HARPER’S
NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.
No. XXVII.—AUGUST, 1852.—Vol. V.
MEMOIRS OF THE HOLY LAND
BY JACOB ABBOTT
VIEW OF MT. CARMEL FROM THE SEA.
MOUNT CARMEL.
ASPECT OF THE MOUNTAIN.
The Christian traveler, in journeying to the
Holy Land, often obtains his first view of the
sacred shores from the deck of some small Levantine
vessel in which he has embarked at Alexandria,
after having completed his tour among
the wonders of Egypt and the Nile. He ascends,
perhaps, to the deck of his vessel, early in the
morning, summoned by the welcome intelligence
that the land is full in view. Here, as he surveys
the shore that presents itself before him,
the first object which attracts his eye is a lofty
promontory which he sees rising in sublime and
sombre majesty above the surrounding country,
and at the same time jutting boldly into the sea.
It forms, he observes, the seaward terminus of a
mountain range which his eye follows far into
the interior of the country, until the undulating
crest loses itself at last from view in the haze of
distant hills. The massive and venerable walls
of an ancient convent crown its summit; its
sloping sides are enriched with a soft and luxuriant
vegetation; and the surf, rolling in from
the sea, whitens the rocks at its foot with breakers
and foam. This promontory is Mt. Carmel.
GEOGRAPHY OF THE VICINITY.
The geographical situation of Mt. Carmel is
shown by the adjoining map. Palestine in the
time of our Saviour was comprised in three distinct
provinces—Judea, Samaria, and Galilee.
Of these, Judea, which bordered upon the Dead
Sea and the lower portion of the Jordan, was the
most southerly; while Galilee, which was opposite
to the sea of Tiberias and the upper part of
the Jordan, was the most northerly; being separated
from Judea by the mountainous district
of Samaria, which lay between. The region
comprised upon the map is chiefly that of Samaria
and Galilee. The chain of which Mt. Carmel is
the terminus forms the southern and southwestern
boundary of Galilee. A little south of the
boundary was Mt. Gerizim, the holy ground of
the Samaritans. Mt. Gerizim forms a part of
the great central chain or congeries of mountains
which rises in the interior of Palestine, and from
which the Carmel range branches, as a sort of
spur or offshoot, traversing the country in a
westward and northward direction, and continuing
its course until it terminates at the sea.
The other principal mountain groups in the Holy
Land are the ranges of Lebanon on the north,
and the mountainous tract about Jerusalem in
the south.
MAP OF MOUNT CARMEL.
On the northern side of the Carmel chain, at
some distance from the sea, there lies a broad expanse
of extremely rich and fertile country, which,
though not strictly level, is called a plain. It
was known in ancient times as the plain of Jezreel.
It is now called the plain of Esdraelon.
The waters of this plain, flowing westward and
northward along the foot of Mt. Carmel to the
sea, constitute the river Kishon, so celebrated in[Pg 290]
sacred history. The sea itself sets up a little way
into the valley through which this river flows,
forming thus a broad bay to the north of Mt.
Carmel, called the Bay of Acre. The town of
Acre lies at the northern extremity of this bay,
and the town of Haïfa[1] at the southern border of
it, just at the foot of Carmel. The ceaseless action
of the sea has sloped and smoothed the shore
of this bay throughout the whole distance from
Haïfa to Acre, and formed upon it a beach of
sand, which serves the double purpose of a landing-place
for the boats of the fishermen, and a
road for the caravans of travelers that pass to and
fro along the coast. The conformation of the
bay, together with the precise situation of Acre
and Haïfa, as well as the more important topographical
details of the mountain, will be found
very clearly represented in the chart upon the
adjoining page.
NAPOLEON’S ENGINEERS.
The topographical chart of the bay of Acre
here given is one made by the engineers of the
French army during Napoleon’s celebrated expedition
to Egypt and Syria. These engineers
accompanied the army wherever it marched, and
in the midst of all the scenes of excitement, difficulty,
and danger, through which they were continually
passing, devoted themselves to the performance
of the scientific duties which their
commander had assigned them, with a calmness
and composure almost incredible. No possible
excitement or commotion around them seemed to
have power to interrupt or disturb them in their
work. The din and confusion of the camp, the
marches and countermarches of the troops, the
battles, the sieges, the assaults, the excitement
of victory, and the confusion of sudden and unexpected
retreats—all failed to embarrass or disconcert
them. Whatever were the scenes that
might be transpiring around them, they went
quietly and fearlessly on, paying no regard to
any thing but their own proper duties. They
adjusted their instruments; they made their observations,
their measurements, their drawings;
they computed their tables and constructed their
charts; and in the end they brought back to
France a complete daguerreotype, as it were, of
every hill, and valley, and river, and plain, of the
vast surface which they traversed. The great
chart from which the adjoining map is taken was
the last one which they made, for Acre was the
northern termination of Napoleon’s expedition.[2]
MOUNT CARMEL AND THE BAY OF ACRE.
APPROACHES TO MOUNT CARMEL.
By reference to the map, it will be seen that
there are three roads by which Mt. Carmel may
be approached on land. One advances along the
coast from the southward, and passing round the
promontory on the western and northern side,
between its steep declivity and the sea, it turns to
the east, and comes at last to the foot of the
branch road which leads up the mountain to the
convent on the top. The second is the road from
Acre. It may be seen upon the map following
closely the line of the shore on the margin of the
sandy beach which has already been described.
The third comes from Nazareth, in the interior
of the country. It descends from the plain of
Esdraelon by the banks of the Kishon, and joins
the Acre road a little to the east of the town of
Haïfa. After passing through Haïfa, the road
follows the shore for a short distance, and then
a branch diverges to the right, leading to some
ancient ruins on the extremity of the cape. A
little farther on another branch turns off to the
left, and leads up the mountain to the convent,
while the main road continues its course round
the northern and western extremity of the promontory,
and there passes into the road that comes
up on the western coast, as at first described.
Travelers approaching Mt. Carmel from the
interior of the country come generally from
Nazareth by the way of the third road above described,
that is, the one that leads down from the
valley of the Kishon, following the bank of the
stream. The town of Nazareth, where the journey
of the day in such cases is usually commenced,
lies among the hills about midway between
the Mediterranean Sea and the Sea of
Tiberias. The route for some hours leads the
traveler along the northern part of the plain
of Esdraelon, and charms him by the scenes
of beauty and fertility which pass before his
view. He sees rich fields of corn and grain,
groves of the pomegranate, the fig, and the olive,
verdant valleys clothed with the most luxuriant
herbage, masses of hanging wood, that adorn
the declivities of the hills, and descend in capes
and promontories of foliage to beautify the plain,
and ruins of ancient fortresses and towns, scattered
here and there in picturesque and commanding
positions. The whole country is like
a romantic park, with the great chain of Mt.
Carmel extending continuously to the southward
of it, and bounding the view.
BAY OF ACRE.
At length the great plain of Acre, with the
bay, and the broad expanse of the Mediterranean
in the distance, opens before him. The town
of Acre, surrounded with its white walls, stands
just on the margin of the water, at the northern
extremity of the bay; while at the southern point
of it stands Haïfa, sheltered by the mountain,
and adorned by the consular flags of the several
nations who have commercial agents there. In
former times the principal harbor for shipping
was at Acre, but from some change which the
course of time has effected in the conformation
of the coast or in the deposit of sand, the only
deep water is now found at the southern extremity
of the bay, where the Kishon finds its
outlet—and Haïfa has consequently become the
port. It is not improbable, in fact, that the
greater depth of water at this point is to be attributed
to the effect produced by the outflow of
the river in impeding the accumulation of deposits
from the sea.
The river, as will be seen from the map, in[Pg 291]
flowing into the bay passes across the beach of
sand. Its depth and the quantity of water which
issues from it vary very much, according to the
season of the year, and thus the accounts of
travelers who ford it at different periods differ
extremely. In its ordinary condition it is very
easily forded, but sometimes, when swollen with
rains, it overflows the meadows that line its
banks, up the valley, and becomes wholly impassable
near its mouth. In the summer the
stream often becomes so low that the sea, incessantly
rolling in from the offing, fills up the outlet
entirely with sand, and then smoothing over
the dyke which it has made, it forms a beach on
the outer slope of it, and thus the sandy shore
of the bay is carried continuously across the
mouth of the river, and the water is shut back
as by a dam.
The next rain, however, and perhaps even the
ordinary flow of the river, causes the water to
accumulate and rise behind this barrier until it
surmounts it. A small stream then begins to
flow over the beach—rapidly increasing in force
and volume as the sand is washed away—and
thus the river regains once more its accustomed
channel. This alternate closing and opening of
the outlet of a river is a phenomenon often witnessed
in cases where the river, at its mouth,[Pg 292]
traverses a sandy beach on a coast exposed to
winds and storms.[3]
The distance from Haïfa to Acre along the
shore of the bay is about eight miles. Acre
itself has always been a very celebrated fortress,
having figured as the central point of almost all
great military operations in Syria for nearly two
thousand years. It has experienced every possible
form and phase of the fortune of war, having
been assaulted, defended, besieged, destroyed,
and rebuilt again and again, in an endless succession
of changes, and in the experience of
every possible fortune and misfortune which
twenty centuries of uninterrupted military vicissitude
could bring. Within the knowledge of
the present generation it has been the scene of
two terrific conflicts. Perhaps the most important
of these events, in a historical point of view,
was the struggle for the possession of the place
between Napoleon and its English defenders,
and the consequent check which was placed
upon Napoleon’s career, on his advance from
Egypt into Syria. On his arrival at Acre, the
young general found the port in possession of
an English force under the command of Sir Sydney
Smith, and though he made the most desperate
and determined efforts to dislodge them,
he was unable to succeed. He planted his batteries
on the declivities of the hills behind the
town, and cannonaded the walls from that position;
while the English supported the garrison
in their defense of the place, by firing upon the
batteries of the besiegers from ships which they
had anchored in the bay.
DEFENSE OF ACRE.
PRODUCTIONS OF THE COUNTRY.
The plains and valleys which border the Carmel
chain of mountains, especially on the northern
side, are extremely fertile. They yield grapes,
olives, corn, and other similar productions, in the
greatest abundance, while the grass that clothes
the slopes of the surrounding mountains, and
adorns with verdure and beauty a thousand
secluded valleys that wind among them, furnishes
an almost exhaustless supply of food for flocks
and herds. A considerable quantity of wheat,
barley, cotton, and other similar products is exported,
being brought down to Haïfa and Acre
from the interior, on the backs of mules and
camels, led by drivers in long caravans and
trains. One traveler speaks of having been detained
at the gates of Acre, when going out to
make an excursion into the surrounding country,
by a train of one hundred camels, laden with corn,
that were just then coming in.
MISGOVERNMENT.
The commerce of the port, however, would
be vastly greater than it is, were it not for the
exactions of the government which restrict and
burden it exceedingly. It is true that governments
generally maintain themselves by taxing
the commerce of the countries over which they
rule, but the despotic authorities that have borne[Pg 293]
military sway in Syria and Palestine for the last
five hundred years, have done this, as it would
seem, in a peculiarly exorbitant and reckless
manner. A practice is adopted in those countries
of “farming out” the revenue, as it is called;
that is, the government sells the privilege
of collecting a certain tax to some wealthy capitalist,
who pays, or secures payment, in advance,
and then collects from the people what is due,
on his own account. Of course he is invested
with power and authority from the government
to enforce the collection, and as it is a matter of
personal interest to him to make the amount that
he receives as great as possible, he has every
conceivable inducement to be extortionate and
oppressive. The sufferers, too, in such cases
generally find it useless to complain; for the
government know well that, if they wish to obtain
high prices from the farmers of the revenue,
from year to year, they must not obstruct them
in any way in the claims which they make, or
the measures which they adopt, in collecting the
amounts due, from the people.
In the more highly civilized and commercial
nations of the world, a very different system is
adopted. The revenue is never farmed, but it is
collected by officers appointed for the purpose, in
the name and for the benefit of the government;
and generally in such a way, that they who assess
the tax, have no direct pecuniary interest—or,
at most, a very inconsiderable one—in the
amount whether larger or smaller, which they
receive. The assessors and collectors thus occupy,
in some respects, the position of impartial
umpires between the government and the people,
with very slight influences operating upon their
minds, to produce a bias in favor of one side or
the other. Even in this way, the evils and disadvantages
of raising national revenues by taxing
commercial transactions, are very great, while,
in the form that has so long prevailed in Syria
and Palestine, the result is utterly disastrous.
The taxes are increased, under one pretext or
another, until the poor peasant and laborer finds
himself robbed of every thing but the bare means
of subsistence. All hope and possibility
of acquiring property by his industry
and thrift, and of rising to a respectable
position in society are taken
away from him, and he spends his life
in idleness, degradation, and despair.
AN INCIDENT.
