BLACKWOOD'S
Edinburgh
MAGAZINE.

VOL. LXVII.

JANUARY-JUNE, 1850.

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, EDINBURGH;
AND
37 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.
———
1850.

BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.

BLACKWOOD'S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCCXI. JANUARY, 1850. Vol. LXVII.

CONTENTS.

SECOND EDITION.
EDINBURGH:
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PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.

BLACKWOOD'S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCCXI. JANUARY, 1850. Vol. LXVII.

THE YEAR OF REACTION.

If the year 1848—"THE YEAR OF REVOLUTIONS" was one pre-eminent among all others for the magnitude and interest of the events it brought forth, the year which has just expired—THE YEAR OF REACTION—is still more worthy of serious reflection, and affords subjects for more cheering meditation. If the first exhibited the whirlwind of anarchy let loose, the second showed the power by which it is restrained; if the former filled every heart with dread at the fierce passions which were developed, and the portentous events which occurred in the world, the latter afforded reason for profound thankfulness, at the silent but irresistible force with which Omnipotence overrules the wickedness of men, and restrains the madness of the people.

"Celsâ sedet Æolus arce,
Sceptra tenens, mollitque animos, et temperat iras.
Ni faciat, maria ac terras cœlumque profundum
Quippe ferant rapidi secum, verruntque per auras.
Sed Pater Omnipotens speluncis abdidit atris,
Hoc metuens; regemque dedit qui fœdere certo
Et premere et laxas sciret dare jussus habenas."[1]

The history of the world during those periods of convulsion, happily of very rare occurrence, when an eruption of popular passions takes place—when thrones are overturned, and the long-established order of things is subverted—is nothing else but the folly and wickedness of man warring against the wisdom of nature. All history demonstrates that there is a certain order of things which is favourable to human felicity—under which industry flourishes, population increases, the arts are encouraged, agriculture improves, general happiness is diffused. The basis of such a state of things is the security of property; the moving power which puts in motion the whole complicated machine of society, is the certainty that every man will enjoy the fruits of his toil. As clearly do past events demonstrate, that there is a state of things wherein the reverse of all this takes place; when industry is paralysed, population arrested, the arts languish, agriculture decays, general misery prevails. The chief cause of such a state of things is to be found in the insecurity of property, the dread that industry will not reap its appointed reward; but that external violence or domestic spoliation may interfere between the labourer and the fruits of his toil. When such a state of things arises from internal commotion, it is generally preceded by the warmest hopes, and the most unbounded anticipations of felicity. It is universally characterised by a resolute disregard of experience, and a universal passion for innovation in all the institutions of society, and all the relations of life. It constantly appeals to the generous affections: speaks of humanity, justice, and fraternity; proclaims mankind as brothers; and professes the warmest desire for general felicity, and the diminution of the sources of human suffering. It veils the advance of selfishness under the guise of generosity. Revolutions demonstrate that the homage which vice pays to virtue is not confined to individuals. The maxim of Rochefoucault applies also to nations. Its truth is never seen with such brightness as during the intensity of a revolution; and this demonstrates at once the wisdom which governs, and the selfishness which desolates the world.

So prone, however, are the bulk of mankind to delusion; so easily are they led away by expressions which appeal to their passions, or projects which seem to forward their interests; so little are the lessons of experience either known to, or heeded by, the immense majority of men, that we should be led to despair of the fortunes of the species, and dread in every age a repetition of the seductive passions which had desolated the one that had preceded it, were it not that a provision is made for the extinction of popular passion in the very first effects of its ebullition. It is in its effect upon property that the curb is found which restrains the madness of the people; by the insolvency it induces that the barrier is formed, which as a matter of necessity forces back society to its habitual forms and relations. In the complicated state of social relations in which we live, it is by the capital of the rich that the industry of the poor is put in motion; by their expenditure that it is alimented. However specious and alluring the projects may be which are brought forward by the popular leaders, they involve in them one source of weakness, which inevitably ere long paralyses all their influence. Directly or indirectly, they all tend to the destruction of property. To excite the passions of the working classes, they are obliged to hold out to them the prospect of a division of property, or such a system of taxation as practically amounts to the same thing: the immediate effect of which is a cessation of expenditure on the part of the affluent classes; a hoarding of capital; a run upon the banks for specie; universal scarcity of money, general distrust, and a fearful decrease of employment. These evils are first felt by the working classes, because, having no stock, they are affected by any diminution in their daily wages; and they are felt with the more bitterness that they immediately succeed extravagant hopes, and highly wrought expectations. Invariably the effects of revolutions are precisely the reverse of the predictions of its supporters. No man is insensible to his own suffering, however much he may be so to that of his predecessors; and thence the universal and general reaction which, sooner or later, takes place against revolutions.

That this reaction would take place to a certainty, in the end, with the French revolution of 1848, as it had done with all similar convulsions since the beginning of the world, could be doubted by none who had the least historical information: and in our first article on that event, within a few weeks of its occurrence, we distinctly foretold that this would be the case.[2] But we confess we did not anticipate the rapidity with which the reaction has set in. Not two years have elapsed since the throne of Louis Philippe was overturned, and a republic proclaimed in Paris amidst the transports of the revolutionary party over all Europe, and the gaze in astonishment of all the world; and already the delusion is over, the transports are at an end, the Jacobins are silent, and the convulsed commonwealth is fast sinking back to its pristine monarchical form of government. Every country in Europe felt the shock. The passions were universally let loose; sanguinary wars arose on every side; and while the enlightened Free-traders of England were dreaming, amidst their cotton bales, of universal and perpetual peace, which should open to them the markets of the world, hostilities the most terrible, contests the most dreadful, dissensions the most implacable, broke out in all quarters. It was not merely the war of opinion which Mr Canning long ago prophesied as the next which would desolate Europe: to it was superadded the still more frightful contest of races. The Lombard rose against the German, the Bohemian against the Imperialist, the Hungarian against the Austrian; the Celt and the Saxon stood in arms against each other. Naples was rent in twain; a revolutionary state was established in Sicily; the supreme pontiff was dethroned at Rome; Piedmont joined the innovating party; Lombardy rose up against Austria, Bohemia was in arms against Vienna, the Magyars revived against the Germans the fierce hostility of five centuries; Prussia was revolutionised, Baden ravaged, Denmark invaded; the Poles could with difficulty be restrained amidst the general effervescence; the Irish openly made preparations for rebellion and separation from Great Britain. England itself was shaken: the gravity and practical tendency of the Anglo-Saxon character in part yielded to the general contagion. London was threatened with a revolutionary movement; the Chartists in all the manufacturing towns were prepared to follow the example; treasonable placards, calling on the people to rise, were to be seen on all sides; and the mighty conqueror who had struck down Napoleon exerted his consummate skill in baffling the rebellion of his own countrymen, and won a victory over anarchy not less momentous than that of Waterloo, and not the less memorable that it did not cost a drop of human blood.

What a contrast, within the short period of eighteen months, did Europe afterwards exhibit! France, the centre of impulsion to the civilised world, was restrained; the demon of anarchy was crushed in its birthplace; the visions of the Socialists had been extinguished in the blood of the barricades. Dispersed, dejected, in despair, the heroes of February were languishing in exile, or mourning in prison the blasting of their hopes, the ruin of their prospects, the unveiling of their sophistries. Revolution had been crushed without the effusion of blood in Berlin: law had regained its ascendency; rebellion had quailed before the undaunted aspect of the defenders of order and the throne. Naples had regained the dominion of Sicily; the arms of France had restored the Pope at Rome; the Eternal City had yielded to the assault of the soldiers of Louis Napoleon. Austria had regained her ascendency in Italy; the perfidious aggression of Charles Albert had been signally chastised by the skill and determination of the veteran Radetsky; Milan was again the seat of Imperial government; the dream of a Venetian republic had passed away, and the Place of St Mark again beheld the double-headed eagle of Austria at the summit of its domes. Baden was conquered, Saxony pacified; the fumes of revolutionary aggression in Schleswig had been dissipated by the firmness of Denmark, and the ready, although unexerted, support of Russia. Poland was overawed by the Colossus of the North; and even the heroic valour of the Magyars, so often in happier days the bulwark of the Cross, had yielded to that loyalty and tenacity of purpose which has so long distinguished the Austrian people, joined and aided by the support which, on this as on many previous occasions, Russia has afforded to the cause of order in Europe. Though last, not least, Great Britain was pacified: the dreams of the Socialists, the treason of the Chartists, had recoiled before the energy of a people yet on the whole loyal and united. Ireland, blasted by the triple curse of rebellion, pestilence, and famine, had ceased to be an object of disquietude to England, save from the incessant misery which it exhibited; and its furious patriots, abandoning in multitudes the land of their birth, were carrying into Transatlantic regions those principles of anarchy, and deathless hatred at civilisation, which had so long laid waste their own country.

Acknowledging, as all must do, with devout thankfulness, that it is to the Great Disposer of events that we are to ascribe so marvellous a DELIVERANCE FROM EVIL—so blessed an escape from a fate which would have renewed, in Europe, a devastation as wide-spread, and darkness as thick, as occurred during the middle ages—it may yet, humanly speaking, be discerned how it is that our salvation has been effected. The days of miracles are past; the law is not now delivered amidst the thunders of Mount Sinai; the walls of fortresses do not fall down at the sound of the Lord's trumpet; there is no longer a chosen people, over whose safety the eye of Omnipotence watches, and whom, in the last extremity, the destroying angel rescues from their enemies. The direction of human affairs by Supreme Wisdom; the coercion of wickedness; the support of virtue; the ceaseless advance of the race of man, amidst all the folly and selfishness with which its concerns are conducted, have not, indeed, passed away: all these are in as complete operation now as when the Red Sea opened to the retreating Israelites, or the walls of Jericho fell before the blast of Joshua's trumpet, or the rending of the vail of the Temple announced that the era had commenced when the whole human race was to be admitted to the sanctuary of the temple. But it is by human means alone that Providence now acts; it is by general laws that the affairs of men are regulated. The agents of Omnipotence are the moving principles of the human heart: the safeguards against ruin are to be found in the barriers which, in injured interests or counteracting passions, are raised up amidst the agitated multitude, against the further progress of devastation. It is not from oblivion, therefore, but with a constant recognition of Divine superintendence, that we shall now endeavour to trace out the means by which the most alarming moral pestilence which ever appeared in modern times has been arrested; the happiness of Europe saved, for the time at least, from the destruction by which it was menaced—from the earthquake in its own bosom; and the progress of real freedom throughout the world prevented from being blasted by the selfish ambition or insane delusions of the demagogues who, for a time, got possession of its current.

The first circumstance which must strike every observer, in the contemplation of the terrible crisis through which we have passed, is, that the destruction with which we were threatened was mainly, if not entirely, owing to want of moral courage on the part of the depositaries of power. The Revolution in Paris, it is well known, owed its success entirely to the pusillanimity of the men of the royal family. Louis Philippe, old and enfeebled by disease, was paralysed by a still more fatal source of weakness—the consciousness of a throne won by treason—the terror inspired by the sight of the barricades, behind which his own government had been constructed. His sons who were present showed that the Orleans family had lost, with the possession of a usurped throne, the courage which, for several generations, had constituted the only virtue of their race. The King of Prussia abandoned the contest in Berlin in the moment of victory—a nervous reluctance to the shedding of blood paralysed, as it had done in the days of Louis XVI., the defenders of the throne. In Austria, the known imbecility, physical and moral, of the emperor, rendered him wholly unequal to the crisis in which he was placed—delivered over the empire, undefended, to a set of revolutionary murderers, and rendered a change in the reigning sovereign indispensable. In Rome, the Pope himself began the movement—he first headed the reform crusade; and whatever his unhappy subjects have since suffered is to be ascribed to his blind delusion and weak concessions. Such was the conduct of the kings of Europe—such the front which our sex in high places opposed to the revolutionary tempest. But women often, in the last extremity, exhibit a courage which puts to shame the pusillanimity of the men by whom they are surrounded; and never was this more signally evinced than in the present instance. The Queen of France tried in vain, at the Tuileries, to inspire her husband with her own heroic spirit; the Duchess of Orleans showed it in front of levelled muskets in the Chamber of Deputies; and, that order is still preserved in our country, is to be ascribed in no small degree to the firm conduct of the sovereign on the throne, and the determination with which she inspired her government to risk everything rather than concede one iota to the revolutionists.

As it was the opposite conduct from this, and the moral weakness of the depositaries of power, which mainly induced the revolutions of 1848, and rendered them so formidable, so those causes which have at length arrested that terrible convulsion seem to have been no other but the moral laws of nature, destined for the correction of wickedness and the coercion of passion, when they have risen to such a pitch as seriously to endanger the existence of society. And, without presuming to scan too deeply the intentions of Providence, or the great system by which evil is brought out of good, and an irresistible power says to the madness of the people, as to the storms of the ocean, "Hitherto shalt thou come, and no farther, and here shall thy proud waves be staid," we may probably discover, humanly speaking, the means by which the evil has been arrested.

The first circumstance which has produced the reaction, and arrested the progress of evil so much more rapidly than was the case in the former great convulsion, is the memory of that convulsion itself. It is no doubt true, that every generation is taught by its own and none by its predecessors' sufferings; but, in the case of the first French Revolution, the suffering was so long-continued and dreadful, that the memory of it descended to the next generation. It was impossible that the sons of the men who had been guillotined, exiled, or mown down by the conscription, who had seen their estates and honours torn from them by the ruthless hand of Revolutionary violence, should not retain a vivid sense of the sufferings they had experienced, and the wrongs they had undergone. All classes, not excluding even those who had been most ardent and active in support of the first Revolution, had writhed alike under the calamities and exactions of the latter years of the war, and the ignominious conquest in which it had terminated, which was only felt the more keenly from the unparalleled triumphs to which the nation had so long been habituated. Add to this, that the attention of all the intelligent classes of society in Europe generally, and in France in particular, had been long, and to an extent of which in this country we can scarcely form an idea, riveted on the events of the first Revolution. The Reign of Terror was not forgotten; the prophecy of the historian[3] proved true:—"A second French Revolution, of the same character as the former, and the age in which it is to arise must be ignorant of the first." Its heartstirring incidents, its mournful catastrophes, its tragic events, its heroic virtue, its appalling wickedness, its streams of blood, were indelibly engraven on the hearts of a considerable, and that too the most influential, part of the people. The revolutionists, indeed, in every country—the Red Republicans in France, the Chartists in England, the Rebels in Ireland, the Carbonari in Italy, the Illuminés in Germany, were perfectly prepared to renew for their own profit the same scenes of spoliation, bloodshed, and massacre. But such extreme characters form, even in the most depraved society, but a small part of the whole inhabitants. It is the delusion or timidity of the great body, not the absolute strength or numbers of the violent party, which is the principal danger. The force of the first Revolution consisted in its novelty; in the enchantment of its visions, the warmth of its professed philanthropy, the magnitude of its promises. But time had dispelled these, as it does many other delusions. The mask had fallen from the spectre which had charmed the world, and the awful form of Death had appeared.

The second circumstance which tended to coerce, more rapidly than could have been hoped for, the progress of the revolution of 1848, was the firmness and loyalty of the soldiers. It is historically known that it was the defection of the troops which brought on, and rendered irresistible the march of the first Revolution: which induced, in rapid succession, the Reign of Terror, the assignats, the conscription, the capture of Paris, the subjugation of the kingdom. But here, too, experience and suffering came to the aid of deluded and wandering humanity. It was seen that what is unjust and dishonourable is never expedient: that the violation of their oaths by the sworn defenders of order is not the commencement of the regeneration, but the first step in the decline of society: and that to fear God and honour the king is the only way to insure, not only the preservation of order, but the ultimate ascendancy of freedom. On the foundation of the revolt of the Gardes Françaises in 1789, were successively built the despotism of the Committee of Public Salvation, the blood of Robespierre, the carnage of Napoleon. The awful example was not lost on the next generation. The throne of Charles X. was overthrown by the defection of the troops of the line; but it was again found that the glorious fabric of civil liberty was not to be erected on the basis of treachery and treason. None of the troops revolted on the crisis of February 1848. The Guards and the line were alike steady. Marshal Bugeaud, when he received the command, speedily passed the whole barricades, and in six hours would have extinguished the revolt. The throne was lost not by the defection of the troops, but by the pusillanimity of the princes of the blood; and accordingly, when the next contest occurred—as occur it ever will in such cases—the troops were resolutely led, the revolution was put down under circumstances ten times more formidable, though not without a frightful loss of human life.

We are so accustomed to the loyalty and steadiness of the English army, that the possibility of their wavering never enters into our imagination. But still all must admit that we too, with all our boasted safeguards of popular representation, general information, a free press, and centuries of freedom, stood on the edge of an abyss; and that, not less than Austria or Prussia, our salvation had come to depend chiefly, if not entirely, on the fidelity of the soldiers. If the six thousand men who garrisoned London on the 10th April 1848 had wavered, and one-half of them had joined the insurgents, where would now have been the British constitution? Had a hundred thousand men from Kennington Common crossed Waterloo Bridge, headed by a regiment of the Guards, and three regiments of the line, where would now have been the British liberties? Where would have been all the safeguards formed, all the hopes expressed, all the prophecies hazarded, as to its being perpetual? But in that dread hour, perhaps the most eventful that England ever knew, we were saved by the courage of the Queen, the firmness of the government, the admirable arrangements of the Duke of Wellington, and the universal steadiness and loyalty of our soldiers. We are quite aware of the special constables, and the immense moral influence of the noble display which the aristocracy and middle classes of England made on that occasion. But moral influence, often all-powerful in the end, is not alone sufficient at the beginning; physical force is then required to withstand the first assault of the enemy: and, highly as we respect the civic force with batons in their hands; and fully as we admit the immense importance of that citizen-demonstration in its ultimate effects, we ascribe our deliverance from the instant peril which threatened, entirely to the steadiness of the British army, and the incomparable arrangements of their chief.

In the Continental states, order succeeded in regaining the ascendency over anarchy entirely in consequence of the fidelity of the soldiers. On that memorable day, when the Prussian army marched into Berlin playing the old airs of the monarchy, and formed in a circle around, distant only twenty-five paces from the insurgent host, and there tranquilly loaded their pieces, the opposing forces were directly brought into collision; it was seen that, in a few seconds, law or rebellion would be victorious. Law prevailed, as it generally does where its defenders are steady and resolutely led—and what has been the result? Is it that freedom has been extinguished in Prussia, that liberty has sunk under the pressure of tyrannic power, and that a long period of servitude and degradation is to close the bright meridian of her national splendour? Quite the reverse: anarchy has been extinguished in Prussia only to make room for the fair forms of order and liberty, which cannot exist but side by side; the revolutionists are overawed, but the lovers of real freedom are only the better confirmed in their hopes of the ultimate establishment of a constitutional monarchy, such as Prussia has been sighing for for thirty years. It is ever to be recollected that the prospects of freedom are never so bright as when they are in the inverse ratio to those of revolution; liberty is never so safe as where anarchy is most thoroughly repressed; despotism is never so near at hand as immediately after the greatest triumphs of insurrection.

In Austria a different and more melancholy prospect has been exhibited. That great and noble country has been the victim, not merely of the passions of revolution, but of those of race. It has been torn asunder, not only by the ambition of the revolutionists, and the ardent zeal of a people yet inexperienced in social dissensions sighing after freedom, but by the force and inextinguishable rivalry of different and discordant races. The Lombard has risen up against the German, the Bohemian against the Austrian; the Magyars have buckled on their armour against both, and, animated alike by revolutionary zeal and national jealousy, have striven to obtain what they deem the first of blessings—national independence—by revolting against the government of Austria, in the moment of its utmost need. That strange compound of races and nations, the Austrian monarchy, in which it is hard to say whether the Slave, the Magyar, the Teuton, the Lombard, or the old Roman had the preponderance, and the union of which, for so long a period, had been a subject of astonishment to all observers, at length revealed its inherent weakness. Worse than the war of opinion, the war of races began. Like the Lacedemonian confederacy, after the defeat of Leuctra, or the Athenian after the catastrophe of Aigos Potamos, or the Roman republic after the disaster of Cannæ, the Austrian aggregate of kingdoms threatened to fall to pieces on the dreadful shock of opinion which resulted from the success of the French revolution. The contest of nations did not now intervene, to bar the spread of democratic ideas; the military passions were not arrayed in opposition to the civic. Lamartine was perfectly right in his prognostic: the pacific French revolution of 1848 achieved greater conquests, in three months, than the warlike republic of 1793 had gained in ten years. Prussia was apparently revolutionised; Austria was all but won to the democratic side; Vienna, Prague, and Milan were in the hands of the insurgents. Never, in the darkest periods of the revolutionary war, was Austria in such desperate straits, as when Radetsky retreated behind the Mincio, and the treacherous assault of Charles Albert was aided by the whole strength of revolutionary Italy, and the tacit support or lukewarm indifference of France and England.

But in that awful hour, by far the most perilous which Austria ever knew, and which threatened with immediate and irrevocable destruction the whole balance of power in Europe, she was saved by the fidelity of her native soldiers, and the incomparable spirit of her German nobility. Then appeared in its highest lustre what is the principle of life and the tenacity of purpose which exist in an aristocratic society, not yet wholly debilitated by the pleasures and the selfishness of a court. Although the Hungarian nobles, for the most part, sided with the Magyar insurgents; although the whole Lombard troops had passed over from the standards of Radetsky to those of Charles Albert, and all the Hungarians in his service sullenly wended their way back to their native places; although Prague was wrested from the crown by the Bohemian insurgents, and Vienna by a vehement urban tumult in the capital; although Hungary was not only lost, but arrayed in fierce hostility against the monarchy—the noble Austrian leaders never lost heart—they realised the dream of the Roman poet—

"Si fractus illabatur orbis,
Impavidum ferient ruinæ."

Windischgratz in Bohemia, Radetsky in Italy, Jellachich in Austria, stood forth as the saviours of the monarchy, and, with it, of the cause of European freedom. Though deserted by their sovereign, who had bent before the revolutionary tempest, they fronted, sometimes, it is believed, in opposition to constrained orders, the dangers with which they were assailed—they acted in conformity with the maxim of a noble people not yet debased by democratic selfishness: Vive le Roi quand-meme! Slowly, but steadily, the forces of order regained their ascendant over the assaults of anarchy. The Tyrol, ever steadfast in its loyalty, first offered an asylum to the emperor, when driven from his capital; Prague was next recovered, and Bohemia coerced by the moral courage and skilful dispositions of Prince Windischgratz; Radetsky, shortly after, reinforced by the loyalty of Austria, regained his ascendant on the Mincio, routed the revolutionary rabble of Italy, and restored Milan to the Imperial government; Vienna, after a desperate conflict, was won by the forces of Order; and Jellachich and Windischgratz enjoyed the proud triumph of having restored his capital to their discrowned sovereign. Hungary, inhabited by a bolder and more numerous race, actuated by stronger passions, held out longest, and was only subdued after a sanguinary conflict, by the aroused vigour and national passions, aided by the support of the Colossus of the North, which has so often sent forth its battalions as the last resource of order and religion, when all but vanquished by the forces of anarchy and infidelity. Yet, though thus constrained, in the last extremity, to call in the aid of the Czar, and array a hundred thousand Muscovites on the plains of Hungary, the stand thus made by the Austrian monarchy is not the less glorious and worthy of eternal remembrance. It demonstrates what so many other passages in the history of that noble people indicate, how great is the strength, and unbounded the resources, of a brave and patriotic nation, even when afflicted by the most terrible disasters; and how uniformly Providence, in the end, lends its protection to a people who have shown themselves worthy of its blessings, by faithfully discharging their duty in a period of disaster. The year 1849 will ever rank with the glories of Maria Theresa, the triumph of Aspern, the devotion of Wagram, as the brightest periods in the long and glorious Austrian annals.

The people of England, ever ready to sympathise with even the name of freedom, and prone beyond any other nation to delusions springing from generous feelings, acting on erroneous information, were at one time much disposed to sympathise with the Hungarian insurgents. They enlisted the wishes of a considerable part, especially of the citizens of towns, on their side. Never were generous and estimable feelings more misapplied. The contest in Hungary, it is to be feared, was not in the slightest degree a struggle for public freedom: it was an effort only to establish the domination of a race in opposition to a lawful government. Like the Sikhs or Ameers in India at this moment, the Normans in England in former times, or the "insane plebeian noblesse" of Poland, whom John Sobieski denounced as the authors of the ruin of his country, the Magyars were a proud and haughty dominant race, not a fourth part of the whole inhabitants of Hungary, but brave and ambitious, and animated with the strongest desire of establishing an independent oligarchy in their wide-spread country. They took the opportunity for asserting their principles when Austria was pierced to the heart, and its provinces, apparently all falling asunder, had the fairest prospect of establishing separate dominions, as in the ancient Roman empire, on the ruins of the Imperial authority. Had they succeeded, they would have established the same monstrous tyranny of a dominant race, which has so long blasted the happiness, and at length destroyed the independence of Poland.

