BLACKWOOD’S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCCXXXI.       SEPTEMBER, 1851.       Vol. LXX.

CONTENTS.

————

EDINBURGH:

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, 45 GEORGE STREET;
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PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.

BLACKWOOD’S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCCXXXI.       SEPTEMBER, 1851.       Vol. LXX.

A CAMPAIGN IN TAKA.

Feldzug von Sennaar nach Taka, Basa, und Beni-Amer, mit besonderem Hinblick
auf die Völker von Bellad-Sudan.—[Campaign from Sennaar to Taka, Basa, and
Beni-Amer; with a particular Glance at the Nations of Bellad-Sudan.]—Von Ferdinand
Werne. Stuttgart: Königl. Hofbuchdruckerei. London: Williams and
Norgate. 1851.

Africa, the least explored division
of the globe’s surface, and the best
field for travellers of bold and enterprising
character, has been the scene
of three of the most remarkable books
of their class that have appeared
within the last ten years. We refer
to Major Harris’s narrative of his
Ethiopian expedition—to the marvellous
adventures of that modern Nimrod,
Mr Gordon Cumming—to Mr
Ferdinand Werne’s strange and exciting
account of his voyage up the
White Nile. In our review of the
last-named interesting and valuable
work,[1] we mentioned that Mr Werne,
previously to his expedition up the
Nile, had been for several months in
the Taka country, a region previously
untrodden by Europeans, with an
army commanded by Achmet Bascha,
governor-general of the Egyptian province
of Bellad-Sudan, who was operating
against refractory tributaries.
He has just published an account of
this campaign, which afforded him,
however, little opportunity of expatiating
on well-contested battles,
signal victories, or feats of heroic
valour. On the other hand, his
narrative abounds in striking incidents,
in curious details of tribes
and localities that have never before
been described, and in perils and
hardships not the less real and painful
that they proceeded from no
efforts of a resolute and formidable
foe, but from the effects of a pernicious
climate, and the caprice and
negligence of a wilful and indolent
commander.

It was early in 1840, and Mr Werne
and his youngest brother Joseph had
been resident for a whole year at
Chartum, chief town of the province
of Sudan, in the country of Sennaar.
Chartum, it will be remembered by
the readers of the “Expedition for
the Discovery of the Sources of the
White Nile,” is situated at the confluence
of the White and Blue streams,
which, there uniting, flow northwards
through Nubia and Egypt Proper to
Cairo and the Mediterranean; and at
Chartum it was that the two Wernes
had beheld, in the previous November,
the departure of the first expedition
up Nile, which they were forbidden
to join, and which met with
little success. The elder Werne,[252]
whose portrait—that of a very determined-looking
man, bearded, and in
Oriental costume—is appended to the
present volume, appears to have been
adventurous and a rambler from his
youth upwards. In 1822 he had
served in Greece, and had now been
for many years in Eastern lands.
Joseph Werne, his youngest and favourite
brother, had come to Egypt
at his instigation, after taking at Berlin
his degree as Doctor of Medicine,
to study, before commencing practice,
some of the extraordinary diseases
indigenous in that noxious climate.
Unfortunately, as recorded in Mr
Werne’s former work, this promising
young man, who seems to have possessed
in no small degree the enterprise,
perseverance, and fortitude so
remarkable in his brother, ultimately
fell a victim to one of those fatal maladies
whose investigation was the
principal motive of his visit to Africa.
The first meeting in Egypt of the two
brothers was at Cairo; and of it a
characteristic account is given by the
elder, an impetuous, we might almost
say a pugnacious man, tolerably
prompt to take offence, and upon
whom, as he himself says at page 67,
the Egyptian climate had a violently
irritating effect.

“Our meeting, at Guerra’s tavern
in Cairo, was so far remarkable, that
my brother knew me immediately,
whilst I took him for some impertinent
Frenchman, disposed to make
game of me, inasmuch as he, in the
petulance of his joy, fixed his eyes
upon me, measuring me from top to
toe, and then laughed at the fury
with which I rushed upon him, to
call him to an account, and, if necessary,
to have him out. We had not
seen each other for eight years, during
which he had grown into a man,
and, moreover, his countenance had
undergone a change, for, by a terrible
cut, received in a duel, the muscle of
risibility had been divided on one
side, and the poor fellow could laugh
only with half his face. In the first
overpowering joy of our meeting in
this distant quarter of the globe, we
could not get the wine over our
tongues, often as my Swiss friend De
Salis (over whose cheeks the tears
were chasing each other) and other
acquaintances struck their glasses
against ours, encouraging us to drink….
I now abandoned the hamlet
of Tura—situated in the desert, but
near the Nile, about three leagues
above Cairo, and whither I had
retreated to do penance and to work
at my travels—as well as my good
friend Dr Schledehaus of Osnabruck,
(then holding an appointment at the
military school, now director of the
marine hospital of Alexandria,) with
whom my brother had studied at
Bonn, and I hired a little house in
the Esbekie Square in Cairo. After
half an hour’s examination, Joseph
was appointed surgeon-major, with
the rank of a Sakulagassi or captain,
in the central hospital of Kasr-el-Ain,
with a thousand piastres a
month, and rations for a horse and
four servants. Our views constantly
directed to the interior of Africa, we
suffered a few months to glide by in
the old city of the Khalifs, dwelling
together in delightful brotherly harmony.
But our thirst for travelling
was unslaked; to it I had sacrificed
my appointment as chancellor of the
Prussian Consulate at Alexandria;
Joseph received his nomination as
regimental surgeon to the 1st regiment
in Sennaar, including that of
physician to the central hospital at
Chartum. Our friends were concerned
for us on account of the
dangerous climate, but, nevertheless,
we sailed with good courage up the
Nile, happy to escape from the noise
of the city, and to be on our way to
new scenes.”

A stroke of the sun, received near
the cataract of Ariman in Upper
Nubia, and followed by ten days’
delirium, soon convinced the younger
Werne that his friends’ anxiety on
his behalf was not groundless. During
the whole of their twelvemonth’s
stay at Chartum, they were mercilessly
persecuted by intermittent
fever, there most malignant, and
under whose torturing and lowering
attacks their sole consolation was
that, as they never chanced both to
be ill together, they were able
alternately to nurse each other. At
last, fearing that body or mind would
succumb to these reiterated fever-fits,
and the first expedition up the
White Nile having, to their great
disgust and disappointment, sailed[253]
without them, they made up their
minds to quit for ever the pestiferous
Chartum and the burning steppes of
Bellad-Sudan. Whilst preparing for
departure, they received a visit from
the chief Cadi, who told them, over
a glass of cardinal—administered by
Dr Werne as medicine, to evade his
Mahomedan scruples—that Effendina
(Excellency) Achmet Bascha was
well pleased with the brotherly love
they manifested, taking care of each
other in sickness, and that they would
do well to pay their respects occasionally
at the Divan. This communication
was almost immediately
followed by the arrival at Chartum of
Dr Gand, physician to Abbas Bascha.
This gentleman had been a comrade
of Ferdinand Werne’s in Greece, and
he recommended the two brothers to
Achmet, with whom he was intimate,
in true Oriental style, as men of universal
genius and perfect integrity, to
whom he might intrust both his body
and his soul. The consequence of this
liberal encomium was, that Achmet
fixed his eyes upon them to accompany
him, in the capacity of confidential
advisers, upon a projected campaign.
Informed of this plan and of the
advantages it included, the Wernes
joyfully abandoned their proposed
departure. Joseph was to be made
house-physician to Achmet and his
harem, as well as medical inspector
of the whole province, in place of
Soliman Effendi, (the renegade Baron
di Pasquali of Palermo,) a notorious
poisoner, in whose hands the Bascha
did not consider himself safe. Ferdinand
Werne, who had held the rank of
captain in Greece, was made bimbaschi
or major, and was attached, as
engineer, to Achmet’s person, with
good pay and many privileges. “At
a later period he would have made
me bey, if I—not on his account,
for he was an enlightened Circassian,
but on that of the Turkish jackasses—would
have turned Mussulman. I
laughed at this, and he said no more
about it.” Delighted to have secured
the services of the two Germans,
Achmet ordered it to be reported
to his father-in-law, Mehemet Ali,
for his approval, and took counsel
with his new officers concerning the
approaching campaign. Turk-like,
he proposed commencing it in the
rainy season. Mr Werne opposed
this as likely to cost him half his
army, the soldiers being exceedingly
susceptible to rain, and advised the
erection of blockhouses at certain
points along the line of march where
springs were to be found, to secure
water for the troops. The Bascha
thought this rather a roundabout
mode of proceeding, held his men’s
lives very cheap, and boasted of his
seven hundred dromedaries, every one
of which, in case of need, could carry
three soldiers. His counsellors were
dismissed, with injunctions to secresy,
and on their return home they found
at their door, as a present from the
Bascha, two beautiful dromedaries,
tall, powerful, ready saddled for a
march, and particularly adapted for a
campaign, inasmuch as they started
not when muskets were fired between
their ears. A few days later, Mr
Werne was sent for by Achmet, who,
when the customary coffee had been
taken, dismissed his attendants by a
sign, and informed him, with a gloomy
countenance, that the people of Taka
refused to pay their tulba, or tribute.
His predecessor, Churdschid Bascha,
having marched into that country,
had been totally defeated in a chaaba,
or tract of forest. Since that time,
Achmet mournfully declared, the
tribes had not paid a single piastre,
and he found himself grievously in
want of money. So, instead of marching
south-westward to Darfour, as he
had intended, he would move north-eastward
to Taka, chastise the stubborn
insolvents, and replenish the
coffers of the state. “Come with
me,” said he, to Mr Werne; “upon
the march we shall all recover our
health,” (he also suffered from frequent
and violent attacks of fever;)
“yonder are water and forests, as in
Germany and Circassia, and very
high mountains.” It mattered little
to so restless and rambling a spirit as
Mr Ferdinand Werne whether his
route lay inland towards the Mountains
of the Moon, or coastwards to
the Red Sea. His brother was again
sick, and spoke of leaving the country;
but Mr Werne cheered him up,
pointed out to him upon the map an
imaginary duchy which he was to
conquer in the approaching war, and
revived an old plan of going to settle[254]
at Bagdad, there to practise as physician
and apothecary. “We resolved,
therefore, to take our passports with
us, so that, if we chose, we might
embark on the Red Sea. By this
time I had seen through the Bascha,
and I resolved to communicate to him
an idea which I often, in the interest
of these oppressed tribes, had revolved
in my mind, namely, that he should
place himself at their head, and renounce
obedience to the Egyptian
vampire. I did subsequently speak
to him of the plan, and it might have
been well and permanently carried
out, had he not, instead of striving to
win the confidence of the chiefs,
tyrannised over them in every possible
manner. Gold and regiments!
was his motto.”

Meanwhile the influential Dr Gand
had fallen seriously ill, and was so
afflicted with the irritability already
referred to as a consequence of the
climate, that no one could go near
him but the two Wernes. He neglected
Joseph’s good advice to quit
Chartum at once, put it off till it was
too late, and died on his journey
northwards. His body lay buried for
a whole year in the sand of the desert;
then his family, who were going to
France, dug it up to take with them.
Always a very thin man, little more
than skin and bone, the burning sand
had preserved him like a mummy.
There was no change in his appearance;
not a hair gone from his mustaches.
Strange is the confusion and
alternation of life and death in that
ardent and unwholesome land of
Nubia. To-day in full health, to-morrow
prostrate with fever, from
which you recover only to be again
attacked. Dead, in twenty-four
hours or less corruption is busy on
the corpse; bury it promptly in the
sand, and in twelve months you may
disinter it, perfect as if embalmed.
At Chartum, the very focus of disease,
death, it might be thought, is
sufficiently supplied by fever to need
no other purveyors. Nevertheless
poisoning seems a pretty common
practice there. Life in Chartum is
altogether, by Mr Werne’s account,
a most curious thing. During the
preparations for the campaign, a
Wurtemberg prince, Duke Paul William
of Mergentheim, arrived in the
place, and was received with much
pomp. “For the first time I saw the
Bascha sit upon a chair; he was in
full uniform, a red jacket adorned
with gold, a great diamond crescent,
and three brilliant stars upon his left
breast, his sabre by his side.” The
prince, a fat good-humoured German,
was considerably impressed by the
state displayed, and left the presence
with many obeisances. The next
day he dined with the Bascha, whom
he and the Wernes hoped to see
squatted on the ground, and feeding
with his fingers. They were disappointed;
the table was arranged in
European fashion; wine of various
kinds was there, especially champagne,
(which the servants, notwithstanding
Werne’s remonstrances, insisted
on shaking before opening, and
which consequently flew about the
room in foaming fountains;) bumper-toasts
were drunk; and the whole
party, Franks and Turks, seem to
have gradually risen into a glorious
state of intoxication, during which
they vowed eternal friendship to each
other in all imaginable tongues; and
the German prince declared he would
make the campaign to Taka with the
Bascha, draw out the plan, and overwhelm
the enemy. This jovial meeting
was followed by a quieter entertainment
given by the Wernes to the
prince, who declared he was travelling
as a private gentleman, and
wished to be treated accordingly;
and then Soliman Effendi, the Sicilian
renegade, made a respectful application
for permission to invite the
“Altezza Tedesca,” for whom he had
conceived a great liking. A passage
from Mr Werne is here worth quoting,
as showing the state of society at
Chartum. “I communicated the
invitation, with the remark that the
Sicilian was notorious for his poisonings,
but that I had less fear on his
highness’ account than on that of my
brother, who was already designated
to replace him in his post. The
prince did not heed the danger;
moreover, I had put myself on a
peculiar footing with Soliman Effendi,
and now told him plainly that he had
better keep his vindictive manœuvres
for others than us, for that my brother
and I should go to dinner with loaded
pistols in our pockets, and would[255]
shoot him through the head (brucciare
il cervello) if one of us three felt as
much as a belly-ache at his table.
The dinner was served in the German
fashion; all the guests came, except
Vaissière (formerly a French captain,
now a slave-dealer, with the cross of
the legion of honour.) He would not
trust Soliman, who was believed to
have poisoned a favourite female-slave
of his after a dispute they had
about money matters. The dinner
went off merrily and well. The duke
changed his mind about going to Taka,
but promised to join in the campaign
on his return from Fàszogl, and bade
me promise the Bascha in his name
a crocodile-rifle and a hundred bottles
of champagne.”

Long and costly were the preparations
for the march; the more so that
Mr Werne and his brother, who saw
gleaming in the distance the golden
cupolas of Bagdad, desired to take all
their baggage with them, and also
sufficient stores for the campaign—not
implicitly trusting to the Bascha’s
promise that his kitchen and table
should be always at their service.
Ten camels were needed to carry the
brothers’ baggage. One of their
greatest troubles was to know how to
dispose of their collection of beasts
and birds. “The young maneless
lion, our greatest joy, was dead—Soliman
Effendi, who was afraid of
him, having dared to poison him, as
I learned, after the renegade’s death,
from one of our own people.” But of
birds there were a host; eagles, vultures,
king-cranes, (grus pavonina,
Linn.;) a snake-killing secretary, with
his beautiful eagle head, long tail, and
heron legs; strange varieties of water-fowl,
many of which had been shot,
but had had the pellets extracted and
the wounds healed by the skill of Dr
Werne; and last, but most beloved,
“a pet black horn-bird, (buceros
abyss. L.,) who hopped up to us when
we called out ‘Jack!’—who picked up
with his long curved beak the pieces of
meat that were thrown to him, tossed
them into the air and caught them
again, (whereat the Prince of Wurtemberg
laughed till he held his sides,)
because nature has provided him with
too short a tongue; but who did not
despise frogs and lizards, and who
called us at daybreak with his persevering
‘Hum, hum,’ until we roused
ourselves and answered ‘Jack.'”
Their anxiety on account of their
aviary was relieved by the Bascha’s
wife, who condescendingly offered to
take charge of it during their absence.
Mehemet Ali’s daughter suffered
dreadfully from ennui in dull, unwholesome
Chartum, and reckoned
on the birds and beasts as pastime
and diversion. Thus, little by little,
difficulties were overcome, and all
was made ready for the march. A
Bolognese doctor of medicine, named
Bellotti, and Dumont, a French apothecary,
arrived at Chartum. They
belonged to an Egyptian regiment,
and must accompany it on the chasua.[2]
Troops assembled in and around
Chartum, the greater part of whose
garrison, destined also to share in the
campaign, were boated over to the
right bank of the Blue Nile. Thence
they were to march northwards to
Damer—once a town, now a village
amidst ruins—situated about three
leagues above the place where the
Atbara, a river that rises in Abyssinia,
and flows north-westward through
Sennaar, falls into the Nile. There
the line of march changed its direction
to the right, and took a tolerably
straight route, but inclining a little to
the south, in the direction of the Red
Sea. The Bascha went by water
down the Nile the greater part of the
way to Damer, and was of course
attended by his physician. Mr Werne,
finding himself unwell, followed his
example, sending their twelve camels
by land, and accompanied by Bellotti,
Dumont, and a Savoyard merchant
from Chartum, Bruno Rollet by name.
There was great difficulty in getting
a vessel, all having been taken for the
transport of provisions and military[256]
stores; but at last one was discovered,
sunk by its owner to save it from the
commissariat, and after eleven days
of sickness, suffering, and peril—during
which Mr Werne, when burning
with fever, had been compelled to
jump overboard to push the heavy
laden boat off the reef on which the
stupid Rëis had run it—the party
rejoined headquarters. There Mr
Werne was kindly received by Achmet,
and most joyfully by his brother.
Long and dolorous was the tale Dr
Joseph had to tell of his sufferings
with the wild-riding Bascha. Three
days before reaching Damer, that impatient
chieftain left his ship and
ordered out the dromedaries. The
Berlin doctor of medicine felt his heart
sink within him; he had never yet
ascended a dromedary’s saddle, and the
desperate riding of the Bascha made
his own Turkish retinue fear to follow
him. His forebodings were well-founded.
Two hours’ rough trot shook
up his interior to such an extent, and
so stripped his exterior of skin, that
he was compelled to dismount and lie
down upon some brushwood near the
Nile, exposed to the burning sun, and
with a compassionate Bedouin for sole
attendant, until the servants and
baggage came up. Headache, vomiting,
terrible heat and parching thirst—for
he had no drinking vessel, and
the Bedouin would not leave him—were
his portion the whole day, followed
by fever and delirium during
the night. At two o’clock the next
day (the hottest time) the Bascha
was again in the saddle, as if desirous
to try to the utmost his own endurance
and that of his suite. By this
time the doctor had come up with
him, (having felt himself better in the
morning,) after a six hours’ ride, and
terrible loss of leather, the blood running
down into his stockings. Partly
on his dromedary, partly on foot, he
managed to follow his leader through
this second day’s march, at the cost
of another night’s fever, but in the
morning he was so weak that he was
obliged to take boat and complete his
journey to Damer by water. Of more
slender frame and delicate complexion
than his brother, the poor doctor was
evidently ill-adapted for roughing it
in African deserts, although his pluck
and fortitude went far towards supplying
his physical deficiencies. Most
painful are the accounts of his constantly
recurring sufferings during
that arduous expedition; and one
cannot but admire and wonder at the
zeal for science, or ardent thirst for
novelty, that supported him, and
induced him to persevere in the teeth
of such hardship and ill-health. At
Damer he purchased a small dromedary
of easy paces, and left the
Bascha’s rough-trotting gift for his
brother’s riding.

At three in the afternoon of the
20th March, a cannon-shot gave the
signal for departure. The Wernes’
water-skins were already filled and
their baggage packed; in an instant
their tents were struck and camels
loaded; with baggage and servants
they took their place at the head of
the column and rode up to the Bascha,
who was halted to the east of Damer,
with his beautiful horses and dromedaries
standing saddled behind him.
He complained of the great disorder
in the camp, but consoled himself
with the reflection that things would
go better by-and-by. “It was truly
a motley scene,” says Mr Werne.
“The Turkish cavalry in their national
costume of many colours, with
yellow and green banners and small
kettle-drums; the Schaïgië and Mograbin
horsemen; Bedouins on horseback,
on camels, and on foot; the
Schechs and Moluks (little king) with
their armour-bearers behind them on
the dromedaries, carrying pikes and
lances, straight swords and leather
shields; the countless donkeys and
camels—the former led by a great
portion of the infantry, to ride in
turn—drums and an ear-splitting
band of music, The Chabir (caravan-leader)
was seen in the distance
mounted on his dromedary, and armed
with a lance and round shield; the
Bascha bestrode his horse, and we
accompanied him in that direction,
whilst gradually, and in picturesque
disorder, the detachments emerged
from the monstrous confusion and followed
us. The artillery consisted of
two field-pieces, drawn by camels,
which the Bascha had had broken to
the work, that in the desert they
might relieve the customary team of
mules.

“Abd-el-Kader, the jovial Topschi[257]
Baschi, (chief of the artillery,) commanded
them, and rode a mule. The
Turks, (that is to say, chiefly Circassians,
Kurds, and Arnauts or Albanians,)
who shortly before could hardly
put one leg before the other, seemed
transformed into new men, as they
once more found themselves at home
in their saddles. They galloped
round the Bascha like madmen, riding
their horses as mercilessly as if they
had been drunk with opium. This
was a sort of honorary demonstration,
intended to indicate to their chief their
untameable valour. The road led
through the desert, and was tolerably
well beaten. Towards evening
the Bascha rode forwards with the
Chabir. We did not follow, for I
felt myself unwell. It was dark
night when we reached the left bank
of the Atbara, where we threw
ourselves down amongst the bushes,
and went to sleep, without taking
supper.”

The campaign might now be said
to be beginning; at least the army
was close upon tribes whose disposition,
if not avowedly hostile, was very
equivocal, and the Bascha placed a
picket of forty men at the only ford
over the Atbara, a clear stream of
tolerable depth, and with lofty banks,
covered with rich grass, with mimosas
and lofty fruit-laden palm-trees. The
next day’s march was a severe one—ten
hours without a halt—and was
attended, after nightfall, with some
danger, arising partly from the route
lying through trees with barbed
thorns, strong enough to tear the
clothes off men’s bodies and the eyes
out of their heads, and partly from the
crowding and pressure in the disorderly
column during its progress
amongst holes and chasms occasioned
by the overflowing of the river. Upon
halting, at midnight, a fire was
lighted for the Bascha, and one of his
attendants brought coffee to Mr
Werne; but he, sick and weary, rejected
it, and would have preferred,
he says, so thoroughly exhausted did
he feel, a nap under a bush to a supper
upon a roasted angel. They were
still ascending the bank of the Atbara,
a winding stream, with wildly beautiful
tree-fringed banks, containing
few fish, but giving shelter, in its
deep places, to the crocodile and hippopotamus.
From the clefts of its
sandstone bed, then partially exposed
by the decline of the waters, sprang
a lovely species of willow, with beautiful
green foliage and white umbelliferous
flowers, having a perfume surpassing
that of jasmine. The Wernes
would gladly, have explored the
neighbourhood; but the tremendous
heat, and a warm wind which played
round their temples with a sickening
effect, drove them into camp. Gunfire
was at noon upon that day; but
it was Mr Werne’s turn to be on the
sick-list. Suddenly he felt himself so
ill, that it was with a sort of despairing
horror he saw the tent struck from
over him, loaded upon a camel, and
driven off. In vain he endeavoured
to rise; the sun seemed to dart coals
of fire upon his head. His brother and
servant carried him into the shadow
of a neighbouring palm-tree, and he
sank half-dead upon the glowing sand.
It would suffice to abide there during
the heat of the day, as they thought,
but instead of that, they were compelled
to remain till next morning,
Werne suffering terribly from dysentery.
“Never in my life,” he says,
“did I more ardently long for the setting
of the sun than on that day; even
its last rays exercised the same painful
power on my hair, which seemed to
be in a sort of electric connection
with just as many sunbeams, and to
bristle up upon my head. And no
sooner had the luminary which inspired
me with such horror sunk below
the horizon, than I felt myself
better, and was able to get on my
legs and crawl slowly about. Some
good-natured Arab shepherd-lads approached
our fire, pitied me, and
brought me milk and durra-bread.
It was a lovely evening; the full moon
was reflected in the Atbara, as were
also the dark crowns of the palm-trees,
wild geese shrieked around us;
otherwise the stillness was unbroken,
save at intervals by the cooing of
doves. There is something beautiful
in sleeping in the open air, when
weather and climate are suitable.
We awoke before sunrise, comforted,
and got upon our dromedaries; but
after a couple of hours’ ride we mistrusted
the sun, and halted with some
wandering Arabs belonging to the
Kabyle of the Kammarabs. We[258]
were hospitably received, and regaled
with milk and bread.”[3]

When our two Germans rejoined
headquarters, after four days’ absence,
they found Achmet Bascha seated in
the shade upon the ground in front of
his tent, much burned by the sun, and
looking fagged and suffering—as well
he might be after the heat and exposure
he had voluntarily undergone.
Nothing could cure him, however, at
least as yet, of his fancy for marching
in the heat of the day. Although
obstinate and despotic, the Bascha
was evidently a dashing sort of fellow,
well calculated to win the respect and
admiration of his wild and heterogeneous
army. Weary as were the
two Wernes, (they reached the camp
at noon,) at two o’clock they had to
be again in the saddle. “A number
of gazelles were started; the Bascha
seized a gun and dashed after them
upon his Arabian stallion, almost the
whole of the cavalry scouring after
him like a wild mob, and we ourselves
riding a sharp trot to witness the
chase. We thought he had fallen
from his horse, so suddenly did he
swing himself from saddle to ground,
killing three gazelles with three shots,
of which animals we consumed a considerable
portion roasted for that
night’s supper.” The river here
widened, and crocodiles showed themselves
upon the opposite shore. The
day was terribly warm; the poor
medico was ill again, suffering grievously
from his head, and complaining
of his hair being so hot; and as the
Salamander Bascha persisted in marching
under a sun which, through the
canvass of the tents, heated sabres
and musket-barrels till it was scarcely
possible to grasp them, the brothers
again lingered behind and followed in
the cool of the evening, Joseph being
mounted upon an easy-going mule
lent him by Topschi Baschi, the good-humoured
but dissolute captain of
the guns. They were now divided
but by the river’s breadth from the
hostile tribe of the Haddenda, and
might at any moment be assailed;
so two hours after sunset a halt was
called and numerous camp-fires were
lighted, producing a most picturesque
effect amongst the trees, and by their
illumination of the diversified costumes
of the soldiery, and attracting
a whole regiment of scorpions, “some
of them remarkably fine specimens,”
says Mr Werne, who looks upon these
unpleasant fireside companions with a
scientific eye, “a finger and a half
long, of a light colour, half of the tail
of a brown black and covered with
hair.” It is a thousand pities that
the adventurous Mrs Ida Pfeiffer did
not accompany Mr Werne upon this
expedition. She would have had the
finest possible opportunities of curing
herself of the prejudice which it will
be remembered she was so weak as
to entertain against the scorpion
tribe. These pleasant reptiles were
as plentiful all along Mr Werne’s line
of march as are cockchafers on a
summer evening in an English oak-copse.
Their visitations were pleasantly
varied by those of snakes of
all sizes, and of various degrees of
venom. “At last,” says Mr Werne,
“one gets somewhat indifferent about
scorpions and other wild animals.”
He had greater difficulty in accustoming
himself to the sociable habits of
the snakes, who used to glide about
amongst tents and baggage, and by
whom, in the course of the expedition,
a great number of persons were
bitten. On the 12th April “Mohammed
Ladham sent us a remarkable
scorpion—pity that it is so much
injured—almost two fingers long,
black-brown, tail and feet covered
with prickly hair, claws as large as
those of a small crab…. We
had laid us down under a green tree
beside a cotton plantation, whilst our
servants unloaded the camels and
pitched the tents, when a snake, six[259]
feet long, darted from under our carpet,
passed over my leg, and close
before my brother’s face. But we
were so exhausted that we lay still,
and some time afterwards the snake
was brought to us, one of Schech
Defalla’s people having killed it.”
About noon next day a similar snake
sprang out of the said Defalla’s own
tent; it was killed also, and found to
measure six feet two inches. The
soldiers perceiving that the German
physician and his brother were curious
in the matter of reptiles, brought
them masses of serpents; but they
had got a notion that the flesh was
the part coveted (not the skin) to
make medicine, and most of the specimens
were so defaced as to be valueless.
Early in May “some soldiers
assured us they had seen in the
thicket a serpent twenty feet long,
and as thick as a man’s leg; probably
a species of boa—a pity that they
could not kill it. The great number
of serpents with dangerous bites
makes our bivouac very unsafe, and
we cannot encamp with any feeling
of security near bushes or amongst
brushwood; the prick of a blade of
straw, the sting of the smallest
insect, causes a hasty movement, for
one immediately fancies it is a snake
or scorpion; and when out shooting,
one’s second glance is for the game,
one’s first on the ground at his feet,
for fear of trampling and irritating
some venomous reptile.” As we proceed
through the volume we shall
come to other accounts of beasts and
reptiles, so remarkable as really
almost to reconcile us to the possibility
of some of the zoological marvels
narrated by the Yankee Doctor
Mayo in his rhapsody of Kaloolah.[4]
For the present we must revert to
the business of this curiously-conducted
campaign. As the army
advanced, various chiefs presented
themselves, with retinues more or
less numerous. The first of these
was the Grand-Shech Mohammed
Defalla, already named, who came
up, with a great following, on the
28th March. He was a man of
herculean frame; and assuredly such
was very necessary to enable him to
endure in that climate the weight of
his defensive arms. He wore a
double shirt of mail over a quilted
doublet, arm-plates and beautifully
wrought steel gauntlets; his casque
fitted like a shell to the upper part of
his head, and had in front, in lieu of
a visor, an iron bar coming down
over the nose—behind, for the protection
of the nape, a fringe composed
of small rings. His straight-bladed
sword had a golden hilt. The whole
equipment, which seems to correspond
very closely with that of some
of the Sikhs or other warlike Indian
tribes, proceeded from India, and
Defalla had forty or fifty such suits
of arms. About the same time with
him, arrived two Schechs from the
refractory land of Taka, tall handsome
men; whilst, from the environs
of the neighbouring town of Gos-Rajeb,
a number of people rode out on
dromedaries to meet the Bascha, their
hair quite white with camel-fat, which
melted in the sun and streamed over
their backs. Gos-Rajeb, situated at
about a quarter of a mile from the
left bank of the Atbara, consists of
some two hundred tokul (huts) and
clay-built houses, and in those parts
is considered an important commercial
depot, Indian goods being transported
thither on camels from the
port of Souakim, on the Red Sea.
The inhabitants are of various tribes,
more of them red than black or brown;
but few were visible, many having
fled at the approach of Achmet’s
army, which passed the town in imposing
array—the infantry in double
column in the centre, the Turkish
cavalry on the right, the Schaïgiës and
Mograbins on the left, the artillery,
with kettledrums, cymbals, and other
music, in the van—marched through
the Atbara, there very shallow, and
encamped on the right bank, in a
stony and almost treeless plain, at
the foot of two rocky hills. The
Bascha ordered the Shech of Gos-Rajeb
to act as guide to the Wernes
in their examination of the vicinity,
and to afford them all the information
in his power. The most remarkable
spot to which he conducted them
was to the site of an ancient city,
which once, according to tradition,
had been as large as Cairo, and[260]
inhabited by Christians. The date
of its existence must be very remote,
for the ground was smooth,
and the sole trace of buildings
consisted in a few heaps of broken
bricks. There were indications of a
terrible conflagration, the bricks in
one place being melted together into
a black glazed mass. Mr Werne
could trace nothing satisfactory with
respect to former Christian occupants,
and seems disposed to think that
Burckhardt, who speaks of Christian
monuments at that spot, (in the neighbourhood
of the hill of Herrerem,)
may have been misled by certain
peculiarly formed rocks.