An incident strikingly illustrative
of these truths, occurred to a traveler
who was visiting Acre, about the year
1815. One morning, in rambling about
the city, he chanced to come into the
vicinity of the custom house, at the
port, and there he overheard a violent
dispute going on between some fishermen
and a certain farmer of the revenue—probably
a wealthy merchant of the
town—who was standing near. It
seems that a duty of about thirty-three
per cent., that is, one-third part of the
whole price, had been laid upon all
fish that should be taken in the bay and
brought into the port for sale; and the
privilege of collecting the tax had been sold to
the merchant, who was engaged in the dispute.
It had been calculated that the remaining two-thirds
of the value of the fish would be sufficient
to induce the fishermen to continue their vocation.
It proved, however, not to be so. The
cost of boats and outfit, and the other expenses
which were necessarily incurred in the prosecution
of the business, were so great, that the poor
fishermen found when they had returned to the
shore and sold their fares, and paid the expenses
of their trip, that the government tax took so
large a portion of what remained, as to leave
little or nothing over, to reimburse them for their
labor. They accordingly became discouraged,
and began to abandon the employment; so that
the farmer who had bought the right to collect
the tax, was alarmed at finding that the revenue
was likely to fail altogether, inasmuch as for
every five boats that had been accustomed to
go out to fish before, only one went now. The
dispute which attracted the attention of the
traveler was occasioned by the anger of the
farmer, who was assailing the fishermen with
bitter invectives and criminations, and threatening
to compel them to go out to fish, in order
that he might receive his dues.
THE TYRANT DJEZZAR.
For many years extending through the latter
part of the last century, and the earlier portion
of the present one, the narratives of travelers
visiting Acre are filled with accounts of the tyranny
and oppression exercised upon the people
of the country by a certain despot named Djezzar,
the history of whose government illustrates very
forcibly the nature of the injuries to which the
wretched inhabitants of those countries are compelled
to submit. Djezzar, in his infancy was
carried into Egypt a slave, and sold to Ali-Bey,
a celebrated ruler of that country. In the service
of Ali-Bey he rose to high civil stations, and at
length, after passing through a great number
of vicissitudes and romantic adventures, in the
course of which he was transferred to the service
of the Turkish government, he was placed by the
Turks in command of the Pachalik of Acre, in
1775. Here he ruled with such despotic cruelty,
that he made himself an object of universal execration
to all mankind, excepting always those
who had placed him in power; for they seemed
to be pleased rather than otherwise with his remorseless
and terrible energy. One of the first
measures which he adopted when he entered
upon his government, was to confiscate all the
houses of the town of Acre, declaring them the
property of the government, and requiring the
inhabitants to pay rent for them to him. The
taxes were exorbitantly increased, and every
possible pretext was resorted to to deprive the
people of their property, and transfer it to the
government. Land which was left uncultivated
for three years was considered as abandoned by
the owners, and thenceforth fell to him. Whenever
a vessel was stranded upon the coast, he
seized upon every thing that could be saved
from the wreck, as his perquisite. His favorite
mode of punishing those who displeased him,
was to mutilate their persons by cutting off an
ear, a nose, an arm, or a foot, or by taking out
an eye. Those who visited his palace, say that
it was common to see many persons in the ante-chambers
and halls who were disfigured thus,
having incurred the cruel monster’s displeasure
from time to time in the course of their service.
These were his “marked men,” as he called
them—”persons bearing signs of their having
been instructed to serve their master with fidelity.”
His secretary, who was his principal banker and
minister, was deprived of both an ear and an
eye, at the same time, for some offense, real or
imaginary, which he had committed, and yet still
continued to serve his savage master. Djezzar
lived in a massive palace, occupying a well-protected
part of the city of Acre, with gardens in
the rear between the palace and the city wall.
Within this palace was his harem, the residence
of his women. No person but himself was ever
admitted to the harem. He was accustomed to
retire thither every evening through three massive
doors, one within the other, which doors he
always closed and barred with his own hands.
No one knew how many or what women the
harem contained. Additions were often made
to the number, from female slaves that were
presented to Djezzar from time to time; but no
one knew how many were thus introduced, or
what was their fate after they disappeared from
public view. Every possible precaution was
taken to seclude the inmates of this harem in
the most absolute manner from the outer world.
Their food was conveyed to them by means of
a sort of wheel or cylinder, turning in the wall,
and so contrived that those without could not
see who received it. If any one was sick, a
physician was brought to a room where there
was a hole in the wall through which the patient,
concealed on the other side, put her arm, and[Pg 294]
thus the pulse was examined, and a prescription
made. We might fill many pages with curious
details in respect to the life and character, and
peculiar habits, of this extraordinary man, but
we must leave Acre and the bay, and prepare to
ascend the mountain.
HORSEMAN OF ACRE.
THE MOUNTAIN.
The height of Mt. Carmel has been generally
estimated at about fifteen hundred feet. This is
a very unusual elevation for land that rises thus
abruptly from the margin of the sea. Of course,
from every cliff, and rock, and projecting head-land
on the higher portions of it there is obtained
a widely extended and most commanding view
both over the water and over the land. The sea
lies toward the west; the prospect is consequently
in that direction unobstructed to the horizon,
and the whole western quarter of the sky is fully
exposed to view. It is by understanding the
position of Mt. Carmel in this respect, that we
appreciate the full force and beauty of the passage
that describes the coming of the rain, after
the destruction of the priests of Baal by the
Prophet Elijah; for it is always, as we observe,
in the western sky, through the operation of
some mysterious and hidden laws which human
philosophy has not yet been able to unfold, that
the clouds which produce sudden summer showers
arise. It is almost invariably there, that
those rounded and dome-like condensations are
formed, which from small and almost unperceived
beginnings expand and swell until they envelop
the whole heavens in darkness and gloom, and
then sweep over the earth in tempests of thunder,
lightning, and rain. The narrative of the
sacred writer, describing the event is as follows.
AHAB AND THE RAIN.
“And Elijah said unto Ahab, Get thee up,
eat and drink; for there is a sound of abundance
of rain. So Ahab went up to eat and to drink.
And Elijah went up to the top of Carmel; and
he cast himself down upon the earth, and put
his face between his knees, and said to his servant,
Go up now, look toward the sea. And he
went up, and looked and said, There is nothing.
And he said, Go again seven times. And it
came to pass at the seventh time that he said,
Behold there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea
like a man’s hand. And he said, Go up, say
unto Ahab, Prepare thy chariot, and get thee
down that the rain stop thee not. And it came
to pass, in the mean while, that the heaven was
black with clouds and wind, and there was a
great rain.”—1 Kings, xviii. 41-45.
The traveler, as he looks up to the summit of
the mountain from the beach of the Bay of Acre,
over the sands of which he is slowly making his
way toward the foot of the ascent, pictures in
his imagination the form of the servant of Elijah
standing upon some projecting pinnacle, and
looking off over the sea. He loses for the moment
his recollection of the age in which he
lives, and under the influence of a temporary
illusion, forgetting the five-and-twenty centuries
which have elapsed since the days of Elijah, almost[Pg 295]
looks to see the chariot and horsemen of
Ahab riding away up the valley, in obedience to
the prophet’s command.
ASCENT OF THE MOUNTAIN.
The road to the mountain, as will appear from
the map, passes through Haïfa. Travelers and
pilgrims, however, seldom make any stay in the
town. There is no inn there to detain them.
The convent is the inn—on the top of the
mountain. After passing Haïfa, the road, as may
be seen upon the map, follows the line of the
shore for about half a mile, and then turns a
little inland, while a branch of the main road,
diverging to the right, continues along the shore
of the sea. This branch leads to the extremity
of the cape, where are situated the ruins of
an ancient place named Porphyrion, and also a
small fortress, on the point. Porphyrion was a
place of some consequence in former times, but
it went gradually to decay, and at last when
Haïfa was built it was entirely abandoned.
A short distance further on, the traveler comes
to another branch, where a mule-path turns off
to the left from the main road, and leads up the
mountain. The ascent is steep, but the path is
so guarded by a parapet on the outer side wherever
required, that it awakens no sense of danger.
The declivities of the mountain, above and
below the path, are clothed with trees and herbage,
with gray walls, forming picturesque cliffs,
and precipices, appearing here and there among
them. There is a profusion, too, of wild flowers
of every form and hue, which attract and
charm the traveler, wherever he turns. He looks
off at every salient point that he passes in his
ascent, over the bay. He sees the white walls
of the city of Acre rising from the margin of the
water at the extremity of it, far in the distance—and
never ceases to admire the smooth and
beautiful beach which lies spread out before
him, its broad expanse broken, perhaps, here and
there on the side toward the sea, with the wrecks
of ships which lie there half buried, and enlivened
on the land with trains of mules or of camels
passing toward Acre or Haïfa, or by some picturesque
group of tents pitched upon the plain—the
encampment of some wandering tribe of
Arabs, or of a party of European travelers. Further
inland, he surveys broad fields of luxuriant
vegetation, variegated with every shade of green
and brown, and groves of trees that extend along
the margin of the rivers, and crown the summits
of the distant hills. In a calm and clear summer’s
morning, the observer looks down upon
this brilliant scene of verdure and beauty, as
upon a map, and lingers long on his way, to
study minutely every feature of it.
THE ASCENT OF THE MOUNTAIN.
THE RIVER BELUS AND THE DISCOVERY OF GLASS.
About midway between Haïfa and Acre, the
traveler, pausing at some resting-place in the
progress of his ascent, may trace the course of
the river Belus, as it meanders through the plain
beneath him, northwardly, toward an outlet
just in the rear of Acre, where it empties
into the sea. The course and direction of
the stream are delineated upon the map near
the commencement of this article. This
river is celebrated as the place where, according
to ancient story, the discovery of the art
of making glass was first made by means of
an accidental vitrification which chanced to
take place under certain peculiar circumstances,
on its shores.[4] Glass is composed
essentially of silicious substances—such as
sand—combined with certain alkalies by
fusion. For sand, though very refractory
if exposed alone to the influence of heat,
when mixed with these alkaline substances
fuses easily, and vitrifies, that is it forms a
glass, which is more or less perfect according
to the precise nature of the substances
employed, and the arrangements of the process.
The story of the origin of the discovery
is, that a vessel came into the mouth
of the Belus from the Bay of Acre, laden
with certain fossil alkalies which were found
somewhere along the coast, and were used
in those times for certain purposes, and that
the sailors landed on the beach and built a fire
there, with a view of taking supper on the
shore. When the fire was made they looked
about the beach for stones to use as a support
for their kettle; but the soil being alluvial and
sandy they were not able to find any stones, and
so they brought instead three fragments of the
alkaline fossil, whatever it might have been,[Pg 296]
with which their vessel was loaded. These
fragments they placed in the margin of the fire
which they had built upon the sand, and rested
the kettle upon them; thus by means of the alkali,
the sand, the metal, and the fire, all the
conditions were combined that are essential to
produce a vitrification, and after their supper
was ended the seamen found the glassy substance
which had been produced, lying beneath
the fire. They made their discovery known, and
the experiment was repeated. Soon after this
the regular manufacture of glass for vessels and
ornaments was commenced in the city of Sidon,
which lies on the coast of the Mediterranean,
not many miles north of the mouth of the Belus,
and from Sidon the art soon spread into every
part of the civilized world.
THE DISCOVERY OF GLASS.
THE CONVENT.
The time required for the ascent from Haïfa
to the convent is about an hour—the buildings
of the institution, though often spoken of as upon
the top of the mountain, being really only about
two-thirds of the way up to the highest summit.
The condition in which the various travelers who
have visited the spot within the last hundred
years have found the institution, and the accounts
which they have given of the edifice and of the
inmates, varies extremely according to the time
of the visit. In fact, after Napoleon’s defeat before
Acre, the convent was entirely destroyed,
and the spot was for a time deserted. The cause
of this was that Napoleon took possession of the
edifice for the purpose of using it as a hospital,
and quartered his wounded and disabled soldiers
there. The Turks, consequently, when they
came and found the institution in the possession
of the French, considered themselves authorized
to regard it as a post of the enemy. They accordingly
slaughtered the troops which they found
there, drove away the monks, and blew up the
buildings. From this time the convent remained
desolate and in ruins for more than twenty years.
At length, between 1820 and 1830, a celebrated
monk, known by the name of John Baptist, undertook
the work of building up the institution
again. With great zeal, and with untiring patience
and perseverance, he traversed many
countries of Europe and Asia to gather funds for
the work, and to remove the various obstacles
which are always in the way in the case of such
an undertaking. He succeeded, at length, in
accomplishing the work, and the convent was
rebuilt in a more complete and extended form
than ever before. Since that time, accordingly,
the traveler finds, when he reaches the brow of
the mountain where the convent buildings stand,
a stately and commodious edifice ready to receive
him. Like most of the other convents and monasteries
of Asia, the institution serves the purpose
of an inn. A monk receives the traveler
and his party, and conducts them to a commodious
sitting-room, furnished with a carpet, with
tables, and with chairs. A corridor from this
apartment leads to bed-rooms in the rear, furnished
likewise in a very comfortable manner,
with beds, chairs, and tables;—articles which
attract the attention of the traveler, and are specially
mentioned in his journal, as they are very
rarely to be found in the East. On the terraces
and balconies of the building the visitor, wearied
with the toil of the ascent, finds seats where he
reposes in peace, and enjoys the illimitable prospect
which the view commands, both up and
down the coast, and far out over the waters of
the Mediterranean Sea.