That the contest in Hungary was one for the domination of a race, not the freedom of people, is evident from two circumstances which have been studiously kept out of view by the Liberal party, both on the Continent and in England. The first is that after the emperor had conceded to Hungary the most extreme liberal institutions, based on universal suffrage, the Magyar leaders sent private orders to all the Hungarian regiments in Radetsky's army to leave his banners, and return to Hungary; thus rendering to all appearance the dismemberment of the monarchy inevitable, and surrendering the Italian provinces, the brightest jewel in the Imperial crown, to the tender mercies of Charles Albert. The second is, that, in the contest which ensued, the Hungarians were in the end overthrown. Possessing, as Hungary does, fourteen millions of inhabitants—nearly a moiety of the whole Austrian empire, and four times more than Upper and Lower Austria, with the Tyrol, which alone could be relied on in that crisis—it is evident that, if the whole Hungarian people had been united, they must have proved victorious, and have decided the contest long before the distant Muscovite battalions could have appeared on the theatre of war. The Hungarian insurrection broke out in April 1848, and was aided by contemporaneous revolts in Prague, Lombardy, Venice, and Vienna. To all appearance the Austrian monarchy was torn in pieces. Muniments of war they had in abundance: Comorn, with its vast arsenal and impregnable walls, opened its arms to receive them. When Georgey capitulated, he had one hundred and thirty-eight guns, besides those in the hands of Kossuth and Bem. Fully half the military stores of Austria fell into the hands of the Hungarians, the moment the insurrection broke out. Yet, with all these advantages, they were overcome. This demonstrates that the war was not a national one, in the proper sense of the word: that is, it did not interest the whole people. It was an effort of a gallant and ambitious race, forming a small minority of the population, to establish a domination over the whole remainder of the inhabitants, and sever themselves from the Austrian empire; and a greater calamity than such a separation, both to the Hungarians themselves and the general balance of power in Europe, cannot be imagined.

How was the balance of power to be maintained in Europe, especially against Russia, if the Austrian monarchy had been broken up? Experience had long ago proved that no coalitions for the preservation of the independence of central Europe, either against Russia on the one side or France on the other, had the least chance of success, in which Austria did not take a prominent part. Even the disasters of the Peninsular campaigns, and the awful catastrophe of the Moscow retreat, could not enable Europe to combat Napoleon, till Metternich, at the Congress of Prague, threw the weight of Austria into the scale. It was by an alliance of Austria, France, and England that, at the Congress of Vienna, a curb was put on the ambition of Russia: by a similar alliance that the Turkish empire was saved from ruin, when the Muscovite standards were advanced to Adrianople, and the Pacha of Egypt was encamped on Scutari. It was a coalition of Austria, England, Russia, and Prussia, which in 1834 coerced the ambition of France, when M. Thiers had sent orders to the French admiral to attack and burn the English fleet in the bay of Vourlas, at dead of night. But if Austria had been broken up into a Hungarian, a Lombard, and a Bohemian republic, how was such an alliance to be formed? What central power could, in such an event, have existed under such circumstances, to oppose a mid impediment to the grasping ambition of Russia on the one side, and France on the other? Prussia, it is well known, is entirely under the influence of Russia, and does not, except in the first fervour of revolution, venture to deviate from the policy which it prescribes. Sweden and Denmark are mere subsidiary states. Austria alone is so strong as to be able, with the aid of England, to bid Russia defiance; and is situated so near to its southern provinces, as to be actuated by a ceaseless dread of its encroachments. The breaking up of the Austrian empire would have been a fatal blow to the balance of power, and with it to real liberty in Europe. It would have left the field open to the Cossacks on the one side, and the Red Republicans on the other.

It is deeply to be regretted that Austria was not able to regain its dominion over its rebellious Hungarian subjects, without the aid of the Muscovite arms. Although the Czar has recalled his troops after the vast service was rendered, and no projects of immediate aggrandisement are apparent, yet it is impossible to doubt—it is fruitless to attempt to disguise—that the influence of Russia in the east of Europe has been immensely extended by this intervention. So weighty an obligation as saving an empire from dismemberment is too great to be easily forgotten; and supposing, what is probably the case, that gratitude is a feeling unknown to cabinets—and that the recollection of salvation from ruin is likely to produce no other sentiment but that of dislike—still the contest, which was adjourned, rather than decided, on the Hungarian plains, has for a very long period, it is to be feared, thrown Austria into the arms of Russia. They are united by the common bond of enduring interest. The Magyars in Hungary, the Poles in Sarmatia, are the enemies of both; and each feels that it is by a close alliance of the cabinets, that the evident dangers of an insurrection of these powerful and warlike races can be provided against. It is more than probable that a secret treaty, offensive and defensive, already unites the two powers; that the crushing of the Magyars was bought by the condition, that the extension of Muscovite influence in Turkey was to be connived at; and that the Czar will one day advance to Constantinople without fear, because he knows that his right flank is secure on the side of Austria. Certain it is, that the joint demand made by Austria and Russia, for the extradition of the Hungarian refugees, and which, as all unwarrantable stretch against the independence of Turkey, was resisted with so much spirit and wisdom by England and France, looks very like the first-fruits of such an alliance. And observe, now, the immediate effects on the balance of power of the revolution of 1848. This invasion of the independence of Turkey was made by Russia and Austria in concert, and was only resisted by France and England! Woful, indeed, for the interests of real freedom, has been the result of those convulsions which have ended in transplanting Austria from its natural position, and have converted the jealous opponent of Muscovite power into its obsequious ally. Nothing could have effected such a metamorphosis, but the terrible convulsion which almost tore out the entrails of the Austrian empire. But that is ever the case with revolutionists. Blinded by the passions with which they are actuated, they rush headlong on their own destruction; and destroy, in their insane ambition, the very bulwarks by which alone durable freedom is to be secured in their own or any other country.

It is commonly thought in this country that the war in Hungary was a contest for national independence, and that it bears a close analogy to the memorable conflicts by which, in former times, the independence of Scotland was maintained, or the liberties of England purchased. There never was a more unfounded opinion. After the Hungarian insurrection had taken place, indeed, and when the Austrian empire had been wellnigh torn to pieces in the shock, Hungary was formally incorporated with Austria, just as the grand-duchy of Warsaw was with Russia after the sanguinary revolt of 1831, and Ireland with England after the rebellion of 1798. But anterior to the revolution, what step had the cabinet of Vienna taken which was hostile to the independence of Hungary? Not one. The constitution which the Austrian government had given to the Hungarians, if it erred at all, did so on the liberal side: for it conceded to a people, scarcely emerged from barbarism, a constitution founded on universal suffrage, such as England, with its centuries of freedom, could not withstand for three months. It was the Hungarian insurgents who are responsible for the loss of their national independence; because they first put it in issue by joining Lombardy and the revolutionists of Prague and Vienna, in their assault upon the Imperial government, at a time when nothing whatever had been done which menaced their separate existence. The truth is, they thought, as many others did, that the Austrian empire was breaking up, and that now was the time to become a separate power. Having voluntarily, and without a cause, committed high treason, they cannot complain with reason, if in a mitigated form they incur its penalties by forfeiting their national existence.

The ultimate suppression of the revolt in Hungary has been attended with a most distressing amount of bloodshed on the scaffold, and the occurrence of several mournful scenes, in which courage and fidelity have asserted their wonted superiority, in the supreme hour, over all the storms of fate. God forbid that we should either justify or approve of such severity, or deprive the heroic Hungarian leaders of the well-earned praise which some of them deserve, for their noble constancy in misfortune! But while fully admitting this on the one hand, we must, in justice to the Austrian government on the other, recall to recollection the circumstances in which they were placed at the close of the contest, the dangers they had undergone, and the dreadful devastation which the Hungarian war had brought upon their country. When Georgey capitulated and Comorn surrendered, Austria was wellnigh exhausted by the conflict: she had owed her salvation in part at least to foreign intervention. She had been forced to proclaim her weakness in the face of Europe, and to bring down the hated Muscovite battalions into the heart of the empire. In judging of the course which her rulers, when victorious, pursued, we must in justice recall to mind the perils they had escaped, and the humiliations to which they had been reduced. We must recollect also the state of civilisation which Hungary has attained, and go back, in imagination, to what we ourselves did in a similar stage of national progress. Hungary is hardly more advanced in civilisation than England was during the Wars of the Roses, when the prisoners on both sides were put to death without mercy, and eighty princes of the blood or nobles were massacred in cold blood; or than Scotland was when the Covenanters murdered all the Irish in Montrose's army, with their wives and children. What did the English government do at Carlisle after the advance of the Pretender to Derby, or in Ireland after the rebellion of 1798? What has she recently done in the Ionian islands, after the insurrection in Cephalonia? Nay, would we have been less rigorous than the Austrians, even at this time, if we had been reduced to similar extremities? It is very easy to be lenient after an insurrection which has been extinguished in a cabbage garden, and rendered the insurgents ridiculous in the eyes of all the world; but what should we have done, and how would we have felt, if Smith O'Brien at the head of the Irish rebels had invaded England, taken London, nourished for a year and a half a frightful civil war in the heart of the empire, and compelled us to call in the legions of France into the midland counties to save the nation from ruin? We do not mean, by these observations, to justify the executions of Haynau and the other Imperial generals: God knows, we deplore them as much as any one can do, and yield to none in admiration of the heroism of the Hungarian leaders, who have shown themselves so worthy of the noble nation to which they belong. But we extenuate, if we cannot justify, the severity of the Austrians, by the recollection of their sufferings; and reserve the weight of our indignation for those insane and selfish demagogues who, for their own elevation, lighted so terrible a conflagration, and caused so much noble blood to be shed, alike on the part of those who fanned and those who sought to extinguish the flames.

The third circumstance which seems to have mainly tended to stop the progress of revolution in Europe, has been the great amount of interests in France which could not fail to be injured, either by foreign warfare or domestic Socialist triumph. This is mainly owing to France having already undergone fusion in the revolutionary crucible. Scarcely anything remains to melt, but the dross which had flowed out of the first furnace. The great estates and church lands were divided; two-thirds were cut off from the national debt. Nobody remained to despoil but the tiers état and revolutionary proprietors. They stood shoulder to shoulder in defence of their all, which they saw was seriously menaced; and thence the stoppage of the revolution at Paris, and the rapid retrograde movement of opinion on the subject, in the majority, over all France. Foreign war was not less an object of apprehension than internal spoliation. The peasants recollected the conscription and the Cossacks, and the weighty contributions of the Allies; the bourgeois dreaded the cessation of foreign travelling in their country, and the termination of the prolific shower of English gold. It was a general terror that the best interests of society were in danger which produced the determined resistance to the insurgents in Paris on the 23d of June, and formed the majority of four millions who elected Prince Louis Napoleon to the president's chair. Beyond all doubt, the greater part of the electors, when they recorded their suffrages for him, understood they were really voting for an emperor, and opposing the barrier of force to the revolution.

This circumstance suggests a very important consideration, on which it well becomes the people of this country to ponder, in reasoning from the example of France to themselves. It is not unusual now to hear the opinion advanced, that the result of universal suffrage in France proves that the apprehensions entertained on this subject, on this side of the Channel, are unfounded; and that, in truth, there is no such effectual barrier against revolution as universal, or, at least, a very low suffrage. America is frequently referred to, also, in confirmation of the same opinion. But under what circumstances has universal suffrage been forced to uphold property in these two countries? Recollect that both are overspread with a host of small proprietors: in France no less than 6,000,000 persons, for the most part in very indigent circumstances, being holders of land; and in America, the whole soil, from its having been so recently reclaimed from the forest, and the law of equal succession, ab intestato, being in the hands of the actual cultivators. But can any opinion be formed from this as to what would be the effect of a change in the electoral law, which created 6,000,000 of voters in a country where there are not 300,000 holders of land, and not above an equal number of proprietors in the funds? It is evident that we can never argue from a country which has been revolutionised, and where property has been divided, to one where neither of these events has taken place. Doubtless the robber will make a fight before he allows his prey to be torn from him; and when there are six millions of persons, for the most part possessed of the fruits of robbery, the rendering these back will not be very easily effected. But if we would see the effect of an extended suffrage, in a country which has not been revolutionised, and where the strong curb-chain of individual interest does not exist to restrain the majority, we have only to look to what the electors of France in 1793 did with the estates of the church and the nobility; to what the American freeholders did in 1837, when they destroyed five-sixths commercial wealth of the country, by raising the cry "Bank, or no Bank:" or what the British ten-pounders have done with the other classes of society, and, eventually, though they did not intend it, with themselves, by their measures of free trade and a restricted currency. Beyond all doubt, these measures would at once be repealed by an extended constituency; but are we sure they would stop there? What security have we they would not apply the sponge to the National Debt, confiscate the church property, and openly, or by a graduated assessment on land, divide the estates of the nobility?

But perhaps the most powerful agent, which has been at work, in stopping the progress of revolution in Europe, has been the public and private Insolvency which in an abandoned state of society inevitably and rapidly follows such convulsions. This is the great check upon the government and the madness of the people. That France, ever since the revolution of February 1848, has been in a state of almost hopeless monetary embarrassment, is well known to all the world. In fact, nothing but the most consummate prudence, and the adoption of the wisest measures on the part of the Bank of France, has saved them from a general public and private bankruptcy. What those measures were, will immediately be explained. In the mean time, to show the magnitude of the difficulties against which they had to make head, it is sufficient to observe, that in twenty-one months the Revolutionary Government has incurred a floating debt of £22,000,000; and that the deficiency for the year 1849, wholly unprovided for—and which must be made good by Exchequer bills, or other temporary expedients—is no less than eleven millions and a half sterling. It is not surprising it should have swelled to this enormous amount; for the very first demand of revolutionists, when they have proved victorious, is to diminish the public burdens and increase the public expenditure. And they did this so effectually in France, that in one year after the revolution of 1848, they had increased the public expenditure by 162,000,000 francs, or about £6,500,000; while they had caused the public revenue to fall by 248,000,000 francs, or nearly £10,000,000!

The dreadful prostration of industry which such a state of the public revenue implies, would have proved altogether fatal to France, had it not been rescued from the abyss by the surpassing wisdom with which, in that crisis, the measures of the Bank of France were conducted. But the conduct of that establishment, at that trying crisis, proved that they had taken a lesson from the archives of history. Carefully shunning the profuse and exorbitant issue of paper which, under the name of assignats, effected so dreadful a destruction of property in France in the first revolution, they imitated the cautious and prudent policy by which Mr Pitt surmounted the crisis of 1797, and brought the nation triumphant through the whole dangers of the war. They obtained an act from the legislature authorising the issue, not of £600,000,000 sterling of notes, as in 1793 and 1794, but of 400,000,000 francs, or £16,000,000 sterling, not convertible into gold and silver. This, and this alone, it was that brought France through the crisis of the Revolution. Specie, before this aid was obtained, was fast disappearing from circulation; the Bank of France had suspended cash payments; three of the principal banks in Paris had become bankrupt; the payment of all bills was suspended by act of government—for this plain reason, that no debtor could find cash to discharge his engagements. But this wise measure gave the French people that most inestimable of all blessings in a political and monetary crisis—a currency which, without being redundant, is sufficient, and, being not convertible into the precious metals, neither augments the strain on them, nor is liable to be swept away by foreign export. In consequence of this seasonable advance, the crisis was surmounted, though not without most acute general suffering; and industry, since a government comparatively stable was established, in the person of Prince Louis Napoleon, has revived to a surprising degree over the whole country. Indeed, it may be doubted whether the general misery which prevailed in France, desolated by a revolution, but sustained by a moderate inconvertible paper currency, was greater than was felt in the manufacturing cities of Great Britain, saved by the firmness of government and the good sense of the nation from a political convulsion, but withering under the fetters of a contracted currency, and unrestricted admission of foreign produce.[4]

One thing is perfectly apparent from the result of the revolution in Italy, that the establishment of either civil liberty or political independence is hopeless in that beautiful peninsula. The total and easy rout of the Piedmontese and Tuscan forces by Radetsky is a proof of this. Venice was defended by its Lagunæ—Rome not by the descendants of the ancient masters of the world, but by the revolutionary mercenaries of Poland, Hungary, and Germany, whom the Austrian victories drove back from the banks of the Po to those of the Tiber. On the other hand, the example of Naples, where the firmness of the king has preserved in the end his dominions entire, though Sicily for a time was severed from the kingdom, and Naples itself was the theatre of a bloody convulsion, proves alike of what flimsy materials revolution is composed in the south of Europe, and through what a perilous crisis a nation can be safely conducted, when the depositaries of power are not unworthy of the elevated duties with which they are entrusted.

Still more important is the lesson read to the world by the attempted revolution in England and Ireland. That Great Britain was threatened with the convulsions, in the throes of which France and Germany were labouring, is universally known. The Chartists openly declared that monarchy could not stand two months in England or Scotland; the Repealers were counting the hours till the Saxon was expelled from the Emerald Isle, and a Hibernian republic proclaimed in Dublin, in close alliance with the great parent democracy in Paris. Where are these boasters now? The English revolutionists were morally slaughtered in London on the 10th April: the Irish rebels were blown into the air by the fire of the police in the cabbage garden. They have been more than vanquished; they have been rendered ridiculous. In despair, they are now leaving in crowds their wo-stricken isle; and it is to be hoped a better race, more industrious habits, and a more tractable people, will gradually be introduced into the deserts which Celtic improvidence and folly has made. It is a glorious spectacle to see an attempted revolution which broke out in both islands suppressed almost without the effusion of blood; and England, the first-born of freedom in modern times, reasserting, in its advanced period of existence, at once the order and moderation which are the glorious inheritance of genuine Liberty.

Would that we could say that our foreign policy during the two last eventful years has been as worthy of praise, as the conduct of our government in combating our internal enemies has been. But here the meed of our approbation must fail. Contrary alike to our obvious interests and to our real and long-established principles, we have apparently been guided by no other principle but that of fomenting revolution, after the example of France, in every country which the contagion had reached. We all but severed Sicily from Naples, and openly assisted the Sicilian insurgents with arms and ammunition. We once stopped, for "humanity's sake," the Neapolitan expedition from sailing to combat the rebels: we more than once interposed in favour of Charles Albert and the Piedmontese revolutionists: we have alienated Austria, it is to be feared, beyond redemption, by our strange and tortuous policy in regard to the Hungarian insurrection: we, without disguise, countenanced the revolutionary Germans in their attack upon the Danes. What object Ministers had in that, or how they thought the interests of England, a great commercial and exporting nation, were to be forwarded by throwing its whole customers into confusion and misery, we cannot divine. Apparently, their sympathy with revolution anywhere but at home, was so strong, that they could not abstain from supporting it all around them, though to the infinite detriment of their own people. And it is a most curious circumstance, that, while the Chancellor of the Exchequer constantly told us—no doubt with a certain degree of truth—that the failure of our exports, and the general distress of the country, was, in a great degree, to be ascribed to the European revolutions, the whole policy of the Foreign Office, during the same period, was directed to countenance and support these very revolutions.

But from the painful contemplation of the follies and aberrations of man, let us turn, with thankfulness, to the contemplation of the great moral lessons which the events of the two last years teach us as to the wisdom and beneficence of Nature. It is now clear beyond the possibility of doubt, that the wisdom of Providence has provided barriers against the passions, vices, and follies of men; and that if the leaders in thought and station fail in their duty, an invisible bulwark against the progress of anarchy is provided in the general misery which is the consequence of their excesses. Pre-eminent above all others in the history of mankind, THE YEAR OF REACTION, immediately succeeding THE YEAR OF REVOLUTIONS, is fraught with the demonstration of these great and consoling moral and religious truths. From it the patriot will derive consolation and hope, amidst the darkest periods which may yet be in store for the human race: for never was a darker period than that through which we have passed; and from its checkered scenes the virtuous and upright will draw the conclusion that there are limits to human wickedness even in this scene of trial; and that the safest, not less than the most honourable course, for all classes, from the throne to the cottage, in periods of danger, is to be found in the fearless discharge of DUTY.

MY PENINSULAR MEDAL.

BY AN OLD PENINSULAR.

PART III.—CHAPTER VII.

Next morning, shortly after daybreak, we were all hurried out of our berths by Joey, to come on deck, and take a first view of the coast of Spain. We made the land to the north-east of Cape Villano, and were not a little struck with the bare, black, scowling aspect of that mountainous and iron-bound coast. Off Oporto we stood in, with the design of entering the river. But a signal from the shore announced the bar impassable, and we had nothing before us but the delightful prospect of standing off and on, till the weather permitted us to land the bags. Gingham, I observed, stood anxiously peering with his telescope in the direction of the bar, where the sea, for miles, was foam and fury. "Well," said I at last, "are you looking for a cork in that yeast?"—"I am," replied Gingham, "and there it is. See, they have passed the bar. We shall soon have them alongside."

I saw nothing, but at length was able to discern in the distance a small speck, which was executing most extraordinary vagaries in the midst of the surf. Now it was high, now low; now visible, now lost. Its approach was indicated, not so much by any perceptible change of position, as by an increase of apparent magnitude. Gingham now handed me the glass, and I saw a large boat, full of men, pulling towards us like Tritons. At length they reached the ship. Smart fellows those Oporto boatmen—know how to handle those clumsy-looking, enormous boats of theirs. What a scene was that alongside! The wind high; the sea rough; the boat banging against the ship's side; the men in her all talking together. Talking? Say jabbering, shouting, screaming. I was in perfect despair. Where was my Portuguese? Hadn't I studied it at Trinity College, Cambridge? Couldn't I make out a page of my Portuguese Gil Blas? Hadn't I got a Portuguese grammar and dictionary in my trunk? And hadn't I got a nice little volume of Portuguese dialogues in my pocket? Yet not one word could I understand of what those fellows in the boat were bawling about. Their idiom was provincial, their pronunciation Spanish. That I didn't know. It seemed to me, at the time, that all my toil had been wasted. Never despair, man. If you want to learn a language, and can't learn it in the country, why, learn it at home. You may, you probably will, feel at a loss, when you first get among the natives. But, after two or three days, all will begin to come right: your ear, untutored hitherto, will begin to do its part; then your stores of previously acquired knowledge will all come into use, and you may jabber away to your heart's content. But mind, whatever the language you learn—Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, or High Dutch—go to work in a scholarlike, businesslike manner; learn the verbs, study the syntax, master all the technicalities, or you are doing no good. Doubtless, in your travels abroad, you will fall in with lively old English residents, who "speak the language as fluently as a native," and tell you it's all nonsense, they never looked into a grammar, nor into a book neither. But never mind that; follow your own plan. Speak the language whenever you can—that of course; hear it spoken; dine at the table d'hôte—that's worth a five shilling lesson at any time, and you get your dinner extra; but, all the while, read daily, work your grammar, turn out the words in your dictionary, and mark the result. You, after a space, can not only speak the language, but write it; whereas those intelligent individuals, let alone writing, can't read it. Another suggestion, which I—but where are we? What are we talking about? While I am boring you with suggestions, the despatches have been handed into the boat; the boat has shoved off, and is making for the shore—plunging, ramping, tearing through the surf under a press of sail: and, on the deck of the Princess Wilhelmina gun-brig, stand three new and very rum-looking passengers—a Spaniard, a Portuguese, and a nondescript—one deal box, one old leathern portmanteau, one canvass bag, two umbrellas (blue,) one ditto (red,) and a high-crowned Spanish hat, tied up in a faded cotton pocket-handkerchief.

Our new companions were all a little "indisposed" the first day; but, the weather moderating in the night, they grew better the next, and were able to take their places at the dinner table. The Spaniard had come on board, assuming that he was to victual himself, or pay extra. Under this impression, opening his box in the forenoon, he produced with much gravity a bundle, consisting of half-a-dozen oranges, some very coarse brown bread, a flask of wine, and a chump of splendid garlick sausage, all tied up together, in a second cotton pocket-handkerchief. Spreading said handkerchief on the cabin table as a cloth, he next brought out from his pocket a formidable cheese-toaster, and was preparing to do battle with the prog. The Major, perceiving his mistake, addressed him in Spanish, politely explaining that the passage-money covered everything, and that he could call for whatever the ship afforded. The Hidalgo, thus advised, and courteously thanking the Major, contented himself with an orange, carefully tied up the remaining provender as before, and restored it to the sky-blue deal box.

This act of the Major's, benignant reader, piqued my curiosity. The Major was a very good fellow, as you have doubtless discovered ere this; but he was not a man to do anything without a motive. I couldn't feel easy, without getting to the bottom of it.

