BLACKWOOD’S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCXCI.    MAY, 1848.     Vol. LXIII.

CONTENTS.

EDINBURGH:
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET;
AND 37, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.

To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed.

SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.

PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.

[525]

THE CAXTONS.—PART II.

CHAPTER VII.

When I had reached the age of
twelve, I had got to the head of the
preparatory school to which I had
been sent. And having thus exhausted
all the oxygen of learning in that
little receiver, my parents looked
out for a wider range for my inspirations.
During the last two years in
which I had been at school, my love for
study had returned; but it was a
vigorous, wakeful, undreamy love, stimulated
by competition, and animated
by the practical desire to excel.

My father no longer sought to curb
my intellectual aspirings. He had too
great a reverence for scholarship not
to wish me to become a scholar if
possible; though he more than once
said to me somewhat sadly, “Master
books, but do not let them master
you. Read to live, not live to read.
One slave of the lamp is enough for a
household; my servitude must not be
a hereditary bondage.”

My father looked round for a suitable
academy; and the fame of Dr
Herman’s “Philhellenic Institute”
came to his ears.

Now, this Dr Herman was the son
of a German music-master, who had
settled in England. He had completed
his own education at the university
of Bonn; but, finding learning
too common a drug in that market to
bring the high price at which he valued
his own, and having some theories as
to political freedom which attached
him to England, he resolved upon
setting up a school, which he designed
as an “era in the history of the
human mind.” Dr Herman was one
of the earliest of those new-fashioned
authorities in education, who have,
more lately, spread pretty numerously
amongst us, and would have given,
perhaps, a dangerous shake to the
foundations of our great classical
seminaries, if those last had not
very wisely, though very cautiously,
borrowed some of the more sensible
principles which lay mixed and adulterated
amongst the crotchets and
chimeras of their innovating rivals
and assailants.

Dr Herman had written a great
many learned works against every
pre-existing method of instruction:
that which had made the greatest
noise was upon the infamous fiction
of Spelling-Books: “A more lying,
roundabout, puzzle-headed delusion
than that by which we CONFUSE the
clear instincts of truth in our accursed
systems of spelling, was never concocted
by the father of falsehood.”
Such was the exordium of this famous
treatise. “For instance, take the monosyllable
Cat. What brazen forehead
you must have, when you say to
an infant C, A, T,—spell CAT: that
is, three sounds, forming a totally
opposite compound—opposite in every
detail, opposite in the whole—compose
a poor little monosyllable, which, if
you would but say the simple truth,
the child will learn to spell merely by
looking at it! How can three sounds,
which run thus to the ear, see—eh—tee,
compose the sound cat? Don’t they
rather compose the sound see-eh-té, or[526]
ceaty? How can a system of education
flourish that begins by so monstrous
a falsehood, which the sense of
hearing suffices to contradict? No
wonder that the horn-book is the
despair of mothers!” From this instance,
the reader will perceive that
Dr Herman, in his theory of education,
began at the beginning!—he
took the bull fairly by the horns. As
for the rest, upon a broad principle of
eclecticism, he had combined together
every new patent invention for youthful
idea-shooting. He had taken his
trigger from Hofwyl; he had bought
his wadding from Hamilton; he had
got his copper-caps from Bell and
Lancaster. The youthful idea! he
had rammed it tight! he had rammed
it loose! he had rammed it with
pictorial illustrations! he had rammed
it with the monitorial system! he had
rammed in every conceivable way, and
with every imaginable ramrod; but I
have mournful doubts whether he shot
the youthful idea an inch farther than
it did under the old mechanism of
flint and steel! Nevertheless, as
Dr Herman really did teach a great
many things too much neglected at
schools; as, besides Latin and Greek,
he taught a vast variety in that vague
complexity now-a-days called “useful
knowledge;” as he engaged lecturers
on chemistry, engineering, and
natural history; as arithmetic and
the elements of physical science were
enforced with zeal and care; as all
sorts of gymnastics were intermingled
with the sports of the play-ground;—so
the youthful idea, if it did not go
farther, spread its shots in a wider
direction; and a boy could not stay
there five years without learning
something, which is more than can
be said of all schools! He learned
at least to use his eyes, and his ears,
and his limbs; order, cleanliness, exercise,
grew into habits; and the school
pleased the ladies, and satisfied the
gentlemen; in a word, it thrived: and
Dr Herman, at the time I speak of,
numbered more than one hundred
pupils. Now, when the worthy man
first commenced the task of tuition,
he had proclaimed the humanest
abhorrence to the barbarous system
of corporeal punishment. But, alas!
as his school increased in numbers,
he had proportionately recanted these
honourable and antibirchen ideas.
He had, reluctantly, perhaps,—honestly,
no doubt, but with full determination,—come
to the conclusion,
that there are secret springs which
can only be discovered by the twigs of
the divining-rod; and having discovered
with what comparative ease the
whole mechanism of his little government,
by the admission of the birch-regulator,
could be carried on, so, as
he grew richer, and lazier, and fatter,
the Philhellenic Institute spun along
as glibly as a top kept in vivacious
movement by the perpetual application
of the lash.

I believe that the school did not
suffer in reputation from this sad
apostacy on the part of the head
master; on the contrary, it seemed
more natural and English,—less outlandish
and heretical. And it was at
the zenith of its renown, when, one
bright morning, with all my clothes
nicely mended, and a large plumcake
in my box, I was deposited at its
hospitable gates.

Amongst Dr Herman’s various
whimsicalities, there was one to which
he had adhered with more fidelity
than to the anti-corporeal punishment
articles of his creed; and, in fact, it
was upon this that he had caused
those imposing words, “Philhellenic
Institute,” to blaze in gilt capitals in
front of his academy. He belonged
to that illustrious class of scholars
who are now waging war on our
popular mythologies, and upsetting
all the associations which the Etonians
and Harrovians connect with the
household names of ancient history.
In a word, he sought to restore to
scholastic purity the mutilated orthography
of Greek appellatives. He
was extremely indignant that little
boys should be brought up to confound
Zeus with Jupiter, Ares with Mars,
Artemis with Diana—the Greek deities
with the Roman; and so rigidly
did he inculcate the doctrine that
these two sets of personages were to
be kept constantly contradistinguished
from each other, that his cross-examinations
kept us in eternal confusion.

“Vat,” he would exclaim to some
new boy fresh from some grammar-school
on the Etonian system—”Vat
do you mean by dranslating Zeus[527]
Jupiter? Is dat amatory, irascible,
cloud-compelling god of Olympus, vid
his eagle and his ægis, in the smallest
degree resembling de grave, formal,
moral Jupiter Optimus Maximus of
the Roman Capitol?—a god, Master
Simpkins, who would have been perfectly
shocked at the idea of running
after innocent Fraulein dressed up as
a swan or a bull! I put dat question
to you vonce for all, Master
Simpkins.” Master Simpkins took
care to agree with the Doctor. “And
how could you,” resumed Dr Herman
majestically, turning to some other
criminal alumnus—”how could you
presume to dranslate de Ares of
Homer, sir, by de audacious vulgarism
Mars? Ares, Master Jones, who
roared as loud as ten thousand men
when he was hurt, or as you vill roar
if I catch you calling him Mars
again! Ares who covered seven
plectra of ground; Ares, the man-slayer,
with the Mars or Mavors
whom de Romans stole from de
Sabines! Mars, de solemn and calm
protector of Rome! Master Jones,
Master Jones, you ought to be
ashamed of yourself!”—and then
waxing enthusiastic, and warming
more and more into German gutturals
and pronunciation, the good Doctor
would lift up his hands, with two
great rings on his thumbs, and exclaim—”Und
Du! and dou, Aphroditè;
dou, whose bert de Seasons velcomed!
dou, who didst put Atonis
into a coffer, and den tid durn him
into an anemone; dou to be called
Venus by dat snivel-nosed little Master
Budderfield! Venus, who presided
over Baumgartens and funerals,
and nasty tinking sewers! Venus
Cloacina,—O mein Gott! Come here,
Master Budderfield; I must a flog
you for dat; I must indeed, liddle
boy!” As our Philhellenic preceptor
carried his archæological purism into
all Greek proper names, it was not
likely that my unhappy baptismal
would escape. The first time I signed
my exercise, I wrote “Pisistratus
Caxton” in my best round-hand.
“And dey call your baba a scholar!”
said the Doctor contemptuously.
“Your name, sir, is Greek; and, as
Greek, you vill be dood enough to
write it, vith vat you call an e and an o—P,
E, I, S, I, S, T, R, A, T, O, S; and you
vill alway put de accent over de i.
Vat can you expect for to come to,
Master Caxton, if you don’t pay de
care dat is proper to your own dood
name—de e, and de o, and de accent?
Ach! let me see no more of your
vile corruptions! Mein Gott! Pi!
ven de name is Pei!”

The next time I wrote home to my
father, modestly implying that I was
short of cash, that a trap-bat would be
acceptable, and that the favourite
goddess amongst the boys (whether
Greek or Roman was very immaterial)
was Diva Moneta, I felt a glow
of classical pride in signing myself,
“your affectionate Peísistratos.” The
next post brought a sad damper to my
scholastic exultation. The letter ran
thus:

“My dear Son,—I prefer my old
acquaintances Thucydides and Pisistratus
to Thoukudídes and Peísistratos.
Horace is familiar to me, but
Horatius is only known to me as
Cocles. Pisistratus can play at trap-ball;
but I find no authority in pure
Greek to allow me to suppose that
that game was known to Peísistratos.
I should be too happy to send you a
drachma or so, but I have no coins
in my possession current at Athens
at the time when Pisistratus was
spelt Peísistratos. Your affectionate
father,

“A. Caxton.”

Verily, here indeed was the first
practical embarrassment produced by
that melancholy anachronism which
my father had so prophetically deplored.
However, nothing like experience
to prove the value of compromise
in this world! Peísistratos
continued to write exercises, and a
second letter from Pisistratus was followed
by the trap-bat.

CHAPTER VIII.

I was somewhere about sixteen
when, on going home for the holidays,
I found my mother’s brother
settled among the household lares.
Uncle Jack, as he was familiarly
called, was a light-hearted, plausible,[528]
enthusiastic, talkative fellow, who had
spent three small fortunes in trying
to make a large one.

Uncle Jack was a great speculator;
but in all his speculations he never
affected to think of himself,—it was
always the good of his fellow-creatures
that he had at heart, and in this
ungrateful world fellow-creatures are
not to be relied upon! On coming of
age, he inherited £6000 from his maternal
grandfather. It seemed to him
then his fellow-creatures were sadly
imposed upon by their tailors. Those
ninth-parts of humanity notoriously
eked out their fractional existence by
asking nine times too much for the
clothing which civilisation, and perhaps
a change of climate, render more
necessary to us than to our ancestors
the Picts. Out of pure philanthropy,
Uncle Jack started “a Grand National
Benevolent Clothing Company,” which
undertook to supply the public with
inexpressibles of the best Saxon cloth
at 7s. 6d. a pair; coats, superfine,
£1, 18s.; and waistcoats at so much
per dozen. They were all to be
worked off by steam. Thus the rascally
tailors were to be put down,
humanity clad, and the philanthropists
rewarded (but that was a
secondary consideration) with a clear
return of 30 per cent. In spite of
the evident charitableness of this
Christian design, and the irrefragable
calculations upon which it was based,
this company died a victim to the
ignorance and unthankfulness of our
fellow-creatures. And all that remained
of Jack’s £6000 was a fifty-fourth
share in a small steam-engine,
a large assortment of ready-made
pantaloons, and the liabilities of the
directors.

Uncle Jack disappeared, and went
on his travels. The same spirit of
philanthropy which characterised the
speculations of his purse attended the
risks of his person. Uncle Jack had
a natural leaning towards all distressed
communities: if any tribe, race, or nation
was down in the world, Uncle Jack
threw himself plump into the scale to
redress the balance. Poles, Greeks,
(the last were then fighting the Turks,)
Mexicans, Spaniards,—Uncle Jack
thrust his nose into all their squabbles!
Heaven forbid I should mock thee,
poor Uncle Jack! for those generous
predilections towards the unfortunate;
only, whenever a nation is in misfortune,
there is always a job going on!
The Polish cause, the Greek cause,
the Mexican cause, and the Spanish
cause, are necessarily mixed up with
loans and subscriptions. These Continental
patriots, when they take up
the sword with one hand, generally
contrive to thrust the other deep into
their neighbours’ breeches’ pockets.
Uncle Jack went to Greece, thence he
went to Spain, thence to Mexico.
No doubt he was of great service to
these afflicted populations, for he came
back with unanswerable proof of their
gratitude in the shape of £3000.
Shortly after this appeared a prospectus
of the “New, Grand, National
Benevolent Insurance Company, for
the Industrious Classes.” This invaluable
document, after setting forth
the immense benefits to society arising
from habits of providence, and the introduction
of insurance companies—proving
the infamous rate of premiums
exacted by the existent offices, and
their inapplicability to the wants of
the honest artisan, and declaring that
nothing but the purest intentions of
benefiting their fellow-creatures, and
raising the moral tone of society, had
led the directors to institute a new
society, founded on the purest principles
and the most moderate calculations—proceeded
to demonstrate that
twenty-four and a half per cent was
the smallest possible return the shareholders
could anticipate. The company
began under the fairest auspices:
an archbishop was caught as president,
on the condition always that he
should give nothing but his name to the
society. Uncle Jack—more euphoniously
designated as “the celebrated
philanthropist, John Jones Tibbets,
Esquire”—was honorary secretary,
and the capital stated at two millions.
But such was the obtuseness of the
industrious classes, so little did they
perceive the benefits of subscribing
one-and-ninepence a-week from the
age of twenty-one to fifty, in order to
secure at the latter age the annuity of
£18, that the company dissolved into
thin air, and with it dissolved also
Uncle Jack’s £3000. Nothing more
was then seen or heard of him for
three years. So obscure was his
existence, that on the death of an[529]
aunt, who left him a small farm in
Cornwall, it was necessary to advertise
that “If John Jones Tibbets, Esq.,
would apply to Messrs Blunt and Tin,
Lothbury, between the hours of ten
and four, he would hear of something
to his advantage.” But, even as a
conjuror declares that he will call the
ace of spades, and the ace of spades,
that you thought you had safely under
your foot, turns up on the table—so
with this advertisement suddenly
turned up Uncle Jack. With inconceivable
satisfaction did the new land-owner
settle himself in his comfortable
homestead. The farm, which was
about two hundred acres, was in the
best possible condition, and saving
one or two chemical preparations,
which cost Uncle Jack, upon the most
scientific principles, thirty acres of
buckwheat, the ears of which came up,
poor things, all spotted and speckled,
as if they had been inoculated with
the small-pox, Uncle Jack for the
first two years was a thriving man.
Unluckily, however, one day Uncle
Jack discovered a coal-mine in a beautiful
field of swedish turnips; in another
week the house was full of
engineers and naturalists, and in another
month appeared, in my uncle’s
best style, much improved by practice,
a prospectus of “the Grand, National,
anti-Monopoly Coal Company, instituted
on behalf of the poor Householders
of London, and against the
Monster Monopoly of the London
Coal Wharfs.

“A vein of the finest coal has been
discovered on the estates of the celebrated
philanthropist, John Jones
Tibbets, Esq. This new mine, the
Molly Wheel, having been satisfactorily
tested by that eminent engineer, Giles
Compass, Esq., promises an inexhaustible
field to the energies of the benevolent
and the wealth of the capitalist.
It is calculated that the best coals
may be delivered, screened, at the
mouth of the Thames, for 18s. per
load, yielding a profit of not less than
forty-eight per cent to the shareholders.
Shares, £50, to be paid in
five instalments. Capital to be subscribed,
one million. For shares, early
application must be made to Messrs
Blunt and Tin, solicitors, Lothbury.”

Here, then, was something tangible
for fellow-creatures to go on—there
was land, there was a mine, there was
coal, and there actually came shareholders
and capital. Uncle Jack was
so persuaded that his fortune was
now to be made, and had, moreover,
so great a desire to share the glory of
ruining the monster monopoly of the
London wharfs, that he refused a very
large offer to dispose of the property
altogether, remained chief shareholder,
and removed to London, where he set
up his carriage, and gave dinners to
his fellow-directors. For no less than
three years did this company flourish,
having submitted the entire direction
and working of the mines to that
eminent engineer, Giles Compass—twenty
per cent was paid regularly by
that gentleman to the shareholders,
and the shares were at more than cent
per cent, when, one bright morning,
when least expected, Giles Compass,
Esq. removed himself to that wider
field for genius like his, the United
States; and it was discovered that the
mine had for more than a year run
itself into a great pit of water, and
that Mr Compass had been paying
the shareholders out of their own
capital. My uncle had the satisfaction
this time of being ruined in very
good company: three doctors of divinity,
two county members, a Scotch
lord, and an East India director, were
all in the same boat,—that boat which
went down with the coal-mine into
the great water pit!

It was just after this event that
Uncle Jack, sanguine and light-hearted
as ever, suddenly recollected his
sister, Mrs Caxton; and not knowing
where else to dine, thought he would
repose his limbs under my father’s
trabes citrea, which the ingenious
W. S. Landor opines should be translated
“mahogany.” You never saw
a more charming man than Uncle
Jack. All plump people are more
popular than thin people. There is
something jovial and pleasant in the
sight of a round face! What conspiracy
could succeed when its head was
a lean and hungry-looking fellow,
like Cassius? If the Roman patriots
had had Uncle Jack amongst them,
perhaps they would never have furnished
a tragedy to Shakspeare.
Uncle Jack was as plump as a partridge—not
unwieldy, not corpulent,
not obese, not “vastus,” which Cicero[530]
objects to in an orator—but every
crevice comfortably filled up. Like
the ocean, “time wrote no wrinkles on
his glassy (or brassy) brow.” His
natural lines were all upward curves,
his smile most ingratiating, his eye so
frank, even his trick of rubbing his
clean well-fed English-looking hands,
had something, about it coaxing and
debonnair, something that actually
decoyed you into trusting your money
into hands so prepossessing. Indeed,
to him might be fully applied the
expression—”Sedem animæ in extremis
digitis habet;” “He had his
soul’s seat in his finger ends.” The
critics observe that few men have ever
united in equal perfection the imaginative
with the scientific or musing
faculties. “Happy he,” exclaims
Schiller, “who combines the enthusiast’s
warmth with the worldly man’s
light”—light and warmth, Uncle Jack
had them both. He was a perfect
symphony of bewitching enthusiasm
and convincing calculation. Dicæopolis
in the Acharnenses, in presenting
a gentleman called Nicharchus to the
audience, observes—”He is small, I
confess, but there is nothing lost in
him: all is knave, that is not fool.”
Parodying the equivocal compliment, I
may say, that though Uncle Jack was
no giant, there was nothing lost in him.
Whatever was not philanthropy was
arithmetic, and whatever was not
arithmetic was philanthropy. He
would have been equally dear to
Howard and to Cocker. Uncle Jack
was comely, too—clear-skinned and
florid, had a little mouth, with good
teeth, wore no whiskers, shaved his
beard as close as if it were one of his
grand national companies; his hair,
once somewhat sandy, was now rather
grayish, which increased the respectability
of his appearance, and he wore
it flat at the sides and raised in a peak
at the top; his organs of constructiveness
and ideality were pronounced by
Mr Squills to be prodigious, and those
freely developed bumps gave great
breadth to his forehead. Well-shaped,
too, was Uncle Jack, about five feet
eight, the proper height for an active
man of business. He wore a black
coat; but to make the nap look the
fresher, he had given it the relief of
gilt buttons, on which were wrought a
small crown and anchor; at a distance
this button looked like the king’s button,
and gave him the air of one who
has a place about Court. He always
wore a white neckcloth without starch,
a frill and a diamond pin; which last
furnished him with observations upon
certain mines of Mexico, which he
had a great but hitherto unsatisfied
desire of seeing worked by a Grand
National United Britons Company.
His waistcoat of a morning was pale
buff—of an evening, embroidered velvet;
wherewith were connected sundry
schemes of an “association for
the improvement of native manufactures.”
His trousers, matutinally,
were of the colour vulgarly called
“blotting-paper;” and he never wore
boots, which, he said, unfitted a man
for exercise, but short drab gaiters
and square-toed shoes. His watch-chain
was garnished with a vast number
of seals: each seal, indeed, represented
the device of some defunct
company, and they might be said to
resemble the scalps of the slain, worn
by the aboriginal Iroquois, concerning
whom indeed he had once entertained
philanthropic designs, compounded of
conversion to Christianity on the principles
of the English Episcopal Church,
and of an advantageous exchange of
beaver-skins for bibles, brandy, and
gunpowder.

That Uncle Jack should win my
heart was no wonder; my mother’s he
had always won from her earliest recollection
of his having persuaded her
to let her great doll (a present from
her godmother) be put up to a raffle
for the benefit of the chimney-sweeps.
“So like him—so good!” she would
often say pensively; “they paid sixpence
a-piece for the raffle—twenty
tickets, and the doll cost £2. Nobody
was taken in, and the doll,
poor thing, (it had such blue eyes!)
went for a quarter of its value.
But Jack said nobody could guess
what good the ten shillings did to the
chimney-sweeps!” Naturally enough,
I say, my mother liked Uncle Jack!
but my father liked him quite as well,
and that was a strong proof of my
uncle’s powers of captivation. However,
it is noticeable that when some
retired scholar is once interested in an
active man of the world, he is more inclined
to admire him than others are.
Sympathy with such a companion gratifies[531]
at once his curiosity and his
indolence: he can travel with him,
scheme with him, fight with him, go
with him through all the adventures of
which his own books speak so eloquently,
and all the time never stir from his
easy-chair. My father said “that it
was like listening to Ulysses to hear
Uncle Jack!” Uncle Jack, too, had
been in Greece and Asia Minor, gone
over the site of the siege of Troy, eat
figs at Marathon, shot hares in the
Peloponnesus, and drank three pints
of brown stout at the top of the Great
Pyramid.

Therefore, Uncle Jack was like a
book of reference to my father. Verily
at times he looked on him as a book,
and took him down after dinner as he
would a volume of Dodwell or
Pausanias. In fact, I believe that
scholars who never move from their
cells are not the less an eminently
curious, bustling, active race, rightly
understood. Even as old Burton
saith of himself—”Though I live a
collegiate student, and lead a monastic
life, sequestered from those tumults
and troubles of the world, I hear and
see what is done abroad, how others
run, ride, turmoil and macerate themselves
in town and country,” which
citation sufficeth to show that scholars
are naturally the most active men of the
world, only that while their heads plot
with Augustus, fight with Julius, sail
with Columbus, and change the face
of the globe with Alexander, Attila,
or Mahomet, there is a certain mysterious
attraction, which our improved
knowledge of mesmerism will doubtless
soon explain to the satisfaction of
science, between that extremer and
antipodal part of the human frame,
called in the vulgate “the seat of
honour,” and the stuffed leather of an
armed-chair. Learning somehow or
other sinks down to that part in
which it was first driven in, and produces
therein a leaden heaviness and
weight, which counteract those lively
emotions of the brain, that might otherwise
render students too mercurial
and agile for the safety of established
order. I leave this conjecture to the
consideration of experimentalists in
the physics.

I was still more delighted than my
father with Uncle Jack. He was full
of amusing tricks, could conjure wonderfully,
make a bunch of keys dance
a hornpipe, and if ever you gave him
half-a-crown, he was sure to turn it
into a halfpenny. He was only unsuccessful
in turning my halfpennies
into half-crowns.

We took long walks together, and
in the midst of his most diverting conversation
my uncle was always an
observer. He would stop to examine
the nature of the soil, fill my pockets
(not his own) with great lumps of
clay, stones, and rubbish, to analyse
when he got home, by the help of
some chemical apparatus he had borrowed
from Mr Squills. He would
stand an hour at a cottage door, admiring
the little girls who were straw-platting,
and then walk into the nearest
farm-houses, to suggest the feasibility
of “a national straw-plat association.”
All this fertility of intellect was, alas!
wasted in that “ingrata terra”
into which Uncle Jack had fallen.
No squire could be persuaded into the
belief that his mother-stone was
pregnant with minerals; no farmer
talked into weaving straw-plat into a
proprietary association. So, even as an
ogre, having devastated the surrounding
country, begins to cast a hungry
eye on his own little ones, Uncle
Jack’s mouth, long defrauded of
juicier and more legitimate morsels,
began to water for a bite of my innocent
father.

CHAPTER IX.

At this time we were living in what
may be called a very respectable style
for people who made no pretence to
ostentation. On the skirts of a
large village, stood a square red
brick house, about the date of
Queen Anne. Upon the top of the
house was a balustrade; why, heaven
knows—for nobody, except our great
tom-cat Ralph, ever walked upon the
leads—but so it was, and so it often
is in houses from the time of Elizabeth,
yea, even to that of Victoria.
This balustrade was divided by low
piers, on each of which was placed a
round ball. The centre of the house[532]
was distinguishable by an architrave,
in the shape of a triangle, under
which was a niche, probably meant
for a figure, but the figure was not
forthcoming. Below this was the window
(encased with carved pilasters) of
my dear mother’s little sitting-room;
and lower still, raised on a flight of
six steps, was a very handsome-looking
door. All the windows, with
smallish panes and largish frames,
were relieved with stone copings;—so
that the house had an air of solidity
and well-to-do-ness about it—nothing
tricky on the one hand, nothing
decayed on the other. The house
stood a little back from the garden
gates, which were large, and set between
two piers surmounted with
vases. Many might object, that in
wet weather you had to walk some
way to your carriage; but we obviated
that objection by not keeping a
carriage. To the right of the house the
enclosure contained a little lawn, a
laurel hermitage, a square pond, a
modest green-house, and half-a-dozen
plots of mignionette, heliotrope, roses,
pinks, sweet-william, &c. To the
left spread the kitchen-garden, lying
screened by espaliers yielding the
finest apples in the neighbourhood,
and divided by three winding gravel-walks,
of which the extremest was
backed by a wall, whereon, as it lay
full south, peaches, pears, and nectarines
sunned themselves early into
well-remembered flavour. This walk
was appropriated to my father. Book
in hand, he would, on fine days, pace
to and fro, often stopping, dear man,
to jot down a pencil-note, gesticulate,
or soliloquise. And there, when not
in his study, my mother would be
sure to find him. In these deambulations,
as he called them, he had
generally a companion so extraordinary,
that I expect to be met with a
hillalu of incredulous contempt when
I specify it. Nevertheless I vow and
protest that it is strictly true, and no
invention of an exaggerating romancer.
It happened one day that
my mother had coaxed Mr Caxton to
walk with her to market. By the way
they passed a sward of green, on which
sundry little boys were engaged upon
the lapidation, or stoning, of a lame
duck. It seemed that the duck was
to have been taken to market, when
it was discovered not only to be lame,
but dyspeptic; perhaps some weed had
disagreed with its ganglionic apparatus,
poor thing. However that
be, the good-wife had declared that
the duck was good for nothing; and
upon the petition of her children, it
had been consigned to them for a
little innocent amusement, and to
keep them out of harm’s way.
My mother declared that she
never before saw her lord and
master roused to such animation.
He dispersed the urchins, released
the duck, carried it home, kept
it in a basket by the fire, fed it and
physicked it till it recovered; and then
it was consigned to the square pond.
But lo! the duck knew its benefactor;
and whenever my father appeared
outside his door, it would catch
sight of him, flap from the pond,
gain the lawn, and hobble after him,
(for it never quite recovered the use
of its left leg,) till it reached the walk
by the peaches; and there sometimes
it would sit, gravely watching its
master’s deambulations; sometimes
stroll by his side, and, at all events,
never leave him, till, at his return
home, he fed it with his own hands;
and, quacking her peaceful adieus, the
nymph then retired to her natural
element.