Travelers are entertained at the convent as at
an inn, except that in place of a formal reckoning
when they depart, they make their acknowledgment
for the hospitality which they have received
in the form of a donation to the monastery,
the amount of which custom prescribes. The
rule is that no guest is to remain longer than a
fortnight—the arrangements being designed for
the accommodation of travelers, and not of permanent
guests. This rule, however, is not
strictly enforced, except so far as to give to parties
newly arriving the precedence in respect to
choice of rooms, over those whose fortnight has
expired. While the guests remain, they are very
kindly and hospitably entertained by the monks,[Pg 297]
who appear before them clothed in a hood and
cassock of coarse brown cloth, with a rope girdle
around the loins, and sandals upon the feet—the
ancient habit of the order. Their countenances
wear a thoughtful and serious, if not sad
expression.
THE GROTTOS AND CAVES.
The halo of sacredness which invests Mt.
Carmel proceeds from the memory of the prophet
Elijah, who, while he lived on the earth, made
this mountain his frequent resort, if not his usual
abode. This we learn from the Scriptures themselves,
as well as from the long and unbroken
testimony of ancient tradition. The memorable
transactions connected with the destruction of
the priests of Baal, in the time of Ahab, at the
conclusion of which came the sudden rain, as
described in the passage already quoted, is supposed
to have taken place at the foot of the
mountain near this spot—and the ground on
which the priests were slain is
still shown, as identified by ancient
tradition, on the banks of
the Kishon, a little way up the
valley.[5] The mountain above is
full of grottos and caves. It is
said that more than a thousand
have been counted. The one
which is supposed to have been
Elijah’s special abode is now
within the buildings of the convent.
Higher up, among the
rocks behind the convent, is another
which is called Elisha’s cave,
and at some distance below, in
the bottom of a frightful chasm,
into which the traveler descends
by a steep and dangerous path,
and which opens toward the sea,
is another cavern, the largest and
most noted of all. It forms a
large and lofty apartment, vaulted
above, and is said to have been
the place where Obadiah concealed
and protected the company
of prophets, one hundred and fifty in number,
and fed them with bread and water while they
remained in their retreat.[6] This cave is called
accordingly the cave of the prophets. The situation
of this grotto is beyond description solitary,
desolate, and sublime. Nothing is to be seen
from within it but the open sea, and no sound
is heard but the breaking of the surf, as it rolls
in upon the rocky shore six hundred feet below.
THE PETRIFACTIONS.
Among the other objects of interest and attraction
for the pilgrims and travelers that visit
Mt. Carmel, are certain curious stones, well
known to geologists as a common mineral formation,
but which pass with the pilgrims and
monks for petrified grapes, dates, or melons, according
to their size and configuration. These
stones are round in form, and are often hollow,
being lined with a crystalline incrustation within,
the crystals representing, in the imagination
of the pilgrim, the seeds of the fruit from which
the specimen was formed. These fossils are
found in a part of the mountain remote from the
convent, where a stream comes down from the
heights above, and they are supposed to be miraculous
in their origin. The legend accounting
for the production of them is this.
In the time of Elijah there was a garden and
a vineyard on the spot, and one day as Elijah
was passing that way, weary and faint with his
journey, he looked over the wall and asked the
owner of the ground to give him some of the
melons and fruits that he saw growing there.
The man refused the wayfarer’s request, saying
jestingly in his refusal, that those things were
not melons and fruits, but only stones. “Stones
then let them be,” said Elijah, and so passed on.
The gardener, on turning to examine the fruits
of his garden, found to his consternation that
they had all been turned into stone, and ever
since that day the ground has been under a
curse, and has produced nothing but stony semblances
of fruit, instead of the reality. These
supposed petrifactions are greatly prized by all
who visit the mountain. Well informed travelers
value them as specimens illustrative of a very
singular superstition, and as souvenirs of their
visit to the spot;—while monks and pilgrims
believe them to possess some supernatural virtue.
They suppose that though Elijah’s denunciation
proved a curse to the ground in respect
to the owner, in causing it to produce these
flinty mockeries, the stones themselves, being
miraculous in their nature and origin, are endued
with some supernatural power to protect and
bless those who reverently collect and preserve
them.
ELIJAH AND THE GARDENER.
ORIGIN OF THE CARMELITE ORDER.
The convent of Mt. Carmel, as alluded to and
described by travelers during the last five hundred
years is to be understood as denoting not
a single building, but a series of buildings, that
have risen, flourished, and gone to decay on the
same spot, in a long succession, like a dynasty
of kings following each other in a line on the
same throne. The grottos and caverns which
are found upon the mountain began to be occupied
at a very early period by hermits and solitary
monks, who lived probably at first in a state
of separation from each other as well as of seclusion
from the world. After a time however they
began to combine together, and to live in edifices
specially constructed for their use, and for
the last thousand years the Carmelites have constituted
a well known and numerous religious
order, having spread from their original seat and
centre to every part of Europe, and taken a very
active and important part in the ecclesiastical
affairs of modern times. Every religious order
of the Roman Church prides itself on the antiquity
of its origin, and the traditions of the Carmelites
for a long time carried back the history
of their society to a very remote period indeed—not
merely to the Christian era, but from the time
of Christ and the apostles back to Elijah, and
from Elijah to Enoch. In discussing this subject,
however, one ecclesiastical writer very gravely
maintains that the Enoch, if there was one,
among the founders of the Carmelite fraternity,
could not have been the patriarch Enoch, the
father of Methusaleh, since it is plain that there
could have been no Carmelite monks among those
saved in the ark, at the time of the deluge, for
the vow of celibacy was an essential rule of the
order from the beginning, and the sons of Noah,
who were the only men besides Noah himself
that were saved from the flood, were all married
men, and took their wives with them when they
went into the ark!
These traditions, however, ascribing a very
high antiquity to the order of the Carmelites,
were allowed to pass for many centuries with very
little question; but at last, about two hundred
years ago, certain religious historians belonging
to other monastic orders, in the course of the investigations
which they made into the early history
of the church, came to the conclusion that
the institution of the Carmelites was founded
in the twelfth century of the Christian era. The
earliest authentic information that they could
find, they said, in respect to its origin was the
account given by a traveler by the name of John
Phocas, who visited the mountain in 1185, in
the course of a tour which he was making in the
Holy Land. He relates that he ascended Mt.
Carmel, and that he found there the cave of
Elijah, describing it as it now appears. He also
states that there was a monastery there which
had been founded a few years before by a venerable
monk, gray-headed and advanced in years,
who had come upon the mountain in obedience
to a revelation which he had received from the
Prophet Elijah, enjoining upon him so to do, and
that he had built a small tower for a dwelling,
and a small chapel for the purpose of worship,
and that he had established himself here with
ten companions of the same religious profession
with himself; and this was the true origin of
the convent of Mt. Carmel.
A CONTROVERSY.
The Carmelite monks throughout Europe were
every where greatly displeased at the publication
of this account, which cut off at a single blow
some two thousand years from the antiquity of
their order, even supposing their pretensions to
go no farther back than to the time of Elijah.
A protracted and very bitter controversy arose.
Volumes after volumes were published—the quarrel,
as is usual with religious disputes, degenerating
in character as it advanced, and growing
continually more and more rancorous and bitter,
until at last the Pope interposed and put an end
to the dispute by a bull. The bull did not attempt
to decide the question; it only silenced
the combatants. Nothing more was to be said
by any party, or under any pretext, on the origin
of the institution of the Carmelites, but the
whole subject was entirely interdicted. This
bull, the issuing of which was a most excellent
act on the part of his Holiness, proved an effectual
remedy for the evil which it was intended
to suppress. The dispute was suddenly terminated,
and though the question was in form left
undecided, it was settled in fact, for it has since
been generally admitted that the story of John
Phocas was true, and that Mt. Carmel, though
inhabited by hermits and individual recluses long
before, was not the seat of a regularly organized
society of Monks until nearly twelve centuries
after the Christian era.
THE MONK ST. BASIL.
The Carmelites themselves were accustomed
to maintain that the earliest written rule for the
government of their order was given them by a
very celebrated ancient monk, known in history
as St. Basil. St. Basil lived about three hundred
years after the time of Christ. He was
descended from a distinguished family, and received
an excellent education in early life, in the
course of which he made very high attainments
in all the branches of knowledge customarily
pursued in those days. His mind, however, being
strongly impressed with a sense of religious
obligation, he determined not to engage in the
duties of the profession for which he had been
trained, but to seclude himself from the world,
in accordance with the custom that prevailed in
those days, and spend his life in religious meditation
and prayer. As a preliminary step he
determined on taking a journey into the countries
where the practice of religious retirement
had begun to prevail, in order to visit the hermits,
recluses, and monks, in their dens and
caves, and become practically acquainted with
the mode of life which these voluntary exiles
from the world were accustomed to lead. He
accordingly set out upon his travels, and in the
course of a few years he explored Egypt, Palestine,
Syria, Asia Minor, and other countries still[Pg 299]
farther east, in order to visit and converse with
all the monks and hermits that he could find, in
the deserts and solitudes to which they had retired.
We can not here give the subsequent
particulars of his life. It is sufficient to say
that his learning, his high rank, his exalted
character, and perhaps his honest and conscientious
piety, combined to raise him in the end to
a very commanding position in respect to the
whole monastic world while he lived, and to inspire
many succeeding generations with a great
veneration for his memory. He was believed to
have been during his life an object of the special
and miraculous protection of heaven; for it is
recorded as sober historic truth, that at one time,
during the latter part of his career, when certain
theological enemies had prevailed in obtaining a
sentence of banishment against him, and the decree,
properly drawn up, was brought to the
emperor to sign, the pen which was put into the
emperor’s hand broke suddenly into pieces as
soon as it touched the paper. The emperor
called for another pen, but on attempting to use
it the same result followed. This was done
three times, and at last, as the emperor seemed
determined to persist in his design, his hand
was seized with a sudden and uncontrollable
trembling, and the chair upon which he was
sitting broke down, and let him fall upon the
floor. The emperor now perceived that he was
contending against God, and taking up the decree
he destroyed it by tearing it in pieces.
Now the Carmelites maintained that this St.
Basil was a monk of their order, that he was one
of the successors of Elijah, that they had obtained
their first written rule of their order from
him, and that the Basilians, an order of monks
taking their name from him and well known
throughout Europe in the middle ages, were to
be considered as only a branch, or offshoot, from
the ancient Carmelite institution. Out of this
state of things there arose subsequently a very
extraordinary controversy between the Basilians
and the Carmelites as will presently appear.
RULES OF THE ORDER.
The claim of the Carmelites to have received
their first written charter from St. Basil is not
very well sustained, as the earliest authentic
evidence of any written rule for the government
of the institution relates to one given them by
the patriarch of Jerusalem in 1205, about thirty
years after the time when the monastery was
founded, according to John Phocas’s narrative.
This “rule,” or charter as it would be called at
the present day, consisted of sixteen articles,
and some particulars of it may be interesting to
the reader as illustrating the nature of this
species of document. The first article treats of
the election of the prior of the monastery, and
of the obedience which was to be rendered to
him by the other monks. The second treats of
the cells in which the brethren were to live, and
prescribes that they should be separated from
each other in such a way that there could be no
intercourse or communication between the respective
inmates. The third contains regulations
in respect to the cell of the prior, its situation
and relation to the other cells. The fifth
requires the monks to remain constantly each
within his own cell except when called away by
regularly prescribed duties elsewhere, and to
devote himself in his retirement to the work of
prayer and meditation. The sixth prescribes
certain regulations in respect to divine service.
By the seventh the monks are forbidden to possess
any private property of any kind. The
eighth requires the brethren of the monastery to
build an oratory or place of prayer in some central
place, near the cells, and to assemble there
every morning to hear mass. The ninth prescribes
rules for the internal discipline of the
institution. The tenth enjoins certain fast days.
The eleventh forbids the use of flesh for food
entirely. The twelfth exhorts the monks to
clothe themselves with certain spiritual armor
which it describes. The thirteenth enjoins upon
them to labor with their hands, in cultivating the
fruits of the earth in their little gardens. The
fourteenth enjoins absolute silence upon them,
from vespers until the break of day on the following
morning. The fifteenth inculcates upon
them the duty of humility and of devoting themselves
to prayer; and the sixteenth closes the
series by exhorting them to be always obedient
and submissive to the prior.
EARLY MONASTIC LIFE.