"Very kind of you, Major," said I, "to give the Don that information respecting his rights in transitu."

"Kind?" said the Major indignantly; "what do you mean by kind? Had he once attacked that sausage, we should have smelt garlic all the way to Lisbon." I now appreciated the Major's urbanity.

"Close fellows, those Spaniards," added the Major. "I knew very well he wouldn't give me part of his sausage. Didn't go for it."

"Why, if you had shared the feast," said I, "we should have smelt garlic twice as bad."

"Yes," replied the Major "but I shouldn't have smelt it at all."

Said hidalgo was a tall, kiln-dried attomy of a man—hair black and lanky—forehead high and corrugated—eyebrows pencilled and elevated—eyes almost closed by the dropping of the eyelids—nose long, thin, and very inexpressive—mouth diminutive—chin sharp—cheek-bones high and enormously prominent—cheeks hollow and cadaverous, regular excavations; half one of his oranges, stuck in each, would about have brought them to a level with his face. Of course he was dubbed Don Quixotte. The Portuguese came on board with his hair dressed as a wig, enormous white choker, no neck (that's why I called him Punch,) chapeau de bras, short black cock-tail coat, white silk waistcoat flowered green and gold, black satin unmentionables, black silk stockings, and top-boots—the tops a sort of red japan. As to the third visitor, no one could assert who he was, or what he was. He obtained a passage without any document from the Oporto authorities, on the plea that he was a courier, and carried despatches from Oporto to Lisbon. This, the Colonel remarked, was rather odd, as the bag generally went by land. One said he was a Spaniard; another said he was a Jew. Gingham pronounced him a Frenchman:—but what could a Frenchman be doing there? The one index of his identity was a nose, which forthwith won him the name of 'Hookey.' Hookey spoke French, Spanish, Portuguese, lots besides—disclaimed English—yet seemed always listening while we talked. He was constantly smiling, too; the habit had given him a deep semicircular maxillary furrow—say trench if you will—on each side of his ugly mug. There was something in his smile that I didn't like. If he saw you looking at him, he put on a smile.

At dinner the Colonel, anxious to do the honours, took an early opportunity of challenging Don Quixotte to a glass of wine. The Don filled a bumper; the Colonel nodded: the Don, with majestic and silent gravity, rose slowly from his seat, his glass in one hand, the other on his heart; bowed profoundly to each of the company in succession; tossed off the wine; melo-dramatically extended the empty glass at arm's length; bowed again; sighed; squeezed his hand very hard upon his heart, and sat down. The Major challenged Punch, who half filled his tumbler, sipped, filled up with water, sipped again, nodded then, not before, as if he would say "Now it will do," and drank off the whole. Captain Gabion challenged Hookey, who, alone of the three, performed correctly. "Hookey, my boy," thought I, "where did you learn that?"

Neither Punch nor Don Quixotte manifested the least disposition to amalgamate with us. They kept themselves apart, replied civilly when addressed—that was all. I must say, speaking from my own observations, it is a slander which describes the English abroad as exclusive. The exclusiveness, so far as I have seen, lies much more with the Continentals.

But if, on the present occasion, the Spaniard and the Portuguese kept their distance, it certainly was far otherwise with my friend Hookey. I take the liberty of calling him my friend, because I was particularly honoured by his attentions. I have already said that he seemed interested in our conversation. The interest extended to everything about us. He inquired respecting each and every one; his name, his rank, his department, his destination: asked me, in an off-hand way, if I could guess how many troops the British general had—what was to be the plan of the ensuing campaign—did our Government intend to carry on the war with vigour? When, by inquiring elsewhere, he discovered that I was attached to the military chest, he redoubled his attentions, and eke his interrogatories. Had I bullion on board? How much? Should I convey treasure from Lisbon to headquarters? On bullock-cars or on mules? By what route? Of course I should have a guard—did I know? Travelling up the country would be dangerous as the army advanced into Spain—wouldn't it advance?—when?—he knew every part of the Peninsula—was himself bound for headquarters after delivering his despatches—would be happy to go with me—wouldn't mind waiting a day or two in Lisbon—would assist me in obtaining a servant—a horse—a mule—anything. I, communicative as he was inquisitive, lavished information in floods; advised him as to the amount of bullion on board, to go down into the hold, and see with his own eyes; informed him, as a particular secret, that I shouldn't wonder if I was sent to headquarters, unless it happened otherwise; and hadn't the least doubt that I should have the conveyance of whatever amount of treasure was placed under my charge for that purpose; declined saying anything then about a servant, horse, or mule, as I should probably find "Milord Vilinton" had thought of me, and had everything of that kind ready against my arrival; begged to tell him I was a person of great importance, but maintaining the strictest incognito—hoped he wouldn't mention it. Presently he stole away to the forecastle, where I got a sight of him. He was jotting down like mad.

On the evening of our second day from Oporto, we made the Berlings; been six weeks at sea, from leaving the Tagus. If, instead of coasting it, which secured them a foul wind, they had struck out at once, from the mouth of the river, two or three days' sail into the Atlantic, they would probably have got the wind they wanted. That is what Captain Nil did, when I came home, passenger from Lisbon, 1843, in his clever little fruit-ship, the King Alfred. Didn't we give the go-by to the northerly current which blows down the coast, and catch a south-wester, which was just what we needed? Didn't we jockey two other orangemen, that started in company, and thought to beat us by working up along shore? And didn't we bring our prime oranges first to market, and sell them off-hand at London Bridge, with an extra profit of ten shillings a chest?

The morning after we passed the Berlings, we saw the Rock of Lisbon. This, I suppose, is about the most striking object the mariner beholds, in approaching any coast in the known world. Not more than fifteen hundred feet above the level of the sea, it stands so dark in tint, so grim in aspect, so ragged in outline, you fancy some fresh earthquake has heaved it up, crude and pinnacled, from the volcanic bowels of the soil, and there left it to frown above the waves that thunder at its base, and spout up in unavailing froth and fume. "There it stands," said Gingham, "the old Rock! Often have I rounded it before; often have I viewed it; often have I ranged it: worthy the attention of the naturalist; still more of the geologist; but, above all, of the meteorologist: the Promontory of the Moon; yes,

The hill where fond Diana looked and loved,
While chaste Endymion slept and dreamed of heaven:

the advanced guard of mountain ridges, that condense the invisible vapours of the ocean; the medium and thoroughfare of electric communication between Europe and the Atlantic! See how the thin air of the tropics becomes mist, when it reaches those thunder-splintered pinnacles—hem! Lady of the Lake. See how it caps them with a perpetual cloud, which, though perpetual, is constantly diminished by the moisture which it discharges, and constantly replenished by fresh supplies of vapour from the sea. Here, the wind is north: but there, in that elevated region, the upper current is blowing steadily from the south-west. Take my advice, Mr Y——. Don't leave Lisbon without visiting the Rock. Go to Cintra. Inquire for Madam Dacey's hotel; and don't allow her to charge you more than two dollars a-day, wine included, spirits and bottled porter extra."

Gingham now drew out his telescope. "Ah!" said he, "there's Colares; and there's Cintra, just at the base of the Penha. There goes a donkey party, on a visit to the Cork Convent. My respects to the old Capuchins. There's Madam Dacey herself, fat and rosy as ever, scolding Francisco the cook for spoiling that omelet. How are you, old lady?—Villain! He's making a pâté with one hand, and taking snuff with the other! Don't roast that hare, blockhead; it's dry enough already. Make it into soup. That's the way to serve a Cintra hare. Clap a thin slice of bacon on the breast of each of those red partridges, before you put them down. What, boil that gurnet? Bake it, bake it, stupid! Serve it up cold for supper: beats lobster, and should be dressed the same way—oil, cayenne, vinegar, and a modicum of salt. I say, Francisco; mind you send up the soup hot. What an extraordinary fact, Mr Y——! You may get good soups, and all the materials for good dinners, go where you will; but our own countrymen are the only people in the world who know how a dinner should be served up, and set on table. Why, sir, at those hotels at Lisbon and Cintra, I've tasted most splendid soups, magnificent!—but, positively, sent to table lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—tepid, sir! what do you think of that?"

I was thinking, just at that moment, that I should like to hear more about Cintra. But Gingham had now got on the subject of la cuisine; la cuisine was one of his hobbies (he kept a stud)—and, once mounted, there was no getting him off. Yet Gingham, much as he delighted in dinner-giving, was not himself a gourmand. In him the passion was disinterested—a matter of taste—a sentiment. And ah! need I add how it enhanced the value of his friendship?

About noon we crossed the bar; by two P.M. were off Lisbon, and, while I was all agape, admiring the surpassing beauties of the scene, had dropped our anchor. Captain Gabion took me by the elbow, and proposed that we should sojourn at the same hotel. The motive transpired that afternoon. Gingham had his own quarters, in the Rua d'Alecrim. We all landed together at the Yellow House, where our luggage underwent an examination—in those days a very off-hand business, the English, in fact, being in military occupation of the country. My traps were despatched among the first; and I sat waiting for the Captain, whose turn came later. Meanwhile Hookey's bag was opened, and the contents turned out. Among them I expected to see a letterbox; but there was nothing that looked like despatches. While Hookey was engaged with his bag, he was joined by a shabby-genteel personage, who had the look of a military man in plain clothes—an Englishman, or, I rather thought, an Irishman. They recognised each other at once, and seemed to meet by appointment—left the office arm in arm, the new-comer carrying Hookey's bag. They passed without observing me, as I sat in the background near the door, among bags and boxes. Both were speaking English: i. e., Hookey, English as it is spoken by Frenchmen; his companion, English as it ought to be spoken, the pure vernacular of the Sister Isle. "Kim, kim away wid ye, now; isn't it aal krikt and wrigler?"—"Oh, yase; now I sal comb vid you, presently." "Aha! Mister Hookey; so you don't understand English," thought I. Not to be an eavesdropper, I started up, and put out my paw, in tender of a parting shake. Hookey, a little taken aback, clasped it fervently in both his; and, repudiating disguise, laughed, and spoke English again, grasping and shaking my fist with intense cordiality. I suppose it was his surprise, that made him substitute greeting for leave-taking: "Ah, how you do, sare? I hope you varraval."

Gingham took a kind but rather distant leave. The Captain and I adjourned with our luggage, which was first cleverly laid together and packed, and then borne, swinging by ropes from two bars, which rested on the shoulders of four stout Gallegos, who walked two and two, hugging each other round the neck, and stepping together in admirable time. The Captain indicated the road; and we soon reached our domicile, MacDermot's Hotel (as it was then called), Rua do Prior, Buenos Ayres,—for air and prospect, the finest situation in all Lisbon; and that is not saying a little.

I was for ordering dinner forthwith. The Captain, for reasons best known to himself, wished an hour's delay. Reluctantly acceding, I retired to my private apartment, and commenced operations in the soap and dowlas line. Presently the Captain tapped at my door, and entered. Wanted me just to walk down with him to the water's side—wanted me particularly. Away we went. The Captain spoke little—seemed to have some project. At length he opened: "I rather think the skipper will catch a precious good hiding presently; serve him right." All this was Greek to me, though I had heard something of the skipper's bad conduct to the Major.

We now, having descended by a side street as steep as a ladder, entered the main road, or broadway, which runs by the water's side. Who should meet us there, but the Major? He was evidently on the look-out for us, and joined forthwith. "Has the boat left the brig yet?" said Captain Gabion.

"Not yet, I think," said the Major; "I saw her alongside, though. Come down to the water's edge. That's the place."

We descended, through a passage between stone walls. Captain Gabion now addressed me a second time: "Mr Y——, I have already undertaken to officiate as the Major's friend. You must pick up the skipper."

"Well, but what's it all about?" said I. "Hadn't any idea of your intention. You never told me."

"No time for explanation now," said the Captain. "Will you officiate, or will you not?"

"Always ready to do the needful when the case requires," said I. "But, if the Major feels himself aggrieved, is there no other redress? Won't it be infra dig.?"

"The fact is," said the Major, "I don't intend to give him a heavy licking—only just to polish him off a bit. As to redress, if I lodged a complaint, it must come ultimately before our own authorities. Now Englishmen abroad, when ill-treated, are always ignored or deserted by their government. I've seen that often. That rascal would get off scot-free; and the very fact of my having applied would be remembered to my disadvantage, and perhaps would injure me in my profession. If I was a Frenchman or a Yankee travelling abroad, and had been oppressed or ill-treated, I would apply to my government. But as I am an Englishman, what would be the use?"

"Well," said I, "the skipper's conduct on board was very bad, I admit; to you, I've heard, particularly. But it's all over now. Come, let him off this time."

"Very well," said the Major. "In a fortnight he sails for England—takes home a ship-load of British officers, sick, wounded, invalided. If he ill treats such fine fellows as you and me, and goes unpunished, how will he treat them, do you think? I'll tell you what. All I fear is, after he has got a few taps, he'll go down; then there'll be no getting him up again, and he'll escape with only half his deserts. Now that's just what I want you to prevent."

"Well," said I; "if I am to officiate as the skipper's friend, of course I must do him justice. I only tell you that."

"Very well," said the Major, between his teeth. "You pick him up; that's all."

We reached the high bank by the water's edge, just above the landing-place. A boat was seen approaching from the Princess Wilhelmina: four men pulling, skipper steering. Captain Gabion addressed the Major:

"I'll tell you what; it won't do here. First, there isn't room. Secondly—don't you see?—when he gets more than he likes, he has nothing to do but to roll down the bank, jump into the boat, and shove off. Thirdly, the boat's crew might interfere; and then we should get the worst of it."

Meanwhile the boat reached the jetty; the skipper landed; ascended the bank by a zigzag path with Snowball at his heels; passed without noticing us, as we stood among other lookers on; and walked up the passage. The Major followed him. Captain Gabion and I followed the Major.

Just as the skipper was emerging from the passage into the street, the Major stepped smartly after him, and tapped him on the shoulder, exclaiming, "Take that, you ruffian." That was a sharp application of the toe.

Like a caged lizard touched in the tail, the skipper sprang fiercely round.

"What's that for?" he cried, with a furious look.

"Ah, what's that for?" replied the Major, administering a stinging soufflet.

The skipper, calm in an instant, and savage in cold blood, commenced peeling. I stepped up to him, received his jacket, and handed it to the nigger, thereby installing myself in office. The Major turned up the cuffs of his coat-sleeves.

"Now, coolly, my man," said I, as the skipper went in like a mad bull.

The first three rounds, like the Three Graces, had a mutual resemblance. Superior to the Major in weight and strength—formidable, too, as a hitter—the skipper did not succeed in planting a single effective blow. Some were stopped, some were dodged, some fell short, and one or two hit short. Still worse for the skipper, he had no idea of guard. His antagonist, a first-rate artiste, went on gradually painting his portrait. At the end of the third round, "his mammy wouldn't a' knowed him." The Major, in striking, did not throw in his weight, merely hit from the shoulder and elbow. But his punishing told: he hit with a snap; he hit fast; he had the faculty of rapidly hitting twice with the same hand. In short, the skipper was evidently getting the worst of it. All this time, the Major continued perfectly cool and fresh; and, like Shelton, the navigator—whom I remember well, though you, perhaps, do not—as often as he stopped a hit, he politely inclined his head, as much as to say, "Well intended—try again." At the close of the third round, however, in consequence of the skipper's attempting a rush, the Major was constrained to put in a really hard blow as a stopper. It not only answered that purpose, but nearly lifted the skipper, and sent him reeling some paces backwards.

Instead of coming, as before, to my extended arms, and seating himself, like a good child, on my knee till time was up, the skipper now staggered towards Snowball, and began rummaging in his jacket. I was too quick for him. Just as he extracted an enormous clasp-knife, I whipped it out of his hand, and passed it to Captain Gabion. On this demonstration, supposing that "legitimate war" was at an end, and my "occupation gone," I was quietly walking away, with my hands in my pockets. But the Captain, having first communicated with the Major, met and stopped me, saying, "Come, we overlook that. The next round."

The fourth round presented no novelty. The painting went on; I may say, this time, was pretty well finished. Never was an ugly monkey more completely "beautified" than the poor skipper. He still had his strength and wind, and there was as yet no reason why he should not ultimately win—especially as he hit out like the kick of a horse, and one of his blows, if it told, might have turned the day. I began, however, to be apprehensive that he would soon be put hors de combat, by losing the use of his peepers. When, therefore, I sent him in the fifth time, I whispered, "You must try to close, or you'll have the worst of it."

Suddenly rushing in, giving his head, and boring on with his right arm extended, the skipper, at the commencement of the fifth round, contrived to get his left about the Major's waist. This led to a grapple, and a short but fierce struggle. The skipper had the advantage in physical power; but the Major was his superior in wrestling, as well as in the nobler science. They fell together, the Major uppermost. On the ground, strength resuming its advantage, the skipper soon rolled the Major over, and had the ascendency. Supposing the round concluded, I was going to pull him off. "Let alone, let alone," said the Major; "leave him to me." The Major, I presumed, was waiting an opportunity for a "hoist."

The skipper now, with his right arm extended, held the Major's extended left, pinned down by the wrist. The skipper's left arm and shoulder were passed under the Major's right, so as completely to put it out of commission. With his left hand, the skipper seemed to be pulling the Major's hair. All this was so completely hors des règles, that nothing but the Major's veto kept us from interposing.

At this juncture of the combat there was evidently something out of the usual course, which particularly interested the nigger. Stooping down almost to a squat, his face peering close over the heads of the two combatants, his big eyes bulging and gloating with eager expectation, his mouth open, his blubber lips projecting, and his two hands uplifted and expanded with intense curiosity, he watched the result. Just in time, I grasped the skipper's thumb! Half a second more, and the Major's eye would have been out of its socket!

Captain Gabion, breathing the only execration I ever heard from his lips, choked the skipper off.

The Portuguese bystanders, though much interested in the fray, had not been thoroughly sensible of its character. To them, probably, the fight had looked as if a man, in perfect possession of his temper, had been merely playing with a very savage assailant, so clean and easy was the Major's style of punishing. But now, when they walked up, and looked in the miserable sufferer's face, they perceived the serious nature of the castigo administered. Instead of features they beheld—a mask, I was going to say, but that would be incorrect; for in most masks, you have eyes, nose, and mouth. Here, distinctness was obliterated; and as to eyes, why, you couldn't see the eyelashes. I handed the skipper to Snowball, advising he should be taken on board, and seen to. Snowball walked of, conducting him down the passage. I thought of the knife, procured it from the Captain, ran, and handed it to the nigger. "Tell him," said I, "never to use that again, except for cheese-toasting, picking his teeth, and so forth." "Yes, massa; me tell him you say so." "I say, Snowball," added I, "hadn't you better put a little oil on his face, to keep off the mosquitos? If they get at him as he is now, they'll drive him mad." "Ah no, massa," said Blackey, regretfully; "no muskitto here, dis tree, five week; dis place too cold, mosh very. Let alone, no muskitto on de wottah here, nebber at no time."

I hurried back, and found Captain Gabion supporting the Major, who stood with both hands spread out over his right eye, and, to all appearance, suffering intense agony. Blood was visible between his fingers, and on his cheek. The Captain, solicitous to ascertain the amount of injury, made a gentle attempt to withdraw the Major's hands.

"Don't! don't!" gasped the Major. "Has he—got my eye—in his pocket?"

"All right, all right," replied the Captain; "you have still a spare eye to wink with. Near thing, though."

"To-night I meant to have slept at Villa Franca," said the Major, still speaking as if his agony was extreme. "My man is waiting just by with the horses, at the chafriz."

"Nonsense, nonsense!" said Captain Gabion; "to-night you must sleep at our quarters. Pledget is there, and will look at your eye. Mr Y——, there's the chafriz; that stone fountain, where you see the open space."

I stepped in that direction, and found an English servant, holding two horses. The Major had intended to "polish off" the skipper, mount forthwith, and away for Sacavem at a hand-gallop. So he might; only that the skipper, according to his own ideas of manly combat, having got his opponent undermost, and secured a grip of the Major's love-lock with his four fingers, had hooked his thumb-nail, and eke a portion of his thumb, in the ——but enough. I brought up the man and horses, and with some difficulty we got the Major to the hotel.

Pledget was there, examined the eye, did not consider the injury serious, but deferred giving any decided opinion. Ordered the Major to bed, and prescribed leeches: wanted to apply a poultice, but the patient couldn't bear the pressure. For a few days he remained a prisoner. After that, I met him in the streets with a green shade—eye doing well. Next spring, saw him on duty. No damage was then visible, save and except a small scar at the inner corner of the eye.

How soon, or how slowly, the skipper recovered from his polishing I never learned. The skipper, it appears, a year or two before the American war broke out, had put into the Tagus in a vessel from New Orleans, damaged. She was detained for repairs; and he, not liking an idle life, had procured employment in a Falmouth ship. After the war commenced, he chose to continue in the packet line. The exact nature of his offence, offered to the Major, I never ascertained. But it was something connected with the pumping of bilge-water, when the Major was suffering from sea-sickness, prostrate on the deck. Some years after, I heard of the skipper again. He had left Falmouth, and had obtained the command of a packet running between Southampton and the coast of France. He still had a bad name for insulting and ill-treating his passengers; and, what is curious, he again received a polishing from an English officer, at Dieppe. On this occasion, if I mistake not, the operator was an officer of the engineers. Whether said officer came out of the mêlée a Cyclops—the little dog forgot to mention.

CHAPTER VIII.

The morning after our landing from the packet, I sought out, and with some difficulty discovered, my uncle's office; where I was very cordially received by both uncles, and very politely by the other gentlemen of the department. I announced myself prepared to start forthwith for headquarters; fully expecting to be off that night, or next day at latest. Uncle No. 1 told me I must go home with him to dinner, and see my aunt and cousins. Uncle No. 2 advised me to look out for a billet.

All this sounded ominous. The sympathising reader is already advised, that my progress from Lisbon to headquarters was not quite so expeditious as I had anticipated. The cause of the delay was this.

My dear mother, as I have already related, had overruled all objections to my joining the Peninsular army; and through her influence, my honoured father gave his reluctant consent. Shortly after, he was ordered to sea: his ship left the Downs; and he did not return, till after my departure from England. As the time of my departure drew nigh, my dear mother, left to her own cogitations, began to view the subject in a very different light. In short, she was perfectly frightened at her own act; and, when it came to the last, wrote off, without my knowledge, a letter to my uncle No. 2, entreating him by all means to detain me at Lisbon, not for the world to send me up the country—in short, to keep me far beyond the sound, let alone the range, of hostile cannon. Her letter, posted at Deal the very day I started thence for London, came out to Lisbon by the same conveyance with myself; and was doubtless in my uncle's hands, when I presented myself at the office. Many years after, in looking over some old correspondence, I found a letter of hers to my father at sea, revealing the whole plot.

Next morning, I again presented myself, still expecting to receive my orders, and be off slick to headquarters. Uncle No. 2 was there; hoped I had not been much tormented with bugs and fleas; pointed out a desk with a high seat; and informed me—that was my place!

The scene, which would have instantly appalled the whole department, had I given expression to my feelings, was happily prevented by one reflection, which struck me just in time; viz., that I was now an employé, bound to obedience by military law, and that Nunky was my commanding officer.

I sulkily took my seat; and Nunky left me for a few minutes, to the pleasing process of mental digestion. Presently, he stood by my side with a huge bundle of papers:—laid the papers on my desk.

"A fortnight," said he, "will probably elapse ere you can proceed to headquarters. I wish, in the mean time, you would just see what you can do, in arranging these convalescent accounts. We could not spare a hand for them, and they have got sadly into arrear. Do try what you can make of them."

I went to work;—worked hard for a fortnight. At the end of that time, with occasional directions from my uncle, the confused mass of accounts was reduced to something like order. Still nothing was said about my journey to headquarters. Fresh work was given me, which took another week. I began to get regularly savage—was rapidly turning misanthrope—sympathised with George Barnwell. Nunky requested my company in a private room.

"You came out," said he, "expecting to go up the country."

"Yes; and on that understanding I applied for the appointment, as I expressed in my letter from England. On that understanding too, unless I mistook the reply, my services were accepted."

"Well, G——," said he, "I put it to yourself. The fact is, those plaguy convalescent accounts have given us more trouble than all the business of the office besides. Till you came out, we never have had a clerk that could do them. You do them excellently. Of course, you are well aware the public service is the first thing. The long and the short of it is, you perform this duty so much to our satisfaction, your uncle J—— and I have come to the determination—we must keep you with us at Lisbon."

