[Pg 498]

[Pg 499]

BLACKWOOD’S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCCXXI. NOVEMBER, 1850. Vol. LXVIII.

MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.

BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON.

BOOK II—INITIAL CHAPTER:—INFORMING THE READER HOW THIS WORK CAME TO HAVE
INITIAL CHAPTERS.

“There can’t be a doubt,” said
my father, “that to each of the main
divisions of your work—whether you
call them Books or Parts—you should
prefix an Initial or Introductory
Chapter.”

Pisistratus.—”Can’t be a doubt,
sir! Why so?”

Mr Caxton.—”Fielding lays it
down as an indispensable rule, which
he supports by his example; and
Fielding was an artistical writer, and
knew what he was about.”

Pisistratus.—”Do you remember
any of his reasons, sir?”

Mr Caxton.—”Why, indeed,
Fielding says very justly that he is
not bound to assign any reason; but
he does assign a good many, here and
there—to find which, I refer you to
Tom Jones. I will only observe, that
one of his reasons, which is unanswerable,
runs to the effect that thus, in
every Part or Book, the reader has
the advantage of beginning at the
fourth or fifth page instead of the
first—’a matter by no means of trivial
consequence,’ saith Fielding, ‘to
persons who read books with no other
view than to say they have read
them—a more general motive to reading
than is commonly imagined; and
from which not only law books and
good books, but the pages of Homer
and Virgil, of Swift and Cervantes
have been often turned over.’
There,” cried my father triumphantly,
“I will lay a shilling to twopence
that I have quoted the very words.”

Mrs Caxton.—”Dear me, that
only means skipping: I don’t see any
great advantage in writing a chapter,
merely for people to skip it.”

Pisistratus.—”Neither do I!”

Mr Caxton, dogmatically.—”It
is the repose in the picture—Fielding
calls it ‘contrast ‘—(still more dogmatically)
I say there can’t be a doubt
about it. Besides, (added my father
after a pause,) besides, this usage gives
you opportunities to explain what has
gone before, or to prepare for what’s
coming; or, since Fielding contends
with great truth, that some learning
is necessary for this kind of historical
composition, it allows you, naturally
and easily, the introduction of light
and pleasant ornaments of that nature.
At each flight in the terrace, you may
give the eye the relief of an urn or a
statue. Moreover, when so inclined,
you create proper pausing places for
reflection; and complete, by a separate
yet harmonious ethical department,
the design of a work, which is
but a mere Mother Goose’s tale if it
does not embrace a general view of
the thoughts and actions of mankind.”

[Pg 500]

Pisistratus.—”But then, in these
initial chapters, the author thrusts
himself forward; and just when you
want to get on with the dramatis personæ,
you find yourself face to face
with the poet himself.”

Mr Caxton.—”Pooh! you can
contrive to prevent that! Imitate the
chorus of the Greek stage, who fill
up the intervals between the action by
saying what the author would otherwise
say in his own person.”

Pisistratus, slily.—”That’s a
good idea, sir—and I have a chorus,
and a chorægus too, already in my eye.”

Mr Caxton, unsuspectingly.—”Aha!
you are not so dull a fellow
as you would make yourself out to be;
and, even if an author did thrust himself
forward, what objection is there
to that? It is a mere affectation to
suppose that a book can come into
the world without an author. Every
child has a father, one father at
least, as the great Condé says very
well in his poem.”

Pisistratus.—”The great Condé a
poet!—I never heard that before.”

Mr Caxton.—”I don’t say he was
a poet, but he sent a poem to Madame
de Montansier. Envious critics think
that he must have paid somebody
else to write it; but there is no reason
why a great Captain should not write
a poem—I don’t say a good poem,
but a poem. I wonder, Roland, if
the Duke ever tried his hand at
‘Stanzas to Mary,’ or ‘Lines to a
sleeping babe.'”

Captain Roland.—”Austin, I’m
ashamed of you. Of course the Duke
could write poetry if he pleased—something,
I dare say, in the way of
the great Condé—that is something
warlike and heroic, I’ll be bound.
Let’s hear!”

Mr Caxton, reciting—

Captain Roland, greatly disgusted.—”Condé
write such stuff!—I
don’t believe it.”

Pisistratus.—”I do, and accept the
quotation—you and Roland shall be
joint fathers to my child as well as
myself.”

Mr Caxton, solemnly.—”I refuse
the proffered paternity; but so far
as administering a little wholesome
castigation, now and then, I have no
objection to join in the discharge of a
father’s duty.”

Pisistratus.—”Agreed; have you
anything to say against the infant
hitherto?”

Mr Caxton.—”He is in long
clothes at present; let us wait till he
can walk.”

Blanche.—”But pray whom do
you mean for a hero?—and is Miss
Jemima your heroine?”

Captain Roland.—”There is
some mystery about the—”

Pisistratus, hastily.—”Hush,
Uncle; no letting the cat out of the
bag yet. Listen, all of you! I left
Frank Hazeldean on his way to the
Casino.”

CHAPTER II.

“It is a sweet pretty place,” thought
Frank, as he opened the gate which
led across the fields to the Casino,
that smiled down upon him with its
plaster pilasters. “I wonder, though,
that my father, who is so particular
in general, suffers the carriage road
to be so full of holes and weeds.
Mounseer does not receive many
visits, I take it.”

But when Frank got into the ground
immediately before the house, he saw
no cause of complaint as to want of
order and repair. Nothing could be
kept more neatly. Frank was ashamed
of the dint made by the pony’s hoofs
in the smooth gravel; he dismounted,
tied the animal to the wicket, and
went on foot towards the glass door
in front.

He rang the bell once, twice, but nobody
came, for the old woman-servant,
who was hard of hearing, was far away
in the yard, searching for any eggs
which the hen might have scandalously
hidden from culinary purposes; and
Jackeymo was fishing for the sticklebacks
and minnows, which were,
when caught, to assist the eggs, when
found, in keeping together the bodies[Pg 501]
and souls of himself and his master.
The old woman was on board wages,—lucky
old woman! Frank rang a
third time, and with the impetuosity
of his age. A face peeped from the
Belvidere on the terrace. “Diavolo!”
said Dr Riccabocca to himself.
“Young cocks crow hard on their
own dunghill; it must be a cock of a
high race to crow so loud at another’s.”

Therewith he shambled out of the
summer-house, and appeared suddenly
before Frank, in a very wizard-like
dressing robe of black serge, a
red cap on his head, and a cloud of
smoke coming rapidly from his lips,
as a final consolatory whiff, before he
removed the pipe from them. Frank
had indeed seen the Doctor before,
but never in so scholastic a costume,
and he was a little startled by the
apparition at his elbow, as he turned
round.

“Signorino—young gentleman,” said
the Italian, taking off his cap with
his usual urbanity, “pardon the negligence
of my people—I am too happy
to receive your commands in person.”

“Dr Rickeybockey?” stammered
Frank, much confused by this polite
address, and the low yet stately bow
with which it was accompanied, “I—I
have a note from the Hall. Mama—that
is, my mother,—and aunt Jemima
beg their best compliments, and
hope you will come, sir.”

The Doctor took the note with another
bow, and, opening the glass door,
invited Frank to enter.

The young gentleman, with a schoolboy’s
usual bluntness, was about to
say that he was in a hurry, and had
rather not; but Dr Riccabocca’s grand
manner awed him, while a glimpse of
the hall excited his curiosity—so he
silently obeyed the invitation.

The hall, which was of an octagon
shape, had been originally panelled
off into compartments, and in these the
Italian had painted landscapes, rich
with the warm sunny light of his
native climate. Frank was no judge
of the art displayed; but he was
greatly struck with the scenes depicted:
they were all views of some
lake, real or imaginary—in all, dark-blue
shining waters reflected dark-blue
placid skies. In one, a flight of
steps descended to the lake, and a gay
group was seen feasting on the margin:
in another, sunset threw its rose-hues
over a vast villa or palace,
backed by Alpine hills, and flanked
by long arcades of vines, while pleasure-boats
skimmed over the waves
below. In short, throughout all the
eight compartments, the scene, though
it differed in details, preserved the
same general character, as if illustrating
some favourite locality. The
Italian did not, however, evince any
desire to do the honours to his own
art, but, preceding Frank across the
hall, opened the door of his usual
sitting-room, and requested him to
enter. Frank did so, rather reluctantly,
and seated himself with unwonted
bashfulness on the edge of a
chair. But here new specimens of
the Doctor’s handicraft soon riveted
attention. The room had been originally
papered; but Riccabocca had
stretched canvass over the walls, and
painted thereon sundry satirical devices,
each separated from the other by
scroll-works of fantastic arabesques.
Here a Cupid was trundling a wheelbarrow
full of hearts, which he appeared
to be selling to an ugly old
fellow, with a money-bag in his hand—probably
Plutus. There Diogenes
might be seen walking through a
market-place, with his lantern in his
hand, in search of an honest man,
whilst the children jeered at him,
and the curs snapped at his heels. In
another place, a lion was seen half
dressed in a fox’s hide, while a wolf
in a sheep’s mask was conversing
very amicably with a young lamb.
Here again might be seen the geese
stretching out their necks from the
Roman Capitol in full cackle, while the
stout invaders were beheld in the
distance, running off as hard as they
could. In short, in all these quaint
entablatures some pithy sarcasm was
symbolically conveyed; only over the
mantelpiece was the design graver
and more touching. It was the figure
of a man in a pilgrim’s garb, chained
to the earth by small but innumerable
ligaments, while a phantom likeness
of himself, his shadow, was seen
hastening down what seemed an interminable
vista; and underneath
were written the pathetic words of
Horace—

[Pg 502]

—”What exile from his country can fly
himself as well?” The furniture of the
room was extremely simple, and somewhat
scanty; yet it was arranged so as
to impart an air of taste and elegance
to the room. Even a few plaster busts
and statues, though bought but of some
humble itinerant, had their classical
effect, glistening from out stands of
flowers that were grouped around
them, or backed by graceful screen-works
formed from twisted osiers,
which, by the simple contrivance of
trays at the bottom, filled with earth,
served for living parasitical plants,
with gay flowers contrasting thick
ivy leaves, and gave to the whole
room the aspect of a bower.

“May I ask your permission?”
said the Italian, with his finger on
the seal of the letter.

“Oh yes,” said Frank with naiveté.

Riccabocca broke the seal, and a
slight smile stole over his countenance.
Then he turned a little aside
from Frank, shaded his face with
his hand, and seemed to muse. “Mrs
Hazeldean,” said he at last, “does
me very great honour. I hardly recognise
her handwriting, or I should
have been more impatient to open
the letter.” The dark eyes were lifted
over the spectacles, and went right
into Frank’s unprotected and undiplomatic
heart. The Doctor raised
the note, and pointed to the characters
with his forefinger.

“Cousin Jemima’s hand,” said
Frank, as directly as if the question
had been put to him.

The Italian smiled. “Mr Hazeldean
has company staying with him?”

“No; that is, only Barney—the
Captain. There’s seldom much company
before the shooting season,”
added Frank with a slight sigh; “and
then you know the holidays are over.
For my part, I think we ought to
break up a month later.”

The Doctor seemed reassured by
the first sentence in Frank’s reply, and
seating himself at the table, wrote
his answer—not hastily, as we English
write, but with care and precision, like
one accustomed to weigh the nature of
words—in that stiff Italian hand,
which allows the writer so much time to
think while he forms his letters. He did
not therefore reply at once to Frank’s
remark about the holidays, but was
silent till he had concluded his note,
read it three times over, sealed it by
the taper he slowly lighted, and then,
giving it to Frank, he said—

“For your sake, young gentleman,
I regret that your holidays are so
early; for mine, I must rejoice, since
I accept the kind invitation you have
rendered doubly gratifying by bringing
it yourself.”

“Deuce take the fellow and his fine
speeches! One don’t know which way
to look,” thought English Frank.

The Italian smiled again, as if this
time he had read the boy’s heart,
without need of those piercing black
eyes, and said, less ceremoniously
than before, “You don’t care much
for compliments, young gentleman?”

“No, I don’t indeed,” said Frank
heartily.

“So much the better for you, since
your way in the world is made: it
would be so much the worse if you
had to make it!”

Frank looked puzzled: the thought
was too deep for him—so he turned
to the pictures.

“Those are very funny,” said he:
“they seem capitally done—who did
’em?”

“Signorino Hazeldean, you are
giving me what you refused yourself.”

“Eh?” said Frank inquiringly.

“Compliments!”

“Oh—I—no; but they are well
done, arn’t they, sir?”

“Not particularly: you speak to
the artist.”

“What! you painted them?”

“Yes.”

“And the pictures in the hall?”

“Those too.”

“Taken from nature—eh?”

“Nature,” said the Italian sententiously,
perhaps evasively, “lets
nothing be taken from her.”

“Oh!” said Frank, puzzled again.

“Well, I must wish you good morning,
sir; I am very glad you are
coming.”

“Without compliment?”

“Without compliment.”

“A rivedersi—good-by for the present,
my young signorino. This way,”
observing Frank make a bolt towards
the wrong door.

“Can I offer you a glass of wine—it
is pure, of our own making?”

“No, thank you, indeed, sir,” cried[Pg 503]
Frank, suddenly recollecting his
father’s admonition. “Good-by—don’t
trouble yourself, sir; I know
my way now.”

But the bland Italian followed his
guest to the wicket, where Frank had
left the pony. The young gentleman,
afraid lest so courteous a host should
hold the stirrup for him, twitched off
the bridle, and mounted in haste, not
even staying to ask if the Italian
could put him in the way to Rood
Hall, of which way he was profoundly
ignorant. The Italian’s eye followed
the boy as he rode up the ascent in the
lane, and the Doctor sighed heavily.
“The wiser we grow,” said he to
himself, “the more we regret the age
of our follies: it is better to gallop
with a light heart up the stony hill
than sit in the summer-house and
cry ‘How true!’ to the stony truths
of Machiavelli!”

With that he turned back into the
Belvidere; but he could not resume
his studies. He remained some
minutes gazing on the prospect, till
the prospect reminded him of the fields,
which Jackeymo was bent on his
hiring, and the fields reminded him of
Lenny Fairfield. He walked back to
the house, and in a few moments re-emerged
in his out-of-door trim, with
cloak and umbrella, relighted his pipe,
and strolled towards Hazeldean village.

Meanwhile Frank, after cantering
on for some distance, stopped at a
cottage, and there learned that there
was a short cut across the fields to
Rood Hall, by which he could save
nearly three miles. Frank, however,
missed the short cut, and came out into
the highroad: a turnpike keeper, after
first taking his toll, put him back
again into the short cut; and finally,
he got into some green lanes, where a
dilapidated finger-post directed him
to Rood. Late at noon, having ridden
fifteen miles in the desire to reduce
ten to seven, he came suddenly upon
a wild and primitive piece of ground,
that seemed half Chase, half common,
with slovenly tumble-down cottages
of villanous aspect scattered about in
odd nooks and corners; idle dirty
children were making mud pies on the
road; slovenly-looking women were
plaiting straw at the thresholds; a large
but forlorn and decayed church, that
seemed to say that the generation
which saw it built was more pious
than the generation which now resorted
to it, stood boldly and nakedly
out by the roadside.

“Is this the village of Rood?”
asked Frank of a stout young man
breaking stones on the road—sad sign
that no better labour could be found
for him!

The man sullenly nodded, and continued
his work.

“And where’s the Hall—Mr. Leslie’s?”

The man looked up in stolid surprise,
and this time touched his hat.

“Be you going there?”

“Yes, if I can find out where it is.”

“I’ll show your honour,” said the
boor alertly.

Frank reined in the pony, and the
man walked by his side.

Frank was much of his father’s son,
despite the difference of age, and that
more fastidious change of manner
which characterises each succeeding
race in the progress of civilisation.
Despite all his Eton finery, he was
familiar with peasants, and had the
quick eye of one country-born as to
country matters.

“You don’t seem very well off in
this village, my man?” said he
knowingly.

“Noa; there be a deal of distress
here in the winter time, and summer
too, for that matter; and the parish
ben’t much help to a single man.”

“But the farmers want work here
as well as elsewhere, I suppose?”

“‘Deed, and there ben’t much
farming work here—most o’ the
parish be all wild ground loike.”

“The poor have a right of common,
I suppose,” said Frank, surveying a
large assortment of vagabond birds
and quadrupeds.

“Yes; neighbour Timmins keeps his
geese on the common, and some has a
cow—and them be neighbour Jowlas’s
pigs. I don’t know if there’s a right,
loike; but the folks at the Hall does all
they can to help us, and that ben’t much:
they ben’t as rich as some folks; but,”
added the peasant proudly, “they be
as good blood as any in the shire.”

“I’m glad to see you like them, at
all events.”

“Oh yes, I likes them well eno’;
mayhap you are at school with the
young gentleman?”

“Yes,” said Frank.

[Pg 504]

“Ah! I heard the clergyman say as
how Master Randal was a mighty
clever lad, and would get rich some
day. I’se sure I wish he would, for a
poor squire makes a poor parish.
There’s the Hall, sir.”

CHAPTER III.

Frank looked right ahead, and saw a
square house that, in spite of modern
sash-windows, was evidently of remote
antiquity—a high conical roof; a stack
of tall quaint chimney-pots of red
baked clay (like those at Sutton
Place in Surrey) dominating over
isolated vulgar smoke-conductors, of
the ignoble fashion of present times;
a dilapidated groin-work, encasing
within a Tudor arch a door of the
comfortable date of George III., and
the peculiarly dingy and weather-stained
appearance of the small finely
finished bricks, of which the habitation
was built,—all showed the abode
of former generations adapted with
tasteless irreverence to the habits of
descendants unenlightened by Pugin,
or indifferent to the poetry of the past.
The house had emerged suddenly upon
Frank out of the gloomy waste land,
for it was placed in a hollow, and
sheltered from sight by a disorderly
group of ragged, dismal, valetudinarian
fir-trees, until an abrupt turn
of the road cleared that screen, and
left the desolate abode bare to the
discontented eye. Frank dismounted;
the man held his pony; and, after
smoothing his cravat, the smart Etonian
sauntered up to the door, and
startled the solitude of the place with
a loud peal from the modern brass
knocker—a knock which instantly
brought forth an astonished starling
who had built under the eaves of the
gable roof, and called up a cloud
of sparrows, tomtits, and yellowhammers,
who had been regaling
themselves amongst the litter of a
slovenly farm-yard that lay in full
sight to the right of the house, fenced
off by a primitive, paintless wooden
rail. In process of time a sow, accompanied
by a thriving and inquisitive
family, strolled up to the gate
of the fence, and, leaning her nose on
the lower bar of the gate, contemplated
the visitor with much curiosity
and some suspicion.

While Frank is still without, impatiently
swingeing his white trousers
with his whip, we will steal a
hurried glance towards the respective
members of the family within.
Mr Leslie, the pater familias,
is in a little room called his ‘study,’
to which he regularly retires every
morning after breakfast, rarely reappearing
till one o’clock, which is his
unfashionable hour for dinner. In
what mysterious occupations Mr Leslie
passes those hours no one ever
formed a conjecture. At the present
moment he is seated before a little
rickety bureau, one leg of which (being
shorter than the other) is propped
up by sundry old letters and scraps of
newspapers; and the bureau is open,
and reveals a great number of pigeon-holes
and divisions, filled with various
odds and ends, the collection of many
years. In some of these compartments
are bundles of letters, very
yellow, and tied in packets with faded
tape; in another, all by itself, is a
fragment of plum-pudding stone,
which Mr Leslie has picked up in his
walks and considered a rare mineral.
It is neatly labelled “Found in Hollow
Lane, May 21st, 1824, by Maunder
Slugge Leslie, Esq.” The next
division holds several bits of iron in
the shape of nails, fragments of horseshoes,
&c., which Mr Leslie had also
met with in his rambles, and, according
to a harmless popular superstition,
deemed it highly unlucky not to pick
up, and, once picked up, no less unlucky
to throw away. Item, in the
adjoining pigeon-hole, a goodly collection
of pebbles with holes in them,
preserved for the same reason, in company
with a crooked sixpence: item,
neatly arranged in fanciful mosaics,
several periwinkles, Blackamoor’s
teeth, (I mean the shell so called,)
and other specimens of the conchiferous
ingenuity of Nature, partly
inherited from some ancestral spinster,
partly amassed by Mr Leslie
himself in a youthful excursion to the
sea-side. There were the farm-bailiff’s
accounts, several files of bills, an
old stirrup, three sets of knee and[Pg 505]
shoe buckles which had belonged to
Mr Leslie’s father, a few seals tied
together by a shoe-string, a shagreen
toothpick case, a tortoiseshell magnifying
glass to read with, his eldest
son’s first copybooks, his second son’s
ditto, his daughter’s ditto, and a lock
of his wife’s hair arranged in a true-lover’s
knot, framed and glazed.
There were also a small mousetrap;
a patent corkscrew, too good to be
used in common; fragments of a
silver tea spoon, that had, by natural
decay, arrived at a dissolution of its
parts; a small brown Holland bag, containing
halfpence of various dates, as
far back as Queen Anne, accompanied
by two French sous, and a German
silber gros; the which miscellany Mr
Leslie magniloquently called “his
coins,” and had left in his will as a
family heir-loom. There were many
other curiosities of congenial nature
and equal value—”quænunc describere
longum est.” Mr Leslie was engaged
at this time in what is termed “putting
things to rights”—an occupation
he performed with exemplary care
once a-week. This was his day;
and he had just counted his coins,
and was slowly tying them up again,
when Frank’s knock reached his ears.

Mr Maunder Slugge Leslie paused,
shook his head as if incredulously, and
was about to resume his occupation,
when he was seized with a fit of
yawning which prevented the bag
being tied for full two minutes.

