever; it was killed outright by what the liberals, as well as the democrats, of Germany choose to call the ill faith and treachery of Prussia in declining to accept its offers, and ultimately refusing to listen to its dictates. Its dying convulsions were frightful. It fled to Stutgardt, in the hopes that change of air might save it in its last extremity: and there it breathed its last. Its very home is a wreck; its furniture has been sold to pay the expenses of its burial; its lucubrations, and its mighty acts, in which it once fondly hoped to have swayed all Germany, if not the world, have been dispersed, in their recorded form, among cheesemongers and greengrocers as waste-paper, at so much the pound. Its house—the silent, sad, and denuded church of St Paul—looks now like its only mausoleum; and on its walls remains alive the allegorical picture of that great German empire, which it deemed it had but to will to found—the grim, dark, shaded face of which grows grimmer and darker still, day by day; whilst the sun that rises behind it, without illuminating its form, daily receives its thicker and thicker cloud of dust to obscure its painted rays. Of a sooth, the allegory is complete. It is dead, and resolved to ashes. Its better and brighter elements have given up their last breath, as, in their meeting at Gotha, they made a last effort to discuss the acceptance of the constitution which Prussia offered in lieu of their own, and strove, although only still wearing a most ghostly semblance of life, to propose to themselves the best ultimate means of securing that desideratum, which they still seem to consider as the panacea for all evils—the great and powerful "United Germany" of their theoretical dreams. This last breath was not without its noble aspirations. Its less pure, more self-seeking, and darker elements have striven, by wild and no longer (even in appearance) legal means, to galvanise themselves into a false existence; their last struggles were such hideous and distracted contortions as are usually produced by such galvanic applications; and now the German papers daily record the arrest of various members of the so-called "Rump Parliament," (so nicknamed by the application or rather misapplication of an English historical term,) which received its final extinguishing blow at Stutgardt, mixed up, in these days of imprisonment, as the consequence of mistaken liberty, along with insurgents and rebels engaged in the late disastrous scenes acted in the duchy of Baden. Such was to be their fate. But, be it for good or for evil, the Frankfort parliament has died, as was prophesied, and not without convulsions: its purposes have proved null; its hopes have been dispersed to the winds; its very traces have been swept away; its memory is all but a bitter mockery. Thus far, then, we may indeed shake our heads despairingly as we ask—"What has revolutionising Germany as yet attained?"

What has it attained? Let as go on. In the first place, what remains of the gigantic cloud, which men attempted to catch, embody, and model into a palpable form, although with hands inexperienced, and with as little of the creative and vivifying health really within its power, as Frankenstein, when he sought to remould the crumbling elements he possessed into a human form, and produced a monster. What remains of the great united German empire of men's dreams? Nothing but a phantom of a central power, grasping the powerless sceptre of a ghostly empire; surrounded by ministers whose dictates men despise and disregard, in veritable exercise of their functions, as ghostly as itself. The position of the Imperial administration has become a byword and a scoff; and it is lamentable to see a prince, whose good intentions never have been doubted, and whose popular sympathies have been so often shown, standing thus, in a situation which borders upon the ridiculous—an almost disregarded and now useless puppet—a quasi emperor without even the shadow of an empire; and yet condemned to play at empire-administrating—as children play at kings and queens—none heeding their innocent and bootless game. How far the edicts of the defunct Frankfort parliament, and the decrees of the government of the Imperial Vicarage—paralysed in all real strength, if not utterly defunct now—are held as a public mockery, is very pithily evidenced to the least open eyes of any traveller to the baths of Germany, at most of which the gambling tables—supposed to be suppressed, and declared to be illegal by the shade of the "central power,"—openly pursue their manœuvres, and earn their gains as of yore; or, at most, fix upon the doors of their hells a ticket, written "salons reservés," to give them the faint appearance of private establishments, and thus adopt a very flimsy pretext, and effect a most barefaced evasion of a hitherto useless law. Croupiers and gamblers sit squatting, most disrespectfully, at almost every bathing-place, upon the Imperial edict—as the toads and frogs squatted upon King Log—treating him as a jest, and covering him with their filthy slime. By what authority—of the same Imperial Vicar also—the whole country around Frankfort is overrun with Prussian soldiers, it would be difficult to show. That the so-called free city itself should be occupied by a joint garrison of Prussian and Austrian troops for its protection, may be looked upon as a legal measure, adopted and authorised by a new parliament, and a central power, such as it is, as by the old Diet. But when we see in every village round about—in every house, in almost every hovel—those hosts of Prussian spiked helmets gleaming in the sun—those Prussian bayonets planted before every door—those Prussian uniforms, studding, with variegated colour, every green rural scene; when we never cease to hear upon the breeze—wherever we may wander in the country—the clang of Prussian military bands, and the tramp of Prussian infantry; when we find the faces of Prussian military at every window, and observe Prussian soldiers mixing in every action of the common everyday life of the country; and then turn to ask how it comes that Prussian soldiers swarm throughout a part of the land in no way belonging to Prussia, we are able to receive no more reasonable answer than that "they are there because they are there"—an explanation which has a more significant meaning in it than the apparently senseless words seem to express. "They are there because they are there"—that is to say, without any recognised authority from any central German power. "They are there because they are there,"—because Prussia has sent them. Where, then, is the central power?—what is its force? what its authority? what its sense? If, then, all that still remains, in living form, of that great united Germany of men's dreams, is but the "shadow of a shade," in power—a power disregarded—even more, despised and ridiculed—what has revolutionising Germany attained in its chase after the phantom of its hopes?

If in this respect it has attained nothing which it can show, after more than a year's revolution, for the avowed or pretended purpose of obtaining some result to this very end, it cannot be said, however, that nothing remains to Germany of its dream of unity. Spite of sad experience—spite of the uselessness of every effort—spite of sacrifices made and sorrows suffered—Germany still pursues its phantom with as much ardour as before. Like the prince in the fairy-tale, who, panting, breathless, half-dead with exhaustion and fatigue, still hunted without rest for the imaginary original of the fair portrait placed in his hands—untired and unyielding, after the repeated disappointments of lifting veil after veil from forms which he thought might be that of the beloved one—still driven on by an incurable longing—still yearning despairingly, and with false hope,—so does Germany, after lifting veil after veil only to find delusive spectres beneath, still yearn and long for the object of its adoration. It is impossible to travel, even partially, through the country, without discovering, from every conversation with all classes, that the intense craving for this object—this great blessing of a grand and powerful United Germany—is as strong as ever—far stronger than ever! For what was not very long ago only the watchword of the fancied liberal student, in his play of would-be conspirator—what was but the pretext of really conspiring and subversive democrats—what grew only by degrees into the cry of the people, who clamoured, not knowing what they clamoured for—has taken evidently the strongest root throughout the whole mass of German nationality, and grows—grows in despite of the rottenness of the branches it has as yet sent forth—grows in despite of the lopping, breaking, and burning of its first offshoots—grows in despite of the atmosphere of contention, rather than of union, that becomes thicker and more deleterious to its growth, around it, and of the blight it daily receives from the seemingly undispersable mildew of hatred, suspicion, and total want of sympathy between Southern and Northern Germany, which formerly arose only from uncongeniality of temperament, mixed up more or less with difference of religious creed, but now is generated by a thousand causes. This intense craving for the possession of the phantom—increasing, it would seem, in proportion as the phantom flies farther and farther from the grasp—is no longer expressed by the student, the democrat, and the man of the people: it pervades all classes from below to above; it is in the mouth of the man of caution and of sense, as in that of the wild and poetico-political enthusiast; it becomes more and more universal, and it amounts to a mania. Ask of whom you will, "Whither tends German hope?" and the answer will still and ever be the same—"German unity." But ask no more; for if you inquire, as last year, into the "how," the "when," the "where," the answer will in most cases be given in the same strain of incomprehensible and still more impracticable rhapsody—visionary, poetical, noble sometimes, but purposeless as before; or men will shrug their shoulders, shake their heads, and sigh, but still dream on the dream of German unity—still clamour for it loudly. And well may they shake their heads and groan, if such be the end and aim of all German aspirations! for where, indeed, is the pith that leads to it? That which Germany is itself following up, leads (for the present at least) visibly from it, and not towards it. Prussia has promulgated its constitution,—and we may ask, par parenthèse, whether that is to be put forward as the great end which revolutionising Germany has attained, after more than a year's revolution? Prussia has called upon all Germany to join with it, hand in hand, in this constitution, granted and given, but not accepted, at the hands of a Frankfort parliament. In answer to its call, it has found the cleft between Northern and Southern Germany—the cleft, of envy and jealousy, suspicion and mistrust—growing wider and wider to oppose it. It has attempted to form a partial union of Northern Germany—between the more northern states of Prussia, Hanover, and Saxony; but even in this union has been disunion—reticence, and suspicion, and doubt, and indecision, among the proposed allies themselves; while Austria, Bavaria, and even Wurtemberg, have held aloof to sulk and scoff, and have seemed to bide that time when Austria should be less shackled, and could better oppose the supremacy of Northern German influence. Coalitions even now are talked of, to which, if Prussia be not a stranger, it is to be admitted only as a humbled ally. With these feelings, which exist not only between powers, but in the people, the cry of United Germany is but a jest—the longing a green-sickness. Certainly revolutionising Germany has not thus far attained any step in its progress towards the great desideratum of its nationality. The only semblance of progress has been, in the advances of Prussia towards supremacy, in the cession of the principality of Hohenzollern Sigmaringen to its territory, (an example which other small German principalities may follow,) in its present occupation of the free town of Hamburg, in its military occupation of the duchy of Baden, of which more further on. But if these be steps towards a united Germany, tell it to Southern Germany, and hear what it will say!

If so little, then, has been attained by revolutionising Germany, in its progress towards its most loudly clamoured desire, let us see what else it has attained. After a year's labour, which was not without its throes, revolutionising Germany, as represented by its central parliament, brought forth its constitution—a rickety child, but fully expected by its fond, and in many respects infatuated parents, to grow into a giant, and flourish under the edifice of a United German Empire. The implicit adoption of this bantling by the several German states, as their heir and future master, was declared by revolutionisers to be the sine quâ non of their sufferance still to exist at all, under the will of the people. Unhappy bantling, decked out with all sorts of promised gifts for the future weal of mankind by its would-be fairy godmothers! it proved but a changeling—or rather an imp, provided with every curse, instead of every blessing; as if the gifts it was intended to bestow had been reversed by a wicked fairy among the godmothers, who had more power than the rest. And, of a truth, there was such a one among them: and her name was Anarchy or Subversion, although the title she gave herself was Red Republic, and the beast on which she rode was Self-interest. The consequence was, that the very contrary occurred to that which revolutionisers had prophesied or rather menaced. Prussia, and the other states, which refused to adopt the bantling, thus menacingly thrown into their arms, have gone on, we cannot say the "even," but uneven "tenor of their way"—no matter now by what means, for we speak only of the strange destinies of the much-laboured, long-expected, loudly-vaunted Frankfort constitution. Almost the only one—at least of the larger states the only one—that seemingly accepted the adoption forced upon it, with frankness, willingness, and openness, has been convulsed by the most terrible of civil wars. In Baden, the acceptance of the Frankfort constitution, and not its rejection, by a well-meaning, mild, but perhaps weak ruler, was eagerly seized upon as a pretext for disaffection, armed insurrection, civil war; while Wurtemberg, where it was received by the king, although with evident unwillingness, or, as he himself expressed it, in a somewhat overstrained tone of pathos, "with bleeding and broken heart," narrowly escaped being involved in the same fearful issue. The process by which this result was attained in Baden was curious enough, although fully in accordance with the usual manœuvres of the anarchical leaders of the day, who, while denouncing Jesuitism, in many parts of the world, as the great evil and anti-popular influence against which they have most to contend, evidently adopt the supposed and most denounced principle of Jesuitism—that "the ends justify the means"—as their own peculiar line of conduct; and use every species of treachery, deceit, falsehood, and delusion, as holy and righteous weapons in the sacred cause of liberty, or of that idol of their worship which they choose to nickname liberty. In showing what revolutionising Germany has, or rather perhaps has not, as yet, attained, we must briefly, then, revert once more to that insurrection and its suppression, that has so fearfully devastated the duchy of Baden, and its neighbouring province of the Palatinate, which, although belonging to Bavaria, is so distant and divided from that kingdom as to be included, without further distinction, in the same designation.

It was with almost prophetic spirit that we, last year, spoke of the unhappy duchy of Baden, which had then, as since, the least cause of complaint of any of the several subdivisions of Germany. "Nothing," it was then said, "can be more uneasy and disquieting than its appearance. In this part of Germany, the revolutionary fermentation appears far more active, and is more visible in the manner, attitude, and language of the lower classes, than even in those (at that time) hotbeds of revolutionary movement, Austria and Prussia. To this state of things the confinity with agitated France, and consequently a more active affinity with its ideas, caught like a fever from a next-door neighbour's house, the agency of the emissaries from the ultra-republican Parisian clubs, who find an easier access across the frontiers, and the fact also that the unhappy duchy has been, if not the native country, at least the scene of action of the republican insurgents, Hecker and Struve, have all combined to contribute." "It is impossible to enter the duchy, and converse with the peasant population, formerly and proverbially so peacefully disposed in patriarchal Germany—formerly so smiling, so ready, so civil, perhaps only too obsequious in their signs of respect, now so insolent and rude—without finding the poison of those various influences gathering and festering in all their ideas, words, and actions."

Such were the views written last year; and this state of things has since continued to increase, as regards popular fermentation, and disposition to insurrection. Demagogic agitators swarmed in the land, instilling poison wherever they went, and rejoicing as they saw the virus do its work in the breaking out of festering sores. The tactics of this party, in all lands, has been to try their experiments upon the military; but it has only been in Baden, thus demoralised, and disorganised by weakness of sufferance, and a vain spirit of concession and looked-for conciliation, that these subjects were found fitting for the efforts of the experimentalisers. The virus had already done its work among them, to the utmost hopes of the poisoning crew, when the New Frankfort Constitution—the rejection of which was to be the signal for a quasi legal insurrection—was accepted by the Grand-duke of Baden. But the agitators were not to be thus baffled. A pretence, however shallow and false, was easily found in the well-prepared fermentation of men's minds; and the military, summoned by demagogic leaders to tumultuous meetings, were easily persuaded that a false, or at least a defective draught of the new boasted constitution had been read to them and proclaimed—that, in the real constitution, an enactment provided that the soldiers were to choose and elect their own officers—that this paragraph had been carefully suppressed; and that the military had been thus deprived and cheated of their rights. Easily detected as might have been the falsehood, it nevertheless succeeded in its purposes. The military insurrection, in which the tumultuous and evil-disposed of the lower classes, and a great portion of the disaffected peasantry joined, broke out on the very evening of one of these great meetings; and, by means of a well-prepared and actively organised concentration of measures, in various parts of the duchy at the same time. Thus was the very acceptance of the revolutionary constitution made in Baden a pretext to stir the land to insurrection.

After the full account already published in these pages, it is needless to enter into detail, with regard to the events which marked the progress and suppression of this great insurrection. It is only to show the insensate state of mind to which revolutionary agents, left to do their will, were able to work up the military; the confused ideas and purposes, with which these would-be revolutionising German heads were filled; the ignorance that was displayed among these men, said to be enlightened by "patriots," and their want of all comprehension of the very rights for which they pretended to clamour—in fact, the utter absence of any experience gained by the lower classes, and especially the military portion of them, after more than a year's revolutionising, that we briefly recapitulate some of the leading events of the outbreak. It was with a perfect headlong frenzy that the garrison of the fortress of Rastadt first revolted; it was with just as much appearance of madness that the mutiny broke out simultaneously in the other garrison towns. There was every evidence of rabid mania in the deplorable scenes which followed, when superior officers in vain attempted with zeal and courage to stem the torrent, and, in many instances, lost their lives at the hands of the infuriated soldiery; when others were cruelly and disgracefully mis-handled, and two or three, unable to contend with the sense of dishonour and degradation which overwhelmed them as military men, rushed, maddened also, into suicide, to have their very corpses mutilated by the men whom they had treated, as it happened, with kindness and concession; when others again, who had escaped over the frontiers, were, by a violation of the Wurtemberg territory, captured, led back prisoners, and immured, under every circumstances of cruelty and ignominy, in the fortress they had in vain attempted loyally to guard. There was madness in all this; and then we learn, to complete the deplorable picture, from a very accurate account of all the circumstances, lately published by a Baden officer, as well as from another pamphlet, more circumscribed in detail, but fully as conclusive as regards narration of feeling, in almost every page, that when the insurgent soldiers were asked by their officers what they wanted, they could only answer, "Our rights and those of the people;" and, when questioned further, "What are those rights?" either held their tongues and shook their heads in ignorance, or replied with the strangest naïveté, "That you ought to know better than we." Still more strikingly characteristic of the insensate nature of the struggle are the examples where the infatuated soldiers parted from their officers with tears in their eyes, then, driven on by their agitators, hunted them to the death; and then, again, with eyes opened at last to their delusion, sobbed forth the bitterest repentance for their blindness.

It has been already seen how the Grand-duke fled the land, how Baden was given up, in a state of utter anarchy, to a Provisional government, that existed but long enough to be utterly rent and torn by the very instruments which its members had contributed to set in movement; and to a disorganised, tumultuous army, prepared to domineer and tyrannise in its newly-acquired self-power; how the insurrection was suppressed, after an unwilling appeal to Prussia by the Grand-duke—how the insurgent troops were dispersed by means of a Prussian army—and how Rastadt was finally surrendered by the revolutionary leaders. As these events have already been detailed, and as it is our purpose to ask in general, "What has revolutionising Germany attained?" we need do no more on this head, than ask, "What, by its late movement, has revolutionising Baden attained?" "What then is the present position, and the present aspect of the country, after the armed suppression?"