This, my dear madam, with the exception of being crossed in love—and to that, you know, we all are liable—was my first serious disappointment in life. Baulked in my schemes of military glory—for already, in imagination, I was a gentleman volunteer, had mounted a breach, and won a commission—I had now but one remedy; to resign my clerkship, and return forthwith to England. And this, under other circumstances, I should doubtless have done. But the case, as I then viewed it, stood thus. Here were my two dear uncles, with enormous responsibility—that of dispensing and accounting for the whole ready-money transactions of the Peninsular army; here was one miserable branch of accounts, which gave them more trouble than all the rest; and here was I, the only lad that could tackle it. Though that, by the bye, was just so much soft solder; for there were at least a dozen gentlemen, in our department, who could have made up and kept the convalescent books quite as well as myself, and probably far better.

Well; bad luck to the shilling. There was no remedy; so I settled to my work; devoting my leisure hours, as a safety-valve, to the furious study of Portuguese and Spanish. This blew off my wrath, and in after years proved of good service.

But I rather suspect, gentle reader, you're a bloody-minded fellow, and want to get away without further bother from Lisbon to the seat of war, among shot and shells, grape, canister and congreves. So, cutting it short, I shall just tell you how, at last, I out-generalled my dear uncle, and broke from bondage. After that, if you've no objection, we'll be off at once to join the army.

Please to bear in mind, then, that I was utterly unconscious of any wish that I should remain at Lisbon, on the part of my honoured parents, or either of them. Had I been aware, I would have acquiesced. My position, according to the view which I now took of it, was this. My parents had acceded to my scheme of joining the army: my uncles had brought me out upon that understanding, and upon no other: and yet, on my arrival, instead of forwarding me up the country, had, for no earthly reason that I could discover, detained me at Lisbon, to discharge a duty which, it was now perfectly clear, might quite as well have been committed to other hands. This, I say, being my actual view of the case, you will not think it strange, that I deemed it perfectly fair to employ all lawful means for my own enlargement and emancipation.

An opportunity presented itself, in the early part of 1814. The Allied army was now in the Pyrenees and south of France. Convoys of specie had been, from time to time, despatched to headquarters; and were always accompanied by a clerk or conductor of our department, who went in charge. While headquarters remained in Portugal, or were not far advanced into Spain, this duty was considered an agreeable change, and was rather sought than shunned. But, as the distance lengthened, the departmental view of the subject became different. The journey was now tedious, and began to be deemed unsafe. Reports occasionally reached us of British officers ill treated, robbed, or murdered on the road, by our brave Spanish allies. Our conductors, who were for the most part natives, began to be very subject to the fever of the country. Whenever their turn came to take the charge of treasure to headquarters, they were sure to have it. Well; how could they help that? You see, it was an intermittent fever. In this condition of affairs, another large amount of specie was counted out, packed, and all ready for remittance: and—no conductor being forthcoming—one of my fellow-clerks received directions to make the usual preparations for attending it to headquarters. Obeyed, as a matter of course; but didn't like it at all. Communicated to me his secret sorrows—was really far from strong—would much prefer remaining at Lisbon. My determination was taken: I volunteer, as his substitute. Proposed my plan, to which he assented with hilarity.

Still, there, was need of management. Had I spoken to Nunky in private, I knew full well I should be foiled. Combining persuasion with authority, he would discourage the scheme, and I should have no course but acquiescence. So, waiting till office-hours, I took my usual place, expecting his appearance in the great room, where half-a-dozen of us were seated together at our desks.

His step was heard in the passage. Half-a-dozen tongues ceased to wag, and half-a-dozen pens went hard to work, while half-a-dozen noses came into close contiguity to half-a-dozen official documents. Nunky entered, took his seat, and commenced the perusal of a pile of letters. I stood beside him.

"Well, G——?"

"I believe, sir, Mr N—— has received instructions to prepare for a journey to headquarters. Not being in very good health, he would be glad, with your permission, to remain at Lisbon. I therefore beg leave to offer myself as his substitute."

Nunky gave me a look:—saw at once that he was beat. In private, he might have urged his objections: but, before the whole office, he could not appear to dissuade me from taking my turn at a duty, now considered anything but agreeable. No course, then, remained for him, but to signify his consent. "Oh, very well," said he, "if that's the way you've settled it between yourselves. Of course, I can have no objection. Get the usual advance, then; draw your allowance for a mule; and have all ready for starting the day after to-morrow."

Exchanging winks with my fellow-subs, right and left, I returned triumphant to my seat. Nunky remained a few minutes at his desk, evidently in a little bit of a fidget. How could I tell that, do you think, when I sat with my back to him? Oh, I suppose you never were a clerk in a public office. Else you wouldn't require to be informed, that office-clerks have eyes in the back of their heads. When the governor is present, his actions, each and all, are seen and chronicled by every subordinate in the room. And a great relief it is, let me tell you, to the tedium of public business, to recount, criticise, and dramatise them, the moment he's off. Nunky took up a letter, and began to read it—laid it down unread—took up another—rose from his seat—sat down again—put on his hat—and bolted.

Dicky Gossip—a Portuguese clerk commonly so called—rushed forthwith to the front office, and returned with equal rapidity. "Ah, Mister Y——, you is doane. You no sall go up to de coantree deece toim. Your oankle I vos see him git into him coashe. Ah, him, gallop down de treet, faster as four mules can carry him. Ah, Mister Y——, I sall tell you vot!"

In the course of the afternoon, I received a message to attend my uncle in another apartment. He met me with a look of triumph, which, I feared, boded no good.

"Well, G——," said he, "I wish you had mentioned that business this morning in private. Then, you know, we would have talked it over together. As, however, you chose to tender your services in the public room, of course I was forced to view the thing officially, and there's no remedy for it. You have volunteered for headquarters, and to headquarters you must go."

"Oh, thank you, sir! thank you. That's just what I always wished."

"Just what you always wished? Of course I know that, as well as you can tell me, Mr G——. Happy to say, though, I have effected one arrangement, which will make matters far safer, and more agreeable too."

"I fear, sir, if you send me off without the treasure, you will have some difficulty—"

"No, no, G——; you and the treasure will go together; that of course. But the fact is, I've been thinking those Spanish fellows behave so ill, I'm hardly justified in forwarding so large an amount of specie by land, all the way from Lisbon to the Pyrenees. In short, since you spoke to me this morning, I have been on board the flag-ship—seen the admiral. You and the treasure go to Passages in a frigate. Beautiful vessel—passed under her stern in coming ashore."

Alas, my object, then, was only half effected! I was to join the army, but not to travel through Spain. Nunky saw my chagrin and chuckled.

"Come, come, Mr G——," said he, "you beat me this morning; now I've beat you. So make up your mind to a voyage by his Majesty's frigate the M——. Be quick with your arrangements, for she's prepared to sail at a moment's warning. We shall ship the treasure instanter. So everything is ready, when you are."

The next day, at noon, I stood on the deck of the M——, a silent and admiring spectator of a grand, peristrephic panorama, as we glided down the Tagus under easy sail.

CHAPTER IX.

No occurrence worthy of record signalised our voyage from Lisbon to Passages. As you are a member of the Yacht Club, though, and passionately fond of romantic scenery, follow my advice, and treat yourself, some fine week in the summer, to a run along the north coast of Spain—say from Cape Finisterre to the mouth of the Bidassoa. By the bye, hadn't you better reverse it? An awkward thing you'd find it, to catch an on-shore wind at the head of the Bay of Biscay. What would become of you—ah, and what would become of that clever little craft of yours, the Water Wagtail, with her dandified rig, and her enormous breadth of beam, and her six pretty little brass popguns as bright as candlesticks, should a stiff north-wester surprise you on that horrid coast? Won't it be better, then, to secure some safe roadstead—the Gironde for instance—make that your starting-point; choose your weather; and, coasting along the shores of Biscay and Asturias, have the pleasure of feeling that you are running out of the Bay, and not running into it?

That I leave to you. But depend upon it, if you visit that coast, you will see not merely rocks, not merely mountains, not merely wild scenery; but scenery so peculiar in character, that you will not easily find the like. Such was the scenery which, on a fine day towards the beginning of March, 1814, I viewed one morning early, standing by the side of the Hon. Mr Beckenham, third lieutenant of the M——. Mr B., having the morning watch, and thinking it dull alone, had persuaded me to turn out, long, long before breakfast;—as he said the night before, "to view that magnificent coast at daybreak;" but, as he obligingly informed me when I came on deck, "that he might enjoy the pleasure of my agreeable society."

The scene, at a first glance, rather disappointed my expectations. "Stupendous ridge of mountains those Santillanos, though," said Mr B.; "equal, I should think, to the Pyrenees themselves—of which, in fact, they are a continuation, though some maps of Spain don't show it."

The view, as I viewed it, had a threefold character. First, there was the coast itself; a black line, occasionally diversified with specks of white; this line a ledge of rocks, extending along shore as far as the eye could reach, both east and west. The ocean-swell, incessantly rolling in, though the morning was still, thundered on this eternal sea-wall: and the surf, of which, at our distance, the eye distinguished nothing but those white specks, visible from time to time, presented, when viewed with a glass, every conceivable variety and vagary of breaking waves: the foam now rushing up some sloping shelf, like troops storming a breach; now arched sublime in a graceful curve, that descended in a smoking deluge of spray; now shooting vertically to a columnar height, as though the breaker had first dashed downwards into some dark abyss, and then, reverberated, flew sky-high in a pillar of froth. Beyond this line of rocks, appeared, secondly, a ridge of low hills, presenting nothing very remarkable, either in aspect or in outline. And beyond these again, further up the country, appeared, thirdly, a very respectable and loftier range—mountains, if you're a Lincolnshire man, and choose to call them so.

"So, this is your ridge of mountains," said I. "Stupendous? I don't call twelve or fourteen hundred feet stupendous, anyhow. And I'm inclined to think you might look down on most of them, at that altitude."

"You don't see them," said he. "You are looking at the coast range. Do you perceive nothing beyond?"

"Nothing but a few light clouds," said I, "in the sickly blue of the morning sky."

"Well, look at them," replied Mr. B. "View those clouds attentively. Watch whether they change their shape, as clouds usually do, when seen near the horizon."

I watched, but there was no visible change. The clouds were fixtures! Sure enough, those faint, pale streaks above the hills, that gleamed like aerial patches of silver vapour, were no other than the lofty summits of the distant Santillanos, capped with snow, and touched by the beam of early morning. It was worth a turnout, any day.

Well, at length we reached Passages. Night had closed in, before we dropped our anchor off the harbour's mouth. The captain dreaded the very disaster to which I have already alluded, that of being caught by an on-shore wind in that ugly corner. It was settled, therefore, that a boat should be sent at once to announce our arrival, and the treasure landed next morning early, in order that the frigate might be off with the least delay possible.

Next morning early, then, the treasure—dollars packed in boxes, one thousand dollars in a bag, two bags in a box—was brought up from the hold, and stowed in three boats alongside. Making my best bow to the captain, and tendering both to him and to his staff, my sincere and grateful acknowledgments for all the polite attentions, &c., I stepped over the side, and seated myself in the boat destined for my conveyance. In the largest boat, which also contained the largest portion of the treasure, sat the Hon. Mr Beckenham; in the next was a middy; in my own, which was the smallest, were only about half-a-dozen boxes, and four sailors to pull ashore. Mr B. requested me to steer. We pulled for the mouth of the harbour, which was distinguishable, at the distance of a mile, by an abrupt and narrow cleft, dividing two lofty hills; and by a line of foam, which extended right across the entrance, without any visible opening.

Three boats leaving the ship in company, there was a race of course. Mine was astern, having been brought close alongside for my accommodation, and so getting the last start. The race was commenced by middy, who, by the rules of the service, ought to have kept astern of Mr B., and therefore tried to get ahead of him. My men, seeing the contest, began pulling like mad; and, though outnumbered by the crew of the other boats, yet ours being light, and the weather moderate, soon overtook and passed them. We pulled away, maintaining the lead, till a dull roar, like continued thunder, reminded us that we were just upon the bar. There it was, right ahead, crossing our course, not a hundred yards distant, and no passage perceptible; the sea, elsewhere, comparatively tranquil, there swelling and raging, like a mild-tempered man in a passion; the breakers curling, flouncing, tumbling one over the other, rolling in opposite directions, tilting as they crossed, and flying up with the force of the shock. How were we to pass? or by what dodge to give the go-by? My men, excited by the race, would have led at that moment into Charybdis. Still they pulled, onward, onward, to all appearance right upon the reef. The difficulty was solved, like many other difficulties, just when we got into the thick of it. The reef, single in appearance, was in reality double; that is to say, it consisted of two ledges, one ledge overlapping the other: so that, just at the instant when three strokes more of the oars would have taken us into the midst of the tumblification, a narrow opening, with comparatively smooth water, appeared at our left; a turn of the rudder brought us cleverly round into that friendly channel, and the next moment we floated on the tranquil surface of the outer harbour. The luff-tackle and the reefer, as if they had let me go ahead only to see how a landsman could turn a corner, now seemed disposed to renew the race. Raising a shout, which rang from hill to hill in the cleft of that narrow roadstead, their crews gave way again with redoubled ardour. But, having gained the precedence outside, we easily kept it in smooth water, and led in, with a sweep, through the larger harbour to the town. There, as we coasted along, I noticed a little jetty; and on it, in the full uniform of our department, a little man, who was anxiously watching our approach. I laid my boat alongside, jumped ashore, and received a hearty welcome from Mr Deputy-Paymaster-General Q——, whom I had previously known at Lisbon, and who was now in charge of the military chest at Passages. Another individual whom I had met at Lisbon, a gentleman holding office in a department attached to the army—suppose, for want of a better name, we call him "My Friend"—stepped up at the same time, as if he had come by accident, was amazingly glad to see me, took my hand, and greeted me with many smiles—begged I wouldn't think of troubling myself about a billet—his quarters were quite roomy enough for two. Had I a mule? Shouldn't be able to get one in all Passages. Must have something. He would sell me a pony cheap.

A working party was at hand, to convey the boxes of specie from the jetty to the office, which was established hard by, for the convenience of landing remittances that came by sea. A guard was now set, and the sailors turned to, handing the boxes smartly out of the boats, and ranging them on terra firma; the shore party began conveying them from the jetty into the office. The Hon. Mr Beckenham was in a dreadful fuss to get back to the frigate. "The skipper wants to be off while the wind is fair, and the men haven't breakfasted,"—nor had he. Up came my commanding officer just at the moment, and hoped Mr B. and the middy would favour us with their company to breakfast, as soon as the boxes were stowed.

Mr B. glanced circularly at the horizon, looked at the clouds, looked at the flags in the harbour, looked at the clouds again. "Don't think there's any sign of a change of wind at present," said he. "Blows very steady from the south, sir," said the middy. The boxes were housed; they suffered themselves to be persuaded, and walked with us into the office. "My friend" also received an invite, and came in company.

The men in the boats were supplied with bread, butter, and cheese; some enormous Spanish sausages, by way of a relish, delicious Spanish onions, as mild as an apple, and a handsome allowance of brilliant draught cider. By all means ship a barrel, if you touch at Passages in the Water Wagtail. Mr Q—— conducted us to his private apartment, where we found a substantial breakfast awaiting us. I walked into the balcony, which looked towards the water; took a view of the men in the boats. All had their knives out, each sat in an attitude of his own, the cider evidently gave general satisfaction, the prog was rapidly disappearing, and the subject of conversation was twofold—the race, already accomplished, from the frigate to the jetty; and the race, soon to come off, from the jetty to the frigate. "My friend" stood at my elbow, saw me laughing at Jack, laughed himself—laughed heartily. "When will you come and look at the pony?" said he. Mr Q—— summoned us to breakfast.

Breakfast over, the lieutenant and his aide-de-camp took their leave. I went to look after my baggage, of which "my friend" had taken charge in the hurry of landing, promising to see it stowed with the treasure, where it would be under a guard. There was the guard, and there was the treasure; but there, was not my baggage. Found him—demanded an explanation. "Why, to tell the truth, the working party being there, he had embraced the opportunity, and had sent off my things at once to his own billet. We might as well go there at once. Could look at the pony by the way." Just as we started, my commanding officer called after me, "Mr Y——, I shall want you to give me a few particulars respecting the treasure. You may as well do so before going out. Then you may consider yourself at liberty for the rest of the day." I accompanied him into a small room, on the door of which was wafered "Private." "My friend" waited outside, in the street.

"Did you send any message to that gentleman last night," said Mr Q——, "when the boat came ashore from the frigate?"

"None whatever, sir. I didn't even know he was at Passages."

"Wasn't he aware that you were coming from Lisbon?"

"I don't see how he could be, sir. For it wasn't mentioned there till the day before I sailed; and of course no intelligence could have come in that time by land."

"Then he didn't meet you this morning by appointment?"

"Certainly not, sir. The meeting was quite casual."

"Casual? He was waiting about here for an hour before you landed; running into the office, out of the office, poking his nose into every corner—couldn't think what he wanted. Oh, I suppose he must have fallen in with the second lieutenant yesterday evening. That's how he heard of you, no doubt. Old cronies, I suppose."

"Not at all, sir. We met twice at Lisbon. That's all that I ever saw of him, till this morning."

"Indeed! Well, he seems very attentive. Does he appear to have any object? What was he saying to you in the balcony?"

"Said something about a pony he wants to sell. That was all, sir."

"Oh!" said Mr Q——. The "oh" came out something like a groan a yard long, first forte, then minuendo, with the forefinger applied laterally to the apex of the nose, and one eye sapiently half-closed. "Ay, ay; I see. That's what he's after, no doubt; he wants you to buy Sancho. Well, perhaps you can't do better. I know the pony well. Doubt whether you'll find anything else to suit you in all Passages. A mule, indeed, would answer your purpose better; but the price of mules is enormous. Have you drawn your allowance for a horse?" "No, sir. As I came by water, and dollars are cumbersome, I thought it best to defer that till I reached Passages."

"Oh, very well; it's all right, then. Mr Y——, I feel it my duty to say this to you; let me know before you close the bargain. Till then, the eighty dollars are as well in my hands as in yours. Horses will soon be dog-cheap. Few to be had in Spain for love or money; lots, though, in France. Once at headquarters, you may mount yourself ad libitum; and the pony will do well enough to carry you up. Well, Mr Y——, with regard to quarters, the town is so full, I was thinking we must try and accommodate you here. But as Mr what's-his-name has made the offer, I feel it my duty to say this to you—you had better accept it."

"Will you look at the invoice of the treasure, now, sir? Or shall I bring it to-morrow?"

"Show it me now. Any gold?"

"All silver, sir; dollars, half-dollars, and quarters."

"What's this? Eight bags of a thousand, halves; twelve bags, quarters; five bags, small mixed. Why, it will take us an age to count it all."

"My fingers were sore with counting, before I left Lisbon, sir."

"Yes; and they must be sore again, before you leave Passages. Glad to find you have had practice, though. Shouldn't mind the dollars: a middling hand, you know, can count his thirty thousand a-day; but that small mixed takes no end of time. Well, Mr Y——, I feel it my duty to say this to you—hold yourself in readiness to start for headquarters, in charge of treasure, this day week at latest. If I can get you off a day or two earlier, all the better. But the money must be counted; the boxes must be looked to and repaired. And then the mules—why, you'll want sixty at least. Let me see. Nearer eighty, unless I can take part of the silver, and give you doubloons. Well, I'll see old Capsicum in the course of the morning, and ascertain what mules he can let me have. Be here to-morrow at ten, and then I shall be able to tell you more about it."

Delighted to hear once more the name of Capsicum, and doubting whether to call on him, or wait till we met, I was leaving the room to rejoin "my friend" in the street, when Mr Q—— called me back.

"Of course, you know, Mr Y——," said he, "I have no wish to interfere with a fair bargain. Make your own agreement for the pony. I have nothing to say against the party who wishes to sell, and would be the last man to disparage a gentleman attached to any department of the British army. Only I feel it my duty to say this to you—keep your weather-eye open. Good morning."

"My friend" and I walked off together to the stable. His Portuguese servant, Antonio, was in attendance, led out the pony, walked him, trotted him, led him in again. The pony, I thought, was a respectable pony enough; not in bad condition, neither; rather small, though, for a rider six feet high. His legs, supple, well-turned, and slender, were decidedly Spanish. But the barrel, round, bulging, and disproportionably large; the hum-drum, steady, business-like pace; the tail, long, thick, and coarse the drooping neck, the great hairy ears, the heavy head, the lifeless eye, and the dull, unmeaning cast of countenance, betokened rather a Gallic origin. I declined giving an immediate answer as to purchasing. "My friend," with a laugh, said I was quite right; and we walked off together to his billet. "Very dull place, this Passages," said he. "Shall be happy to go with you across the harbour, and show you the market. By the bye, of course, before you leave, you'll take a view of St Sebastian. There stands the poor old town, all knocked to smash, just as it remained after the siege. If you wish to form a conception of the tremendous effect of cannon-balls, ride over by all means. You may get there in less than half-an-hour, upon the pony."

We now reached "my friend's" quarters, which consisted of one long, narrow room, with a couple of windows at the end nearest the street, and a couple of alcoves at the other, each alcove containing a very humble bed. As to the windows, you are not to understand by the term window, bless your heart, anything in the shape of glass, sashes, or window-frame; but simply a stone opening in the stone wall, with nothing to keep out the wind and rain, but a pair of old clumsy shutters, which were far from shutting hermetically. The whole furniture of the apartment consisted of a ship's stove, borrowed from one of the transports in the harbour; a door laid on two trestles, to serve as a table; and, on each side of the said table, a bench. Yet often, when the troops were engaged in active service, such accommodations as ours would have been deemed a luxury; and many a wrangle arose for far worse quarters. I noticed that the trestles and benches, which consisted of rough deal, hastily knocked together, looked new. This "my friend" explained, by informing me that the captain of the transport had lent him his carpenter. Having seen to my baggage, which was all right, and ascertained that we had four hours to dinner, I took the first opportunity of cutting my stick, having inwardly formed my determination to be off at once on foot, and take a view of St Sebastian. Six or seven months had now elapsed since St Sebastian was stormed and taken by the British and Portuguese forces.

Less than an hour's walk brought me to the scene of that fierce, and, for a period, doubtful conflict. The road was closed up by hills, which afforded no opportunity for a prospect; and not a soul did I meet in the whole distance. All at once I came in sight of the battered and demolished fortress. Imagine a town knocked to pieces. Imagine this town suddenly presenting itself to your view. The road unexpectedly opened upon a sandy plain, on which rose a few eminences, called the Chofres, that had afforded a position for some of the breaching batteries of the besiegers; at the extremity of this plain ran the river Urumea, discharging itself into the sea; and on an isthmus, beyond the river, stood St Sebastian. It stood like a city in the desert. All was solitude and desolation. The town, though it had contained many thousand inhabitants, at this moment afforded no visible indication of human residence. It was not forsaken; yet nothing could I discover of the tokens which usually indicate life and activity as we approach the abodes of men—on the road, neither vehicles, nor cattle, nor human beings. I was alone, and the city was solitary. No; here, at my feet, upon the sandy plain, was a memorial, at least, of man and of his doings. A rise in the level had been washed down at its edge by the rains of winter; and, projecting from the crumbling bank, appeared the bleached and ghastly remains of a human being; doubtless one out of the multitudes who, having fallen in the siege, had been consigned to a shallow and hasty grave. I will not deny that the sight arrested my steps. Remember, it was the first victim of war I had ever looked upon. Nay, more; it invested the whole panorama with a new character. I stood, as it were, surveying a vast cemetery, the soil now concealing in its bosom the multitudes who, not long before, had drenched its surface with their blood. Entering the town, I did indeed see before me, as "my friend" had said, "the tremendous effect of cannon-balls." Yet that was not the whole: destruction appeared in a threefold aspect. The batteries had knocked houses and defences into rubbish and dust; the mines had torn up the works from their foundations; and a general conflagration had ravaged the whole town. The scene was sombre and oppressive. War had now advanced his pavilion into other lands; but here had left in charge two vast and hideous sentinels—Desolation and Silence! I passed through some of the principal streets, in which the fallen stones had been piled on each side, to make a thoroughfare; and walked along the ramparts, where some of the dead were still visible, partially covered by fragments of the ruined masonry. No living creature did I encounter, save one, a miserable object, a soldier in the Spanish uniform, apparently an invalid, recovering from wounds or sickness. On my approaching him, he appeared unwilling to speak or be spoken to. Nor is it difficult to explain why a Spaniard, meeting an Englishman on the walls of St Sebastian, should feel little disposed for conversation. And so I visited the place, inspected the fortifications, and returned to Passages, without exchanging a word with any one.

"My friend," in honour of my arrival, had invited a brace of dinner-guests: one, like myself, a clerk of the military chest, the other a young hospital mate. Our dinner was excellent; Irish stew, a Passages hare, and an enormous omelet, all cooked by Antonio; capital draught cider; with the cheese, two bottles of English porter as a particular treat; and Andalusian wine ad libitum.