With the exception of my mother’s
dining-room, the principal sitting-rooms—that
is, the study, the dining-room,
and what was emphatically
called the “best drawing-room,”
which was only occupied on great
occasions—looked south. Tall beeches,
firs, poplars, and a few oaks, backed
the house, and indeed surrounded it
on all sides but the south; so that it
was well sheltered from the winter
cold and the summer heat. Our
principal domestic, in dignity and station,
was Mrs Primmins, who was
waiting gentlewoman, housekeeper,
and tyrannical dictatrix of the whole
establishment. Two other maids, a
gardener, and a footman composed the
rest of the serving household. Save
a few pasture-fields, which he let, my
father was not troubled with land. His
income was derived from the interest
of about £15,000, partly in the three
per cents, partly on mortgage; and
what with my mother and Mrs
Primmins, this income always yielded[533]
enough to satisfy my father’s single
hobby for books, pay for my education,
and entertain our neighbours,
rarely, indeed, at dinner, but very often
at tea. My dear mother boasted that
our society was very select. It consisted
chiefly of the clergyman and his
family, two old maids who gave
themselves great airs, a gentleman
who had been in the East India service,
and who lived in a large white
house at the top of the hill; some
half-a-dozen squires and their wives
and children; Mr Squills, still a
bachelor: And once a-year cards
were exchanged—and dinners too—with
certain aristocrats, who inspired
my mother with a great deal of
unnecessary awe; since she declared
they were the most good-natured easy
people in the world, and always stuck
their cards in the most conspicuous
part of the looking-glass frame over
the chimney-place of the best drawing-room.
Thus you perceive that our
natural position was one highly creditable
to us, proving the soundness
of our finances and the gentility of
our pedigree, of which—but more
hereafter. At present I content myself
with saying on that head, that even
the proudest of the neighbouring
squirearchs always spoke of us as a
very ancient family. But all my father
ever said, to evince pride of ancestry,
was in honour of William
Caxton, citizen and printer in the
reign of Edward IV.—”Clarum et
venerabile nomen!” an ancestor a man
of letters might be justly vain of.

“Heus,” said my father, stopping
short, and lifting his eyes from the
Colloquies of Erasmus, “salve multum,
jucundissime.”

Uncle Jack was not much of a scholar,
but he knew enough Latin to answer,
“Salve tantundem, mi frater.”

My father smiled approvingly. “I
see you comprehend true urbanity, or
politeness, as we phrase it. There is
an elegance in addressing the husband
of your sister as brother. Erasmus
commends it in his opening
chapter, under the head of ‘Salutandi
formulæ.’ And indeed,” added
my father thoughtfully, “there is no
great difference between politeness
and affection. My author here observes
that it is polite to express salutation
in certain minor distresses of
nature. One should salute a gentleman
in yawning, salute him in hiccuping,
salute him in sneezing, salute him
in coughing;—and that evidently because
of your interest in his health;
for he may dislocate his jaw in yawning,
and the hiccup is often a symptom
of grave disorder, and sneezing is
perilous to the small blood-vessels of
the head, and coughing is either a
tracheal, bronchial, pulmonary, or
ganglionic affection.”

“Very true. The Turks always
salute in sneezing, and they are a
remarkably polite people,” said Uncle
Jack. “But, my dear brother, I was
just looking with admiration at these
apple-trees of yours. I never saw
finer. I am a great judge of apples.
I find, in talking with my sister, that
you make very little profit of them.
That’s a pity. One might establish a
cider orchard in this county. You can
take your own fields in hand; you
can hire more, so as to make the
whole, say a hundred acres. You can
plant a very extensive apple-orchard
on a grand scale. I have just run
through the calculations; they are
quite startling. Take 40 trees per acre—that’s
the proper average—at 1s. 6d.
per tree; 4000 trees for 100 acres £300;,
labour of digging, trenching, say £10
an acre—total for 100 acres, £1000.
Pave the bottoms of the holes, to prevent
the tap-root striking down into
the bad soil—oh, I am very close and
careful, you see, in all minutiæ,!—always
was—pave ’em with rubbish and
stones, 6d. a hole; that, for 4000
trees the 100 acres is £100. Add the
rent of the land, at 30s. an acre, £150.
And how stands the total?” Here
Uncle Jack proceeded rapidly ticking
off the items with his fingers:—

That’s your expense. Mark.—Now
to the profit. Orchards in Kent
realise £100 an acre, some even £150;
but let’s be moderate, say only £50 an
acre, and your gross profit per year,
from a capital of £1550, will be £5000.—£5000
a year. Think of that,[534]
brother Caxton. Deduct 10 per cent,
or £500 a-year, for gardeners’ wages,
manure, &c., and the net product is
£4500. Your fortune’s made, man—it
is made—I wish you joy!” And
Uncle Jack rubbed his hands.

“Bless me, father,” said eagerly the
young Pisistratus, who had swallowed
with ravished ears every syllable and
figure of this inviting calculation,
“Why, we should be as rich as Squire
Rollick; and then, you know, sir, you
could keep a pack of fox-hounds!”

“And buy a large library,” added
Uncle Jack, with more subtle knowledge
of human nature as to its appropriate
temptations. “There’s my
friend the archbishop’s collection to be
sold.”

Slowly recovering his breath, my
father gently turned his eyes from one
to the other; and then, laying his left
hand on my head, while with the right
he held up Erasmus rebukingly to
Uncle Jack, he said—

“See how easily you can sow covetousness
and avidity in the youthful
mind! Ah, brother!”

“You are too severe, sir. See how
the dear boy hangs his head! Fie!—natural
enthusiasm of his years—’gay
hope by fancy fed,’ as the poet says.
Why, for that fine boy’s sake, you ought
not to lose so certain an occasion of
wealth, I may say, untold. For, observe,
you will form a nursery of
crabs; each year you go on grafting
and enlarging your plantation, renting,
nay, why not buying, more land? Gad,
sir! in twenty years you might cover
half the county; but say you stop
short at 2000 acres, why, the net
profit is £90,000 a-year. A duke’s
income—a duke’s—and going a begging
as I may say.”

“But stop,” said I modestly;
“the trees don’t grow in a year. I
know when our last apple tree was
planted—it is five years ago—it was
then three years old, and it only bore
one half bushel last autumn.”

“What an intelligent lad it is!—Good
head there. Oh, he’ll do credit
to his great fortune, brother,” said
Uncle Jack approvingly. “True, my
boy. But in the meanwhile we could
fill the ground, as they do in Kent, with
gooseberries and currants, or onions
and cabbages. Nevertheless, considering
we are not great capitalists,
I am afraid we must give up a share
of our profits to diminish our outlay.
So, harkye, Pisistratus—(look at him,
brother—simple as he stands there, I
think he’s born with a silver spoon in
his mouth)—harkye, now to the mysteries
of speculation. Your father
shall quietly buy the land, and then,
presto! we will issue a prospectus, and
start a company. Associations can
wait five years for a return. Every
year, meanwhile, increases the value of
the shares. Your father takes, we
say, fifty shares at £50 each, paying
only an instalment of £2 a share. He
sells 35 shares at cent per cent. He
keeps the remaining 15, and his fortune’s
made all the same; only it’s not
quite so large as if he had kept the
whole concern in his own hands.
What say you now, brother Caxton?
‘Visne edere pomum?’ as we used to
say at school.”

“I don’t want a shilling more than
I have got,” said my father, resolutely.
“My wife would not love me
better; my food would not nourish me
more; my boy would not, in all probability,
be half so hardy, or a tenth
part so industrious; and——”

“But,” interrupted Uncle Jack, pertinaciously,
and reserving his grand
argument for the last, “the good you
would confer on the community—the
progress given to the natural productions
of your country, the wholesome
beverage of cider, brought within cheap
reach of the labouring classes. If it was
only for your sake, should I have urged
this question? should I now? is it in
my character? But for the sake of the
public! mankind! of our fellow-creatures!
Why, sir, England could not
get on if gentlemen like you had not a
little philanthropy and speculation.”

“Papæ!” exclaimed my father, “to
think that England can’t get on without
turning Augustine Caxton into
an apple-merchant! My dear Jack,
listen. You remind me of a colloquy in
this book; wait a bit—here it is—Pamphagus
and Cocles—’Cocles recognises
his friend who had been absent
for many years, by his eminent
and remarkable nose.—Pamphagus
says, rather irritably, that he is not
ashamed of his nose. ‘Ashamed of
it! no, indeed,’ says Cocles: ‘I never
saw a nose that could be put to so
many uses!’ ‘Ha,’ says Pamphagus,[535]
(whose curiosity is aroused,) ‘uses!
what uses?’ Whereon (lepidissime
frater!) Cocles, with eloquence rapid
as yours, runs on with a countless list
of the uses to which so vast a development
of the organ can be applied.
‘If the cellar was deep, it could sniff
up the wine like an elephant’s trunk,—if
the bellows were missing, it could
blow the fire,—if the lamp was too
glaring, it could suffice for a shade,—it
would serve as a speaking-trumpet
to a herald,—it could sound a signal
of battle in the field,—it would do for
a wedge in wood-cutting,—a spade
for digging,—a scythe for mowing,—an
anchor in sailing; till Pamphagus
cries out, ‘Lucky dog that I am! and
I never knew before what a useful piece
of furniture I carried about with me.'”
My father paused and strove to whistle,
but that effort at harmony failed him—and
he added, smiling, “So much
for my apple trees, brother John.
Leave them to their natural destination
of filling tarts and dumplings.”

Uncle Jack looked a little discomposed
for a moment; but he then
laughed with his usual heartiness, and
saw that he had not yet got to my
father’s blind side. I confess that my
revered parent rose in my estimation
after that conference; and I began to
see that a man may not be quite without
common-sense, though he is a scholar.
Indeed, whether it was that Uncle
Jack’s visit acted as a gentle stimulant
to his relaxed faculties, or that I, now
grown older and wiser, began to see
his character more clearly, I date from
those summer holidays the commencement
of that familiar and endearing
intimacy which ever after existed between
my father and myself. Often
I deserted the more extensive rambles
of Uncle Jack, or the greater allurements
of a cricket match in the village,
or a day’s fishing in Squire Rollick’s
preserves, for a quiet stroll with my
father by the old peach wall;—sometimes
silent, indeed, and already musing
over the future, while he was
busy with the past, but amply rewarded
when, suspending his lecture,
he would pour forth hoards of varied
learning, rendered amusing by his
quaint comments, and that Socratic
satire which only fell short of wit because
it never passed into malice. At
some moments, indeed, the vein ran into
eloquence; and with some fine
heroic sentiment in his old books, his
stooping form rose erect, his eye
flashed; and you saw that he had not
been originally formed and wholly
meant for the obscure seclusion in
which his harmless days now wore
contentedly away.

CHAPTER IX.

“Egad, sir, the county is going to
the dogs! Our sentiments are not
represented in parliament or out of it.
The County Mercury has ratted, and
be hanged to it! and now we have not
one newspaper in the whole shire to
express the sentiments of the respectable
part of the community!”

This speech was made on the occasion
of one of the rare dinners given
by Mr and Mrs Caxton to the grandees
of the neighbourhood, and uttered
by no less a person than Squire Rollick,
of Rollick Hall, chairman of the
quarter sessions.

I confess that I, (for I was permitted
on that first occasion not only to dine
with the guests, but to outstay the
ladies, in virtue of my growing years,
and my promise to abstain from the
decanters)—I confess, I say, that I,
poor innocent, was puzzled to conjecture
what sudden interest in the county
newspaper could cause Uncle Jack to
prick up his ears like a warhorse at
the sound of the drum, and rush so
incontinently across the interval between
Squire Rollick and himself. But
the mind of that deep and truly knowing
man was not to be plumbed by a
chit of my age. You could not fish
for the shy salmon in that pool with a
crooked pin and a bobbin, as you would
for minnows; or, to indulge in a more
worthy illustration, you could not say
of him, as St Gregory saith of the
streams of Jordan, “a lamb could wade
easily through that ford.”

“Not a county newspaper to advocate
the rights of—” here my uncle
stopped, as if at a loss, and whispered
in my ear, “What are his politics?”
“Don’t know,” answered I. Uncle
Jack intuitively took down from his
memory the phrase most readily at
hand, and added, with a nasal intonation,[536]
“the rights of our distressed
fellow-creatures!”

My father scratched his eyebrow
with his forefinger, as he was apt to
do when doubtful; the rest of the
company—a silent set—looked up.

“Fellow-creatures!” said Mr Rollick—”fellow-fiddlesticks!”

Uncle Jack was clearly in the
wrong box. He drew out of it cautiously—”I
mean,” said he, “our
respectable fellow-creatures;” and then
suddenly it occurred to him that a
“County Mercury” would naturally
represent the agricultural interest,
and that if Mr Rollick said that the
“County Mercury ought to be hanged,”
he was one of those politicians who
had already begun to call the agricultural
interest “a Vampire.” Flushed
with that fancied discovery, Uncle
Jack rushed on, intending to bear
along with the stream, thus fortunately
directed, all the “rubbish”[1] subsequently
shot into Covent Garden and
the Hall of Commerce.

“Yes, respectable fellow-creatures,
men of capital and enterprise! For
what are these country squires compared
to our wealthy merchants?
What is this agricultural interest that
professes to be the prop of the
land?”

“Professes!” cried Squire Rollick,
“It is the prop of the land, and as for
those manufacturing fellows who have
bought up the Mercury—”

“Bought up the Mercury, have
they, the villains!” cried Uncle Jack,
interrupting the Squire, and now
bursting into full scent—”Depend
upon it, sir, it is a part of a diabolical
system of buying up, which must be
exposed manfully.—Yes, as I was
saying, what is that agricultural interest
which they desire to ruin? which
they declare to be so bloated—which
they call ‘a vampire!’ they the true
blood-suckers, the venomous millocrats!
Fellow-creatures, sir! I may
well call distressed fellow-creatures,
the members of that much suffering
class of which you yourself are an
ornament. What can be more
deserving of our best efforts for
relief, than a country gentleman like
yourself, we’ll say—of a nominal
£5000 a-year—compelled to keep up
an establishment, pay for his fox-hounds,
support the whole population
by contributions to the poor rates,
support the whole church by tithes;
all justice, jails, and prosecutions by
the county rates, all thoroughfares by
the highway rates—ground down by
mortgages, Jews, or jointures; having
to provide for younger children; enormous
expenses for cutting his woods,
manuring his model farm, and fattening
huge oxen till every pound of flesh
costs him five pounds sterling in oil-cake;
and then the lawsuits necessary
to protect his rights; plundered on
all hands by poachers, sheep-stealers,
dog-stealers, church-wardens, overseers,
gardeners, gamekeepers, and
that necessary rascal, his steward. If
ever there was a distressed fellow-creature
in the world, it is a country
gentleman with a great estate.”

My father evidently thought this an
exquisite piece of banter; for by the
corner of his mouth I saw that he
chuckled inly.

Squire Rollick, who had interrupted
the speech by sundry approving
exclamations, particularly at the mention
of poor rates, tithes, county rates,
mortgages, and poachers, here pushed
the bottle to Uncle Jack, and said
civilly—”There’s a great deal of truth
in what you say, Mr Tibbets. The
agricultural interest is going to ruin;
and when it does, I would not give
that for Old England!” and Mr Rollick
snapped his finger and thumb.
“But what is to be done—done for
the county? There’s the rub.”

“I was just coming to that,” quoth
Uncle Jack. “You say that you have
not a county paper that upholds your
cause, and denounces your enemies.”

“Not since the Whigs bought the ——shire
Mercury.”

“Why, good heavens! Mr Rollick,
how could you suppose that you will
have justice done you, if at this time
of day you neglect the press? The press,
sir—there it is—air we breathe! What
you want is a great national—no, not a
national—A PROVINCIAL proprietary
weekly journal, supported liberally and
steadily by that mighty party whose
very existence is at stake. Without
such a paper, you are gone, you are
dead, extinct, defunct, buried alive;
with such a paper, well conducted,
well edited by a man of the world, of[537]
education, of practical experience in
agriculture and human nature, mines,
corn, manure, insurances, acts of
parliament, cattle shows, the state of
parties, and the best interests of
society—with such a man and such a
paper, you will carry all before you.
But it must be done by subscription,
by association, by co-operation, by a
grand provincial Benevolent Agricultural,
Anti-innovating Society.”

“Egad, sir, you are right!” said
Mr Rollick, slapping his thigh; “and
I’ll ride over to our Lord-Lieutenant
to-morrow. His eldest son ought to
carry the county.”

“And he will, if you encourage
the press, and set up a journal,” said
Uncle Jack, rubbing his hands, and
then gently stretching them out, and
drawing them gradually together, as
if he were already enclosing in that
airy circle the unsuspecting guineas
of the unborn association.

All happiness dwells more in the
hope than the possession; and at that
moment, I dare be sworn that Uncle
Jack felt a livelier rapture, circum præcordia,
warming his entrails, and diffusing
throughout his whole frame of
five feet eight the prophetic glow of
the Magna Diva Moneta, than if he
had enjoyed for ten years the actual possession
of King Crœsus’s privy purse.

“I thought Uncle Jack was not a
Tory,” said I to my father the next day.

My father, who cared nothing for
politics, opened his eyes.

“Are you a Tory or a Whig, papa?”

“Um,” said my father—”there’s a
great deal to be said on both sides of
the question. You see, my boy, that
Mrs Primmins has a great many
moulds for our butter-pats; sometimes
they come up with a crown on
them, sometimes with the more popular
impress of a cow. It is all very
well for those who dish up the butter
to print it according to their taste, or
in proof of their abilities; it is enough
for us to butter our bread, say grace,
and pay for the dairy. Do you understand?”

“Not a bit, sir.”

“Your namesake Pisistratus was
wiser than you, then,” said my father.
“And now let us feed the duck.
Where’s your uncle?”

“He has borrowed Mr Squills’s
mare, sir, and gone with Squire Rollick
to the great lord they were talking
of.”

“Oho!” said my father, “brother
Jack is going to print his butter!”

And indeed Uncle Jack played his
cards so well on this occasion, and set
before the Lord-Lieutenant, with
whom he had a personal interview, so
fine a prospectus, and so nice a calculation,
that before my holidays were
over, he was installed in a very handsome
office in the county town, with
private apartments over it, and a salary
of £500 a-year—for advocating the
cause of his distressed fellow-creatures,
including noblemen, squires, yeomanry,
farmers, and all yearly subscribers
in the New Proprietary
Agricultural, Anti-innovating
——shire Weekly Gazette. At
the head of his newspaper Uncle Jack
caused to be engraved a crown supported
by a flail and a crook, with the
motto “Pro rege et grege,” and that
was the way in which Uncle Jack
printed his pats of butter.

CHAPTER X.

I seemed to myself to have made a
leap in life when I returned to school.
I no longer felt as a boy. Uncle
Jack, out of his own purse, had presented
me with my first pair of Wellington
boots; my mother had been
coaxed into allowing me a small tail
to jackets hitherto tailless; my collars,
which had been wont, spaniel-like, to
flap and fall about my neck, now, terrier-wise,
stood erect and rampant,
encompassed with a circumvallation
of whalebone, buckram, and black silk.
I was, in truth, nearly seventeen, and I
gave myself the airs of a man. Now
be it observed, that that crisis in
adolescent existence wherein we first
pass from Master Sisty into Mr Pisistratus,
or Pisistratus Caxton, Esq.—wherein
we arrogate, and with tacit
concession from our elders, the long
envied title of “young man”—always
seems a sudden and imprompt up-shooting
and elevation. We do not
mark the gradual preparations thereto;
we remember only one distinct period
in which all the signs and symptoms
burst and effervesced together;—Wellington
boots, tail, stiffener, down on
the upper lip, thoughts on razors,[538]
reveries on young ladies, and a new
kind of sense of poetry.

I began now to read steadily, to
understand what I did read, and to
cast some anxious looks towards the
future, with vague notions that I had
a place to win in the world, and that
nothing is to be won without perseverance
and labour; and so I went
on till I was seventeen, and at the
head of the school, when I received
the two letters I subjoin.

1.—From Augustine Caxton, Esq.

“My Dear Son,—I have informed
Dr Herman that you will not return
to him after the approaching holidays.
You are old enough now to look forward
to the embraces of our beloved
Alma Mater, and I think studious
enough to hope for the honours she
bestows on her worthier sons. You
are already entered at Trinity,—and
in fancy I see my youth return to me
in your image. I see you wandering
where the Cam steals its way through
those noble gardens; and, confusing
you with myself, I recall the old
dreams that haunted me when the
chiming bells swung over the placid
waters. ‘Verum secretumque Mouseion,
quam multa dictatis, quam
multa invenitis!’ There, at that illustrious
college, unless the race has
indeed degenerated, you will measure
yourself with young giants. You will
see those who, in the Law, the
Church, the State, or the still cloisters
of Learning, are destined to become
the eminent leaders of your age.
To rank amongst them you are not
forbidden to aspire; he who in youth
‘can scorn delight, and love laborious
days,’ should pitch high his ambition.

“Your Uncle Jack says he has done
wonders with his newspaper,—though
Mr Rollick grumbles, and declares
it is full of theories, and that it puzzles
the farmers. Uncle Jack, in
reply, contends that he creates an
audience, not addresses one,—and
sighs that his genius is thrown away
in a provincial town. In fact, he
really is a very clever man, and might
do much in London, I dare say. He
often comes over to dine and sleep,
returning the next morning. His
energy is wonderful, and—contagious.
Can you imagine that he has actually
stirred up the flame of my vanity, by
constantly poking at the bars? Metaphor
apart—I find myself collecting
all my notes and common-places, and
wondering to see how easily they fall
into method, and take shape in chapters
and books. I cannot help smiling
when I add, that I fancy I am going
to become an author; and smiling
more when I think that your Uncle
Jack should have provoked me into
so egregious an ambition. However,
I have read some passages of my book
to your mother, and she says “it is
vastly fine,” which is encouraging.
Your mother has great good sense,
though I don’t mean to say that she
has much learning,—which is a wonder,
considering that Pic de la Mirandola
was nothing to her father. Yet
he died, dear great man, and never
printed a line,—while I—positively I
blush to think of my temerity!

“Adieu, my son; make the best of
the time that remains with you at the
Philhellenic. A full mind is the true
Pantheism, plena Jovis. Wherever
there is knowledge, there is God. It
is only in some corner of the brain
which we leave empty, that Vice can
obtain a lodging. When she knocks
at your door, my son, be able to say,
‘No room for your ladyship,—pass
on.’—Your affectionate father,

“A. Caxton.”

2.—From Mrs Caxton.

“My Dearest Sisty,—You are
coming home!—My heart is so full
of that thought that it seems to me
as if I could not write any thing else.
Dear child, you are coming home;—you
have done with school, you have
done with strangers,—you are our
own, all our own son again! You
are mine again, as you were in the
cradle, the nursery, and the garden,
Sisty, when we used to throw daisies
at each other! You will laugh at me
so, when I tell you, that as soon as I
heard you were coming home for good,
I crept away from the room, and went
to my drawer where I keep, you
know, all my treasures. There was
your little cap that I worked myself,
and your poor little nankeen jacket
that you were so proud to throw off—oh!
and many other relics of you
when you were little Sisty, and I was
not that cold formal ‘Mother’ you
call me now, but dear ‘Mamma.’ I[539]
kissed them, Sisty, and said ‘My
little child is coming back to me
again!’ So foolish was I, I forgot all
the long years that have passed, and
fancied I could carry you again
in my arms, and that I should again
coax you to say ‘God bless papa.’
Well, well! I write now between
laughing and crying. You cannot be
what you were, but you are still my
own dear son—your father’s son—dearer
to me than all the world—except
that father.

“I am so glad, too, that you will
come so soon: come while your
father is really warm with his book,
and while you can encourage and
keep him to it. For why should he
not be great and famous? Why
should not all admire him as we do?
You know how proud of him I always
was; but I do so long to let the
world know why I was so proud. And
yet, after all, it is not only because he
is so wise and learned,—but because
he is so good, and has such a large
noble heart. But the heart must
appear in the book too, as well as the
learning. For though it is full of
things I don’t understand, every now
and then there is something I do understand—that
seems as if that heart
spoke out to all the world.

“Your uncle has undertaken to get
it published; and your father is going
up to town with him about it, as soon
as the first volume is finished.

“All are quite well except poor Mrs
Jones, who has the ague very bad indeed;
Primmins has made her wear
a charm for it, and Mrs Jones actually
declares she is already much better.
One can’t deny that there may be a
great deal in such things, though it
seems quite against the reason. Indeed
your father says, ‘Why not?
A charm must be accompanied by a
strong wish on the part of the charmer
that it may succeed,—and what is
magnetism but a wish?’ I don’t
quite comprehend this; but, like all
your father says, it has more than
meets the eye, I am quite sure.

“Only three weeks to the holidays,
and then no more school, Sisty—no
more school! I shall have your room
all done freshly, and made so pretty;
they are coming about it to-morrow.

“The duck is quite well, and I really
don’t think it is quite as lame as it
was.

“God bless you, dear, dear child!—Your
affectionate happy mother,

“K. C.”

The interval between these letters
and the morning on which I was to
return home, seemed to me like one
of those long, restless, yet half dreamy
days which in some infant malady I
had passed in a sick-bed. I went
through my task-work mechanically,
composed a Greek ode in farewell to
the Philhellenic, which Dr Herman
pronounced a chef-d’œuvre, and my
father, to whom I sent it in triumph,
returned a letter of false English
with it, that parodied all my Hellenic
barbarisms by imitating them in my
mother tongue. However, I swallowed
the leek, and consoled myself
with the pleasing recollection that,
after spending six years in learning
to write bad Greek, I should never
have any further occasion to avail
myself of so precious an accomplishment.

And so came the last day. Then,
alone, and in a kind of delighted melancholy,
I revisited each of the old
haunts. The robbers’ cave we had
dug one winter, and maintained, six of
us, against all the police of the little
kingdom. The place near the pales
where I had fought my first battle.
The old beech stump on which I
sate to read letters from home!

With my knife, rich in six blades,
(besides a cork-screw, a pen-picker,
and a button-hook,) I carved my
name in large capitals over my desk.
Then night came, and the bell rang,
and we went to our rooms. And I
opened the window and looked out.
I saw all the stars, and wondered
which was mine—which should light
to fame and fortune the manhood
about to commence. Hope and Ambition
were high within me;—and
yet, behind them, stood Melancholy.
Ah! who amongst you, readers, can
now summon back all those thoughts,
sweet and sad—all that untold, half-conscious
regret for the past—all
those vague longings for the future,
which made a poet of the dullest
amongst you on the last night before
leaving boyhood and school for ever!

[540]

EDUCATION IN WALES.