What, indeed! Poor old Father Rhine, although still, in these revolutionary days, somewhat depressed in spirits, does not now, however, exhibit that aspect of utter melancholy and despair which we last year pictured; he has even contrived to reassume something of that conceited air which we have so often witnessed in his old face. Foreign tourists, if not in the pleasure-seeking shoals of aforetime, at least in very decent sprinklings, return again to pay him visits; and the hotels upon his banks give evidence that his courts are not wholly deserted. Ems, from various causes independent of its natural beauties—the principal one of which has been the pilgrimage of French Legitimists to the heir of the fallen Bourbons, during his short residence in that sweet bathing-place—has overflowed with "guests." Homburg has had scarcely a bed to offer to the wanderer on his arrival. Rhenish Prussia, then, has profited, by its comparative state of quiet, somewhat to redeem its losses of last year. But the poor duchy of Baden still hangs its head mournfully; and Baden-Baden, the fairest queen of German watering-places, finds itself utterly deprived of its well-deserved crown of supremacy, and seems to have covered itself, in shame, with a veil of sadness. Although all now wears again a smiling face of peaceful quiet, and Prussian uniforms, which at least have the merit of studding with colour the gay scene, give warrant for peace by the force of the bayonet, yet tourists seem to avoid the scene of the late fearful convulsions, as they would a house in which the plague has raged, although now declared wholly disinfected. A few wandering "guests" only come and go, and tell the world of foreign wanderers with dismal faces, "Baden-Baden is empty!" Travellers seem to hurry through the country, as swiftly as the railroad can whirl them across it, towards Strasburg and Bâle—ay! rather to republican France, or fermenting Switzerland: they appear unwilling to turn aside and seek rest among the beautiful hills of a country where the reek of blood, or the vapour of the cannon-smoke, may be still upon the air. In Baden-Baden bankrupt hotels are closed; and the lower classes, who have been accustomed to amass comparative wealth by the annual influx of foreigners, either by their produce, or in the various different occupations of attending upon visitors, wear the most evident expression of disappointment, listlessness, and want. Baden pays the bitter penalty of insurrection, by being utterly crippled in one of the branches of its most material interests. It bears as quiet an aspect outwardly, however, as if it were sitting, in humiliation and shame, upon the stool of repentance. There is nothing (if they go not beyond the surface) to prevent foreign pleasure or health seekers from finding their pleasure or repose in this sweet country; and in what has been simply, but correctly, termed "one of the loveliest spots upon God's earth," as of yore; but they are evidently shy, and look askance upon it. Baden pays its penalty.

Although nature smiles, however, upon mountain and valley, and romantic village, as cheerily as before, and there is gaiety still in every sunbeam, yet traces of the horrors lately enacted in the land are still left, which cannot fail to strike the eye of the most listless, mere outward observer, as he whisks along, the country—sometimes in the trampled plain, on which nature has not been as yet able to throw her all-covering veil again, and which shows where has been the battle-field, which should have been the harvest-field, and was not—sometimes in the shattered wall or ruined house—sometimes in the wood cut down or burned. At every step the traveller may be shown, by his guide, the spots on which battles or skirmishes have taken place, where the cannon has lately roared, where blood has been shed, where men have fallen in civil contest. Here he may be conveyed over the noble railway-bridge of the Neckar, and see the broken parapet, and hear how the insurgents had commenced their work of destruction upon the edifice, but were arrested in its accomplishment by the rapid advance of the Prussian troops. Here again he may mark the late repairs of the railroad, where it has been cut up into trenches, to prevent the speedy conveyance of the war-material of the enemy. If he lingers on his way, he may seek in vain in the capital, or other "residence towns" of Baden, where ducal palaces stand, for the treasures of antiquity which were their boast. Pillage has done its work: insurgents have appropriated these objects of value to themselves, in the name of the people; and the costly and bejewelled trappings of the East, the rich gold inlaid armour, and the valuable arms, brought in triumph home by the Margrave Louis of Baden, after his Turkish campaigns, are now dispersed, none knows where, after having fed the greed of some French red-republican or Polish democrat. But it is more particularly in the neighbourhood of the fortress town of Rastadt, where the insurgents last held out, that the strongest traces of the late convulsions may be found. Marks of devastation are everywhere perceptible in the country around; the remains of the temporary defences of the besiegers still lie scattered in newly dug trenches; and the blackened walls of a railway station-house, by the road-side, tell him how it was bombarded from the town by the besieged insurgents, and then burned to the ground, lest it should afford shelter to the besiegers. These are, however, after all, but slight evidences of what the duchy of Baden has attained by its late revolution. If we go below the surface, the dark spots are darker and far more frequent still.

It is impossible to enter into conversation with persons of any class, without discovering, either directly or indirectly, how deeply rooted still remains the demoralisation of the country. The bitterness of feeling, and the revolutionary mania of revolutionising, to obtain no one can tell what, may have been crushed down and overawed; but they evidently still smoulder below the surface and ferment. The volcano-mouth has been filled with a mass of Prussian bayonets; but it still burns below: it is clogged, not extinct. The democratic spirit has been too deeply infused to be drugged out of the mass of the people by the dose of military force. Fearful experience seems to have taught the sufferers little or nothing; and although, here and there, may be found evidences of bitter repentance, consequent upon personal loss of property, or family suffering, yet even below that may be constantly found a profound bitterness, and an eager rancour, against unknown and visionary enemies. Talk to that poor old woman, who sits with pale face upon a stile on the mountain-side. She will weep for the son she has lost among the insurgents, and deplore, with bitter tears, his error and his delusion; and yet, if you gain her confidence, she will raise her head, and, with some fire in her sunken eye, tell you that she has still a son at home, a boy, her last-born, who bides but his time to take up the musket against "those, accursed enemies of the people and the people's rights!" Enter into conversation with that shopkeeper behind his counter, or that hotel-keeper in his palace hotel—both are "well to do" in the world, or have been so, until revolutions shattered the commerce of the one, or deprived the other of wealthy visitors—you may expect to find in them a feeling, taught them at least by experience, against any further convulsion. No such thing; they are as ripe for further revolution as the lower classes, and as eager to avenge their losses—not upon those who have occasioned them, but upon those who would have averted them. Even in the upper classes you will find that craving for the idol, "United Germany," to which we have before alluded, and which seems to invite revolutions, rather than to fear them. Of course exceptions may be found, and many, to the examples here given; but in putting these figures into the foreground of the picture to be painted of the state of Baden, (if not of Germany in general,) we firmly believe we have given characteristic types of the prevailing feelings of the country. German heads, once let loose into the regions of ideal fantasy, be it political or philosophical, or the strange and unpractical mixture of both, seem as if they were not to be recalled to the earth and the realms of palpable truth by the lessons of experience, however strongly, and even terribly, inculcated.

The prevailing feeling, however, at the present time in Baden, among the lower classes, seems the hatred of the occupation of the Prussian army, which has saved the land from utter anarchy. The very men who have been taught by their demagogues to clamour for "German Unity" as a pretext for insurrection, look on the Prussian military as usurping aliens and foreign oppressors. Military occupation is certainly the prevailing feature of the country. Prussian troops are everywhere—in every town, in every village, in every house, in every hovel. Whichever way you turn your eyes, there are soldiers—soldiers—soldiers—horse and foot. The military seem to form by far the greater half of the population; and, much disposed as many may have been to greet the return of the Grand-duke to his states, as the symbol of the cause of order, yet, in spite of birthday fêtes, and banners, and garlands, and loyal devices in flowers, which have bedecked the road of the traveller in the land not long since, these same men will grumble to you of those "accursed Prussian soldiers," who alone were able to restore him to his country, when the Baden army, as troops to support their sovereign, existed no longer—when those who composed it fought at the head of the insurgents. The very shadow of a Baden army, even, is not now to be found. And it is this fact, and the evidences that an insurrectionary spirit is still widely spread abroad, which are given as the excuse of a continued Prussian occupation. It is difficult, certainly, for a traveller in a land so lately convulsed, and still placed in circumstances so peculiar, to arrive at truth. Prussian officers will tell him how, on the arrival of the Prussian army in the country, and the dispersion of the insurgents, flowers were strewn along its path by the populations, who thus seemingly hailed the Prussian soldiers as their deliverers; and in the next breath they will inform him that this was only done from fear, and that, were it not for this salutary fear, the insurrection would break forth again. He may suspect that this account is given as the pretext for a continued occupation of the land. But Baden officials will tell him that such is the case—that Prussian troops alone keep, down a further rising; and if he still suspects his source, he will certainly find among the people, at all events, both the hatred and the fear. Meanwhile the Prussian officers seem to think that both these feelings are necessary for the pacification of the land; and, upon their own showing, or rather boasting, they inculcate them by flogging insolent peasants across the cannon, by shooting down insurgent prisoners, who spit upon them from prison windows, without any other form of trial, and by other autocratic repressive measures of a similar stamp. Meanwhile, also, they seem, by all their words as well as actions, to look upon Baden as a conquered province, acquired to Prussia, and openly and loudly vaunt their conquest. Let it not be supposed that this is exaggeration. It is the general tone of Prussian officers—ay, and even of the common Prussian soldiers occupying the duchy of Baden—with a super-addition of true Prussian conceit in manner, indescribable by words. In spite of what we may read in late newspaper reports, then, of conciliation between the two great powers of Northern and Southern Germany, we may well ask, What will rival Austria say to this? Where is the prospect here of a great United Germany? And, after this resumé of the present position of Baden as a part, we may well ask, also, What has revolutionising Germany attained as a whole?

We have seen that the main object, and at all events the chief pretext of the revolution, the establishment of a great United Germany, is still further from the grasp of the revolutionising country than ever—although it remains still the clamour and the cry. Prussia may point in irony to its advances, by the occupation of the duchy of Baden and of Hamburg, and by its acquisition of the principality of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, and smile while it says that it has effected thus much towards a union of Germany under one head. Or, in more serious mood, it may put forward its projected alliance of the three northern German potentates. But, with regard to the former, what, in spite of the reports we hear of conciliation, will be the conduct of jealous Austria, now at last unshackled in its dealings? The latter only shows still more the cleft that divides the northern portion of the would-be united country from the southern. "United Germany" only remains, then, a plaything in the hands of dreamers and democrats—a pretty toy, about which they may build up airy castles to the one—an instrument blunted and notched, for the present, to the other. What has revolutionising Germany attained here?

What declared last year the manifesto of Prince Leiningen, then Minister for Foreign Affairs, and leading member of the cabinet of the newly established central power—put forward, as it was, as the programme of the new government for all Germany? It denounced "jealousies between the individual states, and revilings of the northern by the southern parts of the empire," as "criminal absurdities;" and yet went on to say that "if the old spirit of discord and separation were still too powerfully at work—if the jealousy between race and race, between north and south, were still too strongly felt—the nation must convince itself of the fact, and return to the old feudal system." It declared, however, in the same breath as it were, that "to retrograde to a confederation of states would only be to create a mournful period of transition to fresh catastrophes, and new revolutions." Failing of the realisation of the great union, to which the revolution was supposed to tend, the manifesto then placed revolutionising Germany between the alternative of returning to a part, which it declared impossible, or further convulsions and civil wars. It put Germany, in fact, into a cleft stick. Has a year's revolution tended to extricate it from this position? The alternative, remains the same—Germany sticks in the cleft stick as much as ever. Revolutionising Germany, with all its throes and all its efforts, has attained nothing to relieve it from this position. Without accepting the manifesto of Prince Leiningen, either as necessarily prophetic, or as a political dictum, from which there is no evasion or escape, it is yet impossible to look back upon it, while trying to discover what revolutionising Germany has attained, without sad presentiments, without looking with much mournful apprehension upon the future fate of the country. To return, however to the present state of Germany—for the investigation of that is our purpose, and not speculation upon the future, although none may look upon the present without asking with a sigh, "What is to become of Germany?"

We find the revolutionary spirit crushed by the events of the last year, but not subdued; writhing, but not avowing itself vanquished. The fermentation is as great as heretofore: experience seems to have taught the German children in politics no useful lesson. Now that the great object, for which the revolution appeared to struggle, has received so notable a check, the confusion of purposes, (if German political rhapsodies may be called such;) of projects, (if, indeed, in such visionary schemes there be any,) and pretexts, (of a nature so evidently false,) is greater than ever—the confusion not only exists, but ferments, and generates foul air, which must find vent somewhere, be it even in imagination. Of the revolutionary spirits whom we sketched last year in Germany, the students alone seem somewhat to have learned a lesson of experience and tactics. Although many may have been found in the ranks of insurgents, yet the general mass has sadly sobered down, and, it may be hoped, acquired more reason and method. The Jews—we cannot again now inquire into the strange whys and wherefores—still remain the restless, gnawing, cankering, agitating agents of revolutionary movement. The insolence and coarseness of the lower classes increases into bitter rancour, and has been in no way amended by concession and a show of good-will. Among the middle-lower classes, the most restless and reckless spirits, it appears from well-drawn statistical accounts, are the village schoolmasters, (as in France)—to exemplify that "a little learning is a dangerous thing"—the barbers, and the tailors. Had we time, it might form the subject of curious speculation to attempt to discover why these two latter occupations, (and especially the last one) induce, more than all others, heated brains and revolutionary habits; but we cannot stop on our way to play with such curious questions. Over all the relations of social, as well as public life, hover politics like a deleterious atmosphere, blighting all that is bright and fair, withering art in all its branches, science, and social intercourse. And, good heavens, what politics!—the politics of a bedlamite philosopher in his ravings. In the late festivities, given in honour of Goethe at Frankfort, the city of his birth, to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of that event, when it might have been supposed that all men might have, for once, united to do homage to the memory of one whom Germans considered their greatest spirit, politics again interfered to thwart, and oppose, and spoil. The democratic party endeavoured to prevent the supplies offered to be given by the town for the festivities, because they saw the names of those they called the "aristocrats," among the list of the committee, even although men of all classes were invited to join it; and, when a serenade was given before the house in which the poet was born, the musicians were driven away, and their torches extinguished, by a band of so-called "patriots," who insisted upon singing, in the place of the appointed cantato composed for the occasion, the revolutionary chorus in honour of the republican Hecker—the now famous song of the revolutionary battle-field, the Hecker-Lied. And such an example of this fermentation of politics in all the circumstances of life, however far from political intents, is not singular: it is only characteristic of the everyday doings of the times. Among the upper classes, those feelings which we last year summed up in the characteristic words, "the dulness of doubt and the stupor of apprehension," have only increased in intensity. None see an issue out of the troubled passage of the revolution. Their eyes are blinded by a mist, and they stumble on their way, dreading a precipice at every step. This impression depicts more especially the feelings of the so-called moderates and liberal conservatives who had their representatives among the best elements of the Frankfort parliament, and who, with the vision of a united Germany before their eyes, laboured to reach that visionary goal, at the same time that they endeavoured to stem the ever-invading torrent of ultra-revolution and red-republicanism. "The dulness of doubt, and the stupor of apprehension," seem indeed to have fallen upon them since the last vain meeting of the heads of their party in Gotha. They let their hands fall upon their laps, and sit shaking their heads. Gagern, the boldest spirit, and one of the best hearts that represents their cause and has struggled for its maintenance, is represented as wholly prostrate in spirit, unstrung—missgestimmt, as the Germans have it. He has retired entirely into private life, to await events with aching heart. If any feeling is still expressed by the moderate liberals, it has been, of late, sympathy in the fate of Hungary, which the Prussians put forward visibly only out of opposition to Austria, at the same time that, with but little consistency, they condemn all the agents of the Hungarian struggle.

We have endeavoured to give a faint and fleeting sketch of what revolutionising Germany has attained, after a year's revolution. The picture is a dark one, of a truth, but we believe in no ways overdone. In actual progress the sum-total appears to be a zero. The position of Germany, although calmer on the surface, is as difficult, as embarrassing, as much in the "cleft stick," as when we speculated upon it last year. All the well-wishers of the country and of mankind may give it their hopes; but when they look for realisation of their hopes, they can only shake their heads, with the Germans themselves, as they ask, "What will become of Germany?"

[THE GREEN HAND—A "SHORT" YARN.]

PART V.

The next evening our friend the Captain found his fair audience by the taffrail increased to a round dozen, while several of the gentlemen passengers lounged near, and the chief officer divided his attention between the gay group of ladies below and the "fanning" main-topsail high up, with its corresponding studding-sail hung far out aloft to the breeze; the narrative having by this time contracted a sort of professional interest, even to his matter-of-fact taste, which enabled him to enjoy greatly the occasional glances of sly humour directed to him by his superior, for whom he evidently entertained a kind of admiring respect, that seemed to be enhanced as he listened. As for the commander himself, he related the adventures in question with a spirit and vividness of manner that contributed to them no small charm; amusingly contrasted with the cool, dry, indifferent sort of gravity of countenance, amidst which the keen gray seawardly eye, under the peak of the naval cap, kept changing and twinkling as it seemed to run through the experience of youth again—sometimes almost approaching to an undeniable wink. The expression of it at this time, however, was more serious, while it appeared to run along the dotted reef-band of the mizen-topsail above, as across the entry in a log-book, and as if there were something interesting to come.

"Well, my dear captain," asked his matronly relative, "what comes next? You and your friend had picked up a—a-what was it now!"

"Ah! I remember, ma'am," said the naval man, laughing; "the bottle—that was where I was. Well, as you may conceive, this said scrap of penmanship in the bottle did take both of us rather on end; and for two or three minutes Westwood and I sat staring at each other and the uncouth-looking fist, in an inquiring sort of way, like two cocks over a beetle. Westwood, for his part, was doubtful of its being the Planter at all; but the whole thing, when I thought of it, made itself as clear to me, so far, as two half-hitches, and the angrier I was at myself for being done by a frog-eating, bloody-politeful set of Frenchmen like these. Could we only have clapped eyes on the villanous thieving craft at the time, by Jove! if I wouldn't have manned a boat from the Indiaman, leave or no leave, and boarded her in another fashion! But where they were now, what they meant, and whether we should ever see them again, heaven only knew. For all we could say, indeed, something strange might have turned up at home in Europe—a new war, old Boney got loose once more, or what not—and I could scarce fall asleep for guessing and bothering over the matter, as restless as the first night we cruised down Channel in the old Pandora."