I must here say a word on the subject of Irish stew. A standing dish at headquarters was that Irish stew. Amongst the followers of the army were a number of youths, Spanish and Portuguese, principally the latter, age from sixteen to twenty, happy, on the small consideration of a few dollars per month, to enter the service of any Senhor Inglez who would hire them. Most of the clerks attached to headquarters had a servant of this description; and as each clerk was entitled to draw double rations, the arrangement was convenient. It was the chief business of this servant, to discharge the two very congenial duties of groom and cook; and no one was eligible to the office who could not make Irish stew. "Well, Pedro, what's for dinner to-day?"—The answer was invariable, "Oirish-too." The ration beef—it was generally beef—was popped into a saucepan with anything else that came to hand—bread, onions, leeks, potatoes if you could get them, and just enough water to cover the whole;—then stewed. Whatever the ingredients, still it was "Oirish-too." Now—perhaps the idea never struck you—the true difference between English and foreign cookery is just this: in preparing butcher's meat for the table, the aim of foreign cookery is to make it tender, of English, to make it hard. And both systems equally effect their object, in spite of difficulties on each side. The butcher's meat, which you buy abroad, is tough, coarse-grained, and stringy; yet foreign cookery sends this meat to table tender. The butcher's meat which you buy in England is tender enough when it comes home; but domestic cookery sends it up hard. Don't tell me the hardness is in the meat itself. Nothing of the kind: it's altogether an achievement of the English cuisine. I appeal to a leg of mutton, I appeal to a beef-steak, as they usually come to table; the beef half-broiled, the mutton half-roasted. Judge for yourself. The underdone portion of each is tender; the portion that's dressed is hard. Argal, the hardness is due to the dressing, not to the meat: it is a triumph of domestic cookery.—Q.E.D. Well; if time was short—say, a meal to be prepared on coming in from a march, the rations not issued till three hours after, and Pedro ordered to "make haste, and get dinner depressa,"—why, then, to appease the wolf in your stomach, the Irish stew was ready in no time—boiled like fury—dished up in half an hour. In that case, you got it in the genuine English style—done in a hurry: the broth watery and thin, the potatoes bullets, and the bouilli shrunk, indurated, screwed up into tough elasticity, by the sudden application of a strong heat, and the potent effect of hard boiling. Engage a "good plain cook"—tell her to boil a neck of mutton—that will show you what I mean. All London necks of mutton come to table crescents—regularly curled. But if, on the contrary, you were in quarters, or the troops halted a day, then you got your Irish stew after the foreign fashion. Breakfast cleared away, your horse is brought to the door, that you may ride a few miles forwards, and take a view of the operations, or ogle Soult through a telescope. Pedro then commences his culinary operations forthwith. The beef—and what-not besides—is whipped into the saucepan; the saucepan is set among the embers upon the hearth: and there it stands—not boiling—scarcely simmering—suppose we say digesting—throughout the forenoon, and till you are ready to eat. Long before dinner, savoury steams announce a normal process of the cuisine, a process both leisurely and effectual. At length, crowned with laurels, and, like all heroes, hungry after fighting, you return from the skirmish in front, having barely escaped a stray cannon-ball that made your horse—oh, didn't it?—spin round like a teetotum. The rich repast awaits you—the whole is turned out, and smokes upon the table—the bouilli is tender, the "jus" appetising and substantial, the tout-ensemble excellent. And if, with an eye to his own interest in the concern, Pedro has slipped in a handful or so of garlic, why, you live all day in the open air—so it doesn't much signify.

Well, so much for Irish stew. We wound up the evening with ship-biscuit and brandy-and-water—ration brandy—French—superb. What an exchange for the horrid agoardente of Lisbon, that excoriated your palate, indurated your gizzard, and burnt a hole in your liver! I happened to mention my morning visit to St Sebastian. All my three companions had seen St Sebastian during the siege—were present at the storming. "Sorry I was not ordered up in time," said I.

"You'll never see anything like that," said the doctor.

"Well, can't you tell me something about it?"

"No, no," replied he; "rather too late for that to-night. I must be moving."

"Come, gentlemen; mix another tumbler round," said "my friend." "If we cannot go into particulars, at least, for the satisfaction of Mr Y——, let us each relate some one incident, which we witnessed when the city was taken by storm. Come, doctor; you shall begin."

"Really," said the doctor, "it was such a scene of slaughter and confusion, I can hardly recollect anything distinctly enough to tell it. I got into the town almost immediately after the troops, to look after the wounded; just those that required to be operated on at once. Found my way into a by-street; came among some of our fellows, who were carrying on such a game, drinking, plundering, firing at the inhabitants, and I don't know what-all besides, I was glad enough to escape with my life, and got out of the place as fast as I could. Don't really remember any particular occurrence to relate. Oh, yes; just as I was coming away, I saw one old woman—beg pardon; ought to have said elderly gentlewoman—pinned to a post with a bayonet, for defending her daughter's virtue."

Well, gentlemen, said "my friend," "I also will relate an incident, connected with that dreadful day. But, first of all, I must show you something. What, would you say, is the value of that, doctor?" He produced a very handsome diamond ring. "Worth fifty dollars at least," said the doctor, holding it to the lamp. "I say, worth it; that is, in the trade. Would sell, in Bond Street, for more than double that price, as they'd set it in London." The doctor, I should mention, was the son of a fashionable watchmaker—bore the sobriquet of Tick.

"Well," continued my friend, "how do you think I became possessed of that ring? Just after the town was carried, I watched a lull in the firing from the castle, and went in over the breach. Only one or two round-shot fell, as I was climbing up. Met there an English sailor, a man-of-war's man, coming along in high good humour, perhaps a little the worse for liquor. He was shouting, laughing, holding up his two hands, as if he wanted me to look at them. The fellow had been plundering; plundering a jeweller's shop. "Now I'm dressed out for a ball," said he, "all for one like a Spanish lady." What d'ye think he had done? All his fingers, both hands, were covered down to the tips with splendid rings, rings set with precious stones, as thick as curtain-rods. Brilliants, rubies, emeralds, amethysts, he had stuck them on, one after the other, till there was no room left. Told him I'd buy them: offered him a dollar for the lot; two dollars; five dollars. 'Avast,' said he, 'I'm a gentleman. Don't want none of your dumps, messmate. Shouldn't mind giving you one, though, for good luck. Here, take this big un.' It was a great ugly Brazilian topaz. 'No, no,' said I; 'give me this little one.' He gave it me; I thanked him; and he walked away, laughing and shouting.—Worth fifty dollars, you say. Is it though, doctor? For forty-five down, you shall have it."

The doctor made no reply; and, for a few seconds, there was a dead silence. "Come, Mr Pagador senior," said he; "I've got three gunshot wounds, an ague, and a dysentery.—Must see them all, before I go to bed. Please to proceed."

"I think," said my fellow-clerk, "our host had a good chance of being shot, when he mounted the breach; for the French, I remember, kept up a fire on all who passed that way, long after it was carried. You're sure you got that ring on the breach, are you?... I, also, had a narrow escape, after I got into the town. I was walking up one of the streets, and passed a wine-shop, where a lot of our fellows were assembled, within and without. A few yards beyond was a corner; another street crossed. Just at the crossing, in the middle of the road, lay an English soldier, dead. There was nothing particular in that; for I had passed several dead before, as I came along. Walking on, I noticed two soldiers looking at me and talking. 'Better tell him, then,' said one of them. 'Tell him yourself,' said the other; 'I shan't tell him. He's only a commissary.' Just before I reached the corner, some one gently laid hold of my arm. I turned round. It was that officer of the engineers—Gabion—yes, Captain Gabion. 'Wouldn't advise you to go beyond the corner,' said he.—'Why not?' said I. 'Don't you see that man lying on the road?' said he.—'Any danger?' said I. 'I'll soon let you see that,' said he: 'have the kindness to lend me your hat.' I gave him my hat—staff-hat—bought it new at Vittoria. He stepped forward, held it out by one end, just poked about half of it beyond the corner. Crack! a rifle-bullet came clean through it. 'The French,' said he, 'still occupy that street. I set a sentry here just now, to keep people from passing on. But he's off; plundering, I suppose, or getting drunk. I'm sorry for your hat, though.' Rum trick, that of Captain Gabion's, I must say. I thought it very unkind. Kept me from getting shot; much obliged to him for that. But spoiled my new staff-hat—cost me ten dollars."

"Yes," said the doctor, "that's just what he is; always up to some practical piece of wit, and grave as a judge. Grave? I should rather say melancholy. Such a fellow for joking, too! Why, he'd crack a joke if a shell was fizzing at his feet. One of the coolest officers in the service."

"Where is Captain Gabion now?" said I.

"Oh, somewhere in advance," said the doctor; "you may be sure of that; somewhere with the troops in the south of France. He and his friend, that major of the artillery, had a narrow escape, though, in the winter. Must needs go paying a morning visit to a French family just this side of St Jean de Luz, before the enemy were driven across the Nivelle. Just escaped a party of them by hard riding. Don't see, though, that your hat, Mr Pagador, is much the worse, merely for being pinked."

"It makes people stare so," said he, "that's all I care about. Looks just exactly as if one had been shot through the head."

"Shouldn't mind giving you my new foraging cap and a dollar for it," said "my friend." Again there was a short silence. It was clear, in fact, that "my friend's" disposition to barter and bargain was not altogether admired.

"Well, gentlemen," said I, "you have all been good enough to tell me something about St Sebastian. Now, I'll tell you something. Did you ever see a dead man swim?"

"I've seen a dead man float," said the doctor; "never saw one swim."

"Well, that's what I saw this morning. And you may see it to-morrow, if you choose to go and look. I'll tell you how it was. The tide was up, and the river Urumea nearly full. I was standing on that part of the rampart, where, as you know, the rubbish dislodged by the springing of the mine is shot down into the bed of the river. In that vast heap, no doubt many of the storming party found a grave, where they still lie buried, under tons upon tons of shattered masonry. In some instances, however, the sufferers were not entirely overwhelmed by the explosion; and their remains are still partly visible, bleached by the sun and wind. The water was perfectly clear; you might see the rocks in the bed of the stream. My eye, measuring the shattered pile on which I was standing, mechanically descended from its summit to its base, which juts out far into the river. Just under water, I noticed something in motion. The appearance attracted my attention. Descending the mound to the water's edge, what do you think I saw? A man half emerging from the fragments, and swimming, yes, swimming beneath the surface, striking out with both hands, as if struggling to get free. So visible was the object, so distinctly I saw every movement, my first impulse was to step down into the water, drag him out from the rubbish before he was drowned, and land him on terra firma. I looked again—he was long past drowning. There he had swum, at high water, every day since the city was stormed, and the mine was sprung. His bones, half bared of flesh, were still held together by the ligaments; the mine, by its explosion, had buried him up to the middle; but from the loins he was free: the play of the waves tossed him to and fro; the water, in its flux and reflux, now caught his arms and spread them out; from his sides to their full extent, now brought them back again:—anybody would have said it was a man swimming. Well, I shall dream of it to-night. I shall again be standing on that breach before daylight; fancy I see the dead man swimming out beneath my feet; and perhaps hear him calling for help under water. Only hope I mayn't fancy it's myself."

"It's curious," said the doctor, "when a fellow first joins, how a thing of that kind strikes him as remarkable. Well, good night all."

AMERICAN ADVENTURE.[5]

There is a class of literature peculiarly American, and unlikely to be rivalled or imitated to any great extent on this side the Atlantic, for which we entertain a strong predilection. It is the literature of the forest and the prairie, of the Indian camp and the backwood settlement, of the trapper's hunting ground, and, we now must add, of the Californian gold mine. It comprises the exploits and narratives of the pioneer in the Far West, and the squatter in Texas; of the military volunteer in Mexico, and the treasure-seeking adventurer on the auriferous shores of the Pacific. In common with millions of Europeans, we have watched, for years past, with wonder, if not always with admiration, the expansive propensities of that singularly restless people, who, few in number, in proportion to their immense extent of territory, and prosperous at home under the government they prefer, yet find themselves cramped and uneasy within their vast limits, and continually, with greater might than right, displace their neighbour's boundary-mark and encroach upon his land. The mode in which this has been done, in a southerly direction, by the settlement of emigrants, who, gradually accumulating, at last dispossess and expel the rightful owner, has been often described and exemplified; and nowhere more graphically than by Charles Sealsfield, in his admirable Cabin Book and Squatter Nathan. The Anglo-German-American, deeply impressed by the virtues of his adopted countrymen, and especially by that intelligence and enterprising spirit which none can deny them, sees merit rather than injustice in the forcible expulsion of the Spaniard's descendants, and makes out the best possible case in defence of the Yankee spoliator. Still, when stripped of factitious colouring and rhetorical adornments, the pith of the argument seems to be that the land is too good for the lazy "greasers," who must incontinently absquatilate, and make way for better men. As for Indians, they are of no account whatever. "Up rifle and at them!" is the word. In utter wantonness they are shot and cut down. Let us hear an American's account of the process.

"When Captain Sutter first settled in California he had much trouble with the Indians, but he adopted, and has pursued steadily from the first, a policy of peace, combined with the requisite firmness and occasional severity. Thus he had obtained all-powerful influence with them, and was enabled to avail himself of their labour for moderate remuneration. Now all was changed: the late emigrants across the mountains, and especially from Oregon, had commenced a war of extermination, shooting them down like wolves—men, women, and children—wherever they could find them. Some of the Indians were undoubtedly bad, and needed punishment, but generally the whites were the aggressors; and, as a matter of course, the Indians retaliated whenever opportunities occurred; and in this way several unarmed or careless Oregonians had become, in turn, their victims. Thus has been renewed in California the war of extermination against the aborigines, commenced in effect at the landing of Columbus, and continued to this day, gradually and surely tending to the utter extinction of the race. And never has this policy proved so injurious to the interests of the whites as in California."—(Sights in the Gold Regions, p. 152-3.)

Mr Johnson illustrates by examples the system he thus condemns, and shows us war-parties of white men issuing forth for razzias upon Indian villages, receiving, as they depart, the valedictory benediction of the patriarch of the settlement, a veteran backwoodsman, well known in the Rocky Mountains as a guide and pioneer, and who, after a long and adventurous career, has at last located himself, with his active, reckless, half-breed sons in the beautiful and romantic valley of the Saw Mill. This bloody-minded old miscreant, John Greenwood by name, boasted of having shot upwards of a hundred Indians—ten of them since his arrival in California—and hoped still to add to the murder-list, although incapacitated by age from distant expeditions. His cabin was the alarm-post where the foragers assembled, and whither, on their return from their errand of blood and rapine, they brought their ill-gotten spoils, the captive squaws, and the still reeking scalps of their victims. With male prisoners they rarely troubled themselves; although, upon one occasion during Mr Johnson's stay in their vicinity, they brought in a number, and shot seven of them in cold blood, because, "being bad-looking and strong warriors," it was believed they had participated in the murder of five English miners, surprised and slain a short time previously. Expeditions of this kind are called "war-parties;" and the propriety of the system of which they form a part is as fiercely and passionately defended by the Americans in California, as is the propriety of slave-holding by the free and enlightened citizens of the southern states of the Union. It were far from prudent to preach emancipation in Florida or Louisiana; at the "diggins" it is decidedly unsafe to call the shooting of Indians by the harsh name of murder. "We saw a young mountaineer, wild with rage, threaten the life of an American who had ventured to suggest that the murders committed by these Indians were provoked by many previous murders of the whites, and that they should not be avenged by indiscriminate slaughter, but by the death of the guilty." The horrible character of the frequent massacres is aggravated by the adoption, on the part of the white savages, of the repugnant and barbarian usages of the unfortunate heathens whom they first provoke and then hunt to the death, by the tearing off of scalps, and suchlike hideous and unchristian abominations. Unfortunately, these scenes of slaughter and atrocity are of constant occurrence, not only in that far-off land where gold is to be had for the gathering, but wherever the white man and the red come in contact. The air of the prairie and backwoods seems fatal to all humane and merciful feelings, and the life of the Indian is held no dearer than that of skunk or buffalo. Mr Parkman tells us of "a young Kentuckian, of the true Kentucky blood, generous, impetuous, and a gentleman withal, who had come out to the mountains with Russel's party of California emigrants. One of his chief objects, as he gave out, was to kill an Indian—an exploit which he afterwards succeeded in achieving, much to the jeopardy of ourselves and others, who had to pass through the country of the dead Pawnee's enraged relatives." No censure is passed upon this generous and gentlemanly young murderer by Mr Parkman, whose book would nevertheless indicate him to be a man of education and humanity, but who is apparently unable to discern any moral wrong in wantonly drilling a hole through the painted hide of a Pawnee. The system of extermination seems practically inseparable from the aggrandisement of American territory at Indian expense. When Mexicans are to be ejected, the process is more humane, or at least less cold-blooded and revolting in its circumstances. But, although the barbarity diminishes, the injustice is as great. By American annexators and propagandists, respect of property may be set down as an Old World prejudice; still it is one by which we are contented to abide; and we cannot see the right of any one to turn a man out of his house because he does not keep it in repair and occupy all the rooms, or to pick a quarrel with him as a pretext for appropriating a choice slice of his garden. A considerable portion of the people of the United States are evidently convinced that they are the instruments of Providence in the civilisation and population of the New World, and look forward to the time as by no means remote when their descendants and form of government shall spread south and north, to the exclusion of British rule and Spanish-American republics, from Greenland to Panama. As a preparatory step, their pioneers are abroad in all directions; and some of them, being handy with the pen as well as with the rifle, jot down their experiences for the encouragement of their countrymen and edification of the foreigner. Before us are three books of the kind completely American in tone and language, and of at least two of which it may safely be affirmed that none but Americans could have written them. In fact they are written in American rather than in English; particularly Mr Johnson's "Sights," of which we can truly say that, but for our intimate acquaintance with the language of the United States, acquired by much study of this particular sort of literature, we should have made our way through it with difficulty without reference to the dictionary, which we presume to exist, of American improvements on the English tongue. The book swarms with Yankeeisms, vulgarisms, and witticisms; the latter of no elevated class, and seldom rising above a very bad pun; notwithstanding which, Sights in the Gold Regions is a very amusing, and, to all appearance, a very honest account of life at the diggings. The other two books are the work, the one of a philosopher in the woods, and the other of a sailor on horseback. Mr Parkman, who, as regards literary skill, is superior to either of the companions we have given him—although his book has less novelty and pungency than either of theirs—left St Louis in the spring of 1846, on a tour of curiosity and amusement to the Rocky Mountains, with the especial object of studying the manners and character of Indians in their primitive state. He has a good eye for scenery and tolerable descriptive powers, and some of the adventures and anecdotes he relates are striking and interesting. But, for a fine specimen of rich rough-spun Yankee narrative, commend us to Lieutenant Wise of the United States navy. There is no mistake about the gallant author of Los Gringos. He makes no more pretence to style or elegance than a boatswain's mate spinning a yarn upon the forecastle. Despising the trammels of orthography and probability, sprinkling his comical English with words from half-a-dozen other languages (often ludicrously distorted), sometimes shrewd, frequently very humorous, invariably good-humoured and vivacious, this rollicking naval officer hoists the reader on his shoulders, and carries him at a canter through his great thick closely-printed New York volume, with infinitely less fatigue to the rider than he himself experienced when, perched upon a Spanish saddle, and armed with a whip "whose lash was like the thongs of a knout," he urged the sorry posters along the road to Mexico's capital. In a few lines of preface, the humorous lieutenant discloses his plan and gives us a glimpse of his quality. "The sketches embodied in this narrative," he says, "were all written on the field of their occurrence: the characters incidentally mentioned are frequently nommes du mer. It is not expected by the author that even the most charitable reader will wholly overlook the careless style and framing of the work, or allow it to pass without censure; nor has it been his object to deal in statistics, or any abstract reflections, but merely to compile a pleasant narrative, such as may perchance please or interest the generality of readers; and in launching the volume on its natural element—the sea of public opinion—the author only indulges in the aspiration, whether the reader be gentle or ungentle, whether the book be praised or condemned, that at least the philanthropy of the publishers may be remunerated, wherein lies all the law and the profits." After which facetious and characteristic preamble, Lieutenant Wise goes on board his frigate; is tugged out of Boston harbour, and sails for Monterey; is alternately buffeted and becalmed; is in danger of stranding on the Dahomey territory and reviles creation accordingly, but ultimately escapes the peril and sets foot on shore at Rio Janeiro, in which pleasant latitude he frequents the coffee-houses, and partakes of mint juleps and other cold institutions; watches the niggers dancing and jabbering their way along the streets, with little fingers affectionately interlaced, and sistling polkas through their closed teeth; and is somewhat scandalised, and yet vastly amused, by the samacueca, a South American polka of much grace but questionable decency, on beholding which he, Lieutenant Wise, being, "as an individual, fond of a taste of cayenne to existence," clapped his hands and vociferously applauded. This eccentric dance, however, was at Valparaiso, we find—not that the fair Brazilians are behind any of their South American sisters in the license they accord their supple forms and twinkling feet. At last, and in the heat of the war between Mexico and the States, Lieutenant Wise reached Monterey, where his ship cast anchor. California had been taken possession of by the Americans, and fighting was going on in the neighbourhood. Before the war, Monterey contained about five hundred inhabitants, but when Mr Wise, arrived, scarcely a native was to be seen. The men were away fighting in the southern provinces, a few women scowled from their dwellings at the gringos (the name given to Anglo-Americans in Mexico and California). Yankee sentinels were posted, knife in girdle, and rifle-lock carefully sheltered from the rain; and persons moving about after dark were greeted at every turn with the challenge—"Look out thar, stranger!" quickly followed by a bullet, if they delayed to shout their name and calling. There was nothing to be had to eat, drink, or smoke, and the general aspect of affairs was cheerless enough. Presently in rode sixty horsemen, gaunt bony woodsmen of the Far West, dressed in skins, with heavy beards and well-appointed rifles, fellows "who wouldn't stick at scalping an Indian or a dinner of mule-meat," and who belonged to the Volunteer Battalion, in which they had enrolled themselves "more by way of recreation than for glory or patriotism." They were not easy to understand, having passed most part of their lives in the Rocky Mountains, a district which has its own peculiar phraseology.

"We soon became quite sociable, and, after a hearty supper of fried beef and biscuit, by some miraculous dispensation a five gallon keg of whisky was uncorked, and, after a thirty days' thirst, our new-found friends slaked away unremittingly. Many were the marvellous adventures narrated of huntings, fightings, freezings, snowings, and starvations; and one stalwart, bronzed trapper beside me, finding an attentive listener, began:—'The last time, captin, I cleared the Oregon trail, the Ingens fowt us amazin' hard. Pete,' said he, addressing a friend smoking a clay pipe by the fire, with a half pint of corn-juice in his hand, which served to moisten his own clay at intervals between every puff—'Pete, do you notice how I dropped the Redskin who put the poisoned arrow in my moccasin! Snakes, captin! the varmints lay thick as leaves behind the rocks; and, bless ye, the minit I let fall old Ginger from my jaw, up they springs, and lets fly their flint-headed arrers in amongst us, and one on 'em wiped me right through the leg. I tell yer what it is, hoss, I riled, I did, though we'd had tolerable luck in the forenoon;—for I dropped two and a squaw, and Pete got his good six—barrin' that the darned villains had hamstrung our mule, and we were bound to see the thing out. Well, captin, as I tell ye, I'm not weak in the jints, but it's no joke to hold the heft of twenty-three pounds on a sight for above ten minits on a stretch; so Pete and me scrouched down, made a little smoke with some sticks, and then we moved off, a few rods, whar we got a clar peep. For better than an hour we see'd nothin'; but on a suddin I see'd the chap—I know'd him by his paintin'—that driv the arrer in my hide: he was peerin' round quite bold, thinkin' we'd vamosed; I jist fetched old Ginger up and drawed a bee line on his cratch, and, stranger, I giv him sich a winch in the stomach that he dropped straight into his tracks: he did! In five jumps I riz his har, and Pete and me warn't troubled again for a week.'"