The most renowned chief of the
mutinous tribes of Taka, the conqueror
of the Turks under Churdschid
Bascha, was Mohammed Din, Grand-Schech
of the Haddenda. This personage,
awed by the approach of
Achmet’s formidable force, sent his
son to the advancing Bascha, as a
hostage for his loyalty and submission.
Achmet sent the young
man back to his father as bearer
of his commands. The next day
the army crossed the frontier of
Taka, which is not very exactly defined,
left the Atbara in their rear,
and, moving still eastwards, beheld
before them, in the far distance, the
blue mountains of Abyssinia. The
Bascha’s suite was now swelled by
the arrival of numerous Schechs, great
and small, with their esquires and attendants.
The route lay through a
thick forest, interwoven with creeping
plants and underwood, and with
thorny mimosas, which grew to a
great height. The path was narrow,
the confusion of the march inconceivably
great and perilous, and if the
enemy had made a vigorous attack
with their javelins, which they are
skilled in throwing, the army must
have endured great loss, with scarcely
a possibility of inflicting any. At last
the scattered column reached an open
space, covered with grass, and intersected
with deep narrow rills of
water. The Bascha, who had outstripped
his troops, was comfortably
encamped, heedless of their fate,
whilst they continued for a long time
to emerge in broken parties from the
wood. Mr Werne’s good opinion of
his generalship had been already much
impaired, and this example of true
Turkish indolence, and of the absence
of any sort of military dispositions
under such critical circumstances,
completely destroyed it. The next
day there was some appearance of
establishing camp-guards, and of taking
due precautions against the fierce
and numerous foe, who on former
occasions had thrice defeated Turkish
armies, and from whom an attack might
at any moment be expected. In the
afternoon an alarm was given; the
Bascha, a good soldier, although a
bad general, was in the saddle in an
instant, and gallopping to the spot,
followed by all his cavalry, whilst the
infantry rushed confusedly in the
same direction. The uproar had
arisen, however, not from Arab assailants,
but from some soldiers who
had discovered extensive corn magazines—silos,
as they are called in Algeria—holes
in the ground, filled with
grain, and carefully covered over.
By the Bascha’s permission, the soldiers
helped themselves from these
abundant granaries, and thus the
army found itself provided with corn
for the next two months. In the
course of the disorderly distribution,
or rather scramble, occurred a little
fight between the Schaïgië, a quarrelsome
set of irregulars, and some of
the Turks. Nothing could be worse
than the discipline of Achmet’s host.
The Schaïgiës were active and daring
horsemen, and were the first to draw
blood in the campaign, in a skirmish
upon the following day with some
ambushed Arabs. The neighbouring
woods swarmed with these javelin-bearing
gentry, although they lay
close, and rarely showed themselves,
save when they could inflict injury
at small risk. Mr Werne began to
doubt the possibility of any extensive
or effectual operations against
these wild and wandering tribes,
who, on the approach of the army,
loaded their goods on camels, and
fled into the Chaaba, or forest district,
whither it was impossible to
follow them. Where was the Bascha
to find money and food for the support
of his numerous army?—where
was he to quarter it during the dangerous
Chariff, or rainy season? He
was very reserved as to his plans;
probably, according to Mr Werne,[261]
because he had none. The Schechs
who had joined and marched with
him could hardly be depended upon,
when it was borne in mind that they,
formerly the independent rulers of a
free people, had been despoiled of
their power and privileges, and were
now the ill-used vassals of the haughty
and stupid Turks, who overwhelmed
them with imposts, treated them contemptuously,
and even subjected them
to the bastinado. “Mohammed Din,
seeing the hard lot of these gentlemen,
seems disposed to preserve his
freedom as long as possible, or to sell
it as dearly as may be. Should it
come to a war, there is, upon our side,
a total want of efficient leaders, at
any rate if we except the Bascha.
Abdin Aga, chief of the Turkish cavalry,
a bloated Arnaut; Sorop Effendi,
a model of stupidity and covetousness;
Hassan Effendi Bimbaschi,
a quiet sot; Soliman Aga, greedy,
and without the slightest education of
any kind; Hassan Effendi of Sennaar,
a Turk in the true sense of the word
(these four are infantry commanders);
Mohammed Ladjam, a good-natured
but inexperienced fellow, chief of the
Mograbin cavalry: amongst all these
officers, the only difference is, that
each is more ignorant than his neighbour.
With such leaders, what can
be expected from an army that, for
the most part, knows no discipline—the
Schaïgiës, for instance, doing just
what they please, and being in a fair
way to corrupt all the rest—and that
is encumbered with an endless train
of dangerous rabble, idlers, slaves,
and women of pleasure, serving as
a burthen and hindrance? Let us
console ourselves with the Allah
kerim! (God is merciful.)” Mr
Werne had not long to wait for a
specimen of Turkish military skill.
On the night of the 7th April he was
watching in his tent beside his grievously
sick brother, when there suddenly
arose an uproar in the camp,
followed by firing. “I remained by
our tent, for my brother was scarcely
able to stir, and the infantry also
remained quiet, trusting to their
mounted comrades. But when I saw
Bimbaschi Hassan Effendi lead a
company past us, and madly begin to
fire over the powder-waggons, as if
these were meant to serve as barricades
against the hostile lances, I
ran up to him with my sabre drawn,
and threatened him with the Bascha,
as well as with the weapon, whereupon
he came to his senses, and
begged me not to betray him. The
whole proved to be mere noise, but
the harassed Bascha was again up
and active. He seemed to make no
use of his aides-de-camp, and only
his own presence could inspire his
troops with courage. Some of the
enemy were killed, and there were
many tracks of blood leading into the
wood, although the firing had been at
random in the darkness. As a specimen
of the tactics of our Napoleon-worshipping
Bascha, he allowed the
wells, which were at two hundred
yards from camp, to remain unguarded
at night, so that they might
easily have been filled up by the
enemy. Truly fortunate was it that
there were no great stones in the
neighbourhood to choke them up, for
we were totally without implements
wherewith to have cleared them out
again.” Luckily for this most careless
general and helpless army, the
Arabs neglected to profit by their
shortcomings, and on the 14th April,
after many negotiations, the renowned
Mohammed Din himself, awed, we
must suppose, by the numerical
strength of Achmet’s troops, and
over-estimating their real value, committed
the fatal blunder of presenting
himself in the Turkish camp. Great
was the curiosity to see this redoubted
chief, who alighted at Schech Defalla’s
tent, into which the soldiers impudently
crowded, to get a view of the
man before whom many of them had
formerly trembled and fled. “Mohammed
Din is of middle stature,
and of a black-brown colour, like all
his people; his countenance at first
says little, but, on longer inspection,
its expression is one of great
cunning; his bald head is bare; his
dress Arabian, with drawers of a fiery
red colour. His retinue consists,
without exception, of most ill-looking
fellows, on whose countenances Nature
seems to have done her best to
express the faithless character attributed
to the Haddenda. They are
all above the middle height, and
armed with shields and lances, or
swords.” Next morning Mr Werne[262]
saw the Bascha seated on his angarèb,
(a sort of bedstead, composed of
plaited strips of camel-hide, which,
upon the march, served as a throne,)
with a number of Shechs squatted
upon the ground on either side of
him, amongst them Mohammed Din,
looking humbled, and as if half-repentant
of his rash step. The Bascha
appeared disposed to let him feel that
he was now no better than a caged
lion, whose claws the captor can cut
at will. He showed him, however,
marks of favour, gave him a red
shawl for a turban, and a purple
mantle with gold tassels, but no
sabre, which Mr Werne thought a
bad omen. The Schech was suffered
to go to and fro between the camp
and his own people, but under certain
control—now with an escort of
Schaïgiës, then leaving his son as
hostage. He sent in some cattle and
sheep as a present, and promised to
bring the tribute due; this he failed
to do, and a time was fixed to him
and the other Shechs within which to
pay up arrears. Notwithstanding the
subjection of their chief, the Arabs
continued their predatory practices,
stealing camels from the camp, or
taking them by force from the grooms
who drove them out to pasture.

Mr Werne’s book is a journal,
written daily during the campaign
but, owing to the long interval between
its writing and publication, he
has found it necessary to make frequent
parenthetical additions, corrective
or explanatory. Towards the
end of April, during great sickness in
camp, he writes as follows:—”My
brother’s medical observations and
experiments begin to excite in me a
strong interest. He has promised me
that he will keep a medical journal;
but he must first get into better health,
for now it is always with sickening
disgust that he returns from visiting
his patients; he complains of the insupportable
effluvia from these people,
sinks upon his angarèb with depression
depicted in his features, and falls
asleep with open eyes, so that I often
feel quite uneasy.” Then comes the
parenthesis of ten years’ later date.
“Subsequently, when I had joined the
expedition for the navigation of the
White Nile, he wrote to me from the
camp of Kàssela-el-Lus to Chartum,
that, with great diligence and industry,
he had written some valuable
papers on African diseases, and was
inconsolable at having lost them. He
had been for ten days dangerously
ill, had missed me sadly, and, in a fit
of delirium, when his servant asked
him for paper to light the fire, had
handed him his manuscript, which the
stupid fellow had forthwith burned.
At the same time, he lamented that,
during his illness, our little menagerie
had been starved to death. The
Bascha had been to see him, and by
his order Topschi Baschi had taken
charge of his money, that he might not
be robbed, giving the servants what
was needful for their keep, and for the
purchase of flesh for the animals. The
servants had drunk the money intended
for the beasts’ food. When my
brother recovered his health, he had
the fagged, (a sort of lynx,) which had
held out longest, and was only just
dead, cut open, and so convinced himself
that it had died of hunger. The
annoyance one has to endure from
these people is beyond conception,
and the very mildest-tempered man—as,
for instance, my late brother—is
compelled at times to make use of the
whip.”

Whilst Mohammed Din and the
other Shechs, accompanied by detachments
of Turkish troops, intended
partly to support them in their demands,
and partly to reconnoitre the
country, endeavoured to get together
the stipulated tribute, the army remained
stationary. But repose did
not entail monotony; strange incidents
were of daily occurrence in this singular
camp. The Wernes, always
anxious for the increase of their cabinet
of stuffed birds and beasts, sent
their huntsman Abdallah with one of
the detachments, remaining themselves,
for the present at least, at headquarters,
to collect whatever might
come in their way. The commander
of the Mograbins sent them an antelope
as big as a donkey, having legs
like a cow, and black twisted horns.
From the natives little was to be
obtained. They were very shy and
ill-disposed, and could not be prevailed
upon, even by tenfold payment,
to supply the things most abundant
with them, as for instance milk and
honey. In hopes of alluring and[263]
conciliating them, the Bascha ordered
those traders who had accompanied
the army to establish a bazaar outside
the fence enclosing the camp. The
little mirrors that were there sold
proved a great attraction. The Arabs
would sit for whole days looking in
them, and pulling faces. But no
amount of reflection could render them
amicable or honest: they continued to
steal camels and asses whenever they
could, and one of them caught a
Schaigie’s horse, led him up to the
camp, and stabbed him to death. So
great was the hatred of these tribes to
their oppressors—a hatred which
would have shown itself by graver
aggressions, but for Achmet’s large
force, and above all, for their dread
of firearms. Within the camp there
was wild work enough at times. The
good-hearted, hot-headed Werne was
horribly scandalised by the ill-treatment
of the slaves. Dumont, the
French apothecary, had a poor lad
named Amber, a mere boy, willing
and industrious, whom he continually
beat and kicked, until at last Mr
Werne challenged him to a duel with
sabres, and threatened to take away
the slave, which he, as a Frenchman,
had no legal right to possess. But
this was nothing compared to the
cruelties practised by other Europeans,
and especially at Chartum by
one Vigoureux, (a French corporal
who had served under Napoleon, and
was now adjutant of an Egyptian
battalion,) and his wife, upon a poor
black girl, only ten years of age,
whom they first barbarously flogged,
and then tied to a post, with her
bleeding back exposed to the broiling
sun. Informed of this atrocity by his
brother, who had witnessed it, Mr
Werne sprang from his sickbed, and
flew to the rescue, armed with his
sabre, and with a well-known iron
stick, ten pounds in weight, which
had earned him the nickname of Abu-Nabut,
or Father of the Stick. A
distant view of his incensed countenance
sufficed, and the Frenchman,
cowardly as cruel, hastened to release
his victim, and to humble himself
before her humane champion. Concerning
this corporal and his dame,
whom he had been to France to fetch,
and who was brought to bed on camel-back,
under a burning sun, in the
midst of the desert, some curious
reminiscences are set down in the
Feldzug, as are also some diverting
details of the improprieties of the dissipated
gunner Topschi Baschi, who,
on the 1st May, brought dancing-girls
into the hut occupied by the two
Germans, and assembled a mob round
it by the indecorous nature of his
proceedings. Regulations for the internal
order and security of the camp
were unheard of. After a time, tents
were pitched over the ammunition; a
ditch was dug around it, and strict
orders were given to light no fire in its
vicinity. All fires, too, by command
of the Bascha, were to be extinguished
when the evening gun was fired. For
a short time the orders were obeyed;
then they were forgotten; fires were
seen blazing late at night, and within
fifteen paces of the powder. Nothing
but the bastinado could give memory
to these reckless fatalists. “I have
often met ships upon the Nile, so laden
with straw that there was scarcely
room for the sailors to work the vessel.
No matter for that; in the midst of
the straw a mighty kitchen-fire was
merrily blazing.”

On the 6th of May, the two Wernes
mounted their dromedaries and set off,
attended by one servant, and with a
guide provided by Mohammed Defalla,
for the village of El Soffra, at a distance
of two and a half leagues, where
they expected to find Mohammed Din
and a large assemblage of his tribe.
It was rather a daring thing to advance
thus unescorted into the land
of the treacherous Haddendas, and the
Bascha gave his consent unwillingly;
but Mussa, (Moses,) the Din’s only
son, was hostage in the camp, and
they deemed themselves safer alone
than with the half company of soldiers
Achmet wanted to send with them.
Their route lay due east, at first through
fields of durra, (a sort of grain,)
afterwards through forests of saplings.
The natives they met greeted
them courteously, and they reached
El Soffra without molestation, but
there learned, to their considerable
annoyance, that Mohammed Din
had gone two leagues and a half
farther, to the camp of his nephew
Shech Mussa, at Mitkenàb. So, after
a short pause, they again mounted
their camels, and rode off, loaded with[264]
maledictions by the Arabs, because
they would not remain and supply
them with medicine, although the same
Arabs refused to requite the drugs
with so much as a cup of milk. They
rode for more than half an hour before
emerging from the straggling village,
which was composed of wretched huts
made of palm-mats, having an earthen
cooking-vessel, a leathern water-bottle,
and two stones for bruising corn,
for sole furniture. The scanty dress
of the people—some of the men had
nothing but a leathern apron round
their hips, and a sheep-skin, with the
wool inwards, over their shoulders—their
long hair and wild countenances,
gave them the appearance of thorough
savages. In the middle of every village
was an open place, where the
children played stark naked in the
burning sun, their colour and their
extraordinarily nimble movements
combining, says Mr Werne, to give
them the appearance of a troop of
young imps. Infants, which in Europe
would lie helpless in the cradle, are
there seen rolling in the sand, with none
to mind them, and playing with the
young goats and other domestic
animals. In that torrid climate, the
development of the human frame is
wonderfully rapid. Those women of
whom the travellers caught a sight in
this large village, which consisted of
upwards of two thousand huts and
tents, were nearly all old and ugly.
The young ones, when they by chance
encountered the strangers, covered
their faces, and ran away. On the
road to Mitkenàb, however, some
young and rather handsome girls
showed themselves. “They all looked
at us with great wonder,” says Mr
Werne, “and took us for Turks, for
we are the first Franks who have come
into this country.”

Mitkenàb, pleasantly situated
amongst lofty trees, seemed to invite
the wanderers to cool shelter from
the mid-day sun. They were parched
with thirst when they entered it, but
not one of the inquisitive Arabs who
crowded around them would attend to
their request for a draught of milk or
water. Here, however, was Mohammed
Din, and with him a party of
Schaïgiës under Melek Mahmud,
whom they found encamped under a
great old tree, with his fifty horsemen
around him. After they had
taken some refreshment, the Din
came to pay them a visit. He refused
to take the place offered him on an
angarèb, but sat down upon the
ground, giving them to understand,
with a sneering smile, that that
was now the proper place for him.
“We had excellent opportunity to
examine the physiognomy of this
Schech, who is venerated like a
demigod by all the Arabs between
the Atbara and the Red Sea. ‘He
is a brave man,’ they say, ‘full of
courage; there is no other like him!’
His face is fat and round, with small
grey-brown, piercing, treacherous-looking
eyes, expressing both the
cunning and the obstinacy of his
character; his nose is well-proportioned
and slightly flattened; his
small mouth constantly wears a
satirical scornful smile. But for this
expression and his thievish glance,
his bald crown and well-fed middle-sized
person would become a monk’s
hood. He goes with his head bare,
wears a white cotton shirt and ferda,
and sandals on his feet…. We
told him that he was well known to
the Franks as a great hero; he shook
his head and said that on the salt
lake, at Souakim, he had seen great
ships with cannon, but that he did
not wish the help of the Inglèb (English;)
then he said something else,
which was not translated to us. I
incautiously asked him, how numerous
his nation was. ‘Count the trees,’
he replied, glancing ironically around
him; (a poll-tax constituted a portion
of the tribute.) Conversation through
an interpreter was so wearisome that
we soon took our leave.” At Mitkenàb
they were upon the borders of
the great forest (Chaaba) that extends
from the banks of the Atbara to the
shores of the Red Sea. It contains
comparatively few lofty trees—most
of these getting uprooted by hurricanes,
when the rainy season has
softened the ground round their roots—but
a vast deal of thicket and dense
brushwood, affording shelter to legions
of wild beasts; innumerable herds of
elephants, rhinoceroses, lions, tigers,
giraffes, various inferior beasts, and
multitudes of serpents of the most
venomous description. For fear of
these unpleasant neighbours, no Arab[265]
at Mitkenàb quits his dwelling after
nightfall. “When we returned to
the wells, a little before sundown, we
found all the Schaïgiës on the move,
to take up their quarters in an enclosure
outside the village, partly on
account of the beasts of prey, especially
the lions, which come down to
drink of a night, partly for safety
from the unfriendly Arabs. We went
with them and encamped with Mammud
in the middle of the enclosure.
We slept soundly the night through,
only once aroused by the hoarse cries
of the hyenas, which were sneaking
about the village, setting all the
dogs barking. To insure our safety,
Mohammed Din himself slept at our
door—so well-disposed were his
people towards us.” A rumour had
gained credit amongst the Arabs, that
the two mysterious strangers were,
sent by Achmet to reconnoitre the
country for the Bascha’s own advance;
and so incensed were they at this,
that, although their beloved chief’s
son was a hostage in the Turkish
camp, it was only by taking bypaths,
under guidance of a young
relative of Schech Mussa’s, that the
Wernes were able to regain their
camp in safety. A few days after
their return they were both attacked
by bad fever, which for some time
prevented them from writing. They
lost their reckoning, and thenceforward
the journal is continued without
dates.

The Bascha grew weary of life in
camp, and pined after action. In vain
did the Schaïgiës toss the djereed, and
go through irregular tournaments and
sham fights for his diversion; in vain
did he rattle the dice with Topschi
Baschi; vain were the blandishments
of an Abyssinian beauty whom he
had quartered in a hut surrounded
with a high fence, and for whose
amusement he not unfrequently had
nocturnal serenades performed by the
band of the 8th regiment; to which
brassy and inharmonious challenge
the six thousand donkeys assembled
in camp never failed to respond by an
ear-splitting bray, whilst the numerous
camels bellowed a bass: despite all
these amusements, the Bascha suffered
from ennui. He was furious when
he saw how slowly and scantily came
in the tribute for which he had made
this long halt. Some three hundred
cows were all that had yet been delivered;
a ridiculously small number
contrasted with the vast herds possessed
by those tribes. Achmet foamed
with rage at this ungrateful return
for his patience and consideration.
He reproached the Schechs who were
with him, and sent for Mohammed
Din, Shech Mussa, and the two
Shechs of Mitkenàb. Although their
people, foreboding evil, endeavoured to
dissuade them from obedience, they
all four came and were forthwith put
in irons and chained together. With
all his cunning Mohammed Din had
fallen into the snare. His plan had
been, so Mr Werne believes, to cajole
and detain the Turks by fair words
and promises until the rainy season,
when hunger and sickness would have
proved his best allies. The Bascha
had been beforehand with him, and
the old marauder might now repent at
leisure that he had not trusted to his
impenetrable forests and to the javelins
of his people, rather than to the word
of a Turk. On the day of his arrest
the usual evening gun was loaded
with canister, and fired into the
woods in the direction of the Haddendas,
the sound of cannon inspiring
the Arab and negro tribes with a
panic fear. Firearms—to them incomprehensible
weapons—have served
more than anything else to daunt
their courage. “When the Turks
attacked a large and populous mountain
near Faszogl, the blacks sent out
spies to see how strong was the foe,
and how armed. The spies came
back laughing, and reported that
there was no great number of men;
that their sole arms were shining sticks
upon their shoulders, and that they
had neither swords, lances, nor shields.
The poor fellows soon found how
terrible an effect had the sticks they
deemed so harmless. As they could
not understand how it was that small
pieces of lead should wound and kill,
a belief got abroad amongst them,
that the Afrite, Scheitàn, (the devil or
evil spirit,) dwelt in the musket-barrels.
With this conviction, a
negro, grasping a soldier’s musket,
put his hand over the mouth of the
barrel, that the afrite might not get
out. The soldier pulled the trigger,
and the leaden devil pierced the poor[266]
black’s hand and breast. After an
action, a negro collected the muskets
of six or seven slain soldiers, and joyfully
carried them home, there to
forge them into lances in the presence
of a party of his friends. But it
happened that some of them were
loaded, and soon getting heated in
the fire, they went off, scattering
death and destruction around them.”
Most of the people in Taka run from
the mere report of a musket, but the
Arabs of Hedjàs, a mountainous
district near the Red Sea, possess
firearms, and are slow but very good
shots.

In the way of tribute, nothing was
gained by the imprisonment of Mahommed
Din and his companions.
No more contributions came in, and
not an Arab showed himself upon
the market-place outside the camp.
Mohammed Din asked why his captors
did not kill rather than confine
him; he preferred death to captivity,
and keeping him prisoner would lead,
he said, to no result. The Arab
chiefs in camp did not conceal their
disgust at the Bascha’s treatment of
their Grand-Shech, and taxed Achmet
with having broken his word, since
he had given him the Amàhn—promise
of pardon. Any possibility of
conciliating the Arabs was destroyed
by the step that had been taken. At
night they swarmed round the camp,
shrieking their war-cry. The utmost
vigilance was necessary; a third of
the infantry was under arms all night,
the consequent fatigue increasing the
amount of sickness. The general
aspect of things was anything but
cheering. The Wernes had their
private causes of annoyance. Six of
their camels, including the two excellent
dromedaries given to them by the
Bascha before quitting Chartum, were
stolen whilst their camel-driver slept,
and could not be recovered. They
were compelled to buy others, and
Mr Werne complains bitterly of the
heavy expenses of the campaign—expenses
greatly augmented by the
sloth and dishonesty of their servants.
The camel-driver, fearing to face his
justly-incensed employers, disappeared
and was no more heard of. Upon
this and other occasions, Mr Werne
was struck by the extraordinary skill
of the Turks in tracing animals and
men by their footsteps. In this manner
his servants tracked his camels to an
Arab village, although the road had
been trampled by hundreds of beasts
of the same sort. “If these people
have once seen the footprint of a man,
camel, horse, or ass, they are sure to
recognise it amongst thousands of
such impressions, and will follow the
trail any distance, so long as the
ground is tolerably favourable, and
wind or rain has not obliterated the
marks. In cases of loss, people send
for a man who makes this kind of
search his profession; they show him
a footprint of the lost animal, and
immediately, without asking any
other indication, he follows the track
through the streets of a town, daily
trodden by thousands, and seldom
falls to hunt out the game. He does
not proceed slowly, or stoop to examine
the ground, but his sharp eye
follows the trail at a run. We ourselves
saw the footstep of a runaway
slave shown to one of these men, who
caught the fugitive at the distance of
three days’ journey from that spot.
My brother once went out of the
Bascha’s house at Chartum, to visit a
patient who lived far off in the town.
He had been gone an hour when the
Bascha desired to see him, and the
tschansch (orderly) traced him at
once by his footmarks on the unpaved
streets in which crowds had left
similar signs. When, in consequence
of my sickness, we lingered for some
days on the Atbara, and then marched
to overtake the army, the Schaïgiës
who escorted us detected, amidst the
hoof-marks of the seven or eight
thousand donkeys accompanying the
troops, those of a particular jackass
belonging to one of their friends, and
the event proved that they were
right.” Mr Werne fills his journal,
during his long sojourn in camp, with
a great deal of curious information
concerning the habits and peculiarities
of both Turks and Arabs, as well as
with the interesting results of his
observations on the brute creation.
The soldiers continued to bring to
him and his brother all manner of
animals and reptiles—frogs, whole
coils of snakes, and chameleons, which
there abound, but whose changes of
colour Mr Werne found to be much less
numerous than is commonly believed.[267]
For two months he watched the
variations of hue of these curious
lizards, and found them limited to
different shades of grey and green,
with yellow stripes and spots. He
made a great pet of a young wild cat,
which was perfectly tame, and extraordinarily
handsome. Its colour was
grey, beautifully spotted with black,
like a panther; its head was smaller
and more pointed than that of European
cats; its ears, of unusual size,
were black, with white stripes.
Many of the people in camp took it
to be a young tiger, but the natives
called it a fagged, and said it was a
sort of cat, in which Mr Werne
agreed with them. “Its companion
and playfellow is a rat, about the
size of a squirrel, with a long silvery
tail, which, when angry, it swells out,
and sets up over its back. This poor
little beast was brought to us with
two broken legs, and we gave it to
the cat, thinking it was near death.
But the cat, not recognising her
natural prey—and moreover feeling
the want of a companion—and the
rat, tamed by pain and cured by
splints, became inseparable friends,
ate together, and slept arm in arm.
The rat, which was not ugly like our
house rats, but was rather to be considered
handsome, by reason of its
long frizzled tail, never made use of
its liberty to escape.” Notwithstanding
the numerous devices put in practice
by the Wernes to pass their
time, it at last began to hang heavy,
and their pipes were almost their sole
resource and consolation. Smoking
is little customary in Egypt, except
amongst the Turks and Arabs. The
Mograbins prefer chewing. The blacks
of the Gesira make a concentrated
infusion of this weed, which they call
bucca; take a mouthful of it, and roll
the savoury liquor round their teeth
for a quarter of an hour before ejecting
it. They are so addicted to this
practice, that they invite their friends
to “bucca” as Europeans do to
dinner. The vessel containing the
tobacco juice makes the round of the
party, and a profound silence ensues,
broken only by the harmonious gurgle
of the delectable fluid. Conversation
is carried on by signs.