Early in the morning-watch a sudden stir of the men on deck woke me, and I bundled up in five minutes' time. But it was only the second mate setting them to wash decks, and out they came from all quarters, yawning, stretching themselves, and tucking up their trousers, as they passed the full buckets lazily along; while a couple of boys could be seen hard at work to keep the head-pump going, up against the gray sky over the bow. However, I was so anxious to have the first look-out ahead, that I made a bold push through the thick of it for the bowsprit, where I went out till I could see nothing astern of me but the Indiaman's big black bows and figurehead, swinging as it were round the spar I sat upon, with the spread of her canvass coming dim after me out of the fog, and a lazy snatch of foam lifting to her cut-water, as the breeze died away. The sun was just beginning to rise; ten minutes before, it had been almost quite dark; there was a mist on the water, and the sails were heavy with dew; when a circle began to open round us, where the surface looked as smooth and dirty as in a dock, the haze seeming to shine through, as the sunlight came sifting through it, like silver gauze. You saw the big red top of the sun glare against the water-line, and a wet gleam of crimson came sliding from one smooth blue swell to another; while the back of the haze astern turned from blue to purple, and went lifting away into vapoury streaks and patches. All of a sudden the ship came clear out aloft and on the water, with her white streak as bright as snow, her fore-royal and truck gilded, her broad foresail as red as blood, and every face on deck shining as they looked ahead, where I felt like a fellow held up on a toasting-fork, against the fiery wheel the sun made ere clearing the horizon. Two or three strips of cloud melted in it like lumps of sugar in hot wine; and, after overhauling the whole seaboard round and round, I kept straining my eyes into the light, with the notion there was something to be seen in that quarter, but to no purpose; there wasn't the slightest sign of the brig or any other blessed thing. What struck me a little, however, was the look of the water just as the fog was clearing away: the swell was sinking down, the wind fallen for the time to a dead calm; and when the smooth face of it caught the light full from aloft, it seemed to come out all over long-winding wrinkles and eddies, running in a broad path, as it were, twisted and woven together, right into the wake of the sunrise. When I came inboard from the bowsprit, big Harry and another grumpy old salt were standing by the bitts, taking a forecastle observation, and gave me a squint, as much as to ask if I had come out of the east, or had been trying to pocket the flying-jib-boom. "D'you notice anything strange about the water at all?" I asked in an offhand sort of way, wishing to see if the men had remarked aught of what I suspected. The old fellow gave me a queer look out of the tail of his eye, and the ugly man seemed to be measuring me from head to foot. "No, sir," said the first, carelessly; "can't say as how I does,"—while Harry coolly commenced sharpening his sheath-knife on his shoe. "Did you ever hear of currents hereabouts?" said I to the other man. "Hereaway!" said he; "why, bless ye, sir, it's unpossible as I could ha' heer'd tell on sich a thing, 'cause, ye see, sir, there an't none so far out at sea, sir—al'ays axin' your parding, ye know, sir!" while he hitched up his trousers and looked aloft, as if there were somewhat wrong about the jib-halliards.

The Indiaman by this time had quite lost steerage-way, and came sheering slowly round, broadside to the sun, while the water began to glitter like a single sheet of quicksilver, trembling and swelling to the firm edge of it far off; the pale blue sky filling deep aloft with light, and a long white haze growing out of the horizon to eastward. I kept still looking over from the fore-chains with my arms folded, and an eye to the water on the starboard side, next the sun, where, just a fathom or two from the bright copper of her sheathing along the water-line, you could see into it. Every now and then little bells and bubbles, as I thought, would come up in it and break short of the surface; and sometimes I fancied the line of a slight ripple, as fine as a rope-yarn, went turning and glistening, round one of the ship's quarters, across her shadow. Just then the old sailor behind me shoved his face over the bulwark, too, all warts and wrinkles, like a ripe walnut-shell, with a round knob of a nose in the middle of it, and seemed to be watching to see it below, when he suddenly squirted his tobacco-juice as far out as possible alongside, and gave his mouth a wipe with the back of his tarry yellow hand; catching my eye in a shame-faced sort of way, as I glanced first at him and then at his floating property. I leant listlessly over the rail, watching the patch of oily yellow froth, as it floated quietly on the smooth face of the water; till all at once I started to observe that beyond all question it had crept slowly away past our starboard bow, clear of the ship, and at last melted into the glittering blue brine. The two men noticed my attention, and stared along with me; while the owner of the precious cargo himself kept looking after it wistfully into the wake of the sunlight, as if he were a little hurt; then aloft and round about, in a puzzled sort of way, to see if the ship hadn't perhaps taken a sudden sheer to port. "Why, my man," I said, meeting his oyster-like old sea-eye, "what's the reason of that?—perhaps there is some current or other here, after all, eh?" Just as he meant to answer, however, I noticed his watch-mate give him a hard shove in the ribs with his huge elbow, and a quick screw of his weather top-light, while he kept the lee one doggedly fixed on myself. I accordingly walked slowly aft as if to the quarterdeck, and came round the long-boat again, right abreast of them.

Harry was pacing fore and aft with his arms folded, when his companion made some remark on the heat, peering all about him, and then right up into the air aloft. "Well then, shipmate," said Harry, dabbing his handkerchief back into his tarpaulin again, "I've seen worse, myself,—ownly, 'twas in the Bight o' Benin, look ye,—an' afore the end on it, d'ye see, we hove o'board nine of a crew, let alone six dozen odds of a cargo!" "Cargo!" exclaimed his companion in surprise. "Ay, black passengers they was, ye know, old ship!" answered the ugly rascal, coolly; "an' I tell ye what it is, Jack, I never sails yet with passengers aboard, but some'at bad turned up in the end,—al'ays one or another on 'em's got a foul turn in his conscience, ye see! I say, 'mate," continued he, looking round, "didn't ye note that 'ere 'long-shore looking customer as walked aft just now, with them bloody soft quest'ns o' his about—" "Why," said Jack, "it's him Jacobs and the larboard watch calls the Green Hand, an' a blessed good joke they has about him, to all appearance,—but they keeps it pretty close." "Close, be d——d!" growled Harry, "I doesn't like the cut of his jib, I tell ye, shipmate! Jist you take my word for it, that 'ere fellow's done some'at bad at home, or he's bent on some'at bad afloat—it's all one! Don't ye mark how he keeps boxhaulin' and skulking fore an' aft, not to say looking out to wind'ard every now an' again, as much as he expected a sail to heave in sight!" "Well, I'm blowed but you're right, Harry!" said the other, taking off his hat to scratch his head, thoughtfully. "Ay, and what's more," went on Harry, "it's just comed ath'art me as how I've clapped eyes on the chap somewheres or other afore this—d——n me if I don't think it was amongst a gang o' Spanish pirates I saw tried for their lives and let off, in the Havanney!" "Thank you, my man!" thought I, as I leant against the booms on the other side, "the devil you did!—a wonder it wasn't in the Old Bailey, which would have been more possible, though less romantic,—seeing in the Havannah I never was!" The curious thing was that I began to have a faint recollection, myself, of having seen this same cross-grained beauty, or heard his voice, before; though where and how it was, I couldn't for the life of me say at the moment. "Lord bless us, Harry!" faltered out the old sailor, "ye don't mean it!—sich a young, soft-looked shaver, too!" "Them smooth-skinned sort o' coves is kimmonly the worst, 'mate," replied Harry; "for that matter ye may be d——d sure he's got his chums aboard,—an' how does we know but the ship's sold, from stem to starn? There's that 'ere black-avizzed parson, now, and one or two more aft—cuss me if that 'ere feller smells brine for the first time! An' as for this here Bob Jacobs o' yours, blow me if there an't over many of his kind in the whole larboard watch, Jack! A man-o'-war's-man's al'ays a blackguard out on a man-o'-war, look ye!" "Why, bless me, shipmate," said Jack, lowering his voice, "by that recknin', a man don't know his friends in this here craft! The sooner we gives the mate a hint, the better, to my thinking?" "No, blow me, no, Jack," said Harry, "keep all fast, or ye'll kick up a worse nitty, old boy! Jist you hould on till ye see what's to turn up,—ownly stand by and look out for squalls, that's all! There's the skipper laid up below in his berth, I hears,—and to my notions, that 'ere mate of ours is no more but a blessed soldier, with his navigation an' his head-work, an' be blowed to him—where's he runned the ship, I'd like to know, messmate!" "Well, strike me lucky if I'm fit to guess!" answered Jack, gloomily. "No, s'help me Bob, if he knows hisself!" said Harry. "But here's, what I says, anyhow,—if so be we heaves in sight of a pirate, or bumps ashore on a ileyand i' the dark, shiver my tawsels if I doesn't have a clip with a handspike at that 'ere soft-sawderin' young blade in the straw hat!" "Well, my fine fellow," thought I, "many thanks to you again, but I certainly shall look out for you!" All this time I couldn't exactly conceive whether the sulky rascal really suspected anything of the kind, or whether he wasn't in fact sounding his companion, and perhaps others of the crew, as to how far they would go in case of an opportunity for mischief; especially when I heard him begin to speculate if "that 'ere proud ould beggar of a naboob, aft yonder, musn't have a sight o' gould and jowels aboard with him!" "Why, for the matter o' that, 'mate," continued he, "I doesn't signify the twinklin' of a marlinspike, mind ye, what lubberly trick they sarves this here craft,—so be ownly ye can get anyhow ashore, when all's done! It's nouther ship-law nor shore-law, look ye, 'mate, as houlds good on a bloody dazart!" "Ay, ay, true enough, bo'," said the other, "but what o' that?—there an't much signs of a dazart, I reckon, in this here blue water!" "Ho!" replied Harry, rather scornfully, "that's 'cause you blue-water, long-v'yage chaps isn't up to them, brother! There's you and that 'ere joker in the striped slops, Jack, chaffing away over the side jist now about a current,—confounded sharp he thinks hisself, too!—but d'ye think Harry Foster an't got his weather-eye open? For my part I thinks more of the streak o' haze yonder-away, right across the starboard bow, nor all the currents in—" "Ay, ay," said Jack, stretching out again to look, "the heat, you means?" "Heat!" exclaimed the ugly topman, "heat be blowed! Hark ye, 'mate, it may be a strip o' cloud, no doubt, or the steam over a sand-bank,—but so be the calm lasts so long, and you sees that 'ere streak again by sundown, with a touch o' yallow in't—" "What—what, shipmate?" asked Jack, breathless with anxiety. "Then, dammee, it's the black coast iv Africay, and no mistake!" said Harry. "And what's more," continued the fellow, coolly, after taking a couple of short turns, "if there be's a current, why, look ye, it'll set dead in to where the land lays—an' I'm blessed if there's one aboard, breeze or no breeze, as is man enough for to take her out o' the suck of a Africane current!" "The Lord be with us!" exclaimed the other sailor, in alarm, "what's to be done, Harry, bo',—when d'ye mean for to let them know, aft?" "Why, maybe I'm wrong, ye know, old ship," said Harry, "an' a man musn't go for to larn his betters, ye know,—by this time half o' the watch has a notion on it, at any rate. There's Dick White, Jack Jones, Jim Sidey, an' a few more Wapping men, means to stick together in case o' accidents—so d—n it, Jack, man, ye needn't be in sich an a taking! What the—" (here he came out with a regular string of topgallant oaths,) "when you finds a good chance shoved into your fist, none o' your doin', an't a feller to haul in the slack of it 'cause he's got a tarry paw, and ships before the mast? I tell ye what it is, old ship, 'tan't the first time you an' me's been cast away, an' I doesn't care the drawin' of a rope-yarn, in them here latitudes, if I'm cast away again! Hark 'ye, ould boy,—grog to the masthead, a grab at the passengers' wallibles, when they han't no more use for 'em, in course—an' the pick on the ladies, jist for the takin' o' them ashore!" "Lord love ye, Harry, belay there!" said Jack, "what's the good o' talkin' on what an't like to be?" "Less like things turns up!" said Harry. "More by token, if I hasn't pitched upon my fancy lass a'ready—an' who knows, old ship, but you marries a naboob's darter yet, and gets yourself shoved all square, like a rig'lar hare, into his heestate, as they calls it? For my part, I've more notion of the maid! An' it'll go hard with me if we doesn't manage to haul that 'ere mishynar' parson safe ashore on the strength of it!" "God bless ye, Harry," answered Jack, somewhat mournfully, "I'm twice spliced already!" "Third time's lucky, though," replied Harry, with a chuckle, as he walked towards the side again, and looked over; the rest of the watch being gathered on the other bow, talking and laughing; the passengers beginning to appear on the poop, and the Scotch second-mate standing up aft on the taffrail, feeling for a breath of wind. The big topman came slowly back to his companion, and leant himself on the spars again. "Blowed if I don't think you're right, 'mate," said he, "you and that 'ere lawyer. You'd a'most say there's a ripple round her larboard bow just now, sure enough—like she were broadside on to some drift or another. Hows'ever, that's nouther here nor there,—for my part, I sets more count by the look o' the sky to east'ard, an' be blowed, shipmate, if that same yonder don't make me think o' woods!" "Well," said Jack, "I goes by sunrise, messmate, an' I didn't like it overmuch myself, d'ye see! That 'ere talk o' yours, Harry, consarnin' dazarts and what not—why, bless me, it's all my eye,—this bout, at any rate—seein' as how, if we doesn't have a stiff snuffler out o' that very quarter afore twenty-four hours is over, you call me lubber!" "Ho, ho! old salt," chuckled Harry, "none o' them saws holds good hereaway, if its the coast of Africay—d——n it, 'mate, two watches 'll settle our hash in them longitudes, without going the length o' six! Han't I knocked about the bloody coast of it six weeks at a time, myself, let alone livin' as many months in the woods?—so I knows the breedin' of a turnady a cussed sight too well, not to speak on the way the land-blink looms afore you sights it!" "Lived in them there woods, did ye?" inquired Jack. "Ay, bo', an' a rum rig it was too, sure enough," said Harry; "the very same time I tould you on, i' the Bight o' Benin." "My eye!" exclaimed the other, "a man never knows what he may come to. Let's into the rights of it, Harry, carn't ye, afore eight-bells strikes?" "Woods!" said Harry, "I b'lieve ye, ould ship. I see'd enough o' woods, that time, arter all!—and 'twan't that long agone, either—I'll not say how long, but it wan't last v'yage. A sharp, clinker-built craft of a schooner she wor, I'm not goin' to give ye her right name, but they called her the Lubber-hater,[13]—an' if there wan't all sorts on as aboard, it's blaming ye—an' a big double-jinted man-eatin' chap of a Yankee was our skipper, as sly as slush—more by token, he had a wart alongside o' one eye as made him look two ways at ye—Job Price by name—an' arter he'd made his fortin, I heard he's took up a tea-total chapel afloat on the Missishippey. She'd got a hell of a long nose, that 'ere schooner, so my boy we leaves everything astarn, chase or race, I promise ye; an' as for a blessed ould ten-gun brig what kept a-cruising thereaway, why, we jest got used to her, like, and al'ays lowers our mainsail afore takin' the wind of her, by way o' good bye, quite perlite. 'Blowed if it warn't rum, though, for to see the brig's white figger'ed over the swell, rollin' under a cloud o' canvass, sten-s'ls crowded out alow an' aloft, as she jogged arter us! Then she'd haul her wind and fire a gun, an' go beating away up in chase of some other craft, as caught the chance for runnin' out whenever they sees the Lubber-hater well to sea—why, s'elp me Bob, if the traders on the coast didn't pay Job Price half a dozen blacks a piece every trip, jist for to play that 'ere dodge! At last, one time, not long after I joined the craft, what does he do but nigh-hand loses her an' her cargo, all owin' to reckonin' over much on this here traverse. Out we comes one night in the tail of a squall, an' as soon as it clears, there sure enough we made out the brig, hard after us, as we thinks,—so never a rag more Job claps on, 'cause two of his friends, ye see, was jist outside the bar in the Noon river. Well, bloody soon the cruiser begins to overhaul us, as one gaff-taups'l wouldn't do, nor yet another, till the flying-jib and bonnets made her walk away from them in right 'arnest,—when slap comes a long-shot that took the fore-topmast out of us in a twinkling. So when the moonlight comed out, lo an' behold, instead o' the brig's two masts stiff and straight against the haze, there was three spanking sticks all ataunto, my boy, in a fine new sloop-o'-war as had fresh came on the station—the Irish, they called her—and a fast ship she wor. But all said and done, the schooner had the heels of her in aught short of a reef-taups'l breeze,—though, as for the other two, the sloop-o'-war picked off both on 'em in the end." At this point of the fellow's account, I, Ned Collins, began to prick up my ears, pretty sure it was the dear old Iris he was talking of; and thought I, "Oho, my mate, we shall have you directly,—listening's fair with a chap of this breed."