While such the employment of the
study—let us turn to the recreations
in the drawing-room, or rather parlour.
A drawing-room there was on
the first floor, with a charming look-out,
not on the dreary fir-trees, but on
the romantic undulating forest-land;
but the drawing-room had not been
used since the death of the last Mrs
Leslie. It was deemed too good to
sit in, except when there was company;
there never being company,
it was never sate in. Indeed, now
the paper was falling off the walls
with the damp, and the rats, mice,
and moths—those “edaces rerum“—had
eaten, between them, most of the
chair-bottoms and a considerable
part of the floor. Therefore the parlour
was the sole general sitting-room;
and being breakfasted in,
dined and supped in, and, after supper,
smoked in by Mr Leslie to the
accompaniment of rum and water,
it is impossible to deny that it had
what is called “a smell”—a comfortable
wholesome family smell—speaking
of numbers, meals, and miscellaneous
social habitation. There
were two windows: one looked full
on the fir-trees; the other on the
farm-yard, with the pigsty closing the
view. Near the fir-tree window sate
Mrs Leslie; before her, on a high
stool, was a basket of the children’s
clothes that wanted mending. A
work-table of rosewood inlaid with
brass, which had been a wedding
present, and was a costly thing originally,
but in that peculiar taste
which is vulgarly called “Brumagem,”
stood at hand: the brass had started
in several places, and occasionally
made great havoc on the children’s
fingers and Mrs Leslie’s gown; in
fact, it was the liveliest piece of
furniture in the house, thanks to that
petulant brass-work, and could not
have been more mischievous if it had
been a monkey. Upon the work-table
lay a housewife and thimble, and scissors
and skeins of worsted and thread,
and little scraps of linen and cloth for
patches. But Mrs Leslie was not
actually working—she was preparing
to work; she had been preparing to
work for the last hour and a half.
Upon her lap she supported a novel,
by a lady who wrote much for a former
generation, under the name of
“Mrs Bridget Blue Mantle.” She
had a small needle in her left hand,
and a very thick piece of thread in
her right; occasionally she applied
the end of the said thread to her lips,
and then—her eyes fixed on the novel—made
a blind vacillating attack
at the eye of the needle. But a
camel would have gone through it
with quite as much ease. Nor did
the novel alone engage Mrs Leslie’s
attention, for ever and anon she
interrupted herself to scold the children;
to inquire “what o’clock it
was;” to observe that “Sarah would
never suit,” and to wonder why Mr
Leslie would not see that the work-table
was mended. Mrs Leslie had
been rather a pretty woman. In
spite of a dress at once slatternly and
economical, she has still the air of a
lady—rather too much so, the hard[Pg 506]
duties of her situation considered.
She is proud of the antiquity of her
family on both sides; her mother was
of the venerable stock of the Daudlers
of Daudle Place, a race that
existed before the Conquest. Indeed,
one has only to read our earliest chronicles,
and to glance over some of
those long-winded moralising poems
which delighted the thanes and ealdermen
of old, in order to see that the
Daudles must have been a very influential
family before William the First
turned the country topsy-turvy.
While the mother’s race was thus
indubitably Saxon, the father’s had
not only the name but the peculiar
idiosyncrasy of the Normans, and
went far to establish that crotchet of
the brilliant author of Sybil, or the
Two Nations, as to the continued
distinction between the conquering
and conquered populations.
Mrs Leslie’s father boasted the
name of Montfydget; doubtless of
the same kith and kin as those
great barons Montfichet, who once
owned such broad lands and such
turbulent castles. A high-nosed,
thin, nervous, excitable progeny, those
same Montfydgets, as the most troublesome
Norman could pretend to be.
This fusion of race was notable to the
most ordinary physiognomist in the
physique and in the morale of Mrs
Leslie. She had the speculative
blue eye of the Saxon, and the passionate
high nose of the Norman;
she had the musing do-nothingness of
the Daudlers, and the reckless have-at-every-thingness
of the Montfydgets.
At Mrs Leslie’s feet, a little girl with
her hair about her ears, (and beautiful
hair it was too) was amusing herself
with a broken-nosed doll. At the far
end of the room, before a high desk,
sate Frank’s Eton schoolfellow, the
eldest son. A minute or two before
Frank’s alarum had disturbed the
tranquillity of the household, he
had raised his eyes from the books
on the desk, to glance at a very tattered
copy of the Greek Testament, in
which his brother Oliver had found a
difficulty that he came to Randal to
solve. As the young Etonian’s face was
turned to the light, your first impression,
on seeing it, would have been
melancholy but respectful interest—for
the face had already lost the
joyous character of youth—there was
a wrinkle between the brows; and
the lines that speak of fatigue, were
already visible under the eyes and
about the mouth; the complexion was
sallow, the lips were pale. Years of
study had already sown, in the delicate
organisation, the seeds of many
an infirmity and many a pain; but if
your look had rested longer on that
countenance, gradually your compassion
might have given place to some
feeling uneasy and sinister, a feeling
akin to fear. There was in the whole
expression so much of cold calm
force, that it belied the debility of
the frame. You saw there the evidence
of a mind that was cultivated,
and you felt that in that cultivation
there was something formidable. A
notable contrast to this countenance,
prematurely worn and eminently intelligent,
was the round healthy face
of Oliver, with slow blue eyes, fixed
hard on the penetrating orbs of his
brother, as if trying with might and
main to catch from them a gleam of
that knowledge with which they
shone clear and frigid as a star.

At Frank’s knock, Oliver’s slow
blue eyes sparkled into animation,
and he sprang from his brother’s side.
The little girl flung back the hair
from her face, and stared at her
mother with a look which spoke
wonder and fright.

The young student knit his brows,
and then turned wearily back to the
books on his desk.

“Dear me,” cried Mrs Leslie,
“who can that possibly be? Oliver,
come from the window, sir, this
instant, you will be seen! Juliet,
run—ring the bell—no, go to the
stairs, and say, ‘not at home.’ Not
at home on any account,” repeated
Mrs Leslie nervously, for the Montfydget
blood was now in full flow.

In another minute or so, Frank’s
loud boyish voice was distinctly
heard at the outer door.

Randal slightly started.

“Frank Hazeldean’s voice,” said
he; “I should like to see him,
mother.”

“See him,” repeated Mrs Leslie in
amaze, “see him!—and the room in
this state!”

Randal might have replied that
the room was in no worse state than[Pg 507]
usual; but he said nothing. A slight
flush came and went over his pale
face; and then he leant his cheek on
his hand, and compressed his lips
firmly.

The outer door closed with a sullen
inhospitable jar, and a slip-shod female
servant entered with a card between
her finger and thumb.

“Who is that for?—give it to me,
Jenny,” cried Mrs Leslie.

But Jenny shook her head, laid the
card on the desk beside Randal, and
vanished without saying a word.

“Oh look, Randal, look up,” cried
Oliver, who had again rushed to the
window; “such a pretty gray pony!”

Randal did look up; nay, he went
deliberately to the window, and gazed
a moment on the high-mettled pony,
and the well-dressed high-spirited
rider. In that moment changes passed
over Randal’s countenance more
rapidly than clouds over the sky in a
gusty day. Now envy and discontent,
with the curled lip and the
gloomy scowl; now hope and proud
self-esteem, with the clearing brow,
and the lofty smile; and then all
again became cold, firm, and close, as
he walked back to his books, seated
himself resolutely, and said half-aloud,—

“Well, KNOWLEDGE IS POWER!”

CHAPTER IV.

Mrs Leslie came up in fidget and
in fuss; she leant over Randal’s
shoulder and read the card. Written
in pen and ink, with an attempt at
imitation of printed Roman character,
there appeared first, ‘Mr Frank
Hazeldean;’ but just over these
letters, and scribbled hastily and less
legibly in pencil, was—

‘Dear Leslie,—sorry you are out—come
and see us—Do!‘

“You will go, Randal?” said
Mrs Leslie, after a pause.

“I am not sure.”

“Yes, you can go; you have clothes
like a gentleman; you can go anywhere,
not like those children;” and
Mrs Leslie glanced almost spitefully on
poor Oliver’s coarse threadbare jacket,
and little Juliet’s torn frock.

“What I have I owe at present to
Mr Egerton, and I should consult his
wishes; he is not on good terms with
these Hazeldeans.” Then glancing
towards his brother, who looked mortified,
he added with a strange sort
of haughty kindness, “What I may
have hereafter, Oliver, I shall owe to
myself; and then, if I rise, I will raise
my family.”

“Dear Randal,” said Mrs Leslie,
fondly kissing him on the forehead,
“what a good heart you have!”

“No, mother; my books don’t tell
me that it is a good heart that gets
on in the world; it is a hard head,”
replied Randal with a rude and
scornful candour. “But I can read
no more just now; come out, Oliver.”

So saying, he slid from his mother’s
hand and left the room.

When Oliver joined him, Randal
was already on the common; and,
without seeming to notice his brother,
he continued to walk quickly and
with long strides in profound silence.
At length he paused under the shade
of an old oak, that, too old to be of
value save for firewood, had escaped
the axe. The tree stood on a knoll,
and the spot commanded a view of
the decayed house—the old dilapidated
church—the dismal dreary village.

“Oliver,” said Randal between
his teeth, so that his voice had the
sound of a hiss, “it was under this
tree that I first resolved to—”

He paused.

“What, Randal?”

“Read hard; knowledge is power!”

“But you are so fond of reading.”

“I!” cried Randal. “Do you
think, when Wolsey and Thomas-à-Becket
became priests, they were fond
of telling their beads and pattering
Aves?—I fond of reading!”

Oliver stared; the historical allusions
were beyond his comprehension.

“You know,” continued Randal,
“that we Leslies were not always
the beggarly poor gentlemen we are
now. You know that there is a man
who lives in Grosvenor Square, and
is very rich—very. His riches come
to him from a Leslie; that man is my
patron, Oliver, and he is very good to
me.”

Randal’s smile was withering as
he spoke. “Come on,” he said, after[Pg 508]
a pause—”come on.” Again the
walk was quicker, and the brothers
were silent.

They came at length to a little
shallow brook, across which some
large stones had been placed at short
intervals, so that the boys walked
over the ford dryshod. “Will you
pull me down that bough, Oliver?”
said Randal abruptly, pointing to a
tree. Oliver obeyed mechanically;
and Randal, stripping the leaves, and
snapping off the twigs, left a fork at
the end; with this he began to remove
the stepping-stones. “What
are you about, Randal?” asked Oliver,
wonderingly.

“We are on the other side of the
brook now; and we shall not come
back this way. We don’t want the
stepping-stones any more!—away
with them!”

CHAPTER V.

The morning after this visit of
Frank Hazeldean’s to Rood Hall, the
Right Honourable Audley Egerton,
member of parliament, privy councillor,
and minister of a high department
in the state—just below the
rank of the cabinet—was seated in
his library, awaiting the delivery of
the post, before he walked down to
his office. In the meanwhile, he
sipped his tea, and glanced over the
newspapers with that quick and half-disdainful
eye with which your practical
man in public life is wont to
regard the abuse or the eulogium of
the Fourth Estate.

There is very little likeness between
Mr Egerton and his half-brother;
none indeed, except that they are
both of tall stature, and strong,
sinewy, English build. But even in
this last they do not resemble each
other; for the Squire’s athletic shape
is already beginning to expand into
that portly embonpoint which seems
the natural development of contented
men as they approach middle life.
Audley, on the contrary, is inclined to
be spare; and his figure, though the
muscles are as firm as iron, has
enough of the slender to satisfy metropolitan
ideas of elegance. His dress—his
look—his tout ensemble, are those
of the London man. In the first, there
is more attention to fashion than is
usual amongst the busy members of
the House of Commons; but then
Audley Egerton had always been
something more than a mere busy
member of the House of Commons.
He had always been a person of mark
in the best society, and one secret of
his success in life has been his high
reputation as ‘a gentleman.’

As he now bends over the journals,
there is an air of distinction in the
turn of the well-shaped head, with
the dark-brown hair—dark in spite of
a reddish tinge—cut close behind, and
worn away a little towards the crown,
so as to give additional height to a
commanding forehead. His profile is
very handsome, and of that kind of
beauty which imposes on men if it
pleases women; and is therefore, unlike
that of your mere pretty fellows,
a positive advantage in public life. It
is a profile with large features clearly
cut, masculine, and somewhat severe.
The expression of his face is not open,
like the Squire’s; nor has it the cold
closeness which accompanies the intellectual
character of young Leslie’s;
but it is reserved and dignified, and
significant of self-control, as should
be the physiognomy of a man accustomed
to think before he speaks.
When you look at him, you are not
surprised to learn that he is not a
florid orator nor a smart debater—he
is a “weighty speaker.” He is fairly
read, but without any great range
either of ornamental scholarship or
constitutional lore. He has not much
humour; but he has that kind of wit
which is essential to grave and serious
irony. He has not much imagination,
nor remarkable subtlety in reasoning;
but if he does not dazzle, he does not
bore: he is too much the man of the
world for that. He is considered to
have sound sense and accurate judgment.
Withal, as he now lays aside
the journals, and his face relaxes its
austerer lines, you will not be astonished
to hear that he is a man who is
said to have been greatly beloved by
women, and still to exercise much
influence in drawing-rooms and boudoirs.
At least no one was surprised
when the great heiress Clementina
Leslie, kinswoman and ward to Lord[Pg 509]
Lansmere—a young lady who had
refused three earls and the heir-apparent
to a dukedom—was declared by
her dearest friends to be dying of love
for Audley Egerton. It had been the
natural wish of the Lansmeres that
this lady should marry their son,
Lord L’Estrange. But that young
gentleman, whose opinions on matrimony
partook of the eccentricity of
his general character, could never be
induced to propose, and had, according
to the on-dits of town, been the
principal party to make up the match
between Clementina and his friend
Audley; for the match required making-up,
despite the predilections of the
young heiress. Mr Egerton had had
scruples of delicacy. He avowed, for
the first time, that his fortune was much
less than had been generally supposed, and
he did not like the idea of owing
all to a wife, however much he might
esteem and admire her. L’Estrange
was with his regiment abroad during the
existence of these scruples; but
by letters to his father, and to his
cousin Clementina, he contrived to
open and conclude negotiations, while
he argued away Mr Egerton’s objections;
and, before the year in which
Audley was returned for Lansmere
had expired, he received the hand of
the great heiress. The settlement of
her fortune, which was chiefly in the
funds, had been unusually advantageous
to the husband; for though
the capital was tied up so long as both
survived—for the benefit of any children
they might have—yet, in the
event of one of the parties dying
without issue by the marriage, the
whole passed without limitation to the
survivor. In not only assenting to,
but proposing this clause, Miss Leslie,
if she showed a generous trust in Mr
Egerton, inflicted no positive wrong
on her relations; for she had none
sufficiently near to her to warrant
their claim to the succession. Her
nearest kinsman, and therefore her
natural heir, was Harley L’Estrange;
and if he was contented, no one had
a right to complain. The tie of blood
between herself and the Leslies of
Rood Hall was, as we shall see presently,
extremely distant.

It was not till after his marriage
that Mr Egerton took an active part
in the business of the House of Commons.
He was then at the most
advantageous starting-point for the
career of ambition. His words on the
state of the country took importance
from his stake in it. His talents found
accessories in the opulence of Grosvenor
Square, the dignity of a princely
establishment, the respectability of one
firmly settled in life, the reputation of
a fortune in reality very large, and
which was magnified by popular report
into the revenues of a Crœsus.
Audley Egerton succeeded in Parliament
beyond the early expectations
formed of him. He took, at first, that
station in the House which it requires
tact to establish, and great knowledge
of the world to free from the charge
of impracticability and crotchet, but
which, once established, is peculiarly
imposing from the rarity of its independence;
that is to say, the station
of the moderate man who belongs
sufficiently to a party to obtain its
support, but is yet sufficiently disengaged
from a party to make his
vote and word, on certain questions,
matter of anxiety and speculation.

Professing Toryism, (the word Conservative,
which would have suited
him better, was not then known,) he
separated himself from the country
party, and always avowed great respect
for the opinions of the large towns. The
epithet given to the views of Audley
Egerton was “enlightened.” Never
too much in advance of the passion
of the day, yet never behind its movement,
he had that shrewd calculation
of odds which a consummate mastery
of the world sometimes bestows upon
politicians—perceived the chances for
and against a certain question being
carried within a certain time, and
nicked the question between wind and
water. He was so good a barometer
of that changeful weather called
Public Opinion that he might have had
a hand in the Times newspaper. He
soon quarrelled, and purposely, with
his Lansmere constituents—nor had
he ever revisited that borough, perhaps
because it was associated with
unpleasant reminiscences in the shape
of the Squire’s epistolary trimmer, and
in that of his own effigies which his
agricultural constituents had burned
in the corn-market. But the speeches
which produced such indignation at
Lansmere, had delighted one of the[Pg 510]
greatest of our commercial towns,
which at the next general election
honoured him with its representation.
In those days, before the Reform Bill,
great commercial towns chose men of
high mark for their members; and a
proud station it was for him who was
delegated to speak the voice of the
princely merchants of England.

Mrs Egerton survived her marriage
but a few years; she left no children;
two had been born, but died in their
first infancy. The property of the
wife, therefore, passed without control
or limit to the husband.

Whatever might have been the
grief of the widower, he disdained to
betray it to the world. Indeed, Audley
Egerton was a man who had early
taught himself to conceal emotion.
He buried himself in the country, none
knew where, for some months: when
he returned, there was a deep wrinkle
on his brow; but no change in his
habits and avocations, except that,
shortly afterwards, he accepted office,
and thus became more busy than ever.

Mr Egerton had always been lavish
and magnificent in money matters.
A rich man in public life has many
claims on his fortune, and no one
yielded to those claims with an air
so regal as Audley Egerton. But
amongst his many liberal actions,
there was none which seemed more
worthy of panegyric, than the generous
favour he extended to the son of
his wife’s poor and distant kinsfolks,
the Leslies of Rood Hall.

Some four generations back, there
had lived a certain Squire Leslie, a
man of large acres and active mind.
He had cause to be displeased with
his elder son, and though he did not
disinherit him, he left half his property
to a younger.

The younger had capacity and spirit,
which justified the paternal provision.
He increased his fortune; lifted himself
into notice and consideration, by
public services and a noble alliance.
His descendants followed his example,
and took rank among the first commoners
in England, till the last male,
dying, left his sole heiress and representative
in one daughter, Clementina,
afterwards married to Mr Egerton.

Meanwhile the elder son of the forementioned
squire had muddled and
sotted away much of his share in the
Leslie property; and, by low habits
and mean society, lowered in repute
his representation of the name.

His successors imitated him, till
nothing was left to Randal’s father,
Mr Maunder Slugge Leslie, but the
decayed house which was what the
Germans call the stamm schloss, or
“stem hall” of the race, and the
wretched lands immediately around it.

Still, though all intercourse between
the two branches of the family
had ceased, the younger had always
felt a respect for the elder, as the
head of the house. And it was
supposed that, on her deathbed, Mrs
Egerton had recommended her impoverished
namesakes and kindred to
the care of her husband. For, when he
returned to town after Mrs Egerton’s
death, Audley had sent to Mr Maunder
Slugge Leslie the sum of £5000,
which he said his wife, leaving no
written will, had orally bequeathed as
a legacy to that gentleman; and he
requested permission to charge himself
with the education of the eldest son.

Mr Maunder Slugge Leslie might
have done great things for his little
property with those £5000, or even,
(kept in the three-per-cents) the
interest would have afforded a material
addition to his comforts. But a
neighbouring solicitor having caught
scent of the legacy, hunted it down
into his own hands, on pretence of
having found a capital investment in
a canal. And when the solicitor had
got possession of the £5000, he went
off with them to America.

Meanwhile Randal, placed by Mr
Egerton at an excellent preparatory
school, at first gave no signs of industry
or talent; but just before he
left it, there came to the school, as
classical tutor, an ambitious young
Oxford man; and his zeal, for he was
a capital teacher, produced a great
effect generally on the pupils, and
especially on Randal Leslie. He
talked to them much in private on
the advantages of learning, and
shortly afterwards he exhibited those
advantages in his own person; for,
having edited a Greek play with much
subtle scholarship, his college, which
some slight irregularities of his had
displeased, recalled him to its venerable
bosom by the presentation of a
fellowship. After this he took orders,[Pg 511]
became a college tutor, distinguished
himself yet more by a treatise on
the Greek accent, got a capital living,
and was considered on the high road
to a bishopric. This young man,
then, communicated to Randal the
thirst for knowledge; and when the
boy went afterwards to Eton, he applied
with such earnestness and resolve
that his fame soon reached the
ears of Audley; and that person, who
had the sympathy for talent, and yet
more for purpose, which often characterises
ambitious men, went to Eton
to see him. From that time, Audley
evinced great and almost fatherly
interest in the brilliant Etonian; and
Randal always spent with him some
days in each vacation.

I have said that Egerton’s conduct,
with respect to this boy, was more
praiseworthy than most of those generous
actions for which he was renowned,
since to this the world gave
no applause. What a man does within
the range of his family connections,
does not carry with it that éclat which
invests a munificence exhibited on
public occasions. Either people care
nothing about it, or tacitly suppose
it to be but his duty. It was true,
too, as the Squire had observed, that
Randal Leslie was even less distantly
related to the Hazeldeans than
to Mrs Egerton, since Randal’s
grandfather had actually married a
Miss Hazeldean, (the highest worldly
connection that branch of the family
had formed since the great split I have
commemorated.) But Audley Egerton
never appeared aware of that fact.
As he was not himself descended from
the Hazeldeans, he never troubled
himself about their genealogy; and
he took care to impress it upon the
Leslies that his generosity on their
behalf was solely to be ascribed to his
respect for his wife’s memory and
kindred. Still the Squire had felt as
if his “distant brother” implied a rebuke
on his own neglect of these poor
Leslies, by the liberality Audley evinced
towards them; and this had made
him doubly sore when the name of
Randal Leslie was mentioned. But
the fact really was, that the Leslies of
Rood had so shrunk out of all notice
that the Squire had actually forgotten
their existence, until Randal became
thus indebted to his brother; and then
he felt a pang of remorse that any one
save himself, the head of the Hazeldeans,
should lend a helping hand to
the grandson of a Hazeldean.

But having thus, somewhat too tediously,
explained the position of Audley
Egerton, whether in the world or in
relation to his young protegé, I may
now permit him to receive and to read
his letters.

CHAPTER VI.

Mr Egerton glanced over the pile
of letters placed beside him, and first
he tore up some, scarcely read, and
threw them into the waste-basket.
Public men have such odd out-of-the-way
letters that their waste-baskets
are never empty: letters from amateur
financiers proposing new ways to pay
off the National Debt; letters from
America, (never free!) asking for autographs;
letters from fond mothers
in country villages, recommending
some miracle of a son for a place
in the king’s service; letters from
freethinkers in reproof of bigotry;
letters from bigots in reproof of freethinking;
letters signed Brutus
Redivivus, containing the agreeable
information that the writer has a
dagger for tyrants, if the Danish
claims are not forthwith adjusted;
letters signed Matilda or Caroline,
stating that Caroline or Matilda has
seen the public man’s portrait at the
Exhibition, and that a heart sensible
to its attractions may be found at
No. — Piccadilly; letters from beggars,
impostors, monomaniacs, speculators,
jobbers—all food for the
waste-basket.

From the correspondence thus winnowed,
Mr Egerton first selected
those on business, which he put methodically
together in one division
of his pocket-book; and secondly,
those of a private nature, which he
as carefully put into another. Of
these last there were but three—one
from his steward, one from Harley
L’Estrange, one from Randal Leslie.
It was his custom to answer his
correspondence at his office; and to
his office, a few minutes afterwards,
he slowly took his way. Many a[Pg 512]
passenger turned back to look again
at the firm figure, which, despite the
hot summer day, was buttoned up to
the throat; and the black frock-coat
thus worn, well became the erect air,
and the deep full chest of the handsome
senator. When he entered Parliament
Street, Audley Egerton was
joined by one of his colleagues, also
on his way to the cares of office.

After a few observations on the
last debate, this gentleman said—

“By the way, can you dine with
me next Saturday, to meet Lansmere?
He comes up to town to vote for us
on Monday.”

“I had asked some people to dine
with me,” answered Egerton, “but
I will put them off. I see Lord
Lansmere too seldom, to miss any
occasion to meet a man whom I
respect so much.”

“So seldom! True, he is very
little in town; but why don’t you go
and see him in the country? Good
shooting—pleasant old-fashioned
house.”