There is no question that the monastic system
of Christian Europe, established originally by
such beginnings as these, led in the end to evil
consequences and results of the most deplorable
character, and we are accustomed, as Protestants,
to believe that there is nothing that is not worthy
of unqualified condemnation in it from beginning
to end. But when we dismiss from our
minds the ideas and associations with which the
religious history of the last five hundred years has
invested every thing that pertains to monastic
life, and look at such a community as this of
Mt. Carmel as it was in its original inception and
design, we shall find it impossible to ascribe the
conduct of those simple-minded recluses to any
other motive than a desire to withdraw themselves
from the world, in a spirit of honest self-denial,
in order to live nearer to God, and enjoy the
peace and happiness of daily and uninterrupted
communion with him. And as to the delusion
and folly of the course which they pursued, in
order to judge impartially, we must look at the circumstances
of the case as they really were, and
see how effectually, in the arrangements which
the hermits made, all the essential requisites for
human comfort and happiness were secured.
The mountain which they chose for their retreat
was beautiful beyond description; the soil was
fertile, the air was balmy and pure, and such was
the climate that the season with them was an
almost perpetual summer. They had gardens
to till, which produced them an abundance of
fruits and vegetables, and in those climes the
human constitution requires no other food. The
grottos in which they lived were dry, and formed
undoubtedly very safe and not uncomfortable[Pg 300]
dwellings. They suffered neither heat nor cold,
for in Palestine cold is seldom known, and though
the sun is sometimes hot, and the air sultry, in
the valleys, the mountain which they dwelt upon
rises into a region of perpetual salubrity, where
there is always an atmosphere of soft and balmy
air reposing in the groves, or breathing gently
over the summit. Besides all these natural advantages
of their situation, their course of daily
duty gave them healthful and agreeable employment.
Their hours were systematically arranged,
and their occupations, though varied in
kind, were regular in rotation and order. Thus,
on the whole, though there was doubtless much
of superstition and of error in their ideas, still
we are inclined to think that there are some
usages and modes of life not at all monastic in
their character—to be witnessed among the world-following
Christians of the present day, in palaces
of wealth and prosperity—which exhibit
quite as much delusion and folly as was ever
evinced by these poor world-abandoning monks,
in the caves and grottos of Mt. Carmel.
THE HERMITS OF MOUNT CARMEL.
THE DISPUTE WITH THE BASILIANS.
A society of monks once established, depends
of course for its continuance and prosperity on
external additions, and not on any internal
growth; for since celibacy is the rule of all monastic
orders, there can not be in such communities,
as in the case of an ordinary hamlet or
village, any natural sequence of generations. A
man is never born a monk: so that monasticism
has at least one of the marks and characteristics
of a monstrosity. It does not propagate its
kind.
Notwithstanding this, however, the institution
on Mt. Carmel gradually increased. Accessions
were made from time to time to the numbers of the
monks, until at length the order became so numerous
that several branch institutions were established
in different parts of Europe, and the Carmelites
became very generally known throughout the
Christian world. We can not here, however, go
away from the mountain to follow the society in
its general history, though we will digress from
our immediate subject so far as to give a brief
account of the singular controversy which arose
in subsequent years between the Carmelites and
the Basilians, a controversy which not only exhibits
in a striking point of view some of the peculiar
ideas and religious usages of the times in
which it occurred, but illustrates certain important
principles in respect to the nature of religious
controversy, that are applicable to the disputes
of every age. The question in this case
related to the costume in which the prophet
Elijah was represented in a certain picture belonging
to a church which the Basilians built
near Messina, in the island of Sicily. The church
was built in the year 1670, and the open controversy
arose then; but the origin of it may be
traced to a period antecedent to that time. It
seems that in 1080, six hundred years before the
dispute to which we are referring commenced, a[Pg 301]
certain Sicilian potentate built a church near
Mt. Etna, in honor of the prophet Elijah, as a
token of his gratitude to the prophet for appearing
to him in a visible form at one time when he
was involved in very imminent danger, in his
wars with the Saracens, and for interposing to
protect him. He also built a monastery in connection
with the church, and established a society
of Basilian monks in it.
It seems that at the time when the church and
monastery were built, a picture of the prophet
Elijah was painted and hung in the church, where
it remained without exciting any question, for
six hundred years.
At length at the expiration of that time the
buildings of the establishment having become
very old, and being often greatly damaged, and
the lives of the inmates seriously endangered by
the shocks of earthquakes and the volcanic eruptions
to which their situation so near to Mt. Etna
exposed them, it was determined to remove the
institution to another place, several miles distant
from its original location, where the ground was
more secure. The old picture of Elijah was however
found to be too much decayed to be removed.
A careful copy of it was therefore made, the artist
taking care to transfer, as nearly as possible,
to his copy, both the features and the costume
of the original. The following engraving is a
faithful representation of this portrait and of the
dress which became the subject of the dispute,
except of course that the colors are not shown.
The shoulders are covered with a cloak which
in the painting was red. Beneath the cloak was
a tunic, formed of the skin of some animal,
which descended to the knees. There were sandals
on the feet. There was a sword tipped with
flame in the hand, and the head was covered
with a red cap trimmed with ornaments of gold.
THE ELIJAH OF THE BASILIANS.
This painting in its original state had hung in
its place in the old convent during the whole six
hundred years without attracting any special
notice; but when the copy was made and hung
up in the new convent, it became an object of
greater attention, and the Carmelites who saw
or heard of it were much displeased with the costume,
inasmuch as it was not the costume of their
order. The painting by exhibiting the prophet
in such a dress, seemed to deny that Elijah had
been a Carmelite, and to claim him as belonging
to some other order. They complained to the
Basilians of the injustice done them, and demanded
that the obnoxious costume should be changed.
Finding, however, that their complaints and remonstrances
were unavailing, they appealed to
the Archbishop of Sicily, praying him to interpose
his authority to redress the injury which
they were suffering, and to compel the Basilians
to take down the painting in question, the display
of which was so dishonorable to the ancient order
of Mt. Carmel. The Basilians in reply alleged
that the costume of the portrait was no innovation
of theirs, and they were not responsible for
it at all. The work, they said, was a faithful copy
of an ancient painting that had hung for six
hundred years, unquestioned and uncomplained
of, in their former monastery, and that they could
not give up the ancient traditions and relics of
their institution; and they were especially unwilling
to consent that the prophet Elijah should
be represented in their church in a Carmelite
dress, since that would prejudice the ancient
claims of the Basilian order.
SETTLEMENT OF THE DISPUTE.
THE AUTHORIZED ELIJAH.
The Archbishop of Sicily, after a long hearing
of the parties to this dispute, refused to interpose,
and finally the case was carried by the Carmelites
to Rome, and laid before a certain board of the
Roman church called the College of Rites, a sort
of tribunal having jurisdiction of all questions
of this nature that might arise in the Catholic
church, and assume sufficient importance to come
before them. Here the Carmelites brought forward
their cause, and offered their complaints in
language more earnest than ever. They represented
in very strong terms the deep dishonor
which the Basilians were inflicting upon them in
publicly exhibiting the prophet Elijah—the patriarch
and the father of their order—dressed in
a cloak, and wearing a red cap upon his head, as
if he were a Turkish pashaw. To give force and
emphasis to their plea they exhibited to the sacred
college before whom the cause was to be tried, a
representation of the picture, colored like the
original, in order that the judges might see for
themselves how flagrant was the wrong which
they endured, and how much cause they had to
complain. After many long and patient hearings
of the case before the college, and many fruitless
attempts to find some mode satisfactory to all
parties, for settling the dispute, the college finally
decided upon a middle course, a sort of forced
compromise which gave the victory to neither
party. The costume of the painting was ordered
to be changed. The cap was to be taken away[Pg 302]
from the head, and the sandals from the feet, and
the red cloak was to be replaced by one of a
saffron color. The tunic of skin was to be retained,
and it was to be bound about the waist
with a leathern girdle. A new picture was accordingly
painted in accordance with this decision,
as represented in the above engraving.
The controversy occupied ten years; it gave rise
to protracted and voluminous proceedings, and
embroiled a great number of partisans among all
ranks and orders of the church:
and by comparing the two engravings
the reader will see at a
glance the amount of the difference
about which the combatants
were contending. It might excite
surprise in our minds that a
large section of the Christian
church could thus be engaged
for ten years in an earnest, expensive,
and bitter controversy
about the costume of a painting,
were it not that we sometimes see
examples at the present day, of
disputes equally earnest and protracted,
about points smaller and
more shadowy still. It ought,
however, in strict justice to be
said that the real questions at issue
in disputes about religious
rites and forms, are not usually
as insignificant as they seem.
Within and beyond the outward
symbol there usually lies some
principle of religious faith, which
is, after all, the real object of the controversy.
In this case, for example, the comparative claims
to antiquity and pre-eminence on the part of
two powerful religious orders constituted the real
question at issue. The costume of the painting
formed only the accidental battle ground,
as it were, on which the war was waged. It
is thus with a great many religious controversies,
where at first view it would seem that the
point at issue is wholly inadequate to account
for the degree of interest taken in the dispute.
The explanation is that the apparent question is
not the real one. The outward aspect of the
contest seems to indicate that the combatants
are merely disputing about a form, while they
are really contending for a principle that lies
concealed beneath it. They are like soldiers at
a siege, who fight on outer walls, in themselves
worthless, to defend homes and fire-sides that
are concealed within, entirely out of view.
DESCENT FROM THE MOUNTAIN.
THE SERPENT.
But we must return to the mountain, though
we return to it only to come down, for it is time
that our visit to it should be ended. In his excursions
around the convent during his stay on
the mountain, the visitor is somewhat restricted
in respect to the range that he can safely take,
by fear of the wild beasts that infest the jungles
and thickets that grow densely on the declivities
of the mountain, and around the base of it, especially
on the southern side. Panthers, hyenas,
wild boars, and strange serpents, make these
forests their abode, occupying, perhaps, in many
cases, the caves and grottos of the ancient recluses,
for their dens. Many tales are told by the
monks of these savage beasts, and of the dangers
which pilgrims and travelers have incurred from
them. There is an account of a child which was
found in a certain situation dead, with a monstrous
serpent coiled upon its breast. On examination
of the body no mark of any bite or
wound could be perceived, and it was accordingly
supposed that the life of the little sufferer
had been extinguished by the chill of the body
of the reptile, or by some other mysterious and[Pg 303]
deadly agency, which it had power to exert.
Even the roadway leading up and down the
mountain is not always safe, it would seem, from
these dangerous intruders. It is rocky and solitary,
and is bordered every where with gloomy
ravines and chasms, all filled with dense and
entangled thickets, in which, and in the cavernous
rocks of which the strata of the mountain are
composed, wild beasts and noxious animals of
every kind find a secure retreat. The monks relate
that not many years ago a servant of the
convent, who had been sent down the mountain
to Haïfa, to accompany a traveler, was attacked
and seized by a panther on his return. The
panther, however, instead of putting his victim
immediately to death, began to play with him as a
cat plays with a mouse which she has succeeded
in making her prey—holding him gently with
her claws, for a time, and then, after drawing
back a little, darting upon him again, as if to
repeat and renew the pleasure of capturing such
a prize. This was continued so long, that the
cries of the terrified captive brought to the spot
some persons that chanced to be near, when the
panther was terrified in her turn, and fled into
the forests; and then the man was rescued from
his horrible situation unharmed.
THE PANTHER.
For these and similar reasons, travelers who
ascend to the convent of Mt. Carmel enjoy but
little liberty there, but must confine their explorations
in most cases to the buildings of the
monks, and to some of the nearest caves of the
ancient recluses. Still the spot is rendered so
attractive by the salubrity of the air, the intrinsic
beauty of the situation, the magnificence
of the prospect, and the kind and attentive demeanor
of the monks, that some visitors have
recommended it as a place of permanent resort
for those who leave their homes in the West in
pursuit of health, or in search of retirement and
repose. The rule that requires those who have
been guests of the convent more than two weeks
to give place to others more recently arrived,
proves in fact to be no serious difficulty. Some
kind of an arrangement can in such cases always
be made, though it is seldom that any occasion
arises that requires it. The quarters,
too, though plain and simple, are comfortable
and neat, and although the visitor is somewhat
restricted, from causes that have already been
named, in respect to explorations of the mountain
itself, there are many excursions that can
be made in the country below, of a very attractive
character. He can visit Haïfa, he can
ride or walk along the beach to Acre; he can
go to Nazareth, or journey down the coast, passing
round the western declivity of the mountain.
In these and similar rambles he will find
scenes of continual novelty to attract him,
and be surrounded every where with the
forms and usages of Oriental life.
LEAVING MOUNT CARMEL.