"Well," said he, "'twas the next trip after that, we finds the coast clear, as commonly was—for, d'ye see, they couldn't touch us if so be we hadn't a slave aboard,—in fact, we heerd as how the cruiser was up by Serry Lony, and left some young lufftenant or other on the watch with a sort o' lateen-rigged tender. A precious raw chap he was, by all accounts,—and sure enough, there he kept plying off and on, inshore, 'stead of out of sight to seaward till the craft would make a bolt; an' as soon as ye dropped an anchor, he'd send a boat aboard with a reefer, to ax if ye'd got slaves in the hold. In course, ye know, Job Price sends back a message, "palm-ile an' iv'ry, an' gould if we can,"—h'ists the Portingee colours, brings up his Portingee papers, and makes the Portingee stoo'rd skipper for the spell,—but anyhow, bein' no less nor three slavers in the mouth of the Bonny river at the time, why, he meant to show fight if need be, and jest manhandle the young navy sprig to his heart's content. Hows'ever, the second or third night, all on a suddent we found he'd sheered off for decency's sake, as it might be, an hour or two afore we'd began to raft off the niggers. Well, 'mate, right in the midst of it there comes sich a fury of a turnady off the land, as we'd to slip cable and run fair out to sea after the other craft what had got sooner full,—one on 'em went ashore in sight, an' we not ninety blacks aboard yet, with barely a day's water stowed in. The next morning, out o' sight of land, we got the sea-breeze, and stood in again under everything, till we made Fernandy Po ileyand three leagues off, or thereby, an' the two ebony-brigs beating out in company,—so the skipper stands over across their course for to give them a hail, heaves to and pulls aboard the nearest, where he stays a good long spell and drinks a stiff glass, as ye may fancy, afore partin'. Back comes Job Price in high glee, and tould the mate as how that mornin' the brigs had fell foul o' the man-o'-war tender, bottom up, an' a big Newfoundling dog a-howlin' on the keel—no doubt she'd turned the turtle in that 'ere squall—more by token he brought the dog alongst with him in a present. So away we filled again to go in for the Bonny river, when the breeze fell, and shortly arter there we was all three dead becalmed, a couple o'miles betwixt us, sticking on the water like flies on glass, an' as hot, ye know, as blazes—the very moral o' this here. By sundown we hadn't a drop o' water, so the skipper sent to the nearest brig for some; but strike me lucky if they'd part with a bucketful for love, bein' out'ard bound. As the Spanish skipper said, 'twas either hard dollars or a stout nigger, and t'other brig said the same. A slight puff o' land-wind we had in the night, though next day 'twas as calm as ever, and the brigs farther off—so by noon, my boy, for two blessed casks, if Job Price hadn't to send six blacks in the boat. Shorter yarn, Jack,—but the calm held that night too, and 'blowed if the brigs would sell another breaker—what we had we couldn't spare to the poor devils under hatches, and the next day, why, they died off like rotten sheep, till we hove the last on 'em o'board; and frightful enough it was, mind ye, for to see about fifty sharks at work all round the schooner at once, as long as it lasted. Well, in the arternoon we'd just commenced squabbling aboard amongst ourselves, round the dreg water, or whether to board one o' the brigs and have a fair fight, when off come a bit of a breeze, betwixt the two high peaks on Fernandy Po, both the brigs set stensails, and begins slipping quietly off—our skipper gave orders to brace after them, and clear away the long gun amidships; but all on a suddent we made out a lump of a brig dropping down before it round the ileyand, which we knowed her well enough for a Bristol craft as had lost half her hands up the Callebar, in the gould an' iv'ry trade. Down she comed, wonderfle fast, for the light breeze, if there hadn't been one o' yer currents besides off the ileyand, till about half-a-mile away she braces up, seemingly to sheer across it and steer clear of us. Out went our boat, an' the skipper bids every man of her crew to shove a short cutlash inside his trousers. Says he, "I guess we'll first speak 'em fair, but if we don't ha' water enough, it'll be 'tarnal queer, that's all," says he—an' Job was a man never swore, but he looked mighty bad, that time, I must say; so we out oars and pulls right aboard the trader, without answerin' ever a hail, when up the side we bundled on deck, one arter the other, mad for a drink, and sees the master with five or six of a crew, all as white as ghostesses, and two or three Kroomen, besides a long-legged young feller a-sittin' and kicking his feet over the kimpanion-hatch, with a tumblerful o' grog in his fist, as fresh to all seemin' as a fish, like a supper-cargo or some'at o' the sort, as them craft commonly has. "What schooner's that?" axes the master, all abroad like; an' says Job, says he out o' breath, "Never you mind; I guess you'll let's have some water, for we wants it almighty keen!" "Well, says the other, shaking his head, "I'm afeared we're short ourselves—anyhow," says he, "we'll give ye a dipper the piece,"—and accordingly they fists us along a dozen gulps, hand over hand. "'Twon't do, I guess, mister," says our skipper; "we wants a cask!" Here the master o' the brig shakes his head again, and giv a look to the young 'long-shore-like chap aft, which sings out as we couldn't have no more for love nor money,—an' I see Cap'en Price commence for to look savitch again, and feel for the handle on his cutlash. "Rather you'd ax iv'ry or gould-dust!" sings out the supper-cargo—"hows'ever," says he: "as ye've tooken sich a fancy to it, short o' water as we is, why a fair exchange an't no robbery," says he: "you wants water, an' we wants hands; haven't ye a couple o' niggers for to spare us, sir, by way off a barter, now?" he says. Well,'mate, I'll be blowed if I ever see a man turn so wicked fur'ous as Job Price turns at this here,—an' says he, through his teeth, "If ye'd said a nigger's nail-parin', I couldn't done it, so it's no use talkin'." "Oh come, capting," says the young fellow, wonderfle angshis like, "say one jist—it's all on the quiet, ye know. Bless me, captin," says he, "I'd do a deal for a man in a strait, 'tickerly for yerself—an' I think we'd manage with a single hand more. I'll give ye two casks and a bag o' gould-dust for one black, and we'll send aboard for him just now, ourselves!" "No!" roars Job Price, walkin' close up to him; "ye've riz me, ye cussed Britisher ye, an' I tell ye we'll take what we wants!" "No jokes, though, captin!" says the feller—"what's one to a whole raft-ful I heerd of ye shipping?" "Go an' ax the sharks, ye beggar!" says the skipper;—"here my lads!" says he, an' makes grab at the other's throat, when slap comes a jug o' rum in his eye-lights, and the young chap ups fist in quick-sticks, and drops him like a cock, big as he was. By that time, though, in a twinklin', the master was flat on deck, and the brig's crew showed no fight—when lo an' behold, my boy, up bundles a score o' strapping men-o'-war's-men out of the cabin. One or two on us got a cut about the head, an' my gentleman supper-cargo claps a pistol to my ear from aft, so we knocked under without more to do. In five minutes time everyman jack of us had a seizing about his wrists and lower pins,—and says Job Price, in a givin-up sort o' v'ice, 'You're too cust spry for playin' jokes on, I calc'late, squire,' he says. 'Jokes!' says the young feller, 'why, it's no joke—in course you knows me?' 'Niver see'd ye atween the eyes afore,' says Job, 'but don't bear no malice, mister, now.' 'That's it,' says the t'other, lookin' at the schooner again,—'no more I does—so jist think a bit, han't you really a nigger or so aboard o' ye—if it was jist one?' 'Squash the one!' says Job, shakin' his head nellicholly like—an' 'Sorry for it,' says the chap, ''cause ye see I'm the lufftenant belongin' to the Irish, an' I carn't titch yer schooner if so be ye han't a slave aboard.' 'Lawk a'mighty!—no!' sings out Job Price, 'cause bein' half blinded he couldn't ha' noted the lot o' man-o'-war's-men sooner.—'But I can,' says the other, 'for piratecy, ye see; an' what's more,' he says, 'there's no help for it now, I'm afeared, mister what-they-call-ye!' Well, 'mate, after that ye may fancy our skipper turns terrible down in the mouth; so without a word more they parbuckles us all down below into the cabin—an' what does this here lufftenant do but he strips the whole lot, rigs out as many of his men in our duds, hoists out a big cask o' water on the brig's far side, and pulls round for the schooner,—hisself togged out like the skipper, and his odd hands laid down in the boat's bottom." You won't wonder at my being highly amused with the fellow's yarn, since the fact was that it happened to be one of my own adventures in the days of the Iris, two or three years before, when we saw a good many scenes together, far more, wild and stirring, of course, in the thick of the slave-trade; but really the ugly rascal described it wonderfully well.

"Well," said Harry, "I gets my chin shoved up in the starn-windy, where I see'd the whole thing, and tould the skipper accordently. The schooner's crew looked out for the water like so many oysters in a tub; the lufftenant jumps up the side with his men after him, an' not so much as the cross of two cutlashes did we hear afore the onion-jack flew out a-peak over her mains'l. In five minutes more, the schooner fills away before the breeze, and begins to slide off in fine style after the pair o' brigs, as was nigh half hull-down to seaward by this time. There we was, left neck an' heel below in the trader, and he hauled up seemin'ly for the land,—an' arter a bit says the skipper to me, 'Foster, my lad, I despise this way o' things,' says he, 'an't there no way on gettin' clear?' 'Never say die, cap'en!' I says; an' says he, 'I calc'late they left considerable few hands aboard?' 'None but them sleepy-like scum o' iv'ry men,' I says,—but be blowed if I see'd what better we was, till down comes a little nigger cabin-boy for some'at or other, with a knife in his hand. Job fixes his eye on him—I've heerd he'd a way in his eye with niggers as they couldn't stand—an' says he, soft-sawderin' like, 'Come here, will ye, my lad, an' give us a drink,'—so the black come for'ad with a pannikin, one foot at a time, an' he houlds it out to the skipper's lips—for, d'ye see, all on us had our flippers lashed behind our backs. 'Now,' says he, 'thankee, boy,—look in atwixt my legs, and ye'll find a dollar.' With that, jest as the boy stoops, Job Price ketches his neck fast betwixt his two knees, an' blowed if he didn't jam them harder, grinning all the time, till down drops the little black throttled on the deck. 'That's for thankin' a bloody niggur!' says he, lookin' as savitch as the devil, and got the knife in his teeth, when he turned to and sawed through the seizing round my wrists—an' in course I sets every man clear in quick-sticks. 'Now!' says Job, lookin' round, 'the quicker the better—that cussed lubber-ratin' hound's got my schooner, but maybe, my lads, this here iv'ry man'll pay expenses—by th'almighty, if I'm made out a pirate, I'll arn the name!'

"Well, we squints up the hatchway, and see'd a young midshipman a-standing with his back to us, watching the brig's crew at the braces, an' a pistol in one hand—when all at once our skipper slips off his shoes, run up the stair as quiet as a cat, an' caught the end of a capstan-bar as lay on the scuttle. With that down he comes crash on the poor fellow's scull from aft, and brained him in a moment. Every man of us got bloody-minded with the sight, so we scarce knowed what we did, ye know, 'mate, afore all hands o' them was gone,—how, I an't goin' for to say, nor the share as one had in it more nor another. The long an' the short on it was, we run the brig by sundown in amongst the creeks up the Camaroons river, thinkin' to lie stowed away close thereabouts till all wor cold. Hows'ever they kicked up the devil's delight about a piratecy, and the sloop-o'war comes back shortly, when night an' day there was that young shark of a lufftenant huntin' arter us, as sharp as a marlinspike—we dursn't come down the river nohow, till what with a bad conscience, fogs, and sleepin' every night within stink o' them blasted muddy mangroves an' bulrushes together, why, mate, the whole ten hands died off one arter the other in the fever—leaving ownly me an' the skipper. Job Price was like a madman over the cargo, worth, good knows how many thousand dollars, as he couldn't take out—but for my part, I gets the brig's punt one night and sculls myself ashore, and off like a hare into the bush by moonlight. No use, ye know, for to say what rum chances I meets with in the woods, livin' up trees and the like for fear o' illiphants, sarpents, an' bloody high-annies,—but, blow me, if I didn't think the farther ye went aloft, the more monkeys an' parrykeets you rowsed out, jabberin' all night so as a feller couldn't close an eye—an' as for the sky, be blowed if I ever once sighted it. So, d'ye see, it puts all notions o' fruits an' flowers out o' my head, an' all them jimmy-jessamy sort o' happy-go-lucky yarns about barbers' ileyands and shipherdresses what they used for to spell out o' dicshinars at school—all gammon, mate!" "Lord love ye, no, surely," said Jack; "it's in the Bible!" "Ay, ay," said Harry, "that's arter ye've gone to Davy Jones, no doubt; but I've been in the South-Sy ileyands since, myself, an' be blowed if it's much better there! Hows'ever, still anon, I took a new fancy, an' away I makes for the river, in sarch of a nigger villache, as they calls 'em; and sure enough it warn't long ere right I plumps in the midst on a lot o' cane huts amongst trees. But sich a shine and a nitty as I kicks up, ye see, bein' half naked, for all the world like a wild man o' the woods, an' for a full hour I has the town to myself, so I hoists my shirt on a stick over the hut I took, by way of a flag o' truce, an' at last they all begins for to swarm in again. Well, ye see, I knowed the ways o' the natifs thereabouts pretty well, an' what does I do but I'd laid myself flat afore a blasted ugly divvle of a wooden himmache, as stood on the flour, an' I wriggles and twists myself, and groans like a chap in a fit—what they calls fittish, thereaway—an' in course, with that they logs me down at once for a rig'lar holy-possel from Jerusalem. The long an' the short on it was, the fittish-man takes me under charge, and sets me to tell fortins or the like with an ould quadrant they'd got somewheres—gives me a hut an' two black wives, begad! and there I lives for two or three weeks on end, no doubt, as proud as Tommy—when, one fine morning, what does I see off shore in the river but that confounded man-o'-war tender, all ship-shape an' ataunto again. So, my boy, I gives 'em to understand as how, bein' over vallible at home with the King of England, in course he'd sent for to puckalow me away—an' no sooner said, but the whole town gets in a fluster—the fittish-man, which a knowing chap he was, takes an' rubs me from heel to truck with ile out on a sartain nut, as turned me coal-black in half an hour, an' as soon as I looks in the creek, 'mate, be blowed if I'd a knewn myself from a nigger, somehow!" To tell the truth, as I thought to myself, it was no wonder, as Master Harry's nose and lips were by no means in the classic style, and his skin, as it was, didn't appear of the whitest. "So there, ye know, I sits before a hut grindin' away at maize, with nothink else but a waist-cloth round me, and my two legs stuck out, till such time as the lufftenant an' two boats' crews had sarched the villache, havin' heerd, no doubt, of a white man thereabouts—an' at last off they went. Well, in course, at first this here affair gives the fittish-man a lift in the niggerses eyes, by reason o' havin' turned a white man black—'cause, ye see, them fittish-men has a riglar-bred knowledge on plants and sichlike. But hows'ever, in a day or two I begins for to get rayther oneasy, seein' it didn't wash off, an' accordently I made beknown as much to the fittish-man, when, my boy, if he doesn't shake his mop-head, and rubs noses, as much as to say, 'We an't agoin' to part.' 'Twas no use, and thinks I, 'Ye man-eatin' scum, be blowed if I don't put your neck out, then!' So I turns to with my knife on a log o' wood, carves a himmage twice as big an' ugly as his'n, and builds a hut over it, where I plays all the conjerin' tricks I could mind on—till, be hanged if the niggers didn't begin to leave the fittish-man pretty fast, an' make a blessed sight more o' me. I takes a couple more wives, gets drunk every day on palm-wine and toddy-juice—as for the hogs an' the yams they brought me, why I couldn't stow 'em away; an' in place o' wantin' myself white again, I rubs myself over an' over with that ere nut, let alone palm-ile, till the bloody ould fittish-man looks brown alongside o' me. At last the king o' the niggers thereaway—King Chimbey they called him, or some'at o' the sort—he sends for to see me, an' away to his town they takes me, a mile or two up the country, where I see'd him; but I'm blowed, Jack, if he'd got a crown on at all, ounly a ould red marine's coat, an' a pair o' top-boots, what was laid away when he warn't in state. Hows'ever he gives me two white beans an' a red un, in sign o' high favour, and gives me to know as I wor to stay there. But one thing I couldn't make out, why the black king's hut an' the josst-house, as they calls it, was all stuck round with bones an' dead men's skulls!—'twan't long, though, ere I finds it out, 'mate! That ere fittish-man, d'ye see, wor a right-down imp to look at, and devilish wicked he eyed me; but still anon I sends over for my wives, turns out a black feller out on his hut, an' slings a hammock in it, when the next day or so I meets the first fittish-man in the woods, an' the poor divvle looks wonderfle friendly-like, makin' me all kinds o' woeful signs, and seemin'ly as much as to say for to keep a bright look-out on the other. All on a suddent what does he do, but he runs a bit, as far as a tree, picks up a sort of a red mushroom, an' he rubs with it across the back o' my hand, gives a wink, and scuttles off. What it meaned I couldn't make out, till I gets back to the town, when I chanced to look at my flipper, and there I see a clean white streak alongst it! Well, I thinks, liberty's sweet, an' I'm blessed if a man's able to cruize much to windward o' right-down slavery, thinks I, if he's black! Howsomever, thinks I, I'll jest hold on a bit longer. Well, next day, the black king had the blue-devils with drinkin' rum, an' he couldn't sleep nohow, 'cause, as I made out, he'd killed his uncle, they said—I doesn't know but he'd eaten him, too—anyhow, I see'd him eat as much of a fat hog, raw, as ud sarve out half the watch—so the fittish-man tells him there's nought for it but to please the fittish. What that wor, blowed if I knew; but no sooner sundown nor they hauls me out o' my hut, claps me in a stinking hole as dark as pitch, and leaves me to smell hell till mornin', as I thought. Jist about the end o' the mid-watch, there kicks up a rumpus like close-reef taups'ls in a hurricane—smash goes the sticks over me; I seed the stars, and a whole lot o' strange blacks with long spears, a-fightin', yellin', tramplin', an' twistin' in the midst o' the huts,—and off I'm hoisted in the gang, on some feller's back or other, at five knots the hour, through the woods,—till down we all comes in a drove, plash amongst the very swamps close by the river, where, lo an' behold, I makes out a schooner afloat at her anchor. The next thing I feels a blasted red-hot iron come hiss across my shoulders, so I jumped up and sang out like blazes, in course. But, my flippers bein' all fast, 'twas no use: I got one shove as sent me head-foremost into a long canoe, with thirty or forty niggers stowed away like cattle, and out the men pulls for the schooner. A big bright fire there was ashore, astarn of us, I mind, where they heated the irons, with a chap in a straw hat sarvin' out rum to the wild blacks from a cask; and ye saw the pitch-black woods behind, with the branches shoved out red in the light on it, an' a bloody-like patch on the water under a clump o' sooty mangrooves. An' be d—d, Jack, if I didn't feel the life sick in me, that time—for, d'ye see, I hears nothin' spoke round me but cussed French, Portingeese, an' nigger tongue—'specially when it jist lightens on me what sort on a case I were in; an' thinks I, 'By G—if I'm not took for a slave, arter all!—an' be hanged but I left that 'ere, 'farnal mushroom a-lying under that there tree yonder!' I begins for to think o' matters an' things, an' about Bristol quay, an' my old mother, an' my sister as was at school—mind ye, 'mate, all atwixt shovin' off the mangroves an' coming bump again the schooner's side—an' blow me if I doesn't tarn to, an' nigh-hand commences for to blubber—when jist then what does I catch sight on, by the lantern over the side, but that 'ere villain of a fittish-man, an' what's more, King Chimbey hisself, both hauled in the net. And with that I gives a chuckle, as ye may suppose, an' no mistake; for, thinks I, so far as consarns myself, this here can't last long, blow me, for sooner or later I'll find some un to speak to, even an I niver gets rid o' this here outer darkness—be blowed if I han't got a white mind, any ways, an' free I'll be, my boy! But I laughs, in course, when I see'd the fittish-man grin at me,—for thinks I, my cocks, you're logged down for a pretty long spell of it!"

"Well, bo', somehow I knows no more about it till such time as I sort o' wakes up in pitch-dark, all choke and sweat, an' a feller's dirty big toe in my mouth, with mine in some un else's eye,—so out I spits it, an' makes scramble for my life. By the roll an' the splash, I knowed I wor down in the schooner's hold; an' be hanged if there wan't twenty or thirty holding on like bees to a open weather-port, where the fresh wind and the spray come a-blowing through—but there, my boy, 'twere no go for to get so much as the tip o' yer nose. Accordently, up I prizes myself with my feet on another poor devil's wool,—for, d'ye see, by that time I minds a man's face no more nor so much timber!—an' I feels for the hatch over me, where by good luck, as I thought, there I finds it not battened down yet, so I shoved my head through on deck like a blacksmith's hammer. Well, 'mate, there was the schooner's deck wet, a swell of a sea on round her, well off the land, no trifle of a morning gale, and the craft heeling to it—a lot o' hands up on her yards, a-reefing at the boom mains'l and fo'taups'l, an' begod if my heart doesn't jump into my mouth with the sight, for I feels it for all the world like a good glass o' grog, settin' all to rights. Two or three there was walkin' aft the quarterdeck, so out I sings 'Hullo! hullo there, shipmates, give us a hand out o' this!' Two on 'em comes forud, one lifts a handspike, but both gives a grin, as much as to say it's some nigger tongue or other, in place o' good English—for, d'ye see, they'd half their faces black-beard, and rings i' their ears—when up walks another chap like the skipper, an' more the looks of a countryman. 'D—n it,' roars I again, 'I'm a free-born Briton!' with that he lends me a squint, looks to the men, an' gives some sort o' a sign—when they jams-to the hatch and nips me fast by the neck. 'Devil of a deep beggar, this here!' says he; 'jist, give him the gag, my lads,' says he; 'the planters often thinks more of a dumby, 'cause he works the more, and a stout piece o' goods this is!' says he. Well, 'mate, what does they do but one pulls out a knife, an' be blowed if they warn't agoin' for to cut out my tongue; but the men aloft sung out to hoist away the yards; so they left me ready clinched till they'd belay the ropes. Next, a hand forud, by good luck, hailed 'Sail-O,' and they'd some'at else to think o' besides me; for there, my boy, little more nor three miles to wind'ard, I see'd the Irish as she come driving bodily out o' the mist, shakin' out her three to'gallant-sails, an' a white spray flying with her off one surge to another. Bloody bad it was, mind ye, for my wind-pipe, for every time the schooner pitched, away swings my feet clear o' the nigger's heads,—'cause, d'ye see, we chanced for to be stowed on the 'tween-decks, an' another tier there was, stuffed in her lower hold—an' there I stuck, 'mate, so as I couldn't help watchin' the whole chase, till at last the hatch slacks nip a bit, and down I plumps into the dark again."