“My dear Westbourne, his house
is ‘nimium vicina Cremonæ,’ close to a
borough in which I have been burned
in effigy.”

“Ha—ha—yes—I remember you
first came into Parliament for that
snug little place; but Lansmere himself
never found fault with your
votes, did he?”

“He behaved very handsomely,
and said he had not presumed to
consider me his mouthpiece; and
then, too, I am so intimate with
L’Estrange.”

“Is that queer fellow ever coming
back to England?”

“He comes, generally every year,
for a few days, just to see his father
and mother, and then goes back to
the Continent.”

“I never meet him.”

“He comes in September or October,
when you, of course, are not in
town, and it is in town that the
Lansmeres meet him.”

“Why does not he go to them?”

“A man in England but once a
year, and for a few days, has so much
to do in London, I suppose.”

“Is he as amusing as ever?”

Egerton nodded.

“So distinguished as he might be!”
continued Lord Westbourne.

“So distinguished as he is!” said
Egerton formally; “an officer selected
for praise, even in such fields as
Quatre Bras and Waterloo; a scholar,
too, of the finest taste; and as an
accomplished gentleman, matchless!”

“I like to hear one man praise
another so warmly in these ill-natured
days,” answered Lord Westbourne.
“But still, though L’Estrange is
doubtless all you say, don’t you
think he rather wastes his life—living
abroad?”

“And trying to be happy, Westbourne?
Are you sure it is not we
who waste our lives? But I can’t
stay to hear your answer. Here we
are at the door of my prison.”

“On Saturday, then?”

“On Saturday. Good day.”

For the next hour, or more, Mr
Egerton was engaged on the affairs
of the state. He then snatched an
interval of leisure, (while awaiting a
report, which he had instructed a
clerk to make him,) in order to reply
to his letters. Those on public business
were soon despatched; and
throwing his replies aside, to be
sealed by a subordinate hand, he
drew out the letters which he had
put apart as private.

He attended first to that of his
steward: the steward’s letter was
long, the reply was contained in three
lines. Pitt himself was scarcely
more negligent of his private interests
and concerns than Audley Egerton—yet,
withal, Audley Egerton was
said by his enemies to be an egotist.

The next letter he wrote was to
Randal, and that, though longer, was
far from prolix: it ran thus—

A. E.”

The reader will remark that, in
this letter, there is a certain tone of
formality. Mr Egerton does not call
his protegé “dear Randal,” as would
seem natural, but coldly and stiffly,
“Dear Mr Leslie.” He hints, also,
that the boy has his own way to
make in life. Is this meant to guard
against too sanguine notions of inheritance,
which his generosity may
have excited?

The letter to Lord L’Estrange
was of a very different kind from the
others. It was long, and full of such
little scraps of news and gossip as may
interest friends in a foreign land; it
was written gaily, and as with a wish
to cheer his friend; you could see that
it was a reply to a melancholy letter;
and in the whole tone and spirit
there was an affection, even to tenderness,
of which those who most
liked Audley Egerton would have
scarcely supposed him capable. Yet,
notwithstanding, there was a kind of
constraint in the letter, which perhaps
only the fine tact of a woman
would detect. It had not that abandon,
that hearty self-outpouring, which
you might expect would characterise
the letters of two such friends, who
had been boys at school together, and
which did breathe indeed in all the
abrupt rambling sentences of his correspondent.
But where was the evidence
of the constraint? Egerton is
off-hand enough where his pen runs
glibly through paragraphs that relate
to others; it is simply that he says
nothing about himself—that he avoids
all reference to the inner world of
sentiment and feeling. But perhaps,
after all, the man has no sentiment
and feeling! How can you expect
that a steady personage in practical
life, whose mornings are spent in
Downing Street, and whose nights
are consumed in watching Government
bills through a committee, can
write in the same style as an idle
dreamer amidst the pines of Ravenna
or on the banks of Como.

Audley had just finished this epistle,
such as it was, when the attendant
in waiting announced the arrival
of a deputation from a provincial
trading town, the members of which
deputation he had appointed to meet
at two o’clock. There was no office
in London at which deputations were
kept waiting less than at that over
which Mr Egerton presided.

The deputation entered—some
score or so of middle-aged, comfortable-looking
persons, who nevertheless
had their grievance—and
considered their own interests, and
those of the country, menaced by a
certain clause in a bill brought in by
Mr Egerton.

The Mayor of the town was the
chief spokesman, and he spoke well—but
in a style to which the dignified
official was not accustomed. It was
a slap-dash style—unceremonious,
free, and easy—an American style.
And, indeed, there was something altogether
in the appearance and bearing
of the Mayor which savoured of residence
in the Great Republic. He was
a very handsome man, but with a
look sharp and domineering—the look
of a man who did not care a straw
for president or monarch, and who
enjoyed the liberty to speak his mind,
and “wallop his own nigger!”

His fellow-burghers evidently regarded
him with great respect; and
Mr Egerton had penetration enough
to perceive that Mr Mayor must be a
rich man, as well as an eloquent one,
to have overcome those impressions
of soreness or jealousy which his tone
was calculated to create in the self-love
of his equals.

Mr Egerton was far too wise to be
easily offended by mere manner; and,
though he stared somewhat haughtily
when he found his observations
actually pooh-poohed, he was not
above being convinced. There was
much sense and much justice in Mr
Mayor’s arguments, and the statesman[Pg 514]
civilly promised to take them into full
consideration.

He then bowed out the deputation;
but scarcely had the door closed
before it opened again, and Mr Mayor
presented himself alone, saying aloud
to his companions in the passage, “I
forgot something I had to say to Mr
Egerton; wait below for me.”

“Well, Mr Mayor,” said Audley,
pointing to a seat, “what else would
you suggest?”

The Mayor looked round to see
that the door was closed; and then,
drawing his chair close to Mr Egerton’s,
laid his forefinger on that gentleman’s
arm, and said, “I think I
speak to a man of the world, sir.”

Mr Egerton bowed, and made no reply
by word, but he gently removed his
arm from the touch of the forefinger.

Mr Mayor.—”You observe, sir,
that I did not ask the members whom
we return to Parliament to accompany
us. Do better without ’em. You
know they are both in Opposition—out-and-outers.”

Mr Egerton.—”It is a misfortune
which the Government cannot remember,
when the question is whether the
trade of the town itself is to be served
or injured.”

Mr Mayor.—”Well, I guess you
speak handsome, sir. But you’d be
glad to have two members to support
Ministers after the next election.”

Mr Egerton, smiling.—”Unquestionably,
Mr Mayor.”

Mr Mayor.—”And I can do it,
Mr Egerton. I may say I have the
town in my pocket; so I ought, I
spend a great deal of money in it.
Now, you see, Mr Egerton, I have
passed a part of my life in a land of
liberty—the United States—and I
come to the point when I speak to a
man of the world. I’m a man of the
world myself, sir. And if so be the
Government will do something for me,
why, I’ll do something for the Government.
Two votes for a free and
independent town like ours—that’s
something, isn’t it?”

Mr Egerton, taken by surprise.—”Really,
I—”

Mr Mayor, advancing his chair
still nearer, and interrupting the
official.—”No nonsense, you see, on
one side or the other. The fact is
that I’ve taken it into my head that
I should be knighted. You
may well look surprised, Mr Egerton—trumpery
thing enough, I dare say;
still, every man has his weakness,
and I should like to be Sir Richard.
Well, if you can get me made Sir
Richard, you may just name your two
members for the next election—that
is, if they belong to your own set, enlightened
men, up to the times. That’s
speaking fair and manful, isn’t it?”

Mr Egerton, drawing himself up.—”I
am at a loss to guess why you
should select me, sir, for this very
extraordinary proposition.”

Mr Mayor, nodding good-humouredly.—”Why,
you see, I don’t go all
along with the Government; you’re
the best of the bunch. And maybe
you’d like to strengthen your own
party. This is quite between you and
me, you understand; honour’s a jewel!”

Mr Egerton, with great gravity.—”Sir,
I am obliged by your good opinion;
but I agree with my colleagues
in all the great questions that affect
the government of the country, and—”

Mr Mayor, interrupting him.—”Ah,
of course, you must say so;
very right. But I guess things would
go differently if you were Prime
Minister. However, I have another
reason for speaking to you about my
little job. You see you were member
for Lansmere once, and I think you
came in but by two majority, eh?”

Mr Egerton.—”I know nothing
of the particulars of that election; I
was not present.”

Mr Mayor.—”No; but, luckily
for you, two relatives of mine were,
and they voted for you. Two votes,
and you came in by two! Since then,
you have got into very snug quarters
here, and I think we have a claim
on you—”

Mr Egerton.—”Sir, I acknowledge
no such claim; I was and am a
stranger to Lansmere; and, if the
electors did me the honour to return
me to Parliament, it was in compliment
rather to—”

Mr Mayor, again interrupting the
official.—”Rather to Lord Lansmere,
you were going to say; unconstitutional
doctrine that, I fancy. Peer
of the realm. But, never mind, I
know the world; and I’d ask Lord
Lansmere to do my affair for me, only
I hear he is as proud as Lucifer.”

[Pg 515]

Mr Egerton, in great disgust, and
settling his papers before him.—”Sir,
it is not in my department to recommend
to his Majesty candidates for
the honour of knighthood, and it is
still less in my department to make
bargains for seats in Parliament.”

Mr Mayor.—”Oh, if that’s the
case, you’ll excuse me; I don’t know
much of the etiquette in these matters.
But I thought that, if I put
two seats in your hands, for your
own friends, you might contrive to
take the affair into your department,
whatever it was. But, since you say
you agree with your colleagues, perhaps
it comes to the same thing.
Now, you must not suppose I want
to sell the town, and that I can change
and chop my politics for my own purpose.
No such thing! I don’t like
the sitting members; I’m all for progressing,
but they go too much a-head
for me; and, since the Government
is disposed to move a little, why I’d
as lief support them as not. But, in
common gratitude, you see, (added
the Mayor, coaxingly,) I ought to be
knighted! I can keep up the dignity,
and do credit to his Majesty.”

Mr Egerton, without looking up
from his papers.—”I can only refer
you, sir, to the proper quarter.”

Mr Mayor, impatiently.—”Proper
quarter! Well, since there is so
much humbug in this old country of
ours, that one must go through all
the forms and get at the job regularly,
just tell me whom I ought to go to.”

Mr Egerton, beginning to be
amused as well as indignant.—”If
you want a knighthood, Mr Mayor,
you must ask the Prime Minister; if
you want to give the Government
information relative to seats in Parliament,
you must introduce yourself to
Mr —— the Secretary of the Treasury.”

Mr Mayor.—”And if I go to the
last chap, what do you think he’ll say?”

Mr Egerton, the amusement preponderating
over the indignation.—”He
will say, I suppose, that you
must not put the thing in the light in
which you have put it to me; that the
Government will be very proud to
have the confidence of yourself and
your brother electors; and that a
gentleman like you, in the proud position
of Mayor, may well hope to be
knighted on some fitting occasion.
But that you must not talk about the
knighthood just at present, and must
confine yourself to converting the unfortunate
political opinions of the
town.”

Mr Mayor.—”Well, I guess that
chap there would want to do me!
Not quite so green, Mr Egerton.
Perhaps I’d better go at once to the
fountain-head. How d’ye think the
Premier would take it?”

Mr Egerton, the indignation preponderating
over the amusement.—”Probably
just as I am about to do.”

Mr Egerton rang the bell; the
attendant appeared.

“Show Mr Mayor the way out,”
said the Minister.

The Mayor turned round sharply,
and his face was purple. He walked
straight to the door; but, suffering
the attendant to precede him along
the corridor, he came back with a
rapid stride, and, clenching his hands,
and, with a voice thick with passion,
cried, “Some day or other I will
make you smart for this, as sure as
my name’s Dick Avenel!”

“Avenel!” repeated Egerton, recoiling,
“Avenel!”

But the Mayor was gone.

Audley fell into a deep and musing
reverie which seemed gloomy, and
lasted till the attendant announced
that the horses were at the door.

He then looked up, still abstractedly,
and saw his letter to Harley
L’Estrange open on the table. He
drew it towards him, and wrote, “A
man has just left me, who calls himself
Aven —” in the middle of the name
his pen stopped. “No, no,” muttered
the writer, “what folly to reopen
the old wounds there,” and he
carefully erased the words.

Audley Egerton did not ride in the
Park that day, as was his wont, but
dismissed his groom; and, turning
his horse’s head towards Westminster
Bridge, took his solitary way into the
country. He rode at first slowly, as
if in thought; then fast, as if trying
to escape from thought. He was
later than usual at the House that
evening, and he looked pale and
fatigued. But he had to speak, and
he spoke well.

[Pg 516]

THE RISE, POWER, AND POLITICS OF PRUSSIA.[1]

If there is such a thing in diplomacy
as a natural ally, Prussia is the natural
ally of England. Each possesses
exactly what the other wants—the
power of Prussia consisting in an
immense army, the power of England
in an unrivalled fleet: for though the
British troops have shown themselves
at least equal to any troops in the
world, the genius of the nation looks
chiefly to naval pre-eminence; and
though, in the course of time, Prussia
may be in possession of naval honours,
nothing can be clearer than that its present
strength depends on its soldiery.

The close alliance of England with
Prussia is now a century old. We
find the great Lord Chatham taking
the most open interest in the successes
of Frederick II., and establishing
the principle that the independence of
Prussia is essential to the balance of
Europe. At the beginning of the
eighteenth century, the north of Germany
was divided among a cluster of
petty sovereignties—of all forms of a
national system the surest to foster
political intrigues, to invite the intermeddling
of foreigners, the one to offer
the strongest inducements to invasion,
and to provide the feeblest means of
defence. The formidable power of
France, within twenty miles of England,
must always fix the eye of the
English statesman; and no more essential
operation for our national tranquillity
could be conceived than the
solid establishment of a kingdom on
the northern frontier of France, which
might make that proverbially impetuous
and ambitious nation aware,
that an attempt to assault England
could not be made without incurring
the hazard of an assault on her own
most exposed frontier.

But another power had arisen to
render the balance of Europe still
more precarious. Russia, at the beginning
of the century, known but as
a land of semi-barbarism, had suddenly
started into a massive force,
which threatened the absorption of
Germany. Possessing the highest advantages
for a great military empire,
with harbours commanding the North,
a population of sixty millions, a territory
almost boundless and almost unassailable,
and a government which,
under all the changes of individual
character in its princes, has retained
in its policy the same character of
continual progress, of restless interference
in European politics, and of
bold ambition—Russia must, in all
the views of the English statesman,
assume an interest of the most pressing
order. To interpose an iron barrier
to the ambition of Russia necessarily
became the principle of English
policy, and the English politician
naturally looked for that barrier in
the vigorous administration and
steady strength of the resources of
Prussia.

The eighteenth century may be
called the Century of Sovereigns.
There was no period, before or
since, in which so many remarkable
personages sat on the thrones of
Europe—William III., Louis XIV.,
Charles XII., the Czar Peter,
Maria Theresa of Austria, Catherine
II., and Frederick II. of Prussia—each
possessed either of great intellectual
or great political qualities; all
capable of distinction, if they had been
born in the humbler conditions of
mankind; but all developing, in the
duties and labours of thrones, those
qualities in a degree which made them,
for their day, the great impulses of
Europe, and which have placed them
in an immovable rank among the
high recollections of history.

But, to the Englishman, whether
politician or philosopher, Prussia is
the most important, from its position,
the nature of its connexion with our
country, the singularity of its origin,
and the especial dependence of its
[Pg 517]early advance to sovereignty on the
vigour of an individual mind.

Gibbon remarks that the oldest
royal genealogy of Europe scarcely
ascends to the eighth century. The
genealogy of the Prussian throne,
whether by the zeal of the herald, or
the truth of the historian, nearly
reaches that cloudy period. Its pedigree
is dubiously traced up to the
founder of the great Swabian family
of Hohenzollern, of whom the first
supposed ancestor was a Count Thalasso
of Zollern. The family then
either fell into obscurity, or rested in
contentment with its ancestral possessions,
until the thirteenth century,
when it started on the national eye
as the Burgraves of Nurnberg. But
it again slumbered for eight generations,
until the difficulties of the
Emperor Sigismund drove him to
apply to the resources of the family,
then probably grown rich, as the
chief personages of an opulent German
community. The service was
repaid by the Viceroyalty of Brandenburg,
and the subsequent donation of
the actual territory, with the title of
Elector, and the office of archchamberlain
of the empire.

The imperial gratitude probably
continued to be reminded of its duties
by fresh loans, for the electorate continued
to receive frequent additions of
territory, until, early in the seventeenth
century, the annexation of the
duchy of Prussia placed the Elector
in an imposing rank among the dependant
princes of the Continent.
In the middle of this century a man
of distinguished ability, fortunately
for Prussia, ascended the electoral
throne. Germany was then ravaged
by the memorable Thirty Years’ War.
Frederick the Great afterwards expressed
the embarrassments of the
new reign in a few pithy words, as
was his custom: “My great ancestor,”
said this graphic describer, “was
a prince without territory, an elector
without power, and an ally without a
friend.”

But talent and time are the true
elements of success in every condition
of life. By economy the Elector restored
his finances; by common sense
he reclaimed his half-savage subjects;
and by sound policy he continued to
augment his dominions, without doing
violence to his neighbours. The
peace of Westphalia, (1648,) which
established the imperial system, gave
him the additional importance attached
to the possession of the archbishopric
of Magdeburg, of Halberstadt,
and of the actual sovereignty
of ducal Prussia, hitherto held as a
Polish fief.

But those were the victories of
peace; he was at length forced to
exhibit his qualities for war. In
1674, as a prince of the empire, he
was compelled to furnish his contingent
to its army against France.
Louis XIV., in revenge, let loose the
Swedes in Pomerania to invade
Brandenburg. The reputation of the
Swedish troops had risen to the
highest rank in the Thirty Years’
War, and they were regarded as all
but invincible. The Prussian Elector,
justly alarmed at this new peril of his
dominions, appealed to his allies.
But German alliances (in those days
at least) were slippery, and German
succours are habitually slow. Wearied
by their delays, the Elector determined
to act for himself. Breaking up from
Franconia, he transferred his little
army of eight thousand men suddenly
to Magdeburg. The Swedes, encamped
on the Havel, and contemptuous
of Prussian strategy, took no
trouble to ascertain his movements.
The whole expedition was conducted
with equal vigour and dexterity. On
his arrival in Magdeburg, the gates
were kept shut for four-and-twenty
hours: thus all intelligence to the enemy
was cut off. At nightfall he sallied
forth; by daybreak he reached and
assaulted the Swedish headquarters,
took their baggage and cannon, and
hunted the troops from post to post
until their dispersion was total.

This battle was one of the instances
in which the most important results
have followed from slight events. The
battle would have been in later times
scarcely more than an affair of advanced
guards, for the Swedes had
but eight thousand, and the Prussians
engaged were but five thousand five
hundred. But, to have beaten the
most distinguished soldiery in Europe,
to have surprised the most disciplined,
and to have gained the victory with
inferior numbers, instantly drew the
eyes of Europe on the Elector. His[Pg 518]
dominions were subjected to no
further insult; the character of the
Prussian army was raised; and Prussia
made the first actual stride to
northern supremacy.

This eminent man died in 1688,
after a career which earned the panegyric
even of his fastidious descendant,
Frederick II., who thus described him,
almost a hundred years after:—

Frederick, the eldest son of the great
elector, by his marriage with a sister
of George I. then Elector of Hanover,
became connected with English politics;
sent six thousand men to the
assistance of the Prince of Orange in
his invasion of England; joined the
Allies, with twenty thousand men, in
revenging the havoc of the Palatinate;
and, in the Grand Alliance of 1691,
sent fifteen thousand troops to join
the army of William III.

But Prussia was continually progressive,
and in 1700 she was to make
that advance in rank of which nations
are as ambitious as their princes. In
this year Prussia obtained from the
Emperor the long-coveted title of
kingdom; and the monarch, as Frederick I.,
took his place among European
sovereigns. He died in 1713,
and was succeeded by the prince-royal,
Frederick-William. The character of
the deceased monarch was, long after,
given with epigrammatic contemptuousness
by Frederick II.

Royal extravagance is never pardoned,
and the memory of this princely
spendthrift prepared popularity for his
rigid successor. The Memoirs of the
Margravine of Bareith have thrown
that successor into ridicule; and it
must be acknowledged, that his early
acts were calculated to throw all the
courtiers of Europe into mingled astonishment
and indignation. Immediately
on his accession, he ordered the
grand-marshal of the palace to bring
him the list of the royal establishment.
The king took a pen, and crossed out
the whole. The grand-marshal, in
horror at this sweeping style of reform,
lost his speech, and fled from
the royal presence. Meeting an officer
in the antechamber, the latter, seeing
his countenance of consternation,
asked what had happened. The
grand-marshal showed him the list,
and the officer translated it for the
benefit of the levée—”Gentlemen,
our good master is dead, and the new
king sends you all to the d—l!”

The twenty-six trumpeters, who
supplied the place of conversation at
the royal dinners, were scattered
among the regiments. The hundred
Swiss—the decorated slaves, whom
Switzerland, with all her boast of
freedom, was in the habit of sending
to play the menial to the European
sovereigns—were dismissed to do duty
in the ranks of the line. The hoards
of pearls and diamonds, and gold and
silver plate, which it had been the
pride and the folly of the late king
to amass, were sold to pay his debts
and to raise troops.

The old court had been overrun
with French fashions, the French language—everything
French. The king
set about reforming those anti-national
propensities: he dressed the regimental
provosts, or army floggers and
executioners, in the full French costume,
to render it ridiculous; the
embroidered coats and huge wigs of
his privy councillors and chamberlains[Pg 519]
he ordered to be worn by the court
fool on gala days.

But the discipline of the Prussian
army was the peculiar distinction of
this singular reign. Of all European
nations, Prussia is the one to which
an army is the most important. The
exposed condition of a long and irregular
territory, wholly without a
natural frontier, with neither mountain
range nor bordering river for its
protection, and surrounded by warlike
and powerful nations, required an
army, to keep it in existence. The
Alps or Pyrenees, the Rhine and the
Danube, the Dniester and the Po,
might protect their several countries
from invasion; but the levels of
Prussia required a force always on
foot, prompt and prepared. To frontierless
Prussia a powerful army was
as peculiarly essential as a Royal
Navy is to the British Isles. In all
the early difficulties of his predecessor’s
debt, the king had raised the
Prussian army to upwards of forty
thousand men; and, before he died,
his muster-roll amounted to nearly
eighty thousand of the finest troops
on the Continent. It gives a curious
contrast of the nature of belligerency
in the nineteenth century, to know
that the Prussian army now reckons
three hundred thousand men, and that,
on the first rumour of war, it would
probably number half-a-million.