“We shall march to-morrow,” had
long been the daily assurance of those
wiseacres, to be found in every army,
who always know what the general
means to do better than the general
himself. At last the much-desired
order was issued—of course when
everybody least expected it—and,
after a night of bustle and confusion,
the army got into motion, in its usual
disorderly array. Its destination was
a mountain called Kassela-el-Lus, in
the heart of the Taka country, whither
the Bascha had sent stores of grain,
and where he proposed passing the
rainy season and founding a new
town. The distance was about fourteen
hours’ march. The route led
south-eastwards, at first through a
level country, covered with boundless
fields of tall durra. At the horizon,
like a great blue cloud, rose the
mountain of Kassela, a blessed sight
to eyes that had long been weary of
the monotonous level country. After
a while the army got out of the durra-fields,
and proceeded over a large
plain scantily overgrown with grass,
observing a certain degree of military
order and discipline, in anticipation
of an attempt, on the part of the
angry Arabs, to rescue Mohammed
Din and his companions in captivity.
Numerous hares and jackals were
started and ridden down. Even
gazelles, swift as they are, were sometimes
overtaken by the excellent
Turkish horses. Presently the grass
grew thicker and tall enough to conceal
a small donkey, and they came
to wooded tracts and jungles, and
upon marks of elephants and other
wild beasts. The foot-prints of the
elephants, in places where the ground
had been slightly softened by the
rain, were often a foot deep, and from
a foot and a half to two feet in length
and breadth. Mr Werne regrets not
obtaining a view of one of these giant
brutes. The two-horned rhinoceros
is also common in that region, and is
said to be of extraordinary ferocity
in its attacks upon men and beasts,
and not unfrequently to come off conqueror
in single combat with the elephant.
“Suddenly the little Schaïgiës
cavalry set up a great shouting, and
every one handled his arms, anticipating
an attack from the Arabs.
But soon the cry of ‘Asset! Asset!’
(lion) was heard, and we gazed eagerly
on every side, curious for the lion’s[268]
appearance. The Bascha had already
warned his chase-loving cavalry,
under penalty of a thousand blows, not
to quit their ranks on the appearance
of wild beasts, for in that broken
ground he feared disorder in the army
and an attack from the enemy. I
and my brother were at that moment
with Melek Mahmud at the outward
extremity of the left wing; suddenly
a tolerably large lioness trotted out of
a thicket beside us, not a hundred
paces off. She seemed quite fearless,
for she did not quicken her pace at
sight of the army. The next minute
a monstrous lion showed himself at
the same spot, roaring frightfully, and
apparently in great fury; his motions
were still slower than those of his
female; now and then he stood still
to look at us, and after coming to
within sixty or seventy paces—we all
standing with our guns cocked, ready
to receive him—he gave us a parting
scowl, and darted away, with great
bounds, in the track of his wife. In
a moment both had disappeared.”
Soon after this encounter, which
startled and delighted Dr Werne, and
made his brother’s little dromedary
dance with alarm, they reached the
banks of the great gohr, (the bed of
a river, filled only in the rainy season,)
known as El Gasch, which
intersects the countries of Taka and
Basa. With very little daring and
still less risk, the Haddendas, who
are said to muster eighty thousand
fighting men, might have annihilated
the Bascha’s army, as it wound its
toilsome way for nearly a league
along the dry water-course, (whose
high banks were crowned with trees
and thick bushes,) the camels stumbling
and occasionally breaking their
legs in the deep holes left by the feet
of the elephants, where the cavalry
could not have acted, and where
every javelin must have told upon
the disorderly groups of weary infantry.
The Arabs either feared the
firearms, or dreaded lest their attack
should be the signal for the
instant slaughter of their Grand-Shech,
who rode, in the midst of the
infantry, upon a donkey, which had
been given him out of consideration
for his age, whilst the three other
prisoners were cruelly forced to perform
the whole march on foot, with
heavy chains on their necks and feet,
and exposed to the jibes of the
pitiless soldiery. On quitting the
Gohr, the march was through trees
and brushwood, and then through a
sort of labyrinthine swamp, where
horses and camels stumbled at every
step, and where the Arabs again had
a glorious opportunity, which they
again neglected, of giving Achmet
such a lesson as they had given to his
predecessor in the Baschalik. The
army now entered the country of the
Hallengas, and a six days’ halt succeeded
to their long and painful
march.

It would be of very little interest
to trace the military operations of
Achmet Bascha, which were altogether
of the most contemptible
description—consisting in the chasuas,
or razzias already noticed, sudden
and secret expeditions of bodies of
armed men against defenceless tribes,
whom they despoiled of their cattle
and women. From his camp at the
foot of Kassela-el-Lus, the Bascha
directed many of these marauding
parties, remaining himself safely in a
large hut, which Mr Werne had had
constructed for him, and usually
cheating the men and officers, who had
borne the fatigue and run the risk,
out of their promised share of the
booty. Sometimes the unfortunate
natives, driven to the wall and rendered
desperate by the cruelties of
their oppressors, found courage for a
stout resistance.

“An expedition took place to the
mountains of Basa, and the troops
brought back a large number of
prisoners of both sexes. The men
were almost all wounded, and showed
great fortitude under the painful
operation of extracting the balls.
Even the Turks confessed that these
mountaineers had made a gallant
defence with lances and stones. Of
our soldiers several had musket-shot
wounds, inflicted by their comrades’
disorderly fire. The Turks asserted
that the Mograbins and Schaïgiës
sometimes fired intentionally at the
soldiers, to drive them from their
booty. It was a piteous sight to see
the prisoners—especially the women
and children—brought into camp
bound upon camels, and with despair
in their countenances. Before they[269]
were sold or allotted, they were taken
near the tent of Topschi Baschi,
where a fire was kept burning, and
were all, even to the smallest children,
branded on the shoulder with a red-hot
iron in the form of a star.
When their moans and lamentations
reached our hut, we took our
guns and hastened away out shooting
with three servants. These, notwithstanding
our exhortations, would
ramble from us, and we had got
exceedingly angry with them for so
doing, when suddenly we heard three
shots, and proceeded in that direction,
thinking it was they who had
fired. Instead of them, we found
three soldiers, lying upon the
ground, bathed in their blood and
terribly torn. Two were already
dead, and the third, whose whole
belly was ripped up, told us they had
been attacked by a lion. The three
shots brought up our servants, whom
we made carry the survivor into camp,
although my brother entertained
slight hopes of saving him. The
Bascha no sooner heard of the incident
than he got on horseback with
Soliman Kaschef and his people, to
hunt the lion, and I accompanied him
with my huntsman Sale, a bold fellow,
who afterwards went with me up the
White Nile. On reaching the spot
where the lion had been, the Turks
galloped off to seek him, and I and
Sale alone remained behind. Suddenly
I heard a heavy trampling, and
a crashing amongst the bushes, and I
saw close beside me an elephant with
its calf. Sale, who was at some distance,
and had just shot a parrot,
called out to know if he should fire at
the elephant, which I loudly forbade
him to do. The beast broke its way
through the brushwood just at hand.
I saw its high back, and took up a
safe position amongst several palm-trees,
which all grew from one root,
and were so close together that the
elephant could not get at me. Sale
was already up a tree, and told me
the elephant had turned round, and
was going back into the chaaba. The
brute seemed angry or anxious about
its young one, for we found the
ground dug up for a long distance by
its tusk as by a plough. Some shots
were fired, and we thought the Bascha
and his horsemen were on the track
of the lion, but they had seen the elephant,
and formed a circle round it.
A messenger galloped into camp,
and in a twinkling the Arnaut Abdin
Bey came up with part of his people.
The elephant, assailed on all sides by
a rain of bullets, charged first one
horseman, then another; they delivered
their fire and galloped off.
The eyes were the point chiefly aimed
at, and it soon was evident that he
was blinded by the bullets, for when
pursuing his foes he ran against the
trees, the shock of his unwieldy mass
shaking the fruit from the palms.
The horsemen dismounted and
formed a smaller circle around him.
He must already have received some
hundred bullets, and the ground over
which he staggered was dyed red,
when the Bascha crept quite near
him, knelt down and sent a shot into
his left eye, whereupon the colossus
sank down upon his hinder end and
died. Nothing was to be seen of the
calf or of the lion, but a few days
later a large male lion was killed by
Soliman Kaschef’s men, close to camp,
where we often in the night-time
heard the roaring of those brutes.”

Just about this time bad news
reached the Wernes. Their huntsman
Abdallah, to whom they were
much attached by reason of his gallantry
and fidelity, had gone a long
time before to the country of the Beni-Amers,
eastward from Taka, in company
of a Schaïgië chief, mounted
on one of their best camels, armed
with a double-barrelled gun, and provided
with a considerable sum of
money for the purchase of giraffes.
On his way back to his employers,
with a valuable collection of stuffed
birds and other curiosities, he was
barbarously murdered, when travelling,
unescorted, through the Hallenga
country, and plundered of all his baggage.
Sale, who went to identify his
friend’s mutilated corpse, attributed
the crime to the Hallengas. Mr
Werne was disposed to suspect Mohammed
Ehle, a great villain, whom
the Bascha at times employed as a
secret stabber and assassin. This
Ehle had been appointed Schech of
the Hallengas by the Divan, in lieu
of the rightful Schech, who had refused
submission to the Turks. Three
nephews of Mohammed Din (one of[270]
them the same youth who had escorted
the Wernes safely back to camp
when they were in peril of their
lives in the Haddenda country) came
to visit their unfortunate relative, who
was still a prisoner, cruelly treated,
lying upon the damp earth, chained to
two posts, and awaiting with fortitude
the cruel death by impalement with
which the Bascha threatened him.
Achmet received the young men very
coldly, and towards evening they set
out, greatly depressed by their uncle’s
sad condition, upon their return homewards.
Early next morning the
Wernes, when out shooting, found
the dead bodies of their three friends.
They had been set upon and slain
after a gallant defence, as was testified
by their bloody lances, and by
other signs of a severe struggle. The
birds of prey had already picked out
their eyes, and their corpses presented
a frightful spectacle. The Wernes,
convinced that this assassination had
taken place by the Bascha’s order,
loaded the bodies on a camel, took
them to Achmet, and preferred an
accusation against the Hallengas for
this shameful breach of hospitality.
The Bascha’s indifference confirmed
their suspicions. He testified no indignation,
but there was great excitement
amongst his officers; and when
they left the Divan, Mr Werne violently
reproached Mohammed Ehle,
whom he was well assured was the
murderer, and who endured his anger
in silence. “The Albanian Abdin
Bey was so enraged that he was only
withheld by the united persuasions of
the other officers from mounting his
horse and charging Mohammed Ehle
with his wild Albanians, the consequence
of which would inevitably
have been a general mutiny against
the Bascha, for the soldiers had long
been murmuring at their bad food and
ill treatment.” The last hundred
pages of Mr Werne’s very closely
printed and compendious volume
abound in instances of the Bascha’s
treachery and cruelty, and of the retaliation
exercised by the Arabs. On
one occasion a party of fifty Turkish
cavalry were murdered by the Haddendas,
who had invited them to a
feast. The town of Gos-Rajeb was
burned, twenty of the merchants there
resident were killed, and the corn,
stored there for the use of the army
on its homeward march, was plundered.
The Bascha had a long-cherished
plan of cutting off the supply of
water from the country of the
Haddendas. This was to be done by
damming up the Gohr-el-Gasch, and
diverting the abundant stream which,
in the rainy season, rushed along its
deep gully, overflowing the tall
banks and fertilising fields and forests.
As the Bascha’s engineer and confidential
adviser, Mr Werne was
compelled to direct this work. By the
labour of thousands of men, extensive
embankments were made, and the
Haddendas began to feel the want of
water, which had come down from
the Abyssinian mountains, and already
stood eight feet deep in the
Gohr. Mr Werne repented his share
in the cruel work, and purposely
abstained from pressing the formation
of a canal which was to carry off the
superfluous water to the Atbara, there
about three leagues distant from the
Gohr. And one morning he was
awakened by a great uproar in the
camp, and by the shouts of the Bascha,
who was on horseback before his
hut, and he found that a party of Haddendas
had thrashed a picket and
made an opening in the dykes, which
was the deathblow to Achmet’s magnificent
project of extracting an exorbitant
tribute from Mohammed Din’s
tribe as the price of the supply of
water essential to their very existence.
The sole results of the cruel
attempt were a fever to the Bascha,
who had got wet, and the sickness of
half the army, who had been compelled
to work like galley-slaves under
a burning sun and upon bad rations.
The vicinity of Kassela is rich in
curious birds and beasts. The mountain
itself swarms with apes, and Mr
Werne frequently saw groups of two
or three hundred of them seated upon
the cliffs. They are about the size
of a large dog, with dark brown hair
and hideous countenances. Awful
was the screaming and howling they
set up of a night, when they received
the unwelcome visit of some hungry
leopard or prowling panther. Once
the Wernes went out with their guns
for a day’s sport amongst the monkeys,
but were soon glad to beat a retreat
under a tremendous shower of stones.[271]
Hassan, a Turk, who purveyed the
brothers with hares, gazelles, and
other savoury morsels, and who was
a very good shot, promised to bring
in—of course for good payment—not
only a male and female monkey, but
a whole camel-load if desired. He
started off with this object, but did
not again show himself for some days,
and tried to sneak out of the Wernes’
way when they at last met him in the
bazaar. He had a hole in his head,
and his shoulder badly hurt, and declared
he would have nothing more
to say to those transformed men upon
the mountain. Mr Werne was very
desirous to catch a monkey alive, but
was unsuccessful, and Mohammed
Ehle refused to sell a tame one which
he owned, and which usually sat upon
his hut. Mr Werne thinks them a
variety of the Chimpanzee. They
fight amongst themselves with sticks,
and defend themselves fiercely with
stones against the attacks of men.
Upon the whole the Wernes were
highly fortunate in collecting zoological
and ornithological specimens, of
which they subsequently sent a large
number, stuffed, to the Berlin museum.
They also secured several birds and
animals alive; amongst these a young
lion and a civet cat. Regarding reptiles
they were very curious, and nothing of
that kind was too long or too large
for them. As Ferdinand Werne was
sitting one day upon his dromedary, in
company with the Bascha, on the left
bank of the Gasch, the animals shied
at a large serpent which suddenly
darted by. The Bascha ordered the
men who were working at the dykes
to capture it, which they at once proceeded
to do, as unconcernedly as an
English haymaker would assail a
hedge snake. “Pursued by several
men, the serpent plunged into the
water, out of which it then boldly
reared its head, and confronted an
Arab who had jumped in after it,
armed with a hassaie. With extraordinary
skill and daring the Arab
approached it, his club uplifted, and
struck it over the head, so that the
serpent fell down stunned and writhing
mightily; whereupon another
Arab came up with a cord; the club-bearer,
without further ceremony,
griped the reptile by the throat, just
below the head; the noose was made
fast, and the pair of them dragged
their prize on shore. There it lay for
a moment motionless, and we contemplated
the terribly beautiful creature,
which was more than eleven
feet long and half-a-foot in diameter.
But when they began to drag it away,
by which the skin would of course be
completely spoiled, orders were given
to carry it to camp. A jacket was
tied over its head, and three men set
to work to get it upon their shoulders;
but the serpent made such violent
convulsive movements that all three
fell to the ground with it, and the
same thing occurred again when
several others had gone to their
assistance. I accompanied them into
camp, drove a big nail into the foremost
great beam of our recuba, (hut,)
and had the monster suspended from
it. He hung down quite limp, as did
also several other snakes, which were
still alive, and which our servants had
suspended inside our hut, intending
to skin them the next morning, as
it was now nearly dark. In the
night I felt a most uncomfortable
sensation. One of the snakes, which
was hung up at the head of my
bed, had smeared his cold tail over
my face. But I sprang to my feet in
real alarm, and thought I had been
struck over the shin with a club, when
the big serpent, now in the death
agony, gave me a wipe with its tail
through the open door, in front of
which our servants were squatted,
telling each other ghost stories of
snake-kings and the like….
They called this serpent assala, which,
however, is a name they give to all
large serpents. Soon afterwards we
caught another, as thick, but only
nine feet long, and with a short tail,
like the Vipera cerastes; and this was
said to be of that breed of short, thick
snakes which can devour a man.” In
the mountains of Basa, two days’
journey from the Gohr-el-Gasch, and
on the road thither, snakes are said
to exist, of no great length, but as
thick as a crocodile, and which can
conveniently swallow a man; and
instances were related to Mr Werne
of these monsters having swallowed
persons when they lay sleeping on
their angarèbs. Sometimes the victims
had been rescued when only half
gorged! Of course travellers hear[272]
strange stories, and some of those
related by Mr Werne are tolerably
astounding; but these are derived
from his Turkish, Egyptian, or Arabian
acquaintances, and there is no
appearance of exaggeration or romancing
in anything which he narrates as
having occurred to or been witnessed
by himself. A wild tradition was
told him of a country called Bellad-el-Kelb,
which signifies the Country
of Dogs, where the women were in all
respects human, but where the men
had faces like dogs, claws on their feet,
and tails like monkeys. They could
not speak, but carried on conversation
by wagging their tails. This ludicrous
account appeared explicable by
the fact, that the men of Bellad-el-Kelb
are great robbers, living by
plunder, and, like fierce and hungry
dogs, never relinquishing their prey.

The Hallengas, amongst whom the
expedition now found itself, were far
more frank and friendly, and much
less wild, than the Haddendas and
some other tribes, and they might
probably have been converted into
useful allies by a less cruel and capricious
invader than the Bascha. But
conciliation was no part of his scheme;
if he one day caressed a tribe or a
chief, it was only to betray them the
next. Mr Werne was on good terms
with some of the Hallenga sheiks, and
went to visit the village of Hauathi,
about three miles from camp, to see
the birds of paradise which abounded
there. On his road he saw from afar
a great tree covered with those beautiful
birds, and which glistened in the
sunshine with all the colours of the
rainbow. Some days later he and
his brother went to drink merissa, a
slightly intoxicating liquor, with one
of the Fakis or priests of the country.
The two Germans got very jovial,
drinking to each other, student-fashion;
and the faki, attempting to
keep pace with them, got crying-drunk,
and disclosed a well-matured
plan for blowing up their powder-magazine.
The ammunition had been
stored in the village of Kadmin, which
was a holy village, entirely inhabited
by fakis. The Bascha had made sure
that none of the natives would risk
blowing up these holy men, even for
the sake of destroying his ammunition,
and he was unwilling to keep so
large a quantity of powder amidst
his numerous camp-fires and reckless
soldiery. But the fakis had
made their arrangements. On a certain
night they were to depart, carrying
away all their property into the
great caverns of Mount Kassela, and
fire was to be applied to the house
that held the powder. Had the plot
succeeded, the whole army was lost,
isolated as it was in the midst of
unfriendly tribes, embittered by its
excesses, and by the aggressions and
treachery of its chief, and who, stimulated
by their priests, would in all
probability have exterminated it to
the last man, when it no longer had
cartridges for its defence. The drunken
faki’s indiscretion saved Achmet and
his troops; the village was forthwith
surrounded, and the next day the
ammunition was transferred to camp.
Not to rouse the whole population
against him, the Bascha abstained for
the moment from punishing the conspirators,
but he was not the man to
let them escape altogether; and some
time afterwards, Mr Werne, who had
returned to Chartum, received a letter
from his brother, informing him that
nine fakis had been hung on palm-trees
just outside the camp, and that
the magnanimous Achmet proposed
treating forty more in the same
way.

A mighty liar was Effendina Achmet
Bascha, as ever ensnared a foe
or broke faith with a friend. Greedy
and cruel was he also, as only a
Turkish despot can be. One of his
most active and unscrupulous agents
was a bloodsucker named Hassan
Effendi, whom he sent to the country
of the Beni-Amers to collect three
thousand five hundred cows and thirteen
hundred camels, the complement
of their tribute. Although this tribe
had upon the whole behaved very
peaceably, Hassan’s first act was to
shoot down a couple of hundred of
them like wild beasts. Then he seized
a large number of camels belonging to
the Haddendas, although the tribe
was at that very time in friendly negotiation
with the Bascha. The Haddendas
revenged themselves by burning
Gos-Rajeb. In proof of their
valour, Hassan’s men cut off the ears
of the murdered Beni-Amers, and took
them to Achmet, who gave them[273]
money for the trophies. “They had
forced a slave to cut off the ears;
yonder now lies the man—raving
mad, and bound with cords. Camel-thieves,
too—no matter to what tribe
they belong—if caught in flagranti,
lose their ears, for which the Bascha
gives a reward. That many a man
who never dreamed of committing a
theft loses his ears in this way, is
easy to understand, for the operation
is performed on the spot.” Dawson
Borrer, in his Campaign in the Kabylie,
mentions a very similar practice
as prevailing in Marshal Bugeaud’s
camp, where ten francs was the fixed
price for the head of a horse-stealer,
it being left to the soldiers who severed
the heads and received the money to
discriminate between horse-stealers
and honest men. Whether Bugeaud
took a hint from the Bascha, or the
Bascha was an admiring imitator of
Bugeaud, remains a matter of doubt.
“Besides many handsome women and
children, Hassan Effendi brought in
two thousand nine hundred cows, and
seven thousand sheep.” He might
have been a French prince returning
from a razzia. “For himself he kept
eighty camels, which he said he had
bought.” A droll dog, this Hassan
Effendi, but withal rather covetous—given
to sell his soldier’s rations, and
to starve his servants, a single piastre—about
twopence halfpenny—being
his whole daily outlay for meat for
his entire household, who lived for
the most part upon durra and water.
If his servants asked for wages, they
received the bastinado. “The Bascha
had given the poor camel-drivers
sixteen cows. The vampire (Hassan)
took upon himself to appropriate thirteen
of them.” Mr Werne reported
this robbery to the Bascha, but Achmet
merely replied “malluch“—signifying,
“it matters not.” When
inferior officers received horses as
their share of booty, Hassan bought
them of them, but always forgot to
pay, and the poor subalterns feared
to complain to the Bascha, who favoured
the rogue, and recommended
him to the authorities at Cairo for
promotion to the rank of Bey, because,
as he told Mr Werne with an
ironical smile, Hassan was getting
very old and infirm, and when he
died the Divan would bring charges
against him, and inherit his wealth.
Thus are things managed in Egypt.
No wonder that, where such injustice
and rascality prevail, many are found
to rejoice at the prospect of a change
of rulers. “News from Souakim (on
the Red Sea) of the probable landing
of the English, excite great interest
in camp; from all sides they come to
ask questions of us, thinking that we,
as Franks, must know the intentions
of the invaders. Upon the whole,
they would not be displeased at such
a change of government, particularly
when we tell them of the good pay
and treatment customary amongst the
English; and that with them no officer
has to endure indignities from his
superiors in rank.”

“I have now,” says Mr Werne,
(page 256,) “been more than half
a year away from Chartum, continually
in the field, and not once have I
enjoyed the great comfort of reposing,
undressed, between clean white sheets,
but have invariably slept in my clothes,
on the ground, or on the short but
practical angarèb. All clean linen
disappears, for the constant perspiration
and chalky dust burns everything;
and the servants do not understand
washing, inasmuch as, contrasted
with their black hides, everything
appears white to them, and for
the last three months no soap has
been obtainable. And in the midst
of this dirty existence, which drags
itself along like a slow fever, suddenly
‘Julla!’ is the word, and one
hangs for four or five days, eighty or
a hundred leagues, upon the camel’s
back, every bone bruised by the rough
motion,—the broiling sun, thirst, hunger,
and cold, for constant companions.
Man can endure much: I have
gone through far more than I ever
thought I could,—vomiting and in a
raging fever on the back of a dromedary,
under a midday sun, more dead
than alive, held upon my saddle by
others, and yet I recovered. To have
remained behind would have been to
encounter certain death from the enemy,
or from wild beasts. We have
seen what a man can bear, under the
pressure of necessity; in my present
uniform and monotonous life I compare
myself to the camels tied before
my tent, which sometimes stand up,
sometimes slowly stretch themselves[274]
on the ground, careless whether crows
or ravens walk over their backs, constantly
moving their jaws, looking up
at the sun, and then, by way of a
change, taking a mouthful of grass,
but giving no signs of joy or curiosity.”

From this state of languid indifference
Mr Werne was suddenly and
pleasurably roused by intelligence
that a second expedition was fitting
out for the White Nile. He and his
brother immediately petitioned the
Bascha for leave to accompany it.
The desired permission was granted
to him, but refused to his brother.
There was too much sickness in the
camp, the Bascha said; he could not
spare his doctor, and lacked confidence
in the Italian, Bellotti. The
fondly-attached brothers were thus
placed in a painful dilemma: they
had hoped to pursue their wanderings
hand in hand, and to pass their
lives together, and loth indeed were
they to sunder in those sickly and
perilous regions. At last they made
up their minds to the parting. It has
been already recorded in Mr Werne’s
former work, how, within ten days
of their next meeting, his beloved
brother’s eyes were closed in death.

In various respects, Mr Werne’s
Feldzug is one of the most curious
books of travel and adventure that,
for a very long time, has appeared.
It has three points of particular attraction
and originality. In the first
place, the author wanders in a region
previously unexplored by Christian
and educated travellers, and amongst
tribes whose bare names have reached
the ears of but few Europeans. Secondly,
he campaigns as officer in
such an army as we can hardly realise
in these days of high civilisation and
strict military discipline,—so wild,
motley, and grotesque are its customs,
composition, and equipment,—an
army whose savage warriors, strange
practices, and barbarous cruelties,
make us fancy ourselves in presence
of some fierce Moslem horde of the
middle ages, marching to the assault
of Italy or Hungary. Thirdly, during
his long sojourn in camp he
had opportunities such as few ordinary
travellers enjoy, and of which
he diligently profited, to study and
note down the characteristics and
social habits of many of the races of
men that make up the heterogeneous
population of the Ottoman empire.
Some of the physiological and medical
details with which he favours us,
would certainly have been more in
their place in his brother’s professional
journal, than in a book intended for
the public at large; and passages
are not wanting at which the squeamish
will be apt to lay down the volume
in disgust. For such persons
Mr Werne does not write; and his
occasional indelicacy and too crude
details are compensated, to our thinking,
by his manly honest tone, and by
the extraordinary amount of useful
and curious information he has managed
to pack into two hundred and
seventy pages. As a whole, the Expedition
to the White Nile, which contains
a vast deal of dry meteorological
and geographical detail, is decidedly
far less attractive than the present
book, which is as amusing as
any romance. We have read it with
absorbing interest, well pleased with
the hint its author throws out at its
close, that the records of his African
wanderings are not yet all exhausted.