"Well, bo', the breeze got lighter, an' to all seemin' the cursed schooner held her own; but hows'ever, the sloop-o'-war kept it up all day, and once or twice she tips us a long shot; till by sunset, as I reckoned, we hears no more on her. The whole night long, again, there we stews as thick as peas—I keeps harknin' to the sighs an' groans, an' the wash along the side, in a sort of a doze; an' s'help me Bob, I fancies for a moment I'm swinging in my hammock in the fox'sle, an' it's no more but the bulkheads and timbers creakin'. Then I thinks its some un else I dreams on, as is d—d oneasy, like to choke for heat and thirst; an' I'm a-chuckling at him—when up I wakes with the cockroaches swarming over my face. Another groan runs from that end to this, the whole lot on us tries hard, and kicks their neighbours to turn, an' be blowed if I knowed but I was buried in a churchyard, with the blasted worms all acrawl about me. All on a sudden, nigh-hand to daybreak it was, I hears a gun to wind'ard, so with that I contrives for to scramble up with my eye to the scuttle-port. 'Twas a stiffish breeze, an' I see'd some'at lift on a sea, like a albatrosse's wing, as one may say—though what wor this but the Irish's bit of a tender, standing right across our bows—for the schooner, ye see, changed her course i' the night-time, rig'lar slaver's dodge, thinkin' for to drop the sloop-o'-war, sure enough. But as for the little f'lucca, why, they hadn't bargained for her at all, lying-to as she did, with a rag o' sail up, in the troughs of the sea, till the schooner was close on her. Well, no sooner does they go about, my boy, but the muskeety of a cruiser lets drive at her off the top of a sea, as we hung broadside to them in stays. Blessed if I ever see sich a mark!—the shot jist takes our fore-top fair slap—for the next minute I see'd the fore-topmast come over the lee-side, an' astarn we begins to go directly. What's more, mate, I never see a small craft yet handled better in a sea, as that 'ere chap did—nor the same thing done, cleaner at any rate—for they jist comes nigh-hand tip on our bowsprit-end, as the schooner lifted—then up in the wind they went like clock-work, with a starnway on as carried the f'lucca, right alongside on us, like a coachman backing up a lane, and grind we both heaved on the swell, with the topmast hamper an' its canvass for a fender atwixt us. Aboard jumps the man-o'-war's-men, in course, cutlash in hand, an' for five minutes some tough work there was on deck, by the tramp, the shots, an' the curses over our heads—when off they shoved the hatches, and I see'd a tall young feller in a gold-banded cap look below. Be blowed if I wasn't goin' to sing out again, for, d'ye see, I'm blessed if I took mind on the chap at all, as much by reason o' the blood an' the smoke he'd got on his face as aught else. Hows'ever, I holds a bit meantime, on account o' Job Price an' that 'ere piratecy consarn—till what does I think, a hour or two arter, when I finds as this here were the very lufftenant as chased us weeks on end in the Camaroons. So a close stopper, sure enough, I keeps on my jaw; an' as for scentin' me out amongst a couple o' hundred blacks in the hold, why, 'twere fit to Paul my own mother herself.

"Well, Jack, by this time bein' near Serry Lone, next day or so we got in—where, what does they do but they lubber-rates us all, as they calls it, into a barracoon ashore, till sich time as the slaver ud be condemned—an' off goes the tender down coast again. Arter that, they treats us well enough, but still I dursn't say a word; for one day, as we goed to work makin' our huts, there I twigs a printed bill upon the church-wall, holdin' out a reward, d'ye see, consarnin' the piratecy, with my oun name and my very build logged down—ownly, be hanged if they doesn't tack on to it all, byway of a topgallant ink-jury to a man, these here words—'He's a very ugly feller—looks like a furriner.' Well, mate, I an't a young maiden, sure enough—but, thinks I, afore I fell foul o' that blasted fittish-man an' his nut, cuss me if I looks jist so bad as that 'ere! So ye know this goes more to my heart nor aught else, till there I spells out another confounded lie in the bill, as how Cap'en Price's men had mutinied again him, and murdered the brig's crew—when, in course, I sees the villain's whole traverse at once. So seein' I watched my chance one night, an' went aboard of a Yankee brig as were to sail next day; an' I tells the skipper part o' the story, offerin' for to work my passage across for nothin'—which, says he, 'It's a hinteresstin' narritife'—them was his words; an' says he, 'It's a land o' freedom is the States, an' no mistake—an't there no more on ye in the like case?' he says. 'Not as I knows on, sir,' I answers; an' says he, 'Plenty o' coloured gen'lmen there is yonder, all in silks an' satins; an' I hear,' says he, 'there's one on 'em has a chance o' bein President next time—anyhow I'm your friend,' says he, quite hearty. Well, the long an' short of it was, I stays aboard the brig, works my spell in her, an' takes my trick at the helm—but I'm blowed, Jack, if the men ud let me sleep in the fok'sle, 'cause I was a black,—so I slung my hammock aft with the nigger stoo'rd. D'ye see, I misgived myself a bit when we sank the coast, for thinks I its in Africay as that 'ere blessed mushroom are to be found, to take the colour off me—hows'ever, I thinks it carn't but wear out in time, now I've got out o' that 'ere confounded mess, where, sure enough, things was against me—so at last the v'yage were up, an' the brig got in to New Orleens. There I walks aft to the skipper for to take leave, when says he, wonderfle friendly-like,—'Now my lad,' says he, 'I'm goin' up river a bit for to see a friend as takes a interesst in your kind—an' if ye likes, why, I'll pay yer passage that far?' In course I agrees, and up river we goes, till we lands at a fine house, where I'm left in a far-handy, ye know, while the skipper an' his friend has their dinner. All at once the gen'lman shoves his head out of a doure, takes a look at me, an' in again,—arter that I hears the chink o' dollars—then the skipper walks out, shuts the doure, an' says he to me, 'Now,' he says, 'that's a 'cute sort o' tale you tould me, my lad—but it's a lie, I guess!' 'Lie, sir!' says I, 'what d'ye mean?' for ye see that 'ere matter o' the iv'ry brig made me sing small, at first. 'No slack, Pumpey,' says he, liftin' his fore-finger like a schoolmaster,—ain't yer name Pumpey?' says he. 'Pumpey be d——d!' says I, 'my name's Jack Brown'—for that wor the name, I'd gived him, afore. 'Oh!' says he, 'jest say it's Gin'ral Washinton, right off! Come,' says he, 'I guess I'd jest tell ye what tripe you belongs to—you're a Mandingy niggur,' says he. 'It's all very well,' he says, 'that 'ere yarn, but that's wot they'd all say when they comes, they've been dyed black! Why,' says he, 'doesn't I see that 'ere brand one night on yer back—there's yer arms all over pagan tattooin'—' 'Bless ye, cap'en,' I says, a-holdin' up my arm, 'it's crowns an' anchers!' 'Crowns!' says he, turnin' up his nose, 'what does we know o' crowns hereaway—we ain't barbers yet, I guess.'—Of what he meaned by barbers here, mate, I'm hanged if I knowed—'sides,' says he, 'you speaks broken Aimerricane!' 'Merricain?' I says, 'why, I speaks good English! an' good reason, bein' a free-born Briton—as white's yerself, if so be I could ownly clap hands for a minnet on some o' them mushrooms I tould ye on!' 'Where does they grow, then?' axes he, screwin' one eye up. 'In Africay yonder, sir,' I says, 'more's the pity I hadn't the chance to lay hands on 'em again!' 'Phoo!' says he, 'glad they ain't here! An does you think we're agoin' for to send all the way over to Africay for them mushrooms you talks on? Tell ye what, yer free papers 'ud do ye a sight more good here!' says he—'its no use, with a black skin, for to claim white laws; an' what's more, ye're too tarnation ugly-faced for it, let alone colour, Pumpey, my man!' he says. 'I tell ye what it is, Cap'en Edwards,' says I, 'my frontispiece an't neither here nor there, but if you calls me Pumpey again, 'blowed an' I don't pitch inty ye!'—so with that I handles my bones in a way as makes him hop inside the doure—an' says the skipper, houldin' it half shut, 'Harkee, lad,' he says, 'it's no go your tryin' for to run, or they'll make ye think angels o' bo'sun's-mates. But what's more,' says he, 'niver you whisper a word o' what ye tells me, about nuts an' mushrooms, or sichlike trash—no more will I; for d'ye see, my lad, in that case they'd jest hush ye up for good!' 'Who d'ye mean!' I says, all abroad, an' of a shiver, like—mindin' on the slave-schooner again. 'Why, the planter's people,' says he, 'as I've sold ye to;' an' with that he p'ints into his mouth, and shuts the door. Well, 'mate, ye may fancy how I feels! Here I stands, givin' a look round for a fair offing; but there was bulwarks two-fadom high all round the house, a big bloodhound chained, with his muzzle on his two paws, an' nobody seems for to mind me. So I see'd it were all up wonst more; an' at the thou't of a knife in my tongue, I sits right down in the far-handy, rig'lar flabbergasted,—when out that 'ere blasted skipper shoots his head again, an' says he 'Pumpey, my lad, good day,' says he; 'you knows some'at o' the water, an' as they've boat-work at times hereaway, I don't know but, if you behaves yerself, they'll trust you with an oar now an' then; for I tould yer master jist now,' says he, 'as how you carn't speak no English!' Well, I gives him a damn, 'cause by that time I hadn't a word to throw at a dog; an' shortly arter, up comes the overseer with his black mate, walks me off to a shed, strips me, and gives me a pair o' cotton drawers an' a broad hat—so out I goes the next mornin' for to hoe sugar-cane with a gang o' niggers.

"Well, 'mate, arter that I kept close enough—says no more but mumbles a lot o' no-man's jargon, as makes 'em all log me down for a sort o' double-guinea savitch—, cause why, I were hanged afeared for my tongue, seein', if so be I lost it, I'd be a nigger for ever, sure enough. So the blacks, for most part bein' country bred, they talks nothin' but a blessed jumble, for all the world like babbies at home; an' what does they do but they fancies me a rig'lar African nigger, as proud as Tommy, an' a'most ready for to washup me they wor—why, the poor divvles ud bring me yams an' fish, they kisses my flippers an' toes as I'd been the Pope; an' as for the young girls, I'm blowed if I wan't all the go amongst em—though I carn't say the same where both 's white, ye know! What with the sun an' the cocoa-nut ile, to my thinkin', I gets blacker an' blacker—'blessed if I didn't fancy a feller's very mind tarned nigger. I larns their confounded lingo, an' I answers to the name o' Pumpey, blast it, till I right-down forgets that I'd ever another. As for runnin', look ye, I knowed 'twas no use thereaway, as long as my skin tould against me, an' as long as Africay wor where it wor. So, my boy, I see'd pretty clear, ye know, as this here bloody world ud turn a man into a rig'lar built slave-nigger in the long run, if he was a angel out o' heaven!

"Well, 'mate, one day I'm in the woods amongst a gang, chopping firewood for the sugar-mill, when, by the Lord! what does I light on betwixt some big ground-leaves and sichlike, but a lot o' them very same red mushrooms as the fittish-man shows me in Africay!—blowed if there warn't a whole sight o' them round about, too! So I pulls enough for ten, ye may be sure, stuffs 'em in my hat, an' that same night, as soon as all's dark, off I goes into the woods, right by the stars, for the nearest town 'twixt there an' New Orleens. As soon as I got nigh-hand it, there I sits down below a tree amongst the bushes, hauls off my slops, an' I turns to for to rub myself all over, from heel to truck, till daybreak. So, in course, I watches for the light angshis enough, as ye may suppose, to know what colour I were. Well, strike me lucky, Jack, if I didn't jump near a fadom i' the air, when at last I sees I'm white wonst more!—'blessed if I didn't feel myself a new man from stem to starn! I makes right for a creek near by, looks at my face in the water, then up I comes again, an' every bloody yarn o' them cussed slave-togs I pulls to bits, when I shoves 'em under the leaves. Arter that I took fair to the water for about a mile, jist to smooth out my wake, like; then I shins aloft up a tree, where I stowed myself away till noon—'cause, d'ye see, I knowed pretty well what to look for next. An' by this time, mind ye, all them queer haps made a feller wonderfle sharp, so I'd schemed out the whole chart aforehand how to weather on them cussed Yankees. Accordently, about noon, what does I hear but that 'ere blasted bloodhound comin' along up creek, with a set o' slave-catchers astarn, for to smell out my track. With that, down I went in the water again, rounds a point into the big river, where I gets abreast of a landin'-place near the town, with craft laying out-stream, boats plying, an' all alive. D'ye see, bo', I'd got no clothes at all, an' how for to rig myself again, 'blowed if I knows—seein' as how by this time I'd tarned as white as the day I were born, an' a naked white man in a town arn't no better nor a black nigger. So in I swims like a porpus afore a breeze, an' up an' down I ducks in the shallow, for all the world like a chap a-takin' a bath; an' out I hollers to all an' sundry, with a Yankee twang i' my nose, for to know if they'd see'd my clothes, till a whole lot on 'em crowds on the quay. Hows'ever, I bethinks me on that 'ere blasted brand atwixt my shoulders, an' I makes myself out as modest as a lady, kicks out my legs, and splashes like a whale aground, an' sticks out my starn to 'em for to let 'em see it's white. 'Hullo!' I sings out, 'han't ye seen my clothes?' 'No, stranger,' says they, 'some un's runned off with 'em, we calc'lates!' With that I tells 'em I'm a Boston skipper new comed up from New Orleens; an' not bein' used to the heat, why, I'd took a bath the first thing; an' I 'scribes the whole o' my togs as if I'd made 'em,—'split new,' says I, 'an' a beaver hat, more by token there's my name inside it; an'' says I, 'there's notes for a hundred dollars in my trousers!' By this time down comes the slave-catchers, an' says they, hearin' on it, 'That 'ere tarnation niggur's gone of with 'em, we'll know un by them marks well enough,' says they, an' off they goes across river. 'Hullo!' I sings out to the folks, 'I'm a gettin' cold here, so I guess I'll come ashore again, slick off!' I twangs out. 'Guess ye can't, straunger!' they hails; 'not till we gets ye some kiverin's!—we're considerable proper here, we are!' 'An't this a free country, then?' I says, givin' a divvle of a splash; an' with that they begs an' axes me for to hould on, an' they'd fix me, as they calls it, in no time. Well, mate, what does they do but one an' another brings me somethin' as like what I 'scribed as could be, hands 'em along on a pole, an' I puts 'em on then an' there. Arter that, the ladies o' the place bein' blessed modest, an' all of a fright leest I'd a comed out an' gone through the town,—why, out o' grannytude, as they says, they gets up a supper-scription on a hundred dollars to make up my loss—has a public meetin' logged down for the evenin', when I'm for to indress the citizens, as they says, all about freedom an' top-gallantry, an' sichlike. Hows'ever, I jist sticks my tongue in my cheek, eats a blessed good dinner in a hot-ell, watches my chance, an' off by a track-boat at sundown to New Orleens, where I shipped aboard a English barque, an' gets safe out to sea wonst more." "Lord love ye, Harry!" exclaimed Jack hereupon, "the likes o' that now! But I've heerd say, them fittish-men you talks on has wonderful knowledge—why, mayhap it's them as keeps all the niggers black, now?" "Well, bo'," said Harry, "I don't doubt but if them 'Merricane slaves jist knowed o' that 'ere red mushroom, why, they'd show the Yankees more stripes nor stars! D'ye see, if a Yankee knowed as his own father were a-hoein' his sugar-canes, 'blowed if he wouldn't make him work up his liberty in dollars! All the stripes, d'ye see, 'mate, is for the blacks, an' all the stars is for the whites, in them Yankee colours as they brags so much about! But what I says is, it's curst hard to get through this here world, shipmate, if ye doesn't keep well to wind'ard of it!" I was the more amused with this account of the ugly rascal's adventures, that I remembered two or three of the occasions he mentioned, and he told them pretty exactly so far as I had to do with them. As for the fetish-man's curious nut, and that extraordinary mushroom of his, why 'ten to one' thought I, 'but all the while the fellow never once touched a piece of soap!' which, no doubt, had as much to do with it as anything besides. Somehow or other, notwithstanding, I had taken almost a fancy to the villain—such a rough sample of mankind he was, with his uncouth, grumpy voice and his huge black beard; and he gave the story in a cool, scornful sort of way that was laughable in itself. 'So, my lad,' I thought, 'it seems you and I have met twice before; but if you play any of your tricks this time, Master Harry, I hope you've found your match;' and certainly, if I had fancied my gentleman was in the slaver's hold that time off the African coast, I'd have 'lubber-rated' him with a vengeance! "I say, 'mates," said he again, with a sulky kind of importance, to those of the watch who had gathered round during the last half of his yarn, "there's three things I hates—an' good reason!" "What be's they, Harry?" asked the rest. "One's a Yankee," said he, "an' be blowed to him! the second's a slaver; and the third is—I carn't abide a nigger, nohow. But d'ye see, there's one thing as I likes——" Here eight bells struck out, and up tumbled the watch below, with Jacobs' hearty face amongst them; so I made my way aft, and, of course, missed hearing what that said delightful thing might be, which this tarry Æsop approved of so much.