The new school of finance makes
inquiries of this kind important; for
since every country must be prepared
to defend itself, and troops require to
be paid, the whole question of national
safety depends on the national force.
The Manchester financiers tell us that
reduction is the true secret of strength,
and that fleets and armies are only
provocatives to war. The older
school held, that to be prepared for
war was the best security for peace;
that the reduction which extinguished
the national force was only an invitation
to insult; and that it was a wiser
policy to give the soldier his pay for
our protection, than to give an invader
every shilling we were worth in the
shape of plunder. Frederick-William
was of the old school; and, by showing
that he was always prepared for
war, he secured peace, even in the
most quarrelsome of all countries,
Germany, through a reign of twenty-seven
years. The organisation of the
Prussian army was even then a phenomenon
in Europe: its provision,
its government, its recruiting, and,
above all, its manœuvring, attracted
universal admiration, and doubled the
impression of its numbers on the
general mind.

These facts have an interest beyond
their mere effect at the time; they
are the testimonials of talent, evidences
of the power of mind, encouragements
to original conception, substantial
declarations that men should
always try to invigorate, improve, and
advance inventions, however apparently
perfect. There is always a field
beyond.

Why a German duchy was suffered
thus to rise into European influence—to
extend from a province into a territory,
now containing sixteen millions
of souls, and to change from a dependent
electorate into a kingdom, now
acting as the barrier of Northern Germany
against the gigantic monarchy
of St Petersburg—is a question which
ought to be asked by the politician,
and which may well excite the study
of the philosopher.

The true value of history consists
in developing principles. Memoirs
and biographies, the anecdotes of
vigorous minds, and the narratives
of leading events, all have their obvious
value; but history has a distinction
of its own. It is more than a
tissue of striking recollections; it is
superior to a fine arrangement of
facts; it is the spirit of great facts,
a system displaying the science of influential
things.

Events are, of course, its material,
but it is only as the materials of
architecture furnish the means of
erecting the palace or the temple:
the mind of the architect must supply
the beauty and grandeur of the
edifice. Without that constructive
genius, history is only a compilation.

It is certainly in no superstition,
that we strongly incline to account for
the rise of Prussia in the necessity of
a protection for Protestantism in Northern
Germany. The whole tenor of
its annals substantiates the conception.
Prussia, at an early period,
felt a singular sympathy with the Protestantism
of Germany. The especial
scene of persecution was Poland, where[Pg 520]
neither royal compact nor popular declaration
was able to secure the faith
of the Scriptures from the outrages of
Romanism. The Treaty of Oliva, in
1660, had, like the Edict of Nantes,
been the charter of Protestantism;
but, like the Edict, it had been broken,
and the life of the Polish Protestant
was a scene of suffering. The “Great
Elector” had signalised his Christianity,
and perhaps raised his country, by
giving protection to the sufferers. His
descendant, Frederick-William, followed
his honourable example. When
the Starost Umruh, in 1715, was sentenced
to have his tongue cut out, and
to be beheaded, for his Protestant
opinions, he fled to Prussia, and was
protected by Frederick-William. The
Diet of Grodno commenced a persecution
by declaring the Polish Protestants
to have forfeited both their
civil and religious privileges. Frederick-William
answered this act of infidelity
and tyranny by a royal remonstrance
to the diet, and by a letter to
the King of England, advocating the
persecuted cause. In the Treaty of
Stockholm, in 1720, he inserted a
stipulation, binding the Swedish Government
to make common cause with
the Protestants of Germany. In
Western Germany, persecution had
long exhibited its irrational policy,
and exercised its cruel power. At
Heidelberg, Popish advisers and confessors
had poisoned the mind of the
Elector, and acts of violence had
taken place. The Protestants, in
their distress, applied to Prussia. The
King, in conjunction with the British
monarch, and the Elector of Hesse,
adopted their defence; issuing, at the
same time, the effective menace that,
if the persecution in the Palatinate
were not stopped, he would shut up
every Romish chapel, convent, and
institution, and sequestrate every dollar
of their revenue in Prussia, while
the persecution lasted.

The same impulse acted throughout
the century. Frederick II. was an infidel:
the national policy continued unchanged.
As a Voltairist, he was an
ostentatious advocate of toleration,
which, though in both Frederick and
his teacher the work of the scoffer,
yet produced the effect of forbidding
all religious tyranny. Even the war
for the possession of Silesia, though
difficult to be explained in its question
of right, had the result of weakening
the Popish influence in Germany.
Maria-Theresa was the prop
of Popery, while Frederick II. was
universally regarded as the champion
of Protestantism; and his final success,
by enfeebling the supremacy of
the empress, showed that a kingdom
of Protestantism possessed the
means of resisting an empire of
Popery hitherto supposed irresistible.
If Prussia had been crushed in that
contest, the prestige of Popery would
again have risen to its old height in
Germany, Protestantism would unquestionably
have felt the blow to its
foundations, and the probable consequence
would have been to throw
the Continent at the feet of Rome.

Frederick the Great was born on
the 24th of January 1712, in the
palace at Berlin. At his baptism,
the sponsors were at least sufficiently
numerous and stately; they were the
Emperor Charles VI., the Dowager-empress,
the Czar Peter, the States-general
of Holland, the Canton of
Berne, the Electant Prince of Hanover,
and the Dowager-duchess of
Mecklenburg.

Frederick was born Prince of Prussia
and Orange; but after the cession
of Orange to France, by the Peace of
Utrecht, the name was given up,
though the Crown of Prussia retained
the title and the arms.

The popular feeling, on this occasion,
was connected with a simple yet
curious circumstance. An American
Aloe, which had been forty-four
years in the royal garden, suddenly
threw out a profusion of blossoms.
Thousands flocked to see this fine production
of nature, which, on a stem
thirty-one feet high, exhibited 7277
blossoms! The multitude gave it an
almost mystic meaning, and conceived
the plant (which, in all this profusion
of beauty, was decaying) to be emblematic
of the failing health of the
old king, and the new prospects of
honour under his grandson. Poems
and pictures of the Aloe were spread
through the kingdom. The omen
was as imaginative as one of the
poetic superstitions of Greece, and
the imagination was realised.

The education of the future possessor
of a sceptre is an important[Pg 521]
topic. In Germany the education
of the higher orders generally embraces
a sort of encyclopædia of
accomplishments. The young heir
to the throne thus learned music and
painting, in addition to mathematics
and languages. In music he became
a proficient, and with his favourite
instrument, the flute, could sustain
his part in an orchestra. But, the
chief object of his education, as that
of all the German princes, being military,
he learned all of the art of war
that could be taught; the perfection of
the art he was yet to learn in the field,
and give evidence of his acquirement
only in his memorable victories.

One misfortune of this education
possessed and perverted him through
life. Germany was, in literature, but
a province of France. The licentiousness
of French sentiment had tempted
the rising generation to abandon the
manly feelings of the Reformers. It
is to the honour of our country that
the principles of true religion, like
those of true liberty, then found their
defence within her borders; and in
the existing, and still darker, period of
German infidelity, the battle is still
fought by the theology of England.

Adversity seems essential to the education
of all great princes. Frederick
was not without his share of this stern
pupillage. The eccentricities of his
royal father, his own waywardness, and
the roughness of court discipline, produced
continual collisions in the royal
family, and the prince remained for
some years in a kind of honourable
exile from Berlin. During this
period, however, he cultivated his
powerful understanding to its height;
but made the singular mistake of believing
that he was born for a hermit, a
sentimentalist, and a writer of French
verses. In this fantastic spirit, he
gave his immediate friends names from
Greece and Rome; and was surrounded
by Hephæstion, Diophanes,
Cæsarion, and Quintus Icilius. Even
the place of his retirement, Rheinsberg,
was transformed into Remusberg, to
meet a tradition that Remus was not
killed by Romulus, but, flying from
Rome, had settled in the spot which
was afterwards to teach sentiment
and solitude to the Prince of Prussia.

Those are traits worth remembering
in the history of human nature. Who
could have conceived the most daring
of warriors, the most subtle of politicians,
and the most ambitious of
kings, in the writer of letters such as
these?—

All his letters are in the same
strain of studious quiet, of steady
self-control, and of systematic love
of retirement. He sometimes even
turns enthusiast, and he thus writes
to Voltaire, then known chiefly as the
author of the Henriade—(his worse
celebrity, as the impugner of all religion,
was still at a distance.) In a
letter, in 1738, he addresses the
Frenchman in this rapturous effusion:—

In another letter he writes—

But this romance was soon to be
exchanged for reality; the elegancies
of royal idleness were to be forgotten
in the sound of cannon, and the
fictions of a pampered fancy were to
be thrown into the shade by the vicissitudes
of one of the most sanguinary
struggles that Europe had ever
seen.

In 1740, Frederick had ascended
the throne. He was at Potsdam, and
confined to his chamber by illness,
when the death of the Emperor
Charles was announced to him. This
event broke up the peace of Germany.

The Emperor, Charles VI., having
no issue after a marriage of four
years, established a new law of succession,
known as the Pragmatic
Sanction. The heirship of Austria
had hitherto been limited to males;
but, by the new law, the undivided
monarchy was to devolve first to his
own daughters, or, if they should not
be living at the time of his death, to
the daughters of his elder brother
Joseph, Electresses of Saxony and
Bavaria, and so on, always to the
nearest relatives.

The death of the Emperor obviously
threatened to involve all Europe, and
especially Germany, in convulsion;
for the mere publication of the Pragmatic
Sanction, in 1724, had produced
counter declarations from no less than
three princes of the empire, who regarded
their rights as invaded. The
Elector of Bavaria, who was married
to a daughter of the Emperor Joseph
I., founded a claim to the Austrian
dominions on the will of Ferdinand I.;
France was disposed to enter into an
alliance with Prussia; Sweden and
Russia would have been inevitably
involved in the war. And it was of this
complication of events that the young
Prussian monarch took advantage to
make an assault upon Austria. For
one hundred years Prussia had complained
of the loss of Silesia. Her
successive kings had severally impeached
its seizure by Austria, and the
Great Elector had still earlier bequeathed
the recovery of the province to the
gallantry, or the good fortune, of his
successors. Frederick, now at the
head of a powerful army, with a full
treasury, and seeing an approaching
contest for the possession of Austria
itself, regarded this as a favourable
moment for the recovery of his ancestral
territory.

Frederick, having now completed
all his preparations, sent an envoy to
Vienna, to offer his alliance to Maria-Theresa,
and his vote to her husband
at the election of emperor, provided
she would give up Silesia. But knowing
the contempt with which the
Austrian cabinet regarded the minor
princes of Germany, and also knowing
the advantage of promptitude, where
the object is possession, he at once set
his army in motion for the Silesian
frontier. His proposal was, as he
had foreseen, rejected; and on its
rejection, without a moment’s delay,
he rushed over the frontier. He
found, as he had expected, the Austrian
government wholly unprepared.
The whole disposable force of Austria,
for the defence of Silesia, amounted
to 3000 men. The invading army
amounted to 28,000. Breslau the
capital, Glogau the principal fortress,
every town, speedily fell before him.
In a note to his friend Jordan, who
had attempted to dissuade him from
the enterprise, he wrote, in a mixture
of scoffing and exultation—

We now advert to the distinguished
public servant whose correspondence
throws the principal light on this important
period of our foreign policy—the
British envoy to the court of
Berlin.

Andrew Mitchell was born in
Edinburgh in 1708, son of one of
the ministers of St Giles’s, king’s
chaplain for Scotland. His mother,
Margaret Cunningham, was a descendant
of Lord Glencairn. Mitchell
adopted the law as his profession, was[Pg 523]
admitted to the Middle Temple, and
was called to the English bar in 1738.
Besides a knowledge of the Scotch
law, he was a man of general and
rather elegant acquirement, having left
among his papers observations on the
Ciceronian philosophy, on the chief
European histories, on morals, models,
statues, and classic objects in general.
He was also a member of the Royal
Society.

Mitchell was evidently either sustained
by active interest, or an opinion
of his talents; for on the appointment
of the Marquis of Tweeddale
to the secretaryship for Scotland,
he fixed on Mitchell as his undersecretary.
In 1747, he was elected
member for the county of Aberdeen.
In 1756, he was appointed as British
representative at the court of Frederick
II.

In the more decorous style of modern
diplomacy, we can seldom find
examples of the court-candour with
which the royal personages of the last
age spoke of each other. George II.
called Frederick-William “my brother
the corporal.” Frederick-William called
George II. “my brother the dancing-master.”
Of course those opinions
made their way to the last ears which
ought to have heard them, and they
left stings. But the necessities of the
time overcame the bitterness of the
sarcasms. Some of the letters of the
elder Horace Walpole, Sir Robert’s
brother, who had been ambassador at
Paris and the Hague, then the chief
scenes of foreign diplomacy, probably
expressed the chief feeling of English
public men in his day, as they certainly
were soon embodied in their
policy. Of Frederick II. he says,—

He gives an equally decisive opinion
of the Austrian policy—

At length it was ascertained that a
private negotiation had been commenced
between Austria and France,
the result of which must expose the
Electoral dominions to invasion by
France. An alliance with Prussia
was immediately concluded. The account
subsequently given by Thiébault,
in his Memoirs of the Prussian
Court, gives a strong impression of Mitchell’s
manliness and intelligence:—

Some of the shrewd bons-mots of the
diplomatic Scot are given by the
Frenchman. On one occasion, when
the English mail had three times been
due, the king said to him at the
levée—”Have you not the spleen,
M. Mitchell, when the mail is thus
delayed?” The reply was,—”No,
Sire, not when it is delayed, but often
enough when it duly arrives.”

The English cabinet having promised
to send a fleet to the Baltic, to[Pg 524]
prevent the Russians from sending
troops against the king, and the fleet
not appearing, Frederick was chagrined;
at length he ceased to invite the
envoy to the royal table. One day
some of the servants, meeting him,
asked,—”Is it dinner-time, M. Mitchell?”
The significant retort was,—”Gentlemen,
no fleet, no dinner.”
This was told to Frederick, and the
invitations were renewed.

The next bon-mot is happier still.
After the taking of Port Mahon, and
the retreat of the unfortunate Admiral
Byng, the king, meeting the envoy,
said,—”You have made a bad beginning,
M. Mitchell; your trial of
Admiral Byng is but a bad plaster
for the disease; you have made an
unlucky campaign.” “Sire,” observed
Mitchell, “we hope, with God’s
assistance, to make a better one next
year.”

“With God’s assistance, sir! I
did not know that you had such an
ally,” said the king.

“We hope we have, Sire; and he
is the only one of our allies that costs
us nothing,” was the pungent reply.

In the latter portion of the war
against Napoleon, it was the custom
to send British officers to attend the
headquarters of the Allies, and diplomatists
frequently moved along
with the armies. But the instance
of Mitchell’s moving along with the
Prussian monarch was, we believe,
the first example of the kind. On
this subject, we have a lively letter
from the Earl of Holdernesse, then
Secretary of State to the envoy:—

A letter from the envoy, addressed
to the King of Prussia, makes the
formal request that he may be allowed
to follow the headquarters—a
permission which was immediately
conceded by the king. The object
of this request, (suggested by the
English Ministry,) was twofold—to
have an intelligent observer of the
politics of Prussia on the spot; and
to supply George II. with anecdotes
of war, for which he conceived himself
to have a peculiar talent; and on
which subject the despatches of the
envoy were always read by him with
peculiar interest.

The envoy was not long without
material. Before he left Berlin, he
had the following despatch to write
to the Earl of Holdernesse—

This was a hard-fought but indecisive
action. The Austrians, under
Marshal Browne, were the assailants;
and the engagement continued from
morning till past midday, when they
retreated; but they numbered two-thirds
more than the Prussians, their
force being nearly seventy thousand
to about forty thousand.

But a more important success immediately
followed. The Saxon
army, amounting to sixteen thousand,
had been surrounded in their fortified
camp at Pirna; the fortifications
were so strong that the only hope of
reducing them was by famine. To
the universal astonishment, they suddenly
quitted this impregnable position,
and marched into a defile, where
they could neither advance nor retreat.
The king offered them conditions,
which they accepted; and[Pg 525]
Mitchell, who had waited at Berlin
only for the royal permission to join
the army, arrived just in time to see
the surrender; and what was more
curious still, the quiet transfer of their
allegiance to the Prussian service.
He thus writes—

“October 21, 1756.

But we are not to suppose that
this association with the mighty of
the earth, and these exhibitions of
capitulating armies were without
their drawbacks. The Prussian
king’s politics were always subtle,
the English cabinet was already tottering,
and the campaign was already
prolonged into winter. The envoy’s
correspondence at length sinks into
complaint, and his description of his
harassed life might make a man
shrink from the honours of travelling
diplomacy. He writes in November
from Seidlitz—

Correspondence of this intimate
kind gives us a true view of that life
which the world in general sees so gilded
and glittering. It thus has a value
superior to even its historical interest.
It tells the humbler conditions of life
to be content with their fate; and
perhaps demonstrates that, like the
traveller among mountains, the higher
man goes, the more slippery is his path,
and the more stormy his atmosphere.
The Secretary of State thus writes:—

“November, 1766.

[Pg 526]

The next campaign was one of still
greater political perplexity, and of still
more desperate fighting. It was signalised
by the then unheard-of number
of four pitched battles; but the
French war has since accustomed
history to more ruinous and more
frequent conflicts. The first engagement
was the battle of Prague, thus
hastily sketched in a flying despatch
to Lord Holdernesse:—

“May 6.

This victory cost a terrible sacrifice
of human life. The victors had
eighteen thousand men hors-de-combat;
the vanquished had twenty-four
thousand killed, wounded, and taken.
The struggle was long doubtful. At
one period of the day, the Prussian
infantry, moving through a defile,
recoiled from the showers of ball
which swept the head of the defile;
the Marshal rushed forward to the
front, and, taking a standard from its
bearer, led back the column, and
charged the enemy. In this charge
the gallant old man was struck by a
ball, and fell. He was seventy-two.

This battle was useless, for all its
fruits were lost immediately after;
but in a military sense it was justifiable,
for it was fought to prevent the
junction of Marshal Daun with General
Browne, whose army protected
Prague. Its effects in England, however,
were greatly to increase the
popular feeling in favour of Frederick.
A letter from Lord Holdernesse gives
a strong picture of the public excitement:—

“May 20, 1757.

But, from the beginning, the struggle
was unequal between Austria and
Prussia. Nothing but a miracle could
make a country then but of five millions
vanquish a country of thirty; and
the prodigious rapidity with which the
Austrian armies were recruited after
the severest losses, made perpetual
battles actually necessary to keep
them at bay. The Prussians had
blockaded Prague. An Austrian force
of forty-two thousand, or upwards,
was advancing to raise the blockade;
and Frederick, with his usual promptitude,
rushed to meet it on its
march, with thirty-two thousand.
The armies met at Kaurzim, (better
known as Kolin.) The battle began
at noon, and was carried into night.
The Prussians attacked: the Austrian
positions were too strong for even the
impetuosity and the perseverance of
their brave assailants. The Prussians,
after driving them from two
heights, were ascending the third,
when, from some mistake, their flank[Pg 527]
was exposed. The Austrian cavalry,
then the finest on the Continent, took
instant advantage of the misfortune,
charged, and threw the whole movement
into confusion. The battle was
lost; and though the king retained
the honour of the day by resting that
night on the field, the result was
unequivocal, in a retrograde march
next day, and the raising of the
blockade of Prague.

This battle diminished his army by
thirteen thousand men! The king
exposed himself with almost desperation.
At last his staff remonstrated
with him on his gallant obstinacy, and
one of his officers even exclaimed,
“Does your Majesty mean to storm
those batteries alone?”

Frederick was now in the deepest
distress. The Austrian hussars had
advanced to the gates of Berlin, and
even levied a contribution on the
city. The scandalous convention by
which the Hanoverian army laid down
its arms, let loose its French assailants;
and Prussia was about to be crushed
by a weight of force then unexampled
in European hostilities. On this occasion
the envoy speaks in the spirit of
a man who saw no hope for the king,
but to save himself by a negotiation
in which he must concede everything,
or take his chance of an honourable
death in the field. But he strikingly
reminds the British Cabinet of the
probable consequences of disaster to
Prussia.

The British envoy, sagacious as he
certainly was, here adopted the common
error of conceiving that the safety
of England depended on her Continental
allies. The cry has been
repeated in every war in which England
has been subsequently engaged;
and the British diplomatist at foreign
courts has habitually employed his ingenuity
in the elaborate effort to warn
us that the national existence depended
at one time on the triumph of Prussia;
at another, of Austria; or, at another,
of Spain. All these are follies.
The whole Continent, not merely alienated
from us, but combined against us,
was not able to shake the strength of
England, during the last and bloodiest
of all wars, urged by the last and
bloodiest of all ambitions. In this
foolish spirit, it has been echoed from
one desponding party to another, that
England was saved from ruin by the
march from Moscow, then by the
battle of Leipzig, then by the battle
of Waterloo. England would have
survived, if Napoleon had grasped
every province of Prussia, if Leipzig
had been a field of German massacre,
and if Waterloo had only exhibited
the bravery without the fortune of
the British army. This style of talking
is trifling and pusillanimous—it
exhibits an utter forgetfulness of history,
and an utter ignorance of the
actual capacities of the country. England,
if true to herself, is unconquerable,
and might look on Continental
battles with no more personal consideration
of the consequences than if
they were battles in the clouds. Still,
it will fully be admitted, that our Continental
alliances ought to be scrupulously
sustained; that, in the event of
war with any of the Continental
powers, it must be of importance to
have as few enemies, and as many
friends as we can; and that there can
be no more short-sighted sense of the
true interests of England than insult
to foreign thrones, under the shallow
pretext of forwarding the privileges
of the people. Monarchs are the[Pg 528]
natural allies of a monarchy—rebels
are the natural enemies of all government;
and the attempt to create
liberty on the Continent, by encouraging
the absurdities of the rabble,
is only to waste the noble influence of
England in the most hopeless of all
projects, and to degrade the national
character by the abuse of the national
principles.

The proverbial uncertainty of war
was now about to be vividly illustrated
by a new phase of Frederick’s
varied career. The French army,
under the Prince Soubise, had poured
into the centre of Germany in great
force, and Marshal Keith, a gallant
Scot, distinguished in the service of
Prussia, was sent to check their irruption.
The result was one of the
most extraordinary victories on record.
Frederick had arrived at Rosbach with
but eighteen thousand men; the
French and Imperialists, amounting to
sixty thousand, made sure of his
capture. It was even said that the
Prince de Soubise had already sent a
courier to Paris announcing it, and
the ruin of the whole army. The
French officers, in the spirit of their
nation, actually scoffed at the idea of
war with so small a kingdom as
Prussia. They said “it was doing
Monsieur le Marquis de Brandenbourg
too much honour to carry on a
sort of war with him.”

On the 6th of November, Soubise
advanced; the King then formed his
plan of attack. It was to fall on the
enemy before they had time to form.
The general of cavalry, Seydlitz, was
to turn the enemy’s horse, and fall on
their infantry in the act of formation.
The two armies moved parallel to
each other, until Seydlitz had turned
the enemy’s right unseen. The Prussian
infantry were in movement after
him; but seeing, with the quick eye
of a thorough soldier, a favourable
moment, he galloped in front of his
squadrons, threw up his meerschaum
in the air, as the signal for attack,
and plunged into the enemy’s columns.
Two Austrian cuirassier regiments and
two French battalions fought stoutly,
but they were overwhelmed. All
thenceforth was confusion. Though
the king’s infantry had scarcely been
engaged, the enemy’s infantry had
been driven together in a mass, and,
on nightfall, had broken up. By six
in the evening the victory was complete.
Six thousand prisoners were
taken, with five generals and three
hundred officers. The Allied army
lost, on the whole, ten thousand men;
the Prussians about four hundred in
killed and wounded. They took
seventy guns, fifteen standards, &c.