After two months passed at Monterey, the American squadron assembled and a new commodore arrived, whereupon Lieut. Wise's captain was not sorry to be allowed to lift his anchors, and avoid playing second fiddle to the new commander-in-chief by transferring his pennant to the waters of the San Francisco. On the way thither his lieutenant treats us to some yarns of extraordinary toughness. Speaking of the lasso, in the use of which the Californians are particularly skilful—catching a bull by the tail and making him fling a somerset over his horns, or dragging a grizzly bear for miles to the baiting place—he calls to mind having once seen a troop of horses "at General Rosas' quinta, near Buenos Ayres, trained to run like hares, with fore and hind legs lashed together by thongs of hide: it was undertaken to preserve the animals from being thrown by the Indian bolas, and the riders, as a consequence, lanced to death. But I was far more amused one afternoon, when passing a fandango, near Monterey, to see a drunken cattle-driver, mounted on a restive, plunging beast, hold at arm's length a tray of glasses, brimming with aguardiente, which he politely offered to everybody within reach of his curvettings, without ever once spilling a drop." These marvellous feats are nothing, however, compared to the cannibal exploits of some unfortunate emigrants, who, having loitered on their way, were overtaken by the snow in the Californian mountains, and compelled to encamp for the winter. Their provisions and cattle consumed, even to the last horse hide, famine and insanity ensued. Those who starved to death were eaten by the survivors, whose appetites, if we may believe Mr Wise, were quite prodigious. A Dutchman, he gravely assures us, actually ate a full-grown body in thirty-six hours; and another boiled and devoured, in a single night, a child, nine years of age. We cannot venture to extract the revolting details that follow. The lieutenant's facetiousness upon this horrible subject is rather ghastly; and the particulars supplied by a young Spaniard, who "ate a baby," are abominable in the extreme, although possibly true. At least Mr Wise assures us he had them from the lad's own lips. And, whilst his strength lasted, poor Baptiste was drudge to the whole party, doing his duty well, fetching fuel and water, until at last, as he told Mr Wise, "very hungry, sir; eat anything."

On the wild and dreary track from the States to California, frightful disasters occur to caravans of emigrants, which, encumbered with women and children, and sometimes under incompetent leaders, lose precious time by the way, and are caught and crushed by the terrible winter of those desolate regions. Journeying near the Sacramento, Mr Johnson came upon the house of "old Keysburg the cannibal, who revelled in the awful feast on human flesh and blood, during the sufferings of a party of emigrants near the pass of the Sierra Nevada, in the winter of 1847. It is said that the taste which Keysburg then acquired has not left him, and that he often declares, with evident gusto, 'I would like to eat a piece of you;' and several have sworn to shoot him, if he ventures on such fond declarations to them. We therefore looked upon the den of this wild beast in human form with a good deal of disgusted curiosity, and kept our bowie-knives handy for a slice of him if necessary."

Sailor though he is, Mr Wise troubles his reader very little with nautical matters. During a few weeks he was a good deal afloat, having succeeded to the command of the Rosita, a forty ton schooner, with a crew of fifteen sailors, a small boy, and a mulatto cook, who had once been "head bottle-washer of a Liverpool liner, with glass nubs on de cabin doors;" but otherwise most of his time seems to have been spent on shore, riding, shooting, dancing, and love-making, doing military duty in garrison at Mazatlan, throwing up fortifications, and surprising parties of Mexicans, whose fear of the Gringos was most intense and ludicrous. In their civil wars, and when contending with the Spaniards for their independence, the Mexicans have occasionally fought doggedly, although never skilfully; but when opposed to combatants of the Anglo-Saxon race, they have invariably shown themselves arrant cowards. Although the soldiers of the States have even less military discipline than those of Mexico, the bodily strength, skill with the rifle, intrepidity, and self-reliance of the former, would render them formidable opponents even to well-drilled European troops. As to the Mexicans, no matter how great the numerical odds in their favour, they never could or would stand against the hardy Yankee volunteers. In the summer of 1846, Mr Parkman met, upon the wild and lonely banks of the Upper Arkansas, Price's Missouri regiment, on its way to Santa Fé.

"No men ever embarked upon a military expedition with a greater love for the work before them than the Missourians; but if discipline and subordination be the criterion of merit, these soldiers were worthless indeed. Yet when their exploits have rung through all America, it would be absurd to deny that they were excellent irregular troops. Their victories were gained in the teeth of every established precedent of warfare; they were owing to a singular combination of military qualities in the men themselves. Without discipline or a spirit of subordination, they knew how to keep their ranks, and act as one man. Doniphan's regiment marched through New Mexico more like a band of Free Companions than like the paid soldiers of a modern government. When General Taylor complimented Doniphan on his success at Sacramento and elsewhere, the colonel's reply very well illustrates the relations which subsisted between the officers and men of his command. 'I don't know anything of the manœuvres. The boys kept coming to me to let them charge; and when I saw a good opportunity, I told them they might go. They were off like a shot, and that's all I know about it.'

"The backwoods lawyer was better fitted to conciliate the good-will than to command the obedience of his men. There were many serving under him, who both from character and education, could better have held command than he. At the battle of Sacramento, his frontiersmen fought under every possible disadvantage. The Mexicans had chosen their own position; they were drawn up across the valley that led to their native city of Chihuahua; their whole front was covered by intrenchments, and defended by batteries of heavy cannon; they outnumbered the invaders five to one. An eagle flew over the Americans, and a deep murmur rose along their lines. The enemy's batteries opened; long they remained under fire, but when at length the word was given, they shouted and ran forward. In one of the divisions, when midway to the enemy, a drunken officer ordered a halt; the exasperated men hesitated to obey. 'Forward, boys!' cried a private from the ranks; and the Americans, rushing like tigers upon the enemy, bounded over the breastwork. Four hundred Mexicans were slain upon the spot, and the rest fled, scattering over the plain like sheep. The standards, cannon, and baggage were taken, and among the rest a waggon laden with cords, which the Mexicans, in the fulness of their confidence, had made ready for tying the American prisoners."

A curious picture of military undiscipline—of egregious cowardice on the one hand, and fortunate audacity on the other. It is evident that the Doniphan mode of carrying on the war—consulting the men's pleasure, with officers drunk before the enemy, and privates giving the word of command—however successful it may prove against the wretched Mexicans, or in mountain and guerilla warfare, would never answer in the open field against a regular and skilfully commanded army. The question, then, follows,—How far could these staunch and gallant American riflemen be trained to the strict discipline and military exercises and manœuvres essential to the efficiency of large bodies of troops, without impairing the very qualities, the feelings of independent action and self-reliance, which render them so valuable as irregular warriors? This inquiry, however, is not worth pursuing; for we suppose there is little chance of Uncle Sam meddling in European quarrels, and sincerely trust he will so curb his annexing mania as to avoid all risk of European armaments encountering him in his own hemisphere. Touching these Missourian volunteers, however, Mr Parkman's account of their appearance, and of his interview with them, is most graphic and characteristic. One forenoon he and his companion, Mr Shaw, turned aside to the river bank, half-a-mile from the trail, to get water and rest. They put up a kind of awning, and whilst seated under it upon their buffalo robes, and smoking, they saw a dark body of horsemen approaching.

"'We are going to catch it now,' said Shaw: 'look at those fellows; there'll be no peace for us here.' And, in good truth, about half the volunteers had straggled away from the line of march, and were riding over the meadow towards us.

"'How are you?' said the first who came up, alighting from his horse, and throwing himself upon the ground. The rest followed close, and a score of them soon gathered about us, some lying at full length, and some sitting on horseback. They all belonged to a company raised in St Louis. There were some ruffian faces among them, and some haggard with debauchery; but, on the whole, they were extremely good-looking men, superior beyond measure to the ordinary rank and file of an army. Except that they were booted to the knees, they wore their belts and military trappings over the ordinary dress of citizens. Besides their swords and holster pistols, they carried, slung from their saddles, the excellent Springfield carbines, loaded at the breech. They inquired the character of our party, and were anxious to know the prospect of killing buffalo, and the chance that their horses would stand the journey to Santa Fé. All this was well enough, but a moment after a worse visitation came upon us.

"'How are you, strangers? Whar are you going, and whar are you from?' said a fellow, who came trotting up with an old straw hat on his head. He was dressed in the coarsest brown homespun cloth. His face was rather sallow, from fever and ague, and his tall figure, although strong and sinewy, was quite thin, and had, besides, an angular look, which, together with his boorish seat on horseback, gave him an appearance anything but graceful. Plenty more of the same stamp were close behind him. Their company was raised in one of the frontier counties, and we soon had abundant evidence of their rustic breeding: dozens of them came crowding round, pushing between our first visitors, and staring at us with unabashed faces.

"'Are you the captain?' asked one fellow.

"'What's your business out here?' inquired another.

"'Whar do you live when you're at home?' said a third.

"'I reckon you're traders,' surmised a fourth; and, to crown the whole, one of them came confidently to my side, and inquired, in a low voice, 'What is your partner's name?'

"As each new comer repeated the same questions, the nuisance became intolerable. Our military visitors were soon disgusted at the concise nature of our replies, and we could overhear them muttering curses against us. Presently, to our amazement, we saw a large cannon with four horses come lumbering up behind the crowd; and the driver, who was perched on one of the animals, stretching his neck so as to look over the rest of the men, called out,—

"'Whar are you from, and what's your business?'

"The captain of one of the companies was amongst our visitors, drawn by the same curiosity that had attracted his men.

"'Well, men,' said he at last, lazily rising from the ground where he had been lounging, 'it's getting late; I reckon we had better be moving.'

"'I shan't start yet, anyhow,' said one fellow, who lay half asleep, with his head resting on his arm.

"'Don't be in a hurry, captain,' added the lieutenant.

"'Well, have it your own way, we'll wait awhile longer,' replied the obsequious commander.

"At length, however, our visitors went straggling away as they had come, and we, to our great relief, were left alone again."

A most mirth-provoking specimen of American character. But we must return to our friend and favourite, Lieutenant Wise, who is truly a Yankee Crichton in a pea-jacket. Besides his nautical skill, and the lingual accomplishments already adverted to, he is a Nimrod in the hunting-field, a Centaur on horseback, a Vestris in the mazes of the dance. Lovers of wild sports in the West will luxuriate in his descriptions of hunting exploits, of his combats with grizzly bears fourteen hundred pounds weight, and his chase of an antelope whose fore-leg he had nearly severed from its shoulder with a rifle bullet, but which still managed to run four leagues, the wounded member "traversing round in its flight like a wheel," before receiving its death-wound. Unable to extract a tithe of the passages that tempt us, we hurry on to his departure for the Mexican capital, whither he was sent early in the month of May, as bearer of a despatch, and in company with a Mexican officer, with whom the lieutenant was at first disposed to be most friendly and sociable, but who forfeited his esteem by the cool proposal of a plan to cheat the government, and whom he soon managed to leave behind—no difficult matter, for the Mexican was cumbered with portmanteau and sumpter mule, whereas the Yankee's sole baggage, as he himself informs us, consisted of two shirts and a toothbrush. Thus lightly equipped, his pace was very rapid; not so much so, however, as to prevent his noting down all that occurred by the way. After La Barca and Ruxton, it is a difficult task to give novelty to an account of Mexican travel and peculiarities. Mr Wise has surmounted the difficulty; and so great is the freshness and originality of his narrative, that we read it with as much zest and enjoyment as if it were the first instead of the twentieth book relating to Mexico which we have perused within the last few years. His anecdotes are most racy and piquant; his sketches of Mexican women, officers, leperos, and of his own countrymen in Mexico, are taken from the life with a truthful and vivid pencil. With the class of leperos he had already made acquaintance on the threshold of the country. Turning, one day, into a bowling alley at Mazatlan, with the officers of a British frigate, he gave a fine horse to hold to one of those Mexican mendicants. The fellow's hatred of the gringos was stronger than his love of gain; for no sooner was he left alone than he drew a pistol from the holsters, shot the horse, and ran for his life, which certainly would not have been worth a maravedi had he tarried for the arrival of the enraged lieutenant. "Oh, Mr Smithers!" exclaims the disconsolate mariner thus cruelly dismounted—"Oh, Mr Smithers! you keep a good ten-pin alley, sing a good song, and your wife prepares good chocolate; you are, together, good fellows; but you should never, O Smithers! transform your establishment into a knacker's yard. And you, my cruel lepero! had I ever got a sight of you along that weapon you handled so well—ah! I wellnigh wept for sorrow that night, and did not recover my spirits for a fortnight." The leperos, we need hardly explain, are the pest of Mexico—ragged, dirty, often disgusting with disease or deformity, born idlers, beggars, and thieves—in the latter capacity so especially skilful, that Mr Wise inclines to the belief that a man, standing open-mouthed in a crowd of them, could hardly escape having the gold picked from his molars. They reaped a rich harvest at the time of the American invasion. It was a case of "nos amis les ennemis." The conquerors were preyed upon by the conquered. Iron bars were unavailing against the cunning rogues. "One evening some expert practitioner contrived to entice a valuable pair of pistols, clothing, and other articles, from my table in the centre of a large apartment, by introducing a pole and hook through the iron grille of the window; and the same night, my friend Molinero was robbed of his bed-clothes, while sleeping, by the same enterprising method." By a strange tolerance, these leperos are admitted everywhere; and in the splendid coffee and gambling houses of the large cities, they are found rubbing their filthy rags against officers' embroideries and the fine broadcloth of wealthy burgesses. At Guanaxato, Mr Wise gives a lively description of a scene of this kind in the handsome saloons of the Gran Sociedad, recalling to our memory, though at a long interval, some striking pages of the first volume of Sealsfield's gorgeous Mexican romance, Der Virey and die Aristocraten. The lepero's chief pastimes are thieving, sleeping, and gambling for copper coins. By way of variety, he occasionally gets up a mortal combat. We think the following the best account of a knife-duel we ever read:—

"A lepero was purchasing a bit of chocolate; it fell in the dirt, when another, probably thinking it a lawful prize, seized it and took a large bite; whereupon the lawful owner swung a mass of heavy steel spurs attached to his wrist, jingling, with some force, on the offender's head. In a second down dropped the spurs, and serapas (a kind of blanket) were wound round the left arms. With low deep curses and flashing eyes, their knives gleamed in the light; the spectators cleared a ring, and to work they went. I sprang upon a stone pillar to be out of harm's way, and thus had a clear view of the fray. Their blades were very unequally matched: one was at least eight inches, and the other not half that measurement; but both appeared adepts at the game, watching each other like wild cats, ready for a spring—moving cautiously to and fro, making feints by the shielded arm, or stamp of the foot, for a minute or two; when, quick as a flash, I saw two rapid passes made by both: blood spirted from an ugly wound in the spur-vender's throat, but at the same moment his short weapon sealed the doom of his antagonist, and he lay upon the ground, lifeless as the bloody steel that struck him. I glanced at the wounds after the affair had terminated, and found the knife had been plunged twice directly in the region of the heart. There was no effort or attempt made by the beholders to arrest the parties; and the survivor caught up his spurs—a bystander quickly folded a handsome kerchief to his neck—and threading the crowd he was soon out of sight. The corpse was laid upon a liquor-stand, with a delf platter upon the breast."

The Mexican capital was not a little Americanised at the period of Mr Wise's visit. The account he gives of the state of affairs there, is not very creditable to the morals and tastes of the victorious volunteers; and he expresses a natural doubt whether the scenes there enacted will have been beneficial to the thousands of young men whom the war had called to Mexico. The great hotels and coffee-houses were all under Yankee dominion, with Yankee ice, and drinks, signs, manners, customs, and habits, "as if the city had been from time immemorial Yankeefied all over, instead of being only occupied a short twelvemonth by the troops." Debauchery of every kind was rife, but gambling was the vice that took the strongest hold. In the large tavern or restauration, where Mr Wise usually dined, in every nook from hall to attic, with the exception of the eating-room, in the corridors and on the landing-places, gaming-tables were displayed.

"Such a condensed essence of worldly hell, in all its glaring, disgusting frightfulness, never existed. And there never was lack of players either—no! not a table but was closely surrounded by officers and soldiers—blacklegs and villains of all sorts—betting uncommonly high, too—many of the banks having sixty and eighty thousand dollars in gold alone on the tables—and once I saw a common soldier stake and win two hundred ounces at a single bet. Other saloons were filled with Mexican girls, with music and dancing, attended by every species of vice, all going on unceasingly, day and night together."

This is an American's account. Of course most of this lavish expenditure and gambled gold had their origin in the plunder of Mexico. Indeed, Lieutenant Wise does not mince the matter at all, but informs us how he himself, after a night-excursion in the vicinity of Mazatlan, returned laden with spoil, and felt such an itching to search people's pockets that he made no doubt of soon becoming as good a freebooter as ever drew sword. He was then, however, but a novice in the science of pillage, for he afterwards learned that a saddle, which he had appropriated, contained six golden ounces, whereby the saddler, to whom he intrusted it for renovation, was much benefited. When an officer holding the United States commission saw nothing derogatory in plunder, there can be no doubt of the rapacity of the dissipated and reckless desperadoes of which the American expeditionary force was notoriously in part composed. And in an army where discipline was lax, and a spirit of anti-military equality prevailed amongst officers and men, the contagion would rapidly spread. Doubtless this was an aggravating cause of Mexican hatred to the Gringos. Nevertheless, when the fighting was over, kindness and attention were shown to the invaders, and some of the Mexican officers appear to have been thrashed into a most affectionate regard for their conquerors. One fine fellow, a colonel of cavalry, all gold and glitter, with richly chased sabre scabbard, and spurs of a dazzling burnish, insisted upon giving a breakfast to a large party of American officers. There were a number of Mexican militaires present, all decorated, some with emblems of battles in which they had been defeated; and as the repast was in some degree public, (being held in a large billiard-room,) a number of casual observers assembled round the table, and helped to drink the numerous toasts, pocketing their glasses after each, to be ready for the next. The banquet began with a bumper of brandy, by way of whet; a most miscellaneous collection of edibles was then placed upon the board, and claret and sherry circulated rapidly to the health and memory of a host of living and dead generals, both Mexican and American, beginning with Washington and Hidalgo, and gradually arriving at Santa Anna and "Skote," (Scott,) for which last-named pair of warriors Mr Wise estimates that at least eighty or ninety cheers were given. The Mexicans, habitually temperate, got exceedingly drunk, and, like most southerns when in that state, furiously excited; the chief characteristics of their intoxication being unbounded affection for their guests, and admiration of their own prowess.

"Our gallant host, in a few disjointed observations, assured us that he was not only brave himself, and loved bravery in others, but that his horse was brave, and had been wounded in divers battles. 'Io soy valiente!' said the fierce colonel, pounding the orders on his capacious breast, and forthwith proclaimed to the audience his intention to pay for everything that anybody could possibly eat or drink for a fortnight; and, seizing me by the arms, he impressively remarked that I was the most intimate friend he ever had except his wife, and requested me to throw his huge shako up to the ceiling, solely for amistad, and for the good-fellowship of the thing—which I instantly did, and made the bearskin and golden plates ring against the rafters. Thereupon he called for more wine, and desired all who loved him to break a few glasses, commencing himself with a couple of decanters."

At which period of the action the landlord cut off the supplies of liquor, anticipating, doubtless, the entire demolition of his establishment; and the revellers got to horse, and went for a turn in the Alameda, then thronged by all the fashion of Queretaro, in which city these jovial proceedings occurred. After galloping round the promenade, at a pace that terrified the natives, Lieutenant Wise ran a "jouist," as he calls it, with one of his Mexican friends, who was still under the influence of his unwonted libations.

"In true Californian style, he shook his bridle, gave spur, and came leaping like a flash towards me. I was no novice at the sport, and, touching one of the finest horses in the army with my heel, the gallant sorrel sprang forward to meet him. We met in full career; my charger stood like the great pyramid, but the shock rolled my antagonist into the street. I should in courtesy have got down from the saddle to his assistance, but, reflecting that without a ladder I never should be able to get on my high steed again, I remained quiet. Being a sailor, I gained great reputation by this feat, and gave an entertainment on the strength of it."

Surely there never was a jollier fellow than Lieutenant Wise of the United States navy. A rare good companion he must be, a real bonus socius across a julep, a very storehouse of fun, frolic, and adventure. So well do we like his society, that we are only sorry we cannot at present accompany him further on his rambles, or return with him to Mazatlan, where he arrived at a flying gallop, after a ride of 2500 miles on horseback—the last 112 leagues in fifty-three hours, (said to be the quickest trip on record,) to be received by a host of friends, and by a Yankee band playing, "Hail, Columbia!" and sail with him to Polynesia, and revisit Valparaiso and Lima, and many other places, in all of which he manages heartily to amuse both himself and his reader, till he finally drops anchor in the waters of the Chesapeake, arriving, with equal satisfaction to both parties, at the end of 450 pages, and 55,000 miles. His book richly deserves an independent notice; but as we started by associating it with others, we are compelled to lay it aside, whilst we visit the glittering coast of California, in company with Mr Theodore Johnson, who arrived on the 1st of April 1849 in Sancelito Bay, and proceeded forthwith to look for the city of the same name, whose wide and elegant streets he had frequently traced upon the map. After some search, he found the city. "It consisted of one board-shed and one tent, holding on to the hill-side like a woodpecker against a tree." Thus was his first illusion dissipated. A few other Californian castles were speedily to crumble. "The latitude of Richmond, and climate of Italy, the gold of Ophir, the silver, red wood and cedar of Solomon's temple, the lovely valley of the Sacramento, the vineyards of France, indigo of Hindostan, and wheat of America, golden rocks, and rivers flowing over the same metal," such were a few of the bright promises that had lured him, "in company with thousands of his go-ahead countrymen," to the Eldorado of the Pacific. These were the things he expected; let us collect, from his first week's experience in California, those that he really found. Ugly barren hills, a miserable sandy-clay soil, producing a weed which a starving jackass will scorn, and a fine dust, against which the most impenetrable eyelids are not proof, a repulsive and disagreeable climate in the month of April, (growing worse as the summer advances,) the extremes of heat and cold following each other in constant succession, water often extremely scarce, and impregnated with quicksilver, platina, and other minerals, killing the fish, and giving Christians the Sacramento fever, "a slow, continual fever, which men go about with for months; but in its more violent forms soon mortal, always affecting the brain, and, in case of recovery, leaving the mind impaired. The lung fever and rheumatism are brought on by working in the cold water, and stooping continually under the burning sun." The scurvy, too, was prevalent, from the use of salt provisions, for none could find time to procure fresh ones, to hunt or tend cattle; and if they did leave their eternal digging for such pursuits, the prices they expected were preposterous. Wild cattle and game are plenty in the valley of the Sacramento and adjacent mountains, but in California the hours are truly golden, and not to be wasted on kitchen considerations; to say nothing of the hardship of driving wild oxen or carrying a gun across a rugged country with the thermometer at 109° to 112° in the shade—the usual temperature in June and July, and one fully justifying the derivation of the name California from two Spanish words signifying a hot oven, caliente horno. "The thermometer stood at 90° Fahrenheit, at noon, in the shade of Culloma valley, on the 16th of April; and at night we slept cold in our tent with our clothing on, and provided with abundant blankets." With such a climate, and with no grass in the mountains fit to sustain them, it is no wonder that the best pack-horses can carry but one hundred and fifty to two hundred pounds weight across the mountains, and frequently fall down and die if overladen. At the time referred to—that is to say, in the month of April last—Mr Johnson "continually saw old miners departing for the cañons[6] of the middle and north Forks, with one month's supply of provisions, consisting of seventy-five lb. of pork and seventy-five lb. of pilot bread, for which they paid respectively at the rates of one hundred and fifty and one hundred and twenty dollars per hundred pounds! Now, although the prices of these articles were rapidly declining on the sea-board, by reason of the immense importation, yet the price of fresh beef was twenty-five dollars per hundred pounds in San Francisco, and must farther enhance there, the supply then being quite insufficient. Fresh provisions will therefore be consumed at the seaport and trading towns, and not in the mining region. The humbug of preserved meats was already exploded, great quantities having been spoiled." All this was very different from the promised vineyards and corn-fields; and Mr Johnson, who had not come to California to feed on salt junk at six shillings a pound, and to drink mercurial water, began to wish himself back again almost as soon as arrived.