While I was listening, I had scarcely noticed, that within the last few minutes a light air had begun to play aloft among the higher canvass, a faint cat's-paw came ruffling here and there a patch of the water, till by this time the Indiaman was answering her wheel again, and moving slowly ahead, as the breeze came down and crept out to the leeches of her sail, with a sluggish lifting of her heavy fore-course. The men were all below at breakfast, forward, and, of course, at that hour the poop above me was quite a Babel of idlers' voices; while I looked into the compass and watched the ship's head falling gradually off from north-east-by-north, near which it had stuck pretty close since daybreak. The sun was brought before her opposite beam, and such a perfect gush of hazy white light shot from that quarter over the larboard bulwarks, that thereaway, in fact, there might have been a fleet of ships, or a knot of islands, and we none the wiser, as you couldn't look into it at all. The chief mate came handing a wonderfully timid young lady down the poop-ladder with great care, and as soon as they were safe on the quarterdeck, she asked with a confiding sort of lisp, "And where are we going now then, Mr Finch?" "Well, Miss," simpered he, "wherever you please, I'll be glad to conduct you!" "Oh, but the ship I mean," replied she, giggling prettily. "Why," said Finch, stooping down to the binnacle, "she heads due south-east at present, Miss." "I am so glad you are going on again!" said the young lady; "but oh! when shall we see dear land once more, Mr Finch?" "Not for more than a week, I fear," answered the mate, "when we arrive at the Cape of Good Hope. But there, Miss, your poetic feelings will be gratified, I assure you! The hills there, I might say, Miss Brodie," he went on, "not to speak of the woods, are quite dramatic! You mustn't suppose the rough mariner, rude as he seems, Miss Brodie, is entirely devoid of romance in his sentiments, I hope!" and he looked down for the twentieth time that morning at his boots, as he handed her down the cabin hatchway, longing to see the Cape, no doubt. 'Much romance, as you call it, there is in ugly Harry yonder!' thought I; and comparing this sort of stuff, aft, with the matter-of-fact notions before the mast, made me the more anxious for what might turn up in a few hours, with this gallant first officer left in full charge, and the captain, as I understood, unable to leave his cot. A good enough seaman the fellow was, so far as your regular deep-sea work went, which those India voyagers had chiefly to do with then; but for aught out of the way, or a sudden pinch, why, the peace had just newly set them free of their leading-strings, and here this young mate brought his new-fangled school navigation, forsooth, to run the Seringapatam into some mess or other; whereas, in a case of the kind, I had no doubt he would prove as helpless as a child. By this time, for my part, all my wishes for some ticklish adventure were almost gone, when I thought of our feelings at the loss of the boat, as well as the number of innocent young creatures on board, with Lota Hyde herself amongst them: while here had I got myself fairly set down for a raw griffin. Yet neither Westwood nor I, unless it came to the very worst, could, venture to make himself openly useful! I was puzzled both what to think of our exact case, and what to do; whereas a pretty short time in these latitudes, as the foremast-man had said, might finish our business altogether; indeed, the whole look of things, somehow or other, at that moment, had a strange unsettled touch about it, out of which one accustomed to those parts might be sure some change would come. The air, a little ago, was quite suffocating, the heat got greater; and the breeze, though it seemed to strengthen aloft, at times sank quietly out of her lower canvass like a breath drawn in, and caught it again as quietly ere it fell to the masts. What with the slow huge heave of the water, as it washed glittering past, and what with the blue tropical sky overhead, getting paler and paler at the horizon astern, from fair heat—while the sunlight and the white haze on our larboard beam, made it a complete puzzle to behold—why, I felt just like some fellow in one of those stupid dreams after a heavy supper, with nothing at all in them, when you don't know how long or how often you've dreamt it before. Deuce the hand or foot you can stir, and yet you've a notion of something horrid that's sure to come upon you. We couldn't be much more than a hundred miles or so to south'ard of St Helena; but we might be two thousand miles off the land, or we might be fifty. I had only been once in my life near the coast thereaway, and certainly my recollections of it weren't the most pleasant. As for the charts, so little was known of it that we couldn't depend upon them; yet there was no doubt the ship had been all night long in a strong set of water toward north-east, right across her course. For my own part, I was as anxious as any one else to reach the Cape, and get rid of all this cursed nonsense; for since last night, I saw quite well by her look that Violet Hyde would never favour me, if I kept in her wake to the day of judgment. There was I, too, every time I came on deck and saw those roundhouse doors, my heart leapt into my throat, and I didn't know port from starboard! But what was the odds, that I'd have kissed the very pitch she walked upon, when she wasn't for me!—being deep in love don't sharpen the faculties, neither, and the more I thought of matters the stupider I seemed to get. "Green Hand!" thought I, "as Jacobs and the larboard watch call me, it appears—why, they're right enough! A green hand I came afloat nine years ago, and by Jove! though I know the sea and what belongs to it, from sheer liking to them, as 'twere—it seems a green hand I'm to stick—seeing I know so blessed little of womankind, not to speak of that whole confounded world ashore! With all one's schemes and one's weather-eye, something new always keeps turning up to show one what an ass he is; and hang me, if I don't begin to suppose I'm only fit for working small traverses upon slavers and jack-nasty-faces, after all! There's Westwood, without troubling himself, seems to weather upon me, with her, like a Baltimore clipper on a Dutch schuyt!" In short, I wanted to leave the Seringapatam as soon as I could, wish them all a good voyage together away for Bombay, sit down under Table Mountain, damn my own eyes, and then perhaps go and travel amongst the Hottentots by way of a change.

The chief officer came aft towards the binnacle again, with a strut in his gait, and more full of importance than ever, of course. "This breeze'll hold, I think, Macleod?" said he to the second mate, who was shuffling about in a lounging, unseamanlike way he had, as if he felt uncomfortable on the quarterdeck, and both hands in his jacket pockets. "Well," said the Scotchman, "do ye not think it's too early begun, sir?" and he looked about like an old owl, winking against the glare of light past the mainsheet to larboard; "I'll not say but it will, though," continued he, "but 'odsake, sir, it's terrible warm!" "Can't be long ere we get into Cape Town, now," said the mate, "so you'll turn the men on deck as soon as breakfast's over, Mr Macleod, and commence giving her a coat of paint outside, sir." "Exactly, Mr Finch," said the other, "all hands it'll be, sir? For any sake, Mr Finch, give thay lazy scoundrels something ado!" "Yes, all hands," said Finch; and he was going below, when the second mate sidled up to him again, as if he had something particular to say. "The captain'll be quite better by this time, no doubt, Mr Finch?" asked he. "Well—d'ye mean?" inquired the mate, rather shortly; "why no, sir—when the surgeon saw him in the morning-watch, he said it was a fever, and the sooner we saw the Cape, the better for him." "No doubt, no doubt, sir," said the second-mate, thoughtfully, putting his fore-finger up his twisted nose, which I noticed he did in such cases, as if the twist had to do with his memory,—"no doubt, sir, that's just it! The doctor's a sharp Edinbro' lad—did he see aucht bye common about the captain, sir?" "No," said Finch, "except that he wanted to go on deck this morning, and the surgeon took away his clothes and left the door locked." "Did he though?" asked Macleod, shaking his head, and looking a little anxious; "didna he ask for aucht in particular, sir?" "Not that I heard of, Mr Macleod," replied the mate; "what do you mean?" "Did he no ask for a green leaf?" replied the second mate. "Pooh!" said Finch, "what if he did?" "Well, sir," said Macleod, "neither you nor the doctor's sailed five voy'ges with the captain, like me. He's a quiet man, Captain Weelumson, an' well he knows his calling; but sometimes warm weather doesn't do with him, more especial siccan warm weather as this, when the moon's full, as it is the night, ye know, Mr Finch. There's something else besides that, though, when he's taken that way." "Well, what is it?" asked the mate carelessly. "Oo!" said Macleod, "it can't be that this time, of course, sir,—it's when he's near the land! The captain knows the smell of it, these times, Mr Finch, as well's a cockroach does—an' it's then he asks for a green leaf, and wants to go straight ashore—I mind he did it the voy'ge before last, sir. He's a quiet man, the captain, as I said, for ord'nar'—but when he's roused, he's a—" "Why, what was the matter with him?" said Finch, more attentive than before, "you don't mean to say—? go on, Mr Macleod." The second mate, however, looked cautious, closed his lips firmly, and twirled his red whiskers, as he glanced with one eye aloft again. "Hoo!" said he, carelessly, "hoo, it's nothing, nothing,—they just, I'm thinking, sir, what they call disgestion ashore—all frae the stommach, Mr Finch! We used just for to lock the state-room door, an' never let on we heard—but at any rate, sir, this is no the thing at all, ye know!" "Mester Semm," continued he to the fat midshipman, who came slowly up from the steerage, picking his teeth with a pocket-knife, "go forred and get the bo'sun to turn up all hands."

"Sir," said I, stepping up to the mate next moment, before the roundhouse, "might I use the freedom of asking whereabouts we are at present?" Finch gave me a look of cool indifference, without stirring head or hand; which I saw, however, was put on, as, ever since our boating affair, the man evidently detested me, with all his pretended scorn. "Oh certainly, sir!" said he, "of course!—sorry I haven't the ship's log here to show you—but it's two hundred miles or so below St Helena, eight hundred miles odd off south-west African coast, with a light westerly breeze bound for the Cape of Good Hope—so after that you can look about you, sir!" Are you sure of all that, sir?" asked I, seriously. "Oh, no, of course not!" said he, still standing as before, "not in the least, sir! It's nothing but quadrant, sextant, and chronometer work, after all—which every young gentleman don't believe in!" Then he muttered aloud, as if to himself, "Well, if the captain should chance to ask for a green leaf, I know where to find it for him!" I was just on the point of giving him some angry answer or other, and perhaps spoiling all, when I felt a tap on my shoulder, and on turning round saw the Indian judge, who had found me in the way either of his passage or his prospect, on stepping out of the starboard door. "Eh!" said he, jocularly, as I begged his pardon, "eh, young sir—I've nothing to do with pardons—always leave that to the governor-general and councillors! Been doing anything wrong, then? Ah, what's this—still calm, or some of your wind again, Mr officer?" "A fine breeze like to hold, Sir Charles," answered the mate, all bows and politeness. "So!" said Sir Charles, "but I don't see Captain. Williamson at all this morning—where is he?" "I am sorry to say he is very unwell, Sir Charles," said Finch. "Indeed!" exclaimed the Judge, with whom the captain stood for all the seamanship aboard, and looking round again rather dissatisfied. "Don't like that, though! I hope he won't be long unable to attend to things, sir—let me know as soon as he is recovered, if you please!" "Certainly, Sir Charles," said the chief officer, touching his cap with some appearance of pique, "but I hope, sir, I understand my duties in command, Sir Charles." "Daresay, sir," said the Judge, "as officer, probably. Commander absent!—horrible accidents already!" he muttered crossly, changing his usual high sharp key to a harsh croak, like a saw going through a heavy spar, "something sure to go wrong—wish we'd done with this deuced tiresome voyage!" "Ha, young gentleman!" exclaimed he, turning as he went in, "d'ye play chess—suppose not—eh?" "Why yes, sir," said I, "I do." "Well," continued he, overhauling me more carefully than he had done before, though latterly I had begun to be somewhat in his good graces when we met by chance, "after all, you've a chess eye, if you know the game at all. Come in, then, for godsake, and let's begin! Ever since the poor brigadier went, I've had only myself or a girl to play against! 'Gad, sir, there is something, I can't express how horrible to my mind, in being matched against nobody—or, what's worse, damme, a woman! But recollect, young gentleman, I call not bear a tyro!" and he glanced at me as we walked into the large poop-cabin, as sharply and as cold as a nor'-wester ere it breaks to windward. Now I happened to know the game, and to be particularly fond of it, so, restless as I felt otherwise, I gave the old nabob a quiet nod, laid down my griffin-looking straw hat on the sofa, and in two minutes there we were, sitting opposite over a splendid China-made chess-board, with elephants, emperors, mandarins, and china-men, all square and ataunto, as if they'd been set ready for days. The dark Kitmagar commenced fanning over his master's head with a bright feather punka, the other native servant handed him his twisted hookah and lighted it, after which he folded his arms and stood looking down on the board like a pundit at some campaign of the Great Mogul—while the Judge himself waited for my first move, as if it had been some of our plain English fellows in Hindostan commencing against your whole big India hubbub and finery, to get hold of it all in the end. For my part I sat at first all of a tingle and tremble, thinking how near his lovely daughter might be; and there were the breakfast cups laid out on a round table at the other side, behind me. However I made my move, Sir Charles made his, and pitched in to the game in a half impatient, half long-headed sort of way, anxious to get to the thick of it, as it were, once more. Not a word was said, and you only heard the suck of the smoke bubbling through the water-bottle of his pipe, after each move the Judge made; till I set myself to the play in right earnest, and, owing to the old gentleman's haste at the beginning, or his over-sharpness, I hooked him into a mess with which I used to catch the old hands at chess in the cock-pit, just by fancying what they meant to be at. The Judge lifted his head, looked at me, and went on again. "Your queen is in check, Sir Charles!" said I, next time, by way of a polite hint. "Check, though, young gentleman!" said he, chuckling, as he dropped one of his outlandish knights, which I wasn't yet up to the looks of, close to windward of my blessed old Turk of a king; so the skirmish was just getting to be a fair set-to, when I chanced to lift my eyes, and saw the door from the after-cabin open, with Miss Hyde coming through. "Now, papa," exclaimed she on the moment, "you must come to breakfast,"—when all of a sudden, at seeing another man in the cabin, she stopped short. Being not so loud and griffin-like in my toggery that morning, and my hat off, the young lady didn't recognise me at first,—though the next minute, I saw by her colour and her astonished look, she not only did that, but something else—no doubt remembering at last where she had seen me ashore. "Well, child," said the Judge, "make haste with it, then!—Recollect where we are, now, young gentleman,—and come to breakfast." She had a pink muslin morning-dress on, with her brown hair done up like the Virgin Mary in a picture, and the sea had taken almost all the paleness off her cheek that it had in the ball-room at Epsom, a month or two ago,—and, by Jove! when I saw her begin to pour out the tea out of the silver tea-pot, I didn't know where I was! "Oh, I forgot," said the Judge, waving his hand from me to her, in a hurry, "Mr Robbins, Violet!—ho, Kitmagar, curry l'ao!" "Oh," said she, stiffly, with a cold turn of her pretty lip, "I have met Mr—Mr—" "Collins, ma'am," said I. "I have met this gentleman by accident before." "So you have—so you have," said her father; "but you play chess well, Mr—a—a—what's his name?—ah! Colley. Gad you play well, sir,—we must have it out!" The young lady glanced at me again with a sort of astonishment; at last she said, no doubt for form's sake, though as indifferently as possible,—"You have known your friend the missionary gentleman long, I believe, sir?—the Reverend Mr Thomas—I think that is his name?" "Oh no, ma'am!" said I hastily, for the Judge was the last man I wished should join Westwood and me together, "only since we crossed the Line, or so." "Why, I thought he said you were at school together!" said she, in surprise. "Why—hem—certainly not, ma'am—a—a—I—a—a—I don't remember the gentleman there," I blundered out. "Eh, what?—check to your queen, young gentleman, surely?" asked Sir Charles. "What's this, though! Always like to hear a mystery explained, so"—and he gave me one of his sharp glances. "Why, why—surely, young man, now I think of it in that way, I've seen you before in some peculiar circumstances or other—on land, too. Why, where was it—let me see, now?" putting his finger to his forehead to think, while, I sat pretty uneasy, like a small pawn that had been trying to get to the head of the board, and turn into a knight or a bishop, when it falls foul of a grand figured-out king and queen. However, the queen is the only piece you need mind at distance, and blessed hard it is to escape from her, of course. Accordingly, I cared little enough for the old nabob finding out I had gone in chase of them; but there sat his charming little daughter, with, her eyes on her teacup; and whether the turn of her face meant coolness, or malice, or amusement, I didn't know—though she seemed a little anxious too, I thought, lest her father should recollect me.

"It wasn't before me, young man?" asked he, looking, up of a sudden: "no, that must have been in India—must have been in England, when I was last there—let me see." And I couldn't help fancying what a man's feelings must be, tried for his life, as I caught a side-view of his temples working, dead in my wake, as it were. The thing was laughable enough, and for a moment I met Lota's eye as he mentioned England—'twas too short a glimpse, though, to make out; and, thought I, "he'll be down on Surrey directly, and then Croydon—last of all, the back of his garden wall, I suppose!" "Check" it was, and what I was going to say I couldn't exactly conceive, unless I patched up some false place or other, with matters to match, and mentioned it to the old fellow, though small chance of its answering with such a devil of a lawyer—when all at once I thought I heard a hail from aloft, then the second-mate's voice roared close outside, "Hullo!—aloft there!" The next moment I started up, and looked at Miss Hyde, as I heard plainly enough the cry, "On deck there—land O!" I turned round at once, and walked out of the roundhouse to the quarterdeck, where, two minutes after, the whole of the passengers were crowding from below, the Judge and his daughter already on the poop. Far aloft, upon the fore-to'gallant-yard, in the hot glare of the sun, a sailor was standing, with his hand over his eyes, and looking to the horizon, as the Indiaman stood quietly before the light breeze. "Where-away-ay?" was the next hail from deck. "Broad on our larboard bow, sir," was the answer.

[PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY.][14]

We have here combined the best of all books, and the best of all maps, for the study of the most interesting description of geography. Mr Johnston's Physical Atlas, now published in a form which renders it accessible to greater numbers, is without a rival as a companion and guide in this department of study; and by dwelling on its merits and utility, we should be only echoing a verdict which has already been pronounced by almost every journal of scientific or critical celebrity. And, indeed, the same might be said of our commendation of Mrs Somerville's book; our praise comes lagging in the rear, and is well-nigh superfluous. But not only are we desirous to tender our tribute of respect to one who has done more than any other living writer to extend amongst us sound, as well as general knowledge of physical science; we are anxious also to recommend to our youth the enlarged method of studying geography, which her present work demonstrates to be as captivating as it is instructive.

Mrs Somerville's Physical Geography does not assume so profound an aspect, nor has it so lofty an aim, as the Cosmos of Alexander Von Humboldt; neither can it claim, like that work, to be written by one who has himself surveyed the greater part of the terraqueous globe he undertakes to describe. This latter circumstance gives an extraordinary interest to the Cosmos. From time to time the professor of science, gleaning his knowledge from books, and laboratories, and museums, steps aside, and we hear, and almost see, the adventurous traveller, the man Humboldt himself, who seems to speak to us from the distant ocean he has traversed, or the sublime mountain heights he has ascended. Our countrywoman can claim no such peculiar prerogative. Who else can? To few—to none other—has it ever been permitted to combine so wide a range of knowledge with so wide a range of vision—to have carried his mind through all science, and his eye over all regions. He is familiar with all the grandeurs of our earth. He speaks with the air of the mountain still around him. When he discourses of the Himalaya or the Andes, it is with the vivid impression of one whose footsteps are still lying uneffaced amongst their rarely-trodden and precipitous passes. The phenomena he describes he has seen. He can reveal to us, and make us feel with him, that strange impression which "the first earthquake" makes even upon the most educated and reflective man, who suddenly finds his old faith shaken in the stability of the earth. And what lecturer upon electricity could ever arrest the attention of his auditors by so charming a reference to his personal experience as is contained in the following passage?—

"It was not without surprise that I noticed, on the shores of the Orinoco, children belonging to tribes in the lowest stage of barbarism amusing themselves by rubbing the dry, flat, shining seeds of a leguminous climbing plant (probably a negretia) for the purpose of causing them to attract fibres of cotton or bamboo. It was a sight well fitted to leave on the mind of a thoughtful spectator a deep and serious impression. How wide is the interval which separates the simple knowledge of the excitement of electricity by friction, shown in the sports of these naked, copper-coloured children of the forest, from the invention of the metallic conductor, which draws the swift lightning from the storm-cloud—of the voltaic pile, capable of effecting chemical decomposition—of a magnetic apparatus, evolving light—and of the magnetic telegraph!"