This victory spread universal exultation
through Germany. It was
scarcely to be called a German defeat,
for the weight of the action fell on
the French. It was regarded as a
trial of strength between the German
and the Frenchman. The victory
made the king a National champion.

Many years after the battle, the
inhabitants of the vicinity erected a
pillar as its memorial. In the disastrous
days of Prussia in our time,
Napoleon, after surveying the scene
of the battle, ordered the pillar to be
conveyed to Paris. But, on the day
before the first entrance of the Allies
into Paris, in 1814, the veterans of
the Invalides threw the pillar into the
Seine, that it might not be restored
to the Prussians. After the victory
of Leipzig, however, an iron column
was placed on the site of the old
memorial.

The victory gave occasion to one
of Frederick’s bons-mots. The conversation
at table turned on the
comparative style of living among
the German princes; the king pronounced
that of the Prince Hildburg-Hausen
to be the most magnificent,
“for,” said he, “he keeps thirty
thousand runners.” (The prince had
commanded the German troops who
were beaten along with Soubise.)

But all was vicissitude in this campaign.
While the king was triumphing
in one quarter, he was all but ruined
in another. The Duke of Bevern,
commanding in Silesia, was attacked
by a force so overpowering that the
province was soon in the hands of the
Austrians. Their purpose was now
to fall upon the king, and extinguish
him. Frederick, in this knowledge,
made an appeal to the loyalty of his
generals; and, declaring that he had
no alternative but victory or death,
offered to give his dismission to any
officer who was unwilling to follow
him farther. The whole levée burst
into protestations of fidelity; and the[Pg 529]
king marched to fight the Austrians at
Leuthen, under the command of
Prince Charles of Lorraine, assisted
by the most distinguished of their
generals, Marshal Daun. But this
was the battle of despair. In the
king’s last speech to his officers, he
said—”Should I fall, and not be
able to remunerate the services which
you have rendered me, the country
must do it. Now, go to the camp,
and repeat to the regiments what I
have said to you.”

On the morning of the 5th, at daybreak,
the Prussians moved. On
their march they fell in with cavalry
pushed forward under the well-known
General Wostitz. The Austrians
were instantly overwhelmed, and
Wostitz, furious at his misfortune,
rushing into the midst of the Prussian
cavalry, received fourteen
wounds, of which he died two days
after.

Among the prisoners was a deserter,
a Frenchman. The king questioned
him, “Why did you leave me?”
“The fact is,” answered the deserter,
“things were going on very badly
with us.” “Come, come,” replied
Frederick, probably amused by the
fellow’s nonchalance in a moment of
such peril to himself, “let us fight
another battle to-day. If I am
beaten, we shall desert together to-morrow.”
He then sent him back to
join his old regiment.

The king’s manœuvre, on his
advance, was so dexterous that, even
to the experienced eye of Daun, he
appeared to be in retreat. “The
Prussians are off,” said he to Prince
Charles; “let us not disturb them.”
The cautious marshal always practised
the maxim of “a bridge of gold for a
retreating enemy.” But the hasty
Prince resolved on a battle. He was
speedily to feel the hazard of such an
antagonist as Frederick. The manœuvre
was intended to throw the whole
force of the Prussians on the Austrian
left wing. It succeeded perfectly.
The wing was turned, and, after a brief
resistance, was driven from the field.
The village of Leuthen, the centre of
their position, was then stormed; but
the Austrian artillery was powerful,
and every attack cost great slaughter.
The battle was now for a while doubtful—but
it was at last decided by a
charge of cavalry. The Austrian
general, Luchesi, had attempted to
fall with his troopers on the Prussian
flank; but, in the act, he was unexpectedly
charged by the main body of
the Prussian cavalry. Luchesi fell,
his cavalry were broken, and the
battle was at an end. The rest was
the capture of the separate posts of
the Austrians, and the pursuit of the
right wing, which, though not engaged,
had disbanded. This success was
unexampled. The Prussians took
twenty thousand prisoners, one
hundred and sixteen guns, fifty-one
pair of colours, and four thousand
baggage waggons. The Austrians left
seven thousand four hundred men on
the field. The victors lost, in killed
and wounded, six thousand men.
This victory produced a prodigious
effect on the public opinion of Europe.
To have won two pitched battles, with
inferior numbers, and in the midst of
political difficulties, with all his conquests
torn from him, and his capital
insulted and laid under contribution,
appeared like the work of romance.
The king was, from that moment, the
first of European generals. He was
the invincible Frederick the Great
in German lips; the Protestant
hero, by a still more honourable title,
in England. Germany then first felt
that she had poets, and a theme for
poetry. Bards sprang up on every
side, and the Prussian king’s exploits
were sung in palace, cottage, and
bivouac. The war-songs of Glein
exhibited the true fire of poetry, and
form stirring and noble records of the
time to this day.

Mitchell’s correspondence, on this
important occasion, was exulting. On
the 9th December, he writes—

The envoy, in his subsequent let[Pg 530]ters,
collects intelligence from all
quarters, and sends it in fragments.

The merit of this diligence may be
estimated from the difficulty of correspondence
in those days of convulsion.
In his first despatch on this subject,
so important to the English cabinet,
he says,—

We then have a curious specimen
of the spirit of diplomacy.

“To the Earl of Holdernesse.

“December 1757.

Napoleon, in his memoirs of the
campaigns of the great European
generals, gave a high place to the
battle of Leuthen, pronounced it a
masterpiece, and declared it of itself
sufficient to fix Frederick in the foremost
rank of generalship.

During this memorable year, the
envoy frequently attended the headquarters,
and shared not merely the
privations but the dangers of the
campaign. Of this period he kept a
diary, containing the more remarkable
particulars, and giving a curious
picture of the harassing life, even of
the highest rank, once engaged in war.
But of this service there was soon to
be an interruption. The Hanoverian
Convention had soured the King of
Prussia’s mind against the English
cabinet: the failure of the expedition
against Rochfort—a failure, however,
which arose simply from a precipitate
embarkation, (for the English troops
had, until that moment, driven everything
before them)—and the delay of
sending a fleet to the Baltic, were topics
of irritation at the Prussian court,
which, of course, were first visited on
the head of the envoy, and which, in
turn, he visited (with whatever reserve)
on the head of the British
cabinet. But Chatham had then succeeded
to the direction of affairs, and
he was not a man to take remonstrance
patiently. The immediate result was
the mission of Yorke to Berlin, and
the recall of Mitchell. But another
change in the public councils made
Yorke’s mission only temporary, and
Mitchell was ordered to remain “until
further orders.”

The brilliant successes of Rosbach
and Leuthen had raised the King’s
military name to the highest rank,
but they only increased the number
of his enemies. The Russians, fresh[Pg 531]
in the field, admirably equipped for
the campaign, and longing to gather
German laurels, had poured down
upon his army, exhausted as it was
by incessant fighting, and almost
hopeless of seeing an end to the war,
but still proud of their reputation, and
confident in their King. A letter from
the envoy to Lord Holdernesse gives
an animated though brief account of
their first collision.

“Field of Battle, Zorndorf,
26th August 1753.

This was a tremendous conflict, and
the particulars of the loss on both
sides made it amount to nearly 24,000,
killed and wounded, of which the
Prussian loss was about 4000. The
Russians lost ninety pieces of cannon,
standards, and several military chests,
containing 858,000 roubles. The subsequent
despatches give us some idea
of the feelings of men in the field,
even though not actually combatants.
In one of these the envoy says,—

All now was anxiety.

Such is the life of kings and generals.

It is remarkable, in nearly all the
great Prussian victories, how much
the King owed to his cavalry. The
battles of Rosbach and Leuthen were
actually won by cavalry charges, and
the value of cavalry seems to have
been fully appreciated by Frederick.
It is equally remarkable, that they
scarcely appear to have been used
since, except to repulse a charge, or
to follow a broken enemy. There is a
fashion in those things. Napoleon
relied on artillery. Wellington relied
on infantry. The Russian and German
generals, in the French war, relied
upon redoubts and fieldworks—a tactic
perhaps partly imposed on them by
the nature of their troops, which were
new to discipline, and, though brave,
were unprepared for manœuvring.
But novelty has great effect in war,
and the first general who will try the
momentum of cavalry on a large scale
will probably beat his enemy. The
common objection, that cavalry costs
too much to bring it into the field in
force, is absurd: nothing can be too
costly which wins the battle.

The envoy now went to Dresden,
where the Austrian generals had collected
a force, and commenced the
siege. Here he was the spectator of
some severe attacks, and had his share
in the wretchedness of war. On the
Austrian demonstration, the general
commanding in the city ordered the[Pg 532]
suburbs to be set on fire, to deprive the
enemy of their cover for the assault.

Marshal Daun next day remonstrated
against this act, as contrary to
the laws of war. The Prussian general
replied “that the Marshal knew
better, and that he must do his duty;
but that if the Marshal wished to save
the rest of the suburbs, he had only
to withdraw his troops.” Daun replied
“that he would receive no
directions how he was to attack.”
The military repartees passed away,
but the people were ruined.

The name of Dresden was familiarised
to English ears in the last war
by the battles fought round it, and the
sufferings of its inhabitants. It is
difficult to think of those calamities,
and of the calamities to which every
Continental city is exposed in the first
breaking out of hostilities, without a
sense of the superior security of our
country, and, it is to be hoped, without
a sense of the gratitude due for
that security to the Supreme Disposer
of the fates of nations. Of war England
knows little but by her victories.

The close of the Seven Years’ War,
in 1763, released the envoy from the
more arduous part of his service; and
in 1765 he returned to England, and
was made a Knight of the Bath, then
an honour much more restricted than
now—the number being few, and the
reward unshared, but by public ministers
and military men of the first distinction.
His health at this period
had been declining, and, retaining his
envoyship to the last, and with the
same vigour of faculties, he died by a
short illness in June 1771. Sir Andrew
Mitchell was evidently a man of high
spirit, clear understanding, and active
intelligence. His Journals are brief,
yet interesting; and if, instead of
writing a Diary, he had given us a
History, no man would have rendered
a more important account of one of
the most important periods of Europe.

The remaining career of Frederick
we pass, as a portion of universal
history. His battles, his share in the
fatal partition of Poland, the vigorous
administration which raised Prussia
from a third-rate state to a first, and
from a population of five millions to
one of three times the number, are
matters of high interest to the political
philosopher. In the character of
Frederick II., there was much that no
man of religious principle can applaud;
but the habits of France had been rendered
infidel by the effects of Popery
on a lively and ingenious people.
The religion which Voltaire and his
followers saw from day to day was
not Christianity—the miracles of supposed
saints, and the worship of a
supposed Queen of Heaven, which
revolted the common sense of mankind,
extinguished the implicit faith
of these keen-witted Frenchmen. The
infidel was only a scoffer at a graver
infidelity. The wit of the Frenchman
made his scoff popular; and the
German, destined to be always an
imitator, was proud to follow the
laugh, without attempting to examine
the logic, of Voltaire.

The later history of Prussia has
grown in importance with the growing
pressure of our time. Prussia is
no longer a struggling state; she is a
great European power. No longer a
dependent on the policy of Europe,
she constitutes a prime mover of that
policy. The French have trampled
her under foot, apparently only to
give her the great lesson that the
strength of a nation is in the national
virtue. The cause, which was lost
by the army, was restored by the
population. There was no army in
Europe which fell into such instant
ruin; there was no population of
Europe which started on its feet with
such invincible vigour. No defeat was
so desperate, no victory so memorable.
The peasant restored the monarchy.

Prussia has since been scourged in
the common insurgency of the Continent;
yet even that suffering will be[Pg 533]
of infinite value, if it shall remind her
that the safety of thrones is in the
religion of the people. The connexion
is evident. Revolution is the natural
tempter of man; it offers opulence to
the poor, rank to the vain, agitation
to the active, and power to the ambitious.
To resist these original stimulants
of our nature, what is there in
the arm of kings, in the frowns of
law, or in the morals of philosophy?
There must be a protector, not to be
found among the dubious impulses or
infirm decencies of this world. That
only protector is Religion!

Germany is irreligious. Its Protestant
population is infidel, its Popish
is sunk in the depths of superstition.
In neither is it Christian. Individuals
may still protest, in the once famous
land of Protestantism; but the volumes
with which Germany is now inundating
the world are hostile to every
principle of the Gospel. Germany
must return to the Bible before her
monarchs can sit safely in their
palaces. The offer of Constitutions
to their people is only the offer of
wine to the intoxicated. It is the
abuse of a noble gift, and the conversion
of a source of natural vigour into
the nutriment of a habitual vice.
Prussia has now a great vocation.
Whatever share of rational liberty
exists in Germany is to be sought for
at her hands. She possesses the most
enlightened intellect, the most vigorous
learning, and the most inquiring
spirit of Germany. Every man who
wishes well to the progress of the
Continent must give his aspirations to
the progress of Prussia. But her
superior advantages will only insure
the keener suffering, unless guided by
superior virtue.

Her late interference in the war of
the Northern Duchies was suspicious;
and the passion for naval power, and
the hope of acquiring the protectorate
of Northern and Central Germany,
may have betrayed her into encroachments
on her neighbours. But these
dreams seem to be past; and it must
depend wholly on herself whether she
shall disappoint a noble experiment,
or shall establish an imperishable
name; whether her emblem shall be
the scaffold or the altar; whether
she shall be the great magazine of
political combustion, or the great armoury
of political defence to Europe;
whether the shade of the royal tree
shall shelter the fugitive principles of
rational freedom, or direct the lightnings
upon them. There can be no
question that we live in times of vast
political peril: the pealing of the
tempest has scarcely sunk behind our
march, when clouds gather on it before.
New expedients are required
to revive the preservative power of
old principles. Religion is on its trial
among ourselves; but here it will not
meet its catastrophe. The Continent
will be the scene of the great conflict;
and Prussia, more probably than any
other portion of the Continent, will
witness the severity of the struggle.
It may be decided even within the
lapse of a few years, and by the exercise
of her own wisdom, whether her
throne shall stand forth the barren
centre of German revolution, or a
magnificent creation of power—a central
temple, to which the nations of
the Continent shall come for the
sacred fire, appointed to administer
virtue to the living generation, and
illustrate posterity.

[Pg 534]

HOURS IN SPAIN.

The neglect of Spanish literature
is perhaps, after the decay of Spanish
power, the most striking instance of
the precarious tenure of greatness that
modern history can supply. Various
causes have contributed to this result;
none more powerfully perhaps than
that ecclesiastical domination which
included all that could embellish and
exalt our nature in the sphere of its
malignant activity, and after poisoning
the sources of material prosperity—after
making the river, the forest, and
the mine useless to their possessors—after
turning the land of corn, and
wine, and oil into a wilderness—extended
its destructive conquest to the
informing soul of its inhabitants, and
to the ruin of commerce added the
extermination of thought itself.

There were many causes which
contributed to the triumph of this
influence in Spain. The long war
against the Moors, carried on with
such unequalled pertinacity, and terminated
by such complete success,
could hardly fail to prolong and exasperate
the feelings of religious antipathy,
and to make the bigotry, which
so many generations had identified
with patriotic feeling, precious and
venerable to their descendants. And
as in France it must for many centuries
have been the great object of every true
patriot to fortify and to consolidate,
at the sacrifice even of constitutional
principle, the central power which
alone could protect her from invasion,
and prevent her from being reduced
to the state of wretched insignificance
to which a minute subdivision of
power into petty principalities had
degraded Germany,—so in Spain, national
pride mingled itself with religious
principle; the hostility of race
combined with the hatred of sect; and
if the latter made the former furious,
the former made the last implacable.
The Saxon submitted to the Norman.
But the Spaniard, under circumstances
far less favourable to resistance, never
for one moment abandoned his hostility
to the Moor. Again, when Louis
the Fourteenth had been compelled
by adverse fortune to surrender the
cause of his own grandson, the Spanish
peasant, without resources, without
commerce, without fleets, without
armies, adhered with inflexible fidelity
to the cause he had once embraced,
and in spite of Blenheim and Ramilies
and Oudenarde—in spite of
Marlborough, Eugene, and Peterborough—kept
the sovereign of his
affections on the throne;-and finally,
when the rest of Continental Europe
quailed before the first of conquerors,
the spirit which had triumphed at
Almanza and Granada showed itself
once more to be invincible, and
taught mankind the memorable lesson
that “all was not lost” where hatred
was immortal, and the determination
of resistance not to be overcome.
Such a nation must leave an imperishable
mark in history. As, however,
these elements of pride and bigotry
acquired an ascendency in the Spanish
character, it gradually sank into
a sullen apathy of unsocial indolence,
which its declining influence
and repeated mortifications tended
materially to confirm. Shut up behind
the barrier of the Pyrenees—living
only in the past, consoling
itself by the recollections of former
grandeur for the consciousness of
actual insignificance and decay; the
slave of priests, the victim of kings—it
clung to habits unknown in the rest
of Europe, and to feelings with which
all sympathy had long since passed
away. The language, which in the
sixteenth century had been spoken in
every court of Europe, was unknown—the
writers, whom the giant intellects
that surrounded the throne of
our Elizabeth had studied with so
much care, were forgotten. In spite
of her noble colonies, in spite of her
glorious dialect, in spite of writers
more nearly approaching the great
models of antiquity in the exquisite
perfection of style than those of any
modern country, in spite of a drama
the wealth of which was inexhaustible
Spain ceased to have any influence
on the progress of human thought and
action. Her vast empire was a
corpse from which life had fled. So
complete was the ignorance of Spanish
literature, that Montesquieu said[Pg 535]
of the Spaniards, without incurring
the charge of having sacrificed truth
to epigram, “Le seul de leurs livres
qui soit bon est celui qui a fait voir le
ridicule de tous les autres:” a singular
proof of literary ingratitude in the
countryman of Molière, Corneille, and
Le Sage—and a still more remarkable
proof of the fluctuation of national
studies in a country where, scarce a
century before, ignorance of Spanish
would have been looked upon as a
proof of the most barbarous rusticity.

In France, says Cervantes, there is
no one man or woman who does not
learn Spanish. “En Francia, ni
varon ni muger dexa de aprender la
lengua Castellana.”

To the effect of this very circumstance
the growing indifference to
Spanish literature may, in some
measure, be ascribed. During the
palmy state of Spanish greatness, the
Spaniard, finding his language, as the
French is now, the received organ of
social intercourse throughout Europe,
seldom vouchsafed to study modern
languages. Nor, indeed, were such
studies congenial to the taste and
temper of that fastidious and haughty
nation. In earlier days, poetical
traditions and popular ballads had
wandered across the Pyrenees. The
songs of the Troubadours, and the
effusions in the tongue of Oc, had, by
means of the kindred dialect of Catalonia,
exercised great influence over
Castilian poetry. But, towards the
end of the fifteenth century, the connection
between French and Spanish
literature was altogether interrupted:
as the language of Catalonia sank to
the level of a mere provincial dialect,
the channel of communication was
blocked up. The family relations
between the different members of the
houses of Hapsburg and Bourbon
could not fill up the chasm which
nature had placed between the inhabitants
of different sides of the
Pyrenees, and which centuries of
almost incessant warfare had contributed
to widen; and as the provinces
of Berne and Languedoc became
scandalous as the seats of heresy,
everything that came from France
was looked upon with aversion and
distrust. Still stronger and more
insurmountable were the barriers
against English literature. He who
will read the Dragontea of Lope de
Vega, the most amiable of authors,
and the ode of Gongora, Al armamento
de Felipe segundo contra Inglaterra,
may form some idea of the scorn and
hatred with which the Spaniard, proud
of his race, proud of his victories, proud
of his language, and, above all, tenacious
to madness of the unsullied
purity of his faith, looked upon the
piratical English, twice apostates
from the Holy See, who spoke a
barbarous dialect, unknown to the
nations of the South, clogged with
consonants and monosyllables, incapable
of sonorous cadences, and
in every respect the opposite of his
own. Even at the present day, it is
remarkable that Southey—with all his
faults, the best writer of English
prose that our age has produced—was
deeply versed in Spanish literature;
and in spite of our acquisitions in
physical science, a native of the South,
to whom his own beautiful dialect is
familiar, might be forgiven when he
reads the clumsy prose and prosaic
verse of the present day, if he reflect
with delight on the Ciceronian eloquence
of Cervantes, and the finished
periods of Saavedra Faxardo. A Spanish
artisan would be ashamed to
write like our learned men, or to speak
like many members of the House of
Commons—so true and so universal
is the doctrine of compensation. In
the year 1754, Velasquez assures us
that there was in Spain no single
translation of an English author.
But the aversion was not reciprocal.
In the days of our great Elizabeth,
when the English intellect was at a
height from which it has ever since been
travelling downwards, Spanish novels
and romances were diligently studied,
and perpetually translated. There
is strong evidence to show that the
great dramatists of that day were
not ignorant of the Spanish stage.

A translation, or rather an abridgment,
of the Celestina, was printed in
London in 1530, and in 1580 the
story was acted in a London theatre.

But as all our readers may not
have heard—and many of them probably
have not read a line of the
Celestina—we will, before we proceed
farther, explain the nature of this
most remarkable—and if the age[Pg 536]
when it was written be considered—this
quite unequalled production.

The Celestina, or Tragi-comedia di
Calisto y Melibœa, is the title of a
book which appeared at Salamanca
in the year 1500. It is named from
the principal person, a procuress,
who is the instrument by which all
the events that it describes are
brought about. It is the work of
two authors. The name of the first,
who wrote the first act only, cannot
certainly be determined. Some
ascribe it to Juan de Mena, and
some to Rodrigo Cota. The language
seems to prove that the date of the
first act cannot be much earlier than
the end of the fifteenth century, or
than that of the twenty acts added
to it by the Bachelor, Fernando de
Rozas, by whom the whole was
published. The work was received
with universal, but, if its merit be
considered, not with excessive approbation.
This is testified by the
numerous editions which succeeded
each other with great rapidity, not
only throughout Spain, but in Venice,
Milan, and Antwerp; and translations
of it were eagerly studied in
France, England, Italy, and Germany.
The great length of the Celestina
proves that it never could have been
intended for the stage; but its influence
on the dramatic literature of
Spain has been, nevertheless, considerable.
For the language of the
dialogue is so exquisitely beautiful—the
representations it contains are so
vivid—and the pathos of several passages
so touching,—above all, the
characters are drawn with so much
spirit and truth of colouring, that it
became the favourite model of the
great Spanish dramatists of the sixteenth
century.