[2]

That it is the duty of a wise and
foreseeing government to inquire into
the condition of whatever affects the
well-being of the people, is almost a
political truism, and may certainly
be received as a political axiom. More
especially, however, when the subject
is one of such vital importance as education,
does such an inquiry become
necessary: and, in truth, the leaders of
the state cannot be considered as doing
their duty, unless they make themselves
acquainted with the practical
bearings and results of the system,
whatever it may be, that exists. Not
that the government of this country,
until very recent periods at least, ever
troubled themselves with such matters:
the more direct political business
of the state, the clash of parties,
and the struggle for power, absorbed
their whole attention; and education
was left, as a matter of private and
local concern, to the clergy and the
gentry exclusively. The voluntary
system, superinduced upon the country
by the indolence or neglect of those
who held the reins of authority, was
allowed to remain in unaided operation
as far as education was concerned;
and until the establishing of National
Schools, as they are commonly termed,
and for some time after that event,
the governments that followed each
other in the dingy recesses of Downing
Street cared no more for village
schoolmasters, and knew no more
about them, than they did about
village blacksmiths. It was enough
if the people went on tolerably well,
and paid their taxes; whether they
learned any thing at school, or
whether they had schools in which
any thing might be learned, was, at
head-quarters, a matter of no moment.
Most of the upper classes of the nation
were of the same feeling—the middle
classes, too, folded their arms and
looked on.[3] Had it not been for the
force of events, and the efforts of a
few energetic men, education had been
shelved, as a musty useless topic, for
an indefinite period.

Now, however, in this forty-eighth
year of the nineteenth century, it is
viewed in a far different light. The
middle classes have begun to take up
the matter as they had never done
before,—”purging and unsealing their
long abused sight” to the manifold
advantages involved in it for themselves;
while the upper classes look
more to how it fares in this respect
with the very poor or the profligate.
And so much pressed on this subject,
from many quarters, is the government,
that neither Lord John Russell,
as long as he remains on the Treasury
Bench, nor any body else, who
may get there, can ever hope to avoid
doing something for the education of
the people.

There has been a growing sense
of the importance of this subject
on the part of the nation at large,
which has acted on the nervous
sensibilities of all occupants of office
in later years; and the very force
of events themselves, apart from all
theoretic reasoning as to expediency
or the contrary, has compelled each
successive government to look after
the schoolmaster, and even to send him
abroad in the world, though at the
risk of making him the laughing-stock
of his scholars for want of due preparation.

We do not purpose to write the
history of the educational movement
of this realm since the middle of the
eighteenth century—volumes might be
compiled on the topic, and it would
still remain unexhausted.

There are, however, two things
which we would point out to the attention
of our readers. The first is,[541]
that the constituted authorities of this
country and the legislature, ever since
the time of the Reformation, have acted
too much upon the principle that the
ecclesiastical establishments of the
nation, aided by the Foundation schools
of the land, not only were sufficient
to attend to the moral and religious
welfare of the community, but that
they actually did effect this end, and
that they did bring up the people in
the right way; whereas we now
know, that not only has the constitution
of the ecclesiastical revenues and
administration been lamentably unequal
and ineffective, but that provisions
for teaching, upon a general and
effective plan, could hardly be said to
exist. At all events, when the population
began to increase rapidly—when
the great movement of the Methodists
took place in England—and
later, when religious dissent not only
reared its hydra head, but became encouraged
in high places—the nation
seemed all at once to start from its
lethargy, and to inquire into what
means it possessed for enlightening
and civilising the humblest classes of
its children; and, when it did so
inquire, those means were found wanting.

Again, in these our own days, when
crime is shown to be increasing in a
much faster ratio than either the enormous
wealth or the already great
population of the country; and when
legal inquirers have traced back adult
crime to puerile and even infantine
neglect and ignorance; when the brutality of
the people shows itself at every
man’s door and homestead, in the
burning of farming-stock or the destruction
of machinery and dwelling-houses,
and makes itself to be paid for
in the form of constantly increasing
poor-rates,—in times such as these, it
behoves every man, who has any thing
to dread from the insurrectionary
rising of the lower classes, to look
sharply around him, and to see how
best the sources of the evil torrent may
be dried up; where the strongest dam
may be thrown across its impetuous
course, and into what side-channels its
blind strength may be diverted. It
behoves every thoughtful lover of his
country to consider well how the innate
national energies of his fellow
countrymen may be improved, humanised,
and directed to proper objects;
and how the mass of the people, instead
of being dreaded as a mob of
hungry, savage levellers, may come to
be looked on as the broad basis and
support of the whole national edifice.
And this is to be effected by attending,
not merely to the physical
and material well-being of the people,
but by giving well directed and unceasing
diligence to the promotion of
“true religion and sound knowledge”
among them. We maintain that
hitherto, and even at the present time,
the public constituted means for attaining
this important end have been, and
are, altogether insufficient; and we further
maintain, that the necessity of
making some adequate provision is
increasing every day, and cannot long
be postponed without imminent danger
to the community.

We would also beg our readers to
observe that, in the case of these commissions
of inquiry into the existing
state of education in any given district,
but especially in Wales, the commissioners
had not got to look into what
the existing government, or previous
governments, had done, nor into how
their systems acted—those governments
had done nothing, and they had
no system; but they rather went to
see what the people, abandoned to
their own resources by the state, which
ought to have aided them, had been
able to effect out of their own means
and goodwill, and to witness the results
of the voluntary and fortuitous systems
which were then in full and unaided operation.
Whatever causes of blame and
offence the commissioners might meet
with—whatever imperfections, and
shortcomings, and ill doings, they might
perceive—these could not so much be
laid to the blame of the people, as they
might in fairness be attributed to the
neglect and apathy of the nation at
large. It was entirely owing to the
private efforts of the people in their
various localities, unconnected with
each other—to their desultory and varying
efforts—that any thing had been
done at all. It was obviously better
that something should have been done
rather than nothing; but the debt of
gratitude for the “something” was
due to the people—the blame of the[542]
“nothing” lay with the legislature
and the nation at large.

It would, therefore, be highly unbecoming
in such commissioners, to show
any flippant petulancy in their animadversions
on the generally defective results
which the isolated operations of
the several parishes and districts might
evince. It would behove them to look
on with rather a benevolent eye, and
to speak with a guarded tongue concerning
the evils they might witness.
We think they have not altogether
shown these qualifications in the Reports
now before us; and after perusing
them, we rise with the feeling
that the commissioners seem to have
thought themselves authorised to find
out how far the various teachers, &c.,
had neglected duties imposed on them
by the public, and that they had
expected to find perfection pervading
the country; whereas they should have
anticipated that imperfection and
neglect would prove to be the rule—perfection
and care the few and distant
exceptions.

It is by no means so easy to inspect
a school, or to find out the knowledge
and the modes of thinking of
young people, as might be supposed.
It is not to be done by any one stalking
stiffly into a school-room, giving
himself the airs of a Dr Busby, and
putting questions with the consequence
of an examiner in the schools
at Oxford. The very idea of a stranger
being in the room, and much more of
one authorised to examine, is enough
to dislocate the thoughts of children,
older and riper than village boys and
girls commonly are; and the mere interruption
of the usual formalities of
class arrangement and class work is
sufficient to break up the discipline
which, in all parochial schools at
least, rests upon a very precarious and
doubtful basis. Much less is it possible,
by a flying visit of one, or two,
or three hours, to get at a true perception
of what the average knowledge of
children may be fairly rated at: it is
only by repeated and patient inspection
that the ordinary amount of work
done, and knowledge gained, can be
discovered. The young mind, too,
does not commonly retain facts—it
rather receives general impressions,
and, though this is not produceable
knowledge, it is, nevertheless, information,
and cultivation of the mental
powers, and formation of the character,
not without great value. But
because a child cannot answer certain
questions at a certain time and
place, it does not therefore follow
that it is ignorant of the subject.
The thoughts cannot be concentrated,
the powers of the memory and of expression
have not been sufficiently
cultivated; the faculty of reproduction,
and the method of arrangement
and classification of ideas, do not exist.
It is impossible for such a child to
pass through the ordeal. And yet the
common expression of young people,
when the question they could not
answer is explained for them—”Oh
yes! I knew that—only I could not
remember it,” tells the whole truth,
and reveals at once the constitution
and the weakness of their minds. Examinations,
unless they immediately
follow the subject learnt, are not suited
to young children, and may tend to
give a false idea of their real acquirements.
But, if to this dread of answering
questions be added the awe
arising from an examiner’s—a strange
examiner’s presence, the physical impossibility
of obtaining satisfactory
replies is thereby confirmed. We
remember it in our own case at school;
in the presence of the university examiner,
who periodically visited us, it
was

“Obstupui, steteruntque comæ; vox faucibus hæsit;”

and even in the schools of adolescent
life, the examiners put us many a stiff
question in Plato and Aristotle at
which we hung our heads and stammered
out nonsense; but which, as
soon as we got back to our rooms in
college, came to our memory in provoking
vividness.

The commissioners seem to have
hoped for unimpeachable examinations—and
in almost every case they were
disappointed: they could often hardly
get a reply to the commonest questions.
Much of this arose from their examining
chiefly in subjects that were
taught in a foreign language. But of
this more anon.

The nature and object of this inspection[543]
of Welsh schools are sufficiently
explained in the instructions
from Mr Kay Shuttleworth, the secretary
to the Committee of Council,
which preface the first of the three
goodly volumes to which these Reports
extend. These instructions
say:—

“Attention was called, during the last
session of parliament, to the state of education
in Wales, by a motion in the house
of commons, for an address to the Queen,
praying her majesty ‘to direct an inquiry
to be made into the state of education in
the principality of Wales, especially into
the means afforded to the labouring
classes of acquiring a knowledge of the
English language.’

“The secretary of state for the home
department undertook on that occasion,
on behalf of her majesty’s late government,
that such an inquiry should be instituted,
and he intimated that it should
be conducted under the authority of the
committee of council on education.

“The object of your commission is, to
ascertain, as accurately as circumstances
will permit, the existing number of
schools of all descriptions, for the education
of the children of the labouring
classes, or of adults—the amount of attendance—the
ages of the scholars—and
the character of the instruction given in
the schools; in order that her majesty’s
government and parliament may be enabled,
by having these facts before them,
in connexion with the wants and circumstances
of the population of the principality,
to consider what measures ought
to be taken for the improvement of the
existing means of education in Wales.”

It will be perceived from this portion
of the instructions, that the
inquiries of the Commissioners were to
be limited to the schools intended for
the lower classes only; and therefore
that they would have to look for the
workings of the voluntary and the isolated
system in its fullest extent. The
further definition of the object of the
Commission is thus specified:—

“The schools for the instruction of the
poorer classes in Wales have chiefly been
erected by private beneficence, and some
have been endowed from the same source;
such of them as have no permanent endowment
are supported by the small
payments of the poor, by collections in
religious congregations, and by voluntary
subscriptions.

“Their lordships cannot confer on you
any absolute authority to enter into and
examine schools, nor to require from any
persons information respecting them
which they may be unwilling to communicate.

“If no objection is made to your visit,
you will personally examine, where practicable,
the condition of the school, keeping
in view the following particulars, as
those on which it will be important to
obtain correct information:—The tenure
of the school, whether held under a mere
temporary occupation, or secured by deed
for ever, or for a term of years—the capacity
of the school-room—the state of
the school furniture and apparatus—the
number of the children on the books—the
average attendance—the organisation of
the school, and the methods used—the
subjects professed to be taught—the time
allotted to each—the books used—whether
the children are instructed in the
Welsh language, or in the English, or in
both—whether in each case in the grammar
or not—the actual condition of their
instruction on all subjects professed to
be taught. You will ascertain the
amount and sources of the annual income
available for the necessary expenses;
the number of teachers—their ages—whether
trained at a normal school or at a
model school—for what period, and when.
At what age they commenced their vocation
as teachers; their previous occupation—the
salaries of each teacher—their
income from school pence, and other emoluments.
Whether they follow any trade,
or hold any other office. Whether they
have a house rent-free, a garden rent-free,
fuel, or other emoluments.

“Numerous Sunday-schools have been
established in Wales, and their character
and tendencies should not be overlooked,
in an attempt to estimate the provision
for the instruction of the poor. The
Sunday-school must be regarded as the
most remarkable, because the most general,
spontaneous effort of the zeal of
Christian congregations for education.
Its origin, organisation, and tendencies,
are purely religious.”

So far so good; the spirit of these
instructions is wise and humane; we
can only regret that such a commission
had not been issued a century
earlier. But shortly after, there follows
a sentence which, to any one
tolerably well acquainted with Wales,
must appear at first sight absolutely
trivial, and then highly extraordinary:—

“In some parts of the country it
will probably be necessary that you[544]
should avail yourselves of the services
of persons possessing a knowledge of
the Welsh language.”

Why, of course, when Welsh is
the living spoken language of three-fourths
of the whole district to
be examined, and when English is
essentially a foreign language, imperfectly
understood in those portions,—in
some parts, indeed, hardly at all
known,—the very least of the qualifications
that we should suppose a
commissioner or school inspector
ought to possess, would be a good
knowledge of the Welsh language.
Did, then, the lords of the privy
council, composing the committee of
education, know so little of the country
they wished to have inspected,
that they thought it only “probable”
that in “some parts” of the country
a knowledge of Welsh would be necessary?
If they had been sending
travelling commissioners to the Continent
to inquire into the state of
public education in France or Germany,
would they then have sent to
the former country those who knew no
other foreign language than German,
and to the latter those who knew
none but French? This is a regular
piece of official oversight, betraying
one-sided and crude views of the subject
to be treated; and showing that
the examination of it was begun in a
hasty and somewhat inconsiderate
manner. It might have been predicted
that any one not thoroughly
conversant with Welsh could never
obtain original information for himself,
but would have to speak through
other people’s mouths, hear with their
ears, and even see with their eyes.
He would never gain the confidence
of the people, but would return with
an imperfect, and all but a second-hand
report. He would resemble the
honest tar who, on his return from
Cherbourg, gave it as his opinion that
the French were the dullest nation on
the face of the earth, since they could
not speak common English. And so
it has actually proved to be the case
with these very Commissioners. Not
only do we find the main grievance
in their reports to be the ignorance of
the children in the English language,
but the prevalent feeling, all over
Wales, is, that these gentlemen have
gone out of it nearly as wise, concerning
the actual knowledge of the
people, as they came into it: and
that, could the examinations have
been conducted by them in the Welsh
tongue, their reports would have
assumed a very different character.
What? complain of children not
twelve years of age for not comprehending
questions addressed to them
in a foreign language? Bring a
French Government inspector of
schools from Paris, and set him to
examine all the boarding-schools round
London in the French tongue, he himself
using it all the while for his
questions; and then let him go home and
declare that not one child in ten knew
any thing about what he said to them,—and
he would come near the truth;—and
very like this is the result of
this inspection of Welsh schools by
English examiners. The Government,
however, do not seem to have learnt
wisdom in this respect, for they have
very recently appointed, as permanent
inspectors for Wales, a gentleman
named Morell, and one of the authors
of this very report, Mr Symons; neither
of whom, we will bet a leek to a
potato, can hold a conversation in
Welsh.

One of the main difficulties in the
way of education in Wales, if not the
principal difficulty of all, results from
the circumstance that the language of
the principality is not that of the rest
of the kingdom. To understand this
difficulty fully, it must be remembered
that the Welsh belong to a race
of men essentially and altogether
distinct from those that inhabit the
lands eastward of Offa’s dyke; that
the peculiarities of national character
which subsist among them have been
only in a very small part removed by
amalgamation of the two races;
and that these differences are so
wide, and so deeply seated, that here,
as elsewhere—wherever, indeed, the
Celtic and Teutonic races have been
brought into contact,—a struggle and
an opposition, a repulsive tendency,
more or less open and active, have
ever existed, and have brought about
the subjugation, the inferiority, and,
to a certain degree, the degradation
of the former. The Saxons produced
few or no results of importance by[545]
their attacks on the Welsh; the hardy
mountaineers generally gave them as
much as they brought; and, had they
been doomed to meet with no men of
sterner stuff, they would still have
held their own in unbroken integrity.
But the energy of the Normans, their
fire and gallantry, animating and directing
the slower impulses of their
Teutonic vassals, made the monarch
of England at length the conquering
sovereign of Wales; and, from that
moment, with the transient exception
of Owen Glyndwr’s bright resistance,
Wales not only became the conquered
and suffering country, but showed all
the symptoms of it, and brought forth
all its fruits. The higher classes either
became replaced by Anglo-Norman
nobles, or imitated both their customs
and their language;—many of the
largest landed proprietors no longer resided
in the principality; and those who
did, held themselves far above their
Celtic vassals in proud and domineering
exclusiveness. The common people—the
mass of the nation, including the
petty free-holders and the remains of
the conquered native nobles—formed
a national party, ever opposed to their
haughty masters; adhered to their
national language with the greater
devotion, as it was to them the only
relic of their former independence;
retained their ancient national customs
and superstitions; and were content
to turn their backs upon the
progress of that nation whose power
they could not throw off, though the
desire to do so remained, and is not,
even at the present day, extinguished.
The Welsh still call themselves “the
Cymry,” and the English “the Saeson.”
They still look on the English as
foreigners; and this fact alone speaks
volumes as to the antagonism that
still subsists between the two races.
It is not our intention to go into any
discussion upon the political bearings
of this state of things: we will only
observe, that the gentry and clergy of
Wales having mainly carried on their
studies in the English language, and
having been anxious to do so as a mark
of distinction from their humbler
neighbours, not only has the Welsh
language remained almost stationary
since the time of the conquest, but the
national mind, the intelligence of the
common people, has never kept pace
with that of England. Nearly all the
literature and science, all the poetry,
history, and belles-lettres of the
English nation, have been to the
Welsh totally unknown. They have
never been translated; and, for that
very reason, the middle classes of the
country, and of course all the lower
ones, are, it may be said, almost
totally ignorant of them.

Another circumstance tending to
this comparative isolation, is the physical
formation of the country, which,
by keeping the people, down to the present
time, fixed to their bleak hills and
extensive moorlands, and by discouraging
the growth of large towns, has
retained the people in a state of primitive
agricultural simplicity, which,
while it may make them enjoy a
certain amount of happiness not inferior
to that of their trade-enslaved
neighbours, retards them in what we
suppose to be the summum bonum—the
march of civilisation.

The language, the feelings, the aspirations
of the Welsh are different from
those of the English—altogether different:
and the million of inhabitants,
who are of Celtic race—just like the two
millions of Celts in France who retain
the name of Britons; and the seven
millions of the Erse in Ireland, who
also differ altogether in sympathies,
and to a great extent in language, from
their conquerors—never will unite
with the Saxon race so far as to keep
pace with them in what is called
“improvement” and “knowledge.”
This fundamental difference is alone
sufficient to account for the different
degrees of education in the two countries,
even supposing that, after all,
this difference should turn out to be
less than it is actually supposed to be
by her Majesty’s inspectors; and it
will also account for the immense preponderance
of dissent in Wales, and
for the pining state of the church.
Ever since the time of Henry VIII., the
English church has been the church of
the conqueror. The conquered have
been left to form their own religious
creed; and, at the present moment, the
Welsh adhere with all the warmth of
national enthusiasm, and with all the
devotion of a conquered people, to
any form of worship but that which
they see adopted by the upper classes—by
their Anglo-Norman lords and[546]
masters. The limits of a review do
not allow of our pursuing this portion
of the subject to the extent we might
wish; but we know that what we have
here asserted is at the bottom of some
of the main differences between the
Welsh and the English characters;
and we do not know of any means
whereby these causes can be removed,
except through the soothing and permuting
influence of time. We appeal
to the knowledge and experience of
the more intelligent of the Welsh
gentry for a confirmation of these
views; we find ample evidence in
support of them in the pages of these
very reports. All through these
volumes—in almost every page—there
is the same complaint that
the difference of language impedes the
communication of knowledge; and,
indeed, we very much doubt whether
any English parent or schoolmaster,
who wished to convey all ideas of
religious and secular knowledge to his
children through the medium of the
Welsh language,—to be taught them
by an Englishman,—from the age of
eight years old and upwards, would
not arrive at the same negative result
as the Welshman who makes the same
experiment by means of the English
tongue.

We may here quote the following
important observations from the report
of Mr Lingen—by far the most
able, and the best digested of the three.
And we take the opportunity of pointing
out this gentleman’s introductory
remarks, as conveying the most valuable
information which we have met
with concerning the actual state of
Wales,—as well as for the highly enlightened
and philosophic spirit in
which they are conceived.

Mr Lingen observes:—

“My district exhibits the phenomenon
of a peculiar language isolating the mass
from the upper portion of society; and,
as a further phenomenon, it exhibits this
mass engaged upon the most opposite
occupations at points not very distant
from each other; being, on the one side,
rude and primitive agriculturists, living
poorly, and thinly scattered; on the
other, smelters and miners, wantoning
in plenty, and congregated in the densest
accumulations. An incessant tide of
immigration sets in from the former extreme
to the latter, and, by perpetuating
a common character in each, admits of
their being contemplated under a single
point of view. Whether in the country, or
among the furnaces, the Welsh element
is never found at the top of the social
scale, nor in its own body does it exhibit
much variety of gradation. In the country,
the farmers are very small holders,
in intelligence and capital nowise distinguished
from labourers. In the works,
the Welsh workman never finds his way
into the office. He never becomes either
clerk or agent. He may become an overseer
or sub-contractor, but this does not take
him out of the labouring and put him into
the administering class. Equally in his
new, as in his old, home, his language
keeps him under the hatches, being one in
which he can neither acquire nor communicate
the necessary information. It is a
language of old-fashioned agriculture, of
theology, and of simple rustic life, while
all the world about him is English.

“Thus his social sphere becomes one
of complete isolation from all influences,
save such as arise within his own order.
He jealously shrinks from holding any
communication with classes either superior
to, or different from, himself. His superiors
are content, for the most part, simply
to ignore his existence in all its moral
relations. He is left to live in an under
world of his own, and the march of society
goes so completely over his head
that he is never heard of, excepting when
the strange and abnormal features of a
revival, or a Rebecca or Chartist outbreak,
call attention to a phase of society
which could produce any thing so contrary
to all that we elsewhere experience.

“Cut off from, or limited to a purely
material agency in, the practical world,
his mental faculties, so far as they are
not engrossed by the hardships of rustic,
or the intemperance of manufacturing,
life, have hitherto been exerted almost
exclusively upon theological ideas. In
this direction too, from causes which it is
out of my province to particularise, he
has moved under the same isolating destiny,
and his worship, like his life, has
grown different from that of the classes
over him. Nor has he failed of tangible
results in his chosen province of independent
exertion. He has raised the buildings,
and maintains the ministry of his
worship over the whole face of his country,
to an extent adequate to his accommodation.”

“On the manifold evils inseparable
from an ignorance of English, I found but
one opinion expressed on all hands. They
are too palpable, and too universally admitted,
to need particularising. Yet, if
interest pleads for English, affection[547]
leans to Welsh. The one is regarded as
a new friend to be acquired for profit’s
sake; the other as an old one, to be cherished
for himself, and especially not to be
deserted in his decline. Probably you
could not find in the most purely Welsh
parts a single parent, in whatever class,
who would not have his child taught
English in school; yet every characteristic
development of the social life into which
that same child is born—preaching—prayer-meetings—Sunday-schools—clubs—biddings—funerals—the
denominational
magazine (his only press), all these
exhibit themselves to him in Welsh as their
natural exponent, partly, it may be, from
necessity, but, in some degree also, from
choice. ‘In the Cymreigyddion (benefit
societies) it is a rule that no English shall
be spoken.’ It is true that the necessities
of the world more and more force English
upon the Welshman; but, whether he can
speak no English, or whether he speaks
it imperfectly, he finds it alike painful to
be reminded of his utter, or to struggle
against his partial, inability of expression.
His feelings are impetuous; his imagination
vivid; his ideas (on such topics as he
entertains) succeed each other rapidly.
Hence he is naturally voluble, often eloquent.
He possesses a mastery over his
own language far beyond that which the
Englishman of the same degree possesses
over his. A certain power of elocution
(viz., to pray ‘doniol,’ as it is called, i. e.,
in a gifted manner), is so universal in his
class that to be without it is a sort of
stigma. Hence, in speaking English, he
has at once to forego the conscious power
of displaying certain talents whereon he
piques himself, and to exhibit himself under
that peculiar form of inability which
most offends his self-esteem. From all
those favourite scenes of his life, therefore,
which can still be transacted without
English, he somewhat eagerly banishes it
as an irksome imposition.

“Through no other medium than a
common language can ideas become common.
It is impossible to open formal
sluice-gates for them from one language
into another. Their circulation requires
a net-work of pores too minute for analysis,
too numerous for special provision.
Without this net-work, the ideas come
into an alien atmosphere in which they
are lifeless. Direct education finds no
place, when indirect education is excluded
by the popular language, as it were by a
wall of brass. Nor can an old and cherished
language be taught down in schools;
for so long as the children are familiar
with none other, they must be educated
to a considerable extent through the medium
of it, even though to supersede it
be the most important part of their education.
Still less, out of school, can the
language of lessons make head against
the language of life. But schools are
every day standing less alone in this contest.
Along the chief lines of road, from
the border counties, from the influx of
English, or English-speaking labourers,
into the iron and coal-fields—in short from
every point of contact with modern activity,
the English tongue keeps spreading,
in some places rapidly, but sensibly in
all. Railroads, and the fuller development
of the great mineral beds, are on
the eve of multiplying these points of
contact. Hence the encouragement vigorously
to press forward the cause of
popular education in its most advanced
form. Schools are not called upon to impart
in a foreign, or engraft upon the ancient
tongue a factitious education conceived
under another set of circumstances
(in either of which cases the task would
be as hopeless as the end unprofitable),
but to convey in a language, which is
already in process of becoming the mother
tongue of the country, such instruction as
may put the people on a level with that
position which is offered to them by the
course of events. If such instruction
contrasts in any points with the tendency
of old ideas, such contrast will
have its reflex and its justification in
the visible change of surrounding circumstances.”

We find the same statements
amply corroborated by the evidence
of Mr Symons, another of her Majesty’s
inspectors. He observes:—

“The Welsh language is a vast drawback
to Wales, and a manifold barrier to the
moral progress and commercial prosperity
of the people. It is not easy to overestimate
its evil effects. It is the language
of the Cymri, and anterior to that
of the ancient Britons. It dissevers the
people from intercourse which would
greatly advance their civilisation, and
bars the access of improving knowledge
to their minds. As a proof of this, there
is no Welsh literature worthy of the
name. The only works generally read in
the Welsh language are the Welsh
monthly magazines, of which a list and
description are given in the Appendix
lettered H. They are much more talented
than any other Welsh works extant, but
convey, to a very limited extent, a knowledge
of passing events, and are chiefly
polemical and full of bitter sectarianism,
and indulge a great deal in highly-coloured
caricatures and personality. Nevertheless
they have partially lifted the
people from that perfect ignorance and
utter vacuity of thought which otherwise
would possess at least two-thirds of them.[548]
At the same time, these periodicals have
used their monopoly as public instructors
in moulding the popular mind, and confirming
a natural partiality for polemics,
which impedes the cultivation of a higher
and more comprehensive taste and desire
for general information. This has been
conclusively proved by Mr Rees, the enterprising
publisher at Llandovery. He
commenced the publication of a periodical
similar to the Penny Magazine, in the
Welsh language, but lost L.200 by it in a
year. This was probably too short a trial
of the experiment; but it sufficiently
evinces the difficulty of supplanting an
established taste, by means however inoffensive.