In countries where a large majority of the men are content to give, year after year, their skill, energy, and time, in exchange for a few hundred pieces of gold, or even of silver, the reports of a land where the most precious of these metals turns up under the ploughshare, abounds in the rivers, mingles with the highway-dust, and is picked from the bricks of the houses, are naturally at first received with doubt and misgiving, and suspected of exaggeration, if not condemned as fiction. We confess, for our part, that we attached little weight to the first accounts of Californian marvels, and that long after the wise men of the East had begun to debate, in the shadow of the grasshopper, the possible effect upon the currency of the anticipated influx of the produce of the diggings, we still were sceptics as to the magnitude of the newly-found treasure. But even those who gave readiest credence to the tale of wonder, could hardly, we should have thought, have expected that the ingots were to be gathered without trouble or pain beyond that of performing a long journey and filling a big bag. Evidently this was Mr Johnson's notion, and that of not a few others of his sanguine countrymen, "who left their homes and families, and the decencies of civilisation, with the expectation of acquiring an adequate competency by the efforts of a single year." At what figure Mr Johnson rates an "adequate competency" we know not; but it is evident he expected to be placed on pretty nearly the same footing as those Oriental princes who, after wandering through the desert to the enchanted gardens, had the free pick of trees whose fruits were diamonds and rubies. The real state of affairs proved very different. A few persons, dwellers in California when the golden richness of the soil was first discovered in 1848,[7] may have made large fortunes on easy terms, by being early in the field, and through barter with the Indians, who (before they were frightened and soured by the shooting and scalping practices of the Oregonians and others) were willing enough to labour and trade, and to give gold-dust weight for weight for glass beads and other baubles. We read of one man, a western farmer, owner and occupier of a loghouse, known as the Blue Tent, who arrived in California before the gold discoveries, treated the Indians well, learned their language, employed them to dig, and realised, it is said, two hundred thousand dollars. Another old settler, we are told, accumulated, in the season of 1848, also by help of the Indians, nearly two bushels of gold-dust. Our arithmetic is not equal to the reduction of this into pounds sterling, but at a rough estimate we should take it to represent a very pleasing sum—possibly the competency Mr Johnson aspired to. But those palmy days of gold-gathering have fled, violently driven away; the Indians, welcomed with bullets instead of beads, will work no more, and every man must dig for himself. And so did Mr Johnson—but only for a very short time, and with no very prosperous result. The gold fever, under whose influence he and his companions started for the diggings, was still burning in their veins when, on the second day after leaving San Francisco, they halted for the night on the river bank, and one of them, "thrusting his bowie-knife into the ground, revealed innumerable shining yellow particles, immediately announced gold discoveries on the Sacramento, and claimed the placer." But it was mica, not gold. They had much further to go, and worse to fare, before reaching the right metal. It was the interest of the United States' government and of certain speculators to tempt emigrants to the distant territory on the shore of the Pacific; and accordingly, says Mr Johnson, "the wonders of the gold region were trumpeted to the world, with unabating, but by no means unforeseeing zeal. Glowing accounts were sent to the United States of the result of all the most successful efforts in the mines. To these were added a delicious climate and wonderful agricultural fertility. The inaccessibility of the placeres, the diseases, the hardships, &c. &c., were quite forgotten or omitted." And thus a certain number of ambitious young men, (many of them wholly unfitted, by their previous mode of life for roughing it in a new country,) were lured from their comfortable homes in New York and elsewhere, in the confident expectation that, on arriving in California, they would ascend beauteous rivers in commodious ships, sleep on board at night, and pleasantly pass a few hours of each day in collecting the wealth that lay strewn upon the shore. Such is the account given of the matter by poor Johnson, who denounces the journey across the mountainous and roadless country as most toilsome, and the whole adventure as disappointing and unsatisfactory. At last he and his companions reached the lower bar[8] on the south fork of American River, shouldered shovels, buckets, and washing-machine, and applied themselves to the task.

"The scene presented to us was new indeed, and not more extraordinary than impressive. Some, with long-handled shovels, delved among clumps of bushes, or by the side of large rocks, never raising their eyes for an instant; others, with pick and shovel, worked among stone and gravel, or with trowels searched under banks and roots of trees, where, if rewarded with small lumps of gold, the eye shone brighter for an instant, when the search was immediately and more ardently resumed. At the edge of the stream, or knee-deep and waist-deep in water, as cold as melted ice and snow could make it, some were washing gold with tin pans, or the common cradle-rocker, while the rays of the sun poured down on their heads with an intensity exceeding any thing we ever experienced at home, though it was but the middle of April. The thirst for gold and the labour of acquisition overruled all else, and totally absorbed every faculty. Complete silence reigned among the miners: they addressed not a word to each other, and seemed averse to all conversation."

After digging and washing twenty bucketfuls of earth, Mr Johnson's party had obtained but four dollars' worth of gold. At noon, the sun's heat being intolerable, they knocked off from work; not much encouraged by the result. This, however, they admit, was a poor digging, the stream being yet too high, and the bar not sufficiently exposed—to say nothing of their being novices at the work. They persisted little, however: another trial was made with no better result; and, in short, a week's effort and observation sickened them of a toil so far less lucrative than they had anticipated. Two of the party (Mr Johnson was one of them) resolved to return to San Francisco till the healthier season of winter; a third, having some goods, took to trading; the fourth and last, a hardy little down-easter from Maine, stuck to the diggings.

By this time, we are not entirely dependent on American books or newspaper correspondence for intelligence from the Californian mines. Some portion of the gold that has come to this country has been brought by the finders; and only the other day, a party of them reached England, having left the diggings as lately as the beginning of October. The details obtained from these men, who are of various European countries, confirm, in all important particulars, the statements of Mr Johnson, with merely the difference of tint imparted by failure and success. Either easily discouraged or physically unequal to encounter the hardships inseparable from the search for and extraction of the gold, Mr Johnson, disappointed in his sanguine expectations, makes a sombre report of the speculation; whereas these more persevering and prosperous miners, having safely returned to Europe, their pockets full of "chunks," scales and dust of the most undeniable purity and excellence, naturally give a more rose-coloured view of the enterprise. They admit, however, (to use the words of one of them,) that "it takes a smart lad to do good in California," and that it is useless for any one to go thither unless prepared to rough it, in the fullest sense of the word. At first, they inform us the amount of theft and outrage was very great; but summary and severe punishment checked this. Mr Johnson deplores the existence of Lynch-law. It really appears to us that California is the very place where such a system is not only justifiable, but indispensable. One miner stated that he belonged to a band or club, thirty in number, who threw together all the gold they found, and shared alike; sharp penalties being denounced against any member of the society who attempted to divert his findings from the common stock. The amount obtained by each member of this joint-stock company during the season of eight or nine months was equivalent to thirteen or fourteen hundred pounds sterling. Not quite the "adequate competency" anticipated by Mr Theodore T. Johnson, but still a very pretty gain for men, most of whom would probably have found it impossible, in any other way, and in the same time, to earn a tithe of the amount. More than one of them proposed, after depositing his treasure safely in Europe, to augment it by a second trip to the gold region; and held the time occupied by the voyage to and fro as little loss, digging being impeded by the winter snows. The winter of 1848-9 was very severe, the snow lying four feet deep on the mountains, and having fallen even on the coast; a circumstance unprecedented in California, whose Spanish and Indian inhabitants attributed the disagreeable phenomenon to the American intruders. Notwithstanding this unwonted rigour, however, we learn from Mr Johnson that "large numbers of hardy and industrious Oregonians spent the last winter in the mines of California, generally with success commensurate with their perseverance, prudence, and sobriety." The lumps of gold, according to the account of the miners already referred to, (and which tallies exactly in this particular with Mr Johnson's statement) are found in what are called the dry diggings, in the red sandy clay of the ravines on the mountain sides; whilst the dust and scales are obtained by washing the earth and sand from the rivers. Lumps of pure gold, with a greater or less admixture of quartz, are also found in the crevices of a white-veined rock.

Whilst denouncing the expense of health and labour at which the Californian gold is obtained, Mr Johnson admits the vast quantity of the metal that has been and still is being collected. In town, fort, and settlement,—in every place, in short, where a score or two of men were congregated, he beheld astonishing evidence of its abundance. "Quarts of the dust or scale gold were to be seen on the tables or counters, or in the safes of all classes of men; and although the form of small scales was most common, yet pieces or lumps of a quarter to three ounces were to be seen everywhere; and among several chunks one was shown us by C. L. Ross, Esq., weighing eighty-one ounces. This was solid pure gold with only the appearance of a little quartz in it." In one day he saw bushels of gold, most of it too pure for jewellery or coin, without alloy. Although the price of the metal was maintained at sixteen dollars per ounce, its depreciation in comparison with labour and merchandise was enormous; and in the mines, during the winter of 1848, "a good deal of gold was sold for three or four dollars the ounce." Carpenters and blacksmiths received an ounce a-day. Lumber was at six hundred dollars per thousand feet. A lot of land, purchased two years previously for a cask of brandy, fetched eighteen thousand dollars. At a French café, a cup of coffee, bit of ham, and two eggs, cost three dollars, or 12s. 6d. A host of details of this kind are added, most of which have already been given in the American and English newspapers. Captain Sutter's saw-mill was earning a thousand dollars a-day. At the Stanislaus diggings, in the winter of 1848-9, a box of raisins, greatly needed for the cure of scurvy, then raging there without remedy, sold for its weight in gold dust, or four thousand dollars! Reckless expenditure is the natural consequence of easily-acquired wealth. The diggers, after a brief period of severe labour, would come into town for what they called "a burst," and scatter their gold dust and ingots like sand and pebbles, keeping "upon the ball" for three or four days and nights, or even for a week together, drinking brandy at eight and champagne at sixteen dollars the bottle, often getting helplessly drunk and losing the whole of their gains. One fellow, during a three days' drunken fit, got rid of sixteen thousand dollars in gold. Two hopeful youths, known as Bill and Gus, who took an especial liking to Mr Johnson and his party, had come in for "a particular, general, and universal burst;" and they carried out their intentions most completely. They were tender in their liquor, and, in the excess of their drunken philanthropy, they purchased a barrel of ale at three dollars a bottle, and a parcel of sardinas at eight dollars a box, and patrolled the district, forcing every one to drink. In paying for something, Bill dropped a lump of gold, worth two or three dollars, which Mr Johnson picked up, and handed to him. "Without taking it, he looked at us with a comical mixture of amazement and ill-humour, and at length broke out with—'Well, stranger, you are a curiosity; I guess you hain't been in the diggins long, and better keep that for a sample.'" Even in all sobriety, miners would not be troubled with anything less than dollars, and often scattered small coins by handfuls in the streets, rather than count or carry them. And as neither exorbitant prices nor drunken bursts sufficed to exhaust the resources of the gold-laden diggers, gambling went on upon all sides. "Talk of placers," cried an American, who had just cleared his thousand dollars in ten minutes, at a monte-table in San Francisco; "what better placer need a man want than this?" At Sutter's Fort, a halting-place of the miners, gambling prevailed without limit or stint, men often losing in a single night the result of many months' severe toil. Drunkenness and fighting diversified the scene. "Hundreds of dollars were often spent in a night, and thousands on Sunday, when Pandemonium was in full blast." Such iniquities were no more than might be expected amongst the ragamuffin crew assembled in California, and which included discharged convicts from New South Wales, Mexicans, Kanakas, Peruvians, Chilians, representatives of every European nation, and thousands of the more dissolute and reckless class of United States men.

It is not surprising that some of the minority of honest and respectable men, who found themselves mingled with the mob of ruffians and outlaws assembled in California, thought the prospect of wealth dearly purchased by a prolonged residence in vile society and a most trying climate, and by labour and exposure destructive to health. Mr Johnson assures us that, among the miners who had been long at the diggings, he saw very few who were not suffering from disease—emaciated by fever till they were mere walking shadows, or tormented by frequently recurring attacks of scurvy and rheumatism. If there was a constant stream of adventurers proceeding to the diggings, there was also a pretty steady flow of weary and sickly men returning thence. It would seem, from Mr Johnson's account, that no previous habit of hard labour qualifies the human frame to follow, without injury, the trying trade of a gold-grubber. "We met a party of six sailors, of the Pacific whalers, who were returning to go before the mast again, swearing, sailor-fashion, that they would rather go a whaling at half wages than dig gold any more." Mr Johnson was somewhat of the same way of thinking. He sums up a general review of California in the following words:—

"So large an emigration of the American people, as have gone to that territory, must make something of the country. They will make it one of the states of this Union, at all events, and speedily, too: and although the country is only adapted by nature for mining and grazing, yet a constant trade must result from the former, and more or less agriculture be added to the latter, from the necessity of the case. A few have made, and will hereafter make fortunes there, and very many of those who remain long enough will accumulate something; but the great mass, all of whom expected to acquire large amounts of gold in a short time, must be comparatively disappointed. The writer visited California to dig gold, but chose to abandon that purpose rather than expose his life and health in the mines; and as numbers were already seeking employment in San Francisco without success, and he had neither the means nor the inclination to speculate, he concluded to return to his family and home industry."

Finally, the disappointed gold-seeker addresses to his readers a parting hint, apprehensive, seemingly, of their supposing that his own ill-success has warped his judgment, or induced him to calumniate the country. "If you think," he says, "we have not shown you enough of the elephant, but got on the wrong way and slid off backwards, please to mount him and take a view for yourself." By which metaphorical phrase, if the worthy Johnson means that we are to go to the diggings, and judge for ourselves, we can only say we had much rather take his word than his advice, and read his book by our fireside than tread in his footsteps amongst the mountains of California.

Without further comment, but with a warm recommendation, we close these three American volumes. It were idle to subject to minute criticism books that make no pretensions to literary merit, and which, professing only to give, in plain language, an account of the writers' personal adventures and experiences, are written in off-hand style, and are wholly free from pedantry and affectation. If they are occasionally somewhat rude in form, like the men and countries they portray, they at least are frank and honest in substance; and they contain more novelty, amusement, and information, than are to be found in any dozen of those vapid narratives of fashionable tourists with which the Bentley and Colburn presses annually cram the nauseated public. We have been much pleased and diverted by the unsophisticated pages of Messrs Johnson, Wise, and Parkman.

HOWARD.[9]

To add another to the numerous eulogies which have been justly bestowed on the memory of Howard the philanthropist, is not our object. We are far from making the attempt: our aim is to contribute something to the more accurate and familiar knowledge of the man himself—his life, his character, his career, his services.

It not unfrequently happens that the great men of history, whom we have admired in our youth, sink grievously in our estimation, and lose their heroic port and proportions, when we survey them more nearly, and at a season of maturer judgment. They shrink into the bounds and limits of commonplace mortality. We venture even to administer reproof and castigation, where, perhaps, we had venerated almost to idolatry. Such is not the case with Howard. Poets have sung his praises, and his name has rounded many an eloquent period. Howard the philanthropist becomes very soon a name as familiar to us as those of the kings and queens who have sat upon our throne; but the vague admiration, thus early instilled into us, suffers no diminution when, at an after period, we become intimately acquainted with the character of the man. We may approach the idol here without danger to our faith. We may analyse the motive—we may "vex, probe, and criticise"—it is all sound. Take your stethoscope and listen—there is no hollow here—every pulse beats true.

The Howard that poets and orators had taught us to admire loses none of its greatness on a near approach. But it undergoes a remarkable transformation. The real Howard, who devoted his life to the jail and the lazaretto, was a very different person from that ideal of benevolence which the verse of Darwin, or the eloquence of Burke, had called up into our minds. Instead of this faint and classic ideal, we have the intensely and somewhat sternly religious man, guided and sustained, every step of his way, not alone, nor principally, by the amiable but vacillating sentiment which passes under the name of philanthropy, but by an exalted, severe, imperative sense of duty. It is Howard the Christian, Howard the Puritan, that stands revealed before us. The form changes, but only to grow more distinct and intelligible. The features have no longer that classic outline we had attributed to them; but they bear henceforth the stamp of reality—of a man who, without doubt, had lived and moved amongst us.

Those who have rested content (and we think there are many such) with that impression of Howard which is derived from the panegyrics scattered through our polite literature, and who accordingly attribute to him, as the master-motive of his conduct, simply a wide benevolence—a sentiment of humanity exalted to a passion—must be conscious of a certain uneasy sense of doubt, an involuntary scepticism; must feel that there is something here unexplained, or singularly exaggerated. Their Howard, if they should scrutinise their impression, is a quite anomalous person. No philanthropist they have ever heard of—no mere lover of his kind, sustained only by the bland sentiment of humanity, not even supported by any new enthusiastic faith in the perfectibility of the species—ever lived the life of this man, or passed through a tithe of his voluntary toils and sufferings. Philanthropists are generally distinguished for their love of speculation; they prefer to think rather than to act; and their labours are chiefly bestowed on the composition of their books. Philanthropists have occasionally ruined themselves; but their rash schemes are more notorious for leading to the ruin of others. As a race, they are not distinguished for self-sacrifice, or for practical and strenuous effort. There must, therefore, to the persons we are describing, be a certain doubt and obscurity hanging over the name of Howard the philanthropist. It must sound like a myth or fable; they must half suspect that, if some Niebuhr should look into the matter, their heroic figure would vanish into thin air.

Let them, however, proceed to the study of the veritable Howard, and all the mystery clears up. The philanthropist of the orator gives place to one who, in the essential elements of his character, may be ranked with Christian missionaries and Christian martyrs. Instead of the half-pagan ideal, or personification of benevolence, there rises before them a character which a rigorous analysis might justly class with those of St Francis or Loyola, or whatever the Christian church has at any time exhibited of exalted piety and complete self-devotion. The same spirit which, in past times, has driven men into the desert, or shut them up in cells with the scourge and the crucifix; the same spirit which has impelled them to brave all the dangers of noxious climates and of savage passions, to extend the knowledge of religion amongst barbarous nations—was animating Howard when he journeyed incessantly from prison to prison, tracking human misery into all its hidden and most loathsome recesses. He who, in another century, would have been the founder of a new order of barefooted monks, became, in Protestant England, the great exemplar of philanthropic heroism. Perhaps he too, in one sense, may be said to have founded a new religious order, though it is not bound together by common rules, and each member of it follows, as he best may, the career of charitable enterprise that lies open before him. The mystery, we say, clears up. Benevolent our Howard was, undoubtedly, by nature, as by nature also he was somewhat imperious; but that which converted his benevolence into a ceaseless motive of strenuous action, of toil, and of sacrifice; that which utilised his natural love of authority, transforming it into that requisite firmness and predominance over others without which no man, at least no reformer, can be rigidly just, and, face to face, admonish, threaten, and reprove; that which constituted the mainspring and vital force of his character, was intense piety, and the all-prevailing sense of duty to his God. The craving of his soul was some great task-work, to be done in the eye of Heaven. Not the love of man, nor the praise of man, but conscience, and to be a servant of the Most High, were his constant motive and desire.

Men of ardent piety generally apply themselves immediately to the reproduction in others of that piety which they feel to be of such incomparable importance. This becomes the predominant, often the sole object of their lives. It is natural it should be so. In such minds all the concerns of the present world sink into insignificance; and their fellow-men are nothing, except as they are, or are not, fellow-Christians. Howard was an exception to this rule. Owing to certain circumstances in his own life; to the manner of his education; to his deficiency in some intellectual qualifications, and his pre-eminence in others, he was led to take the domain of physical suffering—of earthly wretchedness—for the province in which to exert his zeal. For the preacher, or the writer, he was not formed, either by education or by natural endowment; but he was a man of shrewd observation, of great administrative talent, of untiring perseverance, and of an insatiable energy. The St Francis of Protestant England did not, therefore, go forth as a missionary; nor did he become the founder of a new sect, distinguished by any doctrinal peculiarity; but he girded himself up to visit, round the world, the cell of the prisoner—to examine the food he ate, the air he breathed, to rid him of the jail-fever, to drive famine out of its secret haunts, and from its neglected prey. It was this peculiarity which led men to segregate Howard from the class to which, by the great elements of his character, he belongs. To relieve the common wants of our humanity was his object—to war against hunger and disease, and unjust cruelties inflicted by man on man, was his chosen task-work; therefore was it vaguely supposed that the sentiment of humanity was his great predominant motive, and that he was driven about the world by compassion and benevolence.

His remains lie buried in Russia. Dr Clarke, in his travels through that country, relates that "Count Vincent Potoçki, a Polish nobleman of the highest taste and talents, whose magnificent library and museum would do honour to any country, through a mistaken design of testifying his respect for the memory of Howard, has signified his intention of taking up the body that it might be conveyed to his country seat, where a sumptuous monument has been prepared for its reception, upon a small island in the midst of a lake. His countess, being a romantic lady, wishes to have an annual fête consecrated to benevolence; at this the nymphs of the country are to attend, and strew the place with flowers." There are many, we suspect, of his own countrymen and countrywomen, who would be disposed to honour the memory of Howard in a similar manner. They would hang, or carve, their wreaths of flowers upon a tomb where the emblems of Christian martyrdom would be more appropriate. We need hardly add that the design of the romantic countess was not put into execution.

The vague impression prevalent of this remarkable man has been perpetuated by another circumstance. Howard has been unfortunate in his biographers. Dr Aikin, the earliest of these, writes like a gentleman and a scholar; manifests throughout much good sense, a keen intelligence, and a high moral feeling; but his account is brief, and is both defective and deceptive from his incapacity, or unwillingness, to portray the religious aspect of the character he had undertaken to develop. Dr Aikin's little book may still be read with advantage for the general remarks it contains, but it is no biography. Neither was Dr Aikin calculated for a biographer. He wanted both the highest and the lowest qualifications. Details, such as of dates and places, he had not the patience to examine; and he wanted that rarer quality of mind by which the writer is enabled to throw himself into the character of a quite different man from himself, and almost feel by force of sympathy the motives which have actuated him. This the cultivated, tasteful, but, in spite of his verse, the quite didactic mind of Aikin, was incapable of doing.

The Rev. Samuel Palmer, who had known Howard for thirty years, appended to a sermon, preached on the occasion of his death, some account of his life and career. But this, as well as several anonymous contributions to magazines, and a brief anonymous life which appeared at the same time, can be considered only in the light of materials for the future biographer.

The task lay still open, and Mr Baldwin Brown, barrister-at-law, undertook to accomplish it. He appears to have had all the advantages a biographer could desire. He had conversed with the contemporaries and friends of Howard, and with his surviving domestics—an advantage which no subsequent writer could hope to profit by; he was put in possession of the materials which the Rev. Mr Smith and his family, intimate friends of Howard, had collected for the very purpose of such a work as he was engaged on; Dr Brown, professor of theology at Aberdeen, another intimate friend of Howard, transcribed for him, from his commonplace book, the memoranda of conversations held with Howard, and committed to writing at the time; and, above all, he was furnished with extracts and memoranda from diaries kept by Howard himself, and which fortunately had escaped the general conflagration to which the philanthropist, anticipating and disliking the curiosity of the biographer, had devoted his papers. Several influential men amongst the Dissenters interested themselves in obtaining information for him; and the list of those to whom he expresses obligations of this kind, occupies two or three pages of his preface. Mr Brown was himself a man of religious zeal—we presume, from his work, a Dissenter: he could not fail to appreciate the religious aspect of Howard's character. As a lawyer, he was prepared to take an interest in the subject of his labours—the reformation of our prisons and our penal laws. Thus he brought to his task many peculiar advantages; and the work he produced was laborious, conscientious, and very valuable. Unfortunately, Mr Baldwin Brown was a dull writer, by which we here imply that he was also a dull thinker, and his book will be pronounced by the generality of readers to be as dull as it is useful. Notwithstanding the attractive title it bears, and the many interesting particulars contained in it, his biography never attained any popularity. It was probably read extensively amongst the Dissenters, to whose sympathies it more directly appeals than to those of any other class of readers; but we think we are right in saying that it never had much circulation in the world at large.

More parsonic than the parsons, our lawyer-divine can resist no opportunity for sermonising. The eloquence of a Dissenting pulpit, and that when it is but indifferently supplied—the tedious repetition, and the monotonous unmodulated periods of his legal text-books—these combine, or alternate, through the pages of Mr Brown. Yet those who persevere in the perusal of his book will be rewarded. He is judicious in the selection of his materials. He presents us with the means of forming an accurate conception of Howard; though, in so doing, he seems to reveal to an attentive reader more than he had well understood himself.

Tedious or not, this is still the only biography of Howard. A Mr Thomas Taylor has written what appears to be an abridgment of the work. His book is more brief, but it is still more insipid. What notion Mr T. Taylor has of biography may be judged of from this, that he thinks it necessary, in quoting Howard's own original letters, to amend and improve the style—preserving, as he says, the sense, but correcting the composition. He is apparently shocked at the idea that the philanthropist should express himself in indifferent English, even though in a hasty letter to a friend.

Very lately Mr Hepworth Dixon, whose work has recalled us to this subject, has presented us with a life of Howard. It cannot be said of Mr Dixon's book that it is either dull or insipid; it has some of the elements of popularity; but we cannot better describe it in a few words than by saying that it is a caricature of a popular biography. Its flippancy, its conceit, its egregious pretensions, its tawdry novelistic style, are past all sufferance. It is too bad to criticise. But as, in the dearth of any popular biography of Howard, it has assumed for a time a position it by no means merits, we cannot pass it by entirely without notice. For, besides that Mr Dixon writes throughout with execrable taste, he has not dealt conscientiously with the materials before him. His notion of the duty of a biographer is this—that he is to collect every incident of the least piquancy, no matter by whom related, or on what authority, and colour it himself as highly as he can. Evidently the most serious preparation he has made, for writing the life of Howard, has been a course of reading in French romances. It is with the spirit and manner of a Eugene Sue that he sits down to describe the grand and simple career of Howard.