The traveler who comes to Mt. Carmel
by the way of Nazareth and the
plain of Esdraelon, in going away from
it generally passes round the western
declivity of the mountain, and thence
proceeds to the south, by the way of the
sea. On reaching the foot of the descent,
where the mountain mule-path comes out
into the main road, as shown upon the
map near the commencement of this article,
he turns short to the left, and goes
on round the base of the promontory,
with the lofty declivities of the mountain
on one hand, and a mass of dense forests
on the other, lying between the road and
the shore. As he passes on, the road,
picturesque and romantic from the beginning,
becomes gradually wild, solitary,
and desolate. It leads him sometimes
through tangled thickets, sometimes under
shelving rocks, and sometimes it
brings him out unexpectedly to the shore
of the sea, where he sees the surf rolling
in upon the beach at his feet, and far over
the water the setting sun going down to his rest
beneath the western horizon. At length the twilight
gradually disappears, and as the shades of
the evening come on, lights glimmer in the solitary
villages that he passes on his way; but there
is no welcome for him in their beaming. At
length when he deems it time to bring his day’s
journey to an end, he pitches his tent by the
wayside in some unfrequented spot, and before
he retires to rest for the night, comes out to take
one more view of the dark and sombre mountain
which he is about to leave forever. He stands
at the door of his tent, and gazes at it long and
earnestly, before he bids it farewell, equally impressed
with the sublime magnificence of its
situation and form, and with the solemn grandeur
of its history.
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.
BY JOHN S. C. ABBOTT.
FIRST CONSUL FOR LIFE.
France was now at peace with all the world.
It was universally admitted that Napoleon
was the great pacificator. He was the idol of
France. The masses of the people in Europe,
every where regarded him as their advocate and
friend, the enemy of aristocratic usurpation, and
the great champion of equality. The people of
France no longer demanded liberty. Weary
years of woe had taught them gladly to relinquish
the boon. They only desired a ruler who
would take care of them, govern them, protect
them from the power of allied despotism, and
give them equal rights. Though Napoleon had
now but the title of First Consul, and France
was nominally a republic, he was in reality the
most powerful monarch in Europe. His throne
was established in the hearts of nearly forty
millions of people. His word was law.
It will be remembered that Josephine contemplated
the extraordinary grandeur to which
her husband had attained, with intense solicitude.
She saw that more than ordinary regal power had
passed into his hands, and she was not a stranger
to the intense desire which animated his
heart to have an heir to whom to transmit his
name and his glory. She knew that many were
intimating to him that an heir was essential to
the repose of France. She was fully informed
that divorce had been urged upon him as one of
the stern necessities of state. One day, when
Napoleon was busy in his cabinet, Josephine
entered softly, by a side door, and seating herself
affectionately upon his knee, and passing
her hand gently through his hair, said to him,
with a burst of tenderness, “I entreat you, my
friend, do not make yourself king. It is Lucien
who urges you to it. Do not listen to him.”
Napoleon smiled upon her kindly, and said,
“Why, my poor Josephine, you are mad. You
must not listen to these fables which the old
dowagers tell you. But you interrupt me now;
I am very busy; leave me alone.”
It is recorded that Lucien ventured to suggest
to Josephine that a law higher than the law of
ordinary morality required that she must become
a mother, even were it necessary, for the attainment
of that end, that she should violate her
nuptial vows. Brutalizing and vulgar infidelity
had obliterated in France, nearly all the sacredness
of domestic ties. Josephine, instinctively
virtuous, and revering the religion of her childhood,
which her husband had reinstated, bursting
into tears, indignantly exclaimed, “This is
dreadful. Wretched should I be were any one
to suppose me capable of listening, without horror,
to your infamous proposal. Your ideas are
poisonous; your language horrible.” “Well,
then, madame,” responded Lucien, “all that I
can say is, that from my heart I pity you.”
Josephine was at times almost delirious in
apprehension of the awful calamity which threatened
her. She knew the intensity of her husband’s
love. She also knew the boundlessness
of his ambition. She could not be blind to the
apparent importance, as a matter of state policy,
that Napoleon should possess an heir. She also
was fully aware that throughout France marriage
had long been regarded but as a partnership
of convenience, to be formed and sundered
almost at pleasure. “Marriage,” said Madame
de Stael, “has become but the sacrament of
adultery.” The nation, under the influence of
these views, would condemn her for selfishly refusing
assent to an arrangement apparently essential
to the repose of France and of Europe.
Never was a woman placed in a situation of
more terrible trial. Never was an ambitious
man exposed to a more fiery temptation. Laying
aside the authority of Christianity, and contemplating
the subject in the light of mere expediency,
it seemed a plain duty for Napoleon
and Josephine to separate. But gloriously does
it illustrate the immutable truth of God’s word,
that even in such an exigence as this, the path
which the Bible pointed out was the only path
of safety and of peace. “In separating myself
from Josephine,” said Napoleon afterward, “and
in marrying Maria Louisa, I placed my foot upon
an abyss which was covered with flowers.”
Josephine’s daughter, Hortense, beautiful,
brilliant, and amiable, then but eighteen years
of age, was strongly attached to Duroc, one of
Napoleon’s aids, a very fashionable and handsome
man. Josephine, however, had conceived
the idea of marrying Hortense to Louis Bonaparte,
Napoleon’s younger brother. She said,
one day, to Bourrienne, “My two brothers-in-law
are my determined enemies. You see all
their intrigues. You know how much uneasiness
they have caused me. This projected
marriage with Duroc, leaves me without any
support. Duroc, independent of Bonaparte’s
friendship, is nothing. He has neither fortune,
rank, nor even reputation. He can afford me
no protection against the enmity of the brothers.
I must have some more certain reliance for the
future. My husband loves Louis very much. If
I can succeed in uniting my daughter to him, he
will prove a strong counterpoise to the calumnies
and persecutions of my brothers-in-law.” These
remarks were reported to Napoleon. He replied,
“Josephine labors in vain. Duroc and Hortense
love each other, and they shall be married. I
am attached to Duroc. He is well born. I have
given Caroline to Murat, and Pauline to Le
Clerc. I can as well give Hortense to Duroc.
He is brave. He is as good as the others. He
is general of division. Besides, I have other
views for Louis.”
In the palace the heart may throb with the
same joys and griefs as in the cottage. In anticipation
of the projected marriage Duroc was
sent on a special mission to compliment the
Emperor Alexander on his accession to the
throne. Duroc wrote often to Hortense while
absent. When the private secretary whispered
in her ear, in the midst of the brilliant throng
of the Tuileries, “I have a letter,” she would[Pg 305]
immediately retire to her apartment. Upon her
return her friends could see that her eyes were
moistened with the tears of affection and joy.
Josephine cherished the hope that could she succeed
in uniting Hortense with Louis Bonaparte,
should Hortense give birth to a son, Napoleon
would regard him as his heir. The child would
bear the name of Bonaparte; the blood of the
Bonapartes would circulate in his veins; and he
would be the offspring of Hortense, whom Napoleon
regarded as his own daughter, and whom
he loved with the strongest parental affection.
Thus the terrible divorce might be averted.
Urged by motives so powerful, Josephine left
no means untried to accomplish her purpose.
Louis Bonaparte was a studious, pensive,
imaginative man, of great moral worth, though
possessing but little force of character. He had
been bitterly disappointed in his affections, and
was weary of the world. When but nineteen
years of age he had formed a very strong attachment
for a young lady whom he had met in
Paris. She was the daughter of an emigrant
noble, and his whole being became absorbed in
the passion of love. Napoleon, then in the
midst of those victories which paved his way to
the throne of France, was apprehensive that the
alliance of his brother with one of the old royalist
families, might endanger his own ambitious
projects. He therefore sent him away on a
military commission, and secured, by his powerful
instrumentality, the marriage of the young
lady to another person. The disappointment
preyed deeply upon the heart of the sensitive
young man. All ambition died within him. He
loved solitude, and studiously avoided the cares
and pomp of state. Napoleon, not having been
aware of the extreme strength of his brother’s
attachment, when he saw the wound which he
had inflicted upon him, endeavored to make all
the amends in his power. Hortense was beautiful,
full of grace and vivacity. At last Napoleon
fell in with the views of Josephine, and
resolved, having united the two, to recompense
his brother, as far as possible, by lavishing great
favors upon them.
It was long before Louis would listen to the
proposition of his marriage with Hortense. His
affections still clung to the lost object of his
idolatry, and he could not, without pain, think
of union with another. Indeed a more uncongenial
alliance could hardly have been imagined.
In no one thing were their tastes similar. But
who could resist the combined tact of Josephine
and power of Napoleon. All obstacles were
swept away, and the maiden, loving the hilarity
of life, and its gayest scenes of festivity and
splendor, was reluctantly led to the silent, pensive
scholar, who as reluctantly received her as
his bride. Hortense had become in some degree
reconciled to the match, as her powerful
father promised to place them in high positions
of wealth and rank. Louis resigned himself to
his lot, feeling that earth had no further joy in
store for him. A magnificent fête was given in
honor of this marriage, at which all the splendors
of the ancient royalty were revived. Louis
Napoleon Bonaparte, who, as President of the
French Republic, succeeded Louis Philippe, the
King of the French, was the only child of this
marriage who survived his parents.
Napoleon had organized in the heart of Italy
a republic containing about five millions of inhabitants.
This republic could by no means
maintain itself against the monarchies of Europe,
unaided by France. Napoleon, surrounded by
hostile kings, deemed it essential to the safety
of France, to secure in Italy a nation of congenial
sympathies and interests, with whom he
could form the alliance of cordial friendship. The
Italians, all inexperienced in self-government,
regarding Napoleon as their benefactor and their
sole supporter, looked to him for a constitution.
Three of the most influential men of the Cisalpine
Republic, were sent as delegates to Paris,
to consult with the First Consul upon the organization
of their government. Under the direction
of Napoleon a constitution was drafted, which,
considering the character of the Italian people,
and the hostile monarchical influences which
surrounded them, was most highly liberal. A
President and Vice-president were to be chosen
for ten years. There was to be a Senate of eight
members and a House of Representatives of seventy-five
members. These were all to be selected
from a body composed of 300 landed proprietors,
200 merchants, and 200 of the clergy and
prominent literary men. Thus all the important
interests of the state were represented.
In Italy, as in all the other countries of Europe
at that time, there were three prominent
parties. The Loyalists sought the restoration
of monarchy and the exclusive privileges of
kings and nobles. The Moderate Republicans
wished to establish a firm government, which
would enforce order and confer upon all equal
rights. The Jacobins wished to break down all
distinctions, divide property, and to govern by
the blind energies of the mob. Italy had long
been held in subjection by the spiritual terrors
of the priests and by the bayonets of the Austrians.
Ages of bondage had enervated the people
and there were no Italian statesmen capable
of taking the helm of government in such a turbulent
sea of troubles. Napoleon resolved to
have himself proposed as President, and then
reserving to himself the supreme direction, to
delegate the details of affairs to distinguished
Italians, until they should, in some degree, be
trained to duties so new to them. Says Thiers,
“This plan was not, on his part, the inspiration
of ambition, but rather of great good sense. His
views on this occasion were unquestionably both
pure and exalted.” But nothing can more strikingly
show the almost miraculous energies of
Napoleon’s mind, and his perfect self-reliance,
than the readiness with which, in addition to the
cares of the Empire of France, he assumed the
responsibility of organizing and developing another
nation of five millions of inhabitants. This
was in 1802. Napoleon was then but thirty-three
years of age.
To have surrendered those Italians, who had
rallied around the armies of France in their hour
of need, again to Austrian domination, would
have been an act of treachery. To have abandoned
them, in their inexperience, to the Jacobin
mob on the one hand, and to royalist intrigues
on the other, would have insured the ruin of the
Republic. But by leaving the details of government
to be administered by Italians, and at the
same time sustaining the constitution by his own
powerful hand, there was a probability that the
republic might attain prosperity and independence.
As the press of business rendered it extremely
difficult for Napoleon to leave France,
a plan was formed for a vast congress of the
Italians, to be assembled in Lyons, about half
way between Paris and Milan, for the imposing
adoption of the republican constitution. Four
hundred and fifty-two deputies were elected to
cross the frozen Alps, in the month of December.
The extraordinary watchfulness and foresight
of the First Consul, had prepared every
comfort for them on the way. In Lyons sumptuous
preparations were made for their entertainment.
Magnificent halls were decorated in
the highest style of earthly splendor for the
solemnities of the occasion. The army of Egypt,
which had recently landed, bronzed by an African
sun, was gorgeously attired to add to the magnificence
of the spectacle. The Lyonese youth,
exultant with pride, were formed into an imposing
body of cavalry. On the 11th of January,
1802, Napoleon, accompanied by Josephine, arrived
in Lyons. The whole population of the
adjoining country had assembled along the road,
anxiously watching for his passage. At night
immense fires illumined his path, blazing upon
every hill side and in every valley. One continuous
shout of “Live Bonaparte,” rolled along
with the carriage from Paris to Lyons. It was
late in the evening when Napoleon arrived in
Lyons. The brilliant city flamed with the splendor
of noon-day. The carriage of the First Consul
passed under a triumphal arch, surmounted
by a sleeping lion, the emblem of France, and
Napoleon took up his residence in the Hotel de
Ville, which, in most princely sumptuousness
had been decorated for his reception. The Italians
adored Napoleon. They felt personally ennobled
by his renown, for they considered him
their countryman. The Italian language was
his native tongue, and he spoke it with the most
perfect fluency and elegance. The moment that
the name of Napoleon was suggested to the deputies
as President of the Republic, it was received
with shouts of enthusiastic acclamation.