“The evil of the Welsh language, as I
have above stated, is obviously and fearfully
great in courts of justice. The evidence
given by Mr Hall (No. 37) is borne
out by every account I have heard on the
subject; it distorts the truth, favours
fraud, and abets perjury, which is frequently
practised in courts, and escapes
detection through the loop-holes of interpretation.
This public exhibition of successful
falsehood has a disastrous effect
on public morals and regard for truth.
The mockery of an English trial of a
Welsh criminal by a Welsh jury, addressed
by counsel and judge in English,
is too gross and shocking to need comment.
It is nevertheless a mockery which
must continue until the people are taught
the English language; and that will not
be done until there are efficient schools
for the purpose.”

The Reverend Mr Griffiths, of the
Dissenting college, Brecknock, says:—

“It (the English language) is gaining
ground in the border counties, but not so
fast as Englishmen are apt to suppose.
Very few pulpits or Sunday-schools have
changed languages within the memory of
man. Until that is done, the English,
however employed in ordinary matters of
business, can have little effect on the
formation of character. As to the desirableness
of its being better taught,
without entering on considerations of commerce
or general literature, confessedly
important as they are, perhaps you will
forgive my taking an extract from the
address published by the Llandovery conference”
[from which the following passage
may be cited]:—”‘Hallowed by
religion and rich with the magic of genius
and associations of home, it (the Welsh
language) cannot be otherwise than dear
to our hearts. It has done good service
in its day, and the sooner that service is
acknowledged, the better for all parties
concerned. If die it must, let it die fairly,
peacefully, and reputably. Attached to
it as we are, few would wish to postpone
its euthanasy. But no sacrifice would be
deemed too great to prevent its being
murdered. At the best, the vanishing for
ever of a language which has been spoken
for thousands of years is a deeply touching
event. There is a melancholy grandeur
in the very idea, to which even its bitterest
enemies cannot be wholly insensible.
What, then, must the actual fact be to those
who have worshipped and loved in its
accents from the earliest hours of childhood,
and all whose fondest recollections
and hopes are bound up in its existence?'”

Mr Johnson, the third inspector,
publishes a most curious list of all the
books now circulating in the Welsh
language. They are only 405 in number,
and out of these 309 relate to
religion or poetry, 50 to scientific
subjects, and only the remaining 46
to general subjects. What can be
done for the education of a people
with such a literature? Evidently
nothing, until one of these two contingencies
shall take place: either that
the people forsake their own language,
and adopt English exclusively, or that
a very considerable number of the
best elementary and educational books
in the English language be translated
into Welsh, and the people taught in
them. Neither of which contingencies
are likely to fall out for many generations
yet to come; though the latter
is clearly possible and desirable; and
the former not only impossible except
in the lapse of ages, but also, for reasons
that we shall advert to hereafter,
highly to be deprecated even if it lay
within the limits of feasibility.

We now address ourselves to the
main features of the reports themselves;
and shall begin by observing
that each volume consists of an introductory
report, followed and supported
by an immense mass of detailed
evidence, accounts of the examination
of each school, and elaborate tables,
enough to confound the diligence of
the most indefatigable reader, and
amply sufficient to satisfy the statistical
appetites of Mr Kay Shuttleworth,
the secretary of the committee,
and Mr Williams, late M.P. for Coventry,
in whose motion these volumes
originated.

The first volume (Mr Lingen’s)
contains 62 pages of introductory report,
and 492 of evidence and tables.[549]
The second volume, (Mr Symons’s,)
68 of report, and 266 of evidence,
&c.; and the third, (Mr Johnson’s,)
which is the volume devoted to North
Wales, has also 68 of report, and 358
of evidence.

The reports of nearly all the schools,
with very few and widely-scattered
exceptions, run all on the same
themes; the inability of the children
to answer the examiner’s questions,
and their ignorance, bad pronunciation,
bad syntax, &c., of the English
language. We know for a fact, on the
other hand, that the returns of the inspectors
are disputed in a great number
of cases by competent judges residing
in or near the parishes where
the examinations took place; and that
the inspectors are accused of having
conducted their examinations not only
in an off-hand flippant manner, with
much precipitancy, but with a method
so decidedly English, and therefore
foreign, as at once to unnerve both the
children and the schoolmasters, and
thus to have produced the most negative
and unfavourable results possible.
In a great many instances, too, the
inspectors are accused of having made
erroneous returns. We have been
ourselves at the pains to make inquiries
into these points, but for the very
obvious reason of not wishing to involve
ourselves in controversy, we abstain
from discussing the evidence,
especially with three lawyers for our
antagonists: we leave this task to the
Welsh local press, which has been for
some time past running a-muck at
them, and is disposed to devour them—reports,
pens, ink, wigs, gowns,
and all. We shall content ourselves
with stating, that we know of one instance
in which the inspector has sent
in a very unfavourable report of a
considerable school, which had been
thoroughly and patiently examined
only a few weeks before by one of the
Welsh bishops, aided by some local
clergymen, in the presence of a large
concourse of the laity, and when the
result had turned out to be highly
creditable both to the teachers and
the scholars. In the latter case, the
children had been questioned both in
Welsh and English by Welsh people,
and by people whom they knew and
were not afraid of. In the former,
they had been examined by one of her
Majesty’s inspectors, learned in the
law, but not in the Welsh language,
nor in the art of conciliating the Welsh
people. We shall take instances from
each of the three reports, diving into
these parliamentary folios quite at hazard,
and fishing up the first returns that
meet our eye: they will give some
idea of the inspectors’ skill, and of the
condition of the schools.

Mr Lingen reports as follows of a
school in the parish of Llangwnnor,
Carmarthenshire.

“I visited this school on the 24th of
November; it is held in a ruinous hovel
of the most squalid and miserable character,
which was originally erected by the
parish, but apparently by encroachment.
On Sunday the Calvinistic Methodists hold
a school in it; the floor is of bare earth,
full of deep holes; the windows are all
broken; a tattered partition of lath and
plaster divides it into two unequal portions;
in the larger were a few wretched
benches, and a small desk for the master
in one corner; in the lesser was an old
door with the hasp still upon it, laid
crossways upon two benches, about half
a yard high, to serve for a writing-desk!
Such of the scholars as write retire in
pairs to this part of the room, and kneel
on the ground while they write. On the
floor was a heap of loose coal, and a litter
of straw, paper, and all kinds of rubbish.
The vicar’s son informed me that
he had seen eighty children in this hut.
In summer the heat of it is said to be suffocating;
and no wonder.

“The master appeared a pains-taking
and amiable man, and had a very good
character given of him. He had been
disabled from following his trade (that of
a carpenter) by an accident. He was
but indifferently acquainted with English;
one of the copies set by him was
‘The Jews slain Christ.’ I stood by
while he heard two classes—one of two
little girls, and another of three little
boys and a girl—read. The two first
read an account of our Lord’s temptation;
the master asked them to spell a
few words, which they did, and then to
give the Welsh equivalents for several
English words, which they also did; he
asked no other questions. The other
class read small sentences containing a
repetition of the same word, e. g., ‘The
bad do sin—wo to the bad—the bad do
lie,’ &c. They were utterly unable to
turn such sentences into Welsh; they
knew the letters (for they could point to
particular words when required,) and
they knew to some extent the English
sound of them; they knew also the[550]
meaning of the single words (for they
could give the Welsh equivalents,) but
they had no idea of the sentence. With
them, therefore, English reading must be
(at best) a mere string of words, connected
only by juxtaposition.”

Mr. Symons gives the following report
of a school at Llanfihangel
Creiddyn, in Cardiganshire.

“This parish contains a very good
modern school-room, but it is not finished
inside. There is no floor of any sort. The
school, nevertheless, is of the most inferior
description, devoid of method in the instruction,
and of capacity in the master.
During the whole of last summer the
school was shut, and the room was used
by the carpenters who were repairing the
church. One of their benches is now used
as a writing table. Few of the children
remain a year; they come for a quarter
or half-a-year, and then leave the school.
Fourteen children were present, together
with two young men who were there to
learn writing. Four of the children only
could read in the Testament, and the master
selected the 1st chapter of Revelation
for them to read in. They stammered
through several verses, mispronouncing
nearly every word, and which the master
took some pains to correct. None of them
knew the meaning, or could give the
Welsh words for ‘show,’ ‘gave,’ or ‘faith.’
One or two only knew that of ‘grace,’
‘woman,’ ‘nurse.’ Their knowledge of
spelling was very limited. Of Scripture
they knew next to nothing. Jesus was
said to be the son of Joseph; one child
only said the Son of God; another thought
he was on earth now; and another said
he would come again ‘to increase grace,’
grace meaning godliness. Three out of the
five could not tell why Christ came to the
earth, a penny having been offered for a
correct answer. Two could not tell any
one thing that Christ did, and a third said
he drew water from a rock in the land of
Canaan. None knew the number of the
Apostles; one never heard of them, and
two could not name any of them. Christ
died in Calvary, which one said was in
England, and the others did not know
where it was. Four could not tell the
day Christ was born, or what it was called.
The days of a week were guessed to be
five, six, four, and seven. The days in the
month twenty and fifteen, and nine could
name the months. None knew the number
of days in the year; and all thought
the sun moved round the world. This
country was said to be Cardiganshire, not
Wales. Ireland one thought a town, and
another a parish. England was a town,
and London a country. A king was a
reasonable being (creadwr rhesymnol.)
Victoria is the Queen, and it is our duty
to do every thing for her. In arithmetic
they could do next to nothing, and failed
to answer the simplest questions. I then
examined the young men, promising two-pence
to those who answered most correctly.
They had a notion of the elements
of Scripture truths. Two of them had no
notion of arithmetic. The third answered
easy questions, and could do sums in the
simple rules. On general subjects their
information was very little superior to
that of the children.”

And Mr Vaughan Johnson, in examining
the church school of Holyhead,
in the Isle of Anglesey, reports as
follows:—

“Holyhead Church School.—A school
for boys and girls, taught by a master and
mistress, in separate rooms of a large building
set apart for that purpose. Number
of boys, 96; of girls, 47; 10 monitors
are employed. Subjects taught, reading,
writing, and arithmetic, the Holy Scriptures
and Church catechism. Fees, 1d.
per week.

“This school was examined November
9. Total number present, 117. Of these,
20 could write well on paper; 40 were
able to read with ease; and 22 could
repeat the Church catechism, 15 of them
with accuracy. In knowledge of Holy
Scripture and in arithmetic, the boys were
very deficient. Scholars in the first class
said that there were 18 gospels, that Bartholomew
wrote one and Simon another;
that Moses was the son of David. These
answers were not corrected by the rest.
By a lower class it was said, that Jerusalem
is in heaven, and that St Paul wrote
the gospel according to St Matthew;
another believed it was written by Jesus
Christ. The oldest boy in a large class
said, that Joseph was the son of Abraham.
A child about 10 years old said,
that Jesus Christ was the Saviour of men;
but, upon being asked ‘From what did
he save mankind?’ replied, ‘from God.’

“Having heard from the patrons that
the scholars were particularly expert in
arithmetic, I requested the master to
exhibit his best scholars. Thirteen boys
accordingly multiplied a given sum of
£ s. d. by (25 + ½.) The process was
neatly and accurately performed by every
boy. I then examined the same class in
arithmetic, and set each boy a distinct
sum in multiplication of money. Instead
of (25 + ½) I gave 5 as the number by
which the several sums were to be multiplied.
I allowed each boy for this simple
process twice as much time as he had
required for the preceding, which was
far more complicated; but only two of[551]
the 13 could bring me a correct answer.
This is well worthy of remark. The
original sum appears to be one which
they are in the habit of performing before
strangers; many had copied the whole
process from those next them, without
understanding a single step.

“The girls were further advanced in
arithmetic and in Holy Scripture. But
the 2d class asserted that St Matthew
was one of the prophets; that Jesus
Christ is in the grave to this day; and
two stated that Jesus Christ and the Virgin
Mary were the same person. Although
these questions were put in English
and in Welsh, few of the children
could understand what they heard or
read in the English language. The questions
were therefore interpreted.”

We should here observe that a considerable
number of the examinations
were conducted not by the inspectors
themselves, but by persons hired by
them, more or less on account of their
knowledge of the Welsh language.
To these we attach little or no weight,
because they have not the sanction of
a Government commission, nor do the
persons themselves hold any official or
private rank by which their capacities
for conducting such examinations can
be ascertained.

As a specimen of the state in which
some of the peasantry are, we find
Mr Lingen, while in Pembrokeshire,
remarking thus:—

“I entered two cottages, where the
children were said not to be attending
school. In the first I found an extremely
well-spoken and intelligent girl of twelve
or thirteen years old, and her brother
somewhat younger. They had been to
Yerbeston day-school for about a quarter,
and to Molleston Sunday-school for
about two years, though not for the last
month. It was closed during the bad
weather and short days. She read about
Jesus in the Testament; but could tell
me nothing about him except that he was
called the Son of Man. She said, ‘They
only teach us to read; they don’t tell us
any of these things at the Sunday-school.’

“In the other cottage I found two little
children, a boy and girl, going, and
having been, to no school of any kind.
The girl was nursing an infant: there
were two other children from home. The
mother of four of them was a widow, the
fifth child was apparently a pauper, billeted
upon her in consideration of 5s. per
week from the parish. At the time of
my visit the mother was out at farm-work
(winnowing), and had to be called; I
could get no answer from the two children.
The girl, who was the eldest, and
in her ninth year, only replied to my questions
by a cunning, unpleasant grin,
though her face was intelligent and not
ill-looking. The boy had a most villainous
expression of sullen stolidity; he was
mixing culm with his hands. They knew
no prayers, nor who to pray to—and of
course never prayed. The mother could
not read nor write—’worse luck,’ as she
said; her only chance of educating these
children was a free-school. The entire
5s. went in food at the present high prices,
and ‘not enough then.’

“In this same neighbourhood I asked
some questions of a little boy, nearly
seven, whom I met on the road. It was
in vain that I tempted him with half-pence
to answer; he knew nothing of
Sunday—of God—of the devil—’had
heard of Jesus Christ from Jemmy Wilson,’
but could give no account whatever
about him; he knew neither the then day
of the week, nor how many days in a
week, nor months in a year; he had never
been in any school; his brother and sister
were going to St Issell’s school. I had to
repeat my questions two or three times
over before they seemed to impress any
thing more than his ears. The first answer
invariably was, and it was, often
repeated half a dozen times—’What ee’
say?‘ and the next ‘Do’ know.'”

The condition of the buildings in
which the schools are commonly held
in the country parishes is wretched in
the extreme. Take the following
brief accounts, some of which might
furnish admirable sketches to a Cattermole
or a Maclise:—

“(1.) The school was held in a miserable
room over the stable; it was lighted
by two small glazed windows, and was
very low; in one corner was a broken
bench, some sacks, and a worn-out basket;
another corner was boarded off for
storing tiles and mortar belonging to the
chapel. The furniture consisted of one
small square table for the master, two
larger ones for the children, and a few
benches, all in a wretched state of repair.
There were several panes of glass broken
in the windows; in one place paper
served the place of glass, and in another a
slate, to keep out wind and rain; the
door was also in a very dilapidated condition.
On the beams which crossed the
room were a ladder and two larch poles.

“(2.) The school was held in a room
built in a corner of the churchyard; it
was an open-roofed room; the floor was
of the bare earth, and very uneven; the[552]
room was lighted by two small glazed
windows, one-third of each of which was
patched up with boards. The furniture
consisted of a small square table for the
master, one square table for the pupils,
and seven or eight benches, some of which
were in good repair, and others very bad.
The biers belonging to the church were
placed on the beams which ran across the
room. At one end of the room was a heap
of coal and some rubbish, and a worn-out
basket, and on one side was a new door
leaning against the wall, and intended for
the stable belonging to the church. The
door of the schoolroom was in a very bad
condition, there being large holes in it,
through which cold currents of air were
continually flowing.”

If, however, the condition of the
school-buildings is thus unsuitable,
the previous education and training of
the teachers is not less faulty. The
subjoined extract from Mr Lingen’s
report is borne out by precisely similar
statements from those of his coadjutors:—

“The present average age of teachers
is upwards of 40 years; that at which they
commenced their vocation upwards of 30;
the number trained is 12·5 per cent of the
whole ascertained number; the average
period of training is 7·30 months; the
average income is L.22, 10s. 9d. per
annum; besides which, 16·1 per cent have
a house rent-free. Before adopting their
present profession, 6 had been assistants
in schools, 3 attorneys’ clerks, 1 attorney’s
clerk and sheriff’s officer, 1 apprentice
to an ironmonger, 1 assistant to a
draper, 1 agent, 1 artilleryman, 1 articled
clerk, 2 accountants, 1 auctioneer’s clerk,
1 actuary in a savings’ bank, 3 bookbinders,
1 butler, 1 barber, 1 blacksmith,
4 bonnet-makers, 2 booksellers, 1 bookkeeper,
15 commercial clerks, 3 colliers,
1 cordwainer, 7 carpenters, 1 compositor,
1 copyist, 3 cabinet-makers, 3 cooks, 1
corn-dealer, 3 druggists, 42 milliners, 20
domestic servants, 10 drapers, 4 excise-men,
61 farmers, 25 farm-servants, 1 farm-bailiff,
1 fisherman, 2 governesses, 7 grocers,
1 glover, 1 gardener, 177 at home or
in school, 1 herald-chaser, 4 housekeepers,
2 hatters, 1 helper in a stable, 8 hucksters
or shopkeepers, 1 iron-roller, 6 joiners, 1
knitter, 13 labourers, 4 laundresses, 1
lime-burner, 1 lay-vicar, 5 ladies’-maids,
1 lieutenant R. N., 2 land-surveyors, 22
mariners, 1 mill-wright, 108 married women,
7 ministers, 1 mechanic, 1 miner, 2
mineral agents, 5 masons, 1 mate, 1 maltster,
1 militia-man, 1 musician, 1 musical-wire-drawer,
2 nursery-maids, 1 night-schoolmaster,
1 publican’s wife (separated
from her husband,) 2 preparing for the
church, 1 policeman, 1 pedlar, 1 publican,
1 potter, 1 purser’s steward, 1 planter, 2
private tutors, 1 quarryman, 1 reed-thatcher,
28 sempstresses, 1 second master
R. N., 4 soldiers, 14 shoemakers, 2 machine-weighers,
1 stonecutter, 1 serjeant
of marines, 1 sawyer, 1 surgeon, 1 ship’s
cook, 7 tailors, 1 tailor and marine, 1 tiler,
17 widows, 4 weavers, and 60 unascertained,
or having had no previous occupation.

“In connexion with the vocation of
teacher, 2 follow that of assistant-overseer
of roads, 6 are assistant overseers of the
poor, 1 accountant, 1 assistant parish
clerk, 1 bookbinder, 1 broom and clog-maker,
4 bonnet-makers, 1 sells Berlin
wool, 2 are cow-keepers, 3 collectors of
taxes, 1 drover (in summer,) 12 dressmakers,
1 druggist, 1 farmer, 4 grocers,
3 hucksters or shopkeepers, 1 inspector of
weights and measures, 1 knitter, 2 land-surveyors
(one of them is also a stonecutter,)
2 lodging-house keepers, 1 librarian
to a mechanics’ institute, 16 ministers,
1 master of a workhouse, 1 matron
of a lying-in hospital, 3 mat-makers, 13
preachers, 18 parish or vestry clerks
(uniting in some instances the office of
sexton), 1 printer and engraver, 1 porter,
barber, and layer-out of the dead in a
workhouse, 4 publicans, 1 registrar of
marriages, 11 sempstresses, 1 shopman (on
Saturdays,) 8 secretaries to benefit societies,
1 sexton, 2 shoemakers, 1 tailor, 1
teacher of modern languages, 1 turnpike
man, 1 tobacconist, 1 writing-master in
a grammar-school, and 9 are in receipt of
parochial relief.”

Upon this the inspector observes with
great good sense—

“No observations of mine could heighten
the contrast which facts like the above
exhibit, between the actual and the proper
position of a teacher. I found this
office almost every where one of the least
esteemed and worst remunerated; one of
those vocations which serve as the sinks
of all others, and which might be described
as guilds of refuge; for to what other
grade can the office of teacher be referred
after the foregoing analysis? Is it credible
that, if we took 784 shoemakers,
tailors, carpenters, or any other skilled
workmen, we should find them (one with
another) not to have commenced their
calling before 30 years of age? nor more
than 47·3 per cent of them who had not
previously followed some other calling
nor more than 1 in every 8 who had served
any apprenticeship to it, nor even this 8th
man for a period much longer than half a[553]
year? The miserable pittance which they
get is irregularly paid.”

The pecuniary part of the question,
the ways and means for supporting an
efficient system of education in Wales,
may be very fairly inferred from the
following extract of the report on
three of the most prosperous counties
in the principality, corroborated as
it is by similar statements and returns
in other districts:—

“There is a great and general deficiency
of voluntary funds for the maintenance
of schools for the poor in the rural
parts of South Wales. By far the most
liberal contributors to such schools in
England are the clergy. The following
table exhibits the clerical income of the
beneficed clergy in my district. I would
beg to call particular attention to the
average area and population of the parishes
in Carmarthenshire, and to the income
of the clergy in the remote hundreds
of Dewisland and Kemess:—

“The poor provision which the church
offers to an educated man, and the necessity
of ordaining those only, for the great
majority of parishes, who understand the
Welsh language, are facts which bear
powerfully upon the education of the
country. A large portion of the Welsh
clergy complete their education exclusively
in Wales. The licensed grammar
schools, from which they were formerly
ordained, have been superseded for St
David’s College, Lampeter.

“Still, so far as daily education has
hitherto been supported by voluntary
payments, this has been mostly in connexion
with the church. For, putting
aside 31·1 per cent of the day-scholars
as belonging to private adventure schools,
and 10·9 percent for children in union
workhouse and workmen’s schools, there
remains 39·9 per cent of the day-scholars
in connexion, and 18·1 per cent not in
connexion, with the church.”

Whatever deficiencies there may be
in the system of daily and secular
education, much more zeal and energy
is shown in the Sunday schools; the
causes and objects of which are so
graphically and accurately described
by Mr Lingen, that we must again
quote his own words:—observing that
the two other reports tell the same tale
exactly, only in different language—

“The type of such Sunday schools is no
more than this. A congregation meets in
its chapel. It elects those whom it considers
to be its most worthy members,
intellectually and religiously, to act as
‘teachers’ to the rest, and one or more to
‘superintend’ the whole. Bible classes,
Testament classes, and classes of such as
cannot yet read, are formed. They meet
once, generally from 2 to 4 P.M., sometimes
in the morning also, on each Sunday. The
superintendent, or one of the teachers,
begins the school by prayer; they then
sing; then follows the class instruction,
the Bible and Testament classes reading
and discussing the Scriptures, the others
learning to read; school is closed in the
same way as it began. Sections of the
same congregation, where distance or
other causes render it difficult for them
to assemble in the chapel, establish similar
schools elsewhere. These are called
branches. The constitution throughout is
purely democratic, presenting an office
and some sort of title to almost every man
who is able and willing to take an active
part in its administration, without much
reference to his social position during the
other six days of the week. My returns
show 11,000 voluntary teachers, with an
allowance of about seven scholars to
each. Whatever may be the accuracy of
the numbers, I believe this relative proportion
to be not far wrong. The position
of teacher is coveted as a distinction, and
is multiplied accordingly. It is not unfrequently
the first prize to which the
most proficient pupils in the parochial
schools look. For them it is a step towards
the office of preacher and minister.
The universality of these schools, and the[554]
large proportion of the persons attending
them who take part in their government,
have very generally familiarised the
people with some of the more ordinary
terms and methods of organisation, such
as committee, secretary, and so forth.

“Thus, there is every thing about such
institutions which can recommend them to
the popular taste. They gratify that gregarious
sociability which animates the
Welsh towards each other. They present
the charms of office to those who, on all
other occasions, are subject; and of distinction
to those who have no other chance
of distinguishing themselves. The topics
current in them are those of the most
general interest; and are treated in a
mode partly didactic, partly polemical,
partly rhetorical, the most universally
appreciated. Finally, every man, woman,
and child feels comfortably at home in
them. It is all among neighbours and
equals. Whatever ignorance is shown
there, whatever mistakes are made, whatever
strange speculations are started,
there are no superiors to smile and open
their eyes. Common habits of thought
pervade all. They are intelligible or excusable
to one another. Hence, every one
that has got any thing to say is under no
restraint from saying it. Whatever such
Sunday-schools may be as places of instruction,
they are real fields of mental
activity. The Welsh working man rouses
himself for them. Sunday is to him more
than a day of bodily rest and devotion. It
is his best chance, all the week through,
of showing himself in his own character.
He marks his sense of it by a suit of
clothes regarded with a feeling hardly less
Sabbatical than the day itself. I do not
remember to have seen an adult in rags
in a single Sunday school throughout the
poorest districts. They always seemed to
me better dressed on Sundays than the
same classes in England.”

As a specimen of the relative number
of Sunday schools belonging to the
different religious persuasions in North
Wales, we will take Mr Johnson’s
summary, which gives the following
tabular result; and which is nearly in
the same proportion in the rest of the
principality:—

SUNDAY SCHOOLS.

But if we take the returns of the
daily schools for the same six counties,
the proportions will be found to,
be greatly changed:—

DAY SCHOOLS FOR THE POOR.

Out of these daily schools for the
poor, not less than 269, or 46½ per
cent of the whole number, (to say nothing
of many of the private schools,)
are publicly provided by the Church;
and it should be remembered that of
the Dissenting Sunday schools nearly
all are held in their meeting-houses,
and form part and parcel of their religious
system; whereas the Church
Sunday school is mostly an institution
apart from the church itself, and established
on its own separate footing.

With regard to the funds for supporting
schools, the following remarks
by Mr Johnson, as applied to North
Wales, are too important to be omitted.
He says:—

“It appears, from the foregoing analysis
of the funds of 517 schools, that the
amount annually raised by charitable
contributions of the rich is (in round numbers)
£5675, that raised by the poor
£7000. It is important to observe the
misdirection of these branches of school
income, and the fatal consequences which
ensue.