Mr Dixon has not added a single new fact to the biography of Howard, nor any novelty whatever, except such as he has drawn from his own imagination. Nor does he assist in sifting the narrative; on the contrary, whatever dust has the least sparkle in it, though it has been thrice thrown away, he assiduously collects. That he should have nothing new to relate is no matter of blame; it is probable that no future biographer will be able to do more than recast and reanimate the materials to be found in Brown and Aikin. But why this pretence of having written a life of Howard from "original documents?" We beg pardon: he does not absolutely say that he has written the Life of Howard from original documents—the original document, for there is but one, may apply to the "prison-world of Europe," of which also he professes to write. This "earliest document of any value connected with the penology of England," which, with much parade, he prints for the first time, relates to the state of prisons before the labours of Howard. Impossible to suppose, therefore, that Mr Hepworth Dixon meant his readers to infer that, by the aid of this document, he was about to give them an original Life of Howard.

Let us look at Mr Dixon's preface—it is worth while. It thus commences:—

"Several reasons combined to induce the writer to undertake the work of making out for the reading world a new biography of Howard; the chief of them fell under two heads:—

"It lay in his path. Years ago now, circumstances, which do not require to be explained in this place, called his attention to the vast subject of the prison-world."

We must stop a moment to admire this favourite magniloquence of our author. Howard wrote a report on the state of prisons; Mr Dixon writes on nothing less than the prison-world of Europe! He heads his chapters—"The Prison-world of the Continent," "The Prison-world of England." If Mr Dixon, in his patriotic labours, should turn his attention to the nuisance of Smithfield market, he would certainly give us a treatise on "The Butcher-world of Europe," with chapters headed, with due logical gradation, "The Butcher-world of England," and "The Butcher-world of London."

"It lay in his path," was one reason why he wrote his biography. "It needed to be done," was the other. We agree in the last of these reasons, whatever demur we make to the first. A more popular biography than Mr Brown's would certainly be a useful book. But what can Mr Dixon mean by saying, that, "although Howard was the father of prison-science, the story of his life has hitherto been made out without reference to that fact?" Messrs Brown and Aikin were not, then, aware that the excitement of the public attention to the great subject of prison-discipline was the chief result, and the direct and ostensible aim of the labours of Howard!

But now we arrive at Mr Dixon's statement of his own peculiar resources for writing the Life of Howard, and the valuable contributions he has made to our better knowledge of the man; in short, his claims upon our gratitude and confidence:—

"It has been the writer's study to render this biographical history of Howard as worthy of its subject, and of the confidence of the reader, as the nature of the materials at his disposal would allow. He has carefully collated every document already printed—made, and caused to be made, numerous researches—conversed with persons who have preserved traditions and other memorials of this subject—travelled in his traces over a great number of prisons—examined parliamentary and other records for such new facts as they might afford—and, in conclusion, has consulted these several sources of information, and interpreted their answers by such light as his personal experience of the prison-world suggested to be needful. The result of this labour is, that some new matter of curious interest has turned up—amongst other things, a manuscript throwing light on the early history of prison reforms in this country, found in the archives of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and for which he is indebted to the courtesy of the secretary, the Rev. T. B. Murray; and the writer is assured that no other papers exist in any known quarter. The material for Howard's life is therefore now fully collected; whether it is herein finally used, will entirely depend upon the verdict of the reader."

From all this mystification, the reader is at least to conclude that something very important has been done, and contributions very valuable have been made, for a final biography of Howard. Documents collated—researches made, and caused to be made—then a discovered manuscript, which now is, and now is not, appertaining to the subject—assurance "that no other papers exist in any known quarter!"—"materials now fully collected!" Oh, Admirable Crichton! Our author has done all this for us! Our author has read the memoirs of Baldwin Brown—and that not very attentively: if he has done more it is a pity, because there is not the least trace of it in his book. Our author has read the memoirs of Baldwin Brown, and travestied his narrative, and then writes this preface, as a travesty, we presume, of erudite prefaces in general. The book altogether does not belong to literature, but is a sort of parody upon literature.

We may as well give our readers the benefit of the rest of the preface:—

"The mental and moral portraiture of Howard attempted in this volume is new." [Fortunately, and to the recommendation of the volume, it is not new, but a transcript of that which his predecessor had drawn.] "As the writer's method of inquiry and of treatment was different to that ordinarily adopted, so his result is different. His study of the character was earnest, and, he believes, faithful. After making himself master of all the facts of the case which have come down to us, biographically and traditionally, his plan was to saturate himself with Howardian ideas, and then strive to reproduce them living, acting, and suffering in the real world."

How the Howardian ideas suffered from this process, we can somewhat guess. The rest of the sentence is not so plain:—

"The writer lays down his pen, not without regret. Long accustomed to contemplate one of the most noble and beautiful characters in history, he has learnt to regard it with a human affection; and at parting with his theme—the mental companion of many hours, and the object of his constant thoughts—he feels somewhat like a father who gives away his favourite daughter in marriage. He does not lose his interest in his child; but she can be to him no longer what she has been. A touch of melancholy mingles with his joy. He still regards his offspring with a tender solicitude—but his monopoly of love is ended."

Oh, surely no!

We propose, as far as our limits will permit, to retrace the chief incidents in the biography of Howard. A brief sketch of his life and character may not be unacceptable to our readers. Such strictures as we have passed upon his latest biographer, Mr Dixon, we shall have abundant opportunities to justify as we proceed.

The well-known monument in St Paul's Cathedral, which, from the circumstance of the key held in the hand of the statue, has been sometimes taken by foreigners for the representation of the apostle St Peter, bears inscribed on the pedestal that Howard "was born in Hackney, in the county of Middlesex, September 2, 1726." But both the place and the year of his birth have been differently stated by his biographers. The Rev. S. Palmer, who had known him long, writes that he was born at Clapton; Dr Aikin, that he was born at Enfield. To the authority of the Doctor, on such a point as this, we attach no weight; it is plain to us that he gave himself little trouble to determine whether he was born at Clapton or Enfield. It was probably at Clapton; but Clapton is in the parish of Hackney, so that there is really no discrepancy between Mr Palmer's statement and that on the monument. The year 1726 seems also to be generally received as the most probable date of his birth. After all the discussion, we may as well adhere to the inscription on the pedestal of the statue.

The father of Howard had acquired a considerable fortune in business as an upholsterer and carpet warehouseman in Long Lane, Smithfield. He was a dissenter, of Calvinistic principles; and, it is presumed, an Independent. The question has been raised, whether our Howard was descended from any branch of the noble family of that name; but his biographers generally agree in rejecting for him the honours of such a pedigree. Nor can any one be in the least degree solicitous to advance such a claim. The military achievements of a Norman ancestry would diffuse a very incongruous lustre over the name of our Christian philanthropist. Thus much, however, is evident, that at one time there existed some tradition, or belief, or pretence, in the family of the citizen Howard, that they were remotely connected with the noble family whose name they share. "The arms of the Duke of Norfolk, and of the Earls of Suffolk, Effingham, and Carlisle, are placed at the head of the tombstone which Howard erected to the memory of his first wife, on the south side of Whitechapel churchyard." Such is the assertion of the anonymous biographer in the Universal Magazine, (vol. lxxxvi.) who stands alone, we believe, in maintaining the validity of this claim. And Mr Brown, after quoting these words, adds—"From actual inspection of the mouldering monument, I can assure those of my readers who may feel any curiosity on the subject, that this description of its armorial bearings is correct; and am further enabled to add, on the authority of his relative, Mr Barnardiston, that the distinguished individual by whom that monument was erected, occasionally spoke of Lord Carlisle as his relative; thus claiming at least a traditional descent from the Howards, Earls of Suffolk." That such a man as Howard should have used these arms once is significant; that he should have used them only once, is equally so. He was one of the last men, if we have read his character correctly, who would have assumed what he did not, at the time, think himself entitled to; and one of the last who would shrink from claiming a right where his title was clear.

Mr Dixon not only rejects the claim, but is highly indignant that it should ever have been suggested. "Howard sprang from a virgin and undistinguished soil;"—why the upholsterer's should be peculiarly a virgin soil we do not see. "Attempts, however, have not been wanting to vulgarise his origin—to rob its greatness of its most natural charm—by circling his brows with the distant glitter of a ducal crown; by finding in his simple lineaments the trace of noble lines, and in his veins the consecrated currents of patrician blood." Strange waste of eloquent indignation! But he does not keep quite steady in his passion. "No," he exclaims, "let Howard stand alone. His reputation rests upon a basis already broad enough. Why should we pile up Pelion on Olympus?" There was, then, a Pelion to pile upon Olympus? We had thought not. Our author should have kept these red and purple patches at a greater distance: they do not harmonise.

Meanwhile the father of Howard had so little of what is commonly called aristocratic pride, that although he had retired from business, and had a good property—and property, too, in land—to leave to his son, he yet wished that son to tread in his own footsteps. He apprenticed him to a wholesale grocer in Watling Street.

The education of young Howard was such as is, or was, generally given to a lad of respectable parents intended for trade. He was at two schools. Of the first, Howard himself is reported to have said, that, having been there seven years, "he left it not fully taught in any one thing." He left it when a boy, and what boy ever left his school "fully taught in any one thing?" The remark is rather characteristic of the speaker than condemnatory of John Worsley, the schoolmaster in question. His second school was kept by a Mr Eames, a man of acknowledged ability. But how long he remained there is not known. At this school he made the friendship of one Price, afterwards that Dr Price who remains, to all posterity, impaled in Burke's Letter on the French Revolution. The great orator thrust his spear through his thin texture, and pinned him to the board; and never, but in this rich museum, will any one behold or think of Dr Price. Perhaps he deserved a better fate, but his case is hopeless now. Yet, if it can heal his memory to connect his name with one who was not a revolutionary philanthropist, let him have all the benefit of the association. Howard had never acquired the art of writing his own language with ease and correctness, and therefore it will be directly understood how valuable to him, in the preparation of his reports, was the help of a literary friend. That literary friend he found in Dr Price. In a letter to him, Howard writes, "It is from your kind aid and assistance, my dear friend, that I derive so much of my character and influence. I exult in declaring it, and shall carry a grateful sense of it to the last hour of my existence."

After his father's death, Howard purchased his freedom from the wholesale grocer's in Watling Street, and travelled upon the Continent. He was not without taste for the arts; and it was at this time, Mr Brown supposes, that he brought with him from Italy those paintings with which he afterwards embellished his favourite seat at Cardington.

On returning from this tour, he took lodgings at Stoke Newington, in the house of Mrs Loidore, a widow, upwards of fifty, of rather humble station in life, and a perpetual invalid. She, however, nursed him with so much care, through a severe illness, by which he was attacked while residing under her roof, that, on his recovery, he offered her marriage. "Against this unexpected proposal," says Mr Brown, "the lady made remonstrances, principally upon the ground of the great disparity in their ages; but Mr Howard being firm to his purpose, the union took place, it is believed, in the year 1752, he being then in about the twenty-fifth year of his age, and his bride in her fifty-second. Upon this occasion, he behaved with a liberality which seems to have been inherent in his nature, by settling the whole of his wife's little independence upon her sister. The marriage, thus singularly contracted, was productive of mutual satisfaction to the parties who entered it. Mrs Howard was a woman of excellent character, amiable in her disposition, sincere in her piety, endowed with a good mental capacity, and forward in exercising its powers in every good word and work."

Thus runs the sober narrative of Mr Brown. Not so does Mr Dixon let pass the opportunity for fine descriptive writing. Read and admire:—

"As he became convalescent, his plan ripened into form. When the danger had entirely passed away, his health was restored to its accustomed state; he offered her, as the only fitting reward of her services—a toy? an ornament? a purse? a house? an estate? or any of those munificent gifts with which wealthy and generous convalescents reward their favourite attendants? No. He offered her his hand, his name, his fortune! Of course, the good lady was astonished at the portentous shape of her patient's gratitude. She started objections, being older, and having more worldly prudence than her lover. It is even said that she seriously refused her consent to the match, urging the various arguments which might fairly be alleged against it,—the inequality in the years, fortune, social position of the parties, and so forth—but all to no purpose. Howard's mind was made up. During his slow recovery, he had weighed the matter carefully—had come to the conclusion that it was his duty to marry her, and nothing could now change his determination. The struggle between the two must have been extremely curious: the sense of duty on both sides, founded upon honest convictions, no doubt,—the mutual respect without the consuming fire,—the cool and logical weighing of arguments, in place of the rapid pleading of triumphant passion; the young man without the ordinary inspirations of youth, on the one hand; the widow, past her prime, yet simple, undesigning, unambitious, earnestly struggling to reject and put aside youth, wealth, protection, honour, social rank,—the very things for which women are taught to dress, to pose, to intrigue, almost to circumvent heaven, on the other;—form together a picture which has its romantic interest, in spite of the incongruity of the main idea. Humble life is not without its heroic acts. Cæsar refusing the Roman crown, even had he been really serious, and without after-thought in its rejection, is a paltry piece of magnanimity, compared with Mrs Loidore's refusal of the hand of Howard. At length, however, her resistance was overcome by the indomitable will of her suitor. One of the contemporary biographers has thrown an air of romance over the scene of this domestic struggle, which, if the lady had been young and beautiful—that is, if the element of passion could be admitted into the arena—would have been truly charming. As it is, the reader may receive it with such modifications as he or she may deem necessary. 'On the very first opportunity,' says this grave but imaginative chronicler, 'Mr Howard expressed his sentiments to her in the strongest terms of affection, assuring her that, if she rejected his proposal, he would become an exile for ever to his family and friends. The lady was upwards of forty [true enough! she was also upwards of fifty, good master historian,] and therefore urged the disagreement of their years, as well as their circumstances; but, after allowing her four-and-twenty hours for a final reply, his eloquence surmounted all her objections, and she consented to a union wherein gratitude was to supply the deficiencies of passion!' Criticism would only spoil the pretty picture—so let it stand."

Criticism had already spoilt the picture, such as it is. But this matters not to Mr Dixon. The quotation he has thought fit to embellish his pages with, is taken from an anonymous pamphlet published in 1790, under the title of The Life of the late John Howard, Esquire, with a Review of his Travels. Mr Dixon, however, evidently extracts it second-hand from the note in Mr Brown, where it is quoted, with some other passages from the same performance, for the express purpose of refutation and contradiction. This is what Mr Dixon would call artistic—the picking up what had been discarded as worthless, and, with a gentle shade of doubt thrown over its authenticity, making use of it again.

A note of Mr Brown's, in the same page of his memoirs, (p. 634,) will supply us with another instance of this ingenious procedure. That note runs thus:—

"We are informed in the memoirs of Mr Howard, published in the Gentleman's Magazine, that, during the period of his residing as a lodger in the house of Mrs Loidore, he used to ride out in the morning for a few miles with a book in his pocket, dismount, turn his horse to graze upon a common, and spend several hours in reading. 'On a very particular inquiry, however,' says the author of the Life of Mr Howard, inserted in the Universal Magazine, 'of persons very intimate, and who had often rode out with him, we are assured that they never saw, nor ever heard of such a practice.'"

Mr Dixon makes use of the first part of the note, ignoring the second.

"It is said," he writes, gravely suspending his judgment on the authenticity of the fact—"it is said, in a contemporary biographical notice, that he would frequently ride out a mile or two in the country, fasten his nag to a tree, or turn him loose to browse upon the way-side; and then, throwing himself upon the grass, under a friendly shade, would read and cogitate for hours. This statement, if true, would indicate more of a romantic and poetical temperament in Howard, than the generally calm and Christian stoicism of his manner would have led one to expect."

That Mr Dixon never consulted the memoir itself, in the Gentleman's Magazine, we shall by-and-by have an opportunity of showing. That memoir, worthless as an authority, has become notorious for the calumny it originated. But this collator of documents, this inquirer after traditions, this maker of unimaginable researches, has never turned over the pages of the Gentleman's Magazine for that obituary which, owing to its slanderous attack, has excited so much controversy in all the biographies of Howard, his own included.

This wife, so singularly selected, died two or three years after her marriage. Howard is again free and solitary, and again betakes himself to travel. We are in the year 1755, and the great earthquake of Lisbon has laid that city in ruins. He goes to see the grand and terrific spectacle. Dr Aikin calls it a sublime curiosity. We presume that no other motive than curiosity impelled him on this occasion; it would be certainly very difficult to suggest any other. No difficulties, however, daunt Mr Dixon. According to him,—"Howard, attracted by reports of the unexampled sufferings of the survivors, no sooner found himself at his own disposal, than he determined to haste with all possible speed to their assistance!" Single-handed, he was to cope with the earthquake.

Lisbon, however, he was not fated to reach. The vessel he sailed in was taken by a French privateer, and he, with the rest of the passengers and crew, carried into Brest, and there retained prisoner of war. The calamities of imprisonment he here endured himself, and under no mild form: afterwards, when other circumstances had drawn his attention to the condition of the prisoners, the remembrance of his own sufferings came in aid of his compassion for others. "Perhaps," he says, in the preface to his first report, "what I suffered on this occasion increased my sympathy with the unhappy people, whose case is the subject of this book."

Released upon parole, he returned to England, obtained his exchange, and then sat himself down on his estate at Cardington. Here he occupied himself in plans to ameliorate the condition of his tenantry. Scientific studies, and the study of medicine, to which, from time to time, he had applied himself, also engaged his attention. It was at this period he was elected a member of the Royal Society, not assuredly, as Mr Thomas Taylor presumes, from the "value attached" to a few communications upon the state of the weather, but, as Dr Aikin sensibly tells us, "in conformity to the laudable practice of that society, of attaching gentlemen of fortune and leisure to the interests of knowledge, by incorporating them into that body."

Howard now entered into matrimony a second time. On the 25th April 1758, he married Henrietta Leeds, second daughter of Edward Leeds, Esq. of Croxton, in Cambridgeshire. This alliance is pronounced by all his biographers to be in every respect suitable. Parity of age, harmony of sentiment, and, on the part of the lady, the charms of person and amiability of temper, everything contributed to a happy union. And it was so. Unfortunately, the happiness was as brief as it seems to have been perfect. His second wife also expired after a few years,—"the only years," Howard himself has said, "of true enjoyment he had known in life."

On this occasion, Mr Dixon, after infusing into Howard "the bland and insinuating witchery of a virgin passion," proceeds to describe his Henrietta in the most approved language of the novelist: "Although her features were not cast in the choicest mould of Grecian beauty, she was very fair—had large impressive eyes, an ample brow, a mouth exquisitely cut," &c. Shall we never again get the chisel out of the human face?

Connected with this second marriage of Howard, his biographers relate a trait of character which will be differently estimated by different minds—we relate it in the words of Mr Dixon:—

"We must not omit an incident that occurred before the ceremony, which is very significant of Howard's frankness and firmness at this epoch. Observing that many unpleasantnesses arise in families, from circumstances trifling in themselves, in consequence of each individual wishing to have his own way in all things, he determined to avoid all these sources of domestic discord, by establishing his own paramount authority in the first instance. It is just conceivable that his former experience of the wedded life may have led him to insist upon this condition. At all events, he stipulated with Henrietta, that, in all matters in which there should be a difference of opinion between them, his voice should rule. This may sound very ungallant in terms, but it was found exceedingly useful in practice. Few men would have the moral honesty to suggest such an arrangement to their lady-loves at such a season; though, at the same time, few would hesitate to make the largest mental reservations in their own behalf. It may also be, that few young belles would be disposed to treat such a proposition otherwise than with ridicule and anger, however conscious they might be, that as soon as the hymeneal pageantries were passed, their surest means of happiness would lie in the prompt adoption of the principle so laid down.

"Would that men and women would become sincerer with each other! The great social vice of this age is its untrustfulness."

And Mr Dixon thereupon launches into we know not what heroics upon etiquette, upon English law, morals, and the constitution, all à propos of Henrietta's obedience! For our own part, we do not look with much respect upon this stipulation which calls forth the admiration of Mr Dixon, and apparently meets with his cordial sympathy. Such a stipulation would probably be a mere nullity; with, or without it, the stronger will would predominate; but if we are to suppose it a really binding obligation, forming the basis of the conjugal union, it presents to us anything but an attractive aspect. It was the harsh feature in Howard's character, or the mistaken principle that he had adopted—this love of an authority—this claim to a domestic absolutism—which was to give no reasons, and admit of no questioning.

In justice to the character of Howard, we must not leave this matter entirely in the hands of Mr Dixon. Everything he draws is, more or less, a caricature. The authority on which his narration is founded is the following statement of the Rev. S. Palmer, given in Brown, p. 55:—

"The truth is," says Mr Palmer, in his manuscript memoir of his distinguished friend, "he had a high idea (some of his friends may think, too high) of the authority of the head of a family. And he thought it right, because most convenient, to maintain it, for the sake of avoiding the unhappy consequences of domestic disputes. On this principle I have more than once heard him pleasantly relate the agreement he made with the last Mrs Howard, previous to their marriage, that, to prevent all altercation about those little matters which he had observed to be the chief grounds of uneasiness in families, he should always decide. To this the amiable lady readily consented, and ever adhered. Nor did she ever regret the agreement, which she found to be attended with the happiest effects. Such was the opinion she entertained, both of his wisdom and his goodness, that she perfectly acquiesced in all that he did, and no lady ever appeared happier in the conjugal bonds."

Here the matter has a much less repulsive aspect than in Mr Dixon's version, who has, in fact, exaggerated, in his zeal, a trait of Howard's character, which his best friends seem always to have looked upon with more or less of regret and disapproval.

As the only other circumstance connected with Howard's domestic life which we shall have space to mention, has also a peculiar reference to this trait in his character, we will depart from the chronological order of events, and allude to it here. His last wife left him one child, a son. This son grew up a dissolute youth; his ill-regulated life led to disease, and disease terminated in insanity. To this last malady, Mr Brown tells us he is authorised to say that there was a hereditary predisposition—we presume he means upon the mother's side.

Immediately on the death of Howard, there appeared, amongst the obituaries of the Gentleman's Magazine, a memoir of the deceased, in which the miserable fate of the son is directly charged upon the severity of the father. The whole memoir is full of errors. For this, the extreme haste in which it was necessarily written forms an excuse. But no excuse can be given for the perverse and malignant spirit it betrays. The very next number of the magazine opens with four or five letters addressed to Mr Urban, all remonstrating against, and refuting this baseless calumny; and every biographer has felt himself compelled to notice and repel the slander.

The fact is, that the writer or writers of the memoir—for several were engaged in concocting this very hasty and wretched performance—were quite ignorant, both of the education the son had received, and of the profligate course, and the consequent derangement of his health into which he had fallen. They knew only that the son was in a lunatic asylum, and that the father was a severe disciplinarian; and they most unwarrantably combined the two together, in the relation of cause and effect. "All prospects," they say, speaking of the youth, "were blasted by paternal severity, which reduced the young man to such an unhappy situation as to require his being placed where he now is, or lately was."

The vindication of Howard from this slander is complete; the origin of the son's malady is clearly traced; his affection for his child is amply demonstrated, and his unceasing anxiety to train him to virtue and piety is made equally manifest. But his most intimate friends entertained the opinion that his conduct towards his son was not judicious, and that his method of training up the youth was by no means so wisely, as it was conscientiously adopted. This is the sole charge, if such it can be called, to which the father is obnoxious; nor, from this, do we pretend to acquit him.

"It is agreed, on all hands," says Mr Brown, "that Howard entertained the most exalted notions of the authority of the head of a family—notions derived rather from the Scriptural history of patriarchal times than from any of our modern codes of ethics, or systems of education." Accordingly, we are told that he trained up his child from earliest infancy to an implicit obedience. Without once striking the child, but by manifesting a firmness of purpose which it was hopeless to think of shaking, he established such an authority over him that Howard himself, on one occasion, said, that "if he told the boy to put his finger in the fire, he believed he would do it." When he was an infant, and cried from passion, the father took him, laid him quietly in his lap, neither spoke nor moved, but let him cry on till he was wearied. "This process, a few times repeated, had such an effect, that the child, if crying ever so violently, was rendered quiet the instant his father took him." When he grew older, the severest punishment his father inflicted was to make him sit still in his presence, without speaking, for a time proportioned to the nature of the offence. But this impassive, statue-like firmness must have precluded all approach to companionship or confidence on the part of the son. It was still the obedience only of fear. "His friends," we quote from Mr Brown, "and amongst the rest the most intimate of them, the Rev. Mr Smith, thought that in the case of his son he carried those patriarchal ideas rather too far, and that by a lad of his temper (the son is described as of a lively disposition) he would have been more respected, and would have possessed more real authority over him, had he attempted to convince him of the reasonableness of his commands, instead of always enforcing obedience to them on his parental authority." We therefore may be permitted to say, that we look upon this aspect of Howard's character as by no means estimable. As a husband he claimed an unjust prerogative, and as a parent he divorced authority from persuasion, nor allowed obedience to mingle and ally itself with filial affection.