[275]

MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.

BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON.

BOOK VII.—INITIAL CHAPTER.

“What is courage?” said my uncle
Roland, rousing himself from a reverie
into which he had fallen after the
Sixth Book in this history had been
read to our family circle.

“What is courage?” he repeated
more earnestly. “Is it insensibility
to fear? That may be the mere
accident of constitution; and, if so,
there is no more merit in being courageous
than in being this table.”

“I am very glad to hear you speak
thus,” observed Mr Caxton, “for I
should not like to consider myself a
coward; yet I am very sensible to
fear in all dangers, bodily and moral.”

“La, Austin, how can you say so?”
cried my mother, firing up; “was it
not only last week that you faced the
great bull that was rushing after
Blanche and the children?”

Blanche at that recollection stole to
my father’s chair, and, hanging over
his shoulder, kissed his forehead.

Mr Caxton, (sublimely unmoved
by these flatteries.)—”I don’t deny
that I faced the bull, but I assert that
I was horribly frightened.”

Roland.—”The sense of honour
which conquers fear is the true courage
of chivalry: you could not run away
when others were looking on—no
gentleman could.”

Mr Caxton.—”Fiddledee! It
was not on my gentility that I stood,
Captain. I should have run fast
enough, if it had done any good. I
stood upon my understanding. As
the bull could run faster than I could,
the only chance of escape was to make
the brute as frightened as myself.”

Blanche.—”Ah, you did not
think of that; your only thought was
to save me and the children.”

Mr Caxton.—”Possibly, my
dear—very possibly I might have
been afraid for you too;—but I was
very much afraid for myself. However,
luckily I had the umbrella, and
I sprang it up and spread it forth in
the animal’s stupid eyes, hurling at
him simultaneously the biggest lines
I could think of in the First Chorus of
the ‘Seven against Thebes.’ I began
with Eledemnas pedioploktupos;
and when I came to the grand howl of
Ἰὼ, ἰὼ, ἰὼ, ἰὼ—the beast stood appalled
as at the roar of a lion. I shall
never forget his amazed snort at the
Greek. Then he kicked up his hind
legs, and went bolt through the gap in
the hedge. Thus, armed with Æschylus
and the umbrella, I remained master
of the field; but (continued Mr Caxton,
ingenuously,) I should not like
to go through that half minute again.”

“No man would,” said the Captain
kindly. “I should be very sorry to
face a bull myself, even with a bigger
umbrella than yours, and even
though I had Æschylus, and Homer
to boot, at my fingers’ ends.”

Mr Caxton.—”You would not
have minded if it had been a Frenchman
with a sword in his hand?”

Captain.—”Of course not. Rather
liked it than otherwise,” he added
grimly.

Mr Caxton.—”Yet many a
Spanish matador, who doesn’t care a
button for a bull, would take to his
heels at the first lunge en carte from
a Frenchman. Therefore, in fact, if
courage be a matter of constitution, it
is also a matter of custom. We face
calmly the dangers we are habituated
to, and recoil from those of which we
have no familiar experience. I doubt
if Marshal Turenne himself would
have been quite at his ease on the
tight-rope; and a rope-dancer, who
seems disposed to scale the heavens
with Titanic temerity, might possibly
object to charge on a cannon.”

Captain Roland.—”Still, either
this is not the courage I mean, or
there is another kind of it. I mean
by courage that which is the especial
force and dignity of the human character,
without which there is no
reliance on principle, no constancy in
virtue—a something,” continued my
uncle gallantly, and with a half bow
towards my mother, “which your[276]
sex shares with our own. When the
lover, for instance, clasps the hand
of his betrothed, and says, ‘Wilt thou
be true to me, in spite of absence and
time, in spite of hazard and fortune,
though my foes malign me, though thy
friends may dissuade thee, and our lot
in life may be rough and rude?’ and
when the betrothed answers, ‘I will
be true,’ does not the lover trust to
her courage as well as her love?”

“Admirably put, Roland,” said my
father. “But apropos of what do
you puzzle us with these queries on
courage?”

Captain Roland, (with a slight
blush.)—”I was led to the inquiry
(though, perhaps, it may be frivolous
to take so much thought of what, no
doubt, costs Pisistratus so little) by
the last chapters in my nephew’s
story. I see this poor boy, Leonard,
alone with his fallen hopes, (though
very irrational they were,) and his
sense of shame. And I read his heart,
I dare say, better than Pisistratus
does, for I could feel like that boy if
I had been in the same position; and,
conjecturing what he and thousands
like him must go through, I asked
myself, ‘What can save him and
them?’ I answered, as a soldier would
answer, ‘Courage!’ Very well. But
pray, Austin, what is courage?”

Mr Caxton, (prudently backing
out of a reply.)—”Papæ! Brother,
since you have just complimented the
ladies on that quality, you had better
address your question to them.”

Blanche here leant both hands on
my father’s chair, and said, looking
down at first bashfully, but afterwards
warming with the subject,
“Do you not think, sir, that little
Helen has already suggested, if not
what is courage, what at least is the
real essence of all courage that endures
and conquers, that ennobles,
and hallows, and redeems? Is it not
Patience, father?—and that is why
we women have a courage of our own.
Patience does not affect to be superior
to fear, but at least it never
admits despair.”

Pisistratus.—”Kiss me, my
Blanche, for you have come near to
the truth which perplexed the soldier
and puzzled the sage.”

Mr Caxton, (tartly.)—”If you
mean me by the sage, I was not
puzzled at all. Heaven knows you
do right to inculcate patience—it is a
virtue very much required in your
readers. Nevertheless,” added my
father, softening with the enjoyment
of his joke—”nevertheless Blanche
and Helen are quite right. Patience
is the courage of the conqueror; it is
the virtue, par excellence, of Man
against Destiny—of the One against
the World, and of the Soul against
Matter. Therefore this is the courage
of the Gospel; and its importance, in
a social view—its importance to races
and institutions—cannot be too
earnestly inculcated. What is it that
distinguishes the Anglo-Saxon from
all other branches of the human
family, peoples deserts with his children,
and consigns to them the heritage
of rising worlds? What but his
faculty to brave, to suffer, to endure—the
patience that resists firmly, and
innovates slowly. Compare him with
the Frenchman. The Frenchman has
plenty of valour—that there is no
denying; but as for fortitude, he has
not enough to cover the point of a
pin. He is ready to rush out of the
world if he is bit by a flea.”

Captain Roland.—”There was
a case in the papers the other day,
Austin, of a Frenchman who actually
did destroy himself because he was so
teased by the little creatures you
speak of. He left a paper on his
table, saying that ‘life was not worth
having at the price of such torments.'”[5]

Mr Caxton, (solemnly.)—”Sir,
their whole political history, since the
great meeting of the Tiers Etat, has
been the history of men who would
rather go to the devil than be bit by a[277]
flea. It is the record of human impatience,
that seeks to force time, and
expects to grow forests from the
spawn of a mushroom. Wherefore,
running through all extremes of constitutional
experiment, when they are
nearest to democracy they are next
door to a despot; and all they have
really done is to destroy whatever
constitutes the foundation of every
tolerable government. A constitutional
monarchy cannot exist without
aristocracy, nor a healthful republic
endure with corruption of manners.
The cry of Equality is incompatible
with Civilisation, which, of necessity,
contrasts poverty with wealth—and,
in short, whether it be an emperor or
a mob that is to rule, Force is the
sole hope of order, and the government
is but an army.

“Impress, O Pisistratus! impress
the value of patience as regards man
and men. You touch there on the
kernel of the social system—the secret
that fortifies the individual and disciplines
the million. I care not, for
my part, if you are tedious so long as
you are earnest. Be minute and
detailed. Let the real human life, in
its war with Circumstance, stand out.
Never mind if one can read you but
slowly—better chance of being less
quickly forgotten. Patience, patience!
By the soul of Epictetus, your readers
shall set you an example!”

CHAPTER II.

Leonard had written twice to Mrs
Fairfield, twice to Riccabocca, and
once to Mr Dale; and the poor proud
boy could not bear to betray his humiliation.
He wrote as with cheerful
spirits—as if perfectly satisfied with
his prospects. He said that he was
well employed, in the midst of books,
and that he had found kind friends.
Then he turned from himself to write
about those whom he addressed, and
the affairs and interests of the quiet
world wherein they lived. He did
not give his own address, nor that of
Mr Prickett. He dated his letters
from a small coffeehouse near the
bookseller, to which he occasionally
went for his simple meals. He had a
motive in this. He did not desire to
be found out. Mr Dale replied for
himself and for Mrs Fairfield, to the
epistles addressed to these two. Riccabocca
wrote also. Nothing could
be more kind than the replies of both.
They came to Leonard in a very dark
period in his life, and they strengthened
him in the noiseless battle with
despair.

If there be a good in the world that
we do without knowing it, without
conjecturing the effect it may have
upon a human soul, it is when we show
kindness to the young in the first
barren footpath up the mountain of life.

Leonard’s face resumed its serenity
in his intercourse with his employer;
but he did not recover his boyish
ingenuous frankness. The under-currents
flowed again pure from the turbid
soil and the splintered fragments
uptorn from the deep; but they were
still too strong and too rapid to allow
transparency to the surface. And now
he stood in the sublime world of books,
still and earnest as a seer who invokes
the dead. And thus, face to face with
knowledge, hourly he discovered how
little he knew. Mr Prickett lent him
such works as he selected and asked
to take home with him. He spent
whole nights in reading; and no longer
desultorily. He read no more poetry,
no more Lives of Poets. He read what
poets must read if they desire to be
great—Sapere principium et fons—strict
reasonings on the human mind;
the relations between motive and conduct,
thought and action; the grave
and solemn truths of the past world;
antiquities, history, philosophy. He
was taken out of himself. He was
carried along the ocean of the universe.
In that ocean, O seeker, study the law
of the tides; and seeing Chance nowhere—Thought
presiding over all—Fate,
that dread phantom, shall vanish
from creation, and Providence alone
be visible in heaven and on earth!

CHAPTER III.

There was to be a considerable
book-sale at a country house one day’s
journey from London. Mr Prickett
meant to have attended it on his own[278]
behalf, and that of several gentlemen
who had given him commissions for
purchase; but, on the morning fixed
for his departure, he was seized with
a severe return of his old foe the
rheumatism. He requested Leonard
to attend instead of himself. Leonard
went, and was absent for the three
days during which the sale lasted.
He returned late in the evening, and
went at once to Mr Prickett’s house.
The shop was closed; he knocked at
the private entrance; a strange person
opened the door to him, and, in reply
to his question if Mr Prickett was at
home, said with a long and funereal
face—”Young man, Mr Prickett
senior is gone to his long home, but
Mr Richard Prickett will see you.”

At this moment a very grave-looking
man, with lank hair, looked forth
from the side-door communicating
between the shop and the passage,
land then, stepped forward—”Come
in, sir; you are my late uncle’s assistant,
Mr Fairfield, I suppose?”

“Your late uncle! Heavens, sir, do
I understand aright—can Mr Prickett
be dead since I left London?”

“Died, sir, suddenly last night. It
was an affection of the heart; the
Doctor thinks the rheumatism attacked
that organ. He had small time to
provide for his departure, and his
account-books seem in sad disorder:
I am his nephew and executor.”

Leonard had now followed the
nephew into the shop. There, still
burned the gas-lamp. The place
seemed more dingy and cavernous
than before. Death always makes its
presence felt in the house it visits.

Leonard was greatly affected—and
yet more, perhaps, by the utter want
of feeling which the nephew exhibited.
In fact, the deceased had not been on
friendly terms with this person, his
nearest relative and heir-at-law, who
was also a bookseller.

“You were engaged but by the
week I find, young man, on reference
to my late uncle’s papers. He gave
you £1 a week—a monstrous sum! I
shall not require your services any
further. I shall move these books
to my own house. You will be good
enough to send me a list of those you
bought at the sale, and your account
of travelling-expenses, &c. What may
be due to you shall be sent to your
address. Good evening.”

Leonard went home, shocked and
saddened at the sudden death of his
kind employer. He did not think
much of himself that night; but, when
he rose the next day, he suddenly felt
that the world of London lay before
him, without a friend, without a calling,
without an occupation for bread.

This time it was no fancied sorrow,
no poetic dream disappointed. Before
him, gaunt and palpable, stood
Famine.

Escape!—yes. Back to the village;
his mother’s cottage; the exile’s garden;
the radishes and the fount. Why
could he not escape? Ask why civilisation
cannot escape its ills, and fly
back to the wild and the wigwam?

Leonard could not have returned to
the cottage, even if the Famine that
faced had already seized him with her
skeleton hand. London releases not
so readily her fated stepsons.

CHAPTER IV.

One day three persons were standing
before an old book-stall in a
passage leading from Oxford Street
into Tottenham Court Road. Two
were gentlemen; the third, of the class
and appearance of those who more
habitually halt at old book-stalls.

“Look,” said one of the gentlemen
to the other, “I have discovered here
what I have searched for in vain the
last ten years—the Horace of 1580,
the Horace of the Forty Commentators—a
perfect treasury of learning,
and marked only fourteen shillings!”

“Hush, Norreys,” said the other,
“and observe what is yet more
worth your study;” and he pointed to
the third bystander, whose face,
sharp and attenuated, was bent with
an absorbed, and, as it were, with
a hungering attention over an old
worm-eaten volume.

“What is the book, my lord?”
whispered Mr Norreys.

His companion smiled, and replied
by another question, “What
is the man who reads the book?”

Mr Norreys moved a few paces,[279]
and looked over the student’s shoulder
“Preston’s translation of Boethius,
The Consolations of Philosophy,” he
said, coming back to his friend.

“He looks as if he wanted all the
consolations Philosophy can give him,
poor boy.”

At this moment a fourth passenger
paused at the book-stall, and, recognising
the pale student, placed his
hand on his shoulder and said, “Aha,
young sir, we meet again. So poor
Prickett is dead. But you are still
haunted by associations. Books—books—magnets
to which all iron
minds move insensibly. What is
this? Boethius! Ah, a book written
in prison, but a little time before
the advent of the only philosopher
who solves to the simplest understanding
every mystery of life—”

“And that philosopher?”

“Is Death!” said Mr Burley.
“How can you be dull enough to
ask? Poor Boethius, rich, nobly
born, a consul, his sons consuls—the
world one smile to the Last Philosopher
of Rome. Then suddenly, against
this type of the old world’s departing
WISDOM, stands frowning the new
world’s grim genius, FORCE—Theodoric
the Ostrogoth condemning Boethius
the Schoolman; and Boethius,
in his Pavian dungeon, holding a
dialogue with the shade of Athenian
Philosophy. It is the finest picture
upon which lingers the glimmering
of the Western golden day, before
night rushes over time.”

“And,” said Mr Norreys abruptly,
“Boethius comes back to us with the
faint gleam of returning light, translated
by Alfred the Great. And,
again, as the sun of knowledge bursts
forth in all its splendour, by Queen
Elizabeth. Boethius influences us as
we stand in this passage; and that is
the best of all the Consolations of
Philosophy—eh, Mr Burley?”

Mr Burley turned and bowed.

The two men looked at each other;
you could not see a greater contrast.
Mr Burley, his gay green dress
already shabby and soiled, with a rent
in the skirts, and his face speaking of
habitual night-cups. Mr Norreys,
neat and somewhat precise in dress,
with firm lean figure, and quiet, collected,
vigorous energy in his eye and
aspect.

“If,” replied Mr Burley, “a poor
devil like me may argue with a
gentleman who may command his
own price with the booksellers, I
should say it is no consolation at all,
Mr Norreys. And I should like to
see any man of sense accept the condition
of Boethius in his prison, with
some strangler or headsman waiting
behind the door, upon the promised
proviso that he should be translated,
centuries afterwards, by Kings and
Queens, and help indirectly to influence
the minds of Northern barbarians,
babbling about him in an alley, jostled
by passers-by who never heard the
name of Boethius, and who don’t care
a fig for philosophy. Your servant,
sir—young man, come and talk.”

Burley hooked his arm within Leonard’s,
and led the boy passively away.

“That is a clever man,” said
Harley L’Estrange. “But I am sorry
to see yon young student, with his
bright earnest eyes, and his lip that
has the quiver of passion and enthusiasm,
leaning on the arm of a guide
who seems disenchanted of all that
gives purpose to learning and links
philosophy with use to the world.
Who, and what is this clever man
whom you call Burley?”

“A man who might have been
famous, if he had condescended to be
respectable! The boy listening to
us both so attentively interested me
too—I should like to have the making
of him. But I must buy this Horace.”

The shopman, lurking within his
hole like a spider for flies, was now
called out. And when Mr Norreys
had bought the Horace, and given an
address where to send it, Harley
asked the shopman if he knew the
young man who had been reading
Boethius.

“Only by sight. He has come
here every day the last week, and
spends hours at the stall. When once
he fastens on a book, he reads it
through.”

“And never buys?” said Mr Norreys.

“Sir,” said the shopman with a
good-natured smile, “they who buy
seldom read. The poor boy pays me
twopence a-day to read as long as he
pleases. I would not take it, but he
is proud.”

“I have known men amass great[280]
learning in that way,” said Mr
Norreys. “Yes, I should like to
have that boy in my hands. And
now, my lord, I am at your service,
and we will go to the studio of your
artist.”

The two gentlemen walked on
towards one of the streets out of
Fitzroy Square.

In a few minutes more Harley
L’Estrange was in his element,
seated carelessly on a deal table,
smoking his cigar, and discussing art
with the gusto of a man who honestly
loved, and the taste of a man who
thoroughly understood it. The young
artist, in his dressing robe, adding
slow touch upon touch, paused often
to listen the better. And Henry
Norreys, enjoying the brief respite
from a life of great labour, was gladly
reminded of idle hours under rosy
skies; for these three men had
formed their friendship in Italy, where
the bands of friendship are woven
by the hands of the Graces.

CHAPTER V.

Leonard and Mr Burley walked on
into the suburbs round the north
road from London, and Mr Burley
offered to find literary employment
for Leonard—an offer eagerly accepted.

Then they went into a public house
by the wayside. Burley demanded a
private room, called for pen, ink, and
paper; and, placing these implements
before Leonard, said, “Write what
you please in prose, five sheets of
letter paper, twenty-two lines to a
page—neither more nor less.”

“I cannot write so.”

“Tut, ’tis for bread.”

The boy’s face crimsoned.

“I must forget that,” said he.

“There is an arbour in the garden
under a weeping ash,” returned
Burley. “Go there, and fancy yourself
in Arcadia.”

Leonard was too pleased to obey.
He found out the little arbour at one
end of a deserted bowling-green. All
was still—the hedgerow shut out the
sight of the inn. The sun lay warm
on the grass, and glinted pleasantly
through the leaves of the ash. And
Leonard there wrote the first essay
from his hand as Author by profession.
What was it that he wrote?
His dreamy impressions of London?
an anathema on its streets, and its
hearts of stone? murmurs against
poverty? dark elegies on fate?

Oh, no! little knowest thou true
genius, if thou askest such questions,
or thinkest that there, under
the weeping ash, the taskwork for
bread was remembered; or that the
sunbeam glinted but over the practical
world, which, vulgar and sordid,
lay around. Leonard wrote a fairy
tale—one of the loveliest you can
conceive, with a delicate touch of
playful humour—in a style all flowered
over with happy fancies. He smiled
as he wrote the last word—he was
happy. In rather more than an hour
Mr Burley came to him, and found
him with that smile on his lips.

Mr Burley had a glass of brandy
and water in his hand; it was his
third. He too smiled—he too looked
happy. He read the paper aloud,
and well. He was very complimentary.
“You will do!” said he, clapping
Leonard on the back. “Perhaps
some day you will catch my
one-eyed perch.” Then he folded up
the MS., scribbled off a note, put
the whole in one envelope—and they
returned to London.

Mr Burley disappeared within a
dingy office near Fleet Street, on
which was inscribed—”Office of
the Beehive,” and soon came forth
with a golden sovereign in his hand—Leonard’s
first-fruits. Leonard
thought Peru lay before him. He accompanied
Mr Burley to that gentleman’s
lodging in Maida Hill. The
walk had been very long; Leonard
was not fatigued. He listened
with a livelier attention than before
to Burley’s talk. And when they
reached the apartments of the latter,
and Mr Burley sent to the cookshop,
and their joint supper was taken out
of the golden sovereign, Leonard
felt proud, and for the first time for
weeks he laughed the heart’s laugh.
The two writers grew more and more
intimate and cordial. And there was
a vast deal in Burley by which any[281]
young man might be made the wiser.
There was no apparent evidence of
poverty in the apartments—clean,
new, well furnished; but all things
in the most horrible litter—all speaking
of the huge literary sloven.

For several days Leonard almost
lived in those rooms. He wrote continuously—save
when Burley’s conversation
fascinated him into idleness.
Nay, it was not idleness—his knowledge
grew larger as he listened; but
the cynicism of the talker began slowly
to work its way. That cynicism in
which there was no faith, no hope,
no vivifying breath from Glory—from
Religion. The cynicism of the Epicurean,
more degraded in his stye than
ever was Diogenes in his tub; and
yet presented with such ease and
such eloquence—with such art and
such mirth—so adorned with illustration
and anecdote, so unconscious of
debasement.

Strange and dread philosophy—that
made it a maxim to squander the
gifts of mind on the mere care for
matter, and fit the soul to live but as
from day to day, with its scornful
cry, “A fig for immortality and
laurels!” An author for bread! Oh,
miserable calling! was there something
grand and holy, after all, even
in Chatterton’s despair!

CHAPTER VI.

The villanous Beehive! Bread was
worked out of it, certainly; but
fame, but hope for the future—certainly
not. Milton’s Paradise Lost
would have perished without a sound,
had it appeared in the Beehive.

Fine things were there in a fragmentary
crude state, composed by
Burley himself. At the end of a
week they were dead and forgotten—never
read by one man of education
and taste; taken simultaneously and
indifferently with shallow politics and
wretched essays, yet selling, perhaps,
twenty or thirty thousand copies—an
immense sale;—and nothing got out
of them but bread and brandy!

“What more would you have?”
cried John Burley. “Did not stern
old Sam Johnson say he could never
write but from want?”

“He might say it,” answered
Leonard; “but he never meant posterity
to believe him. And he would
have died of want, I suspect, rather
than have written Rasselas for the
Beehive! Want is a grand thing,” continued
the boy, thoughtfully. “A
parent of grand things. Necessity is
strong, and should give us its own
strength; but Want should shatter
asunder, with its very writhings, the
walls of our prison-house, and not
sit contented with the allowance
the jail gives us in exchange for our
work.”

“There is no prison-house to a
man who calls upon Bacchus—stay—I
will translate to you Schiller’s
Dithyramb. ‘Then see I Bacchus—then
up come Cupid and Phœbus, and
all the Celestials are filling my dwelling.'”

Breaking into impromptu careless
rhymes, Burley threw off a rude but
spirited translation of that divine
lyric.

“O materialist!” cried the boy,
with his bright eyes suffused.
“Schiller calls on the gods to take
him to their heaven with him; and
you would debase the gods to a gin
palace.”

“Ho, ho!” cried Burley, with his
giant laugh. “Drink, and you will
understand the Dithyramb.”

CHAPTER VII.

Suddenly one morning, as Leonard
sate with Barley, a fashionable cabriolet,
with a very handsome horse,
stopped at the door—a loud knock—a
quick step on the stairs, and Randal
Leslie entered. Leonard recognised
him, and started. Randal glanced at
him in surprise, and then, with a tact
that showed he had already learned
to profit by London life, after shaking
hands with Burley, approached,
and said with some successful attempt
at ease, “Unless I am not
mistaken, sir, we have met before.[282]
If you remember me, I hope all boyish
quarrels are forgotten?”

Leonard bowed, and his heart was
still good enough to be softened.

“Where could you two ever have
met?” asked Burley.

“In a village green, and in single
combat,” answered Randal, smiling;
and he told the story of the Battle of
the Stocks, with a well-bred jest on
himself. Burley laughed at the story.
“But,” said he, when this laugh was
over, “my young friend had better
have remained guardian of the village
stocks, than come to London in search
of such fortune as lies at the bottom
of an inkhorn.”

“Ah,” said Randal, with the secret
contempt which men elaborately
cultivated are apt to feel for those
who seek to educate themselves—”ah,
you make literature your calling,
sir? At what school did you
conceive a taste for letters?—not very
common at our great public schools.”

“I am at school now for the first
time,” answered Leonard, drily.

“Experience is the best schoolmistress,”
said Burley; “and that
was the maxim of Goethe, who had
book-learning enough, in all conscience.”

Randal slightly shrugged his
shoulders, and, without wasting another
thought on Leonard, peasant-born
and self-taught, took his seat,
and began to talk to Burley upon a
political question, which made then
the war-cry between the two great
Parliamentary parties. It was a
subject in which Burley showed much
general knowledge; and Randal, seeming
to differ from him, drew forth
alike his information and his argumentative
powers. The conversation
lasted more than an hour.

“I can’t quite agree with you,”
said Randal, taking his leave; “but
you must allow me to call again—will
the same hour to-morrow suit
you?”

“Yes,” said Burley.

Away went the young man in his
cabriolet. Leonard watched him from
the window.

For five days, consecutively, did
Randal call and discuss the question
in all its bearings; and Burley, after
the second day, got interested in the
matter, looked up his authorities—refreshed
his memory—and even spent
an hour or two in the Library of the
British Museum.

By the fifth day, Burley had really
exhausted all that could well be said
on his side of the question.

Leonard, during these colloquies,
had sate apart, seemingly absorbed
in reading, and secretly stung by
Randal’s disregard of his presence.
For indeed that young man, in his
superb self-esteem, and in the absorption
of his ambitious projects, scarce
felt even curiosity as to Leonard’s
rise above his earlier station, and
looked on him as a mere journeyman
of Burley’s. But the self-taught are
keen and quick observers. And
Leonard had remarked, that Randal
seemed more as one playing a part
for some private purpose, than arguing
in earnest; and that, when he rose
and said, “Mr Burley, you have convinced
me,” it was not with the
modesty of a sincere reasoner, but the
triumph of one who has gained his
end. But so struck, meanwhile, was
our unheeded and silent listener, with
Burley’s power of generalisation, and
the wide surface over which his information
extended, that when Randal
left the room the boy looked at
the slovenly purposeless man, and
said aloud—”True; knowledge is not
power.”

“Certainly not,” said Burley, drily—”the
weakest thing, in the world.”

“Knowledge is power,” muttered
Randal Leslie, as, with a smile on his
lip, he drove from the door.

Not many days after this last
interview there appeared a short
pamphlet; anonymous, but one which
made a great impression on the town.
It was on the subject discussed
between Randal and Burley. It was
quoted at great length in the newspapers.
And Burley started to his
feet one morning, and exclaimed,
“My own thoughts! my very
words! Who the devil is this pamphleteer?”

Leonard took the newspaper from
Burley’s hand. The most flattering
encomiums preceded the extracts,
and the extracts were as stereotypes
of Burley’s talk.

“Can you doubt the author?” cried
Leonard, in deep disgust and ingenuous
scorn. “The young man[283]
who came to steal your brains, and
turn your knowledge—”

“Into power,” interrupted Burley,
with a laugh, but it was a laugh of
pain. “Well, this was very mean; I
shall tell him so when he comes.”

“He will come no more,” said
Leonard. Nor did Randal come
again. But he sent Mr Burley a copy
of the pamphlet with a polite note,
saying, with candid but careless acknowledgment,
that “he had profited
much by Mr Burley’s hints and
remarks.”

And now it was in all the papers,
that the pamphlet which had made so
great a noise was by a very young
man, Mr Audley Egerton’s relation.
And high hopes were expressed of
the future career of Mr Randal
Leslie.

Burley still attempted to laugh, and
still his pain was visible. Leonard
most cordially despised and hated
Randal Leslie, and his heart moved
to Burley with noble but perilous
compassion. In his desire to soothe
and comfort the man whom he deemed
cheated out of fame, he forgot the
caution he had hitherto imposed on
himself, and yielded more and more
to the charm of that wasted intellect.
He accompanied Burley now where
he went to spent his evenings, and
more and more—though gradually,
and with many a recoil and self-rebuke—there
crept over him the
cynic’s contempt for glory, and miserable
philosophy of debased content.