“The wealthy classes who contribute
towards education belong to the Established
Church; the poor who are to be
educated are Dissenters. The former will
not aid in supporting neutral schools; the
latter withhold their children from such
as require conformity to the Established
Church. The effects are seen in the co-existence
of two classes of schools, both
of which are rendered futile—the Church
schools supported by the rich, which are
thinly attended, and that by the extreme
poor; and private-adventure schools, supported
by the mass of the poorer classes
at an exorbitant expense, and so utterly
useless that nothing can account for their
existence except the unhealthy division of[555]
society, which prevents the rich and poor
from co-operating. The Church schools,
too feebly supported by the rich to give
useful education, are deprived of the support
of the poor, which would have sufficed
to render them efficient. Thus
situated, the promoters are driven to
establish premiums, clothing-clubs, and
other collateral inducements, in order to
overcome the scruples and reluctance of
Dissenting parents. The masters, to increase
their slender pittance, are induced
to connive at the infringement of the rules
which require conformity in religion, and
allow the parents (sometimes covertly,
sometimes with the consent of the promoters)
to purchase exemption for a small
gratuity; those who cannot afford it being
compelled to conform, or expelled in case
of refusal. Where, however, the rules
are impartially enforced, or the parents
too poor to purchase exemption, a compromise
follows. The children are allowed
to learn the Church catechism, and to
attend church, so long as they remain at
school, but are cautioned by their parents
not to believe the catechism, and to return
to their paternal chapels so soon as they
have finished schooling. A dispensation,
in fact, is given, allowing conformity in
matters of religion during the period required
for education, provided they allow
no impression to be made upon their minds
by the ritual and observances to which
they conform. The desired object is
attained by both parties. Outward conformity
is effected for the time, and the
children return in after-life to the creed
and usages of their parents.”

The fact is, that the farmers and all
the lower classes care little for education
per se, though they wish their
children to profit by a knowledge of
English, in order to facilitate their
advancement in after life; and they
are unwilling, at the same time, to
support schools in connexion with the
Church. That Church is to them the
church of the rich man as distinguished
from the poor; of the conqueror as
distinguished from the conquered; of
the Englishman as distinguished from
the Welsh; it is the Church of England,
not of Wales; and their affections
as well as their prejudices are all
opposed to it. This again is one of
the main causes—and it is so pointed
out by the commissioners—of the slow
progress of education in Wales, supported,
as it mainly is, by the upper
classes. It is not the proper place to
enter here into any further discussion
as to all the causes of dispute in
Wales; we will merely state that we
believe it to be now confirmed, not
only by the national antagonism of the
two races, but also by the democratic
principles which are so widely diffused
throughout the country, and which
are sure to break out again to a most
dangerous extent in Wales on the first
opportunity. Hear what Mr Lingen
states on the subject:—

“Most singular is the character which
has been developed by this theological
bent of minds isolated from nearly all
sources, direct or indirect, of secular information.
Poetical and enthusiastic
warmth of religious feeling, careful attendance
upon religious services, zealous
interest in religious knowledge, the comparative
absence of crime, are found side
by side with the most unreasoning prejudices
and impulses; an utter want of method
in thinking and acting; and (what
is far worse) wide-spread disregard to
temperance, wherever there are the means
of excess, of chastity, of veracity, and
of fair dealing. I subjoin two extreme
instances of the wild fanaticism into
which such temperaments may run. The
first concerns the Rebecca riots. W.
Chambers, jun., Esq. of Llanelly House,
kindly furnished me with a large collection
of contemporary documents and depositions
concerning the period of those
disturbances. An extract from the deposition
of one Thomas Phillips of Topsail,
is illustrative of the vividly descriptive
and imaginative powers of the
Welsh, and of the peculiar forms under
which popular excitement among them
would be sure to exhibit itself.

“Shoui-yschwr-fawr and Dai Cantwr
were noms de guerre borne by two ringleaders
in these disturbances.

“Between ten and eleven o’clock on
the night of the attack on Mr Newman’s
house, I was called upon by Shoui-yschwr-fawr,
and went with the party.
On my way I had a conversation with
Dai Cantwr. Thomas Morris, a collier,
by the Five Cross Roads, was walking
before us, with a long gun. I said
“Thomas is enough to frighten one with
his long gun.” Dai said, “There is not
such a free man as Tom Morris in the
rank. I was coming up Gellygwlwnog
field, arm in arm with him, after burning
Mr Chambers’s ricks of hay; and he had
a gun in the other hand, and Tom said,
“Here’s a hare,” and he up with his gun
and shot it slap down—and it was a
horse—Mr Chambers’s horse. One of the
party stuck the horse with a knife—the[556]
blood flowed—and Tom Morris held his
hand under the blood, and called upon
the persons to come forward and dip
their fingers in it, and take it as a sacrifice
instead of Christ; and the parties
did so.’ And Dai added, ‘that he had
often heard of a sacrament in many ways,
but had never heard of a sacrament by a
horse before that night.’

“The other instance was told me by
one who witnessed much of the Chartist
outbreak. He said that ‘the men who
marched from the hills to join Frost, had
no definite object beyond a fanatical notion
that they were to march immediately
to London, fight a great battle, and conquer
a great kingdom.’ I could not help
being reminded of the swarm that followed
Walter the Penniless, and took the
town which they reached at the end of
their first day’s march for Jerusalem.”

We could point out several districts
in Wales, in which few gentry reside,
such as the south-western portion of
Caernarvon, and some parts of Anglesey,
where the most republican and
levelling doctrines prevail extensively
among the farmers and the labouring
classes, and where resistance to tithes,
and not only to tithes, but to rents, is
a subject fondly cherished for future
opportunity. The town of Caernarvon
itself is a pestilent hot-bed of discontent;
so is Merthyr Tydvil; so is
Newtown; so is Swansea; and so are
many others.

The commissioners dwell rather
lightly on this part of the subject—on
these consequences of the past and
present condition of the country, and
of the defective education existing in
it. Many of the assistants employed
by the commissioners were
Dissenters, and their examinations of
Church schools may be therefore suspected;
at least we fancy that we can
discern a certain warmth of admiration,
and intensity of unction, in the
reports on the Dissenting schools,
which are not bestowed on the others.
However this may be, we cannot but
admit that these reports do actually
show the existence of a very defective
state of things in the principality;
and we find the commissioners justly
pointing out and reprobating two
glaring vices in the Welsh character,
the existence of which we admit, and
to which we shall, of our own knowledge,
add a third.

The first refers to the want of chastity,
or rather to the lax ideas of the
common order of people on that subject
previous to marriage. This, with
every wish to excuse the national
feelings and failings of the Welsh, we
must allow to be proved by the concurrent
testimony and experience of
every one well acquainted with the
principality. This vice, however, is
more systematically established in the
northern than in the southern counties;
and the existence of this system
is, we have no doubt, of very long
standing, ranking, indeed, among the
national customs which lose their origin
in the night of ages. The common
notion prevalent among the lower
classes in Wales, and generally acted
on, is, that want of chastity before
marriage is no vice, though afterwards
it is considered a crime, which is very
rarely committed. Before we pass a
sweeping condemnation on the rude
population of the Welsh mountains
for this laxity, let us remember that,
such is the false state of “over-civilisation”
in England, the same ideas
and practices exist universally among
the male portion, at least, of the people,
and pass without any thing beyond a
formal, we might almost say, a legal
reprimand: that in France, Spain,
Portugal, Italy, and, it may be, other
countries of Europe, this laxity exists
not so much before as after marriage;
and that therefore the poor Celtic
mountaineers do not stand alone in
their ignorance of what is better.

It appears by the official returns,
that the proportion of illegitimate
children in North Wales shows an
excess of 12·3 per cent above the
average of all England and Wales
upon the like numbers of registered
births. We know ourselves of a
union of 48 parishes in which there
are now 500 bastard children supported
out of the poor-rates; and, in
fact, the prevalence of the vice is not
to be denied. The volumes of these
reports contain numerous minutes of
evidences and letters from magistrates
and clergymen corroborative of this
fact; and they all agree in referring
it to the ignorance of the people. We
are not inclined to lift the veil which
we would willingly allow to hang over
the faults, the weaknesses, and the
ignorance of a poor uncultivated
people; believing, as we do, that the[557]
remedies for such a state of things are
not far off, nor difficult to find; and
knowing that, if there be any palliation
of such a state of things, it is to be
found in this circumstance, that the
married state is most duly honoured
and observed in that country, and also,
that the women marry early in life,
and support all the duties of their
state in an exemplary manner. We
could also pick out county after
county in England, where we know
that the morality of the lower orders
is little, if at all, elevated above this
standard, and where the phenomenon
of the pregnant bride is one of the
most ordinary occurrence. The statement
of these facts, as published by
the commissioners, has caused great
indignation throughout Wales, and
has set the local press in a ferment,
but has not produced any satisfactory
refutation of the impeachment.

Another vice, correlative to, and
consequent upon the other, is the
want of truth and honesty in petty
matters observable throughout the
land. This is the common complaint
of almost every gentleman and magistrate
in the twelve counties—that
the word of a Welshman of the lower
classes is hardly to be trusted in little
matters; and that the crime of false
swearing in courts and at quarter-sessions
is exceedingly frequent. In
the same manner, the people generally,
in the minor transactions of life, are
given to equivocations and by-dealing,
and make light of telling an untruth
if it refers only to a matter of
minor importance. Were a Welshman
called as a witness in a case of
felony, we think his oath might be
depended upon as much as an Englishman’s;
but is he called up on a
case of common assault, or the stealing
of a few potatoes from his neighbour’s
field—or is he covenanting to sell you
coals or corn at a certain price and
weight—we should be uncommonly
careful how we trusted to his deposition
or his assurances.

A clergyman of Brecknockshire
says:—

“The Welsh are more deceitful than
the English; though they are full of expression,
I cannot rely on them as I should
on the English. There is more disposition
to pilfer than among the English, but we
are less apprehensive of robbery than in
England. There is less open avowal of a
want of chastity, but it exists; and there
is far less feeling of delicacy between the
sexes here in every-day life than in England.
The boys bathe here, for instance,
in the river at the bridge in public, and I
have been insulted for endeavouring to
stop it. There is less open wickedness as
regards prostitution than in England.
Drunkenness is the prevailing sin of this
place and the county around, and is not
confined to the labouring classes, but the
drunkenness of the lower classes is greatly
caused by the example of those above
them, who pass their evenings in the public-houses.
But clergymen and magistrates,
who used to frequent them, have
ceased to do so within the last few years.
I have preached against the sin, and used
other efforts to check it, though I have
been insulted for doing so in the street.
I think things are better than they were
in this respect…. I do not think
they are addicted to gambling, but their
chief vice is that of sotting in the
public-houses.”

A magistrate, in another part of
the county, gives the following testimony:—

“Crimes of violence are almost unknown,
such as burglary, forcible robbery,
or the use of the knife. Common assaults
are frequent, usually arising from drunken
quarrels. Petty thefts are not particularly
numerous. Poultry-stealing and
sheep-stealing prevail to a considerable
extent. There is no rural police, and the
parish constables are for the most part
utterly useless, except for serving summonses,
&c. Sheep and poultry stealers,
therefore, very frequently escape with impunity.
Drunkenness prevails to a lamentable
extent—not so much among the
lowest class, who are restrained by their
poverty, as among those who are in better
circumstances. Every market or fair day
affords too much proof of this assertion.
Unchastity in the women is, I am sorry
to say, a great stain upon our people.
The number of bastard children is very
great, as is shown by the application of
young women for admission into the workhouse
to be confined, and by the application
to magistrates in petty sessions
for orders of affiliation. In hearing these
cases, it is impossible not to remark how
unconscious of shame both the young woman
and her parents often appear to be.
In the majority of cases where an order
of affiliation is sought, marriage was promised,
or the expectation of it held out.
The cases are usually cases of bonâ fide
seduction. Those who enter the workhouse
to be confined are generally girls of[558]
known bad character. I believe that in
the rural districts few professed prostitutes
would be found.”

The clerk, to the magistrates at Lampeter
observes:—

“Perjury is common in courts of
justice, and the Welsh language facilitates
it; for, when witnesses understand
English, they feign not to do so, in
order to gain time in the process of translation,
to shape and mould their answers
according to the interest they wish to
serve. Frequently neither the prisoner
nor the jury understand English, and the
counsel, nevertheless, addresses them in
English, and the judge sums up in English,
not one word of which do they often understand.
Instances have occurred when
I have had to translate the answers of an
English witness into Welsh for the jury;
and once even to the grand jury at Cardigan
I had to do this. A juryman once
asked me, ‘What was the nature of an
action in which he had given his verdict.’

“Truth and the sacredness of an oath
are little thought of; it is most difficult
to get satisfactory evidence in courts of
justice.”

Upon the above evidence, Mr Symons,
the inspector, remarks:—

“Notwithstanding the lamentable state
of morals, the jails are empty. The following
comparison between the relative
criminality of the three counties in my
district with that of the neighbouring
agricultural county of Hereford, exhibits
this moral anomaly in the Welsh character
very forcibly:—

“Crimes, therefore, are twice as numerous
in Herefordshire as in Radnorshire
or Brecknockshire, and five times more so
than in Cardiganshire.

“I attribute this paucity of punishable
offences in Wales partly to the extreme
shrewdness and caution of the people, but
much more to a natural benevolence and
warmth of heart, which powerfully deters
them from acts of malice and all deliberate
injury to others. And I cannot but express
my surprise that a characteristic so
highly to the credit of the Welsh people,
and of which so many evidences presented
themselves to the eye of the stranger,
should have been left chiefly to his own
personal testimony. Facts were nevertheless
related to me which bore out my
impression; and I may instance the ancient
practice among neighbouring families
of assisting the marriages of each
other’s children by loans or gifts of money
at the ‘biddings’ or marriage meetings,
to be repaid only on a similar occasion in
the family of the donor, as well as the
attendance of friends at times of death or
adversity, as among the incidents which
spring from and mark this honourable
characteristic.”

Notwithstanding all this, we know,
from official sources, that the proportion
per cent of commitments for North
Wales is sixty-one per cent below the
calculated average for all England
and Wales, on the same amount of
male population of the like ages. In
fact, the jails of Wales are commonly
empty, or the next thing to it; and
the whole twelve counties would hardly
keep one barrister, on the crown
side, above starving-point. Maiden
assizes are any thing but uncommon
in that country.

That particular foci of evil do exist,
we have asserted before; and we find
the following trace of this portion of the
subject in the report of Mr Vaughan
Johnson on Montgomeryshire:—

“The following evidence relates to the
parishes of Newtown and Llanllwchaiarn,
which contain 6842 inhabitants:—

‘It appears that, previously to the year
1845, no district in North Wales was
more neglected, in respect of education,
than the parishes of Newtown and Llanllwchaiarn.
The effects were partly seen
in the turbulent and seditious state of the
neighbourhood in the year 1839. The
permanent evils which have sprung from
this neglect it will require many years of
careful education to eradicate. A memorial,
presented by the inhabitants to
the Lords of the Committee of Council on
Education, at the close of the year 1845,
contains the following plea for assistance
in providing popular education:—

“In the spring of the year 1839 the
peace of the town and neighbourhood was
threatened by an intended insurrection
on the part of the operative class, in connexion,
it is supposed, with other parts of
the kingdom, with a view to effect a
change in the institutions of the country;
but such an insurrection, if intended, was
prevented by the presence of an armed
force; and a military force has ever since[559]
been stationed in the town, with a view
of preserving its peace.

‘Your memorialists believe that, if the
inhabitants had had the benefit of a sound
moral and religious culture in early life,
the presence of an armed force to protect
the peace of the town would not be needed
in so comparatively small a place; and
your memorialists are under a firm conviction
that no better way can be devised
for the removal of all disposition to vice
and crime, than by enlightening the ignorant,
and especially by sowing in early
life, by the hands of the teacher, the seeds
of religion and morality.'”

‘The alarm occasioned by these disturbances
has passed away; but I ascertained,
by a careful inquiry among the
persons best acquainted with the condition
of the working-classes, that even at
the present day low and unprincipled
publications, of a profane and seditious
tendency, are much read by a class of the
operatives; that private and secret clubs
exist for the dissemination of such writings,
by means of which the class of
operatives have access to the writings of
Paine and Volney, to Owen’s tracts, and
to newspapers and periodicals of the
same pernicious tendency. It is stated
that many persons who read such works
also attend Sunday schools, from their
anxiety to obtain a knowledge of the art
of reading, which they cannot otherwise
acquire. It is the opinion of those who
are best acquainted with the evils complained
of, that the most efficacious remedy
would be the circulation of intelligent
publications on general subjects, within
the comprehension of the working-classes,
by the help of reading-societies and circulating
libraries, at terms which the
operatives would be able to afford.'”

The third vice—for it is a vice—which
we know to be prevalent in
Wales, is the extreme dirt and untidiness
of all the inhabitants. Go
into any Welsh town or village, and
observe the squalid shabby look of
the houses and their tenants; visit
their farms and cottages, and see the
wretched filth in which men and animals
herd together, and you will bear
witness to the truth of our assertion.
There is no spirit of order and improvement
among them; every thing is
done on the principle of the least
possible present trouble. Were the
Welsh blessed with the climate of
Naples, they would, every one of
them, become pure Lazzaroni,—as it
is, they approximate to the Irish in
their innate indolence and love of
dirt. Whenever the commissioners
for the health of towns receive their
full power, they will have an Augean
stable to cleanse, comprising the whole
Principality.

Even here, however, we are disposed
to find some excuse for the
people. They have so few resident
gentry, at least of the larger proprietors;
their country is so wild and so
lonely; the difficulties of poverty and
bad weather which they have to contend
against are so great, that the
philanthropical inquirer must make
large allowances for them on this
head. The commissioners found
most of the country schools conducted
in the most wretched buildings; but
perhaps these buildings were some of
the very best and cleanest in the district:
they thought them neglected,
and in bad repair; whereas the inhabitants
might have supposed that
they “had done the correct thing,”
and had adorned them in a style of
lavish expenditure.

We might go on multiplying our
extracts and our comments ad infinitum,
but we purposely abstain; and
we shall conclude our review of these
highly important documents with one
or two inferences that seem to us
obviously necessary.

In the first place, as long as the
Welsh language cannot reckon, among
its literary treasures, the principal
portion of the good elementary books
of instruction which have long been
employed in England, and are still
issuing from the English press, it is
obviously impossible to place the education
of the Welsh on the same level
as that of their Saxon neighbours.
Not only should the best English
books be translated into Welsh—we
mean for the instruction and amusement
of the middle and lower classes,—but
translations might be made
most advantageously from other
tongues; and the literature of Wales
might become permanently enriched
with the best fruits of all nations.
We by no means coincide in opinion
with those who would discourage the
study of Welsh, and would even
attempt to suppress that language
altogether; we look upon it as one of
the most interesting and valuable,
though not one of the most fortunate
and gifted, of European tongues. In[560]
ancient literature, in poetry, and in
an immense mass of oral tradition, it
is uncommonly rich, and, by the mere
dignity of age, is worthy of its place
being ever kept for it among the languages
of the world. But, further than
this, though it operates to a certain
extent as a social bar to the more
intimate connexion of the Welsh and
English populations, it serves also
as a strong bond and support of
Welsh nationality, and keeps alive in
their breasts that indomitable love of
their country, and that spirit of national
pride, which is the best safeguard
of the liberties of the realm,
and its protection from democratic
invasion. It hinders the operations
of centralisation—that odious and destructive
principle of government
which Whigs and Democrats are so
fond of copying from their masters, the
revolutionary French; and it teaches
the people to rely on their own resources,
and to preserve the ancient freedom
of their country. In times like
these, when the aggressive levelling
spirit of democracy is actively at
work, and when the ancient liberties
of the country are gradually falling
beneath the scythe of radical innovation,
any thing that may serve as a
check to the decline and fall of the
empire is not to be lightly despised
or abandoned. The Welsh, like the
Basques, like the Bretons, like the
Hungarians, have preserved their national
language and feelings, though
all these are united to empires and
people far more powerful and numerous
than themselves; and thus are
destined to form the most energetic
and abiding portions of those empires,
when the excessive advance of civilisation,
and the destruction of all
national virtues, shall have brought
about their disruption and ruin. Let
the higher orders and the government
of the country show, the former more
enlightened and more energetic patriotism,
and the latter more intelligence
and foresight than hitherto.
Let them provide the people with the
materials of education and instruction;
let them call forth the numerous learned
men to be found amongst the clergy
of the Principality; let them require
and pay for the formation of an elementary
literature, and the nucleus
thus originated will grow betimes into
a goodly mass, fit for the work required,
and itself generating the means
of its future increase. The natural
acuteness of the Welsh people is
such—and the Commissioners bear
ample testimony to the fact—that,
had they but books in their own
tongue, the facts of knowledge would
be universally acquired. They would
make as much progress in secular as
they now do in theological research;
and were their powers of acquisition
well directed, the whole character of
the nation would undergo an elevating
and improving change.

We would have them taught English
as a foreign language—as an
accomplishment, in fact. It belongs
to a totally different family of languages,
and must always be a foreign
tongue to a Celt—but still it may be
acquired sufficiently for all the common
purposes of life; while all facts,
all instruction, all matters for reflection
and memory, should be conveyed
in the national tongue, the pure
Cymric language.

Government need not trouble
itself by attempting to carry the
details of educational systems into
operation; all that it is required to
supply is the moving and the controlling
power; the various duties of the
great machine will be better fulfilled
by the people at large—that is to say,
by the local authorities, the constituted
voices and hands of the
national body.

We are aware of the many difficulties
that are sure to meet any government,
or rather any political party,
that should attempt at the present
day to carry into effect a scheme of
general education. The sectarian
spirit of the country is so thoroughly
excited, the minds of the people are
so thoroughly wild upon certain subjects,
that any thing like a patriotic
sinking of interests for the general
good is out of the question; much
less is it to be expected that, under
Whig leaders, the discordant members
of the state would be inclined to defer
to the superior authority of the legislators.
The predominance of the
democratic element in the present
phase of the constitution of England
hinders the action of government, and
injures in this, as in most other
respects, the very best interests of the[561]
country. Still we cannot but think
that, were there at the head of affairs a
band of statesmen in whose political
integrity, private honour, and public
capacity, the country could firmly rely,
the mass of the people might be made
to rally round their standard, rather
than round the gathering-posts of factious
leaders, whether political or
religious. But at the present moment,
when the tone of political morality
and parliamentary consistency is so
low, when treason and tergiversation
are the order of the day, and when the
undisguised pursuit of gain—by fair
means or by foul, but still by some
means or other—is allowed to usurp
an undue place in the councils of the
nation, it is in vain to hope for any
very satisfactory results.

We would say, follow out the
Church scheme fearlessly and boldly,
but without intolerance—follow it out
consistently and honestly, and you
will obtain more numerous and more
worthy followers, you will produce
more permanent and more beneficial
results, than by truckling to this sect
or to that, or by the vain endeavour
to curry favour with all. At the same
time we think, with the commissioners,
that to make the Bible the sole book
of education, as is the case in most
schools, is a bad plan; it brings the
sacred volume itself into contempt and
dislike, and it limits the field of instruction
in an undue degree. We
would introduce more of secular subjects
even into the common schools,
and certainly not less of real religion;
and to that end we would endeavour
to fit the teachers for their duties, and
suit the extensiveness of the schools
to the amount of work to be done.
Religious education being maintained
daily as a part, not as the whole, of
education, it should be made the exclusive
topic of Sunday education;
and the amount of information on
religious topics thus gained would be
found to be greater, in a given time,
than when the child’s mind is bent to
that one subject alone—the hardest,
the sublimest of all subjects—and
when all his thoughts, all his ideas,
are concentrated on the Bible, the
Prayer-Book, and the Catechism. In
this matter, however, the heads of the
Church are the authorities with whom
the move for improvement ought to
originate; and, would they but act
with energy and unanimity, there is
no doubt that they would carry the
weight and influence of the nation
along with them.

The third observation we have to
offer refers to the lamentably inadequate
provision made, in a pecuniary
point of view, for the education of the
people. Not only are the teachers
totally unprepared by previous education,
but, even let their talents and
acquirements be what they may, their
brightest prospect is that of earning
less than at any trade to which they
may be take themselves—without any
prospect of ever, by some turn of
fortune’s wheel, amassing for themselves
a store for their declining
years. Work, to be done well, no
matter what its nature may be, must
be properly recompensed; no system
that is not adequately supported with
funds can be expected to continue in
a state of efficiency—it will speedily
degenerate, decline, and ultimately
perish.

Not to dwell upon truisms of this
kind, we shall at once state what we
think would form a sufficient fund for
the maintenance of a uniform and
effective system of public instruction
in Wales, and the means of carrying it
into effect. We conceive that the
advantages of education, being felt by
every man—even whether he be the
direct recipient of it or not—should be
paid for out of a common fund, raised
in an equitable manner by the state.
On the other hand, in an agricultural
country, where the main interests of
the state are in the hands of the great
landed proprietors, and where the
well-being and safety of the whole
depends upon the morality and the
physical good of the labouring classes,
the magistrates of the country, and
all the owners of land, are most intimately
bound up with the healthy
action and welfare of the whole people;
nor can they by any means shift from
their shoulders the duty of providing
for the happiness of their tenants and
dependents. For similar reasons, the
merchants, manufacturers, and other
citizens of large towns, have a direct
interest in the welfare and in the in moral
advancement of all the working and
inferior classes of the urban population.
Now, we maintain that one of[562]
the most efficient and ready methods
for the promotion of industry, the
suppression of vagrancy, the diminution
of drunkenness, sensuality, and
crime, and therefore the lowering of
poor-rates, police-rates, county-rates,
&c., would be the giving the people a
better religious and secular education,
and the raising of them in the scale of
social beings. It would follow from
these premises, if assented to, that
an education tax would be one of the
fairest and most directly advantageous
which could be imposed on the country;
and we are further persuaded that, as
its effects began to make themselves
felt, its justice would be acquiesced
in by all who should pay it.

We would therefore suggest, 1st,
That a general poll-tax should be
raised on the country, without distinction
of person, or age, or sex, for
the purposes of education; and, in
order that people might not murmur
at it for its oppressiveness, we would
fix it at the value of one day’s work
of an adult agricultural labourer. 2d,
On all the acreage of the country we
would recommend a land-tax to be
levied, with the same intent, and
without exception for any class of
property whatsoever. This we would
fix at some small fractional part of
the annual value of the land in rent
charge,—say at one penny per acre.
3d, On all household property in
towns, for tenements, belonging to
persons not in the condition of
labourers, we would lay a similar
tax of a small fractional portion of
the annual rent; and on all mining
and manufacturing property, wherever
situated, we would impose a certain
small annual charge. To fix ideas,
we will suppose that the sum produced
by this latter class of property
should be equal to one-half of that
charged for the same purpose on the
landed proprietors. The sums to be
raised may be thus calculated:—

1st., The entire population of North
and South Wales, as ascertained by
the census of 1841, is 911,603: and
the average rate of wages for an able-bodied
agricultural labourer may be
safely estimated at 1s. 6d. per diem,
as a minimum throughout Wales, A
poll-tax, therefore, of 1s. 6d. per head
on the whole population, would produce
a sum of £68,375.

2d., The entire acreage of Wales is
very nearly 5,206,900 acres; and a
land-tax of 1d. per acre would therefore
produce £21,695.

3d., Estimating a tax on houses,
and mining and manufacturing property
throughout Wales, at only half
the amount of that raised on the land,
we should have a sum of £10,847.

The whole would stand thus:—

Now assuming that, whether by adhering
to the old division of parishes
for the formation of educational districts—and
for many reasons, religious
as well as political, we should be sorry
to see this arrangement disturbed—there
would be required, at the rate of
at least one school for each parish,
the total number of 863 schools.
But on account of the increased size
of some of the towns, and the accumulation
of mining population in several
mountainous districts, it might be
necessary to provide more than this
number. We will therefore, at a
guess, fix it at 1000, and this would
furnish at least one school for every
1000 of the whole population, adult
as well as infantine—a proportion
which will be allowed to be abundantly
sufficient, when it is considered that
such schools are intended only for the
lower classes.