The writer naturally reflects on the wide interval which separates the knowledge of electricity shown by these naked children on the banks of the Orinoco, and the inventions of modern science, which have taught the lightnings of heaven to do our messages on the earth. But, to our mind, this wide interval is far more strikingly displayed by the picture which is here presented to the imagination, of the profound and meditative European looking down, pleased and surprised, at the first unconscious steps in experimental philosophy which these copper-coloured children of the forest are making in their sport.

But if Mrs Somerville's book has none of this extraordinary interest which the great traveller has thrown over his work, and if it does not aspire to that philosophic unity of view, (of which a word hereafter, in passing,) it must take precedence of this, and of all other works, as a useful compendium of the latest discoveries, and the soundest knowledge we possess, in the various subjects it embraces. Nowhere, except in her own previous work, The Connexion of the Physical Sciences, is there to be found so large a store of well-selected information, so lucidly set forth. In surveying and grouping together whatever has been seen by the eyes of others, or detected by their laborious investigations, she is not surpassed by any one; and the absence of all higher aim, or more original effort, is favourable to this distinctness of exposition. We have no obscurities other than what the imperfect state of science itself involves her in; no dissertations which are felt to interrupt or delay. She strings her beads distinct and close together. With quiet perspicacity she seizes at once whatever is most interesting and most captivating in her subject.

The Cosmos of Humboldt has the ambitious aim of presenting to us the universe, so far as we know it, in that beauty of harmony which results from a whole. Thus, at least, we understand his intention. He would domineer, as with an eagle's glance, over the known creation, and embrace it in its unity, displaying to us that beauty which exists in the harmony of all its parts. The attempt no one would depreciate or decry, but manifestly the imperfect state of science forbids its execution. We have attained no point of view from which we can survey the world as one harmonious whole. Our knowledge is fragmentary, uncertain, imperfect; and the most philosophic mind cannot reduce it into any shape in which it shall appear other than uncertain and fragmentary. We cannot "stand in the sun," as Coleridge says in his fine verse, and survey creation; we have no such luminous standing-point. There never, indeed, was a time when the attempt to harmonise our knowledge, and view the universe of things "in the beauty of unity," was so hopeless, so desperate. For the old theories, the old methods of representing to the imagination the more subtle and invisible agencies of the physical world, are shaken, or exploded, and nothing new has been able to take their place. What is new, and what is old, are alike unsettled, unconfirmed. In reality, therefore, the work of Mrs Somerville is as much a Cosmos as that of Von Humboldt; and, as a work of instruction, is far better for not aiming higher than it does. Mrs Somerville presents to us each gospel of science—if we may give that title to its imperfect revelations—and does not bewilder or confuse by attempting that "harmony of the gospels" which the scientific expositor is, as yet, unable to accomplish.

As yet, we have said—but, indeed, will science be ever able to realise this aspiration of the intellect after unity and completeness of view? To the reflective mind, human science presents this singular aspect. Whilst the speculative reason of man continually seeks after unity, strives to see the many in the one—as the Platonist would express himself—or, as we should rather say, strives to resolve the multiplicity of phenomena into a few ultimate causes, so as to create for itself a whole, some rounded system which the intellectual vision call embrace; the discoveries of science, by which it hopes and strives to realise this end, do in fact, at every stage, increase the apparent complexity of the phenomena. The new agencies, or causes, which are brought to light, if they explain what before was anomalous and obscure, become themselves the source of innumerable difficulties and conjectures. Each discovery stirs more questions than it sets at rest. What, on its first introduction, promised to explain so many things, is found, on further acquaintance, to have added but one more to the inexplicable facts around us. With each step, also, in our inquiry, the physical agents that are revealed to us become more subtle, more calculated to excite and to elude our curiosity. Already, half our science is occupied with matter that is invisible. From time to time some grand generalisation is proposed—electricity is now the evoked spirit which is to help us through our besetting difficulties—but, fast as the theory is formed, some new fact emerges that will not range itself within it; the cautious thinker steps back, and acknowledges that the effort is as yet premature. It always will be premature.

There is a perpetual antagonism between the intellectual tendency to reduce all phenomena to a harmonious and complete system, and that increase of knowledge which, while it seems to favour the attempt, renders it more and more impracticable. With our limited powers, we cannot embrace the whole; and therefore it must follow, that it is only when our knowledge is scanty, that we seem capable of the task. Every addition to that knowledge, from the time that Thales would have reduced all things to the one element of water, has rendered the task more hopeless. And as science was never so far advanced as at the present time, so this antagonism was never so clearly illustrated between the effort of reason to generalise, and the influx of broken knowledge, reducing the overtasked intellect to despair. How much has lately been revealed to us of the more subtle powers and processes of nature—of light, of heat, of electricity! How tempting the generalisations offered to our view! We seem to be, at least, upon the eve of some great discovery which will explain all: an illusion which is destined to prompt the researches of the ardent spirits of every age. They will always be on the eve of some great discovery which is to place the clue of the labyrinth into their hand. The new discovery, like its predecessor, will add only another chamber to the interminable labyrinth.

Let us, for instance, suppose that we have discovered, in electricity, the cause of that attraction to which we had confided the revolution of the planets; of that chemical affinity to which we had ascribed the various combinations of those ultimate atoms of which the material world is presumed to be composed; of that vital principle which assimilates in the plant, and grows and feels in the animal. Let us suppose that this is a sound generalisation; yet, as electricity cannot be alone both attraction in the mass, and chemical affinity in the atom, and irritability and susceptibility in the fibre and the nerve, what has the speculative reason attained but to the knowledge of a new and necessary agent, producing different effects according to the different conditions in which, and the different co-agencies with which it operates? These conditions, these co-agencies, are all to be discovered. It is one flash of light, revealing a whole world of ignorance.

To the explanation of the most obstinate of all problems—the nature of the vital principle—we seem to have made a great step when we introduce a current of electricity circulating through the nerves. If this hypothesis be established, we shall probably have made a valuable and very useful addition to our stock of knowledge; but we shall be as far as ever from solving the problem of the vital principle. We have now a current of electricity circulating along the nerves, as we had before a current of blood, circulating through the veins and arteries; the one may become as prominent and as important a fact in the science of the physician as the other; but it will be equally powerless with the old discovery of Harvey to explain the ultimate cause of vitality. To the speculative reason it has but complicated the phenomena of animal life.

Within the memory of a living man, there has been such progress and revolution in science, that not one of the great generalisations taught him in his youth can be now received as uncontested propositions. Not many years ago, how commodiously a few words, such as attraction, caloric, affinity, rays of light, and others, could be used, and how much they seemed to explain! Caloric was a fluid, unseen indeed, but very obedient to the imagination—expanding bodies, and radiating from one to the other in a quite orderly manner. What is it now? Perhaps the vibration of a subtle ether interfused through all bodies; perhaps the vibration of the atomic parts themselves of those bodies. Who will venture to say? Attraction and affinity are no longer the clearly defined ultimate facts they seemed to be; we know so much, at least, that they are intimately connected with electrical phenomena, though not to what extent. That electricity is implicated with chemical composition, and recomposition, is clearly recognised; and Sir J. Herschel has lately expressed his opinion, that it is impossible any longer to attempt the explanation of the movements of all the heavenly bodies by simple attraction, as understood in the Newtonian theory—these comets, with their trains perversely turned from the sun, deranging sadly our systematic views. The ray of light, which, with its reflection and its refraction, seemed a quite manageable substance, has deserted us, and we have an ethereal fluid—the same as that which constitutes heat, or another—substituted in its stead. Science has no language, and knows not how to speak. If she lectures one day upon the "polarisation" of light, she professes the next not to know what she means by the term; she is driven even to talk of "invisible rays" of light, or chemical rays. Never was it so difficult to form any scientific conception on these subjects, or to speak of them with any consistency. Mrs Somerville is a correct writer; yet she opens her brief section upon magnetism thus:—"Magnetism is one of those unseen imponderable existences, which, like electricity and heat, are known only by their effects. It is certainly identical with electricity, for," &c. It is like, and it is identical, in almost the same sentence.

Even in the fields of astronomy, where we have to deal with large masses of matter, it is no longer possible for the imagination to form any embraceable system. We are plunged into hopeless infinitude, and the little regularities we had painfully delineated on the heavens are all effaced. The earth had been torn from its moorings and sent revolving through space, but it revolved round a central stationary sun. Here, at least, was something stable. The sun was a fixed centre for our minds, as well as for the planetary system. But the sun himself has been uprooted, and revolves round some other centre—we know not what—or else travels on through infinite space—we know not whither. A little time ago, the stately seven rolled round their central orb in clear and uninterrupted space; their number has been constantly increasing; we reckon now seventeen planetary bodies that can be reduced to no law of proportion or harmony, either as to their size, their orbits, the inclination of their axes, or any other planetary property;[15] and the space they circulate in is intruded on by other smaller and miscellaneous bodies, asteroids, and the like, some of which, it seems, occasionally fall to the earth. Comets come sweeping in from illimitable space, requiring, it is thought, some eight thousand years for their revolution round the sun. Some of these cross each other's orbits: one has crossed the orbit of the earth; and their decreasing circle round the sun, gives notice of some unknown ether suffused through the interstellar spaces. The outlying prospect, beyond our system, grows still more bewildering. The stars are no longer "fixed," nor is their brilliancy secured to them; this increases and diminishes with perplexing mystery. What seemed a single point of light, resolves itself into two stars revolving round each, perhaps reciprocally sun and planet. The faint and telescopic nebula, just reached by the glass in one age, is found in the next to be a congregation of innumerable stars. Our milky way is, at the same distance, just such another nebula. "The elder Herschel calculates that the light of the most distant nebula, discovered by his forty-feet refractor, requires two millions of years to reach our eyes." Oh, shut up the telescope! the reason reels.

Science, in short, presents before us a field of perpetual activity—of endless excitement, and that of the highest order—of practical results of the greatest utility and most beneficial description; but it gives no prospect of any resting-place—any repose for the speculative reason—any position with which the scientific mind shall be content, and from which it shall embrace the scene before it in its unity and harmony. Always will it be

"Moving about in worlds half-realised."

Having touched upon these subtle agencies of light, and heat, and electricity, and on the increasing difficulty we have of framing to ourselves any distinct conception of them, we cannot refrain from alluding to a little work or pamphlet, by Mr Grove, entitled, The Correlation of Physical Forces, in which this subject is treated with great originality. Mr Grove has made himself a name in experimental science by his discoveries in electricity and chemistry; in this pamphlet he shows, that he has the taste and power for enlarged speculation on the truths which experiment brings to light. We would recommend the perusal of his pamphlet to all who are interested in these higher and more abstract speculations. How far the wide generalisation he adopts is sustained by facts, we are not prepared to say. But it is a powerful work, and it is a singular one; for it is not often, in this country at least, that a man so well versed in the minutiæ of science ventures upon so bold a style of generalisation. After reviewing some of the more lately discovered properties of electricity, heat, light, and magnetism, and showing how each of them is capable of producing or resolving itself into the others, he reasons that all the four are but the varied activity of one and the same element. He adds, that this element is probably no other than the primitive atom itself; and that, in fact, these may be all regarded as affections of matter, which follow in their legal sequence, and not as the results of separate fluids or ethers. We are not sure that we do justice to his views, as we have not the work at hand, and it is some time since we read it; but we are persuaded that its perusal will be of interest to a philosophic reader, though its reasoning should fail to satisfy him.

But we have not placed the title of Mrs Somerville's book at the head of this paper, as an occasion to involve ourselves in these dark and abstract discussions. We are for out-of-door life; we would survey this visible round world, whose various regions, with their products and their inhabitants, she has brought before us.

"Physical geography," thus commences our writer, "is a description of the earth, the sea, and the air, with their inhabitants animal and vegetable, of the distribution of these organised beings, and the causes of that distribution. Political and arbitrary divisions are disregarded: the sea and the land are considered only with respect to these great features, that have been stamped upon them by the hand of the Almighty; and man himself is viewed but as a fellow-inhabitant of the globe with other created things, yet influencing them to a certain extent by his actions, and influenced in return."

Physical geography stands thus in contrast with political and historical geography. Russia is here no despotism, and America no democracy; they are only portions of the globe inhabited by certain races. To some persons it will doubtless seem a strange "geography" that takes no notice of the city, and respects not at all the boundaries of states. Those to whom the name recalls only the early labours of the school-room, when counties and county-towns formed a great branch of learning—where the blue and red lines upon the map were so anxiously traced, and where, doubtless, some suspicion arose that the earth itself was marked out by corresponding lines, or something equivalent to them—will hardly admit that to be geography which takes no note of these essential demarcations, or allow that to be a map in which the very city they live in cannot be found. To them the Physical Atlas will still seem nothing but a series of maps, in which most of the names have still to be inserted. They unconsciously regard cities and provinces as the primary objects and natural divisions of the earth. They share something of the feeling of that good man, more pious than reflective, who noted it as all especial providence that all the great rivers ran by the great towns.

Others, however, will be glad to escape for a time from these landmarks which man has put upon the earth, and to regard it in its great natural lineaments of continent and sea, mountain and island. To do this with advantage, it is necessary to disembarrass ourselves, both in the book and the map, of much that in our usual nomenclature ranks pre-eminently as geography. Nor is it easy to study this, more than the older branch of geography, without an appropriate atlas. To turn over the maps of Mr Johnston's, and con the varied information which accompanies them, is itself a study, and no disagreeable one. Of the extent of this information we can give no idea by extract or quotation; it is manifestly in too condensed a form for quotation; it is a perfect storehouse of knowledge, gathered from the best authorities.

The first thing which strikes an observant person, on looking over a map, or turning round a globe, is the unequal division and distribution of land and water. Over little more than one-fourth of the surface of the earth does dry land appear; the remaining three-fourths are overflowed by water. And this land is by no means equally disposed over the globe. Far the greater part of it lies in the northern hemisphere. "In the northern hemisphere it is three times greater than the south."

Of the form which this land assumes, the following peculiarities have been noticed:—

"The tendency of the land to assume a peninsular form is very remarkable, and it is still more so that almost all the peninsulas tend to the south—circumstances that depend on some unknown cause which seems to have acted very extensively. The continents of South America, Africa, and Greenland, are peninsulas on a gigantic scale, all tending to the south; the Asiatic peninsula of India, the Indo-Chinese peninsula, those of Corea, Kamtchatka, of Florida, California, and Aliaska, in North America, as well as the European peninsulas of Norway and Sweden, Spain and Portugal, Italy and Greece, take the same direction. All the latter have a rounded form except Italy, whereas most of the others terminate sharply, especially the continents of South America and Africa, India, and Greenland, which have the pointed form of wedges; while some are long and narrow, as California, Aliaska, and Malacca. Many of the peninsulas have an island, or group of islands, at their extremity—as South America, which terminates with the group of Terra del Fuego; India has Ceylon; Malacca has Sumatra and Banca; the southern extremity of New Holland ends in Van Diemen's Land; a chain of islands run from the end of the peninsula of Aliaska; Greenland has a group of islands at its extremity; and Sicily lies close to the termination of Italy. It has been observed, as another peculiarity in the structure of peninsulas, that they generally terminate boldly, in bluffs, promontories, or mountains, which are often the last portions of the continental chains. South America terminates in Cape Horn, a high promontory which is the visible termination of the Andes; Africa with the Cape of Good Hope; India with Cape Comorin, the last of the Ghauts; New Holland ends with South-East Cape in Van Diemen's Land; and Greenland's farthest point is the elevated bluff of Cape Farewell."

These are peculiarities interesting to notice, and which may hereafter explain, or be explained by, other phenomena. Resemblances and analogies of this kind, whilst they are permitted only to direct and stimulate inquiry, have their legitimate place in science. It was a resemblance of this description, between the zig-zag course of the metalliferous veins, and the path of the lightning, which first suggested the theory, based, of course, on very different reasonings, that electricity had essentially contributed to the formation of those veins—a theory which Mrs Somerville has considered sufficiently sound to introduce into her work.

What lies within our globe is still matter of conjecture. The radius of the earth is 4000 miles, and by one means or another, mining, and the examination of the upheaved strata, and of what volcanoes have thrown out, we are supposed to have penetrated, with speculative vision, to about the depth of ten miles.

"The increase of temperature," writes Mrs Somerville, "with the depth below the surface of the earth, and the tremendous desolation hurled over wide regions by numerous fire-breathing mountains, show that man is removed but a few miles from immense lakes or seas of liquid fire. The very shell on which he stands is unstable under his feet, not only from those temporary convulsions that seem to shake the globe to its centre, but from a slow, almost imperceptible, elevation in some places, and an equally gentle subsidence in others, as if the internal molten matter were subject to secular tides, now heaving and now ebbing; or that the subjacent rocks were in one place expanded and in another contracted by changes in temperature."

Perhaps these "immense lakes or seas of liquid fire" are a little too hastily set down here in our geography. But of these obscure regions beneath the earth, the student must understand he can share only in the best conjectures of scientific men. Geology is compelled, at present, in many cases, to content herself with intelligent conjecture.

To return again to the surface of the earth, the first grand spectacle that strikes us is the mountains. Before it was understood how the mountain was the parent of the river, the noble elevation was apt to be regarded in the light of a ruin, as evidence of some disastrous catastrophe, and Burnett, in his Theory of the Earth, conceived the ideal or normal state of our planet to be that of a smooth ball, smooth as an egg. The notion not only betrays the low state of scientific knowledge in his age, but a miserable taste in world-architecture, which, we may remark in excuse for poor Burnett, was, almost as much as his scientific ignorance, to be shared with the age in which he lived. For it is surprising, with the exception of a few poets, how destitute men were, in his time, of all sympathy with, and admiration of, the grander and more sublime objects of nature. "We have changed all that!" The mountain range, pouring down its streams into the valleys on both sides, is not only recognised as necessary to the fertility of the plain; but, strange to say, we become more and more awake to its surprising beauty and magnificence. The description of the mountain ranges of the several continents of the world, forms one of the principal attractions of the study of physical geography, and one of the great charms of Mrs Somerville's book.