To enter into a detailed account of
this beautiful composition would be
mere pedantry. It might, perhaps,
be agreeable to an age which receives
with exultation and delight prose
translations of the most beautiful
poetry, and places equestrian statues
over archways; but it must fill every
one to whom the rudiments of taste
are not absolutely unknown—every
one for whom eloquence and poetry
are not merely a dead letter—with
unspeakable disgust. It would bear
the same resemblance to the original
that a corpse does to the body animated
by an informing spirit. The
plot is extremely simple. Calisto, a
youth of high birth, cherishes the
most passionate love for the beautiful
Melibœa. In order to gratify his
passion, he has recourse to Celestina,
and by her arts and love-potions, and
intrigues, he at length accomplishes
his object. They meet at her house;
and while

the servants of Calisto quarrel, a conflict
ensues, in which Celestina loses
her life. The law interferes, seizes
upon the malefactors, and condemns
them to the gallows. The friends of
the servants agree to revenge their
death. They beset the house, in which
Calisto and his beloved have met
again. Calisto, who wishes to encounter
them, is slain. Melibœa,
distracted with remorse and sorrow,
and resolved not to survive her lover,
ascends a lofty tower, and, after informing
her parents of her errors, and
of the death of him who shared them,
precipitates herself from its summit.
Such is the outline of this primitive
effort of dramatic art, the eloquence
of which is as various and astonishing
as the plot is simple and inadequate.
There are passages in it which
may remind the reader of Clarissa
Harlowe; and it is very possible
that it may have suggested hints to
Richardson. Bouterwek’s remarks
upon the Celestina are trivial and
insignificant.

“I may boldly say it, because I
have seen it,” says Stephen Gosson,
in 1581, writing under the influence
of those puritanical feelings which
were soon to play so conspicuous a
part in our dramatic history, “that
the Palace of Pleasure, the Golden
Ass, the Æthiopian History, Amadis
of France, and the Round Table,
indecent histories in Latin, French,
Italian, and Spanish, have been
thoroughly ransacked to furnish the
playhouses in London.” Robert
Green, the author of Friar Bacon,
one of the most eminent of Shakspeare’s
immediate predecessors, tells
us that he had travelled in Spain.
There are several expressions in
Shakspeare which indicate an ac[Pg 537]quaintance
with Spanish literature—among
others, the remarkable phrase,
“this is mischief malikin,” which is
evidently a corruption of “mucho
malhecho.” The origin of the Taming
of the Shrew is Spanish. The alternate
rhymes of Love’s Labour
Lost prove, beyond a doubt, a
Spanish model. The advice from
Polonius to his son is said to be a
literal translation from a Spanish
dramatist. The resemblance between
Twelfth Night and an anonymous
comedy, La Española in Florencia,
is too striking to be merely accidental.
It is, indeed, most improbable
that Shakspeare who was acquainted
with French, and has inserted in his
works—in the Tempest for instance—several
paraphrases of Montaigne,
should have been ignorant of Spanish,
which was not only a more popular
language, but one which contained
far more to reward and stimulate the
labour of the student. And here we
may observe, that the prodigy of the
Spanish stage, Lope de Vega—the
“monster of nature,” as Cervantes
calls him, and certainly the most surprising
instance of the combination of
facility and genius which the modern
world has seen—was born on the 25th
November 1562, at Madrid, two years
before Shakspeare. If we pursue our
examination of the influence of Spanish
literature on the English drama, we
shall find a close resemblance between
Fletcher’s beautiful play of the Elder
Brother—which was mutilated to
please our barbarous grandfathers by
Cibber,—and Calderon’s Two Effects
from one Cause, (De una Causa dos
Efectos😉 the Maid of the Mill, by
Beaumont and Fletcher, and Lope’s
Quinta de Florencia; Webster’s
Duchess of Malfi, and Lope de
Vega’s Mayor Domo de la Duquesa
de Amalfi. So the Señora Cornelia,
a novel of Cervantes’, is the foundation
of the brilliant play of the
Chances. The third scene of the
third act of the Little French Lawyer,
is taken from the fourth chapter of
the second part of the first book
of Aleman’s Guzman d’Alfarache.
The Knight of the Burning Perkle,
shows that Don Quixote was commonly
read in England. The Spanish
Gipsy of Middleton and Rowley, and
Beggars’ Bush of Fletcher, are taken
from the Fuerza de la Sangre, and
Gitanilla of Cervantes; and the
plan of Love’s Pilgrimage is borrowed
from the Dos Doncellas of
the same author. The Spanish
Curate is taken from the Gerardo
of Gonzalo de Cerpedes; and The
History of Alphonso, or a Wife for
a Month, is that related by many
Spanish writers of Sancho, the eighth
King of Leon. To this list may
be added a remarkable passage in
Milton’s Areopagitica, in which he
alludes to Spanish poetry as we
should allude to Manzoni and Lamartine.
“The villages also must
have their visitors, to inquire what
lectures the bagpipe and the rebec
reads even to the gamut of every municipal
fiddler; for these are the countryman’s
Arcadias and his Monte
Mayors.” In 1663 was printed, The
Adventures of Five Hours, from the
Spanish comedy, Los Empeños de Seis
Horas. Lord Digby’s ‘Tis better than
it was is taken from Calderon’s Mejor
está que estaba. His Worse and Worse
from Peor está que estaba. His Elvira,
or the Worst not always True, from
Calderon’s No siempre lo Peor es Cierto.
There can be little doubt, as a careful
and elaborate writer, Shack, remarks
in his instructive work on the Spanish
stage, that a more accurate inquiry
than has yet been instituted into the
English drama, would lead to the conclusion,
that many of the works of
Lope de Vega were familiar to the
great writers of Elizabeth’s time; not,
indeed, that it is contended, or that
with any shadow of plausibility it
can be maintained, that the Spanish
is the origin of the English drama,
or, indeed, that it ever exercised a
decided influence on the English stage.
The rapid intrigue, the brilliant accumulation
of incidents, which the peasant
of the South follows with delight
and ease in scenic representation,
would confound and bewilder the most
educated classes of which a Northern
audience is composed. Let an English
or German reader try the experiment
of reading one of Calderon’s
most agreeable plays, Tambien, hay
duelo en las Damas, which may be
freely translated, “There may be
Trust in Women,” and see whether,
even in the quiet of his study, his
brain does not grow dizzy with[Pg 538]
the complicated intrigue that it describes.

The truth is, that both in Spain and
England, the drama, at the period of
its greatest splendour, was drawn
from the inmost sources of the national
character and genius. It spoke the
language of the different races amid
which it appeared, and the peculiarities
of each were wrought into the
stamina of its existence. Before that
time, and while it was seeking the
track which it was to illuminate with
such a flood of glory, before the days
of Shakspeare and Lope de Vega, its
effects had been feeble and unsuccessful.
Ferrex and Porrex, Ralph Royster,
Doyster, Damon and Pythias,
bear, like the contemporary works of
Spanish and Italian authors, traces of
the attempt to substitute, as in the
Sophonisba of Trissino, a cold, stiff,
and affected imitation of ancient models
for the appeal to those passions,
and the image of those manners, with
which man has an unchangeable and
an everlasting sympathy. In the rude
comedies of that day, as in the Spanish
farces in the middle of the sixteenth
century, coarse buffoonery and
the realities of vulgar detail predominate.
After this phasis, there may
be still observed, in the dramatists of
the day, a want of power to manage
the materials which they had just
begun to discover and appreciate. In
the plays of Green, as well as of Juan
de la Cueva, the sudden and inartificial
incidents, the actions without a
motive, and the want of a regularly
constructed plot, betray the authors’
want of experience and self-command.
Marlow and Christoval de Vines resemble
each other in their love of what
is horrible and extravagant, and their
use of a turgid and inflated diction.
Neither in Peele, Kyd, or Lily, in our
country, nor in Arguesda, Artieda, or
Cervantes, (considered exclusively as
a dramatist,) in the other, is any fixed,
systematic, matured, independent, national
drama distinctly to be traced.
They were, however, the harbingers,
in their respective lands, of the meridian
light which was fast travelling to
its maturity of splendour, and rejoicing
as a giant to run its course. A lustre
then was shed over the Western skies,
which more than rivalled the earlier
glories of the East. How did this
come to pass? to what are we to
ascribe the surprising resemblance of
dramatic literature, in so many essential
points, of Spain and England?
this simultaneous outbreak of genius,
this selection of the same path, and
this arrival at the same goal—a goal
which the utmost exertions of other
modern nations have never enabled
them to come within sight of, much
less to reach? What is the seed of
the noble and stately plant that shot
up at once in such prodigality of magnificence?
Shall we content ourselves
with the cant of a romantic school,
which, after it had wearied the Continent,
has, of course, been put forward
as a great discovery by our
wretched sciolists, in explanation of
this curious epoch in the history of the
human mind? Or shall we look to the
national feelings, sympathies, tastes,
and legends, which the masters of the
Greek, as well of the Spanish and of
the English drama, unveiled in their
immortal creations to the very depths?
This is the true reason why these nations
alone possess a drama of their
own—this is the reason which accounts
for the triumph of ancient as
well as modern art—not an ambiguous
and obscure phrase, but a principle
which must insure the originality
of the drama, so long as man
is man.

If we pursue the comparison between
the drama of Spain and England, we
shall find the period of its golden age
far more circumscribed in the latter
than in the former. In the latter, it
cannot be said to reach beyond the
time of Charles the First; and from the
time of Shakspeare its decline is
visible. But in Spain, from the end
of the sixteenth to the beginning of
the eighteenth century, during a period
when poetry was almost forgotten
throughout the rest of Europe, the
stream of the Spanish drama held on
its majestic course, supplied from an
ever-gushing fountain, and reflecting
from its radiant surface all the varieties
of human life. If Shakspeare has
reached the very summit of all poetry,
and a height to which no Spanish
dramatist has ascended, the interval
which divides him from every other
of his countrymen is enormous. But
the drama in Spain is not bound up
with a single name, or with individual[Pg 539]
genius; it can exhibit a galaxy of
light, and many constellations contribute
to its lustre.

The starry host, of which Lope de
Vega and Calderon de la Barca are
the Lucifers, far surpasses in numbers
and splendour that which any other
country can exhibit; nor would the
dull, brutal, stupid, hard-hearted, and
obscene ribaldry which (Congreve excepted)
is the prevailing characteristic
of the popular writers of Charles
the Second’s time, and especially of
Wycherley, have been endured by the
Spanish peasant for a moment.

Christoval Suavey de Figueroa, who
lived towards the end of the sixteenth
and about the beginning of the
seventeenth century, was of all enemies
to the theatre of his day the
most bitter and the most implacable.
The influence of the priesthood had
been early turned against the drama,
especially on the grounds which had
induced the Catholic Church of all
ages to oppose itself to the drama,
but in reality because the secular
plays had superseded the rude and
gross religious representations from
which they sprang in Spain, as well
as in France and England, and which
had long been a principal means by
which the priests had preserved their
influence over the vulgar. Figueroa’s
animadversions are to be found in two
works, one, the Playa universal de
todas las Ciencias, published at Madrid,
1615; the other, Advertencios utilissimas
a la Vida humana, Madrid, 1617.
The writer complains that the nourishment
which the writers of plays
furnish for the diseased appetites of
the vulgar is poisonous; and that, far
from intermixing with their levity
any moral or instructive sentences,
the sole object of the writers is to
provoke the laughter of the audience.
Hence men, who are scarcely able to
read, venture to write comedies, as is
proved by the Tailor of Toledo, the
Weaver of Seville, and other instances
of success equally disgraceful.
“Hence it happens that scandalous
comedies, full of obscene language and
trivial conceptions, are represented
on the stage, in which all respect for
sovereigns is trampled under foot,
together with the rules of reason and
morality. In these pieces the valet
speaks without shame, the maid without
modesty, and the old man without
discretion.”

In the Pasagero, which is a dialogue,
the principal person says that
“if Plautus and Terence were now living
they would be driven from the
stage, as a certain person, (Lope de
Vega,) who considers himself beyond
all rule, has invented a particular
kind of farce, as lucrative as it is
monstrous.” But the exhortations
of Figueroa were in vain. The passion
for writing plays, far from diminishing,
increased with tenfold fury, in
spite of the Church and the critic, and
even Philip the Second’s edict. Nor
can it be denied that, amid the prodigious
and almost incredible mass of
plays which increased with every
year, some were of a very moderate
description. But the very worst were
above the level of the great majority
of plays in other countries, and especially
in our own. It would be difficult
to find a single play in the time
of Lope de Vega or of Calderon, in
which some redeeming quality, happy
incidents, or fiery invective, or beautiful
language did not appear. Some
of these writers, however, acquired an
imperishable reputation. Of these,
Gabriel Tellez, who wrote under the
name of Tirso de Molina, was the most
illustrious.

It may be quoted, as a proof of
the profound disregard for Spanish
literature in Europe, that Bouterwek
never mentions this extraordinary
dramatist; and that Schlegel, who
affected such profound knowledge of
the Spanish drama, and whose remarks
on Euripides and Molière are
so thoroughly unjust and absurd, has
been to all real purpose equally silent
concerning him; though no man, not
even Lope de Vega, or Calderon himself,
whom Schlegel praises (not because
he was a great poet, but because
he was a bigoted Roman Catholic,),
bears a stronger impress of true Castilian
genius, or is more identified
with the drama of his country. Gabriel
Tellez was considerably younger
than Lope de Vega: he was born
about 1570. Little is known of his
life till he became a monk at Madrid.
He became a doctor of theology, and
died in 1648, prior of the monastery
at Soria. His comedies are second
only, in point of number, to those of[Pg 540]
Lope de Vega—a circumstance which
makes Schlegel’s absolute omission of
all but his very name, and perhaps of
that, the more unpardonable; and he
was, besides, the author of many other
works—among others, of a defence of
the national drama of Spain against
the champions of the unities. This
was written twelve years before The
Cid of Corneille, and therefore anticipated
a controversy to which we
invariably assign a more recent, as
well as a Gallic origin. The following
are extracts from this admirable
vindication.

“The delightful interest excited by
the drama, the skill of the actors, and
the succession of various incidents,
make the time appear so short, that no
man, though the representation had
lasted three hours, would find aught
to censure but its brevity. This at
least was the judgment of the unprejudiced—I
mean of those who attend
a dramatic representation, not so
much to find fault as to procure for
themselves a poetical gratification.
The drones who do not themselves
know how to labour, but how to rob
the industrious bees, could not indeed
renounce their nature, and plunged
their stings, with a malignant hum,
into the honeyed treasures of genius.
One says the piece is intolerably too
long; another says it is unseemly; a
pedantic historian said the poet should
be chastised, because he has, against
the truth of Portuguese history, made
the Duke Pedro of Coimbra a shepherd—though
he was in fact slain in
battle against his cousin, King Alonzo,
and left no posterity. It is an affront
to the house of Aveiro, and its great
duke, that the daughters of the last
should be described as reckless damsels,
who, in defiance of all the laws
of decency, turn their garden into a
scene of their licentiousness—as if the
liberties of Apollo were tethered to
historical accuracy, and might not
raise the fabric of poetry on true historical
foundations. In the mean time
there were not wanting defenders of
the absent poet, who maintained his
honour, and struck to earth the argument
of the envious censurers; although
besotted minds, who are in love
with their own opinion, and display
their acuteness rather in the censure of
others’ works than in any productions
of their own, never will allow that they
are overcome…. Among many
absurdities,” says the critic to be refuted,
“it has most shocked me to
observe the impudence with which the
poet has transgressed the limits assigned
to their art by the inventors of
the drama; for though the action required
by them is one which is complete
in twenty-four hours at the
most, he has crowded months into his
play, crammed with love adventures;
and even that time is not long enough
for ladies of rank and education to
fall blindly in love with a shepherd,
to make him their secretary, and
enable him to decipher their real purpose
amid the riddles with which it is
expressed…. Moreover, I
am at a loss to comprehend with what
propriety a piece, in which dukes and
counts make their appearance, can be
called a comedy.” So far the malignant
censurer proceeds, when he is interrupted
by Don Alejo, the other
speaker in the Dialogue. “I cannot assent
to your opinion, inasmuch as, setting
aside the rule that, in common courtesy,
the guest is bound not to quarrel
with the viands set before him, this
particular comedy does comply with
the rules which still are valid; and, in
my opinion, which is common to all
who are free from prejudice with
myself, the dramas actually represented
in our Spain have a great
advantage over those of antiquity,
although they depart from the rules
laid down by the creators of the stage.
If they establish this principle, that a
play should only represent such transactions
as can by possibility be compressed
within the space of twenty-four
hours—can there be a more
flagrant absurdity than that a man in
his senses should, in so short a period,
fall passionately in love with a woman
equally in possession of hers, and
carry the matter on so rapidly, that
the love, which is announced in the
morning, ends in a marriage at night?
Is that time enough to represent
jealousy, despair, hope—in short, all
the passions and incidents, without
which love is a mere word, without
any signification? These evils are,
according to the judgment of all persons
competent to form an opinion,
far greater than those arising from
the circumstance that the spectators,[Pg 541]
without moving from their seats, see
and hear things which must occupy
several days. For as he who reads a
history of a few pages, informs himself
of events which have occurred in
remote countries during many centuries,
even so may comedy, which is
the image and representation of that
on which it is founded, in describing
the events which befall two lovers,
paint in the most vivid colours all
that can take place on such an occasion;
and as it is improbable that all
these incidents should occur in one
day, may feign also for itself the
longer time, of which it stands in need.
Not improperly has poetry been
called a living picture; and as the
pencil represents on a few feet of canvass
remote distances, which cheat the
eye with an appearance of reality, so
must the same privilege be conceded
to the pen; and so much the rather,
as the latter is incomparably more
energetic than the former, inasmuch
as articulated syllables are more intelligible
than silent images, which can
explain thought by signs only. And if
you object to me, that, under pain of
being esteemed presumptuous and ungrateful,
we must obey the precepts
of the first inventors of the drama,
I reply to you, that we owe them
indeed reverence for having triumphed
over the difficulties which belong
to a beginning in any matter, but
that we are bound to bring what they
have discovered to perfection; so that,
without impairing the substance, we
may change the manner of proceeding,
and improve it by the lessons of experience.

“It were indeed a precious state of
things if the musician, because the
inventors of music studied harmony
of sound from the blows of the hammer
on the anvil, were at the present
day to use the instruments of Vulcan,
and incur censure because they introduced
a harp with strings, and thus
brought to perfection what originally
was imperfect. Herein it is that art
differs from nature, because what the
one has established since the creation
remains immutable—as the pear-tree
always produces pears, and the oak its
acorns (for we shall not now stop to
consider the exceptions arising from
soil and climate, and the skill and
graftings of the gardener); while in
art, the roots of which grow in the
shifting qualities of men, use causes
the most important changes and modifications.
What reason is there for
surprise, then, if comedy transgresses
the rules of our forefathers, and,
according to the analogy of nature
and of art, grafts the comic on the
tragic, while it combines these opposite
kinds of poetry in a fascinating
whole, in which sometimes the serious
characters of the one, sometimes the
ludicrous and playful characters of the
other, make their appearance. Moreover,
if the pre-eminence of Æschylus
and Menander in Greece, and that
of Terence and Seneca in Rome, were
sufficient to make their rules immutable,
the excellence of our Lope de
Vega, the pearl of the Manzanares,
the Tully of Castile, the phœnix of
our nation, so far surpasses these in
the quantity as well as the quality of
his writings, that his authority is
abundantly sufficient to weigh down
the doctrine I have cited; and as he
has brought comedy to the perfection
and consummate refinement in which
we now behold it, we must think
ourselves fortunate in having such a
teacher, and zealously defend his
school of poetry against its passionate
antagonists. For when he says, in
many passages of his writings, that
he has deviated from the rules of
the ancients only out of condescension
to the taste of the multitude,
this is only said from the modesty of
his nature, and in order that the
malevolence of the ignorant should
not ascribe that to arrogance which
is in fact aiming at perfection. But
it is incumbent on us who are his
followers, for the reasons which I
have enumerated, as well as many
others which I will not now allege, to
look upon him as the reformer of the
new comedy, and to hold in honour
modern writers as more beautiful and
more instructive than those of former
ages.” It is difficult to conceive a
more ingenious and solid defence of
the Spanish drama than Tellez has
here put forward; and it is time to
examine how far his practice exemplifies
his theory. Many of our
readers will be surprised to hear that
Tirso de Molina, or Gabriel Tellez,
is the first author who brought Don
Juan and the famous story of the[Pg 542]
statue-guest upon the stage, under
the title of the Burlador de Sevilla,
or the Convidado de Piedra. The
name of the hero is Don Juan Tenorio.
The story still lives in the tradition
of the people of Seville, in which
city the Tenorios were a distinguished
race, though the name exists no
longer. It was one of the famous
twenty-four, the “veinti-cuatros” of
Seville. The basis of the story is,
that, after seducing the daughter of
the Comendador Ulloa, Don Juan
killed the father, who was buried in
the convent of San Francisco. Don
Juan’s birth and connections placed
him above the reach of legal punishment;
but the monks of San Francisco
contrived to get him within
their walls, where they put him to
death, and propagated a rumour that
Don Juan had gone to the chapel in
which the statue of the Comendador
was placed, for the purpose of insulting
his memory, when the statue had
seized him and precipitated him into
the infernal regions. Such is the
legend on which rests El Burlador de
Sevilla. It became extremely popular
in Spain, and even more so in foreign
countries. In 1620 it was transplanted
to the Italian stage. Three
translations of it appeared in France,
under the not very happily chosen
title of the Festin de Pierre; the first
in 1659 by De Villiers; the second
1661, by Dorimon; the third 1665,
by Molière. In Spain the same subject
was dramatised by Zamora, in a
play which still keeps possession of
the stage.

As a specimen, we subjoin a
translation from one of his most
amusing plays, The Pious Martha,
(Martha la Piadosa) in which long
before the Tartuffe, and in Spain,
hypocrisy was exposed to ridicule.
A girl, in order to get rid of a rich and
aged suitor, pretends to be seized
with a fit of piety, and an aversion
to marriage. Her father, after some
little resistance, allows her to follow
the bent of her inclination without
restraint, under pretence of visiting
the sick in hospitals. She contrives
to obtain repeated interviews with her
favoured lover, who—the trait is
thoroughly Spanish—has killed her
brother in a duel; and at last to procure
admittance for him, under the
disguise of a palsied and penniless
student, into her father’s house to
teach her the Latin grammar. Some
of the scenes are in the highest vein
of comedy:—one, where the student
pretends to faint from weakness, and
her father desires her to hold him up,
and bids him lean upon her without
scruple; another where the lady,
having given vent to her jealousy in
a very vivid exclamation which her
father overhears, escapes from the
detection of her hypocrisy by pretending
that the student has said it,
and that she is repeating it in anger.
The expression is tantamount to “By
heavens!” (vive Dios😉 and the father
tells her she is too severe. The
lover pretends that his feelings are
too much hurt for him to stay any
longer in the house: the father desires
the daughter to appease him; and
with wit equal to Molière, the girl, in
her father’s presence, goes down on
her knees before her lover, and kisses
his hand, which is the only condition
upon which he has said that he will
remain.

(Martha kneels.)