To support, however, a school in a
proper state of efficiency—that is to
say, to furnish it with properly trained
teachers, male and female, and with
the requisite books and other instruments
of teaching—we do not think
that we are overstraining the point
if we assign the annual sum of one
hundred pounds as necessary. This
sum might either be divided in the
proportion of sixty pounds per annum
for a male teacher, and forty pounds
per annum for a female,—or it might
most advantageously, in some cases,
be bestowed on a teacher and his
wife, supposing them both capable of
undertaking such duties. Of course,
in all cases suitable buildings, including
school-rooms for both sexes, residences
and gardens for the teachers,
should be provided at the public expense,
and maintained in repair from[563]
a distinct fund. We shall then perceive
that the sum mentioned above,
amounting in round numbers to one
hundred thousand pounds per annum,
would be sufficient for the purpose;
and we think that it would not only
be so, but that, it would be made to
furnish a sufficient sum for retiring
and superannuated pensions, on the
principle adopted in several of the
Continental states, of an annual percentage
being deducted from the
salaries of all civil servants to form a
fund of this nature, specially devoted
to their own benefit. We do not
throw out any specific hints for the
collection and management of this
fund; but it might be raised along
with other local rates, and by the
same local officers, so that the smallest
possible addition might be thereby
made to the cost of collecting it.

One part of this plan, however,
without which the whole would be
inefficient, would be the forming of a
body of inspectors, and the establishing
of training-schools or colleges
for teachers. The latter are already
beginning to exist, and machinery
for the former is now at work under
the direction of the Committee of
Council. But we should hope to see
training-schools established on a much
larger and more efficient scale than at
present; and we should desire to see
the appointment of inspectors, and the
management of the education funds,
taken out of the hands of such a body
as the Privy Council, and given to the
local and provincial authorities, civil
and ecclesiastical, of Wales. If such
appointments remained in the hands
of government, political jobbing would
act upon them with greater intensity
than through the medium of local
interests and county influence; and,
what would be far worse than this,
another impulse would be given to
the principle of centralisation, one of
the most fatal for national spirit and
national freedom that can be devised,
and which we are called upon to resist
at all times, but especially when a
party of Whig politico-economists,
as wild and destructive in the ultimate
tendencies of their theories as the
Girondists of France, are in possession
of the reins of power.

We say nothing on the subject of
Sunday schools; we leave them altogether
to the consideration and support
of the Church, and the various
sects in Wales, by whom, if they are
wanted, they can be efficiently maintained
without any interference of
the state. But we call loudly upon
the legislature of the United Kingdom
to give at least the initiative
and the moving power to the natural
inertness of the Welsh people; and
we would summon them, as they
value the happiness, the tranquillity,
and the moral advancement of that
portion of the country, to take the
matter of education under their
primary control, and to form a general
system, harmonious in its manner of
working, comprehensive in its extent,
and tolerant in its religious tendencies.
Much opposition and prejudice
and clamour would have to be combated,
as upon every question seems
now to be the case in what we fondly
consider the model of all political constitutions.
But unless the legislature
and the statesmen at the head of
affairs are prepared to meet these obstacles,
and to remove them in their
sovereign wisdom, they had better
declare their incapacity openly, and
renounce their functions.

[564]

THE SILVER CROSS.—A CAMPAIGNING SKETCH.

FROM THE GERMAN OF ERNEST KOCH.

NIGHT-QUARTERS.

[4]

In the village of Careta, upon the
mountains near the Arga, which flows
from the Pyrenees to Pampeluna, the
wind whistled and the snow drifted
upon a stormy January evening of
the year 1836. It was about seven
of the clock: José, a sturdy peasant, sat
by his kitchen fire, on which withered
vine-branches blazed and crackled,
and dried his hempen sandals. Beside
him knelt a haggard old woman,
handsome in the ugliness of one of
those strongly-marked, melancholy,
yellow countenances, in which a legend
of the Alhambra seems to lurk.
Dressed in rusty black, she crouched
like an animal by the hearth, poking
and blowing at the fire, which sometimes
broadly illuminated the remotest
corners of the room and rafters of the
roof, at others was barely sufficiently
vivid to light up her mysterious old
physiognomy. Suddenly a tremendous
gust of wind burst open the
wooden shutter, and howled into the
apartment.

“Dios! what weather!” croaked
the old woman.

An affirmative carajo was her husband’s
reply, as he knocked the dry
mud from his leathern gamashes
against the edge of the raised hearthstone.

“God help the poor troops in the
mountains!” continued the old woman.
“Daughter, shut the window.”

A young girl, who sat, spindle in
hand, upon a wooden bench in the
gloom of the chimney corner, obeyed
the order. Her coarse woollen dress
could not wholly disguise the graces
of her form, as she tripped across
the kitchen through the fitful firelight,
which shone upon her gipsy features
and clear brown skin, and upon the
two long plaited tails of jet-black hair
that fell down her back nearly to her
heels. Before closing the window she
listened, with the true instinct of a
vedette, to the sounds without. In a
lull of the blast, her ear caught the
noise of distant drums, beaten not in
irregular guerilla fashion, but by
well-trained drummers, in steady
quick time.

“Father,” cried Manuela, “troops
are at hand.”

“Nonsense, child: ’tis the garrison
tattoo below at Larasuena.”

“No, father, it draws nearer. ‘Tis
the French. Mother, hide the beds.”

Beds were hidden, a sack of white
beans was carefully concealed, the
family jackass was tethered in the
darkest corner of the cellar-like stable.
Preceded by rattle of drums, two wet
and weary battalions of the French
Legion marched into Careta, and
after a few minutes’ halt the shivering
alcalde was hurrying from house
to house, allotting quarters to the
tired strangers.

An hour later I sat beside José’s
hearth, smoking a friendly cigarillo,
with the surly old peasant. Upon
the earthen floor, at various distances
from the fire, at which sundry pair of
white gaiters, newly washed, hung to
dry, lay those soldiers of my squad
(I was then a corporal) who had not
fallen in that day’s fight by Larasuena.
At a sort of loop-hole in the
wall, looking out into the street, a
sentry stood. For a long while José
sat with folded hands, gazing at the
fire. I did all I could to make him
talk; told him about German customs
and German men; then spoke of
Spain, of the Constitution and so
forth; less, however, if truth must be
told, with a view to his amusement
than to that of the sweet-faced girl
with the long black locks who sat over
her spindle in the opposite corner.
At last José’s sullenness thawed so[565]
far that he asked me very earnestly if
the German jackasses were as big
and as strong as those in Navarre.
What could I reply to such a question!

Suddenly a long shrill whistle was
heard outside the house. “Keep a
bright look-out!” cried I, to the sentry
at the loophole. Again all was
still. Father José dropped off to
sleep; the patrona went down stairs
to fodder the donkey, and I addressed
my conversation to pretty Manuela.
I know not how it was, but we got on so
well together that soon I found myself
seated close beside her, one arm round
her waist, whilst the other hand played
with a silver cross that hung from her
neck, and on which were engraved
the words, “Mary, pray for me!”
And she told me of her brother Antonio,
who was away from home, and of
her sister Maria, who was with relations
at Hostiz, in the valley of the
Bastan.

“And where is your brother Antonio,
Manuela?”

“My brother is—in the mountains.
You seem good and kind, stranger;
you tell me you are not a Frenchman,
but a German. Oh! if you meet my
brother in fight, do not kill him—spare
him for my sake!”

“But, dear Manuela, how am I to
know your brother? One Carlist is
so like another.”

“No, no! you are sure to know him:
he resembles me, and he wears upon
his breast a silver cross like mine. The
same words are written upon it, and
not a bullet has touched him since he
has worn it.”

“So, your brother is a soldier of
Don Carlos, your sister dwells in a
Carlist village, and your parents—at
least your father, judging from his
looks when I spoke of the Constitution,—also
hold for the Pretender.
Do you not fear Christino troops?”

“No, Señor—at least I should not,
if they were all as good as you, who
protected me from that rude Italian.—Dios!”
she exclaimed, suddenly
interrupting herself, and springing
from her chair like a scared deer.
From under the bench on the other
side of the fire peered forth the dark
countenance of a Piedmontese soldier,
his checks flushed with wine, his eyes
sparkling with a sullen fire, his ignoble,
satyr-like features expressing
a host of evil passions. He shot a
venomous glance from under his dirty
eyelashes, then turned himself round,
grinding between his teeth an Italian
malediction. He still lay where I
had violently thrown him, when, upon
our first entrance, I rescued Manuela
from his brutality.

“To bed, girl!” screamed the old
woman, who just then re-entered the
kitchen. Manuela went to bed, and
I composed myself to sleep upon the
bench by the fire. It was eleven
o’clock, and the silence in the village
was unbroken save by the howling
of the storm and the occasional challenge
of a sentry.

IN THE MOUNTAINS.

The road from Pampeluna to France
passes by a mountain of some size,
whose real name I have forgotten,
but which our soldiers called the Hill
of Death, because, for a league around,
it emitted an odour of unburied
corpses. Close to the road, but at a
considerable elevation, a conical peak
springs from the hill-side.

Around this peak, upon a July
night, about six months after the
scene at Careta, lay a column of Carlists,
awaiting the dawn. There they
are, scattered about the fires, forlorn
figures of unconquerable endurance,
barefoot, in linen trousers and thin
cloth jackets, the scarlet plate-shaped
cap upon their heads. Burnt brown
by the Castilian sun, their daring picturesque
countenances assume an additional
wildness of aspect in the red light
of the watch-fires. From one of these,
Fernando, a handsome Arragonese lad,
whose father and brothers have been
shot, and whose sister is a fille-de-joie
at Saragossa, snatches a charcoal with
his fingers, and places it upon a stone,
to light his paper cigar. Then comes
Hippolito, a pale emaciated boy of
sixteen, and sets upon the fire a small
pot of potatoes, which he has carried
with him since morning. The Carlists
caught him in Catalonia, and
dragged him along with them, and
often does he swear a peevish oath
that his death will be in the hospital.[566]
Beside him lies Cyrillo, a desperate
scapegrace from Estremadura, intended
for the university, but whom
restlessness and evil courses have
brought under the banners. He has
a piece of bacon on his bayonet, and
toasts it at the flame. Hard by, a
brace of Andalusians have got a
guitar, and strike up a melody, so
plaintive and yet so strangely spirit-stirring,
that a bearded dragoon,
slumbering upon his back, with his
hands beneath his head, suddenly
opens his great wild eyes. One of
his comrades stands near him, his
arms folded on his breast, gazing
down wistfully into the valley of the
Arga, now veiled by the mists of evening,
and which he perhaps for many
a long day has not dared to visit—as
if the tones of the guitar brought
melancholy to his mind. Suddenly
the measure is changed, and the musician
breaks into the lively fandango;
a joyous Navarrese seizes the pensive
trooper by the arm and whirls him
round, but receives in return a push
that sends him staggering against the
guitar player, whilst he grasps at his
girdle for the ready knife. An obscene
curse burst from half-a-dozen throats;
with fierce looks the two men confront
each other, but are separated by force,
and again the guitar tinkles in the
night air, whilst Hippolito gathers up
his potatoes, upset and scattered in the
scuffle. A dirty priest comes up, a
decoration upon his black coat, and
enjoins order and peace. He has
scarcely walked away, when a soldier
in handsome uniform rushes up to the
fire, and throws himself down, breathless
and half fainting. He is a deserter
from the Christino regiment of
Cordova. They give him unlimited
wine, and he tells them the latest
news from the hostile camp. The
bota passes from mouth to mouth;
and whilst the deserter sleeps off his
libations and fatigue, his new comrades
cast lots for his good shirt and
strong shoes.

The same evening four battalions
of the foreign legion were quartered
at Villalba, four leagues nearer to
Pampeluna. Upon an open space in
the village, whence the sun had long
since burned away the grass, a party
of Germans sat upon scattered blocks
of stone, and discussed, whilst a gourd
of wine circulated slowly amongst
them, an order just issued to hold
themselves ready to march at a minute’s
notice.

“Who knows,” said one of them,
a tailor from Regensburg, “whether
we shall be alive to-morrow? Let’s
have a song.”

“A song, a song!” repeated another,
a shoemaker from Rhenish Prussia,
who had found himself uncomfortable
in the Vauban barracks in Luxemburg.

“What shall it be?” cried a journeyman
mechanic, who, when upon
his travels, ran short of work and
money.

Before any one could answer, a
capering Frenchman struck up,

“Entendez-vous, le tambour bat, le clairon sonne,” &c.

“Hold your infernal French
tongue!” shouted the Germans.
“Here’s the sergeant from Munich
will give us a song.”

The Bavarian, nothing loath, struck
up a song, whose simple strain and
familiar words brought home and
friends to the memory of all present.
The melody echoed far through the
still evening air, and, when it concluded,
tears were in every eye, and
no one spoke, save the Regensburg
tailor, who muttered,

“God take us safe out of this cutthroat
country!”

The sun went down. A few pieces
of ship-biscuit were shared for the
evening meal, and then the drums
beat to roll-call, which was held in
quarters, and at whose next repetition
many a man then present was doomed
to be missing.

That same night, twelve o’clock had
scarcely struck, when the three solemn
taps with which the French
générale begins, resounded through the
village of Villalba. In less than ten
minutes the battalions were under
arms, hurrying at quick step along
the desolate road to Larasuena. In a
meadow, outside this village, half an
hour’s halt was allowed, for the men
to fill their flasks with vinegar and
water, as a remedy for the faintness
occasioned by heat. Then the march
continued. The column had scarcely
halted, for the second time, in rear of[567]
the houses of Zubiri, when a sharp
fire of musketry was heard from the
mountain above. At charging pace
the weary troops hurried up the steep
acclivity. The sun was scorching hot;
the knapsacks seemed insupportably
heavy. Nearer and nearer was the noise
of the fight; in the ranks of the ascending
soldiers short suppressed gasps and
groans were heard. The tailor from
Regensburg fell forward, with froth
upon his lips, and gave up the ghost.

On reaching a small level, we saw
it was high time for our arrival. The
second regiment of the royal guard
already gave ground, when the cry
“La Legion!” changed the fortune
of the day. With fixed bayonets our
battalions rushed like tigers upon the
factious ranks, which were disordered
by the shock. The Bavarian sergeant
fell amongst five Carlists, who settled
him with their knives. A pale subaltern
of the factious came in contact
with three of our grenadiers, and
begged piteously for mercy. But the
grenadiers had no time; they cut a
bad joke in Swabian dialect, and
brained him with their muskets. Of
the first encounter of the day, these
are the only episodes I remember.
Suddenly the Carlist bugles
sounded the retreat. We formed column
and hurried in pursuit, followed
by the royal guard. From time to
time the enemy halted, till the bayonet
again dislodged them. By turns our
battalions were sent forward as skirmishers.
It was nearly noon. A
dying officer of ours begged me for a
mouthful of vinegar. I had but two;
one for myself, and one for my comrade,
whom I had not seen, however,
the whole of the day, and never saw
afterwards. It was about twelve
o’clock when my company advanced
to skirmish. The line deployed, and
as we slowly advanced, loading and
firing, I had to pass through the corner
of a small thicket. Just as I entered
it, I observed a Carlist horseman,
at its other extremity, fire his
carbine at one of our men. Then he
disappeared amongst the trees, and
five seconds later I saw him riding
towards me. “Surrender!” he shouted
in Navarrese patois, and stooped behind
his horse’s head. At my shot
the animal stood stock-still, and the
rider fell from his saddle. Blood
streamed from a wound between neck
and shoulder. I released his foot
from the stirrup, propped him up
against a beech-tree, and unbuttoned
his jacket from over his panting
breast. As I did so, a silver
cross fell almost into my hand. It
hung from his neck by a ribbon,
and upon it were the words, “Mary,
pray for me!” I had seen such a
cross before. “Open your mouth,
Antonio!” I cried. He obeyed, and
I poured upon his parched tongue
the last contents of my flask. He
thanked me with his dying breath.
I concealed the cross within his
jacket, and followed the signal that
called the skirmishers forward.

HIDDEN TREASURE.

A fortnight later, at about the same
hour as in the previous January, the
Legion marched into Careta. As before,
old José was seated upon the
bench in the chimney corner, making
a cigarillo out of the stumps of a dozen
others, carefully treasured in his coat
cuff; and the patrona jumped up
with a shrill “Dios de mi alma!”
as the foreign drums announced her
former guests. “The old billets”
was the convenient order, as regarded
quarters; and with shout and song,
and clatter of musket-buts, my company
rushed up the well-known staircase.
The rough greeting over, and
a demand for wine complied with, I
inquired after Manuela. “She is
with friends in the mountains,” grumbled
the old woman.

It was ten o’clock. With four other
non-commissioned officers I betook
myself, an iron lamp in hand, to the
room allotted us. José and the patrona
had been long asleep. The soldiers
lay for the most part in the
deathlike slumber of extreme fatigue,
upon the chairs and in the kitchen.
The floor of our room was of tiles,
affording a cold, uncomfortable resting-place.
As to bedding, it was not
to be thought of.

Whilst examining our dreary lodgings,
one of my companions pointed
out an opening in the wall, closed up
with square flat stones, laid upon[568]
each other, but not cemented. Judging
from the external aspect of the
house, we conjectured this condemned
doorway to lead into another apartment.

The suspicion that beds or wine
were perhaps concealed there, induced
us to remove the upper stones, and
when enough of them were out to allow
of ingress, my comrades hoisted me
up to the opening, through which I
held the lamp, and saw a passage
with several doors. Taking my bayonet
and havresack, I bid my comrades
remain where they were, and, promising
an equitable division of spoils, I
climbed over the wall. Shading the
lamp with my hand lest a ray should
meet the eye of old José, I moved
along as noiselessly as possible, whilst
behind me my companions poked
their heads through the opening, and
made eager and curious inquiries as to
what I saw. In one corner I found a
pile of sheep’s wool, which I threw
out to serve as bed. In the room
I found some rude furniture, broken
and worthless, old shrivelled goatskins,
empty casks, and the like. I
was about to cease my investigation,
when I noticed a wooden partition
cutting off the end of a room. There
was a door in it, which I opened.
Whilst my comrades were busy spreading
out the wool, it revealed an alcove,
containing a clean, white bed, in which
some one lay.

Hastily shading the lamp I gently
closed the door. But perceiving that
the person in the bed, whoever it was,
did not stir, I ventured nearer, and
beheld a mass of long black hair
spread out in rich waves over the
snow-white sheet. The sleeper’s face
was turned to the wall; another
glance, and I recognised Manuela.
My heart throbbed violently. It was
a hard fight, harder than that on the
4th July. She lay so still and unconscious,
breathing so softly, and her
dark hair twined so temptingly over
the bed-clothes, like snakes out of
paradise. But upon her partially unveiled
bosom lay the silver cross, and
the lamp-light shone upon the words,
“Mary, pray for me!” Silently I
shut the door and returned to my
comrades. Upon my assurance that
I had found nothing worth looking
after, the stones were replaced in the
opening, and we lay down to sleep.
But I have often slept more soundly
upon bare tiles than I did that night
upon José’s wool.

At daybreak the diana called us, as
usual, under arms, to wait the return
of the morning reconnoissance. After
that, various duties occupied me for
some hours. Upon my return to the
house, I had all the difficulty in the
world to appease Manuela’s mother,
who showered upon us, to the astonishment
of the whole company,
every malediction the Spanish language
affords. The old lady had
found the wool scattered about our
room, and naturally concluded that
was not the full extent of our depredations.
Manuela now made her appearance,
bathed in tears—her presence
in the house being already known,
so her mother supposed, to all of us.

It was again evening. The thunder
rolled, and a heavy summer shower
poured down in torrents, when, as I
ascended the stairs, a flash of lightning
showed me José equipped and
girt for the road. Manuela hung sobbing
round his neck, and bid him
God-speed. On my appearance, the
old peasant darted through the back-door;
and a second flash gave me a
glimpse of his brown cloak as he strode
over the garden fence and disappeared
across the country.

An hour later our drums beat for
unexpected departure, and the soldiers
hurried out of the house. I lingered
an instant, and, with my arm round
Manuela’s waist, told her, in few
words, my discovery of the previous
night. Her cheeks burned like flame,
and she raised her great dark eyes
timidly and gratefully to my face.
“May God repay it to your sisters and
mother!” were her words. “I said
you were not like the rest. But your
home is far hence, and if the war
spares you, poor Manuela will soon be
forgotten.”

“Give me something whereby to
remember you, Manuela. A kiss, if
you will.”

“Take this cross. I give it you.
Wear it in battle, as my brother Antonio
does his, and show it him if you
meet in strife. May it shield and
accompany you to your distant home,
and remind you sometimes of the poor
Navarrese maiden.”

[569]I pressed the sweet girl closer to my
breast, took a farewell kiss, and whispered,
“Adieu, poor Manuela!” Just
then, through the half-open door,
appeared the unclean countenance of
the Piedmontese. He grinned with
rage and disappointment, and disappeared
at Manuela’s cry of alarm.

Ten or twelve leagues south-west
from Pampeluna lies the fortress of
Lerin, perched high upon the summit
of a hill. Thence, a few weeks after
the preceding scene, the second division
of the foreign legion started suddenly
at midnight, the object of the
mysterious march unknown even to
the officers. When the column had
reached the bottom of the road that
zig-zags down the hill, a peasant,
tied, by precaution, to one of the
horses of the advanced guard, conducted
them rapidly across the Ega,
through meadows and vineyards, and
wild broken country. It was very
dark, and now and then a man or
horse fell down a bank or into a
ditch. When day broke, however, it
was discovered that the wrong direction
had been taken. The column
went to the right about, and reached,
just as the sun rose, a beaten track
leading direct to Sesma, a village occupied
by Carlist troops. Bright blazed
the bayonets in the sunbeams, betraying
our presence to the foe we were to
have surprised. Whilst we gave the
Carlists employment in the adjacent
woods and fields, our general made a
dash into the village, caught the alcalde,
and, by threats of a short
shrift and a sharp volley, made him
pay down a small portion of the long
arrears due to the legion.

Upon our orderly retreat to Lerin,
effected in squares of battalions, on
whose skirts hosts of Carlist cavalry
impotently hovered, we were surprised
to see our peasant guide led along
with bound hands. When the sight of
the fort’s artillery made the enemy
cease the pursuit and return to Sesma,
the column was formed into one large
square, a drum-head court-martial was
held upon the peasant, and preparation
made for his instant execution.
Although well acquainted with the
country, he had led the troops astray,
exposing them to great danger, and
partly frustrating the object of the
expedition. Further proof of his guilt
was found upon him, in the shape of
a letter from the Carlist village of
Hostiz. With bowed head, and in
sullen silence, he listened to his sentence,
announced with a threefold
rattle of drums. For the first time
the unpleasant duty devolved upon
me of forming one of the firing party.
Heavens! how I started as I drew
near to the victim, and recognised old
José from Careta. Poor Manuela!
I trembled as I looked round, expecting
her to appear. Just then came
pouring out of the town, with a woman
at their head, a crowd of peasants
in Sunday garb, hat in hand,
and approached the general, slackening
their pace respectfully as they
drew near. But Manuela’s mother
(she it was who accompanied them)
sprang forward like a fury, menacing
the general with her clenched fist and
mad Cassandra-like countenance, and
heaping upon him curses such as only
an angry Spaniard can lay tongue to.
Her shrill imprecations contrasted
oddly with the humble and deprecating
entreaties of the men, and with
the muttered prayers of José, who
awaited his last minute upon his knees
before the firing party.

Permission given, one of the men
stepped forward as spokesman.

“May it please your Excellency,”
said he to the general, “to spare this
man’s life. He is unacquainted with
the country. He first came hither
only a month ago, after his hearth
had been ravaged, his family scattered,
his house burned. Be merciful,
Señor. We will all be sureties
for his good behaviour. Let him
return to his wife: and so shall the
blessed Mary and the angels comfort
your Excellency in the hour of
agony!”

“No, no!” yelled the woman,
sputtering with fury, her long grizzled
hair streaming around her distorted
face. “No! they shall not comfort
him, the vile heretic! José Lopez!
husband! die bravely, curse the
heretic dogs with thy last breath,
and the angels will hear thee!
Curse upon ye, strangers, come to
destroy our dwellings, to slay our
men, to slight our faith! Death and
agony to your souls, pest in your
veins, ravens on your carcass, ashes
on your threshold! Die, José, for[570]
the King and the holy faith! Viva la
Santa Maria! Viva Carlos Quinto!“

Four men led away the peasants
and the furious woman. The word
of command was given, and I had to
aim at the breast to which, only a
month previously, poor Manuela had
been pressed in the cottage at Careta.
Once more José exclaimed, in a loud
voice, “Mary, pray for me!” Then
there was the rattle of a volley, the
peasant sprang into the air, and fell
down upon his face, his jacket smoking
with burnt wadding.

The band struck up, and we marched
back to Lerin.

THE WINE-SKIN.

Three days afterwards, on the 14th
August, the legion made an unexpected
incursion into the valley of
the Bastan, a district full of strong
positions, and formerly, for some
time, the abiding place of the Pretender,
of whose cause its inhabitants
were enthusiastic partisans.

Moving with extreme rapidity, we
swept, with small resistance, one
village after another. On our approach,
soldiers, peasants, women,
and children, packed their beds upon
jackasses, and fled with bag and
baggage to concealment in the mountains.
Towards noon, every sign of
a foe having disappeared, we retired
rapidly through the valley towards
the Arga, and on this retreat some
plundering occurred in the villages.

Arrived at Hostiz, I entered what
appeared the best house in the village.
The streets were strewn with
clothes, linen, and other objects,
dropped or thrown away by the fugitives.
I met two soldiers carrying
large red curtains of heavy rich silk;
others had laden themselves with
cheeses, others with honey or wine;
one man had got a large crucifix.
Half-naked women ran screaming
through the streets. Eager for a
draught of wine, for I was exhausted to
faintness by the extreme heat and by
the fatigue of a long rapid march, I
hurried up the stairs. The house
bore witness to utter wantonness of
destruction. Every thing was broken
and smashed; and hence I was not a
little surprised to observe the good-humoured
air with which a handsome
young woman, standing in the roomy
vestibule, distributed wine to a large
party of our soldiers, who drank in
greedy haste, laughing, singing,
and extolling the charms of their
Hebe.

“Hallo! my girl, a drink of wine,
for heaven’s sake!”

I had scarcely uttered the words
when an adjacent door opened; and,
with arms extended and dishevelled
hair, Manuela rushed towards me.

“Give him none, Maria!” she
cried; “and you,” she added, seizing
both my hands, “for God and the
saints’ sake, drink not a drop!”

At the words, her sister Maria
dropped the mouth of the wine-skin,
allowing the red liquor to gush over
the floor, and disappeared. The
drums beat to fall in and march.
But now the soldiers, an instant before
so joyous, sank down, one after
the other, like poisoned flies, writhing
and bemoaning themselves upon the
stairs and in the passage. Manuela
hung senseless upon my arm. I
stooped to lay her gently on the
ground, when a musket was fired
not three paces behind me. I looked
round. It was the Piedmontese,
grinning horribly in mingled agony
and exultation, as he doubled himself
like a worm in the pangs of poison.
But the wretch’s aim had been too
true. Her breast pierced by the
bullet, Manuela fell dead beside the
other victims.