Randal had risen into grave repute
upon the strength of Burley’s knowledge.
But, had Burley written the
pamphlet, would the same repute
have attended him? Certainly not.
Randal Leslie brought to that knowledge
qualities all his own—a style
simple, strong, and logical; a certain
tone of good society, and allusions to
men and to parties that showed his
connection with a cabinet minister,
and proved that he had profited no
less by Egerton’s talk than Burley’s.

Had Burley written the pamphlet,
it would have showed more genius,
it would have had humour and wit,
but have been so full of whims and
quips, sins against taste, and defects
in earnestness, that it would have
failed to create any serious sensation.
Here, then, there was something
else besides knowledge, by which
knowledge became power. Knowledge
must not smell of the brandy
bottle.

Randal Leslie might be mean in
his plagiarism, but he turned the
useless into use. And so far he was
original.

But one’s admiration, after all, rests
where Leonard’s rested—with the
poor, shabby, riotous, lawless, big
fallen man.

Burley took himself off to the Brent,
and fished again for the one-eyed
perch. Leonard accompanied him.
His feelings were indeed different
from what they had been when he
had reclined under the old tree, and
talked with Helen of the future. But
it was almost pathetic to see how
Burley’s nature seemed to alter, as he
strayed along the banks of the rivulet,
and talked of his own boyhood. The
man then seemed restored to something
of the innocence of the child.
He cared, in truth, little for the perch,
which continued intractable, but he
enjoyed the air and the sky, the
rustling grass and the murmuring
waters. These excursions to the
haunts of youth seemed to rebaptise
him, and then his eloquence took a
pastoral character, and Isaac Walton
himself would have loved to hear
him. But as he got back into the
smoke of the metropolis, and the gas
lamps made him forget the ruddy
sunset, and the soft evening star, the
gross habits reassumed their sway;
and on he went with his swaggering
reckless step to the orgies in which
his abused intellect flamed forth, and
then sank into the socket quenched
and rayless.

CHAPTER VIII.

Helen was seized with profound
and anxious sadness. Leonard had
been three or four times to see her,
and each time she saw a change in
him that excited all her fears. He
seemed, it is true, more shrewd,
more worldly-wise, more fitted, it
might be, for coarse daily life; but, on[284]
the other hand, the freshness and glory
of his youth were waning slowly.
His aspirings drooped earthward.
He had not mastered the Practical,
and moulded its uses with the
strong hand of the Spiritual Architect,
of the Ideal Builder: the Practical was
overpowering himself. She grew pale
when he talked of Burley, and shuddered,
poor little Helen! when she
found he was daily and almost nightly
in a companionship which, with her
native honest prudence, she saw so unsuited
to strengthen him in his struggles,
and aid him against temptation. She
almost groaned when, pressing him as
to his pecuniary means, she found his
old terror of debt seemed fading away,
and the solid healthful principles he
had taken from his village were
loosening fast. Under all, it is true,
there was what a wiser and older
person than Helen would have hailed
as the redeeming promise. But that
something was grief—a sublime grief
in his own sense of falling—in his own
impotence against the Fate he had
provoked and coveted. The sublimity
of that grief Helen could not detect:
she saw only that it was grief, and she
grieved with it, letting it excuse every
fault—making her more anxious to
comfort, in order that she might save.
Even from the first, when Leonard
had exclaimed, “Ah, Helen, why did
you ever leave me?” she had revolved
the idea of return to him; and
when in the boy’s last visit he told her
that Burley, persecuted by duns, was
about to fly from his present lodgings,
and take his abode with Leonard in
the room she had left vacant, all doubt
was over. She resolved to sacrifice
the safety and shelter of the home
assured her. She resolved to come back
and share Leonard’s penury and
struggles, and save the old room,
wherein she had prayed for him, from
the tempter’s dangerous presence.
Should she burden him? No; she
had assisted her father by many little
female arts in needle and fancy work.
She had improved herself in these
during her sojourn with Miss Starke.
She could bring her share to the common
stock. Possessed with this idea,
she determined to realise it before the
day on which Leonard had told her
Burley was to move his quarters.
Accordingly she rose very early one
morning; she wrote a pretty and
grateful note to Miss Starke, who
was fast asleep, left it on the table,
and, before any one was astir, stole
from the house, her little bundle on
her arm. She lingered an instant at
the garden-gate, with a remorseful
sentiment—a feeling that she had ill-repaid
the cold and prim protection
that Miss Starke had shown her. But
sisterly love carried all before it. She
closed the gate with a sigh, and
went on.

She arrived at the lodging-house
before Leonard was up, took possession
of her old chamber, and, presenting
herself to Leonard as he was
about to go forth, said, (story-teller
that she was,)—”I am sent away,
brother, and I have, come to you to
take care of me. Do not let us part
again. But you must be very cheerful
and very happy, or I shall think
that I am sadly in your way.”

Leonard at first did look cheerful,
and even happy; but then he thought
of Burley, and then of his own means
of supporting her, and was embarrassed,
and began questioning Helen
as to the possibility of reconciliation
with Miss Starke. And Helen said
gravely, “Impossible—do not ask it,
and do not go near her.”

Then Leonard thought she had
been humbled and insulted, and remembered
that she was a gentleman’s
child, and felt for her wounded pride—he
was so proud himself. Yet still
he was embarrassed.

“Shall I keep the purse again,
Leonard?” said Helen coaxingly.

“Alas!” replied Leonard, “the
purse is empty.”

“That is very naughty in the
purse,” said Helen, “since you put
so much into it.”

“I?”

“Did not you say that you made,
at least, a guinea a-week?”

“Yes; but Burley takes the money;
and then, poor fellow! as I owe all to
him, I have not the heart to prevent
his spending it as he likes.”

“Please, I wish you could settle
the month’s rent,” said the landlady,
suddenly showing herself. She said
it civilly, but with firmness.

Leonard coloured. “It shall be
paid to-day.”

Then he pressed his hat on his[285]
head, and, putting Helen gently aside,
went forth.

“Speak to me in future, kind Mrs
Smedley,” said Helen with the air of
a housewife. “He is always in study,
and must not be disturbed.”

The landlady—a good woman,
though she liked her rent—smiled
benignly. She was fond of Helen,
whom she had known of old.

“I am so glad you are come back;
and perhaps now the young man will
not keep such late hours. I meant to
give him warning, but—”

“But he will be a great man one
of these days, and you must bear with
him now.” And Helen kissed Mrs
Smedley, and sent her away half inclined
to cry.

Then Helen busied herself in the
rooms. She found her father’s box,
which had been duly forwarded. She
re-examined its contents, and wept as
she touched each humble and pious
relic. But her father’s memory itself
thus seemed to give this home a sanction
which the former had not; and she
rose quietly and began mechanically
to put things in order, sighing as she,
saw all so neglected, till she came to
the rose-tree, and that alone showed
heed and care. “Dear Leonard!”
she murmured, and the smile resettled
on her lips.

CHAPTER IX.

Nothing, perhaps, could have
severed Leonard from Burley but
Helen’s return to his care. It was
impossible for him, even had there
been another room in the house
vacant, (which there was not,) to install
this noisy riotous son of the
Muse by Bacchus, talking at random,
and smelling of spirits, in the same
dwelling with an innocent, delicate,
timid, female child. And Leonard
could not leave her alone all the
twenty-four hours. She restored a
home to him, and imposed its duties.
He therefore told Mr Burley that in
future he should write and study in
his own room, and hinted with many
a blush, and as delicately as he could,
that it seemed to him that whatever
he obtained from his pen ought to be
halved with Burley, to whose interest
he owed the employment, and from
whose books or whose knowledge he
took what helped to maintain it; but
that the other half, if his, he could no
longer afford to spend upon feasts or
libations. He had another to provide
for.

Burley pooh-poohed the notion
of taking half his coadjutor’s earning,
with much grandeur, but spoke
very fretfully of Leonard’s sober
appropriation of the other half; and,
though a good-natured warm-hearted
man, felt extremely indignant against
the sudden interposition of poor
Helen. However, Leonard was firm;
and then Burley grew sullen, and
so they parted. But the rent was
still to be paid. How? Leonard
for the first time thought of the pawnbroker.
He had clothes to spare,
and Riccabocca’s watch. No; that
last he shrank from applying to such
base uses.

He went home at noon, and met
Helen at the street door. She too
had been out, and her soft cheek was
rosy red with unwonted exercise and
the sense of joy. She had still preserved
the few gold pieces which
Leonard had taken back to her on
his first visit to Miss Starke’s. She
had now gone out and bought wools
and implements for work; and meanwhile
she had paid the rent.

Leonard did not object to the work,
but he blushed deeply when he knew
about the rent, and was very angry.
He payed back to her that night
what she had advanced; and Helen
wept silently at his pride, and wept
more when she saw the next day a
woeful hiatus in his wardrobe.

But Leonard now worked at home,
and worked resolutely; and Helen
sate by his side, working too; so
that next day, and the next, slipped
peacefully away, and in the evening of
the second he asked her to walk out
in the fields. She sprang up joyously
at the invitation, when bang went the
door, and in reeled John Burley—drunk:—And
so drunk!

[286]

CHAPTER X.

And with Burley there reeled in
another man—a friend of his—a man
who had been a wealthy trader and
once well to do, but who, unluckily,
had literary tastes, and was fond of
hearing Burley talk. So, since he had
known the wit, his business had fallen
from him, and he had passed through
the Bankrupt Court. A very shabby-looking
dog he was, indeed, and his
nose was redder than Burley’s.

John made a drunken dash at poor
Helen. “So you are the Pentheus in
petticoats who defies Bacchus,” cried
he; and therewith he roared out a
verse from Euripides. Helen ran
away, and Leonard interposed.

“For shame, Burley!”

“He’s drunk,” said Mr Douce the
bankrupt trader—”very drunk—don’t
mind—him. I say, sir, I hope we
don’t intrude. Sit still, Burley, sit
still, and talk, do—that’s a good man.
You should hear him—ta—ta—talk,
sir.”

Leonard meanwhile had got Helen
out of the room, into her own, and
begged her not to be alarmed, and
keep the door locked. He then returned
to Burley, who had seated
himself on the bed, trying wondrous
hard to keep himself upright; while
Mr Douce was striving to light a short
pipe that he carried in his buttonhole—without
having filled it—and,
naturally failing in that attempt, was
now beginning to weep.

Leonard was deeply shocked and
revolted for Helen’s sake; but it was
hopeless to make Burley listen to
reason. And how could the boy turn
out of his room the man to whom he
was under obligations?

Meanwhile there smote upon Helen’s
shrinking, ears loud jarring talk and
maudlin laughter, and cracked attempts
at jovial songs. Then she
heard Mrs Smedley in Leonard’s
room, remonstrating, and Burley’s
laugh was louder than before, and Mrs
Smedley, who was a meek woman,
evidently got frightened, and was heard
in precipitate retreat. Long and loud
talk recommenced, Burley’s great
voice predominant, Mr Douce chiming
in with hiccupy broken treble.
Hour after hour this lasted, for want
of the drink that would have brought
it to a premature close. And Burley
gradually began to talk himself somewhat
sober. Then Mr Douce was
heard descending the stairs, and
silence followed. At dawn, Leonard
knocked at Helen’s door. She opened
it at once, for she had not gone to
bed.

“Helen,” said he very sadly, “you
cannot continue here. I must find
out some proper home for you. This
man has served me when all London
was friendless, and he tells me that he
has nowhere else to go—that the
bailiffs are after him. He has now
fallen asleep. I will go and find you
some lodging close at hand—for I cannot
expel him who has protected me;
and yet you cannot be under the same
roof with him. My own good angel,
I must lose you.”

He did not wait for her answer,
but hurried down the stairs.

The morning looked through the
shutterless panes in Leonard’s garret,
and the birds began to chirp from the
elm-tree, when Burley rose and shook
himself, and stared round. He could
not quite make out where he was.
He got hold of the water-jug which he
emptied at three draughts, and felt
greatly refreshed. He then began to
reconnoitre the chamber—looked at
Leonard’s MSS.—peeped into the
drawers—wondered where the devil
Leonard himself had gone to—and
finally amused himself by throwing
down the fire-irons, ringing the bell,
and making all the noise he could, in
the hopes of attracting the attention
of somebody or other, and procuring
himself his morning dram.

In the midst of this charivari the door
opened softly, but as if with a resolute
hand, and the small quiet form of
Helen stood before the threshold.
Burley turned round, and the two
looked at each other for some moments
with silent scrutiny.

Burley, (composing his features
into their most friendly expression.)—”Come
hither, my dear. So you are
the little girl whom I saw with Leonard
on the banks of the Brent, and you
have come back to live with him—and
I have come to live with him too. You[287]
shall be our little housekeeper, and I
will tell you the story of Prince
Prettyman, and a great many others
not to be found in Mother Goose.
Meanwhile, my dear little girl, here’s
sixpence—just run out and change this
for its worth in rum.”

Helen, (coming slowly up to Mr
Burley, and still gazing earnestly into
his face.)—”Ah, sir, Leonard says
you have a kind heart, and that you
have served him—he cannot ask you
to leave the house; and so I, who have
never served him, am to go hence and
live alone.”

Burley, (moved.)—”You go, my
little lady?—and why? Can we not
all live together?”

Helen.—”No, sir. I left everything
to come to Leonard, for we had
met first at my father’s grave. But
you rob me of him, and I have no
other friend on earth.”

Burley, (discomposed.)—”Explain
yourself. Why must you leave
him because I come?”

Helen looks at Mr Burley again, long
and wistfully, but makes no answer.

Burley, (with a gulp.)—”Is it
because he thinks I am not fit company
for you?”

Helen bowed her head.

Burley winced, and after a moment’s
pause said,—”He is right.”

Helen, (obeying the impulse at her
heart, springs forward and takes
Burley’s hand.)—”Ah, sir,” she
cried, “before he knew you he was so
different—then he was cheerful—then,
even when his first disappointment
came, I grieved and wept; but I felt
he would conquer still—for his heart
was so good and pure. Oh, sir, don’t
think I reproach you; but what is to
become of him if—if—No, it is not for
myself I speak. I know that if I
was here, that if he had me to care
for, he would come home early—and
work patiently—and—and—that I
might save him. But now when I am
gone, and you with him—you to whom
he is grateful, you whom he would
follow against his own conscience,
(you must see that, sir)—what is to
become of him?”

Helen’s voice died in sobs.

Burley took three or four long
strides through the room—he was
greatly agitated. “I am a demon,”
he murmured. “I never saw it before—but
it is true—I should be this boy’s
ruin.” Tears stood in his eyes, he
paused abruptly, made a clutch at his
hat, and turned to the door.

Helen stopped the way, and, taking
him gently by the arm, said,—”Oh, sir,
forgive me—I have pained you;” and
looked up at him with a compassionate
expression, that indeed made the
child’s sweet face as that of an
angel.

Burley bent down as if to kiss her,
and then drew back—perhaps with a
sentiment that his lips were not worthy
to touch that innocent brow.

“If I had had a sister—a child
like you, little one,” he muttered,
“perhaps I too might have been
saved in time. Now—”

“Ah, now you may stay, sir; I
don’t fear you any more.”

“No, no; you would fear me again
ere night-time, and I might not be
always in the right mood to listen to
a voice like yours, child. Your
Leonard has a noble heart and rare
gifts. He should rise yet, and he
shall. I will not drag him into the
mire. Good-bye—you will see me no
more.” He broke from Helen, cleared
the stairs with a bound, and was out
of the house.

When Leonard returned he was
surprised to hear his unwelcome guest
was gone—but Helen did not venture
to tell him of her interposition. She
knew instinctively how such officiousness
would mortify and offend
the pride of man—but she never
again spoke harshly of poor Burley.
Leonard supposed that he should
either see or hear of the humourist
in the course of the day. Finding
he did not, he went in search of
him at his old haunts; but no trace.
He inquired at the Beehive if they
knew there of his new address, but no
tidings of Burley could be obtained.

As he came home disappointed
and anxious, for he felt uneasy as
to the disappearance of his wild
friend, Mrs Smedley met him at the
door.

“Please, sir, suit yourself with
another lodging,” said she. “I can
have no such singings and shoutings
going on at night in my house. And
that poor little girl, too!—you should
be ashamed of yourself.”

Leonard frowned, and passed by.

[288]

CHAPTER XI.

Meanwhile, on leaving Helen, Burley
strode on; and, as if by some better
instinct, for he was unconscious of his
own steps, he took the way towards
the still green haunts of his youth.
When he paused at length, he was
already before the door of a rural
cottage, standing alone in the midst
of fields, with a little farm-yard at
the back; and far through the trees
in front was caught a glimpse of the
winding Brent.

With this cottage Burley was familiar;
it was inhabited by a good old
couple who had known him from a
boy. There he habitually left his
rods and fishing-tackle; there, for
intervals in his turbid riotous life, he
had sojourned for two or three days
together—fancying the first day
that the country was a heaven, and
convinced before the third that it was
a purgatory.

An old woman, of neat and tidy
exterior, came forth to greet him.

“Ah, Master John,” said she clasping
his nerveless hand—”well, the
fields be pleasant now—I hope you
are come to stay a bit? Do; it will
freshen you: you lose all the fine
colour you had once, in Lunnon
town.”

“I will stay with you, my kind
friend,” said Burley with unusual
meekness—”I can have the old room,
then?”

“Oh yes, come and look at it. I
never let it now to any one but you—never
have let it since the dear
beautiful lady with the angel’s face
went away. Poor thing, what could
have become of her?”

Thus speaking, while Burley listened
not, the old woman drew him
within the cottage, and led him up
the stairs into a room that might
have well become a better house, for
it was furnished with taste, and even
elegance. A small cabinet pianoforte
stood opposite the fireplace, and the
window looked upon pleasant meads
and tangled hedgerows, and the narrow
windings of the blue rivulet.
Burley sank down exhausted, and
gazed wistfully from the casement.

“You have not breakfasted?” said
the hostess anxiously.

“No.”

“Well, the eggs are fresh laid, and
you would like a rasher of bacon, Master
John? And if you will have brandy
in your tea, I have some that you left
long ago in your own bottle.”

Burley shook his head. “No
brandy, Mrs Goodyer; only fresh
milk. I will see whether I can yet
coax Nature.”

Mrs Goodyer did not know what
was meant by coaxing Nature, but
she said, “Pray do, Master John,”
and vanished.

That day Burley went out with his
rod, and he fished hard for the one-eyed
perch: but in vain. Then he
roved along the stream with his
hands in his pockets, whistling. He
returned to the cottage at sunset,
partook of the fare provided for him,
abstained from the brandy, and felt
dreadfully low. He called for pen,
ink, and paper, and sought to write,
but could not achieve two lines. He
summoned Mrs Goodyer, “Tell your
husband to come and sit and talk.”

Up came old Jacob Goodyer, and
the great wit bade him tell him all
the news of the village. Jacob
obeyed willingly, and Burley at last
fell asleep. The next day it was
much the same, only at dinner he had
up the brandy bottle, and finished it;
and he did not have up Jacob, but
he contrived to write.

The third day it rained incessantly.
“Have you no books, Mrs Goodyer?”
asked poor John Burley.

“Oh, yes, some that the dear lady
left behind her; and perhaps you
would like to look at some papers in
her own writing?”

“No, not the papers—all women
scribble, and all scribble the same
things. Get me the books.”

The books were brought up—poetry
and essays—John knew them by
heart. He looked out on the rain,
and at evening the rain had ceased.
He rushed to his hat and fled.

“Nature, Nature!” he exclaimed
when he was out in the air and hurrying
by the dripping hedgerows,
“you are not to be coaxed by me!
I have jilted you shamefully, I own
it; you are a female and unforgiving.[289]
I don’t complain. You may
be very pretty, but you are the stupidest
and most tiresome companion
that ever I met with. Thank heaven,
I am not married to you!”

Thus John Burley made his way
into town, and paused at the first
public house. Out of that house he
came with a jovial air, and on he
strode towards the heart of London.
Now he is in Leicester Square, and
he gazes on the foreigners who stalk
that region, and hums a tune; and
now from yonder alley two forms
emerge, and dog his careless footsteps;
now through the maze of passages
towards St Martin’s he threads his
path, and, anticipating an orgy as he
nears his favourite haunts, jingles the
silver in his pockets; and now the
two forms are at his heels.

“Hail to thee, O Freedom!” muttered
John Burley, “thy dwelling is
in cities, and thy palace is the
tavern.”

“In the king’s name,” quoth a
gruff voice; and John Burley feels
the horrid and familiar tap on the
shoulder.

The two bailiffs who dogged have
seized their prey.

“At whose suit?” asked John
Burley falteringly.

“Mr Cox, the wine-merchant.”

“Cox! A man to whom I gave a
cheque on my bankers, not three
months ago!”

“But it warn’t cashed.”

“What does that signify?—the
intention was the same. A good
heart takes the will for the deed.
Cox is a monster of ingratitude; and
I withdraw my custom.”

“Sarve him right. Would your
honour like a jarvey?”

“I would rather spend the money
on something else,” said John Burley.
“Give me your arm, I am not proud.
After all, thank heaven, I shall not
sleep in the country.”

And John Burley made a night of
it in the Fleet.

CHAPTER XII.

Miss Starke was one of those ladies
who pass their lives in the direst of
all civil strife—war with their servants.
She looked upon the members
of that class as the unrelenting
and sleepless enemies of the unfortunate
householders condemned to
employ them. She thought they ate
and drank to their villanous utmost,
in order to ruin their benefactors—that
they lived in one constant
conspiracy with one another and the
tradesmen, the object of which was
to cheat and pilfer. Miss Starke
was a miserable woman. As she
had no relations or friends who
cared enough for her to share her
solitary struggle against her domestic
foes; and her income, though easy,
was an annuity that died with herself,
thereby reducing various nephews,
nieces, or cousins, to the strict bounds
of a natural affection—that did not
exist; and as she felt the want of
some friendly face amidst this world
of distrust and hate, so she had tried
the resource of venal companions.
But the venal companions had never
staid long—either they disliked Miss
Starke, or Miss Starke disliked them.
Therefore the poor woman had resolved
upon bringing up some little
girl whose heart, as she said to herself,
would be fresh and uncorrupted,
and from whom she might expect
gratitude. She had been contented,
on the whole, with Helen, and had
meant to keep that child in her house
as long as she (Miss Starke) remained
upon the earth—perhaps some thirty
years longer; and then, having carefully
secluded her from marriage, and
other friendship, to leave her nothing
but the regret of having lost so kind
a benefactress. Agreeably with this
notion, and in order to secure the
affections of the child, Miss Starke
had relaxed the frigid austerity natural
to her manner and mode of
thought, and been kind to Helen in
an iron way. She had neither slapped
nor pinched her, neither had she
starved. She had allowed her to
see Leonard, according to the agreement
made with Dr Morgan, and had
laid out tenpence on cakes, besides
contributing fruit from her garden for
the first interview—a hospitality she
did not think it fit to renew on subsequent
occasions. In return for this,[290]
she conceived she had purchased the
right to Helen bodily and spiritually,
and nothing could exceed her indignation
when she rose one morning
and found the child had gone. As it
never had occurred to her to ask
Leonard’s address, though she suspected
Helen had gone to him, she
was at a loss what to do, and remained
for twenty-four hours in a
state of inane depression. But then
she began to miss the child so much
that her energies woke, and she persuaded
herself that she was actuated
by the purest benevolence in trying
to reclaim this poor creature from the
world into which Helen had thus
rashly plunged.

Accordingly, she put an advertisement
into the Times, to the following
effect, liberally imitated from
one by which, in former years, she had
recovered a favourite Blenheim.

TWO GUINEAS REWARD.

Strayed, from Ivy Cottage, Highgate,
a Little Girl, answers to the
name of Helen; with blue eyes and
brown hair; white muslin frock, and
straw hat with blue ribbons. Whoever
will bring the same to Ivy Cottage, shall
receive the above Reward.

N.B.—Nothing more will be offered.

Now, it so happened that Mrs
Smedley had put an advertisement in
the Times on her own account, relative
to a niece of hers who was coming
from the country, and for whom she
desired to find a situation. So, contrary
to her usual habit, she sent for
the newspaper, and, close by her
own advertisement, she saw Miss
Starke’s.

It was impossible that she could
mistake the description of Helen;
and, as this advertisement caught her
eye the very day after the whole
house had been disturbed and scandalised
by Burley’s noisy visit, and
on which she had resolved to get rid
of a lodger who received such visitors,
the goodhearted woman was delighted
to think that she could restore Helen
to some safe home. While thus
thinking, Helen herself entered the
kitchen where Mrs Smedley sate,
and the landlady had the imprudence
to point out the advertisement, and
talk, as she called it, “seriously” to
the little girl.

Helen in vain and with tears entreated
her to take no step in reply to the
advertisement. Mrs Smedley felt it
was an affair of duty, and was obdurate,
and shortly afterwards put on her
bonnet and left the house. Helen conjectured
that she was on her way to
Miss Starke’s, and her whole soul was
bent on flight. Leonard had gone to
the office of the Beehive with his MSS.;
but she packed up all their joint
effects, and, just as she had done so, he
returned. She communicated the
news of the advertisement, and said
she should be so miserable if compelled
to go back to Miss Starke’s,
and implored him so pathetically to
save her from such sorrow that he at
once assented to her proposal of flight.
Luckily, little was owing to the landlady—that
little was left with the
maid-servant; and, profiting by Mrs
Smedley’s absence, they escaped
without scene or conflict. Their
effects were taken by Leonard to a
stand of hackney vehicles, and then
left at a coach-office, while they went
in search of lodgings. It was wise to
choose an entirely new and remote
district; and before night they were
settled in an attic in Lambeth.

CHAPTER XIII.

As the reader will expect, no
trace of Burley could Leonard find:
the humourist had ceased to communicate
with the Beehive. But Leonard
grieved for Burley’s sake; and
indeed, he missed the intercourse of
the large wrong mind. But he settled
down by degrees to the simple loving
society of his child companion, and in
that presence grew more tranquil.
The hours in the daytime that he did
not pass at work he spent as before,
picking up knowledge at bookstalls;
and at dusk he and Helen would
stroll out—sometimes striving to
escape from the long suburb into
fresh rural air; more often wandering
to and fro the bridge that led
to glorious Westminster—London’s
classic land—and watching the vague[291]
lamps reflected on the river. This
haunt suited the musing melancholy
boy. He would stand long and with
wistful silence by the balustrade—seating
Helen thereon, that she too
might look along the dark mournful
waters which, dark though they be,
still have their charm of mysterious
repose.

As the river flowed between the
world of roofs, and the roar of human
passions on either side, so in those
two hearts flowed Thought—and all
they knew of London was its shadow.

CHAPTER XIV.

There appeared in the Beehive certain
very truculent political papers—papers
very like the tracts in the
Tinker’s bag. Leonard did not heed
them much, but they made far more
sensation in the public that read the
Beehive than Leonard’s papers, full
of rare promise though the last were.
They greatly increased the sale of the
periodical in the manufacturing towns,
and began to awake the drowsy vigilance
of the Home Office. Suddenly
a descent was made upon the Beehive,
and all its papers and plant.
The editor saw himself threatened
with a criminal prosecution, and the
certainty of two years’ imprisonment:
he did not like the prospect, and disappeared.
One evening, when Leonard,
unconscious of these mischances,
arrived at the door of the office, he
found it closed. An agitated mob was
before it, and a voice that was not
new to his ear was haranguing the
bystanders, with many imprecations
against “tyrans.” He looked, and,
to his amaze, recognised in the orator
Mr Sprott the Tinker.

The police came in numbers to disperse
the crowd, and Mr Sprott
prudently vanished. Leonard learned
then what had befallen, and again
saw himself without employment
and the means of bread.

Slowly he walked back. “O,
knowledge, knowledge!—powerless
indeed!” he murmured.

As he thus spoke, a handbill in
large capitals met his eyes on a dead
wall—”Wanted, a few smart young
men for India.”

A crimp accosted him—”You
would make a fine soldier, my man.
You have stout limbs of your own.”
Leonard moved on.

“It has come back, then, to this.
Brute physical force after all! O
Mind, despair! O Peasant, be a
machine again.”

He entered his attic noiselessly,
and gazed upon Helen as she sate at
work, straining her eyes by the open
window—with tender and deep compassion.
She had not heard him
enter, nor was she aware of his presence.
Patient and still she sate,
and the small fingers plied busily.
He gazed, and saw that her cheek
was pale and hollow, and the hands
looked so thin! His heart was deeply
touched, and at that moment he had
not one memory of the baffled Poet,
one thought that proclaimed the
Egotist.