A deputation was immediately sent to the First
Consul to express the unanimous and cordial
wish of the convention that he would accept the
office. While these things were transpiring,
Napoleon, ever intensely occupied, was inspecting
his veteran soldiers of Italy and of Egypt,
in a public review. The elements seemed to
conspire to invest the occasion with splendor.
The day was cloudless, the sun brilliant, the
sky serene, the air invigorating. All the inhabitants
of Lyons and the populace of the adjacent
country thronged the streets. No pen can describe
the transports with which the hero was
received, as he rode along the lines of these veterans,
whom he had so often led to victory. The
soldiers shouted in a frenzy of enthusiasm. Old
men, and young men, and boys caught the shout
and it reverberated along the streets in one continuous
roar. Matrons and maidens, waving
banners and handkerchiefs, wept in excess of
emotion. Bouquets of flowers were showered
from the windows, to carpet his path, and every
conceivable demonstration was made of the most
enthusiastic love. Napoleon himself was deeply
moved by the scene. Some of the old grenadiers,
whom he recognized, he called out of the ranks,
kindly talked with them, inquiring respecting
their wounds and their wants. He addressed
several of the officers, whom he had seen in
many encounters, shook hands with them, and
a delirium of excitement pervaded all minds.
Upon his return to the Hotel de Ville, he met
the deputation of the convention. They presented
him the address, urging upon him the
acceptance of the Presidency of the Cisalpine
Republic. Napoleon received the address, intimated
his acceptance, and promised, on the
following day, to meet the convention.
REVIEW AT LYONS.
The next morning dawned brightly upon the
city. A large church, embellished with richest
drapery, was prepared for the solemnities of the
occasion. Napoleon entered the church, took
his seat upon an elevated platform, surrounded
by his family, the French ministers, and a large
number of distinguished generals and statesmen.
He addressed the assembly in the Italian language,
with as much ease of manner, elegance
of expression, and fluency of utterance as if his
whole life had been devoted to the cultivation of
the powers of oratory. He announced his acceptance
of the dignity with which they would
invest him, and uttered his views respecting the
measures which should be adopted to secure
the prosperity of the Italian Republic, as the
new state was henceforth to be called. Repeated
bursts of applause interrupted his address, and
at its close one continuous shout of acclamation
testified the assent and the delight of the assembled
multitude. Napoleon remained at Lyons
twenty days, occupied, apparently every moment,
with the vast affairs which then engrossed his
attention. And yet he found time to write daily
to Paris, urging forward the majestic enterprises
of the new government in France. The following
brief extracts, from this free and confidential
correspondence, afford an interesting glimpse of
the motives which actuated Napoleon at this time,
and of the great objects of his ambition.
“I am proceeding slowly in my operations. I
pass the whole of my mornings in giving audience
to the deputations of the neighboring departments.
The improvement in the happiness
of France is obvious. During the past two years
the population of Lyons has increased more than
20,000 souls. All the manufacturers tell me that
their works are in a state of high activity. All[Pg 307]
minds seem to be full of energy, not that energy
which overturns empires, but that which re-establishes
them, and conducts them to prosperity
and riches.”
“I beg of you particularly to see that the unruly
members, whom we have in the constituted
authorities, are every one of them removed. The
wish of the nation is, that the government shall
not be obstructed in its endeavors to act for the
public good, and that the head of Medusa shall
no longer show itself, either in our tribunes or
in our assemblies. The conduct of Sieyes, on
this occasion, completely proves that, having contributed
to the destruction of all the constitutions
since ’91, he wishes now to try his hand against
the present. He ought to burn a wax candle to
Our Lady, for having got out of the scrape so
fortunately and in so unexpected a manner. But
the older I grow, the more I perceive that each
man must fulfill his destiny. I recommend you
to ascertain whether the provisions for St. Domingo
have actually been sent off. I take it for
granted that you have taken proper measures for
demolishing the Châtelet. If the Minister of
Marine should stand in need of the frigates of
the King of Naples, he may make use of them.
General Jourdan gives me a satisfactory account
of the state of Piedmont.”
“I wish that citizen Royer be sent to the 16th
military division, to examine into the accounts
of the paymaster. I also wish some individual,
like citizen Royer, to perform the same duty for
the 13th and 14th divisions. It is complained
that the receivers keep the money as long as
they can, and that the paymasters postpone payment
as long as possible. The paymasters and
the receivers are the greatest nuisance in the
state.”
“Yesterday I visited several factories. I was
pleased with the industry and the severe economy
which pervaded these establishments. Should
the wintry weather continue severe, I do not
think that the $25,000 a month, which the Minister
of the Interior grants for the purposes of
charity, will be sufficient. It will be necessary
to add five thousand dollars for the distribution
of wood, and also to light fires in the churches
and other large buildings to give warmth to a
great number of people.”
Napoleon arrived in Paris on the 31st of January.
In the mean time, there had been a new
election of members of the Tribunate and of the
Legislative body. All those who had manifested
any opposition to the measures of Napoleon, in
the re-establishment of Christianity, and in the
adoption of the new civil code, were left out, and
their places supplied by those who approved of
the measures of the First Consul. Napoleon
could now act unembarrassed. In every quarter
there was submission. All the officers of the
state, immediately upon his return, sought an
audience, and, in that pomp of language which
his majestic deeds and character inspired, presented
to him their congratulations. He was
already a sovereign, in possession of regal power,
such as no other monarch in Europe enjoyed.
Upon one object all the energies of his mighty
mind were concentrated. France was his estate,
his diadem, his all. The glory of France was
his glory, the happiness of France his happiness,
the riches of France his wealth. Never did a
father with more untiring self-denial and toil
labor for his family, than did Napoleon through
days of Herculean exertion and nights of sleeplessness
devote every energy of body and soul to
the greatness of France. He loved not ease, he
loved not personal indulgence, he loved not sensual
gratification. The elevation of France to
prosperity, wealth, and power, was a limitless
ambition. The almost supernatural success which
had thus far attended his exertions, did but magnify
his desires and stimulate his hopes. He
had no wish to elevate France upon the ruins
of other nations. But he wished to make France
the pattern of all excellence, the illustrious leader,
at the head of all nations, guiding them to intelligence,
to opulence, and to happiness. Such,
at this time, was the towering ambition of Napoleon,
the most noble and comprehensive which
was ever embraced by the conception of man.
Of course, such ambition was not consistent with
the equality of other nations, for he determined
that France should be the first. But he manifested
no disposition to destroy the prosperity of
others; he only wished to give such an impulse
to humanity in France, by the culture of mind,
by purity of morals, by domestic industry, by
foreign commerce, by great national works, as
to place France in the advance upon the race
course of greatness. In this race France had
but one antagonist—England. France had nearly
forty millions of inhabitants. The island of Great
Britain contained but about fifteen millions. But
England, with her colonies, girdled the globe, and,
with her fleets, commanded all seas. “France,”
said Napoleon, “must also have her colonies and
her fleets.” “If we permit that,” the statesmen
of England rejoined, “we may become a secondary
power, and may thus be at the mercy of
France.” It was undeniably so. Shall history
be blind to such fatality as this? Is man, in the
hour of triumphant ambition, so moderate, that
we can be willing that he should attain power
which places us at his mercy? England was
omnipotent upon the seas. She became arrogant,
and abused that power, and made herself
offensive to all nations. Napoleon developed no
special meekness of character to indicate that he
would be, in the pride of strength which no nation
could resist, more moderate and conciliating.
Candor can not censure England for being unwilling
to yield her high position—to surrender
her supremacy on the seas—to become a secondary
power—to allow France to become her master.
And who can censure France for seeking
the establishment of colonies, the extension of
commerce, friendly alliance with other nations,
and the creation of fleets to protect her from
aggression upon the ocean, as well as upon the
land? Napoleon himself, with that wonderful
magnanimity which ever characterized him,
though at times exasperated by the hostility[Pg 308]
which he now encountered, yet often spoke in
terms of respect of the influences which animated
his foes. It is to be regretted that his antagonists
so seldom reciprocated this magnanimity.
There was here, most certainly, a right and a
wrong. But it is not easy for man accurately
to adjust the balance. God alone can award the
issue. The mind is saddened as it wanders amid
the labyrinths of conscientiousness and of passion,
of pure motives and of impure ambition.
This is, indeed, a fallen world. The drama of
nations is a tragedy. Melancholy is the lot of
man.
England daily witnessed, with increasing alarm,
the rapid and enormous strides which France
was making. The energy of the First Consul
seemed superhuman. His acts indicated the
most profound sagacity, the most far-reaching
foresight. To-day the news reaches London that
Napoleon has been elected President of the Italian
Republic. Thus in an hour five millions of
people are added to his empire! To-morrow it
is announced that he is establishing a colony at
Elba, that a vast expedition is sailing for St.
Domingo, to re-organize the colony there. England
is bewildered. Again it is proclaimed that
Napoleon has purchased Louisiana of Spain, and
is preparing to fill the fertile valley of the Mississippi
with colonists. In the mean time, all
France is in a state of activity. Factories, roads,
bridges, canals, fortifications are every where
springing into existence. The sound of the ship
hammer reverberates in all the harbors of France,
and every month witnesses the increase of the
French fleet. The mass of the English people
contemplate with admiration this development
of energy. The statesmen of England contemplate
it with dread.
For some months, Napoleon, in the midst of
all his other cares, had been maturing a vast
system of public instruction for the youth of
France. He drew up, with his own hand, the
plan for their schools, and proposed the course
of study. It is a little singular that, with his
strong scientific predilections, he should have
assigned the first rank to classical studies. Perhaps
this is to be accounted for from his profound
admiration of the heroes of antiquity. His own
mind was most thoroughly stored with all the
treasures of Greek and Roman story. All these
schools were formed upon a military model, for,
situated as France was, in the midst of monarchies,
at heart hostile, he deemed it necessary that
the nation should be universally trained to bear
arms. Religious instruction was to be communicated
in all these schools by chaplains, military
instruction by old officers who had left the army,
and classical and scientific instruction by the
most learned men Europe could furnish. The
First Consul also devoted special attention to
female schools. “France needs nothing so much
to promote her regeneration,” said he, “as good
mothers.” To attract the youth of France to
these schools, one million of dollars was appropriated
for over six thousand gratuitous exhibitions
for the pupils. Ten schools of law were
established, nine schools of medicine, and an
institution for the mechanical arts, called the
“School of Bridges and Roads,” the first model
of those schools of art which continue in France
until the present day, and which are deemed invaluable.
There were no exclusive privileges in
these institutions. A system of perfect equality
pervaded them. The pupils of all classes were
placed upon a level, with an unobstructed arena
before them. “This is only a commencement,”
said Napoleon, “by-and-by we shall do more and
better.”
Another project which Napoleon now introduced
was vehemently opposed—the establishment
of the Legion of Honor. One of the leading
principles of the revolution was the entire overthrow
of all titles of distinction. Every man,
high or low, was to be addressed simply as Citizen.
Napoleon wished to introduce a system
of rewards which should stimulate to heroic
deeds, and which should ennoble those who had
deserved well of humanity. Innumerable foreigners
of distinction had thronged France since
the peace. He had observed with what eagerness
the populace had followed these foreigners,
gazing with delight upon their gay decorations.
The court-yard of the Tuileries was ever crowded
when these illustrious strangers arrived and departed.
Napoleon, in his council, where he was
always eloquent and powerful, thus urged his
views:
“Look at these vanities, which genius pretends
so much to disdain. The populace is not
of that opinion. It loves these many-colored
ribbons, as it loves religious pomp. The democrat
philosopher calls it vanity. Vanity let it
be. But that vanity is a weakness common to
the whole human race, and great virtues may be
made to spring from it. With these so much
despised baubles heroes are made. There must
be worship for the religious sentiment. There
must be visible distinctions for the noble sentiment
of glory. Nations should not strive to be
singular any more than individuals. The affectation
of acting differently from the rest of the
world, is an affectation which is reproved by all
persons of sense and modesty. Ribbons are in
use in all countries. Let them be in use in
France. It will be one more friendly relation
established with Europe. Our neighbors give
them only to the man of noble birth. I will
give them to the man of merit—to the one who
shall have served best in the army or in the
state, or who shall have produced the finest
works.”
It was objected that the institution of the
Legion of Honor was a return to the aristocracy
which the revolution had abolished. “What is
there aristocratic,” Napoleon exclaimed, “in a
distinction purely personal, and merely for life,
bestowed on the man who has displayed merit,
whether civil or military—bestowed on him alone,
bestowed for his life only, and not passing to his
children. Such a distinction is the reverse of
aristocratic. It is the essence of aristocracy
that its titles are transmitted from the man who[Pg 309]
has earned them, to the son who possesses no
merit. The ancient regimé, so battered by the
ram of the revolution, is more entire than is believed.
All the emigrants hold each other by
the hand. The Vendeeans are secretly enrolled.