As a farther specimen of Molina’s
style, we subjoin the following translation.
The lover and his friend Pastrana,
a man full of dry caustic wit,
are present at a bull-fight. The following
dialogue ensues:—

But the most popular play of this
great writer, and one which is always
received with the most rapturous
applause, is Gil de las Calzas Verdes,
(Gil of the Green Trousers.) A
lady has been abandoned by her lover
for a rich beauty of Madrid. She
calls herself Don Gil—follows him
thither, dresses herself in male attire,
of which the green trousers are the
most conspicuous part—torments him
with letters from the convent where
he supposes her to be, describing her
suffering, her illness, and at last her
death; interrupts his remittances,
destroys his credit, carries off his
mistress, who falls desperately in love
with her; thwarts him at every turn;
obliges him to believe that he is really
haunted by the ghost of her whom he
has wronged; and at last causes him
to be arrested for her murder. The
rage, amazement, confusion, repentance
and despair of the faithless
lover are portrayed in the most brilliant
colours. Do what he will, mean
what he will, attempt what he will,
Gil of the Green Trousers, though invisible,
has been beforehand with
him. He goes to his bankers: the
check is paid to Don Gil of the Green
Trousers. He endeavours to mislead
his intended father-in-law: the
plot is unravelled by Don Gil of the
Green Trousers. He tries to soften
his mistress: she raves of nothing but[Pg 544]
Don Gil of the Green Trousers. As
Don Gil is so successful with his
green trousers, other suitors of the
Madrid lady dress in green trousers,
and assume his name in the dark
under her window. There are at one
time four persons in the street, each
calling himself Gil with the Green
Trousers. The faithless suitor of the
true Gil is one of them. His rival
challenges him; but no sooner does
the challenged see the fatal garment,
than his conscience smites him, and
he addresses his furious rival as the
ghost of his injured mistress.

The other lover, who hears this
grotesque invocation, thinks it a mere
trick of his rival to escape a duel,
and overwhelms him with every
epithet of abuse.

The play ends by the marriage of
Don Gil with her fickle suitor. We
are almost ashamed to add, that this
was the favourite play of Ferdinand
VII., and was ordered for him on all
solemn occasions by the municipality
of Madrid. Without the refinement
of Calderon or Lope de Vega, Molina
surpasses both in his verve and
gaiety. His satire is unlimited; it
spares neither the authorities of
earth, nor the ministers of heaven—nay,
it does not even spare the great
national amusement. Epigram after
epigram is poured out upon every
object that attracts his notice; his
brilliant and sparkling wit is inexhaustible;
and his “malice” as boundless
as it is subtle. Of all French
writers, it has been said, by a very
competent judge, that he resembles
Beaumarchais most closely; and however
strange it may seem, that the
Spanish monk of the seventeenth
century should bear so close an
analogy to the Parisian bel esprit of
the eighteenth, the remark is undoubtedly
correct. We have dwelt more
especially on this writer, because he
is not well known in Europe, and
because even Mr Ticknor, in his accurate
and valuable work on Spanish
literature—a work we hail both for
what it proves, and for what it makes
us expect, with the greatest delight—has
failed to do him complete justice.
Shack seems to us to have appreciated
him more justly in his excellent and
useful dissertation. But our limits
are exhausted for the present.

[Pg 545]

MODERN STATE TRIALS.[2]

PART II.

Impelled by motives which we
own to be with difficulty effectively
justifiable, and which we must resolve
into an overmastering anxiety
to behold how doomed human nature
can confront terror-inspiring circumstances,
felt sufficient to palsy one’s
own soul, we found ourselves, on
Sunday morning, the 5th of July 1840,
in the front seat of the stranger’s gallery
in the Chapel of Newgate, in
order to hear the condemned sermon
preached to Benjamin Courvoisier,
and witness the demeanour of one who
was to be publicly strangled on the
ensuing morning, and in the ensuing
evening buried within the precincts of
the prison. Callous must he have
been who could witness the scene of
that morning without being profoundly
affected. It was the house of
God; and yet, (with reverence be the
allusion made,) in one sense, alas! a
den of thieves—of outcasts from society;
whose laws they had, or were
charged with having, disregarded and
openly violated. Some were there
under the pressure of violent suspicion—amounting
to a moral, soon to
pass into a legal, certainty—of various
kinds and degrees of guilt:
others bore the blighting brand of
established crime, and were suffering,
or about to suffer, its penalty. With
what feelings would they enter the
house of Him who is of purer eyes
than to behold iniquity—to Whom all
hearts are open, all desires known,
and from Whom no secrets are hid!
Would any of that guilty throng take
their places there, brutally ignorant,
indifferent, reckless, or desperate?
Would their polluted souls be swelling
with ill-suppressed feelings of
impiety and blasphemy? Would any
approach with broken and contrite
spirits, having been shaken, by the
stern hand of offended human law
alone, out of a life’s lethargy and
insensibility? How would the holy
accents of warning, of expostulation,
of mercy, of dread denunciation, sound
in the ears of those who were presently
to fill that dismal chapel—dismal, only
from its locality, and the character
of its occupants? With what feelings
would one enter—the death-doomed—for
whom, and for whom alone, was
reserved that solitary, central, ominous
black bench? who was so terribly
far advanced in his passage from a
human tribunal to that of the dread
Eternal!—on whose brow already
faintly glistened the dread twilight
between here and hereafter,—the black
night of time breaking before the
dawning of an eternal day!

They come! Yonder gallery, curtained
off, is filling with the female
prisoners; no sounds audible but their
rustling dresses, and perhaps a half-choked
sigh or sob. It is well, poor
souls! that you are hidden from the
public gaze—from the rude eye of
your male comrades in crime! They
are now entering below, silent and
orderly, the eye of the governor upon
them, as they are led by burly turnkeys
and inspectors to their appropriate
places, classed as untried and
convicted—the latter according to their
respective kinds and degree of punishment.
All, at length, are seated.
What an assemblage! Almost all
clad in prison costume; many with
sullen, determined countenances—others
with harassed features and
downcast look—one or two exhibiting
unequivocally an air of insolent and
reckless defiance—but all conscious
of the stern surveillance under which
they sate. Alas, those boys! some
already, others about to be, condemned—all
gazing, terror-struck, at
the black seat in the centre!

The chaplain enters the desk immediately
under the pulpit, which,
attached to the blank wall, faces the
communion-table. He, also, casts an
ominous glance at the black bench
[Pg 546]before him, in the centre of the
floor, to which all faces are directed,
amidst moody and troubled
silence. At length a door on the left
is heard being unbolted; a turnkey
enters, followed by the great criminal—one
whose name was ringing in the
ears of the public—one on whom every
eye is instantly fixed with sickening
intensity. It is Courvoisier—the monster
who, a few weeks before, had
barbarously murdered his sleeping
lord!—He was led to his seat, a glass
of water being placed near him, in case
of his faintness, and on one side of
him sate a turnkey. Courvoisier knelt
down; and then, a prayer-book having
been given him, (which he held in an
untrembling hand,) took his seat,
not far from the reading-desk, covering
his eyes for a few moments with
his left hand. His demeanour was
signally calm and self-possessed, and
his motions were deliberate. He was
a man about twenty-four years of
age. His countenance wore such an
expression of pensive good-nature and
docility, as rendered it a consolatory
reflection that he had unequivocally
and spontaneously confessed the
fiendish act of which the law had pronounced
him guilty, and for which,
under holy sanctions, it was on the
morrow to take away his life.[3] Yes—there
he sate, where we had seen
sitting, also, his blood-stained predecessor
Greenacre; and, moreover,
Fauntleroy the forger; also a young
banker’s clerk—a widowed mother’s
sole support, her only child—for
forging a trifling check. Alas, alas!
how he wept during the whole service!—but
how calmly he behaved the
next morning on the gallows!

After gazing long and earnestly
on the central figure in the gloomy
picture, our eyes were casually
attracted by a very different one,—that
of a youth sitting on the steps
of the altar, as though he had
been a privileged spectator. We regarded
him as a friend of some subordinate
functionary of the gaol. He
seemed a silly, vulgar, little dandy,
who had put on his very best clothes
for the occasion. He looked about
eighteen or nineteen years old, and
was of slender figure, and a little
under the average height. His hair
was full and curly—displayed in a very
affected style. He wore a sort of
second-hand blue surtout with velvet
collar, a black satin stock, a light
figured waistcoat, and light slate-coloured
trousers—the latter a trifle too
short, and strained down by a pair of
elongated straps, so as to reach as
nearly as possible to the brightly-polished
boots. Beside him was a hat,
of which he seemed very careful, and
smoothed it round delicately, once or
twice, with his hand. His eyes were
quick, and inquisitive; and he seemed
to share the interest with which others
contemplated Courvoisier. Several
times, during the service, his fingers
passed jauntily through his hair, as if
to dispose it effectively round his temples.
A prayer-book was handed to
him, to which he seemed tolerably
attentive; but during the sermon he
was evidently more occupied with his
dress than the exciting and instructive
topics of the chaplain—frequently
pulling off and putting on his gloves,
and arranging different portions of his
dress, as though he feared they did
not sit upon him sufficiently becomingly.
When, however, the chaplain
addressed himself personally, and with
fearful solemnity, to the murderer before
him, the young occupant of the
altar-steps was roused into attention,
and he listened a few minutes—his
eyes fixed now on the preacher, then
on the condemned. When the service
was over, Courvoisier (whose demeanour
had been throughout most
satisfactory—solemn, composed, and
reverent) was beckoned out to the door
through which he had entered, and he
obeyed, walking with complete self-possession.—We
had looked our last
on him!—”Do you see that young
[Pg 547]fellow on the altar-steps?—do you
know who he is?” said a gentleman
who approached us for the purpose.
“No; he seems a vulgar little puppy,”
we exclaimed, “whoever he may be.”
“It is Oxford, who shot at the Queen,
and is to be tried this week!” was
the reply; and while we turned round
to gaze at him, he was in the act of
quitting the chapel, holding his hat
very carefully, and gazing towards the
gallery with an expression of cheerful
inquisitiveness. Had it occurred to
him that, in all human probability, a
week or two would behold him an
occupant of the black bench just
quitted by the murderer?

Yes! that was Edward Oxford,
the little caitiff, first of a small and
ignominious series of similar ones, who
had, on the preceding 9th of June,
twice deliberately fired at his young
Queen, as she was driving, in fancied
security, with her consort, up Constitution
Hill, and on each occasion
apparently with ball! The following
was his own free-and-easy account of
the matter, on being examined before
the Privy Council:—

(Signed) “Edward Oxford.”

In the case of this young miscreant,
(for it is difficult to speak of him temperately,)
however, was, within four
days’ time, to be resolved a problem
of unspeakable difficulty and moment,
by such means as the law of the country
could command,—viz., responsibility
or irresponsibility for criminal
acts, according to the state of mind
existing at the time of committing
them. It is needless to affirm that
this is a question of public, permanent,
universal interest; one in which
every individual, young or old, may
become personally concerned; one
which no humane jurist, practical or
speculative, can approach without
lively anxiety; one worthy of frequent
and deep consideration by every
one concerned in the administration
of criminal justice. To punish an
individual utterly unconscious of the
difference between right and wrong
at the time of committing the alleged
crime, shocks one’s sense of natural
justice, and confounds all the principles
on which it can be administered
by man. How can we hang a maniac
who, in a paroxysm of madness, kills
the keeper who was endeavouring to
soothe or to restrain him? Or one
who shoots another whom, under the
veritable and sole influence of delusion,
he believed to be in the act of killing
him, and that he was therefore acting
solely in self-defence? These are plain
cases, as stated; but still they require,
of course, very clear proof of the facts
from which the law is to deduce a
perfect irresponsibility for his acts.
The subject is one environed with immense
practical difficulties, which are
often unexpectedly visible in applying
apparently clear and correct principles
to simple combinations of fact. The
most sagacious judges, the most conscientious
juries, have grievously miscarried
in such cases; some sending
persons to the scaffold under circumstances
far weaker than those held by
others demonstrative of irresponsibility,
and, consequently, demanding an
acquittal. Many painful and dreadful
cases might be cited; but two shall
suffice. In the year 1837, an industrious,
affectionate, poverty-stricken
father strangled his four children,
avowedly to prevent their being turned
into the streets. They all slept in one
room. Having strangled two, he left
the room; but, after meditating for
some time, came to the conclusion
that he might as well be hanged for
killing all four; on which he returned,
and strangled the other two—having
shaken hands with them before he did
it! He then quitted the house, and
went to a neighbour’s, to whom he did
not mention what he had done; but
on being apprehended the next day,
and taken before the coroner, he confessed
the above facts. No witness
had ever observed a trace of insanity
about him. The physician to a lunatic
asylum offered to prove that the
prisoner’s grandmother and sister had
been under his care, the latter for entertaining
a desire to destroy herself
and her children—evidence which the
judge rejected; and under his direction
the jury convicted, and he passed[Pg 548]
sentence of death on the prisoner.[4]
In the year 1845, a young servant
girl, quiet and docile, having taken a
knife from the kitchen, on some trivial
pretence, went up to the room
where her master’s child lay, and
killed it. She then went downstairs,
and told the horrifying fact to her
master. She was quite conscious of
the crime she had committed, and
showed much anxiety to know whether
she would be hanged or transported.
There was not the slightest
tittle of evidence that she had been
labouring under any delusion; yet she
was acquitted on the ground of insanity![5]
Can anything be more grievously
unsatisfactory than such a state
of things as this, in the administration
of the criminal justice of the country?
One of the causes which conduced to
such results was the too ready deference
paid to speculative medical men,
professing to have made disordered
intellects their peculiar study, and
who came forward, from time to time,
confidently and authoritatively pronouncing
that such and such circumstances
indicated unequivocally the
existence of “insanity,” of “moral
insanity,” at the time of the act committed.
Nay, they would sit in court,
listening to a detail of facts, from
which they would then enter the witness-box,
and authoritatively declare
their opinion that, if such were the
facts, the prisoner was insane, and
therefore irresponsible, when the act in
question was committed! Many held
that the mere absence of assignable
motive indicated such insanity! and
many, that the mere committal of the
particular act should be so regarded!
Notions more dangerous and monstrous
cannot be conceived. Well might the
late Mr. Baron Gurney declare, “that
the defence of insanity had lately grown
to a fearful height, and the security of
the public required that it should be
watched.”[6] There are two Trials
contained in Mr Townsend’s first
volume, which afford memorable illustrations
of the difficulty with which
these questions are encountered in our
courts of justice. They are those of
Oxford, for shooting at the Queen,
and of M’Naughten for the murder of
Mr Drummond, the private secretary
of the late Sir Robert Peel. In both
cases there were acquittals, on the
alleged ground of insanity; and we take
leave to intimate that, in our opinion,
there should have been convictions in
both. The escape of the cold-blooded
murderer, M’Naughten, who deliberately
shot his unsuspecting victim in
the back, horrified and disgusted the
public. “It had not been anticipated,”
says Mr Townsend, “and created
a deep feeling in the public mind, that
there was some unaccountable defect
in our criminal law. People of good
sense appeared panic-stricken, by this
new danger, from venturing into the
London streets; and called upon the
legislature to discover some preservative
against the attacks of insane
passengers in public thoroughfares.”[7]
Indignation was loudly expressed in
Parliament. In the House of Commons,
an honourable Irish baronet moved
for leave to bring in a bill to abolish
the plea of insanity in cases of murder,
except where it could be proved
that the person accused was publicly
known and reputed to be a maniac;
and he asked the House to suspend
the standing orders to accelerate the
progress of his bill. His motion, however,
found no seconder. A similar
casualty had befallen Mr Windham,
in 1800, who, in the course of a
debate which ensued in bringing in a
bill to meet such cases as that of
Hadfield, (who had just been acquitted,
on the ground of insanity, from
the charge of firing at George III.,)
suggested that an offender, even if
insane, should be subjected to some
sort of punishment, for the sake of
example! On the same evening in
which the attempt of Sir Valentine
Blake was made in the House of Commons,
the matter was discussed anxiously
in the House of Lords, by Lords
Lyndhurst, Brougham, Cottenham,
Campbell, and Denman. Lord Campbell
expressed the general feeling of
the House, when he said—”There may
be great difficulty in convicting persons
[Pg 549]who are not in a state of mind
to be responsible for their actions;
but it is monstrous to think that
society should be exposed to the
dreadful dangers to which it is at present
liable, from persons in that state
of mind going at large.”[8] At length,
on the suggestion of the Lord Chancellor,
(Lord Lyndhurst,) it was
agreed that the judges should be called
upon to declare the true state of the
criminal law on this momentous subject;
and five questions were carefully
framed for that purpose, and submitted
to them for grave consideration.
The following are these questions and
answers—both of which, as containing
a solemn and authoritative enunciation
of the law of the land, we shall
present to our readers, whom we request
to give them a careful perusal,
before proceeding to read what we
have to offer on the two trials above
alluded to. We are the more anxious
that they should do so, because of the
recent very remarkable case of Pate,
who struck her Majesty with a cane
last summer; and whose case was
dealt with in strict conformity with
the rules which follow:—

Such being the authoritative enunciation
of the law by its legitimate
exponents, which superseded the necessity
of legislative interference, it is
right to observe that it has by no
means satisfied the professors of medical
jurisprudence, and the members of
the medical profession. One of them,
Mr Taylor, has observed,[9] that the law
here appears to “look for a consciousness
of right and wrong, and a knowledge
of the consequences of the act.”
This legal test “is insufficient for the
purpose intended: it cannot, in a large
majority of cases, enable us to distinguish
the insane homicide from the
sane criminal…. A full consciousness
of the illegality or wrongfulness
of the act may exist in a man’s
mind, and yet he may be fairly
acquitted on the ground of insanity….
There are no certain legal or
medical rules whereby homicidal
mania may be detected. Each case
must be determined by the circumstances
attending it; but the true
test for irresponsibility in these
ambiguous cases appears to be, whether
the individual, at the time of
committing the act, had, or had not,
a sufficient power of control to govern
his actions. If, from circumstances,
it can be inferred that he had this
power, he should be made responsible,
and rendered liable to punishment.
If, however, he was led to the perpetration
of the act by an uncontrollable
impulse, whether accompanied by deliberation
or not, then he is entitled
to an acquittal as an irresponsible
agent.”[10] This doctrine is utterly
repudiated, however, by our judges,
as will appear from two very decisive
instances. In directing the jury, in
Pate’s case, in July last, Mr Baron
Alderson thus somewhat sarcastically
disposed of the dangerous plea
of “uncontrollable impulse.”—”The
law does not recognise such an impulse.
If a person was aware that it
was a wrong act he was about to
commit, he was answerable for the
consequences. A man might say that
he picked a pocket from some incontrollable
impulse; and in that case the
law would have an incontrollable impulse
to punish him for it!” Another
acute and eminent judge, Baron
Rolfe, on a recent occasion, in trying
a boy aged twelve years, for deliberately
and cunningly poisoning his
aged grandfather, thus gravely dispelled
[Pg 551]this favourite delusion of the medical
jurists.—”The witnesses called
for the defence had described the prisoner
as acting from ‘uncontrollable
impulse.’ In my opinion, such evidence
ought to be scanned by juries
with very great jealousy and suspicion,
because it may tend to the perfect
justification of every crime that may be
committed. What is the meaning of
not being able to resist moral influence?
Every crime is committed
under an influence of such a description,
and the object of the law is to
compel persons to control these influences.
If it be made an excuse for a
person who has committed a crime,
that he has been goaded to it by some
impulse, which medical men may
choose to say he could not control, I
must observe, that such a doctrine is
fraught with very great danger to
society.” This stern and sound good
sense prevailed; and the youthful murderer
was convicted. We have been
thus full and distinct in explaining the
wholesome doctrine of our English
law, because of its immense importance;
and we desire it to be understood,
far and wide, especially by the
medical profession, that these fashionable
but dangerous modern paradoxes,
borrowed from Continental physicians,
concerning the co-existence of moral
insanity with intellectual sanity, will
not be tolerated in English courts of
justice.

Let us now proceed to deal with the
two remarkable cases of Oxford and
M’Naughten—the former of whom
was placed at the bar of the Old
Bailey four days after the execution
of Courvoisier.

It is unspeakably painful, and humiliating,
and disgusting, to reflect that
our Queen, who has always shown a
disposition to intrust herself unreservedly
among her subjects, should
have been subjected to no fewer than
five public outrages—the last of which
inflicted actual injury on the royal person,—that
of a lady, a young queen,
ascending the throne of this mighty
empire at the age of eighteen!—outrages
in every instance perpetrated
by despicable beings of the male sex,
properly characterised by Mr Townsend
as “crazed knaves, or imbecile
monomaniacs.” First came, on the
10th June 1840, Edward Oxford,
aged nineteen; then, on the 30th
May 1842, John Francis, aged twenty;
then, on the 3d July 1842, John
William Bean, a deformed stripling
aged seventeen; then, on the 19th
May 1849, William Hamilton; finally—God
grant that the degraded series
may never be increased!—on the 27th
June 1850, Robert Pate—alas! a
gentleman of birth and fortune, and
who had recently borne her Majesty’s
commission!