He approached her gently, laid his
hand on her shoulder—”Helen, put
on your shawl and bonnet, and walk
out—I have much to say.”

In a few moments she was ready,
and they took their way to their
favourite haunt upon the bridge.
Pausing in one of the recesses or
nooks, Leonard then began,—”Helen,
we must part.”

“Part?—Oh, brother!”

“Listen. All work that depends
on mind is over for me; nothing remains
but the labour of thews and
sinews. I cannot go back to my village
and say to all, ‘My hopes were
self-conceit, and my intellect a delusion!’
I cannot. Neither in this sordid
city can I turn menial or porter.
I might be born to that drudgery,
but my mind has, it may be unhappily,
raised me above my birth. What,
then, shall I do? I know not yet—serve
as a soldier, or push my way
to some wilderness afar, as an emigrant,
perhaps. But whatever my
choice, I must henceforth be alone;
I have a home no more. But there
is a home for you, Helen, a very
humble one, (for you, too, so well
born,) but very safe—the roof of—of—my
peasant mother. She will love
you for my sake, and—and—”

Helen clung to him trembling, and[292]
sobbed out, “Anything, anything
you will. But I can work; I can
make money, Leonard. I do, indeed,
make money—you do not know how
much—but enough for us both till
better times come to you. Do not let
us part.”

“And I—a man, and born to
labour, to be maintained by the work
of an infant! No, Helen, do not so
degrade me.”

She drew back as she looked on his
flushed brow, bowed her head submissively,
and murmured, “Pardon.”

“Ah,” said Helen, after a pause,
“if now we could but find my poor
father’s friend! I never so much
cared for it before.”

“Yes, he would surely provide for
you.”

“For me!” repeated Helen, in a
tone of soft deep reproach, and she
turned away her head to conceal her
tears.

“You are sure you would remember
him, if we met him by chance?”

“Oh yes. He was so different
from all we see in this terrible city,
and his eyes were like yonder stars,
so clear and so bright; yet the light
seemed to come from afar off, as the
light does in yours, when your
thoughts are away from all things
round you. And then, too, his dog
whom he called Nero—I could not
forget that.”

“But his dog may not be always
with him.”

“But the bright clear eyes are!
Ah, now you look up to heaven,
and yours seem to dream like his.”

Leonard did not answer, for his
thoughts were indeed less on earth
than struggling to pierce into that
remote and mysterious heaven.

Both were silent long; the crowd
passed them by unheedingly. Night
deepened over the river, but the reflection
of the lamplights on its waves
was more visible than that of the
stars. The beams showed the darkness
of the strong current, and the
craft that lay eastward on the tide,
with sail-less spectral masts and black
dismal hulks, looked deathlike in their
stillness.

Leonard looked down, and the
thought of Chatterton’s grim suicide
came back to his soul, and a pale
scornful face with luminous haunting
eyes seemed to look up from the stream,
and murmur from livid lips,—”Struggle
no more against the tides
on the surface—all is calm and rest
within the deep.”

Starting in terror from the gloom
of his reverie, the boy began to talk
fast to Helen, and tried to soothe her
with descriptions of the lowly home
which he had offered.

He spoke of the light cares which
she would participate with his
mother—for by that name he still
called the widow—and dwelt, with
an eloquence that the contrast round
him made sincere and strong, on
the happy rural life, the shadowy
woodlands, the rippling cornfields,
the solemn lone church-spire soaring
from the tranquil landscape. Flatteringly
he painted the flowery terraces
of the Italian exile, and the playful
fountain that, even as he spoke, was
flinging up its spray to the stars,
through serene air untroubled by the
smoke of cities, and untainted by the
sinful sighs of men. He promised her
the love and protection of natures
akin to the happy scene: the simple
affectionate mother—the gentle pastor—the
exile wise and kind—Violante,
with dark eyes full of the
mystic thoughts that solitude calls
from childhood,—Violante should be
her companion.

“And oh!” cried Helen, “if life
be thus happy there, return with me,
return—return!”

“Alas!” murmured the boy, “if
the hammer once strike the spark
from the anvil, the spark must fly
upward; it cannot fall back to earth
until light has left it. Upward still,
Helen—let me go upward still!”

CHAPTER XV.

The next morning Helen was very
ill—so ill that, shortly after rising,
she was forced to creep back to bed.
Her frame shivered—her eyes were
heavy—her hand burned like fire.
Fever had set in. Perhaps she might
have caught cold on the bridge—perhaps
her emotions had proved too[293]
much for her frame. Leonard, in
great alarm, called on the nearest
apothecary. The apothecary looked
grave, and said there was danger.
And danger soon declared itself—Helen
became delirious. For several
days she lay in this state, between
life and death. Leonard then felt
that all the sorrows of earth are
light, compared with the fear of
losing what we love. How valueless
the envied laurel seemed beside the
dying rose.

Thanks, perhaps, more to his heed
and tending than to medical skill, she
recovered sense at last—immediate
peril was over. But she was very
weak and reduced—her ultimate recovery
doubtful—convalescence, at
best, likely to be very slow.

But when she learned how long she
had been thus ill, she looked anxiously
at Leonard’s face as he bent over
her, and faltered forth—”Give me my
work; I am strong enough for that
now—it would amuse me.”

Leonard burst into tears.

Alas! he had no work himself; all
their joint money had melted away;
the apothecary was not like good Dr
Morgan: the medicines were to be
paid for, and the rent. Two days
before, Leonard had pawned Riccabocca’s
watch; and when the last
shilling thus raised was gone, how
should he support Helen? Nevertheless
he conquered his tears, and assured
her that he had employment; and
that so earnestly that she believed
him, and sank into soft sleep. He
listened to her breathing, kissed her
forehead, and left the room. He
turned into his own neigbouring
garret, and, leaning his face on his
hands, collected all his thoughts.

He must be a beggar at last. He
must write to Mr Dale for money—Mr
Dale, too, who knew the secret
of his birth. He would rather have
begged of a stranger—it seemed to
add a new dishonour to his mother’s
memory for the child to beg of one
who was acquainted with her shame.
Had he himself been the only one to want
and to starve, he would have sunk inch
by inch into the grave of famine, before
he would have so subdued his pride.
But Helen, there on that bed—Helen
needing, for weeks perhaps, all support,
and illness making luxuries
themselves like necessaries! Beg he
must. And when he so resolved, had
you but seen the proud bitter soul he
conquered, you would have said—”This
which he thinks is degradation—this
is heroism. Oh strange human
heart!—no epic ever written achieves
the Sublime and the Beautiful which
are graven, unread by human eye,
in thy secret leaves.” Of whom else
should he beg? His mother had nothing,
Riccabocca was poor, and the
stately Violante, who had exclaimed,
“Would that I were a man!”—he
could not endure the thought that she
should pity him, and despise. The
Avenels! No—thrice No. He drew
towards him hastily ink and paper,
and wrote rapid lines, that were
wrung from him as from the bleeding
strings of life.

But the hour for the post had
passed—the letter must wait till the
next day; and three days at least
would elapse before he could receive
an answer. He left the letter on the
table, and, stifling as for air, went
forth. He crossed the bridge—he
passed on mechanically—and was
borne along by a crowd pressing
towards the doors of Parliament.
A debate that excited popular interest
was fixed for that evening, and many
bystanders collected in the street to
see the members pass to and fro,
or hear what speakers had yet risen to
take part in the debate, or try to get
orders for the gallery.

He halted amidst these loiterers, with
no interest, indeed, in common with
them, but looking over their heads
abstractedly towards the tall Funeral
Abbey—Imperial Golgotha of Poets,
and Chiefs, and Kings.

Suddenly his attention was diverted
to those around by the sound of a
name—displeasingly known to him.
“How are you, Randal Leslie?
coming to hear the debate?” said a
member who was passing through
the street.

“Yes; Mr Egerton promised to get
me under the gallery. He is to speak
himself to-night, and I have never
heard him. As you are going into
the House, will you remind him?”

“I can’t now, for he is speaking
already—and well too. I hurried from
the Athenæum, where I was dining,
on purpose to be in time, as I heard[294]
that his speech was making a great
effect.”

“This is very unlucky,” said Randal.
“I had no idea he would speak
so early.”

“M—— brought him up by a direct
personal attack. But follow me; perhaps
I can get you into the House;
and a man like you, Leslie, of whom
we expect great things some day, I
can tell you, should not miss any
such opportunity of knowing what
this House of ours is on a field night.
Come on!”

The member hurried towards the
door; and as Randal followed him, a
bystander cried—”That is the young
man who wrote the famous pamphlet—Egerton’s
relation.”

“Oh, indeed!” said another.
“Clever man, Egerton—I am waiting
for him.”

“So am I.”

“Why, you are not a constituent,
as I am.”

“No; but he has been very kind to
my nephew, and I must thank him.
You are a constituent—he is an
honour to your town.”

“So he is: Enlightened man!”

“And so generous!”

“Brings forward really good measures,”
quoth the politician.

“And clever young men,” said the
uncle.

Therewith one or two others joined
in the praise of Audley Egerton, and
many anecdotes of his liberality were
told.

Leonard listened at first listlessly,
at last with thoughtful attention. He
had heard Burley, too, speak highly
of this generous statesman, who,
without pretending to genius himself,
appreciated it in others. He suddenly
remembered, too, that Egerton was
half-brother to the Squire. Vague
notions of some appeal to this eminent
person, not for charity, but employ
to his mind, gleamed across him—inexperienced
boy that he yet was! And,
while thus meditating, the door of the
House opened, and out came Audley
Egerton himself. A partial cheering,
followed by a general murmur, apprised
Leonard of the presence of the
popular statesman. Egerton was
caught hold of by some five or six
persons in succession; a shake of the
hand, a nod, a brief whispered word
or two, sufficed the practised member
for graceful escape; and soon, free
from the crowd, his tall erect figure
passed on, and turned towards the
bridge. He paused at the angle and
took out his watch, looking at it by
the lamp-light.

“Harley will be here soon,” he
muttered—”he is always punctual;
and now that I have spoken, I can
give him an hour or so. That is well.”

As he replaced his watch in his
pocket, and re-buttoned his coat over
his firm broad chest, he lifted his eyes,
and saw a young man standing before
him.

“Do you want me?” asked the
statesman, with the direct brevity of
his practical character.

“Mr Egerton,” said the young
man, with a voice that slightly trembled,
and yet was manly amidst
emotion, “you have a great name,
and great power—I stand here in
these streets of London without a
friend, and without employ. I believe
that I have it in me to do some
nobler work than that of bodily labour,
had I but one friend—one opening for
my thoughts. And now I have said
this, I scarcely know how, or why,
but from despair, and the sudden impulse
which that despair took from the
praise that follows your success, I
have nothing more to add.”

Audley Egerton was silent for a moment,
struck by the tone and address
of the stranger; but the consummate
and wary man of the world, accustomed
to all manner of strange applications,
and all varieties of imposture,
quickly recovered from a passing
and slight effect.

“Are you a native of ——?” (naming
the town he represented as member.)

“No, sir.”

“Well, young man, I am very
sorry for you; but the good sense you
must possess (for I judge of that by the
education you have evidently received)
must tell you that a public man,
whatever be his patronage, has it too
fully absorbed by claimants who have
a right to demand it, to be able to
listen to strangers.”

He paused a moment, and, as
Leonard stood silent, added, with
more kindness than most public men
so accosted would have showed—

[295]

“You say you are friendless—poor
fellow. In early life that happens to
many of us, who find friends enough
before the close. Be honest, and
well-conducted; lean on yourself, not
on strangers; work with the body if
you can’t with the mind; and, believe
me, that advice is all I can give you,
unless this trifle,”—and the minister
held out a crown piece.

Leonard bowed, shook his head
sadly, and walked away. Egerton
looked after him with a slight
pang.

“Pooh!” said he to himself, “there
must be thousands in the same state
in these streets of London. I cannot
redress the necessities of civilisation.
Well educated! It is not from ignorance
henceforth that society will suffer—it
is from over-educating the
hungry thousands who, thus unfitted
for manual toil, and with no career
for mental, will some day or other
stand like that boy in our streets,
and puzzle wiser ministers than I
am.”

As Egerton thus mused, and passed
on to the bridge, a bugle-horn rang
merrily from the box of a gay four-in-hand.
A drag-coach with superb
blood-horses rattled over the causeway,
and in the driver Egerton recognised
his nephew—Frank Hazeldean.

The young Guardsman was returning,
with a lively party of men, from
dining at Greenwich; and the careless
laughter of these children of pleasure
floated far over the still river.

It vexed the ear of the careworn
statesman—sad, perhaps, with all his
greatness, lonely amidst all his crowd
of friends. It reminded him, perhaps,
of his own youth, when such parties
and companionships were familiar to
him, though through them all he bore
an ambitious aspiring soul—”Le jeu,
vaut-il la chandelle?” said he, shrugging
his shoulders.

The coach rolled rapidly past Leonard,
as he stood leaning against the
corner of the bridge, and the mire of
the kennel splashed over him from the
hoofs of the fiery horses. The laughter
smote on his ear more discordantly
than on the minister’s, but it begot no
envy.

“Life is a dark riddle,” said he,
smiting his breast.

And he walked slowly on, gained
the recess where he had stood several
nights before with Helen; and dizzy
with want of food, and worn out for
want of sleep, he sank down into
the dark corner; while the river that
rolled under the arch of stone muttered
dirge-like in his ear;—as under
the social key-stone wails and rolls
on for ever the mystery of Human
Discontent. Take comfort, O Thinker
by the stream! ‘Tis the river that
founded and gave pomp to the city;
and without the discontent, where
were progress—what were Man?
Take comfort, O Thinker! where ever
the stream over which thou
bendest, or beside which thou sinkest,
weary and desolate, frets the arch
that supports thee;—never dream
that, by destroying the bridge, thou
canst silence the moan of the wave!

[296]

DISFRANCHISEMENT OF THE BOROUGHS.

TO WALTER BINKIE, ESQ., PROVOST OF DREEPDAILY.

My dear Provost,—In the course
of your communings with nature on
the uplands of Dreepdaily, you must
doubtless have observed that the
advent of a storm is usually preceded
by the appearance of a flight of seamaws,
who, by their discordant
screams, give notice of the approaching
change of weather. For some
time past it has been the opinion of
those who are in the habit of watching
the political horizon, that we
should do well to prepare ourselves
for a squall, and already the premonitory
symptoms are distinctly audible.
The Liberal press, headed by the
Times, is clamorous for some sweeping
change in the method of Parliamentary
representation; and Lord
John Russell, as you are well aware,
proposes in the course of next Session
to take up the subject. This is no
mere brutum fulmen, or dodge to
secure a little temporary popularity—it
is a distinct party move for a
very intelligible purpose; and is
fraught, I think, with much danger
and injustice to many of the constituencies
which are now intrusted with
the right of franchise. As you, my
dear Provost, are a Liberal both by
principle and profession, and moreover
chief magistrate of a very old
Scottish burgh, your opinion upon
this matter must have great weight
in determining the judgment of others;
and, therefore, you will not, I trust,
consider it too great a liberty, if, at
this dull season of the year, I call
your attention to one or two points
which appear well worthy of consideration.

In the first place, I think you will
admit that extensive organic changes
in the Constitution ought never to be
attempted except in cases of strong
necessity. The real interests of the
country are never promoted by internal
political agitation, which unsettles
men’s minds, is injurious to regular
industry, and too often leaves behind
it the seeds of jealousy and discord
between different classes of the community,
ready on some future occasion
to burst into noxious existence.
You would not, I think, wish to see
annually renewed that sort of strife
which characterised the era of the
Reform Bill. I venture to pass no
opinion whatever on the abstract
merits of that measure. I accept it
as a fact, just as I accept other changes
in the Constitution of this country
which took place before I was born;
and I hope I shall ever comport myself
as a loyal and independent
elector. But I am sure you have far
too lively a recollection of the ferment
which that event created, to wish to
see it renewed, without at least some
urgent cause. You were consistently
anxious for the suppression of rotten
boroughs, and for the enlargement of
the constituency upon a broad and
popular basis; and you considered
that the advantages to be gained by
the adoption of the new system, justified
the social risks which were incurred
in the endeavour to supersede
the old one. I do not say that you
were wrong in this. The agitation
for Parliamentary Reform had been
going on for a great number of years;
the voice of the majority of the country
was undeniably in your favour,
and you finally carried your point.
Still, in consequence of that struggle,
years elapsed before the heart-burnings
and jealousies which were occasioned
by it were allayed. Even now
it is not uncommon to hear the reminiscences
of the Reform Bill appealed
to on the hustings by candidates who
have little else to say for themselves
by way of personal recommendation.
A most ludicrous instance of this
occurred very lately in the case of a
young gentleman, who, being desirous
of Parliamentary honours, actually
requested the support of the electors
on the ground that his father or grandfather—I
forget which—had voted for
the Reform Bill; a ceremony which
he could not very well have performed
in his own person, as at that time
he had not been released from the
bondage of swaddling-clothes! I
need hardly add that he was rejected;[297]
but the anecdote is curious and instructive.

In a country such as this, changes
must be looked for in the course of
years. One system dies out, or becomes
unpopular, and is replaced by
a new one. But I cannot charge my
memory with any historical instance
where a great change was attempted
without some powerful or cogent
reason. Still less can I recollect any
great change being proposed, unless a
large and powerful section of the
community had unequivocally declared
in its favour. The reason of this is
quite obvious. The middle classes of
Great Britain, however liberal they
may be in their sentiments, have a
just horror of revolutions. They
know very well that organic changes
are never effected without enormous
loss and individual deprivation, and
they will not move unless they are
assured that the value of the object to
be gained is commensurate with the
extent of the sacrifice. In defence of
their liberties, when these are attacked,
the British people are ever
ready to stand forward; but I mistake
them much, if they will at any
time allow themselves to be made the
tools of a faction. The attempt to
get up organic changes for the sole
purpose of perpetuating the existence
of a particular Ministry, or of maintaining
the supremacy of a particular
party, is a new feature in our history.
It is an experiment which the nation
ought not to tolerate for a single
moment; and which I am satisfied it
will not tolerate, when the schemes
of its authors are laid bare.

I believe, Provost, I am right in
assuming that there has been no decided
movement in favour of a New
Parliamentary Reform Bill, either in
Dreepdaily or in any of the other
burghs with which you are connected.
The electors are well satisfied with
the operation of the ten-pound clause,
which excludes from the franchise no
man of decent ability and industry,
whilst it secures property from those
direct inroads which would be the
inevitable result of a system of universal
suffrage. Also, I suppose, you
are reasonably indifferent on the subjects
of Vote by Ballot and Triennial
Parliaments, and that you view the
idea of annual ones with undisguised
reprobation. Difference of opinion
undoubtedly may exist on some of
these points: an eight-pound qualification
may have its advocates, and
the right of secret voting may be convenient
for members of the clique;
but, on the whole, you are satisfied
with matters as they are; and, certainly,
I do not see that you have any
grievance to complain of. If I were
a member of the Liberal party, I
should be very sorry to see any
change of the representation made in
Scotland. Just observe how the
matter stands. At the commencement
of the present year the whole
representation of the Scottish burghs
was in the hands of the Liberal party.
Since then, it is true, Falkirk has
changed sides; but you are still remarkably
well off; and I think that
out of thirty county members, eighteen
may be set down as supporters of the
Free-trade policy. Remember, I do
not guarantee the continuance of
these proportions: I wish you simply
to observe how you stand at present,
under the working of your own Reform
Bill; and really it appears to me
that nothing could be more satisfactory.
The Liberal who wishes to
have more men of his own kidney
from Scotland must indeed be an unconscionable
glutton; and if, in the
face of these facts, he asks for a reform
in the representation, I cannot
set him down as other than a consummate
ass. He must needs admit
that the system has worked well.
Scotland sends to the support of the
Whig Ministry, and the maintenance
of progressive opinions, a brilliant
phalanx of senators; amongst whom
we point, with justifiable pride, to
the distinguished names of Anderson,
Bouverie, Ewart, Hume, Smith,
M’Taggart, and M’Gregor. Are
these gentlemen not liberal enough
for the wants of the present age?
Why, unless I am most egregiously
mistaken—and not I only, but the
whole of the Liberal press in Scotland—they
are generally regarded as
decidedly ahead even of my Lord John
Russell. Why, then, should your
representation be reformed, while it
bears such admirable fruit? With
such a growth of golden pippins on
its boughs, would it not be madness
to cut down the tree, on the mere[298]
chance of another arising from the
stump, more especially when you
cannot hope to gather from it a more
abundant harvest? I am quite sure,
Provost, that you agree with me in
this. You have nothing to gain, but
possibly a good deal to lose, by any
alteration which may be made; and
therefore it is, I presume, that in this
part of the world not the slightest
wish has been manifested for a radical
change of the system. That very
conceited and shallow individual, Sir
Joshua Walmsley, made not long
ago a kind of agitating tour through
Scotland, for the purpose of getting
up the steam; but except from a few
unhappy Chartists, whose sentiments
on the subject of property are identically
the same with those professed
by the gentlemen who plundered the
Glasgow tradesmen’s shops in 1848,
he met with no manner of encouragement.
The electors laughed in the
face of this ridiculous caricature of
Peter the Hermit, and advised him,
instead of exposing his ignorance in
the north, to go back to Bolton
and occupy himself with his own
affairs.

This much I have said touching
the necessity or call for a new Reform
Bill, which is likely enough to
involve us, for a considerable period
at least, in unfortunate political strife.
I have put it to you as a Liberal, but
at the same time as a man of common
sense and honesty, whether there are
any circumstances, under your knowledge,
which can justify such an
attempt; and in the absence of these,
you cannot but admit that such an
experiment is eminently dangerous
at the present time, and ought to be
strongly discountenanced by all men,
whatever may be their kind of political
opinions. I speak now without any
reference whatever to the details. It
may certainly be possible to discover
a better system of representation than
that which at present exists. I never
regarded Lord John Russell as the
living incarnation of Minerva, nor
can I consider any measure originated
by him as conveying an assurance
that the highest amount of human
wisdom has been exhausted in its
preparation. But what I do say is
this, that in the absence of anything
like general demand, and failing the
allegation of any marked grievance
to be redressed, no Ministry is entitled
to propose an extensive or
organic change in the representation
of the country; and the men who
shall venture upon such a step must
render themselves liable to the imputation
of being actuated by other
motives than regard to the public
welfare.

You will, however, be slow to
believe that Lord John Russell is
moving in this matter without some
special reason. In this you are perfectly
right. He has a reason, and a
very cogent one, but not such a reason
as you, if you are truly a Liberal,
and not a mere partisan, can accept.
I presume it is the wish of the Liberal
party—at least it used to be their
watchword—that public opinion in
this country is not to be slighted
or suppressed. With the view of
giving full effect to that public opinion,
not of securing the supremacy of this
or that political alliance, the Reform
Act was framed; it being the declared
object and intention of its founders that
a full, fair, and free representation
should be secured to the people of
this country. The property qualification
was fixed at a low rate; the
balance of power as between counties
and boroughs was carefully adjusted;
and every precaution was taken—at
least so we were told at the time—that
no one great interest of the State
should be allowed unduly to predominate
over another. Many, however,
were of opinion at the time, and have
since seen no reason to alter it, that
the adjustment then made, as between
counties and boroughs, was by no
means equitable, and that an undue
share in the representation was given
to the latter, more especially in England.
That, you will observe, was a
Conservative, not a Liberal objection;
and it was over-ruled. Well, then,
did the Representation, as fixed by
the Reform Bill, fulfil its primary
condition? You thought so; and so
did my Lord John Russell, until some
twelve months ago, when a new light
dawned upon him. That light has
since increased in intensity, and he
now sees his way, clearly enough, to
a new organic measure. Why is
this? Simply, my dear Provost,
because the English boroughs will no[299]
longer support him in his bungling
legislation, or countenance his unnational
policy!

Public opinion, as represented
through the operation of the Reform
Act, is no longer favourable to Lord
John Russell. The result of recent
elections, in places which were formerly
considered as the strongholds
of Whiggery, have demonstrated to
him that the Free-trade policy, to
which he is irretrievably pledged, has
become obnoxious to the bulk of the
electors, and that they will no longer
accord their support to any Ministry
which is bent upon depressing British
labour and sapping the foundations of
national prosperity. So Lord John
Russell, finding himself in this position,
that he must either get rid of public
opinion or resign his place, sets about
the concoction of a new Reform Bill,
by means of which he hopes to swamp
the present electoral body! This is
Whig liberty in its pure and original
form. It implies, of course, that the
Reform Bill did not give a full, fair,
and free representation to the country,
else there can be no excuse for altering
its provisions. If we really have
a fair representation; and if, notwithstanding,
the majority of the electors
are convinced that Free Trade is not
for their benefit, it does appear to me
a most monstrous thing that they are
to be coerced into receiving it by
the infusion of a new element into the
Constitution, or a forcible change in
the distribution of the electoral power,
to suit the commercial views which
are in favour with the Whig party.
It is, in short, a most circuitous
method of exercising despotic power;
and I, for one, having the interests of
the country at heart, would much
prefer the institution at once of a pure
despotism, and submit to be ruled and
taxed henceforward at the sweet will
of the scion of the house of Russell.

I do not know what your individual
sentiments may be on the subject of
Free Trade; but whether you are for
it or against it, my argument remains
the same. It is essentially a question
for the solution of the electoral body;
and if the Whigs are right in their
averment that its operation hitherto
has been attended with marked success,
and has even transcended the
expectation of its promoters, you
may rely upon it that there is no
power in the British Empire which can
overthrow it. No Protectionist ravings
can damage a system which has
been productive of real advantage to
the great bulk of the people. But if,
on the contrary, it is a bad system, is
it to be endured that any man or
body of men shall attempt to perpetuate
it against the will of the majority
of the electors, by a change in
the representation of the country?
I ask you this as a Liberal. Without
having any undue diffidence in the
soundness of your own judgment, I
presume you do not, like his Holiness
the Pope, consider yourself infallible,
or entitled to coerce others who may
differ from you in opinion. Yet this
is precisely what Lord John Russell
is now attempting to do; and I warn
you and others who are similarly
situated, to be wise in time, and to
take care lest, under the operation of
this new Reform Bill, you are not
stripped of that political power and
those political privileges which at
present you enjoy.

Don’t suppose that I am speaking
rashly or without consideration. All
I know touching this new Reform
Bill, is derived from the arguments
and proposals which have been advanced
and made by the Liberal press
in consequence of the late indications
of public feeling, as manifested by
the result of recent elections. It is
rather remarkable that we heard few
or no proposals for an alteration in
the electoral system, until it became
apparent that the voice of the boroughs
could no longer be depended on for
the maintenance of the present commercial
policy. You may recollect
that the earliest of the victories which
were achieved by the Protectionists,
with respect to vacant seats in the
House of Commons, were treated
lightly by their opponents as mere
casualties; but when borough after
borough deliberately renounced its
adherence to the cause of the League,
and, not unfrequently under circumstances
of very marked significance,
declared openly in favour of Protection,
the matter became serious. It
was then, and then only, that we
heard the necessity for some new and
sweeping change in the representation
of this country broadly asserted; and,[300]
singularly enough, the advocates of
that change do not attempt to disguise
their motives. They do not
venture to say that the intelligence of
the country is not adequately represented
at present—what they complain
of is, that the intelligence of the
country is becoming every day more
hostile to their commercial theories.
In short, they want to get rid of that
intelligence, and must get rid of it
speedily, unless their system is to
crumble to pieces. Such is their aim
and declared object; and if you entertain
any doubts on the matter, I
beg leave to refer you to the recorded
sentiments of the leading Ministerial
and Free-trade organ—the Times. It
is always instructive to notice the
hints of the Thunderer. The writers
in that journal are fully alive to the
nature of the coming crisis. They
have been long aware of the reaction
which has taken place throughout the
country on the subject of Free Trade,
and they recognise distinctly the peril
in which their favourite principle is
placed, if some violent means are not
used to counteract the conviction of
the electoral body. They see that,
in the event of a general election, the
constituencies of the Empire are not
likely to return a verdict hostile to
the domestic interests of the country.
They have watched with careful and
anxious eyes the turning tide of
opinion; and they can devise no
means of arresting it, without having
recourse to that peculiar mode of
manipulation, which is dignified by the
name of Burking. Let us hear what
they say so late as the 21st of July
last.