How beautiful she was, even in
death, whilst her left breast poured
forth in a crimson stream the many
sorrows she had sighed under! Poor
Manuela! How pale was now your
cheek! How different the last farewell
kiss on your chill blue lips from
that warm and thrilling one in
Careta!

THE HOSPITAL.

The military hospital at Pampeluna
was formerly the palace of the
bishop, who fled to Don Carlos at
the commencement of the war. Its
spacious halls and corridors were
converted into twelve large wards,[571]
four of them for wounded men, and
four others for fever patients. Each
ward contained about fifty beds, in
which, upon dirty mattresses, Christino
soldiers pined and suffered.
Most of the sick of the foreign legion
there gave up the ghost. The nurses
were sisters of the Order of Mercy;
but these, like nearly all Spaniards
pertaining to the church, were adherents
of the Pretender, and any thing
but zealous in the discharge of their
duty towards us. People spoke even
of the poisoning of soups and drinks
given to the patients—a thing certainly
not impossible, all such matters
being prepared by the sisterhood,
whose proceedings were but carelessly
superintended.

In each of these wards, during the
dead hours of night, a single lamp
burned, leaving the two extremities
of the room in darkness. The hospital
being close to the town wall,
there was never a lack of night-birds,
attracted to the windows by the smell
of corpses. Day and night the sisters
moved about the wards, in white
veils and black dresses—a mass of
keys, beads, and crucifixes, suspended
at their side. And frequent were the
visits of the episcopal chaplain, Don
Rafael Salvador, preceded by bell-ringing
urchins, and bearing the last
sacrament to some expiring sinner.

Repeated bivouacs in inclement
weather, and especially that of the
11th March, at the foot of the Dos
Hermanas, laid me, on the 15th
March 1837, seven months after the
incident last related, upon a sick bed
in this house of suffering.

Four bloodlettings within two days
had done something towards calming
the fever that burned in my veins,
but still enough remained to beset
my couch with delirious images.
Grim and horrible visages, pale,
mournful figures that seemed of
moonshine, and vaguely reminded me
of my home, scenes from my childhood,
and others from the war in
which I had been nearly two years
a sharer, passed rapidly before me.
Now it was the tailor from Regensburg,
with froth on his lips, expiring
on the mountain side; then old José,
with sightless eyes and pierced by a
dozen bullets, danced a ghastly fandango
at my bed-foot; and then I
beheld a colossal breast, white and
beautiful, offering blood to drink to a
host of thirsty soldiers.

From such visions as these I one
night awoke and lay with my eyes
fixed upon the lamp, which hung just
opposite to me, revolving wild and
melancholy fancies in my fevered
brain. Do what I would, Manuela’s
image continually recurred to me,
and with the strange pertinacity of
delirium I repeated to myself that
she would come and rescue me from
my unhappy condition. In a bed
behind me, an Andalusian prayed with
the chaplain, who threw a red silk
coverlid over his emaciated body,
received his confession, and administered
the holy wafer. At the window
a screech-owl uttered its annoying
cries. Upon a bed opposite to
me a sick German sang—

Further off another patient whistled
a fandango; and next to me, upon
my left hand, an unhappy creature,
frantic with fever, and bound down
upon his bed with leathern straps,
wrought and strove till he got rid of
his coverings, and wrenched the bandage
from his arm, which forthwith
sent up into the air a spout of blood
from a recently opened vein. For a
moment the German’s kindly song
soothed and calmed my perturbed
ideas; but suddenly José gave a
bound before me, and held up his fist
with a frightful laugh, and yelled out
like a lunatic, “Viva Carlos Quinto!”
And Manuela wrung her hands till
my two sisters came and consoled and
prayed with her. Then suddenly her
pale face, surrounded by a white veil,
was bent down till it nearly touched
mine; and she said, in soft and tender
tones:—

Poor stranger, will you drink?”

“Yes,” I replied, and looked her
full in the face. Manuela it was. I
well remembered the sweet countenance,
first seen in Careta. I raised
myself, and would fain have seized
hold of her, but she moved slowly
away, her rosary and golden crucifix
and black gown rustling through the
room. It was no deception. Again
Manuela came, and brought me some
cooling drink. Once more I looked
her hard in the eyes. God! now I[572]
remembered! It was the same
beautiful woman who distributed the
wine at Hostiz and would fain have
given me some. “Faugh!” I exclaimed,
and raised myself in bed to
call the Piedmontese to shoot her.
But she bent soothingly over me, and
laid hold of the ribbon upon which I
wore Manuela’s silver cross. I
thought she was about to strangle
me; but she smiled kindly, and showed
me that she wore a similar cross upon
her breast. And she gave me to
drink, and then took away the little
earthen jug, and disappeared at the
dark end of the room. And I lay
thinking how like she was to Manuela,
the poor girl in Careta, who loved
me and saved my life.

The same night—how long afterwards
I cannot tell, perhaps five
minutes, perhaps two hours—the
pale sad face again bowed over me.
Just then two hospital attendants
bore away a corpse, rolled in its bed-clothes.
My neighbour, No. 50,
cried out, “Pierre! they are burying
you!” and laughed horridly, whilst
the German opposite sang gently and
mournfully:

But close beside me a soft voice whispered:
“Sleep, and be at rest; God
give thee peace and health. I am
not Manuela—I am Maria. I found
thy cross, and I pray for thee. Thou
shalt recover and return to thy country!”

And her prayers and care prevailed.
I did recover, and returned
to friends and home. But often still
do I think of poor Manuela, and of
my loves and perils and sufferings
in yon strange land beyond the
Pyrenees.

HEIGH-HO!

[573]

REPUBLICAN PARIS.

[MARCH, APRIL 1848.]

Is there any former lover of Paris
who imagines that, when the barricades
of the last insurrection have
been removed, the devastations repaired,
and the street lanterns mended,
Paris will wear, with its republican
face, the same aspect as it did
of old? If there be such a man,
let him still cherish the fond delusion,
and not come and see. Or, would he
learn the truth, let him try the experiment
of taking from the fairest face
he knows and loves, the gay, coquettish
cap of gauze and ribbon, the
light, butterfly-like chef-d’œuvre of the
most tasty fancy of a French marchande
des modes, and let him put on
that head the Phrygian cap of liberty,
the bonnet rouge, in all its startling
coarseness of red cloth. He thinks,
perhaps, that the face will be the same,
or at least wear the same expression
as before! Fatal mistake! Animated,
gay with colour, flushed with the red
reflected tints, picture-like even, may
be the pretty face—but it will have
utterly lost its former charm; it will
look staring, vulgar, swaggering, disordered,
at best Bacchante-like. Or,
to take a more psychological comparison:—Let
him think back upon the
time when he was in love, and wandered
in the company of the beloved,
and try to remember how he looked
upon the objects that surrounded him.
Of a surety, whatever their natural
want of beauty they wore a peculiar
look of brightness; there was a
magical veil of rose-coloured charm
upon all. Let him then reflect upon
the aspect of the same spot when she
was gone. The objects remained the
same, but certainly they wore not the
same air to his eyes; they were the
identical objects he had looked upon
before, and yet he could have sworn
that they were changed—that the
whole landscape was discoloured. And
so it is with Paris. Streets, squares,
and houses are the same, but its moral
appearance is totally altered: there
is a changed look in the very air; the
impression on the mind is as different
as rose-colour is from gray upon the
sense; the psychological tint has been
washed out, blurred away, and replaced
by a troubled, confused, indescribably
unharmonious and uncongenial
colour.

But without attempting to convey to
others a feeling impossible to define,
it is easy enough to point out the
altered state of being of the French
capital in the outward physical aspect
of republican Paris. True, the
marks of devastation have been almost
entirely removed from the Boulevards
and principal streets with wonderful
alacrity on the part of the municipal
authorities. Young trees have been
planted on the spots where the old
ones were cut down to form barricades:
they look stunted, meagre, and
unhappy enough, to be sure—very like
the young republic that their frail
stems typify—but they manage to keep
up the look of the line of avenue.
There they stand, all ready to be cut
down again for the construction of
fresh barricades, if ever they grow big
enough before they are wanted, which
is certainly a very doubtful matter.
The asphalte is already laid down
once more in the holes of the broken-up
trottoirs, or at least smoke and
stench enough prevail in the labours
of plastering it down; and in a short
time the iron railings of the Boulevard
du Rempart will again prevent drunken
citizens in smocks from falling down
into the street below; at all events,
there is mortar and solder enough
ready on the pavement to do the work.
On the opposite side of the way, that
fatal building, the Hotel of Foreign
Affairs, before which so frightful a
scene of carnage was acted, looks much
as it did of yore—perhaps only a
little dirtier, a little more public-office-like—although
young citizens en blouse
mount guard before its gates instead
of soldiers of the line, and on its walls,
smeared with blood-dipped fingers,
glare before one’s eyes, unwashed
away by rain, the startling capitals—”Mort
a Guizot.” But it is to be
presumed that the eyes of passers-by
will get used to the bloody words—forgotten,[574]
perhaps, before many months
in other visions of blood—perhaps
smeared over in their turn by “Mort
à ——.” Who can tell? The pavement
has been long since restored to
the streets; although, to tell the truth,
here and there the disjointed, ill-replaced
stones still slightly lift their
heads to tell a tale of past devastation,
and proclaim their readiness to
rise again at a moment’s warning; and
fiacres jolt uneasily over them—very
much like the Provisional Government
over the rough work left them
to stumble against by the Revolution.
But, upon the whole, Paris has nigh
recovered its former material look,
and might almost cheat the wanderer,
who looks only upon stone walls, and
pavements, and lamp-posts, into the
belief that it has undergone no change,
and retained no scars from its late
burning eruptive disorder, unless he
stroll past two spots which startle him
into a recollection of the truth. Here
the long façade of the palace of the
Tuilleries, its window-panes all smashed,
its shutters shattered—the broken
casket of royalty! There the quondam
Palais-Royal, its walls still blackened
by the bonfires of royal furniture
lighted in its courts; its windows
paneless, its once flowered terraces
bare or boarded with planks. And,
opposite, the smoked walls of that
ruined building, on the other side of
the square, where the last defenders
of royalty were shot down, or were
flung back to perish in the blazing
pile of the vast guard-house.

But if Paris has thus washed away
its blood and dirt, thus mended its
rent garments, thus patched over its
scars, where then is the great change?
Come and see! The scenes with which
the streets of republican Paris teem
are such as those who have only
known the city in its kingly garb have
never witnessed.

What was the aspect of Paris formerly
on one of those bright champagne-like
spring days, when the
Parisian butterflies of all classes, the
humble gray moth as the sparkling
tiger-fly, came forth to sun themselves
in the golden air? There
were crowds—but listless, easy, careless
crowds, that sauntered they knew
not whither, and turned back they
knew not why—crowds of beings
who ran over each other, and almost
over themselves, as they fluttered
hither and thither, enjoying the
brightness of the sky without rendering
themselves any reckoning of
their enjoyment. There are still
crowds in the streets; but no longer
listless, easy, careless crowds. They
form in large groups, and knots, and
circles on the pavement, and at street
corners, and at the entrance of galleries
and passages; and, from the
midst of the mass, if you can get
near enough to hear, comes the sound
of haranguing or of disputing. Each
group is an al fresco club in which
the interests of the country at large
are being discussed; and round about
is ever a dark murmuring, and a
rumour, and a ferment—and sometimes
minor disputants break off from
the parent knot; and presently they
form a nucleus for a fresh encircling
crowd; and another group takes up
its standing; and a great banian-tree
of politicising knots drops its branches,
which thus take root up and down
the Boulevards, far and wide, until
the whole long avenue is planted
with separate little circles of disputants
or spouters. Here a well-dressed
man assures his unknown
auditors that the arbitrary and despotic
measures of an obnoxious Minister
of the Interior destroy all confidence,
and prepare the ruin of the
country, with the fear of another
Reign of Terror: there a workman on
a bench, with violent gesture and inflamed
countenance, declares that the
salvation of the republic, one and
indivisible, hangs upon the despotism—he
gives it another name—of the
same Minister of the Interior—for
the time being, the hero of the people.
But think not that the blouse is sundered
from the frock-coat, or the
varnished boot from the clouted shoe.
Here you see a young élégant of the
Faubourg St Germain, his legitimist
principles and his old dynastic
hopes prudently concealed behind the
axiom, “All for France! Français
avant tout!” discussing amicably a
knotty point about elections, or the
measures of the Provisional Government,
with an unshaved artisan in
a smock: and look! they are of one
mind—or apparently so—and the
kid-gloved hand grasps the rough,[575]
callous, toil-hardened palm. Here
again a good bourgeois, a shopkeeper,
in his uniform as a National Guard,
the grocer of your street corner maybe,
holds Monsieur the ex-Count,
his customer, by the button, to develop
his last republican scheme for
the certain remedy of the financial
crisis. A little further on, a dark-browed
man, in a ragged coat, with
a tricolor cockade, scarcely concealing
the blood-red ribbon beneath,
declares to a knot of young schoolboys,
that the only method to avert
the general misery is by the spoliation
of the vile rich; but meets with
little sympathy, and goes away scowling,
as if he thought that his time
would yet come. And here again a
gamin, a very child, with his snub
nose insolently cocked in the air, his
sabre bound about his body, and his
musket on his arm—for he just comes
from keeping guard—is holding forth
upon the interests of the Republic to
a red-faced, mustached old gentleman,
who looks like an old general;
and who smiles good-temperedly on
the urchin, and listens, until the
young patriot thinks probably that
he has sufficiently enlightened “granny”
upon the art of sucking republican
eggs, and swaggers off, screeching
Mourir pour la Patrie, at the
top of his shrill voice. And around
each of these minor centres of two
suns is all the hemisphere of listening
planets and satellites. And thus
every where is a fusion, according
to the best-established republican
principles of égalité: and no great
harm done, were the doctrine to rest
there—every where ferment, commotion,
murmur, movement. But the old
Parisian flaneur, with his easily satisfied
curiosity, his desultory wanderings,
his careless movements—and
what Parisian of the street-crowds,
man, woman, or child, had not formerly
more or less of the spirit of a true
flaneur?—is gone from the streets of
Paris. A citizen has something else
to do than flaner: he feels all the
weight of the interests of the country
on his own individual shoulders; and
he has no time now but for making
harangues, on which the welfare of
France depends, and discussing political
or social questions, equally for
the welfare of all humanity. It is
wonderful how quickly the change has
come over the spirit of his dream.
But fashion and contagion work
miracles.

Come! look at this picture now.
It is a bright moonlight night. The
beams of the full moon are whitening
the long line of elevated columns of
the Bourse. In the large, open,
moonlit place before it are crowds—every
where crowds—in isolated
circles again, looking like clumps of
little wooded islands in a glistening
lake. Let us approach one of the
dark masses. In the midst of the
circle stands a young fellow, bare-headed,
shaking his fair locks about
him most theatrically, and “baying
at the moon.” He is mounted on a
tub, or some such temporary pulpit.
His arms are tossed aloft in the
moonlight with such energy that we
feel convinced he fancies himself a
second Camille Desmoulins animating
the Parisian population against
the tyrants of the country. We get
as near as we can, and we now catch
his words. He is, in truth, haranguing
against tyranny, but the
tyranny of the shopkeepers; and he
calls upon all citoyens and true
patriots to join him in a petition to
the Government for the closing of
shops on Sundays and holidays at
twelve o’clock, instead of three in
the afternoon! But the mass around
does not seem to catch his enthusiasm;
for I see none of those shifting
lights in the chiaro-obscuro of the
crowd, that would indicate one of
those electric movements that fall
upon popular masses, under the influence
of inspiration. Now, he cries,
“Vive la Republique! citizens, friends,
let us to the Faubourg St Antoine!”—the
workman’s quarter, where
émeutes are generally cooked up. But
no one seems inclined to follow him
into that distant region, in order to
get up a shop-shutting insurrection;
and more than one voice calls out,
“plus souvent!” or, Anglice, “I wish
you may get it!”

Come! here is another picture.
The night this time is dark and drizzly.
Upon the pavement of the now naked
flower-market, beneath the quiet
ghostly white walls of the Madeleine,
stand thick groups of men: there are
some hundreds of them—some in cloaks,[576]
some in thick coats, some with their
hats slouched down upon their brows,
all wearing, in their several patches
of murmuring forms, an air of conspiracy,
which is greatly increased by
the sombre and inclement state of the
night. And conspirators they are—but
bold-faced conspirators in the face
of a dripping heaven. In republican
Paris, however, there is, as yet, no
police to prevent conspiracy: and in
this instance the plotters are not conspiring
against republican France, but
against monarchies and empires. The
dusky forms are those of the German
democrats, who are holding a desultory
council for the raising of a German
army to go and conquer the liberties of
the great German republic they intend
to found. To-morrow their address
to the “citoyens Français,” calling
on them to lend arms and give money
towards the recruitment of their force,
will be on all the walls of Paris. In a
day or two a few hundreds will be off,
with the full conviction that they are
to mix their own republican leaven of
sourness into all the freshly baked
German constitutional governments,
and proclaim their republic wherever
they go. They are talking, in this
bigger group, not only of “breaking
tyrant-chains,” but of “wreathing
laurels for their own brows.”

Think not also that the Boulevards
retain their glittering aspect of rich
decorated shops, teeming with the
luxury of colour and gilding as before.
We are in the midst of a financial
crisis, and misery and want are increasing
daily. Trade has ceased with
the want of confidence; ruin has fallen
on many; workmen have been dismissed,
and shop-boys turned adrift
in hundreds upon the streets; and, in
spite of the “roasted larks” all ready
for hungry mouths, and “showers of
gold” which the Government promises
as about to fall from the heaven of the
republic upon the working classes, it
is not only on the faces of the tradespeople
at their shop-doors, or behind
the mockery of their plate-glass windows,
that there is impressed a gloom,
but upon the many hundreds and
thousands who seek work and cannot
find it, and who wander up and down
with hanging heads, or while away
their weary hours in lounging about
the outskirts of the disputing groups.
See! how many shops are shut! See!
how sadly the placard of “boutique à
louer,” upon the closed doors, meets
the eye at every ten steps, and tells a
tale of bankruptcy; how many rows
of dismal shutters, like coffin-lids erect
upon their ends, give by day to the
streets that funereal look they formerly
only gave by night; and
chalked upon these shutters are still
the words—”armes donnés au peuple,”
a still remaining souvenir of the days
of tumult, disorder, and bloodshed,
when every house in Paris was scrawled
over by the same announcement,
in order to prevent the forcible entry
of the mob into private dwellings to
carry off defensive weapons. If we
step aside into one of those monster-shops,
with their vast corridors, and
avenues, and galleries, and staircases,
which lately were so crowded
that it was difficult for customers to
be served even by the hundred commis
within, what a scene of desert listlessness
meets our eyes! There is scarce a
solitary customer who wanders amongst
their long galleries, vainly draperied
and beshawled with all the rich wonders
of modern manufacture. The
weary-looking shop-boys, the few that
remain, run out of breath from one end
of a long gallery to another to get
what you want, for they have now
several departments of the establishment
under their care. There is not a
trace here of Paris as it was.

Come out in the streets again!
What has become of the bright look
they wore? There are no longer the
belles toilettes of the last Parisian
fashion—no gay dresses, or but a scanty,
worn-out, tawdry show—none of
the ancient splendour of rich Paris.
A few élégants, it is true, familiar
faces, may be still met upon their former
lounging haunts on the Boulevards;
but they are few, and their
varnished boots even have a dull
lustreless look, that is perfectly sympathetical
with the general gloom.
Several, certainly, may be met in the
uniform of the National Guard, but
with such an altered, any thing but
“lion”-like mien, that you do not recognise
them at first, and cut half your
best acquaintances. The equipages
which formerly dashed hither and
thither over the pavement, are now
raræ aves in the streets; and the few[577]
who exhibit thus openly their superior
wealth have, for the most part,
considered it advisable to have the
armorial bearings upon the pannels of
their vehicles painted over. Most
of the upper classes have put down
their carriages, and sold or sent
away their horses. The unfortunate
“rich,” however, are in sad
straits; if they show themselves en
voiture, while their humbler neighbours
walk on foot, they may stand
a chance, in the new realm of “égalité,”
of having their ears saluted with
the menacing cry of “à bas les aristocrates—à
bas les riches!” if they restrict
their expenses and reduce their
establishments, they run the risk of
being seriously denounced as favourers
of the “conspiration de l`économie,”
which they are supposed to form in
order to injure the republic by refusing
to spend their money. Where the
people are lords and masters, the upper
classes have evidently a far harder
game to play, and much less tolerance
to expect, than in the contrary rule.
In the aspect of the streets, then, there
is not a trace of Paris as it was.

How looks the scene? There are
plenty of ill-dressed men moving
about with anxious faces: they are
the hungry crew from the provinces,
come to solicit places in the new order
of things, and snatch what morsel of
the cake they can in the general
scramble. They may be known by the
size of their tricolor cockades, and
streaming ribbons at their buttonhole;
for they think it necessary to
proclaim, as flauntingly as they can,
by symbol, the republican principles
which, they suddenly find out, always
and from all times, although unknown
to themselves, animated their souls.
And blouses there are in plenty, as of
course. They are the kings of the day,
and they are not yet chary of their
royal persons, or tired of exhibiting
the consciousness of their royalty in
the streets. Some of these braves citoyens
have got far beyond the comparison,
“drunk as a lord”—they are
“drunk as an emperor:” and with
their ideas of aristocratic power, and
their maxim of “all for us, and nothing
for nobody else,” why should
they not be? Besides, as they choose
to have much pay and no work, how
could they better employ their time?
The uniforms of the National Guards
are now almost more numerous than
the frock-coat and round hat; and
though so fallen from their high estate
before the frowning demonstration of
the people, these former soi-disant defenders
of the liberties of their country
assert a certain predominance in the
aspect of the moving scene. Where so
lately arms were never seen, having
been strictly prohibited by orders of the
police, now pass by you, at all times,
bands of armed men, in tolerably ragged
attire, or en blouse, with muskets
on their arms, their white sword and
cartouche belts crossing their breasts,
and little bits of card-paper stuck in
their caps. These are small battalions
of the newly recruited garde mobile—recruited
chiefly from the idle refuse
of the people; and as they march
hither and thither continually, they
seem still to have a faint idea that
they are obeying orders from their
officers: but how long this fancy of
obedience and discipline will be still
entertained among them, is a very
ticklish question. Some of them are
standing sentinels at the gates of the
government buildings and public
offices, in lieu of the soldiers of the
line that formerly met your eye there.
Here again, before the Hotel de la
Marine, are a few sturdy-looking
sailors, the most honest in physiognomy
of most of the individuals you
meet; and with their blue dresses,
and ribbon-bound glazed hats, give
a new feature, and not an unpicturesque
one, to the street scene. A few
soldiers still roam about in desultory
manner; the jealousy of the people
will not allow of any armed force but
their own within the walls of Paris;
and they have a debauched demoralised
look that they wore not of old;
for they no longer obey orders, wander
about at will, and return to their
barracks only when they want to be
fed. Without seeking for any marked
republican fashion, there may be thus
found sufficient change in the outward
attire of the general throng to show
at once that you are in the streets of
republican Paris, and not Paris as it
was. And yet, specimens of the fantastic
republican attire of a gone-by
time, the recollections of which few,
one would think, would wish to recall,
are not altogether wanting. A few[578]
bonnets rouges,—the Phrygian caps of
liberty,—with tricolor cockades on
one side, startle the eye sometimes:
some adventurous female of the lower
classes crosses your path now and
then with a similar coiffure, and in a
tricolor dress of red, blue apron, and
white collar; and here and there a
tricolor-bedecked fellow, with a fanner
in his hands, invites you to witness
his feats of republican jugglery. This,
however, is the mere child’s play that
mocks an old comedy,—an old tragedy,
I should have said. Little is as
yet done to parody that fearful epoch
of French history: people do not even
address each other as “citoyen” and
“citoyenne.” The name appears only
in public documents. What King
People may require, when it feels
more fully its own strength—what
comedy, or what tragedy, of old times
it may choose to act again, remains to
be seen upon the dark and gloomy
page of the future. The new-born
giant only stretches his arms as yet,
and crushes a fly or two in sport; as
yet he scarcely knows his awful power.

Now listen to the street-cries in the
formerly orderly thoroughfares of the
capital. What an incessant screeching
of voices,—rough, shrill, clear, and
husky—fills the air, and, if not deafens,
tears the ears. From an early hour
of the morning until after midnight,
the hoarse screaming ceases not in the
streets. Wo betide the nervous and
impressionable! they are sure to go
to bed nightly with a headach. All
this eardrum-rending clamour has reference
only to one object of all,—that
of the necessary daily food of republican
Paris—of the newspapers. Their
name now is legion. With one ambitious
exception, all the old established
newspapers are submerged in
this deluge of republican prints. We
have now two or three “Republiques,”
“La Reforme,” “La Liberté,” “Le
Salut Public,” “La voix du Peuple,”
and who can tell how many other
“voices” besides, including “La voix
des Femmes;” for the milder sex already
lifts its voice still more fiercely
if possible than the ruder. But it
would be as difficult to enumerate all
the names of the demons in a fantastic
poet’s “inferno,” as all the titles of
the new republican newspapers that
howl around one in the distracted
streets of Paris. There is one, as was
before said, that is screeched more
noisily, more assiduously, more sturdily,
than all the others; and the sounds
of its hawking ring long in the ears
after the streets have been left, and
even pursue the bewildered street-wanderer
to his bed, and in his dreams.
It weighs in weight of noise against
all the other papers of Paris taken in
the mass. Listen! What do you
hear? Nothing but “Démandez la
Presse!” “La Patrie!” “Démandez
la Presse!” “La voix des Clubs!”
“Démandez la Presse!” “La vrai
Démocrate!” “Démandez la Presse!”
and so on to the “crack of doom.”
It is the journal of an intriguing man,
of strong sense, and stronger ambition,
who has not yet obtained that
power at which he grasps; but as the
whole paper is for one sou, it will be
strange if, with this active system of
living puffing, he arrive not at some
great pinnacle, or fall not into some
deep abyss. Ears, however, will get
accustomed to the cannon of the battlefield;
but the harassed spirit gets
not easily accustomed to the bodily
assaults of every moment. At every
step newspaper-venders obstruct your
path, rushing down upon you like
cab-drivers in the streets of Naples:
the thousand rival sheets of printed
paper are flared in your face, thrust
into your hand, forced into your
bosom, ten at a time, with the accompanying
howl of “only a sou!—only
five centimes!”