The mountains of Asia take precedence of all others in altitude and length of range.

"The mean height of the Himalaya is stupendous. Captain Gerard and his brother estimated that it could not be less than from 16,000 to 20,000 feet; but, from the average elevation of the passes over these mountains, Baron Humboldt thinks it must be under 15,700 feet. Colonel Sabine estimates it to be only 11,510 feet, though the peaks exceeding that elevation are not to be numbered, especially at the sources of the Sutlej. Indeed, from that river to the Kalee, the chain exhibits an endless succession of the loftiest mountains on earth: forty of them surpass the height of Chimborazo, one of the highest of the Andes, and several reach the height of 25,000 feet at least.... The valleys are crevices so deep and narrow, and the mountains that hang over them in menacing cliffs are so lofty, that these abysses are shrouded in perpetual gloom, except where the rays of a vertical sun penetrate their depths. From the steepness of the descent the rivers shoot down with the swiftness of an arrow, filling the caverns with foam and the air with mist.

"Most of the passes over the Himalaya are but little lower than the top of Mont Blanc; many are higher, especially near the Sutlej, where they are from 18,000 to 19,000 feet high; and that north-east of Khoonawur is 20,000 feet above the level of the sea, the highest that has been attempted. All are terrific, and the fatigue and suffering from the rarity of the air in the last 500 feet is not to be described. Animals are as much distressed as human beings, and many of them die; thousands of birds perish from the violence of the winds; the drifting snow is often fatal to travellers, and violent thunder-storms add to the horror of the journey. The Niti Pass, by which Mr Moorcroft ascended to the sacred lake of Manasa, in Tibet, is tremendous: he and his guide had not only to walk bare-footed, from the risk of slipping, but they were obliged to creep along the most frightful chasms, holding by twigs and tufts of grass, and sometimes they crossed deep and awful crevices on a branch of a tree, or on loose stones thrown across. Yet these are the thoroughfares for commerce in the Himalaya, never repaired, nor susceptible of improvement, from frequent landslips and torrents.

"The loftiest peaks, being bare of snow, give great variety of colour and beauty to the scenery, which in these passes is at all times magnificent. During the day, the stupendous size of the mountains, their interminable extent, the variety and sharpness of their forms, and, above all, the tender clearness of their distant outline melting into the pale blue sky, contrasted with the deep azure above, is described as a scene of wild and wonderful beauty. At midnight, when myriads of stars sparkle in the black sky, and the pure blue of the mountains looks deeper still below the pale white gleam of the earth and snow-light, the effect is of unparalleled sublimity; and no language can describe the splendour of the sunbeams at daybreak streaming between the high peaks, and throwing their gigantic shadows on the mountains below. There, far above the habitation of man, no living thing exists, no sound is heard; the very echo of the traveller's footsteps startles him in the awful solitude and silence that reigns in these august dwellings of everlasting snow."

The table-lands of Asia are on a scale corresponding with its mountains. But the same elevation, it is remarked, is not accompanied with the same sterility in these parts of the world, as in the temperate zone. Corn has been found growing at heights exceeding the summit of Mont Blanc. "According to Mr Moorcroft, the sacred lake of Manasa, in Great Tibet, and the surrounding country, is 17,000 feet above the sea, which is 1240 feet higher than Mont Blanc. In this elevated region wheat and barley grow, and many of the fruits of Southern Europe ripen. The city of H'Lassa, in eastern Tibet, the residence of the Grand Lama, is surrounded by vineyards, and is called by the Chinese 'the Realm of Pleasure!'" Nevertheless the general aspect of the table lands is that of a terrific sterility. Here is a striking description of them. We should have been tempted to say, that in this singularly dark appearance of the sky at mid-day, there was something of exaggeration, if our own limited experience had not taught us to be very cautious in attributing exaggeration where the scenic effects of nature are concerned.

"In summer the sun is powerful at mid-day; the air is of the purest transparency, and the azure of the sky so deep that it seems black as in the darkest night. The rising moon does not enlighten the atmosphere; no warning radiance announces her approach, till her limb touches the horizon, and the stars shine with the distinctness and brilliancy of suns. In southern Tibet the verdure is confined to favoured spots; the bleak mountains and high plains are sternly gloomy—a scene of barrenness not to be conceived. Solitude reigns in these dreary wastes, where there is not a tree, nor even a shrub to be seen of more than a few inches high. The scanty, short-lived verdure vanishes in October; the country then looks as if fire had passed over it; and cutting dry winds blow with irresistible fury, howling in the bare mountains, whirling the snow through the air, and freezing to death the unfortunate traveller benighted in their defiles."

The description of the territory of the East India Company will be read with interest. We cannot afford space to extract it. Plains and valleys the very richest in the globe are to be found here, as also much rank marshy land, and also much jungle. "It has been estimated that a third of the East India Company's territory is jungle."

As a set-off against this jungle we have it intimated that, if proper search were made, gold would probably be found in this territory, as abundantly as in California. We sincerely hope no such discovery will be made. If there is a sure specific for demoralising a people, it is to involve them in the chase for gold, instead of that profitable industry which produces the veritable wealth for which gold has become the symbol and representative. The discovery of gold in one of our colonies would not only demoralise, it would impoverish. It would demoralise, by substituting for steady industry, with steady returns, a species of enterprise which has all the uncertainty and fluctuation of gambling; and it would finally impoverish by diverting labour from the creation of agricultural and manufacturing wealth, to the obtaining of the dry barren symbol of wealth, which, apart from its representative character, has but very little value whatever.

We will not look back towards Chimborazo and the Andes, as we should involve ourselves in long and tempting descriptions. In Africa, it is remarkable that we are little acquainted with the mountains. "No European has yet seen the Mountains of the Moon!" What a challenge to enterprising travellers! We know the level sands of Africa better than these elevations which have assumed so magnificent a title. What a terrific sterility does a large portion of this the most ill-fated of the great continents present! "On the interminable sands and rocks of these deserts no animal—no insect—breaks the dread silence; not a tree nor a shrub is to be seen in this land without a shadow. In the glare of noon the air quivers with the heat reflected from the red sand, and in the night it is chilled under a clear sky sparkling with its host of stars." The wind of heaven, which elsewhere breathes so refreshingly, is here a burning blast fatal to life; or else it drives the sand in clouds before it, obscuring the sun, and stifling and burying the hapless caravan.

In the new continent of America—if it still retains that title—the desert is comparatively rare. But its enormous forests have, in some regions, proved that excessive vegetation can assume almost as terrific an appearance as this interminable sterility.

"The forests of the Amazons not only cover the basin of that river, from the Cordillera of Chiquitos to the mountains of Parima, but also its limiting mountain-chains, the Sierra Dos Vertentes and Parima, so that the whole forms an area of woodland more than six times the size of France, lying between the 18th parallel of south latitude and the 7th of north, consequently inter-tropical and traversed by the equator. According to Baron Humboldt, the soil, enriched for ages by the spoils of the forest, consists of the richest mould. The heat is suffocating in the deep and dark recesses of these primeval woods, where not a breath of air penetrates, and where, after being drenched by the periodical rains, the damp is so excessive that a blue mist rises in the early morning among the huge stems of the trees, and envelops the entangled creepers stretching from bough to bough. A deathlike stillness prevails from sunrise to sunset, then the thousands of animals that inhabit these forests join in one loud discordant roar, not continuous, but in bursts. The beasts seem to be periodically and unanimously roused by some unknown impulse, till the forests ring in universal uproar. Profound silence prevails at midnight, which is broken at the dawn of morning by another general roar of the wild chorus. The whole forest often resounds when the animals, startled from their sleep, scream in terror at the noise made by bands of its inhabitants flying from some night-prowling foe. Their anxiety and terror before a thunder-storm is excessive, and all nature seems to partake in the dread. The tops of the lofty trees rustle ominously, though not a breath of air agitates them; a hollow whistling in the high regions of the atmosphere comes as a warning from the black floating vapour; midnight darkness envelops the ancient forests, which soon after groan and creak with the blast of the hurricane. The gloom is rendered still more hideous by the vivid lightning, and the stunning crash of thunder."

One of the most interesting subjects, of which mention is made in the work before us, is the gradual elevation and subsidence observed in some portions of these continents themselves. Just when the imagination had become somewhat familiar with the sudden but very partial upheaving of the earth by volcanic agencies, this new discovery came to light of the slow rising and sinking of vast areas of the land, and unaccompanied with any earthquakes or volcanic eruptions. In some parts the crust of the earth has sunk and risen again; in others, sort of see-saw movement on a most gigantic scale has been detected.

"There is a line crossing Sweden from east to west, in the parallel of 56° 3´ N. lat., along which the ground is perfectly stable, and has been so for centuries. To the north of it for 1000 miles, between Gottenburg and North Cape, the ground is rising; the maximum elevation, which takes place at North Cape, being at the rate of five feet in a century, from whence it gradually diminishes to three inches in a century at Stockholm. South of the line of stability, on the contrary, the land is sinking through part of Christianstad and Malmo; for the village of Stassten in Scania is now 380 feet nearer to the Baltic than it was in the time of Linnæus, by whom it was measured eighty-seven years ago."

It is evident that the elevation of the land, in relation to the level of the sea, may be produced either by an uprising of the continent or a depression of the bed of the ocean, permitting the waters to sink; as also the apparent depression of the land may be occasioned by an elevation in the bed of the ocean. This renders the problem somewhat more difficult to solve, because the causes we are seeking to discover may be sometimes operating at that part of the crust of the earth which is concealed from our view. Mr Lyell, who, in his Principles of Geology, has collected and investigated the facts bearing upon this subject, mentions the following as probable causes of the phenomena:—

1. "It is easy to conceive that the shattered rocks may assume an arched form during a convulsion, so that the country above may remain permanently upheaved. In other cases, gas may drive before it masses of liquid lava, which may thus be injected into newly opened fissures. The gas having then obtained more room, by the forcing up of the incumbent rocks, may remain at rest; while the lava, congealing in the rents, may afford a solid foundation for the newly raised district.

2. "Experiments have recently been made in America, by Colonel Patten, to ascertain the ratio according to which some of the stones commonly used in architecture expand with given increments of heat.... Now, according to the law of expansion thus ascertained, a mass of sandstone, a mile in thickness, which should have its temperature raised 200° F., would lift a super-imposed layer of rock to the height of ten feet above its former level. But, suppose a part of the earth's crust one hundred miles in thickness, and equally expansible, to have its temperature raised 600° or 800°, this might produce an elevation of between two and three thousand feet. The cooling of the same mass might afterwards cause the overlying rocks to sink down again, and resume their original position. By such agency, we might explain the gradual rise of Scandinavia, or the subsidence of Greenland, if this last phenomenon should also be established as a fact on further inquiry.

3. "It is also possible that, as the clay in Wedgwood's pyrometer contracts, by giving of its water, and then by incipient vitrification; so large masses of argillaceous strata, in the earth's interior, may shrink, when subjected to heat and chemical changes, and allow the incumbent rocks to subside gradually. It may frequently happen that fissures of great extent may be formed in rocks, simply by the unequal expansion of a continuous mass heated in one part, while in another it remains in a comparatively low temperature. The sudden subsidence of land may also be occasioned by subterranean caverns giving way, when gases are condensed, or when they escape through newly formed crevices. The subtraction, moreover, of matter from certain parts of the interior, by the flowing of lava and of mineral springs, must, in the course of ages, cause vacuities below, so that the undermined surface may at length fall in."[16]

Two agencies of the most opposite, character have apparently been, at all times, acting on the crust of the earth to change its form, or add to the surface of dry land—the volcano and the insect!—the one the most sudden and violent imaginable, producing in a short time the most astonishing effects; the other gradual, silent, and imperceptible, yet leaving the most stupendous monuments of its activity. The volcano has thrown up a mountain in a single night; there is an instance, too, on record, where a mountain has quite as suddenly disappeared, destroying itself in its own violent combustion, and breaking up with repeated and terrific explosions. On the other hand, besides what has been long known of the works of the coral insect, the microscope has revealed to us that huge cliffs have been constructed of the minute fossil shells of animalcule. These creatures, abstracting from the water, or the air, or both, the minute particles of vegetable or other matter they hold in solution, first frame of them their own siliceous shells, and then deposit these shells by myriads, so as ultimately to construct enormous solid mounds out of imperceptible and fluent particles.

Astonishing, indeed, is the new world of animals invisible to the naked eye, which science has lately detected.

"Professor Ehrenberg," says Mrs Somerville, "has discovered a new world of creatures in the infusoria, so minute that they are invisible to the naked eye. He found them in fog, rain, and snow, in the ocean and stagnant water, in animal and vegetable juices, in volcanic ashes and pumice, in opal, in the dusty air that sometimes falls on the ocean; and he detected eighteen species twenty feet below the surface of the ground in peat earth, which was full of microscopic live animals: they exist in ice, and are not killed by boiling water. This lowest order of animal life is much more abundant than any other, and new species are found every day. Magnified, some of them seem to consist of a transparent vesicle, and some have a tail; they move with great alacrity, and show intelligence by avoiding obstacles in their course: others have siliceous shells. Language, and even imagination, fails in the attempt to describe the inconceivable myriads of these invisible inhabitants of the ocean, the air, and the earth."

With every great change, however brought about, in the surface of the earth, and the climate of its several regions, it appears that, either by the direct agency of the Omnipotent Creator, or through the intermediate operations of laws which are at present profound secrets to us, a corresponding change takes place in the forms of animal life, and in the whole vegetable kingdom. Modern science presents no subject to us of more interest than this, and none apparently so inscrutable. Nor does the examination of the globe, as it exists before us at this moment, with its various floras and faunas, at all assist us in forming any conception of the law by which the geological series (if we may so term it) of animal life, has been regulated, for the distribution of the several animals over the several countries and climates of the world follows no rule that one can detect. Of course, no animal can exist where provision has not been made for its subsistence, but the provision has been made with the same abundance in two countries, and in the one the animal is found, and the other not. We should ask in vain why the horse was found a native of the deserts of Tartary, and why it was originally unknown to the plains of America? Nor can any cause be detected for the difference between the congeners, a representative species of one continent or island, and those of another. And not only have the larger animals an arbitrary territory marked out to them by nature, but birds, and even insects, are separated and grouped together in the same unaccountable manner. The chapters which Mrs Somerville has devoted to this subject will be read, especially by those to whom the topic is new, with extreme interest. They are enlightened and judicious.

It is a natural supposition to make, that, in the series of animals which at great geological periods have been introduced upon the earth, there has been a progression, so that each new form of animal life has been, in some marked manner, superior to that which is substituted. The comparative anatomist has not sanctioned this opinion; he tells us that he finds the same "high organisation" in the fossil saurians of a bygone world, as in the lions and leopards of the present day. But we would observe that the presence of this "high organisation" is not sufficient to determine the question. We should be surprised, indeed, if any creature were to be found whose structure was not perfectly adapted to the mode of life it was destined to lead. But it is permissible to compare one animal with another in its whole nature, and the character of its existence. The pig has the same high organisation as the dog, yet we should certainly prefer the one animal to the other; we should say that it was calculated for a happier life. We cannot suppose that a bird is not a more joyous creature than the worm or the snail. The adaptation of the whole form and structure to a pleasurable existence, and not what is termed high organisation, is that which we must regard, in estimating the superiority of one animal to another. Now, in this respect, there surely has been a progression from the earliest epochs. The crocodile and the tortoise are, amongst the animals which now exist, those which most resemble some of the more remarkable of the extinct genera. They are as perfectly adapted, no doubt, as any other creature, to their peculiar mode of being; but that mode of being is not an enviable one. The long stiff unwieldy body of the one, and the slow movement, with the oppressive carcase, of the other, are not consistent with vivid animal enjoyment. The crocodile, accordingly, lies motionless for hours together—waits for its prey—and slumbers gorged with food. And for the tortoise, it appears to lead a life as near to perpetual torpor as may be. Pass through a museum, and note those huger animals, the elephant and the rhinoceros, the seal or walrus, all those which most remind us of the gigantic creatures of the antediluvian world, and compare them with the horse, the deer, the dog, the antelope. Surely the latter present to us a type of animal life superior to the former—superior, inasmuch as the latter are altogether calculated for a more vivacious, sprightly, and happy existence. We must not venture to remark on their greater comparative beauty, for we shall be told that this is a matter for our own peculiar taste. We should not be contented to be so easily silenced on this head, but we should require far more space than we have now at our disposal to defend our æsthetic notions.

We have found ourselves imperceptibly conducted from the inanimate to the animate creation; we shall proceed, therefore, with the same topic, in the few farther extracts we shall be able to make from the work before us. Indeed, with so vast a subject, and so brief a space, it would be idle to affect any great precision in the arrangement of our topics; enough if they follow without abruptness, and are linked together by natural associations of thought.

"Three hundred thousand insects are known!" and every day, we were almost going to add, increases the number. They abound, as may be expected, in equatorial regions, and decrease towards the poles. "The location of insects depends upon that of the plants which yield their food; and as almost each plant is peopled with inhabitants peculiar to itself, insects are distributed over the earth in the same manner as vegetables; the groups, consequently, are often confined within narrow limits, and it is extraordinary that, notwithstanding their powers of locomotion, they often remain within a particular compass, though the plant, and all other circumstances in their immediate vicinity, appear equally favourable for their habitation."

Mountain-chains, Mrs Somerville observes, are a complete barrier to insects; they differ even in the two sides of the Col de Tende in the Alps, and they are limited in the choice of their food. If a plant is taken to a country where it has no congeners, it will be safe from the insects of that country; but if it has congeners, the insect inhabitants will soon find the way to it. Our cabbages and carrots, when transplanted to Cayenne, were not injured by the insects of that country; and the tulip tree, and other magnolias brought here, are not molested by our insects.

The insect is a race, or order, of creatures not friendly to man, or any of the larger animals.

"The mosquito and culex are spread over the world more generally than any other tribe; they are the torment of men and animals from the poles to the equator, by night and by day; the species are numerous, and their location partial.... Of all places on earth, the Orinoco, and other great rivers of tropical America, are the most obnoxious to this plague. The account given by Baron Humboldt is really fearful; at no season of the year, at no hour of the day or night, can rest be found; whole districts in the Upper Orinoco are deserted on account of these insects. Different species follow one another with such precision, that the time of day or night may be known accurately from their humming noise, and from the different sensations of pain which the different poisons produce. The only respite is the interval of a few minutes between the departure of one gang and the arrival of their successors, for the species do not mix. On some parts of the Orinoco, the air is one dense cloud of poisonous insects to the height of twenty feet."