“With such a prospect before us, with
unknown struggles and unprecedented
collisions within the bounds of possibility,
there is only one resource, and we must
say that Her Majesty’s present advisers
will be answerable for the consequences
if they do not adopt it. They must lay
the foundation of an appeal to the people
with a large and liberal measure of
Parliamentary reform. It is high time
that this great country should cease to
quake and to quail at the decisions of stupid
and corrupt little constituencies, of whom,
as in the case before us, it would take
thirty to make one metropolitan borough.
The great question always before the
nation in one shape or another is—whether
the people are as happy as laws
can make them? To what sort of constituencies
shall we appeal for the answer
to this question? To Harwich with its
population of 3370; to St Albans with
its population of 6246; to Scarborough
with its population of 9953; to Knaresborough
with its population of 5382; and
to a score other places still more insignificant?
Or shall we insist on the appeal
being made to much larger bodies? The
average population of boroughs and
counties is more than 60,000. Is it not
high time to require that no single
borough shall fall below half or a third
of that number?”

The meaning of this is clear enough.
It points, if not to the absolute annihilation,
most certainly to the concretion
of the smaller boroughs
throughout England—to an entire
remarshalling of the electoral ranks—and,
above all, to an enormous increase
in the representation of the
larger cities. In this way, you see,
local interests will be made almost
entirely to disappear; and London
alone will secure almost as many
representatives in Parliament as are
at the present time returned for the
whole kingdom of Scotland. Now, I
confess to you, Provost, that I do not
feel greatly exhilarated at the prospect
of any such change. I believe
that the prosperity of Great Britain
depends upon the maintenance of
many interests, and I cannot see how
that can be secured if we are to deliver
over the whole political power
to the masses congregated within the
towns. Moreover, I would very
humbly remark, that past experience
is little calculated to increase the
measure of our faith in the wisdom or
judgment of large constituencies. I
may be wrong in my estimate of the
talent and abilities of the several
honourable members who at present
sit for London and the adjacent districts;
but, if so, I am only one out
of many who labour under a similar
delusion. We are told by the Times
to look to Marylebone as an example
of a large and enlightened constituency.
I obey the mandate; and on
referring to the Parliamentary Companion,
I find that Marylebone
is represented by Lord Dudley Stuart
and Sir Benjamin Hall. That fact
does not, in my humble opinion,
furnish a conclusive argument in
favour of large constituencies. As I[301]
wish to avoid the Jew question, I
shall say nothing about Baron Rothschild;
but passing over to the Tower
Hamlets, I find them in possession of
Thomson and Clay; Lambeth rejoicing
in d’Eyncourt and Williams;
and Southwark in Humphrey and
Molesworth. Capable senators though
these may be, I should not like to
see a Parliament composed entirely
of men of their kidney; nor do I think
that they afford undoubted materials
for the construction of a new Cabinet.

But perhaps I am undervaluing the
abilities of these gentlemen; perhaps
I am doing injustice to the discretion
and wisdom of the metropolitan constituencies.
Anxious to avoid any
such imputation, I shall again invoke
the assistance of the Times, whom I
now cite as a witness, and a very
powerful one, upon my side of the
question. Let us hear the Thunderer
on the subject of these same metropolitan
constituencies, just twelve
months ago, before Scarborough and
Knaresborough had disgraced themselves
by returning Protectionists to
Parliament. I quote from a leader in
the Times of 8th August 1850, referring
to the Lambeth election, when
Mr Williams was returned.

“When it was proposed some twenty
years ago to extend the franchise to the
metropolitan boroughs, the presumption
was, that the quality of the representatives
would bear something like a proportion
to the importance of the constituencies
called into play. In other words,
if the political axioms from which the
principle of an extended representation is
deduced have any foundation in reality,
it should follow that the most numerous
and most intelligent bodies of electors
would return to Parliament members of
the highest mark for character and capacity.
Now, looking at the condition of
the metropolitan representation as it
stands at present, or as it has stood any
time since the passing of the Reform Bill,
has this expectation been fulfilled? Lord
John Russell, the First Minister of the
Crown, sits, indeed, as member for the
city of London, and so far it is well.
Whatever difference of opinion may exist
as to the noble lord’s capacity for government,
or whatever may be the views
of this or that political party, it is beyond
all dispute that, in such a case as this,
there is dignity and fitness in the relation
between the member and the constituency.
But, setting aside this one solitary instance,
with what metropolitan borough
is the name of any very eminent Englishman
associated at the present time? It is
of course as contrary to our inclination
as it would be unnecessary for the purposes
of the argument, to quote this or that
man’s name as an actual illustration of the
failure of a system, or of the decadence
of a constituency. We would, however,
without any invidious or offensive personality,
invite attention to the present list
of metropolitan members, and ask what
name is to be found among them, with
the single exception we have named,
which is borne by a man with a shadow
of a pretension to be reckoned as among
the leading Englishmen of the age?”

You see, Provost, I am by no
means singular in my estimate of the
quality of the metropolitan representatives.
The Times is with me, or
was with me twelve months ago; and
I suppose it will hardly be averred
that, since that time, any enormous
increase of wisdom or of ability has
been manifested by the gentlemen referred
to. But there is rather more
than this. In the article from which
I am quoting, the writer does not confine
his strictures simply to the metropolitan
boroughs. He goes a great deal
further, for he attacks large constituencies
in the mass, and points out
very well and forcibly the evils which
must inevitably follow should these
obtain an accession to their power.
Read, mark, and perpend the following
paragraphs, and then reconcile
their tenor—if you can—with the later
proposals from the same quarter for
the general suppression of small constituencies,
and the establishment of
larger tribunals of public opinion.

“Lambeth, then, on the occasion of the
present election, is likely to become another
illustration of the downward tendencies
of the metropolitan constituencies.
We use the word ‘tendency’ advisedly,
for matters are worse than they have
been, and we can perceive no symptom of
a turning tide. Let us leave the names
of individuals aside, and simply consider
the metropolitan members as a body, and
what is their main employment in the
House of Commons? Is it not mainly to
represent the selfish interests and blind prejudices
of the less patriotic or less enlightened
portion of their constituents whenever
any change is proposed manifestly for the
public benefit? Looking at their votes,
one would suppose a metropolitan member[302]
to be rather a Parliamentary agent
of the drovers, and sextons, and undertakers,
than a representative of one of
the most important constituencies in the
kingdom. Is this downward progress of
the metropolitan representation to remain
unchanged? Will it be extended to
other constituencies as soon as they shall
be brought under conditions analogous to
those under which the metropolitan electors
exercise the franchise? The question
is of no small interest. Whether the
fault be with the electors, or with those
who should have the nerve to come forward
and demand their suffrages, matters
not for the purposes of the argument.
The fact remains unaltered. Supposing
England throughout its area were represented
as the various boroughs of the metropolis
are represented at the present
time, what would be the effect? That is
the point for consideration. It may well
be that men of higher character, and of
more distinguished intellectual qualifications,
would readily attract the sympathies
and secure the votes of these constituencies;
but what does their absence prove?
Simply that the same feeling of unwillingness
to face large electoral bodies, which is
said to prevail in the United States, is gradually
rising up in this country. On the
other side of the Atlantic, we are told by
all who know the country best, that the
most distinguished citizens shrink from
stepping forward on the arena of public
life, lest they be made the mark for calumny
and abuse. It would require more
space than we can devote to the subject
to point out the correlative shortcomings
of the constituencies and the candidates;
but, leaving these aside, we cannot but arrive
at the conclusion that there is something
in the constitution of these great electoral
masses which renders a peaceful majority
little better than a passive instrument
in the hands of a turbulent minority, and
affords an explanation of the fact that
such a person as Mr Williams should
aspire to represent the borough of Lambeth.”

What do you think of that, Provost,
by way of an argument in favour
of large constituencies? I agree
with every word of it. I believe, in
common with the eloquent writer,
that matters are growing worse instead
of better, and that there is
something radically wrong in the constitution
of these great electoral
masses. I believe that they do not
represent the real intelligence of the
electors, and that they are liable to
all those objections which are here
so well and forcibly urged. It is
not necessary to travel quite so far
as London for an illustration. Look
at Glasgow. Have the twelve thousand
and odd electors of that great
commercial and manufacturing city
covered themselves with undying
glory by their choice of their present
representatives? Is the intelligence
of the first commercial city in Scotland
really embodied in the person of
Mr M’Gregor? I should be very loth
to think so. Far be it from me to
impugn the propriety of any particular
choice, or to speculate upon
coming events; but I cannot help
wondering whether, in the event of
the suppression of some of the smaller
burghs, and the transference of their
power to the larger cities, it may come
to pass that the city of St Mungo
shall be represented by the wisdom
of six M’Gregors? I repeat, that I
wish to say nothing in disparagement
of large urban constituencies, or of
their choice in any one particular
case—I simply desire to draw your
attention to the fact, that we are not
indebted to such constituencies for
returning the men who, by common
consent, are admitted to be the most
valuable members, in point of talent,
ability, and business habits, in the
House of Commons. How far we
should improve the character of our
legislative assembly, by disfranchising
smaller constituencies, and transferring
their privileges to the larger ones,—open
to such serious objections as
have been urged against them by the
Times, a journal not likely to err on the
side of undervaluing popular opinion—appears
to me a question decidedly
open to discussion; and I hope that
it will be discussed, pretty broadly
and extensively, before any active
steps are taken for suppressing
boroughs which are not open to the
charge of rank venality and corruption.

The Times, you observe, talks in
its more recent article, in which
totally opposite views are advocated,
of “stupid and corrupt little constituencies.”
This is a clever way of
mixing up two distinct and separate
matters. We all know what is meant
by corruption, and I hope none of us
are in favour of it. It means the
purchase, either by money or promises,
of the suffrages of those who[303]
are intrusted with the electoral
franchise; and I am quite ready to
join with the Times in the most
hearty denunciation of such villanous
practices, whether used by Jew or
Gentile. It may be, and probably is,
impossible to prevent bribery altogether,
for there are scoundrels in all
constituencies; and if a candidate
with a long purse is so lax in his
morals as to hint at the purchase of
votes, he is tolerably certain to find a
market in which these commodities
are sold. But if, in any case, general
corruption can be proved against
a borough, it ought to be forthwith
disfranchised, and declared unworthy
of exercising so important a public
privilege. But of the “stupidity” of
constituencies, who are to be the
judges? Not, I hope, the Areopagites
of the Times, else we may
expect to see every constituency
which does not pronounce in favour
of Free Trade, placed under the
general extinguisher! Scarborough,
with some seven or eight hundred
electors—a good many more, by the
way, than are on the roll for the
Dreepdaily burghs—has, in the
opinion of the Times, stultified itself
for ever by returning Mr George F.
Young to Parliament, instead of a
Whig lordling, who possessed great
local influence. Therefore Scarborough
is put down in the black list,
not because it is “corrupt,” but because
it is “stupid,” in having elected
a gentleman of the highest political
celebrity, who is at the same time
one of the most extensive shipowners
of Great Britain! I put it to you,
Provost, whether this is not as cool
an instance of audacity as you ever
heard of. What would you think
if it were openly proposed, upon
our side, to disfranchise Greenwich,
because the tea-and-shrimp
population of that virtuous town has
committed the stupid act of returning
a Jew to Parliament? If stupidity is
to go for anything in the way of cancelling
privileges, I think I could
name to you some half-dozen places
on this side of the border which are
in evident danger, at least if we are
to accept the attainments of the
representatives as any test of the
mental acquirements of the electors;
but perhaps it is better to avoid
particulars in a matter so personal
and delicate.

I am not in the least degree surprised
to find the Free-Traders turning
round against the boroughs. Four
years ago, you would certainly have
laughed in the face of any one who
might have prophesied such a result;
but since then, times have altered.
The grand experiment upon native
industry has been made, and allowed
to go on without check or impediment.
The Free-Traders have had
it all their own way; and if there had
been one iota of truth in their statements,
or if their calculations had
been based upon secure and rational
data, they must long ago have
achieved a complete moral triumph.
Pray, remember what they told us.
They said that Free Trade in corn
and in cattle would not permanently
lower the value of agricultural produce
in Britain—it would only steady
prices, and prevent extreme fluctuations.
Then, again, we were assured
that large imports from any part of
the world could not by possibility
be obtained; and those consummate
blockheads, the statists, offered to
prove by figures, that a deluge of
foreign grain was as impossible as an
overflow of the Mediterranean. I
need not tell you that the results have
entirely falsified such predictions,
and that the agricultural interest has
ever since been suffering under the
effects of unexampled depression.
No man denies that. The stiffest
stickler for the cheap loaf does not
venture now to assert that agriculture
is a profitable profession in
Britain; all he can do is to recommend
economy, and to utter a hypocritical
prayer, that the prosperity which he
assumes to exist in other quarters
may, at no distant date, and through
some mysterious process which he
cannot specify, extend itself to the
suffering millions who depend for
their subsistence on the produce of the
soil of Britain, and who pay by far
the largest share of the taxes and
burdens of the kingdom.

Now, it is perfectly obvious that
agricultural distress, by which I mean
the continuance of a range of unremunerative
prices, cannot long prevail
in any district, without affecting the
traffic of the towns. You, who are[304]
an extensive retail merchant in Dreepdaily,
know well that the business of
your own trade depends in a great
degree upon the state of the produce
markets. So long as the farmer is
thriving, he buys from you and your
neighbours liberally, and you find
him, I have no doubt, your best and
steadiest customer. But if you reverse
his circumstances, you must
look for a corresponding change in
his dealings. He cannot afford to
purchase silks for his wife and
daughters, as formerly; he grows
penurious in his own personal expenditure,
and denies himself every unnecessary
luxury; he does nothing
for the good of trade, and is impassable
to all the temptations which
you endeavour to throw in his way.
To post your ledger is now no very
difficult task. You find last year’s
stock remaining steadily on your
hands; and when the season for the
annual visit of the bagmen comes
round, you dismiss them from your premises
without gratifying their avidity
by an order. This is a faithful picture
of what has been going on for two
years, at least, in the smaller inland
boroughs. No doubt you are getting
your bread cheap; but those whose
importations have brought about that
cheapness, never were, and never can
be, customers of yours. Even supposing
that they were to take goods
in exchange for their imported grain,
no profit or custom could accrue to
the retail shopkeeper, who must
necessarily look to the people around
him for the consumption of his wares.
In this way trade has been made to
stagnate, and profits have of course
declined, until the tradesmen, weary
of awaiting the advent of a prosperity
which never arrives, have come to
the conclusion, that they will best
consult their interest by giving their
support to a policy the reverse of that
which has crippled the great body of
their customers.

Watering-places, and towns of
fashionable resort, have suffered in a
like degree. The gentry, whose rents
have been most seriously affected by
the unnatural diminution of prices,
are compelled to curtail their expenditure,
and to deny themselves many
things which formerly would have
been esteemed legitimate indulgences.
Economy is the order Of the day:
equipages are given up, servants dismissed,
and old furniture made to last
beyond its appointed time. These
things, I most freely admit, are no
great hardships to the gentry; nor do
I intend to awaken your compassion
in behalf of the squire, who, by reason
of his contracted rent-roll, has been
compelled to part with his carriage and
a couple of footmen, and to refuse his
wife and daughters the pleasure of a
trip to Cheltenham. The hardship
lies elsewhere. I pity the footmen,
the coach-builder, the upholsterer,
the house proprietor in Cheltenham,
and all the other people to whom the
surplus of the squire’s revenue found
its way, much more than the old
gentleman himself. I daresay he is
quite as happy at home—perhaps far
happier—than if he were compelled
to racket elsewhere; and sure I am
that he will not consume his dinner
with less appetite because he lacks
the attendance of a couple of knaves,
with heads like full-blown cauliflowers.
But is it consistent with the workings
of human nature to expect that the
people to whom he formerly gave
employment and custom, let us say
to the extent of a couple of thousand
pounds, can be gratified by the cessation
of that expenditure?—or is it
possible to suppose that they will
remain enamoured of a system which
has caused them so heavy a loss?
View the subject in this light, and
you can have no difficulty in understanding
why this formidable reaction
has taken place in the English
boroughs. It is simply a question of
the pocket; and the electors now
see, that unless the boroughs are to
be left to rapid decay, something must
be done to protect and foster that
industry upon which they all depend.
Such facts, which are open and patent
to every man’s experience, and tell
upon his income and expenditure, are
worth whole cargoes of theory. What
reason has the trader, whose stock is
remaining unsold upon his hands, to
plume himself, because he is assured
by Mr Porter, or some other similar
authority, that some hundred thousand
additional yards of flimsy calico have
been shipped from the British shores
in the course of the last twelve months?
So far as the shopkeeper is concerned,[305]
the author of the Progress of the Nation
might as well have been reporting upon
the traffic-tables of Tyre and Sidon.
He is not even assured that all this
export has been accompanied with a
profit to the manufacturer. If he
reads the Economist, he will find that
exhilarating print filled with complaints
of general distress and want
of demand; he will be startled from
time to time by the announcement
that in some places, such as Dundee,
trade has experienced a most decided
check; or that in others, such as
Nottingham and Leicester, the operatives
are applying by hundreds for
admission to the workhouse! Comfortable
intelligence this, alongside of
increasing exports! But he has been
taught, to borrow a phrase from the
writings of the late John Galt, to
look upon your political arithmetician
as “a mystery shrouded by a halo;”
and he supposes that, somehow or
other, somebody must be the gainer
by all these exports, though it seems
clearly impossible to specify the
fortunate individual. However, this
he knows, to his cost any time these
three years back, that he has not been
the gainer; and, as he opines very
justly that charity begins at home,
and that the man who neglects the
interest of his own family is rather
worse than a heathen, he has made
up his mind to support such candidates
only as will stand by British
industry, and protect him by means
of protecting others. As for the men
of the maritime boroughs—a large and
influential class—I need not touch
upon their feelings or sentiments
with regard to Free Trade. I observe
that the Liberal press, with peculiar
taste and felicity of expression, designates
them by the generic term of
“crimps,” just as it used to compliment
the whole agriculturists of
Britain by the comprehensive appellation
of “chawbacons.” I trust they
feel the compliment so delicately conveyed;
but, after all, it matters little.
Hard words break no bones; and, in
the mean time at least, the vote of a
“crimp” is quite as good as that of
the concocter of a paragraph.

Perhaps now you understand why
the Free-Traders are so wroth against
the boroughs. They expected to
play off the latter against the county
constituencies; and, being disappointed
in that, they want to swamp
them altogether. This, I must own,
strikes me as particularly unfair. Let
it be granted that a large number of
the smaller boroughs did, at the last
general election, manifest a decided
wish that the Free Trade experiment,
then begun, should be allowed a fair
trial; are they to be held so pledged
to that commercial system, that,
however disastrous may have been
its results, they are not entitled to
alter their minds? Are all the representations,
promises, and prophecies
of the leading advocates of Free
Trade, to be set aside as if these
were never uttered or written? Who
were the cozeners in this case?
Clearly the men who boasted of the
enormous advantages which were
immediately to arise from their policy—advantages
whereof, up to the present
moment, not a single glimpse has
been vouchsafed. Free Trade, we
were distinctly told, was to benefit
the boroughs. Free Trade has done
nothing of the kind; on the contrary,
it has reduced their business and
lowered their importance. And now,
when this effect has become so plain
and undeniable that the very men
who subscribed to the funds of the
League, and who were foremost in
defending the conduct of the late Sir
Robert Peel, are sending Protectionists
to Parliament, it is calmly
proposed to neutralise their conversion
by depriving them of political
power!

Under the circumstances, I do not
know that the Free-Traders could have
hit upon a happier scheme. The grand
tendency of their system is centralisation.
They want to drive everything—paupers
alone excepted, if they
could by possibility compass that fortunate
immunity—into the larger
towns, which are the seats of export
manufacture, and to leave the rest of
the population to take care of themselves.
You see how they have succeeded
in Ireland, by the reports of
the last census. They are doing the
same thing in Scotland, as we shall
ere long discover to our cost; and,
indeed, the process is going on slowly,
but surely, throughout the whole of the
British islands. I chanced the other
day to light upon a passage in a very[306]
dreary article in the last number of
the Edinburgh Review, which seems to
me to embody the chief economical
doctrines of the gentlemen to whom
we are indebted for the present posture
of affairs. It is as follows:—

“The common watchword, or cuckoo-note
of the advocates of restriction in
affairs of trade is, ‘Protection to Native
Industry.’ In the principle fairly involved
in this motto we cordially agree.
We are as anxious as the most vehement
advocate for high import duties on foreign
products can be, that the industry of our
fellow-countrymen should be protected(!)
We only differ as to the means. Their
theory of protection is to guard against
competition those branches of industry
which, without such extraneous help,
could never be successfully pursued:
ours, is that of enlarging, to the uttermost,
those other branches for the prosecution
of which our countrymen possess the
greatest aptitude, and of thereby securing
for their skill and capital the greatest
return. This protection is best afforded
by governments when they leave, without
interference, the productive industry
of the country to find its true level; for
we may be certain that the interest of
individuals will always lead them to prefer
those pursuits which they find most gainful.
There is, in fact, no mode of interference
with entire freedom of action
which must not be, in some degree, hurtful;
but the mischief which follows upon
legislation in affairs of trade, in any given
country, is then most noxious when it tends
to foster branches of industry for which
other countries have a greater aptitude.”

You will, I think, find some difficulty
in discovering the protective
principle enunciated by this sagacious
scribe, who, like many others of his
limited calibre, is fain to take refuge
in nonsense when he cannot extricate
his meaning. You may also, very
reasonably, entertain doubts whether
the protective theory, which our friend
of the Blue and Yellow puts into the
mouth of his opponents, was ever
entertained or promulgated by any
rational being, at least in the broad
sense which he wishes to imply. The
true protective theory has reference to
the State burdens, which, in so far as
they are exacted from the produce of
native industry, or, in other words,
from labour, we wish to see counterbalanced
by a fair import-duty, which
shall reduce the foreign and the native
producer to an equality in the home
market. When the reviewer talks of
the non-interference of Government
with regard to the productive industry
of the country, he altogether omits
mention of that most stringent interference
which is the direct result of
taxation. If the farmer were allowed
to till the ground, to sow the seed,
and to reap the harvest, without any
interference from Government, then I
admit at once that a demand for protection
would be preposterous. But
when Government requires him to pay
income-tax, assessed taxes, church and
poor-rates, besides other direct burdens,
out of the fruit of his industry—when
it prevents him from growing on
his own land several kinds of crop,
in order that the customs revenue
may be maintained—when it taxes
indirectly his tea, coffee, wines, spirits,
tobacco, soap, and spiceries—then I
say that Government does interfere,
and that most unmercifully, with the
productive industry of the country.
Just suppose that, by recurring to a
primitive method of taxation, the
Government should lay claim to one-third
of the proceeds of every crop,
and instruct its emissaries to remove
it from the ground before another acre
should be reaped—would that not
constitute interference in the eyes of
the sapient reviewer? Well, then,
since all taxes must ultimately be paid
out of produce, what difference does
the mere method of levying the burden
make with regard to the burden
itself? I call your attention to this
point, because the Free-Traders invariably,
but I fear wilfully, omit all
mention of artificial taxation when
they talk of artificial restrictions.
They want you to believe that we,
who maintain the opposite view, seek
to establish an entire monopoly in
Great Britain of all kinds of possible
produce; and they are in the habit of
putting asinine queries as to the propriety
of raising the duties on foreign
wine, so as to encourage the establishment
of vineyards in Kent and Sussex,
and also as to the proper protective
duty which should be levied on
pine-apples, in order that a due stimulus
may be given to the cultivation of
that luscious fruit. But these funny fellows
take especial care never to hint to
you that protection is and was demanded
simply on account of the enormous[307]
nature of our imposts, which have the
effect of raising the rates of labour.
It is in this way, and no other, that
agriculture, deprived of protection,
but still subjected to taxation, has
become an unremunerative branch of
industry; and you observe how calmly
the disciple of Ricardo condemns it to
destruction. “The mischief,” quoth
he, “which follows upon legislation
in affairs of trade, in any given
country, is then most noxious when
it tends to foster branches of industry
for which other countries have a
greater aptitude.” So, then, having
taxed agriculture to that point when
it can no longer bear the burden, we
are, for the future, to draw our supplies
from “other countries which
have a greater aptitude” for growing
corn; that aptitude consisting in their
comparative immunity from taxation,
and in the degraded moral and social
condition of the serfs who constitute
the tillers of the soil! We are to
give up cultivation, and apply ourselves
to the task “of enlarging to
the uttermost those other branches,
for the prosecution of which our
countrymen possess the greatest aptitude”—by
which, I presume, is meant
the manufacture of cotton-twist!

Now, then, consider for a moment
what is the natural, nay, the inevitable
effect of this narrowing of the
range of employment. I shall not
start the important point whether the
concentration of labour does not tend
to lower wages—I shall merely assume,
what is indeed already abundantly established
by facts, that the depression
of agriculture in any district leads almost
immediately to a large increase
in the population of the greater towns.
Places like Dreepdaily may remain stationary,
but they do not receive any
material increment to their population.
You have, I believe, no export trade,
at least very little, beyond the manufacture
of an ingenious description of
snuff-box, justly prized by those who
are in the habit of stimulating their
nostrils. The displaced stream of
labour passes through you, but does
not tarry with you—it rolls on towards
Paisley and Glasgow, where it is
absorbed in the living ocean. Year
after year the same process is carried
on. The older people, probably because
it is not worth while at their
years to attempt a change, tarry in
their little villages and cots, and gradually
acquire that appearance of
utter apathy, which is perhaps the
saddest aspect of humanity. The
younger people, finding no employment
at home, repair to the towns,
marry or do worse, and propagate
children for the service of the
factories which are dedicated to the
export trade. Of education they receive
little or nothing; for they must
be in attendance on their gaunt iron
master during the whole of their
waking hours; and religion seeks after
them in vain. What wonder, then,
if the condition of our operatives
should be such as to suggest to
thinking minds very serious doubts
whether our boasted civilisation can
be regarded in the light of a blessing?
Certain it is that the bulk of these
classes are neither better nor happier
than their forefathers. Nay, if there
be any truth in evidence—any reality
in the appalling accounts which reach
us from the heart of the towns, there
exists an amount of crime, misery,
drunkenness, and profligacy, which is
unknown even among savages and
heathen nations. Were we to recall
from the four ends of the earth all
the missionaries who have been despatched
from the various churches,
they would find more than sufficient
work ready for them at home. Well-meaning
men project sanitary improvements,
as if these could avail to
counteract the moral poison. New
churches are built; new schools are
founded; public baths are subscribed
for, and public washing-houses are
opened; the old rookeries are pulled
down, and light and air admitted to
the heart of the cities—but the heart
of the people is not changed; and
neither air nor water, nor religious
warning, has the effect of checking
crime, eradicating intemperance, or
teaching man the duty which he owes
to himself, his brethren, and his God!
This is an awful picture, but it is a
true one; and it well becomes us to
consider why these things should be.
There is no lukewarmness on the subject
exhibited in any quarter. The
evil is universally acknowledged, and
every one would be ready to contribute
to alleviate it, could a proper
remedy be suggested. It is not my[308]
province to suggest remedies; but it
does appear to me that the original
fault is to be found in the system
which has caused this unnatural pressure
of our population into the towns.
I am aware that in saying this, I am
impugning the leading doctrines of
modern political economy. I am
aware that I am uttering what will
be considered by many as a rank
political heresy; still, not having the
fear of fire and fagot before my eyes,
I shall use the liberty of speech. It
appears to me that the system which
has been more or less adopted since
the days of Mr Huskisson, of suppressing
small trades for the encouragement
of foreign importation, and of
stimulating export manufactures to
the uttermost, has proved very pernicious
to the morals and the social
condition of the people. The termination
of the war found us with a
large population, and with an enormous
debt. If, on the one hand, it
was for the advantage of the country
that commerce should progress
with rapid strides, and that our
foreign trade should be augmented,
it was, on the other, no less necessary
that due regard should be had for the
former occupations of the people, and
that no great and violent displacements
of labour should be occasioned,
by fiscal relaxations which might
have the effect of supplanting home
industry by foreign produce in the
British market. The mistake of the
political economists lies in their obstinate
determination to enforce a
principle, which in the abstract is
not only unobjectionable but unchallenged,
without any regard whatever
to the peculiar and pecuniary circumstances
of the country. They will
not look at what has gone before, in
order to determine their line of conduct
in any particular case. They
admit of no exceptions. They start
with their axiom that trade ought to
be free, and they will not listen to
any argument founded upon special
circumstances in opposition to that
doctrine. Now, this is not the way
in which men have been, or ever can
be, governed. They must be dealt
with as rational beings, not regarded
as mere senseless machinery, which
may be treated as lumber, and cast
aside to make way for some new
improvement. Look at the case of
our own Highlanders. We know
very well that, from the commencement
of the American war, it was
considered by the British Government
an important object to maintain
the population of the Highlands, as
the source from which they drew
their hardiest and most serviceable
recruits. So long as the manufacture
of kelp existed, and the breeding of
cattle was profitable, there was little
difficulty in doing this; now, under
this new commercial system, we are
told that the population is infinitely
too large for the natural resources of
the country; we are shocked by
accounts of periodical famine, and of
deaths occurring from starvation;
and our economists declare that there
is no remedy except a general emigration
of the inhabitants. This is
the extreme case in Great Britain;
but extreme cases often furnish us
with the best tests of the operation
of a particular system. Here you
have a population fostered for an
especial purpose, and abandoned so
soon as that special purpose has been
served. Without maintaining that
the Gael is the most industrious of
mankind, it strikes me forcibly that
it would be a better national policy
to give every reasonable encouragement
to the development of the
natural resources of that portion of
the British islands, than to pursue the
opposite system, and to reduce the
Highlands to a wilderness. Not so
think the political economists. They
can derive their supplies cheaper
from elsewhere, at the hands of
strangers who contribute no share
whatever to the national revenue;
and for the sake of that cheapness
they are content to reduce thousands
of their countrymen to beggary.
But emigration cannot, and will not,
be carried out to an extent at all
equal to the necessity which is engendered
by the cessation of employment.
The towns become the great
centre-points and recipients of the
displaced population; and so centralisation
goes on, and, as a matter of
course, pauperism and crime increase.