The priests, at heart, are not very friendly to us.
With the words ‘legitimate king,’ thousands
might be roused to arms. It is needful that the
men who have taken part in the revolution should
have a bond of union, and cease to depend on
the first accident which might strike one single
head. For ten years we have only been making
ruins. We must now found an edifice. Depend
upon it, the struggle is not over with Europe.
Be assured that struggle will begin again.”
It was then urged by some, that the Legion
of Honor should be confined entirely to military
merit. “By no means,” said Napoleon, “Rewards
are not to be conferred upon soldiers
alone. All sorts of merit are brothers. The
courage of the President of the Convention, resisting
the populace, should be compared with
the courage of Kleber, mounting to the assault
of Acre. It is right that civil virtues should
have their reward, as well as military virtues.
Those who oppose this course, reason like barbarians.
It is the religion of brute force they
commend to us. Intelligence has its rights before
those of force. Force, without intelligence,
is nothing. In barbarous ages, the man of stoutest
sinews was the chieftain. Now the general
is the most intelligent of the brave. At Cairo,
the Egyptians could not comprehend how it was
that Kleber, with his majestic form, was not
commander-in-chief. When Mourad Bey had
carefully observed our tactics, he could comprehend
how it was that I, and no other, ought to
be the general of an army so conducted. You
reason like the Egyptians, when you attempt to
confine rewards to military valor. The soldiers
reason better than you. Go to their bivouacs;
listen to them. Do you imagine that it is the
tallest of their officers, and the most imposing
by his stature, for whom they feel the highest
regard? Do you imagine even that the bravest
stands first in their esteem? No doubt they
would despise the man whose courage they suspected;
but they rank above the merely brave
man him whom they consider the most intelligent.
As for myself, do you suppose that it is
solely because I am reputed a great general that
I rule France? No! It is because the qualities
of a statesman and a magistrate are attributed
to me. France will never tolerate the government
of the sword. Those who think so are
strangely mistaken. It would require an abject
servitude of fifty years before that could be the
case. France is too noble, too intelligent a country
to submit to material power. Let us honor
intelligence, virtue, the civil qualities; in short,
let us bestow upon them, in all professions, the
like reward.”
The true spirit of republicanism is certainly
equality of rights, not of attainments and honors;
the abolition of hereditary distinctions and
privileges, not of those which are founded upon
merit. The badge of the Legion of Honor was
to be conferred upon all who, by genius, self-denial,
and toil, had won renown. The prizes
were open to the humblest peasant in the land.
Still the popular hostility to any institution
which bore a resemblance to the aristocracy of
the ancient nobility was so strong, that though
a majority voted in favor of the measure, there
was a strong opposition. Napoleon was surprised.
He said to Bourrienne: “You are
right. Prejudices are still against me. I ought
to have waited. There was no occasion for
haste in bringing it forward. But the thing is
done; and you will soon find that the taste for
these distinctions is not yet gone by. It is a
taste which belongs to the nature of man. You
will see that extraordinary results will arise
from it.”
The order was to consist of six thousand members.
It was constituted in four ranks: grand
officers, commanders, officers, and private legionaries.
The badge was simply a red ribbon, in
the button-hole. To the first rank, there was
allotted an annual salary of $1000; to the second,
$400; to the third, $200; to the fourth,
$50. The private soldier, the retired scholar,
and the skillful artist were thus decorated with
the same badge of distinction which figured upon
the breasts of generals, nobles, and monarchs.
That this institution was peculiarly adapted to
the state of France, is evident from the fact,
that it has survived all the revolutions of subsequent
years. “Though of such recent origin,”
says Thiers, “it is already consecrated as if it
had passed through centuries; to such a degree
has it become the recompense of heroism, of
knowledge, of merit of every kind—so much
have its honors been coveted by the grandees
and the princes of Europe the most proud of
their origin.”
The popularity of Napoleon was now unbounded.
A very general and earnest disposition
was expressed to confer upon the First
Consul a magnificent testimonial of the national
gratitude—a testimonial worthy of the illustrious
man who was to receive it, and of the powerful
nation by which it was to be bestowed. The
President of the Tribunal thus addressed that
body: “Among all nations public honors have
been decreed to men who, by splendid actions,
have honored their country, and saved it from
great dangers. What man ever had stronger
claims to the national gratitude than General
Bonaparte? His valor and genius have saved
the French people from the excesses of anarchy,
and from the miseries of war; and France is
too great, too magnanimous to leave such benefits
without reward.”
A deputation was immediately chosen to confer
with Napoleon upon the subject of the tribute
of gratitude and affection which he should
receive. Surrounded by his colleagues and the
principal officers of the state, he received them
the next day in the Tuileries. With seriousness
and modesty he listened to the high eulogium
upon his achievements which was pronounced,[Pg 310]
and then replied: “I receive with sincere gratitude
the wish expressed by the Tribunate. I
desire no other glory than that of having completely
performed the task imposed upon me. I
aspire to no other reward than the affection of
my fellow-citizens. I shall be happy if they are
thoroughly convinced, that the evils which they
may experience, will always be to me the severest
of misfortunes; that life is dear to me solely
for the services which I am able to render to my
country; that death itself will have no bitterness
for me, if my last looks can see the happiness of
the republic as firmly secured as is its glory.”
RECEPTION AT THE TUILERIES.
But how was Napoleon to be rewarded?
That was the great and difficult question. Was
wealth to be conferred upon him? For wealth
he cared nothing. Millions had been at his disposal,
and he had emptied them all into the treasury
of France. Ease, luxury, self-indulgence
had no charms for him. Were monuments to
be reared to his honor, titles to be lavished upon
his name? Napoleon regarded these but as
means for the accomplishment of ends. In
themselves they were nothing. The one only
thing which he desired was power, power to work
out vast results for others, and thus to secure for
himself renown, which should be pure and imperishable.
But how could the power of Napoleon
be increased? He was already almost absolute.
Whatever he willed, he accomplished.
Senators, legislators, and tribunes all co-operated
in giving energy to his plans. It will be
remembered, that Napoleon was elected First
Consul for a period of ten years. It seemed
that there was absolutely nothing which could
be done, gratifying to the First Consul, but to
prolong the term of his Consulship, by either
adding to it another period of ten years, or by
continuing it during his life. “What does he
wish?” was the universal inquiry. Every possible
means were tried, but in vain, to obtain a
single word from his lips, significant of his desires.
One of the senators went to Cambaceres,
and said, “What would be gratifying to General
Bonaparte? Does he wish to be king? Only
let him say so, and we are all ready to vote for
the re-establishment of royalty. Most willingly
will we do it for him, for he is worthy of that
station.” But the First Consul shut himself
up in impenetrable reserve. Even his most intimate
friends could catch no glimpse of his secret
wishes. At last the question was plainly
and earnestly put to him. With great apparent
humility, he replied: “I have not fixed my mind
upon any thing. Any testimony of the public
confidence will be sufficient for me, and will fill
me with satisfaction.” The question was then
discussed whether to add ten years to his Consulship,
or to make him First Consul for life.
Cambaceres knew well the boundless ambition
of Napoleon, and was fully conscious, that any
limited period of power would not be in accordance
with his plans. He ventured to say to him;
“You are wrong not to explain yourself. Your
enemies, for notwithstanding your services, you
have some left even in the Senate, will abuse
your reserve.” Napoleon calmly replied: “Let
them alone. The majority of the Senate is always
ready to do more than it is asked. They
will go further than you imagine.”
On the evening of the 8th of May, 1802, the
resolution was adopted, of prolonging the powers
of the First Consul for ten years. Napoleon
was probably surprised and disappointed. He,
however, decided to return a grateful answer,
and to say that not from the Senate, but from
the suffrages of the people alone could he accept
a prolongation of that power to which their[Pg 311]
voices had elevated him. The following answer
was transmitted to the Senate, the next
morning:
“The honorable proof of your esteem, given
in your deliberation of the 8th, will remain forever
engraven on my heart. In the three years
which have just elapsed fortune has smiled upon
the republic. But fortune is fickle. How many
men whom she has loaded with favors, have
lived a few years too long. The interest of my
glory and that of my happiness, would seem to
have marked the term of my public life, at the
moment when the peace of the world is proclaimed.
But the glory and the happiness of
the citizen ought to be silent, when the interest
of the state, and the public partiality, call him.
You judge that I owe a new sacrifice to the people.
I will make it, if the wishes of the people
command what your suffrage authorizes.”
MALMAISON.
Napoleon immediately left Paris for his country-seat
at Malmaison. This beautiful chateau
was about ten miles from the metropolis. Josephine
had purchased the peaceful, rural retreat
at Napoleon’s request, during his first
Italian campaign. Subsequently, large sums
had been expended in enlarging and improving
the grounds; and it was ever the favorite residence
of both Napoleon and Josephine. Cambaceres
called an extraordinary meeting of the
Council of State. After much deliberation, it
was resolved, by an immense majority, that the
following proposition should be submitted to the
people: “Shall Napoleon Bonaparte be First
Consul for life?” It was then resolved to submit
a second question: “Shall the First Consul
have the power of appointing his successor?”
This was indeed re-establishing monarchy, under
a republican name.
Cambaceres immediately repaired to Malmaison,
to submit these resolutions to Napoleon.
To the amazement of all, he immediately and
firmly rejected the second question. Energetically,[Pg 312]
he said: “Whom would you have me
appoint my successor? My brothers? But
will France, which has consented to be governed
by me, consent to be governed by Joseph
or Lucien? Shall I nominate you consul, Cambaceres?
You? Dare you undertake such a
task? And then the will of Louis XIV. was
not respected; is it likely that mine would be?
A dead man, let him be who he will, is nobody.”
In opposition to all urgency, he ordered the second
question to be erased, and the first only to
be submitted to the people. It is impossible to
divine the motive which influenced Napoleon in
this most unexpected decision. Some have supposed
that even then he had in view the Empire
and the hereditary monarchy, and that he wished
to leave a chasm in the organization of the government,
as a reason for future change. Others
have supposed that he dreaded the rivalries which
would arise among his brothers and his nephews,
from his having at his disposal so resplendent a
gift as the Empire of France. But the historian
treads upon dangerous ground, when he begins
to judge of motives. That which Napoleon actually
did was moderate and noble in the highest
degree. He declined the power of appointing his
successor, and submitted his election to the suffrages
of the people. A majority of 3,568,885 voted
for the Consulate for life, and only eight thousands
and a few hundreds, against it. Never before,
or since, was an earthly government established
by such unanimity. Never had a monarch
a more indisputable title to his throne. Upon this
occasion Lafayette added to his vote these qualifying
words: “I can not vote for such a magistracy,
until public freedom is sufficiently guaranteed.
When that is done, I give my voice to
Napoleon Bonaparte.” In a private conversation
with the First Consul, he added: “A free
government, and you at its head—that comprehends
all my desires.” Napoleon remarked:
“In theory Lafayette is perhaps right. But
what is theory? A mere dream, when applied
to the masses of mankind. He thinks he is still[Pg 313]
in the United States—as if the French were
Americans. He has no conception of what is
required for this country.”
A day was fixed for a grand diplomatic festival,
when Napoleon should receive the congratulations
of the constituted authorities, and of the
foreign embassadors. The soldiers, in brilliant
uniform, formed a double line, from the Tuileries
to the Luxembourg. The First Consul was
seated in a magnificent chariot, drawn by eight
horses. A cortège of gorgeous splendor accompanied
him. All Paris thronged the streets
through which he passed, and the most enthusiastic
applause rent the heavens. To the congratulatory
address of the Senate, Napoleon replied:
“The life of a citizen belongs to his country.
The French nation wishes that mine should
be wholly consecrated to France. I obey its
will. Through my efforts, by your assistance,
citizen-senators, by the aid of the authorities,
and by the confidence and support of this mighty
people, the liberty, equality, and prosperity of
France will be rendered secure against the caprices
of fate, and the uncertainty of futurity.
The most virtuous of nations will be the most
happy, as it deserves to be; and its felicity will
contribute to the general happiness of all Europe.
Proud then of being thus called, by the command
of that Power from which every thing emanates,
to bring back order, justice, and equality
to the earth, when my last hour approaches, I
shall yield myself up with resignation, and, without
any solicitude respecting the opinions of future
generations.”
ELECTION FOR CONSUL FOR LIFE.
On the following day the new articles, modifying
the constitution in accordance with the
change in the consulship, were submitted to the
Council of State. The First Consul presided,
and with his accustomed vigor and perspicuity,
explained the reasons of each article, as he recounted
them one by one. The articles contained
the provision that Napoleon should nominate
his successor to the Senate. To this, after a
slight resistance, he yielded. The most profound
satisfaction now pervaded France. Even Josephine
began to be tranquil and happy. She
imagined that all thoughts of royalty and of hereditary
succession had now passed away. She
contemplated with no uneasiness the power which
Napoleon possessed of choosing his successor.
Napoleon sympathized cordially with her in her
high gratification that Hortense was soon to become
a mother. This child was already, in their
hearts, the selected heir to the power of Napoleon.