Suppose that, for a moment—a bold
supposition!—you have escaped from
the attacks of these invading hordes
of republican journalism, you must
not fancy that your future path is unobstructed.
Of course, in republican
Paris, a street-police would be considered
as the most frightful of tyrannies;
universal license is the order of
the day. Besides the politicising and
haranguing crowds already mentioned,
your course is hemmed by countless
others. Here is a juggler—there a
quack-doctor—there a monkey—here
a pamphlet-vender; and each has its
thick encircling throng of idlers around
it. And, alas! how many there are
who have now no business but to idle.
The thickest crowd, perhaps, is round
a long-haired meagre fellow, who is
crying “Les crimes de Louis Philippe,[579]
et les assassinats qu’il a commis—all for
two sous!” to an admiring and applauding
throng of the lowest classes.
Some better feelings murmur at this
useless ass’s kick at the dead lion; but
they are few. Move on! There is
another obstructing crowd before a
host of caricatures on the walls;
of course, they are all directed against
Louis File-vite,” as he is termed,
and his accolyte “Cuit-sot.” There
is a rare lack of wit in them, be they
allegorical, typical, or fanciful; but
they are sure to attract a gaping and
a laughing throng. Move on again,
if you can! You find two or three
hommes du peuple, in blouses, planted
before you, who cry, authoritatively,
and without budging themselves to the
right or to the left—”Faites place,
nom de Dieu!” And you, of course,
make room; and if you are disposed to
reverence, you will take off your hat
to them too; for these are your lords
and masters,—what say I? your
kings! and no autocrat was ever more
despotically disposed. Move on again,
if you can! You will stumble over
the countless beggars stretched across
the pavement, or squatting in gipsy-like
groups, or thrusting wounds and
sores into your face. Many there may be
real sufferers from the present misery,
but the most are of the got-up species.
It is now the beggars’ saturnalia; they
keep high holiday in the streets. The
people have cried “A bas les municipaux—à
bas les sergents de ville!”
Those execrable monsters, the agents
of a tyrannical power, have been
driven away, if not massacred, in the
last “three glorious days:” and the
people want no police,—”the great,
the magnanimous, the generous, the
virtuous,” as the Government calls it
in its proclamations.

Try to move on once more! Before
the walls, all plastered with handbills
of every kind, are again throngs to read
and comment. On every vacant space of
wall, at every corner, are posted
countless addresses and advertisements.
The numerous white bills are
decrees, proclamations, addresses, and
republican bulletins of the Provisional
Government, all headed with those
awful words, “Republique Française,”
which make many a soul sink, and
sicken many a heart, with the remembrance
of a fearful time gone by. And
decrees there are which hurry on the
subversion of all the previously existing
social edifice, without reorganising
in the place, destroying and
yet not building anew;—and proclamations
more autocratic and despotic, in
the announcement of the reign of republican
liberty, than ever was monarchic
ordinance;—and addresses to
the people, couched in vague declamation,
telling these rulers of the day,
“Oui, peuple! tu es grand—oui, tu es
brave—oui, tu es magnanime—oui, tu
es généreux—oui, tu es beau!” with an
odious flattering such as the most slavering
courtier never ventured to bestow
upon the most incensed despot;—and
bulletins declaring France at
the pinnacle of glory, and happiness,
and pride—the object of envy and imitation
to all people. Private addresses
from individuals or republican
bodies there are also innumerable, in
the same sense; until one expects to
see angels’ wings growing behind the
backs of every blouse, forming harmonious
contrast with the black unshaven
faces. But we are far from being at
the end of the long lines of handbills,
that give Paris the look of a city built
up of printed paper. Here we have
announcements of clubs—the mille e
tre noisy mistresses that court the
fascinating, seductive, splendid Don
Juan of a Republic; there are four or
five in every quarter of the town,
almost in every street. And then come
their professions de foi; and then their
addresses to the people, and their appeals,
and their counsels to the Government,
and their last resolutions, and
their future intentions—say, their future
exactions. Most greet the fall of
the social edifice with triumph; but
few, if any, let you know how they
would reconstruct anew: some boldly
state their object to be “the enlightenment
of a well-intentioned but ignorant
Government, which it is their duty
to instruct:” others call down “the
celestial vengeance, and the thunders
of heaven, on their head, if ever
they should deceive or lead astray
the people.” Here again we have petitions
to Government, and demands,
and remonstrances from individuals
or small bodies—delegates, they
tell you, of the people’s rights;—some
wild and inflammatory, some visionary
to the very seventh heaven of[580]
political rhapsody, but all flattering
to the Peuple Souverain, whose voice
is the voix de Dieu! Here again we
have whole newspapers pasted on the
walls, with articles calling upon the
people to take arms again, since their
first duty to their country is “mistrust.”
Now a proposition to tax the
revenues of the rich in a progressive
proportion of one per cent for every
fortune of a thousand francs, two for
every two thousand, fifty for every
fifty thousand, “and so on progressively,”—without
stating, however,
whether those who possess a revenue
of a hundred thousand francs are to
pay a hundred per cent, or what is to
become of those who possess two hundred
thousand. Now, a menacing
call upon the Government to perform
their duty in exacting the disgorgement
of that vile spoliation of
the nation, the indemnity granted to
the emigrants at the Restoration, as
belonging to the people alone. Here
again are numerous addresses and
appeals from and to all foreign democrats
in Paris—Germans, Belgians,
Italians, Poles—calling for meetings,
and begging the “braves Français”
to give them arms and money to go
and conquer the republics of their
respective countries by force. Here
again, other notices from all trades,
and companies, and employments,
appointing meetings for the consideration
of the interests of their partie;
tailors, café-waiters, bootmakers, choristes
of theatres, gens de maisons,
(servants,) even to the wandering
hawkers on the public ways, and
lower still, all wanting to complain to
the Provisional Government of the
restraint laid on their free rights.
Here again, proposals for congratulatory
addresses, and felicitations to
the Government, from all manner of
various representatives of nations
resident in Paris. Here again, ten or
twelve solitary voices of braves citoyens,
proposing infallible remedies for
the doctoring of the financial crisis.
Here again, advertisements, in republican
phrase, recommending to the
“citoyennes,” “now that the hour is
come, to take up their carpets,” some
especial wax for their floors; or reminding
the “Citoyens Gardes Nationaux,”
that, “in this moment of
the awakening of a country’s glory,
when they watch over the interests of
France, and are indefatigable in patrolling
the streets of the capital,” the
citoyen “so and so” will cut their corns
with cheapness and ease! And all
these are pasted about in confused
pell-mell; all are headed with the necessary
“Vive la Republique!” Wonder
then not, at the thick crowds about
these documents, all treating of a
country’s weal, all announcing some
new and startling design, all devoured
by eager eyes. Wo betide, however,
the citoyen who may leave his house
door closed for a whole day!—he will
find it barricaded with plastered paper
from top to bottom on the morrow; or
the shopkeeper who may lie too long
a-bed—it will be a difficult task for him
to take down his placarded shutters:
and both will stand a chance of getting
hooted for venturing to displace a
printed paper headed with the talismanic
words, proclaiming individual
liberty of person and opinion. No
tyranny like a mob tyrant, I trow.

Apropos of advertisements, the play-bills
will no less startle the ancient
habitué of Paris, were he now again
to return to his old haunts. The
names, formerly so familiar to his
eyes, are gone in many instances. The
old Académie de Musique is now the
Théâtre de la Nation; the Théâtre
Français, the Théâtre de la Republique;
the Théâtre du Palais Royal, the
Théâtre Montansier. In this confusion
he will be still more confounded
by the composition of the bills: every
where the announcement of patriotic
songs and chorusses, sung between
the acts—of àpropos pieces, allegorical
or historical—of titles such as “Les
Barricades,” “Les Trois Revolutions,”
“Les Filles de la Liberté,” “La Revolution
Française,” and so forth, throughout
all the theatres in Paris. Even
in the ex-Théâtre Français he will
scarcely trust his astonished eyes to
see that “Mademoiselle Rachel will
sing the Marseillaise between the
acts.” Oh! theatre-loving old habitué
of Paris, you will think that your wits
have gone astray, and that your senses
are deceiving you! The new names
of streets will no less bewilder your
mind. All that smacked of royalty, or
dynasty, or monarchic history have
already republicanised themselves, as
is the old wont of Paris streets under[581]
every change of government: there
are many that have long since forgotten
all the hundred and one names
that they have already borne. Then
you will know how to pity the embarrassment
of an unlucky man who
lived in the Rue Royale St Honoré.
On going out in the morning of the
25th of February, he found unexpectedly
that he lived in the Rue de la
Republique. Well, he made up his
mind to that; but the Rue Rambuteau
had already claimed this glorious
title; so the Rue Royale had to make
shift with that of the Rue de la Revolution.
But now came again another
prior claim; and the ex-Rue Royale
was again despoiled. Now it has no
name at all: and the poor individual
in question, as far as his direction
goes, might as well live in the ruins of
Palmyra.

But to return to the outward aspect
of republican Paris.

Hark! what a noise of awkward
drumming! and see! a host of men
of the lower classes comes pouring
down the street, in hundreds—nay,
in thousands. Several banners are
borne among them: they shout “Vive
la Republique!” and sing with that
utter bold disregard of time, which,
the French themselves would tell you,
is peculiar only to supposed unmusical
England. The Marseillaise or
the now so popular Mourir pour la
Patrie, or the Ca ira of fearful memory;
and interlard their discordant
efforts at chorus with screams of
“à bas les aristocrates!” Scarcely
has the horde rushed past you, than
there comes another, and another,
and another, until your brain whirls
with the unceasing throngs. Now it
is a troop of women, banners also at
their head; now again a long line of
more orderly, and better dressed men;
but they cry “Vive le Gouvernement
Provisoire!” Now again a band of
ruffian fellows, with the howl of “à
bas les riches!” They cross your
path at every step, these marching
bands. Sometimes they are deputations
of all the different trades, or
subdivisions of peculiar branches of
handiwork—tailors, joiners, scavengers,
paviours, sign-painters, wet-nurses,
cooks, and so forth, as far as
the imagination or the memory can
reach in enumeration, and still further;
and they are all streaming to the
Hotel de Ville, to harangue the Provisional
Government on their several
rights and wrongs, desires and demands.
Sometimes they are mere
bands promenading for the sake of
promenading, screeching for the sake
of screeching, and making demonstrations,
because whatever is theatrical,
whatever smacks of show and parade,
whatever gives them the opportunity
of exhibition, and with it the hope of
admiration, is the ruling passion of
the people; or because they have
nothing else to do, and will not work,
although the Government pays them
daily with the country’s money. Now
comes a troop of would-be Hungarian
patriots, in their national dress, their
attilas, pelisses, braided pantaloons,
singing a national hymn—somewhat
better than the French, by the way—flaring
about banners, and getting
up all sorts of Quixotic theatrical
manifestations, lowering their banners
in mere sport, flourishing them
upon others, and calling upon the
manes of several of the “victims of
liberty murdered in their country’s
cause.” These are specimens of the
Hungarian nation of the frantic description,
who, after carrying felicitations
to the Provisional Government
in the name of their country, are now
parading the streets to show themselves
off. Now comes again a long
troop of young fellows in light-coloured
blouses, bound with lacquered leather
belts around their waists: they have
broad white beavers on their heads,
mounted by black, red, and yellow
cocks’ feathers; and they bear banners
of black, red, and gold—a more
picturesque throng than those you
usually meet. The colours are the
colours of the German nationality:
the young men are German patriots.
Poor deluded young fellows! their
minds have been excited by designing
men; and they are about to march
off to Germany “to conquer the
liberties of the German republic,”
expecting that all Germany is to rise
again at their puny call, and at the
sound of that magical name “republic.”
They have been begging for
arms and ammunition, and money, of
all Paris; and now, with the slender
succour they have obtained, they go
to meet their fates.

[582]But now comes a fresh marching
mass of many thousands, with the
usual accompanying drums and banners:
there are women and children
among the throng—if children still
there be in France, when every urchin
fancies himself a man. They distinguish
themselves from the others
by the tall bare poplar stems they
bear. These are great poetically and
symbolically-minded patriots of the
lower classes, who are bent on planting
trees of liberty all over Paris.
They protest that they are fully earning
the pay the country gives them,
by enacting these wonderful feats for
the country’s good. Their delegates
knock at house-doors, and thrust
themselves into private dwellings, to
beg—no! to demand contributions
for the celebration of their fête; and
these republican fêtes are of every
day and every hour. The ancient
habitué of Paris will not find his
capital much embellished by the aspect
of these tall unsightly bare stems
erected at every corner, on every
square, on every vacant space of
ground, although they be all behung
with banners, and garlands, and tricolor
streamers. Let us follow some
of these immense gangs. In some
instances they have got a priest
among them to bless their patriotic
fête: and the poor ecclesiastic is
dragged along with them, oft-times
pale and trembling at the thought of
the unusual ceremony he is thus violently
called upon to perform. Now
again they summon the whole clergy
of some rich parish church to come
forth in cope and stole, and with
incense and banner, and all the hundred
other rich accessories of the pomp
of Catholic ceremony, to bestow the
blessing on these naked emblems of
a country’s naked liberties, and pronounce
a political sermon, felicitating
France on the awakening glories of
the republic, established by divine
Providence and a people’s might,
before the poor ragged pole. Sometimes
again they come, fresh with
triumphs, from the Hotel de Ville,
where they have constrained one or
more of the members of the Provisional
Government to accompany
them—some of them nothing loth,
when popular demonstrations are to
be theatrically made—and to give
vent to wonderful speeches, flattering
to this people, “si grand, si magnanime,
si généreux, si beau!” &c., &c., as
before, as every day, as in every word
they are to hear; all which flattering
words teach them how their excellence
is ill recompensed, and how it
ought to exact still more. They are
now at work with more or less of this
pomp, and in the midst of a greater
or lesser concourse of spectators.
The pavement is torn up: a hole is
dug in the street; the tree is planted,
pulled up to its elevation, firmly fixed
in the ground—although, by the way,
in many instances, the poor tree of
liberty looks in a very tottering state—and
the havock committed in the
pavement more or less repaired. The
acclamation is great: shouts, shrieks,
cries rend the air: the religious benediction
is over: the priests hurry
away as quietly as they can: the
members of the Government retreat,
escorted by a deputation of delegates,
after an oration: and now the
Marseillaise, or the Mourir pour la
Patrie, are again screeched in discordant
chorus, amidst the incessant
firing off of guns. All day the tumult
lasts throughout the city: to a late
hour of night the firing in the air
is incessant. A barricade of stones and
poles is erected round the precious
emblem of liberty: the surrounding
houses are constrained by threats of
window-breaking to illuminate in
honour of King-People: pitch fires are
bright at each corner of the barricade:
and patriotic boys, who devote themselves
for their country’s weal, are
posted, with muskets on arm, to do
sentry-duty all night round the tree—lest
any audacious enemy of the
country should compromise the safety
of the republic by attempting to pull
down one of the many hundreds of
its emblems that now disfigure the
streets of Paris. Again, who would
recognise his old Paris in these strange
scenes, or in the night pictures, thus
faintly sketched, which meet his eye
at every turn? When these mighty
deeds for a country’s welfare and glory
shall come to end—when Paris shall
have been all so beplanted that it
will resemble a naked forest, what
great feats to prove their zeal in behalf
of Republican France will they
next invent? “Qui vivra verra” is a[583]
favourite French proverb. Heaven
grant that it be not reversed, and that
“qui verra ne vivra pas!“

But see! they have already invented
another great patriotic amusement.
Whence come those discordant howlings?
A band of fellows is rushing
up and down the Boulevards, dragging
along a bust of the ex-King, by means
of a rope round its neck; they have attached
to it a label, “Louis Philippe
à la lanterne!” See! what a frantic
delight they express in their schoolboy
amusement. How wonderfully
their ferocious faces picture forth
“the grand, the generous, the magnanimous,
the beautiful!” They
flourish sticks about at carriage
windows, with the cry of “à bas les
riches! à bas les aristocrates!” and
they forcibly turn such equipages out
of their royal way, if their path be
crossed by adventurous coachmen.
But as yet they do no real harm; and
the pacific majority is hopeful in its
force to restrain, if the time for restraint
should come.

Now again comes pouring down
from the Rue du Faubourg St Denis,
another host of men, women, and
children, howling the “Ca Ira.” They
have got a great placard among them,
declaring, that if their landlords do
not remit to them their rents, for two
quarters at least, they will burn down
their masters’ houses over their heads:
and, unobstructed, this screeching
mob invades the streets. But this is
rather too much, even amidst the
license due to King People in Republican
Paris. To-morrow will be
posted on the walls of the capital, a
notice from the Prefet de Police,
appealing to the good sense of the
mob not to burn houses, and containing
a half-concealed under-current,
but an under-current only, of threat.

Now again you may be witness to
a grotesque scene of a high revolutionary
tone. We are in the purlieus
of one of the great public schools
of Paris—the colléges, as they are
termed. Suddenly the street is invaded
by several hundred boys: they
rush along uttering hideous vociferations;
before them flies a well-dressed
middle-aged man: he flies as if for
his life, and is pursued by showers of
stones from the young revolutionary
insurgents. This flying man, these
screaming and pursuing children—what
a lesson there is in it! Let us
catch hold of one of the little urchins,
and ask what all the uproar means.
He tells us that the object of all his
schoolboy hate, is a tyrant—a tyrant
like Louis Philippe; and that, like
Louis Philippe, they are driving him
forth with scorn. “What has he
done then?” we ask. “He was too
strict,” is the only reply; and on
rushes again the young revolutionist
to join in the general pursuit, with a
big oath, and the cry of “Vive la
Republique! à bas les tyrans!“

Now again, late in the evening,
hurries past a detachment of National
Guards. We ask, what now is afloat
in a city where every day something
new and startling crosses our life’s
path. We are told that the citizen
troops are hastening to the rescue of
a newspaper editor, who has ventured
to write articles in opposition to the
Government. His house is being
stormed by an angry and excited
mob; they threaten to break his
presses, if not burn the whole establishment.
In vain he meets the mob
with courage, and asserts the right of
that “liberty of opinion,” which the
republic has proclaimed as one of its
first benefits. He is not listened to.
What is liberty of opinion, or any
liberty, in the sense of a mob, compared
with its own liberty of doing
what it listeth? They advance upon
the house with threatening gesture—they
pour in: the National Guards
arrive, and a scuffle ensues. With
difficulty the mob is driven back, and
sentinels are posted. But now the
crowds, in the dim night, grow thicker
on the Boulevards than ever; and
violent declamation is still heard
from the midst against the man who,
whatever be his real ends and aims,
has the courage to assert an opinion
contrary to the mass. Partisans
there are, for and against: and high
words arise, and threats are again
proffered: and along the damp night
air comes ever the murmur of many
angry voices far and near: and the
rumour ceases not, the crowd disperse
not. And in the distracted city,
where was firing, and shouting, and
singing, and drumming, all day, there
is still the agitation and the tumult
long and late into the night.

[584]But let us take a turn to the neighbourhood
of the Hotel de Ville, the
seat of the Government; other fresh
scenes will there meet our eyes.

Daily and hourly pour up into the
open space before the fine old building,
such troops of drumming, banner-bearing
men and women as have been
before described. Sometimes they are
deputations from the various trades, full
of all sorts of grievances, for which
the members of the Provisional Government
are expected to find immediate
remedy;—sometimes they are
bands of workmen, all couching, under
different expressions, the demand for
much pay and little work;—sometimes
they bear addresses from various
nations all speaking in the name of
their country, which probably would
disavow them;—sometimes they are
delegates from the thousand and one
clubs of Paris, who all choose to lay
their resolutions, however frantic and
impracticable they may be, before the
Government, and expect to impose
upon it their distracted will;—sometimes
they are a body of individuals,
who have got some fancy for a remedy
of the financial crisis, which, of course,
unless it would offend them bitterly, the
Government is expected forthwith to
adopt. Deputations, addresses, counsels,
demands, exactions,—they must
all be admitted, they must all be heard,
they must all receive flattering promises,
that probably never will, and
never can be fulfilled. See! they come
streaming up from all sides, from
streets and quays, in noisy inundating
floods; and now the streams
mingle and roar together, and struggle
for precedence. Generally, delegates
are despatched to obtain audiences of
the persecuted members of the Government;
but sometimes, again, some
tired minister or other is forced to
appear in front, and harangue their
importunate petitioners, amidst cries
of “Vive la Republique!” For those
who dwell upon this place, Paris
must appear to be in a state of constant
revolution. The noise, the
tumult, the drumming, the shouting,
the marching and the countermarching,
never cease for a moment.

See! to-day there is a tumult before
the façade of the old building.
Battalions of National Guards have
marched up, without arms, to protest
against a despotic and arbitrary
ordinance of an ambitious and reckless
minister. They bring up their
petition as thousands of other deputations
have brought up theirs; the
square is filled for the most part with
long military-looking lines of their
uniforms. But in a sudden, they
have come to a check. Before the
long façade of the line of building,
are posted bodies of armed men, of
the lower classes, with muskets
charged and bayonets fixed. The
demonstration of the National Guards,
who dare to murmur at the will of
their governors, spite of the proclamation
of the reign of liberty, is not
to be received. Anger and indignation
is on the faces of all the citizen-soldiers;
their feelings are excited;
they cry, “down with” the obnoxious
minister; they are met by cries from
the armed people, of “down with the
National Guards! down with the
aristocrats!” The middling classes
are now considered, then, as the
aristocrats of the day; and the
people treat them, as they have
treated, in days gone by, the titled
noblesse—as enemies! But now they
advance in rank and file, determined
to force an entrance to the Government
palace: and the people oppose
them with pointed bayonets; and
drive them back; disperse them like
sheep; pursue them down the quays;
and the unarmed mob, collected in
countless crowds around, joins in the
cry of “down with the National
Guards!” The National Guards are
vanquished. They were considered
in the revolutionary days of combat
as the heroes, and allies, and defenders
of the people. Only a few
weeks are gone by since then; and they,
in turn, are overthrown in a bloodless
revolution. Their prestige is lost for
ever. The last barrier is thrown down
between the upper and the lower
classes—the breakwater is swept away:
and when the day of storm and tempest
shall come, when the angry waters
shall rise, when the inundation shall
sweep on and on in tumultuous tide,
what shall there be now to oppose it?

On the morrow, what a scene!
From a very early hour of the morning,
bands of hundreds and of thousands,
in marching order, have poured
down upon Paris from all the suburbs.[585]
From north, south, east, and west,
they have come in countless hordes
into the central streets and squares of
the capital. Along the Boulevards,
from the Bastile, from the heights of
Montmartre, down the avenues of the
Champs Elysées and the quays—from
beyond the water and the Faubourg
St Martel, they have come, sweeping
on like so many mountain torrents.
Every where as they advanced they
have proferred cries of “Down with
the National Guards! down with the
aristocrats! down with the legitimists!
down with the enemies of the
Republic!” Better dressed men in
many instances have marshalled them
on their way; and among the inhabitants
of Paris goes forth a murmur,
that they have been roused to this
state of tumult by the accolytes of the
obnoxious minister, with the intention
of overawing his colleagues and displaying
his own power. And if, in
truth, they shout “long live” any
one, it is his name they cry: his noble-hearted
and more moderate colleague,
lately so popular, has lost a people’s
favour. And now the hundred torrents
have met upon the quays, and
before the Hotel de Ville; and hundreds
of banners with manifold inscriptions
are waving in the air; and
troop upon troop is marshalled into
some degree of order: but fearful is
the mass: awful is the demonstration
of a people! And now the members of
the Government are compelled, one
and all, to come down upon the elevated
terrace before the façade of the
Hotel de Ville: they are behung with
tricolor scarfs, the ends of which
stream with long gold fringes; their
heads are bared before their masters
and the rulers of the land. And now
the host of people defiles before them;
and they make speeches, and cry
“Vive la Republique! Vive le peuple!”
And the people, proud of its force, and
rejoicing in its demonstration, that
shows its power over the bourgeois,
answers with shouts that rend the air.
Heavens! what a scene! This is Republican
Paris, indeed, I trow!

But come quickly to the Boulevards:
the mighty mass has passed away to
the column of liberty in the Place de
la Bastile; and it will come down
the Boulevards in overwhelming tide,
exulting in its triumph. And now it
comes. The long line, five abreast—there
are nearly two hundred thousand
in this great army—stretches on and
on, almost from one end to the other
of the immense central artery of the
capital. It comes, and the chorus of
the Marseillaise rolls like thunder
along, dying away but to burst forth
again. Hark! how it peels along the
Boulevards! It comes, and the senses
swim as the host goes by, marching
on, and on, and on—confusing the
sight with the incessant passing of
such a stream of living beings, and its
waving banners; deafening the ears
with the menacing cries of “Down
with the aristocrats!” and the discordant
chorussing of confused patriotic
songs—for the Marseillaise now
gives way to the fearful Ca Ira. It
comes, and it seems as if it never
would end. Awful, indeed, is the
display of a people’s force, thus excited
and inflamed by designing leaders!
At last the mighty procession passed
away, leaving consternation and alarm
behind it. But think not that Paris
resumes its usual aspect. The various
bands break up at last, but they still
parade the streets in several battalions:
and the shouting and howling
and singing cease not during the day.

But the night of the same day is
come, and all is not yet done. Not
content with its triumph, the people
demands that all Paris should honour
it with a festival, whether it will or
not. Down the Boulevards come the
hordes again, slowly, and pausing as
they came on: they are chanting,
in measured notes, the words “Des
lampions! des lampions!” amidst the
cries of “Illuminate, or we break your
windows! Down with the aristocrats!”
Why all Paris should be
illuminated, because it has pleased
King People to make a demonstration,
it would be too insolent to inquire.
It is a fancy, a caprice—and
autocrats will have fancies and
caprices. It is the people’s will; and,
however fantastic or unreasonable,
the will must be obeyed. “Des lampions!
des lampions!” The monotonous
chant is impressed upon the ears
with stunning force, until you believe
that you must retain it in your bewildered
brain until your dying day.
And as they come along, see how
readily the will of the people is obeyed![586]
There is no readiness so quick as the
readiness of fear. Up and down, from
above and from below, right and left,
in long irregular lines, until the lines
of light become more general and
more regular—see the illumination
bursts forth from the façades of all
the houses. Windows are rapidly
opened on every side, in sixth stories
as on first floors, on every terrace, on
every balcony; and lamps, lanterns,
candles, pots of grease, all flaming, are
thrust out at every one. See! how
the light darts up and down like wildfire,
dancing along the houses in the
darkness of the night, with an increasing
phosphoric flicker. You may
mark the progress of the mob, as it
goes farther on in dusky mass, and is
lost to sight in the gloom, not only
by the eternal monotonous cry that
bids the inhabitants illuminate, coming
from the distance, but by the
gleaming track it leaves behind it like
a gigantic, broad tail of fire. Presently
all the Boulevards will be brightly
lighted; and the gleams of the many
thousand points of light will illuminate
a thickly moving crowd of beings, that
look like the uneasy spirits of some
gloomy pandemonium. Fairy-like,
however, has the magical illumination
sprung forth at the people’s bidding,
and fairy-like does it flicker on
all sides in the night. All the other
principal streets are burning also on
either side, like long bands of spangled
stuff glittering in the sun. The Faubourg
St Germain, suspected of legitimacy,
has long since been the first to
yield to threats, and demonstrate at
its windows its supposed sympathy
in a people’s triumph; and to-morrow
we shall be told by the republican
papers, how Paris was in an ecstasy
of joy—how all the population strove
in zeal, with one accord, to fêter le
peuple généreux—how spontaneous
was this illumination of republican
enthusiasm. Spontaneous was the
feeling that dictated it, certainly; but
it was the spontaneity of fear—the
fear of the quietly-disposed in the face
of a reckless and all-powerful mob!