To render this system perpetual,
without any regard to ultimate consequences,
is the leading object of the
Free-Traders. Not converted, but[309]
on the contrary rendered more inveterate
by the failure of their schemes,
they are determined to allow no consideration
whatever to stand in the
way of their purpose; and of this you
have a splendid instance in their late
denunciation of the boroughs. They
think—whether rightfully or wrongfully,
it is not now necessary to
inquire—that, by altering the proportions
of Parliamentary power as
established by the Reform Act—by
taking away from the smaller
boroughs, and by adding to the
urban constituencies, they will still
be able to command a majority in
the House of Commons. In the present
temper of the nation, and so
long as its voice is expressed as heretofore,
they know, feel, and admit
that their policy is not secure. And
why is it not secure? Simply because
it has undergone the test of experience—because
it has had a fair trial
in the sight of the nation—and because
it has not succeeded in realising
the expectations of its founders.

I have ventured to throw together
these few crude remarks for your consideration
during the recess, being
quite satisfied that you will not feel
indifferent upon any subject which
touches the dignity, status, or privileges
of the boroughs. Whether Lord
John Russell agrees with the Times as
to the mode of effecting the threatened
Parliamentary change, or whether
he has some separate scheme of his
own, is a question which I cannot
solve. Possibly he has not yet made
up his mind as to the course which it
may be most advisable to pursue;
for, in the absence of anything like
general excitement or agitation, it is
not easy to predict in what manner
the proposal for any sweeping or
organic change may be received by
the constituencies of the Empire.
There is far too much truth in the
observations which I have already
quoted from the great leading journal,
relative to the dangers which must
attend an increase of constituencies
already too large, or a further extension
of their power, to permit of our
considering this as a light and unimportant
matter. I view it as a very
serious one indeed; and I cannot help
thinking that Lord John Russell has
committed an act of gross and unjustifiable
rashness, in pledging himself,
at the present time, to undertake a remodelment
of the constitution. But
whatever he does, I hope, for his own
sake, and for the credit of the Liberal
party, that he will be able to assign
some better and more constitutional
reason for the change, than the refusal
of the English boroughs to bear arms
in the crusade which is directed
against the interests of Native Industry.

[310]

PARIS IN 1851.—(Continued.)

The Opera.—In the evening I
went to the French Opera, which is
still one of the lions of Paris. It was
once in the Rue Richelieu; but the
atrocious assassination of the Duc de
Berri, who was stabbed in its porch,
threw a kind of horror over the spot:
the theatre was closed, and the performance
moved to its present site in
the Rue Lepelletier, a street diverging
from the Boulevard.

Fond as the French are of decoration,
the architecture of this building
possesses no peculiar beauty, and
would answer equally well for a substantial
public hospital, a workhouse,
or a barrack, if the latter were not the
more readily suggested by the gendarmerie
loitering about the doors,
and the mounted dragoons at either
end of the street.

The passages of the interior are of
the same character—spacious and
substantial; but the door of the salle
opens, and the stranger, at a single
step, enters from those murky passages
into all the magic of a crowded
theatre. The French have, within
these few years, borrowed from us the
art of lighting theatres. I recollect
the French theatre lighted only by
a few lamps scattered round the
house, or a chandelier in the middle,
which might have figured in the crypt
of a cathedral. This they excused,
as giving greater effect to the stage;
but it threw the audience into utter
gloom. They have now made the
audience a part of the picture, and
an indispensable part. The opera-house
now shows the audience; and
if not very dressy, or rather as dowdy,
odd, and dishevelled a crowd as I ever
recollect to have seen within theatrical
walls, yet they are evidently
human beings, which is much more
picturesque than masses of spectres,
seen only by an occasional flash from
the stage.

The French architects certainly
have not made this national edifice
grand; but they have made it a much
better thing,—lively, showy, and rich.
Neither majestic and monotonous,
nor grand and Gothic, they have
made it riant and racy, like a place
where men and women come to be
happy, where beautiful dancers are
to be seen, and where sweet songs are
to be heard, and where the mind is
for three or four hours to forget all
its cares, and to carry away pleasant
recollections for the time being. From
pit to ceiling it is covered with paintings—all
sorts of cupids, nymphs, and
flower-garlands, and Greek urns—none
of them wonders of the pencil,
but all exhibiting that showy mediocrity
of which every Frenchman
is capable, and with which every
Frenchman is in raptures. All looks
rich, warm, and operatic.

One characteristic change has
struck me everywhere in Paris—the
men dress better, and the women
worse. When I was last here, the
men dressed half bandit and half Hottentot.
The revolutionary mystery
was at work, and the hatred of the
Bourbons was emblematised in a conical
hat, a loose neckcloth, tremendous
trousers, and the scowl of a stage
conspirator. The Parisian men have
since learned the decencies of dress.

As I entered the house before the
rising of the curtain, I had leisure to
look about me, and I found even in
the audience a strong contrast to
those of London. By that kind of
contradiction to everything rational
and English which governs the Parisian,
the women seem to choose dishabille
for the Opera.

As the house was crowded, and the
boxes are let high, and the performance
of the night was popular, I
might presume that some of the élite
were present, yet I never saw so
many ill-dressed women under one
roof. Bonnets, shawls, muffles of all
kinds, were the costume. How different
from the finish, the splendour,
and the fashion of the English opera-box.
I saw hundreds of women who
appeared, by their dress, scarcely
above the rank of shopkeepers, yet,
who probably were among the Parisian
leaders of fashion, if in republican
Paris there are any leaders of
fashion.

But I came to be interested, to enjoy,
to indulge in a feast of music and[311]
acting; with no fastidiousness of criticism,
and with every inclination to
be gratified. In the opera itself I was
utterly disappointed. The Opera was
Zerline, or, The Basket of Oranges.
The composer was the first living
musician of France, Auber; the writer
was the most popular dramatist of his
day, Scribe; the Prima Donna was
Alboni, to whom the manager of the
Opera in London had not thought it
too much to give £4000 for a single
season. I never paid my francs with
more willing expectation: and I never
saw a performance of which I so soon
got weary.

The plot is singularly trifling. Zerline,
an orange-girl of Palermo, has
had a daughter by Boccanera, a man
of rank, who afterwards becomes
Viceroy of Sicily. Zerline is captured
by pirates, and carried to Algiers.
The opera opens with her return to
Palermo, after so many years that
her daughter is grown up to womanhood;
and Boccanera is emerged into
public life, and has gradually became
an officer of state.

The commencing scene has all the
animation of the French picturesque.
The Port of Palermo is before the
spectator; the location is the Fruit
Market. Masses of fruits, with smart
peasantry to take care of them, cover
the front of the stage. The background
is filled up with Lazzaroni
lying on the ground, sleeping, or eating
macaroni. The Prince Boccanera
comes from the palace; the crowd
observe ‘Son air sombre;’ the Prince
sings—

After this matrimonial confession,
which extends to details, the prime
minister tells us of his love still existing
for Zerline, whose daughter he
has educated under the name of niece,
and who is now the Princess Gemma,
and about to be married to a court
noble.

A ship approaches the harbour;
Boccanera disappears; the Lazzaroni
hasten to discharge the cargo. Zerline
lands from the vessel, and sings a
cavatina in praise of Palermo:—

Zerline is a dealer in oranges, and
she lands her cargo, placing it in the
market. The original tenants of the
place dispute her right to come among
them, and are about to expel her by
force, when a marine officer, Rodolf,
takes her part, and, drawing his
sword, puts the whole crowd to flight.
Zerline, moved by this instance of heroism,
tells him her story, that she
was coming “un beau matin” to the
city to sell oranges, when a pitiless
corsair captured her, and carried her
to Africa, separating her from her
child, whom she had not seen for fifteen
years; that she escaped to
Malta, laid in a stock of oranges there;—and
thus the events of the day occurred.
Rodolf, this young hero, is costumed
in a tie-wig with powder, stiff
skirts, and the dress of a century ago.
What tempted the author to put not
merely his hero, but all his court characters,
into the costume of Queen
Anne, is not easily conceivable, as
there is nothing in the story which
limits it in point of time.

Zerline looks after him with sudden
sympathy, says that she heard him
sigh, that he must be unhappy, and
that, if her daughter lives, he is just
the husband for her,—Zerline not having
been particular as to marriage
herself. She then rambles about the
streets, singing,

After this “hommage aux oranges!”
to the discredit of Paradise, on which
turns the plot of the play, a succession
of maids of honour appear, clad
in the same unfortunate livery of fardingales,
enormous flat hats, powdered
wigs, and stomachers. The
Princess follows them, apparently
armed by her costume against all the
assaults of Cupid. But she, too, has an
“affaire du cœur” upon her hands. In
fact, from the Orangewoman up to
the Throne, Cupid is the Lord of Palermo,
with its “beau ciel, plaine fertile.”
The object of the Princess’s
love is the Marquis de Buttura, the
suitor of her husband’s supposed
niece. Here is a complication! The
enamoured wife receives a billet-doux
from the suitor, proposing a meeting
on his return from hunting. She tears[312]
the billet for the purpose of concealment,
and in her emotion drops the fragments
on the floor. That billet performs
all important part in the end. The
enamoured lady buys an orange, and
gives a gold piece for it. Zerline, not
accustomed to be so well paid for her
fruit, begins to suspect this outrageous
liberality; and having had experience
in these matters, picks up the fragments
of the letter, and gets into the
whole secret.

The plot proceeds: the daughter
of the orangewoman now appears.
She is clad in the same preposterous
habiliments. As the niece of the minister,
she is created a princess, (those
things are cheap in Italy,) and she,
too, is in love with the officer in the
tie-wig. She recognises the song of
Zerline, “Achetez mes belles oranges,”
and sings the half of it. On this, the
mother and daughter now recognise
each other. It is impossible to go
further in such a denouement. If
Italian operas are proverbially silly,
we are to recollect that this is not an
Italian, but a French one; and that
it is by the most popular comic writer
of France.

The marriage of Gemma and Rodolf
is forbidden by the pride of the
King’s sister, the wife of Boccanera,
but Zerline interposes, reminds her of
the orange affair, threatens her with
the discovery of the billet-doux, and
finally makes her give her consent:
and thus the curtain drops. I grew
tired of all this insipidity, and left
the theatre before the catastrophe.
The music seemed to me fitting for
the plot—neither better nor worse;
and I made my escape with right
good-will from the clamour and crash
of the orchestra, and from the loves
and faux pas of the belles of Palermo.

The Obelisk.—I strayed into the
Place de la Concorde, beyond comparison
the finest space in Paris.
I cannot call it a square, nor does
it equal in animation the Boulevard;
but in the profusion of noble architecture
it has no rival in Paris, nor
in Europe. Vive la Despotisme!
every inch of it is owing to Monarchy.
Republics build nothing, if we except
prisons and workhouses. They are proverbially
squalid, bitter, and beggarly.
What has America, with all her boasting,
ever built, but a warehouse or a
conventicle? The Roman Republic,
after seven hundred years’ existence,
remained a collection hovels till an
Emperor faced them with marble. If
Athens exhibited her universal talents
in the splendour of her architecture,
we must recollect that Pericles was
her master through life—as substantially
despotic, by the aid of the
populace, as an Asiatic king by
his guards; and recollect, also, that
an action of damages was brought
against him for “wasting the public
money on the Parthenon,” the glory
of Athens in every succeeding age.
Louis Quatorze, Napoleon, and Louis
Philippe—two openly, and the third
secretly, as despotic as the Sultan—were
the true builders of Paris.

As I stood in the centre of this
vast enclosure, I was fully struck
with the effect of scene. The sun
was sinking into a bed of gold and
crimson clouds, that threw their hue
over the long line of the Champs
Elysées. Before me were the two
great fountains, and the Obelisk of
Luxor. The fountains had ceased to
play, from the lateness of the hour,
but still looked massive and gigantic;
the obelisk looked shapely and superb.
The gardens of the Tuilleries were on
my left—deep dense masses of foliage,
surmounted in the distance by the tall
roofs of the old Palace; on my right,
the verdure of the Champs Elysées,
with the Arc de l’Etoile rising above
it, at the end of its long and noble
avenue; in my front the Palace of
the Legislature, a chaste and elegant
structure; and behind me, glowing
in the sunbeams, the Madeleine, the
noblest church—I think the noblest
edifice, in Paris, and perhaps not surpassed
in beauty and grandeur, for
its size, by any place of worship in
Europe. The air cool and sweet from
the foliage, the vast place almost
solitary, and undisturbed by the cries
which are incessant in this babel
during the day, yet with that gentle
confusion of sounds which makes
the murmur and the music of a great
city. All was calm, noble, and
soothing.

The obelisk of Luxor which stands
in the centre of the “Place,” is one
of two Monoliths, or pillars of a
single stone, which, with Cleopatra’s[313]
Needle, were given by Mehemet Ali
to the French, at the time when, by
their alliance, he expected to have
made himself independent. All the
dates of Egyptian antiquities are uncertain—notwithstanding
Young and
his imitator Champollion—but the
date assigned to this pillar is 1550
years before the Christian era. The
two obelisks stood in front of the
great temple of Thebes, now named
Luxor, and the hieroglyphics which
cover this one, from top to bottom, are
supposed to relate the exploits and
incidents of the reign of Sesostris.

It is of red Syenite; but, from time
and weather, it is almost the colour of
limestone. It has an original flaw up
a third of its height, for which the
Egyptian masons provided a remedy
by wedges, and the summit is slightly
broken. The height of the monolith
is seventy-two feet three inches,
which would look insignificant, fixed
as it is in the centre of lofty buildings,
but for its being raised on a
plinth of granite, and that again
raised on a pedestal of immense
blocks of granite—the height of the
plinth and the pedestal together being
twenty-seven feet, making the entire
height nearly one hundred. The weight
of the monolith is five hundred thousand
pounds; the weight of the pedestal
is half that amount, and the weight of
the blocks probably makes the whole
amount to nine hundred thousand,
which is the weight of the obelisk at
Rome. It was erected in 1836, by
drawing it up an inclined plane of masonry,
and then raising it by cables and
capstans to the perpendicular. The
operation was tedious, difficult, and
expensive; but it was worth the
labour; and the monolith now forms
a remarkable monument of the zeal
of the king, and of the liberality of
his government.

There is, I understand, an obelisk
remaining in Egypt, which was given
by the Turkish government to the
British army, on the expulsion of the
French from Egypt, but which has
been unclaimed, from the difficulty of
carrying it to England.

That difficulty, it must be acknowledged,
is considerable. In transporting
and erecting the obelisk of Luxor
six years were employed. I have not
heard the expense, but it must have
been large. A vessel was especially
constructed at Toulon, for its conveyance
down the Nile. A long
road was to be made from the Nile to
the Temple. Then the obelisk required
to be protected from the accidents
of carriage, which was done by
enclosing it in a wooden case. It was
then drawn by manual force to
the river—and this employed three
months. Then came the trouble of
embarking it, for which the vessel
had to be nearly sawn through; then
came the crossing of the bar at
Rosetta—a most difficult operation at
the season of the year; then the
voyage down the Mediterranean, the
vessel being towed by a steamer; then
the landing at Cherbourg, in 1833;
and, lastly, the passage up the Seine,
which occupied nearly four months,
reaching Paris in December; thenceforth
its finishing and erection, which
was completed only in three years
after.

This detail may have some interest,
as we have a similar project before
us. But the whole question is,
whether the transport of the obelisk
which remains in Egypt for us is
worth the expense. We, without
hesitation, say that it is. The French
have shown that it is practicable, and
it is a matter of rational desire to
show that we are not behind the
French either in power, in ability, or
in zeal, to adorn our cities. The
obelisk transported to England would
be a proud monument, without being
an offensive one, of a great achievement
of our armies; it would present
to our eyes, and those of our children,
a relic of the most civilised kingdom of
the early ages; it would sustain the
recollections of the scholar by its
record, and might kindle the energy
of the people by the sight of what
had been accomplished by the prowess
of Englishmen.

If it be replied that such views are
Utopian, may we not ask, what is
the use of all antiquity, since we can
eat and drink as well without it?
But we cannot feel as loftily without
it; many a lesson of vigour, liberality,
and virtue would be lost to us without
it; we should lose the noblest examples
of the arts, some of the finest
displays of human genius in architecture,
a large portion of the teaching of[314]
the public mind in all things great, and
an equally large portion of the incentives
to public virtue in all things
self-denying. The labour, it is true,
of conveying the obelisk would be
serious, the expense considerable, and
we might not see it erected before the
gate of Buckingham Palace these ten
years. But it would be erected at
last. It would be a trophy—it would
be an abiding memorial of the extraordinary
country from which civilisation
spread to the whole world.

But the two grand fountains ought
especially to stimulate our emulation.
Those we can have without a voyage
from Alexandria to Portsmouth, or a
six years’ delay.

The fountains of the Place de la
Concorde would deserve praise if it
were only for their beauty. At a
distance sufficient for the picturesque,
and with the sun shining on them,
they actually look like domes and
cataracts of molten silver; and a
nearer view does not diminish their
right to admiration. They are both
lofty, perhaps, fifty feet high, both
consisting of three basins, lessening
in size in proportion to their height,
and all pouring out sheets of water
from the trumpets of Tritons, from
the mouths of dolphins, and from
allegorical figures. One of those
fountains is in honour of Maritime
Navigation, and the other of the
Navigation of Rivers. In the former
the figures represent the Ocean and
the Mediterranean, with the Genii
of the fisheries; and in the upper
basin are Commerce, Astronomy,
Navigation, &c., all capital bronzes,
and all spouting out floods of water.
The fountain of River Navigation is
not behind its rival in bronze or
water. It exhibits the Rhine and the
Rhone, with the Genii of fruits and
flowers, of the vintage and the harvest,
with the usual attendance of
Tritons. Why the artist had no room
for the Seine and the Garonne, while
he introduced the Rhine, which is not
a French river in any part of its
course, must be left for his explanation;
but the whole constitutes a
beautiful and magnificent object, and,
with the sister fountain, perhaps
forms the finest display of the kind in
Europe. I did not venture, while
looking at those stately monuments
of French art, to turn my thoughts to
our own unhappy performances in
Trafalgar Square—the rival of a
soda-water bottle, yet the work of a
people of boundless wealth, and the
first machinists in the world.

The Jardin des Plantes.—I found
this fine establishment crowded with
the lower orders—fathers and mothers,
nurses, old women, and soldiers. As
it includes the popular attractions of a
zoological garden, as well as a botanical,
every day sees its visitants, and
every holiday its crowds. The plants
are for science, and for that I had no
time, even had I possessed other
qualifications; but the zoological collection
were for curiosity, and of that
the spectators had abundance. Yet
the animals of pasture appeared to be
languid, possibly tired of the perpetual
bustle round them—for all animals
love quiet at certain times, and escape
from the eye of man, when escape is
in their power. Possibly the heat of
the weather, for the day was remarkably
sultry, might have contributed
to their exhaustion. But if they have
memory—and why should they not?—they
must have strangely felt the
contrast of their free pastures, shady
woods, and fresh streams, with the
little patch of ground, the parched
soil, and the clamour of ten thousand
tongues round them. I could imagine
the antelope’s intelligent eye, as he
lay panting before us on his brown
patch of soil, comparing it with the
ravines of the Cape, or the eternal
forests clothing the hills of his native
Abyssinia.

But the object of all popular interest
was the pit of the bears;
there the crowd was incessant and
delighted. But the bears, three or
four huge brown beasts, by no means
reciprocated the popular feeling. They
sat quietly on their hind-quarters,
gazing grimly at the groups which
lined their rails, and tossed cakes and
apples to them from above. They
had probably been saturated with
sweets, for they scarcely noticed anything
but by a growl. They were
insensible to apples—even oranges
could not make them move, and cakes
they seemed to treat with scorn. It
was difficult to conceive that those
heavy and unwieldy-looking animals
could be ferocious; but the Alpine[315]
hunter knows that they are as fierce
as the tiger, and nearly as quick and
dangerous in their spring.

The carnivorous beasts were few,
and, except in the instance of one
lion, of no remarkable size or beauty.
As they naturally doze during the
day, their languor was no proof of
their weariness; but I have never
seen an exhibition of this kind without
some degree of regret. The plea
of the promotion of science is nothing.
Even if it were important to science
to be acquainted with the habits of
the lion and tiger, which it is not,
their native habits are not to be
learned from the animal shut up in a
cage. The chief exertion of their
sagacity and their strength in the
native state is in the pursuit of prey;
yet what of these can be learned from
the condition in which the animal
dines as regularly as his keeper, and
divides his time between feeding and
sleep? Half-a-dozen lions let loose in
the Bois de Boulogne would let the
naturalist into more knowledge of their
nature than a menagerie for fifty years.

The present system is merely
cruel; and the animals, without exercise,
without air, without the common
excitement of free motion, which all
animals enjoy so highly—perhaps
much more highly than the human
race—fall into disease and die, no
doubt miserably, though they cannot
draw up a rationale of their sufferings.
I have been told that the lions
in confinement die chiefly of consumption—a
singularly sentimental disease
for this proud ravager of the desert.
But the whole purpose of display
would be answered as effectually by
exhibiting half-a-dozen lions’ skins
stuffed, in the different attitudes of
seizing their prey, or ranging the
forest, or feeding. At present nothing
is seen but a great beast asleep,
or restlessly moving in a space of
half-a-dozen square feet, and pining
away in his confinement. An eagle
on his perch and with a chain on his
leg, in a menagerie, always appears
to me like a dethroned monarch; and
I have never seen him thus cast down
from his “high estate” without longing
to break his chain, and let him
spread his wing, and delight his
splendid eye with the full view of his
kingdom of the Air.

The Jardin dates its origin as far
back as Louis XIII., when the king’s
physician recommended its foundation
for science. The French are
fond of gardening, and are good gardeners;
and the climate is peculiarly
favourable to flowers, as is evident
from the market held every morning
in summer by the side of the Madeleine,
where the greatest abundance
of the richest flowers I ever saw is
laid out for the luxury of the Parisians.

The Jardin, patronised by kings
and nobles, flourished through successive
reigns; but the appointment
of Buffon, about the middle of the
eighteenth century, suddenly raised it
to the pinnacle of European celebrity.
The most eloquent writer of his time,
(in the style which the French call
eloquence,) a man of family, and a
man of opulence, he made Natural
History the fashion, and in France
that word is magic. It accomplishes
everything—it includes everything.
All France was frantic with the study
of plants, animals, poultry-yards, and
projects for driving tigers in cabriolets,
and harnessing lions à la Cybele.

But Buffon mixed good sense with
his inevitable charlatanrie—he selected
the ablest men whom he could
find for his professors; and in France
there is an extraordinary quantity of
“ordinary” cleverness—they gave
amusing lectures, and they won the
hearts of the nation.

But the Revolution came, and
crushed all institutions alike. Buffon,
fortunate in every way, had died in
the year before, in 1788, and was thus
spared the sight of the general ruin.
The Jardin escaped, through some
plea of its being national property;
but the professors had fled, and were
starving, or starved.

The Consulate, and still more the
Empire, restored the establishment.
Napoleon was ambitious of the character
of a man of science, he was a
member of the Institute, he knew the
French character, and he flattered the
national vanity, by indulging it with
the prospect of being at the head of
human knowledge.

The institution had by this time
been so long regarded as a public
show that it was beginning to be
regarded as nothing else. Gratuitous[316]
lectures, which are always good for
nothing, and to which all kinds of
people crowd with corresponding profit,
were gradually reducing the character
of the Jardin; when Cuvier,
a man of talent, was appointed to one
of the departments of the institution,
and he instantly revived its popularity;
and, what was of more importance,
its public use.

Cuvier devoted himself to comparative
anatomy and geology. The
former was a study within human
means, of which he had the materials
round him, and which, being intended
for the instruction of man, is evidently
intended for his investigation.
The latter, in attempting to fix the
age of the world, to decide on the
process of creation, and to contradict
Scripture by the ignorance of man,
is merely an instance of the presumption
of Sciolism. Cuvier exhibited
remarkable dexterity in discovering
the species of the fossil fishes, reptiles,
and animals. The science was
not new, but he threw it into a new
form—he made it interesting, and he
made it probable. If a large proportion
of his supposed discoveries were
merely ingenious guesses, they were
at least guesses which there was nobody
to refute, and they were ingenious—that
was enough. Fame followed
him, and the lectures of the
ingenious theorist were a popular
novelty. The “Cabinet of Comparative
Anatomy” in the Jardin is the
monument of his diligence, and it
does honour to the sagacity of his
investigation.

One remark, however, must be
made. On a former visit to the
Cabinet of Comparative Anatomy,
among the collection of skeletons, I
was surprised and disgusted with the
sight of the skeleton of the Arab who
killed General Kleber in Egypt. The
Arab was impaled, and the iron spike
was shown still sticking in the spine!
I do not know whether this hideous
object is still to be seen, for I have not
lately visited the apartment; but, if
existing still, it ought to remain no
longer in a museum of science. Of
course, the assassin deserved death;
but, in all probability, the murder
which made him guilty, was of the
same order as that which made Charlotte
Corday famous. How many of his
countrymen had died by the soldiery
of France! In the eye of Christianity,
this is no palliation; though in the
eye of Mahometanism it might constitute
a patriot and a hero. At all
events, so frightful a spectacle ought
not to meet the public eye.

Hôtel des Invalides.—The depository
of all that remains of Napoleon,
the monument of almost two hundred
years of war, and the burial-place
of a whole host of celebrated
names, is well worth the visit of
strangers; and I entered the esplanade
of the famous hôtel with due veneration,
and some slight curiosity to see
the changes of time. I had visited
this noble pile immediately after the
fall of Napoleon, and while it still
retained the honours of an imperial
edifice. Its courts now appeared to
me comparatively desolate; this, however,
may be accounted for by the
cessation of those wars which peopled
them with military mutilation. The
establishment was calculated to provide
for five thousand men; and, at
that period, probably, it was always
full. At present, scarcely more than
half the number are under its roof; and,
as even the Algerine war is reduced
to skirmishes with the mountaineers
of the Atlas, that number must be
further diminishing from year to year.

The Cupola then shone with gilding.
This was the work of Napoleon, who
had a stately eye for the ornament of
his imperial city. The cupola of the
Invalides thus glittered above all the
roofs of Paris, and was seen glittering
to an immense distance. It might
be taken for the dedication of the
French capital to the genius of War.
This gilding is now worn off practically,
as well as metaphorically, and
the prestige is lost.

The celebrated Edmund Burke, all
whose ideas were grand, is said to
have proposed gilding the cupola of
St Paul’s, which certainly would have
been a splendid sight, and would
have thrown a look of stateliness over
that city to which the ends of the
earth turn their eyes. But the civic
spirit was not equal to the idea, and
it has since gone on lavishing ten
times the money on the embellishment
of lanes.