We shall place our readers, briefly
and distinctly, in possession of the
state of the law applicable to wilfully
injuring, or attempting to injure the
royal person. Its progress is painfully
interesting. The attempt to
inflict, and the actual infliction of
such injury, are of course high treason;
both the trial and punishment
being attended, till recently, with all
the solemn formalities of high treason
as explained in our last Number.
This heinous offence comes under the
first head of the statute of treason,
(25 Edward III. c. 2,) viz., “When
a man doth compass or imagine[11] the
death of our Lord and King.” By
“compass and imagine” is signified
the purpose or design of the mind or
will, evidenced by an open or overt
act. On the 15th May 1800, James
Hadfield fired a horse-pistol, loaded
with two slugs, at King George III.,
as he was entering his box at Drury
Lane Theatre.[12] He was tried for high
treason in the Court of Queen’s
[Pg 552]Bench, and defended by Mr Erskine
with splendid eloquence.[13] He was
acquitted on the ground of insanity,
committed at once to Bedlam, and
died there in January 1841, after
forty years’ incarceration. In the
course of his defence, Mr Erskine
made an observation which led to an
immediate interposition of the legislature.
In speaking of the state of
the law which interposed protective
delay in cases of high treason, Mr
Erskine observed: “Where the
intent charged affected the political
character of the sovereign, the delay,
and all the other safeguards provided,
were just and necessary; but a mere
murderous attack on the King’s person,
not at all connected with his
political character, seemed a case to
be ranged and dealt with like a
similar attack upon any private
man.”[14] On the 28th July in the
same year, were passed statutes 39 and
40 Geo. III. c. 93, carrying out Mr
Erskine’s judicious suggestion, by
enacting that, where the overt act of
this head of treason should be the
assassination of the King, or any
direct attempt against his life or
person, whereby his life might be
endangered or his person suffer bodily
harm, the trial should be conducted
in every respect like a simple trial for
murder; but, on conviction, the sentence
should be pronounced and carried
into effect as in other cases of
high treason. On the same day was
passed another statute—also occasioned
by the trial of Hadfield—that
in all cases of trial for treason,
murder, or felony, if evidence be given
of the prisoner’s insanity at the time
of the commission of the offence, and
he be acquitted, the jury shall be
required to find specially whether he
was insane at the time of committing
the offence, and to declare whether
they acquit on account of such insanity;
and if they do, the court shall
order the prisoner to be confined in
strict and safe custody during his
Majesty’s pleasure. Under the former
of these two wholesome statutes were
tried Oxford and Francis, the latter
being convicted of having fired a
pistol against the Queen, loaded with
powder and “certain other destructive
materials and substances unknown;”
on which sentence of death was pronounced
by Chief-Justice Tindal, as
in other cases of high treason. He
sobbed piteously[15] on being convicted;
but after two consultations of the
Cabinet had been held on his case,
his life was spared, in contemptuous
clemency to the worthless offender,
and in deference to the humane feelings
of her Majesty, and he was transported
for life. Within almost one month
after this questionable act of mercy,
her Majesty was subjected to a similar
outrage—a pistol being presented
towards her, by Bean, on Sunday, as
she was going to the Chapel Royal.
The pistol was cocked, and the click
of the hammer against the pan was
heard, but there was no explosion;
and the pistol was loaded with only
powder, wadding, and one or two
minute fragments (about the size of
ordinary shot) of pipe. He was tried
for misdemeanour, and sentenced to
eighteen months’ imprisonment in the
penitentiary; Lord Abinger remarking,
at the conclusion of the trial, that
“whipping at the cart’s tail should
be the petty sentence in future.” The
public disgust and indignation demanded
some more effectual remedy
to be provided for such disgraceful
cases, should any unhappily occur in
future; and within a fortnight of
Bean’s conviction—viz. on the 16th
July 1842—was passed statute 5 & 6
Vict. c. 51, entitled “An act for providing
[Pg 553]for the further security and
protection of her Majesty’s person;”
and recites the expediency of extending
the provisions of statute 39 & 40
Geo. III. c. 93, to “any attempt to
injure in any manner whatsoever the
person of the Queen,” and of “making
further provision by law for the protection
and security of the person of
the sovereign of these realms.” It
then proceeds to enact, that—

This salutary statute (proposed by
the late Sir Robert Peel) was passed
unanimously; Lord John Russell
justly remarking, that “as the offence
to be punished was that of bad and
degraded beings, a base and degrading
punishment was most fitly applied
to it.” Her Majesty enjoyed a seven
years’ respite from the insufferable
annoyance to which she had been
subjected—viz., till the 19th May
1849—when, about four o’clock in the
afternoon, as she was driving in an
open carriage with three of her children,
a pistol was fired in the direction
of the carriage by “one William
Hamilton, an Irish bricklayer.” The
pistol was fired point-blank at the
person of General Wemyss, one of
her equerries, who happened to be in
the line of her Majesty’s person.
This stolid wretch was tried on the
14th June ensuing, under the above
statute, when he pleaded guilty, and
was sentenced to be transported for
seven years. Again, on the 12th of
July last, it was rendered lamentably
necessary to call this statute into operation,
and with the like effect as in
the preceding case: but we shall reserve
our observations upon the case of
Pate till after we have completed what
we have to offer on those of Oxford
and M’Naughten. We have just returned
from an examination of those
two notorious persons in Bethlehem
Hospital, and shall by and by convey
to the reader the result of our
own careful observations, made since
the earlier portions of this article were
committed to the press.

Oxford’s Case.

The judges who presided at the
trial—which took place at the Old
Bailey, and lasted three days, (the
9th, 10th, and 11th July 1840)—were
Lord Denman, Baron Alderson, and
Justice Maule. The counsel for the
crown were—the Attorney and Solicitor
Generals, (Sir John Campbell
and Sir Thomas Wilde), Sir Frederick
Pollock, the present Mr Justice Wightman,
Mr Adolphus, and Mr Gurney;
those for the prisoner were the late
Mr Sydney Taylor and Mr Bodkin.
The indictment contained two counts—respectively
applicable, in precisely
the same terms, to the two acts of
firing—charging that Oxford, “as a
false traitor, maliciously and traitorously
did compass, imagine, and intend
to put our lady the Queen to
death; and, to fulfil and bring into
effect his treason and treasonable
compassing, did shoot off and discharge
a certain pistol loaded with gunpowder
and a bullet, and thereby made a
direct attempt against the life of our said
lady the Queen,”—in the words of statute
39 and 40 Geo. III., c. 93, § 1. The
trial, as already observed, differed in
no respect from an ordinary trial for
felony; and neither the Crown nor
the prisoner challenged a single jury[Pg 554]man.
“Oxford,” says Mr Townsend,
“stepped into the dock with a jaunty
air, and a flickering smile on his
countenance; glanced at the galleries,
as if to ascertain whether he had a
large concourse of spectators; and,
leaning with his elbow on the ledge of
the dock, commenced playing with
the herbs[16] which were placed there
before him. He kept his gaze earnestly
fixed on the Attorney-general
during the whole of his address, twirling
the rue about in his fingers, and
became more subdued in manner towards
the close of the speech.”[17] The
facts constituting the outrage lie in
a nutshell: The prisoner was seized
instantly after having discharged two
pistols, as the Queen and the Prince-consort
were driving up Constitution
Hill, in a low open carriage. He had
been observed, for some time before
the approach of the royal carriage,
walking backwards and forewards
with his arms folded under his breast.
As the carriage approached, he turned
round, nodded, drew a pistol from his
breast, and discharged it at the carriage,
when it was nearly opposite to
him. As it advanced, after looking
round to see if he were observed, he
took out a second pistol, directed it
across the other to her Majesty, who,
seeing it, stooped down; and he fired
a second time—very deliberately—at
only about six or seven yards’ distance.
The witnesses spoke to hearing
distinctly a sharp whizzing sound
“close past their own ears.” The
prisoner, on seeing the person who
had snatched from him the pistols
mistaken for the person who had fired,
said, “It was me—I did it. I give
myself up—I will go quietly.” At
the police-office he said, “Is the
Queen hurt?” Some one observed,
“I wonder whether there was any
ball in the pistol?” on which the
prisoner said, “If the ball had come
in contact with your head, if it were
between the carriage, you would have
known it.” The witness who spoke
to these words appears, however,
to have somewhat hesitated when
pressed in cross-examination; but he
finally adhered to his statement that
the prisoner declared there were balls
in the pistols. A few days previously
he had purchased the pistols for
two sovereigns, about fifty percussion-caps,
a powder-flask, which, with a
bullet-mould and five bullets fitting
the pistols, were found at his lodgings.
He had also been practising firing at
a target, and, on purchasing the pistols,
particularly asked how far they
could carry. The Earl of Uxbridge
deposed that, when he saw Oxford in
his cell, he asked, “Is the Queen
hurt?” on which Lord Uxbridge said,
“How dare you ask such a question?”
Oxford then stated that “he
had been shooting a great deal lately—he
was a very good shot with a
pistol, but a better shot with a rifle.”
“You have now fulfilled your engagement,”
said the Earl. “No,” replied
Oxford, “I have not.” “You
have, sir,” rejoined Lord Uxbridge,
“as far as the attempt goes.” To that
he was silent. The most rigid search
was made to discover any bullets;
but in vain. Two witnesses, gentlemen
of rank, and well acquainted
with the use of firearms, spoke confidently
to having seen bullet-marks
on the wall, in the direction in which
Oxford had fired; but the Attorney-general
expressed his opinion that
the evidence was entitled to no weight,
as probably mistaken; declaring himself,
however, positive that there must
have been balls in the pistols, but
that the pistols had been elevated so
high that the balls went over the
garden-wall. One of the witnesses
said to the other, immediately after
seizing Oxford, “Look out—I dare
say he has some friends;” to which
he replied, “You are right—I have.”
At his lodgings were found some
curious papers, in Oxford’s handwriting,
purporting to be the rules of a
secret club or society called Young
England; the first of which was,
“that every member shall be provided
with a brace of pistols, a sword,
a rifle, and a dagger—the two latter
[Pg 555]to be kept at the committee-room.”
A list of members-factitives‘ [sic]
names were given. “Marks of distinction:
Council, a large white cockade;
President, a black bow; General,
three red bows; Captain, two red
bows; Lieutenant, one red bow.”
There were also found in Oxford’s
trunk a sword and scabbard, and a
black crape cap with two red bows—one
of the “rules” requiring every
member to be armed with a brace of
loaded pistols, and to be provided
with a black crape cap to cover his
face, with his marks of distinction
outside. Three letters were also found
in his pocket-book, addressed to himself
at three different residences, purporting
to be signed by “A. W.
Smith, secretary,” and to contain
statements of what had taken place,
or was to take place, at the secret
meetings of the society. They were
all headed “Young England,” and
dated respectively “16th May 1839,”
“14th Nov. 1839,” and “3d April
1840.” Oxford said he had intended
to destroy these papers in the morning,
before he went out, but had forgotten
it. All these papers—the
“rules” and letters—were sworn by
Oxford’s mother to be in his own
handwriting; and it should have been
mentioned that there was not a tittle
of evidence adduced to show that
there were, in fact, any such society
in existence, or any such persons as
these papers would have indicated;
nor, up to the present moment, has
there been the least reason for believing
that such was the case.

Thus closed the case for the Crown,
undoubtedly a very formidable one.
No attempt was made by the prisoner’s
counsel—who appear to have conducted
the defence temperately and
judiciously—to alter by evidence the
position of the proved facts; which,
therefore, were allowed to stand before
the jury as almost conclusively establishing
the case of high treason. Mr
Taylor, however, strongly impaired
the Attorney-general’s notion that
there had been in the pistols balls,
which had gone over the wall; because
his own witnesses had spoken decisively
to the bullet-marks on the
wall; yet no flattened balls had been
produced, after all the search that had
been made. Mr Taylor, therefore,
inferred that the pistols had contained
powder only: “a great outrage, unquestionably,
but still not the treason
charged.” There was, again, he contended,
there could have been, no
motive for killing the Queen; and the
idea of the Treasonable Society was
mere moonshine—a pure invention
concocted by a lunatic—one who had
inherited insanity, and himself exhibited
the proofs of its existence: for
Mr Taylor undertook to prove the
insanity of Oxford’s grandfather, his
father, and himself. The proof broke
down as far as concerned the grandfather,
a sailor in the navy; for it was
clear that his alleged violent eccentricities
had been exhibited when he
was under the influence of liquor. The
insanity of Oxford’s father was sought
to be established by his widow, the
mother of the prisoner. If her story,
“told with unfaltering voice and unshaken
nerve,” were correct, her husband
had undoubtedly been a very
violent and brutal fellow, with a dash
of madness in his composition. It is
possible that the mother, in her anxiety
to save her son from a traitor’s death
on the scaffold, had, by a quasi pia
fraus, too highly coloured her deceased
husband’s conduct. If this were not
so, she had indeed been an object of
the utmost sympathy. He forced her
to marry him, she said, by furious
threats of self-destruction if she did
not: he burnt a great roll of banknotes
to ashes in her presence, because
she had refused, or hesitated, to become
his wife. He used to terrify
her, during her pregnancies, by hideous
grimaces, and apish tricks and
gesticulations: the results being that
her second child was born, and within
three years’ time died, an idiot. Her
husband pursued the same course
during her pregnancy with the prisoner,
and presented a gun at her
head. The prisoner had always been
a headstrong, wayward, mischievous,
eccentric youth—subject to fits of
involuntary laughing and crying. He
was absurdly vain, boastful, and ambitious;
and wished his mother to
send him to sea, where he would have
nothing to do but walk about the
deck, give orders, and by and by become
Admiral Sir Edward Oxford!
This was the utmost extent of the
facts alleged in support of the defence[Pg 556]
of insanity. The prisoner’s whole life
had been traced—in evidence—while
he was at school, and in three distinct
services; and he had never been confined,
or in any way treated as mad.
His sister spoke to his going out on
the day of the outrage, and detailed a
conversation evincing no symptoms of
wandering. He used to have books
from the library—”The Black Pirate,”
“Oliver Twist,” and “Jack Sheppard.”
On leaving home that day,
about three o’clock in the afternoon,
he told his sister that he was going to
the Shooting Gallery to buy some
linen for her to make him some shirts,
and to bring home some tea from a
particular shop in the Strand. A
nur-sery-maid to whom he had written
a ludicrously-addressed letter a few
weeks before, said, “I considered
him in a sound state of mind, but
sometimes very eccentric:” than
which, no words were fitter to characterise
the true scope and tendency
of all the evidence which had been
offered to prove him insane. Of that
evidence, according to the genius and
spirit, and also the letter of English
law, twelve intelligent jurymen were
the proper judges, under judicial guidance;
and greatly to be deprecated is
any attempt to deprive them of their
right, and their fellow-subjects—the
public at large—of the protection
afforded by its unfettered exercise.

We therefore earnestly beg the
reader to assume that he is given
credit for an average degree of intelligence,
and only a moderate amount of
moral firmness—to imagine himself a
juryman, charged with the solution of
this critical problem. We ask—On
the facts now laid before you, do you
believe Oxford to have been no more
conscious of, or accountable for, his
actions, in twice deliberately firing at
the Queen, than would have been a
baby accidentally pulling the trigger
of a loaded pistol, and shooting its
fond incautious mother or affectionate
attendant?

If Oxford, instead of shooting at
the Queen, had shot himself that
afternoon: would you, being sworn
“to give a just and true verdict
according to the evidence,” have pronounced
him insane—totally unconscious
and irresponsible? Would you
have declared him such, if required to
say ay or no to that question on a
commission of lunacy? Would you
have declared his marriage, on that
afternoon, null and void, on the ground
of his insanity? Would you have
declared his will void? or any contract,
great or small, which he had
entered into? Would you have declared
his vote, in a municipal or parliamentary
election, invalid? If he
had committed some act of petty pilfering
or cheating, would you have
deliberately absolved him from guilt
on the ground of insanity? Would
you, in each and every one of these
cases, have declared, upon your oath,
that you believed Oxford was “labouring
under such a defect of reason,
from disease of the mind, as not to
know the nature and quality of the act
he was doing,—or, if he did know it,
that he did not know he was doing
wrong?”[18] We entreat you to forget
altogether the enormity of the offence
imputed to Oxford—an attempt to
take the life of his Queen: dismiss it,
and all consideration of consequences,
as a disturbing force, and address your
reason exclusively to the question last
proposed. What would be your sworn
answer? We beg you also to bear
in mind from whom has proceeded the
chief evidence in support of the defence
of insanity—a mother, seeking
to rescue her son from the fearful
death of a traitor; and that the attempt
to impugn his mental sanity is not
made till after such a terrible occasion
has arisen for doing so. Had it been
their interest to establish his sanity,
in order to uphold a will of his bequeathing
them a large sum of money,
who sees not how all their evidences
of insanity would have melted into
thin air, and the attempt to magnify
and distort petty eccentricities into
such, have been branded as cruel, unjust,
and disgraceful?

But there came five doctors on the
scene, and at their approach the light
of reason was darkened. These astute
personages—mysterious in their means
of knowledge, and confident in their
powers of extinguishing the common
sense of both judges and jury—came
to demonstrate that the unfortunate
[Pg 557]young gentleman at the bar was no
more the object of punishment than
the unconscious baby aforesaid; no
more aware of the nature and consequences
of the act which he had done
than is the torch with which a haystack
is fired, or the bullet, cannonball,
or dagger with which life is taken
away! But let them speak for themselves—these
wise men of Gotham—these
confident disciples of the
“couldn’t help it” school!

As to the hypothesis proposed, the
reader will not have failed to observe
how inapplicable it was to the proved
facts. Oxford certainly “remained
on the spot” because he could not
possibly have got away; there being
a high wall on one side, high park
railings on the other, and an infuriate
crowd, as well as the Queen’s attendants,
on all sides. He also certainly
“declared he was the person who did
it;” but how absurd to deny what so
many had witnessed?

With every due consideration for
these five gentlemen, as expressing
themselves with undoubted sincerity
and conscientiousness; with the sincerest
respect for the medical profession,
and a profound sense of the perplexities
which its honourable and
able members have to encounter in
steering their course, when called
upon to act in cases of alleged insanity—encountering
often equally undeserved
censure and peril for interfering
and for not interfering—we
beg to enter our stern and solemn protest
on behalf of the public, and the
administration of the justice, against such
“evidence of insanity” as we have
just presented to the reader. It may
really be stigmatised as “The safe
committal of crime made easy to the
plainest capacity.” It proceeds upon
paradoxes subversive of society.
Moral insanity? Absurd misnomer!
Call it rather “immoral insanity,”
and punish it accordingly. Is it not
fearful to see well-educated men of
intellect take so perverted a view of
the conditions of human society—of
the duties and responsibilities of its
members? Absence of assignable motive
an evidence of such insanity as
should exempt from responsibility!
Inability to resist or control a motive
to commit murder a safe ground for
immunity from criminal responsibility!—that
“criminal responsibility
which,” as the present Lord Chancellor,
in replying for the Crown in
Oxford’s case, justly remarked, “secures
the very existence of society.”

Let us look at another aspect of
this medical evidence given on this
memorable occasion. Doctor the
first pronounced his authoritative
decision solely on the evidence given
in court: influenced, it may be, by
his having, many years before, been
called in to attend the prisoner’s
father when labouring under symp[Pg 559]toms
of poisoning by laudanum.
Doctor the second gave merely speculative
evidence, without, as it would
seem, having even seen the prisoner,
and founded solely on what passed at
the trial. Doctor the third never saw
the prisoner before the trial but
once, and then for “perhaps half an
hour,” on the first day of the trial, or
the day before it! How potent that
half hour’s observation! Doctor the
fourth saw the prisoner with doctor
the third, for “perhaps three-quarters
of an hour!” Doctor the fifth was a
practising surgeon of not four years’
standing—owning how “short a time
he had been in practice.” Let us
only surrender our understandings to
this queer quinary, and we arrive at
a short and easy solution—very comfortable,
indeed, for the young gentleman
at the bar, who is doubtless
filled with wonder at finding how
sagaciously they saw into the thoughts
which had been passing through his
mind—the precise state of his feelings,
views, objects, and intentions,
when he fired at the Queen. But in
the mean time we ask, can it be tolerated
that medical gentlemen should
thus usurp the province of both judge
and jury? We answer, no! and
shall place here on record the just
and indignant rebuke of Mr Baron
Alderson to a well-known medical
gentleman, who had thus authoritatively
announced his conclusion on
the recent trial of Robert Pate.

It fell to the lot of Sir Thomas
Wilde to reply for the Crown, in Oxford’s
case, as in that of Frost; and
he discharged the responsible duty
with his usual clearness and cogency.
As to the facts, irrespective of the
question of insanity, a single sentence
disposed of them.

And, with this terse summary of
the proved facts before our eyes, we
ask a question of our own: What
overwhelming evidence of insanity
would not an intelligent and honest
juryman require, to refer such a case
to the category of criminal irresponsibility?

Sir Thomas Wilde vigorously and
contemptuously crushed under foot
the mischievous sophistries of the
medical evidence.

All this surely sounds like an irresistible
appeal to good sense.

Lord Denman directed the jury
with corresponding clearness and decision,
and also in full conformity
with the views of the Solicitor-general,
and with the subsequent annunciation
of the law by the judges.[19]

The jury, thus charged with the
principles of a humane and sound
jurisprudence, retired, and after three
quarters of an hour’s absence returned
with this special verdict: “We find
the prisoner, Edward Oxford, guilty
of discharging the contents of two
pistols; but whether or not they were
loaded with ball has not been satisfactorily
proved to us—he being of
unsound mind at the time.” In other
words, “We find that he did not fire
a pistol loaded with ball because he
was not of sound mind!” They were
sent back, with a mild intimation that
they had not sufficiently applied their
minds to the true question—viz., Did
the prisoner, ay or no, fire a pistol
loaded with ball at the Queen? The
foreman, “We cannot decide the
point, because there is no satisfactory
evidence produced before us, to show
that the pistols were loaded with bullets.”
They retired, to return with
a verdict of “‘Guilty,’ or ‘Not
Guilty,’ on the evidence.” After an
hour’s absence they finally brought
back their verdict, “Guilty, he being
at the time insane!”

Upon the whole matter we are of
opinion,—First, That there was very
satisfactory evidence that the pistols
were loaded with ball, and that the
jury ought to have found their verdict
accordingly. Secondly, If they remained
of opinion, to the last, that
there was no satisfactory evidence on
this point, they ought unquestionably
to have pronounced the prisoner Not
Guilty, independently of any question
as to the prisoner’s state of mind. In
Scotland, the jury would, in such a
case, have returned a verdict of Not
[Pg 561]Proven; but in England, deficient
evidence—i. e. such as leaves the jury
finally in doubt—is regarded as leaving
the charge unproved, &c., requiring
the verdict of Not Guilty. Thirdly,
The defence of insanity utterly failed,
and the evidence offered in support of
it was scarcely worthy of serious consideration.
Lastly, It is possible that
the verdict was given—though by
men anxiously desirous of acting with
mingled mercy and justice—under a
condition of mental irresolution and
confusion, and with a deficiency of
moral courage. The jury either
shrank from the fearful consequences
of a verdict of Guilty, on a charge of
high treason, and yet feared to let the
prisoner loose again upon society; or
there was a compromise between those
who believed that there was, and there
was not, sufficient evidence of the
pistols having contained bullets; and
also between those who were similarly
divided on the subject of the prisoner’s
sanity. Thus stood, thus
stands, the case; and Oxford has
ever since been an inmate of Bedlam:
though Mr Taylor, to whose work on
Medical Jurisprudence we have
already referred, and who is a decided
and able supporter of that theory of
“moral insanity” to which we, in
common with all the Judges, are so
strongly opposed, admits expressly
that, with the exception of M’Naughten’s
case, “there is perhaps none on
record, in English jurisprudence, where
the facts in support of the plea of insanity
were so slight as in that of
Oxford.”[21]

M’Naughten’s Case.

The case of Daniel M’Naughten,
which was tried at the Old Bailey
about two years and a half after that
of Oxford—viz., on the 3d and 4th
March 1843—cannot be approached
without a shudder, as one recalls the
direful deed for which he was brought
to trial—the assassination of Mr
Drummond, whom the murderer had
mistaken for the late Sir Robert Peel!
To a candid philosophical jurist, this
case is one of profound interest, and
of considerable difficulty. The abrupt
interposition of the presiding
judge, the late Chief-justice Tindal—a
step very unusual on such an occasion,
and especially so in the case of
that signally patient and cautious
judge—occasioned much remark at
the time, and a general, if not almost
universal expression of regret that he
had not allowed a case of such magnitude
to run on to the end, and so have
afforded the jury the vast advantage
of hearing that consummate lawyer
Sir William Follett’s commentary upon
the case, set up in behalf of the
prisoner. The unexpected issue of
this dreadful case led, as has been
already explained, to Parliamentary
discussion, and a solemn declaration
by the assembled judges of England
of the true principles applicable to
such cases. We shall not examine
the proceedings as minutely as in the
case of Oxford; but we shall endeavour
to enable the thoughtful reader
to apply to the leading facts the rules
of law laid down by the Judges for the
conduct of these critical investigations.
He can then form an opinion as to
what might have been the result, if
those principles had been strictly
adhered to, and the case had gone on
to its legitimate conclusion. It will
be borne in mind that, as stated at the
close of our account of Oxford’s case,
even Mr Taylor treats the case of
M’Naughten as an acquittal proceeding
on facts, alleged in support of the
defence of insanity, “as slight as those
in Oxford’s case!”