On the 15th of August, Paris magnificently
celebrated the anniversary of the birth-day of the
First Consul. This was another introduction of
monarchical usages. All the high authorities of
the Church and the State, and the foreign diplomatic
bodies, called upon him with congratulations.
At noon, in all the churches of the
metropolis, a Te Deum was sung, in gratitude
to God for the gift of Napoleon. At night the
city blazed with illuminations. The splendors
and the etiquette of royalty were now rapidly introduced;
and the same fickle populace who had
so recently trampled princes and thrones into
blood and ruin, were now captivated with the reintroduction
of these discarded splendors. Napoleon
soon established himself in the beautiful
chateau of St. Cloud, which he had caused to be
repaired with great magnificence. On the Sabbath
the First Consul, with Josephine, invariably
attended divine service. Their example was
soon followed by most of the members of the
court, and the nation as a body returned to
Christianity, which, even in its most corrupt
form, saves humanity from those abysses of degradation
into which infidelity plunges it. Immediately
after divine service he conversed in the
gallery of the chateau with the visitors who were
then waiting for him. The brilliance of his intellect,
and his high renown, caused him to be
approached with emotions of awe. His words
were listened to with intensest eagerness. He
was the exclusive object of observation and attention.
No earthly potentate had ever attained
such a degree of homage, pure and sincere, as
now circled around the First Consul.
Napoleon was very desirous of having his court
a model of decorum and of morals. Lucien
owned a beautiful rural mansion near Neuilly.
Upon one occasion he invited Napoleon, and all
the inmates of Malmaison, to attend some private
theatricals at his dwelling. Lucien and
Eliza were the performers in a piece called Alzire.
The ardor of their declamation, the freedom
of their gestures, and above all the indelicacy
of the costume which they assumed, displeased
Napoleon exceedingly. As soon as the play was
over he exclaimed, “It is a scandal. I ought not
to suffer such indecencies. I will give Lucien to
understand that I will have no more of it.” As
soon as Lucien entered the saloon, having resumed
his usual dress, Napoleon addressed him
before the whole company, and requested him in
future to desist from all such representations.
“What!” said he, “when I am endeavoring to
restore purity of manners, my brother and sister
must needs exhibit themselves upon a platform,
almost in a state of nudity! It is an insult!”
One day at this time Bourrienne, going from
Malmaison to Ruel, lost a beautiful watch. He
proclaimed his loss by means of the bellman at
Ruel. An hour after, as he was sitting down to
dinner, a peasant boy brought him the watch,
which he had found on the road. Napoleon heard
of the occurrence. Immediately he instituted inquiries
respecting the young man and the family.
Hearing a good report of them, he gave the three
brothers employment, and amply rewarded the
honest lad. “Kindness,” says Bourrienne, “was
a very prominent trait in the character of Napoleon.”
If we now take a brief review of what Napoleon
had accomplished since his return from
Egypt, it must be admitted that the records of
the world are to be searched in vain for a similar
recital. No mortal man before ever accomplished
so much, or accomplished it so well, in so
short a time.
Let us for a moment return to his landing at[Pg 314]
Frejus on the 8th of October, 1799, until he was
chosen First Consul for life, in August, 1802, a
period of not quite three years. Proceeding to
Paris, almost alone, he overthrew the Directory,
and seized the supreme power; restored order
into the administration of government, established
a new and very efficient system for the collection
of taxes, raised public credit, and supplied
the wants of the suffering army. By great energy
and humanity he immediately terminated
the horrors of that unnatural war which had for
years been desolating La Vendee. Condescending
to the attitude of suppliant, he implored of
Europe peace. Europe chose war. By a majestic
conception of military combinations, he
sent Moreau with a vast army to the Rhine;
stimulated Massena to the most desperate strife
at Genoa, and then, creating as by magic, an
army, from materials which excited but the ridicule
of his foes, he climbed, with artillery and
horse, and all the munitions of war, the icy pinnacles
of the Alps, and fell like an avalanche
upon his foes upon the plain of Marengo. With
far inferior numbers, he snatched the victory
from the victors; and in the exultant hour of
the most signal conquest, wrote again from the
field of blood imploring peace. His foes, humbled,
and at his mercy, gladly availed themselves
of his clemency, and promised to treat. Perfidiously,
they only sought time to regain their
strength. He then sent Moreau to Hohenlinden,
and beneath the walls of Vienna extorted peace
with continental Europe. England still prosecuted
the war. The First Consul, by his genius,
won the heart of Paul of Russia, secured the
affection of Prussia, Denmark, and Sweden, and
formed a league of all Europe against the Mistress
of the Seas. While engaged in this work,
he paid the creditors of the State, established
the Bank of France, overwhelmed the highway
robbers with utter destruction, and restored security
in all the provinces; cut magnificent communications
over the Alps, founded hospitals on
their summits, surrounded exposed cities with
fortifications, opened canals, constructed bridges,
created magnificent roads, and commenced the
compilation of that civil code which will remain
an ever-during monument of his labors and his
genius. In opposition to the remonstrances of his
best friends, he re-established Christianity, and
with it proclaimed perfect liberty of conscience.
Public works were every where established, to
encourage industry. Schools and colleges were
founded. Merit of every kind was stimulated by
abundant rewards. Vast improvements were
made in Paris, and the streets cleaned and irrigated.
In the midst of all these cares, he was
defending France against the assaults of the
most powerful nation on the globe; and he was
preparing, as his last resort, a vast army, to
carry the war into the heart of England. Notwithstanding
the most atrocious libels with which
England was filled against him, his fame shone
resplendent through them all, and he was popular
with the English people. Many of the most
illustrious of the English statesmen advocated
his cause. His gigantic adversary, William Pitt,
vanquished by the genius of Napoleon, was compelled
to retire from the ministry—and the world
was at peace.
The difficulties, perplexities, embarrassments
which were encountered in these enterprises
were infinite. Says Napoleon, with that magnanimity
which history should recognize and applaud,
“We are told that all the First Consul
had to look to, was to do justice. But to whom
was he to do justice? To the proprietors whom
the revolution had violently despoiled of their
properties, for this only, that they had been faithful
to their legitimate sovereign and to the principle
of honor which they had inherited from
their ancestors; or to those new proprietors, who
had purchased these domains, adventuring their
money on the faith of laws flowing from an illegitimate
authority? Was he to do justice to
those royalist soldiers, mutilated in the fields of
Germany, La Vendee, and Quiberon, arrayed
under the white standard of the Bourbons, in the
firm belief that they were serving the cause of
their king against a usurping tyranny; or to the
million of citizens, who, forming around the
frontiers a wall of brass, had so often saved their
country from the inveterate hostility of its enemies,
and had borne to so transcendent a height
the glory of the French eagle? Was he to do
justice to that clergy, the model and the example
of every Christian virtue, stripped of its birthright,
the reward of fifteen hundred years of
benevolence; or to the recent acquirers, who
had converted the convents into workshops, the
churches into warehouses, and had turned to
profane uses all that had been deemed most holy
for ages?”
“At this period,” says Thiers, “Napoleon appeared
so moderate, after having been so victorious,
he showed himself so profound a legislator,
after having proved himself so great a commander,
he evinced so much love for the arts of peace,
after having excelled in the arts of war, that well
might he excite illusions in France and in the
world. Only some few among the personages
who were admitted to his councils, who were capable
of judging futurity by the present, were
filled with as much anxiety as admiration, on
witnessing the indefatigable activity of his mind
and body, and the energy of his will, and the impetuosity
of his desires. They trembled even at
seeing him do good, in the way he did—so impatient
was he to accomplish it quickly, and upon
an immense scale. The wise and sagacious
Tronchet, who both admired and loved him, and
looked upon him as the saviour of France, said,
nevertheless, one day in a tone of deep feeling to
Cambaceres, ‘This young man begins like Cæsar;
I fear that he will end like him.'”
The elevation of Napoleon to the supreme
power for life was regarded by most of the states
of continental Europe with satisfaction, as tending
to diminish the dreaded influences of republicanism,
and to assimilate France with the surrounding
monarchies. Even in England, the
prime minister, Mr. Addington, assured the[Pg 315]
French embassador of the cordial approbation of
the British government of an event, destined to
consolidate order and power in France. The
King of Prussia, the Emperor Alexander, and
the Archduke Charles of Austria, sent him their
friendly congratulations. Even Catharine, the
haughty Queen of Naples, mother of the Empress
of Austria, being then at Vienna, in ardent expression
of her gratification to the French embassador
said, “General Bonaparte is a great
man. He has done me much injury, but that
shall not prevent me from acknowledging his
genius. By checking disorder in France, he has
rendered a service to all of Europe. He has attained
the government of his country because he
is most worthy of it. I hold him out every day
as a pattern to the young princes of the imperial
family. I exhort them to study that extraordinary
personage, to learn from him how to direct
nations, how to make the yoke of authority endurable,
by means of genius and glory.”
But difficulties were rapidly rising between
England and France. The English were much
disappointed in not finding that sale of their manufactures
which they had anticipated. The cotton
and iron manufactures were the richest branches
of industry in England. Napoleon, supremely
devoted to the development of the manufacturing
resources of France, encouraged those manufactures
by the almost absolute prohibition of the
rival articles. William Pitt and his partisans,
still retaining immense influence, regarded with
extreme jealousy the rapid strides which Napoleon
was making to power, and incessantly declaimed,
in the journals, against the ambition of
France. Most of the royalist emigrants, who
had refused to acknowledge the new government,
and were still devoted to the cause of the Bourbons,
had taken refuge in London. They had
been the allies with England in the long war
against France. The English government could
not refrain from sympathizing with them in their
sufferings. It would have been ungenerous not
to have done so. The emigrants were many of
them supported by pensions paid them by England.
At the same time they were constantly
plotting conspiracies against the life of Napoleon,
and sending assassins to shoot him. “I
will yet teach those Bourbons,” said Napoleon,
in a moment of indignation, “that I am not a
man to be shot at like a dog.” Napoleon complained
bitterly that his enemies, then attempting
his assassination, were in the pay of the British
government. Almost daily the plots of these
emigrants were brought to light by the vigilance
of the French police.
A Bourbon pamphleteer, named Peltier, circulated
widely through England the most atrocious
libels against the First Consul, his wife, her
children, his brothers and sisters. They were
charged with the most low, degrading, and revolting
vices. These accusations were circulated
widely through England and America. They
produced a profound impression. They were believed.
Many were interested in the circulation
of these reports, wishing to destroy the popularity
of Napoleon, and to prepare the populace
of England for the renewal of the war. Napoleon
remonstrated against such infamous representations
of his character being allowed in
England. But he was informed that the British
press was free; that there was no resource but
to prosecute for libel in the British courts; and
that it was the part of true greatness to treat
such slanders with contempt. But Napoleon felt
that such false charges were exasperating nations,
were paving the way to deluge Europe
again in war, and that causes tending to such
woes were too potent to be despised.
The Algerines were now sweeping with their
piratic crafts the Mediterranean, exacting tribute
from all Christian powers. A French ship had
been wrecked upon the coast, and the crew were
made prisoners. Two French vessels and a
Neapolitan ship had also been captured and taken
to Algiers. The indignation of Napoleon was
aroused. He sent an officer to the Dey with a
letter, informing him that if the prisoners were
not released and the captured vessels instantly
restored, and a promise given to respect in future
the flags of France and Italy, he would send a
fleet and an army and overwhelm him with ruin.
The Dey had heard of Napoleon’s career in
Egypt. He was thoroughly frightened, restored
the ships and the prisoners, implored clemency,
and with barbarian injustice doomed to death
those who had captured the ships in obedience
to his commands. Their lives were saved only
through the intercession of the French minister.
Napoleon then performed one of the most gracious
acts of courtesy toward the Pope. The
feeble monarch had no means of protecting his
coasts from the pirates who still swarmed in
those seas. Napoleon selected two fine brigs in
the naval arsenal at Toulon, equipped them with
great elegance, armed them most effectively,
filled them with naval stores, and conferring
upon them the apostolical names of St. Peter and
St. Paul, sent them as a present to the Pontiff.
With characteristic grandeur of action, he carried
his attentions so far as to send a cutter to
bring back the crews, that the papal treasury
might be exposed to no expense. The venerable
Pope, in the exuberance of his gratitude, insisted
upon taking the French seamen to Rome. He
treated them with every attention in his power;
exhibited to them St. Peter’s, and dazzled them
with the pomp and splendor of cathedral worship.
They returned to France loaded with
humble presents, and exceedingly gratified with
the kindness with which they had been received.
It was stipulated in the treaty of Amiens, that
both England and France should evacuate Egypt,
and that England should surrender Malta to its
ancient rulers. Malta, impregnable in its fortifications,
commanded the Mediterranean, and was
the key of Egypt. Napoleon had therefore,
while he professed a willingness to relinquish all
claim to the island himself, insisted upon it, as
an essential point, that England should do the
same. The question upon which the treaty
hinged, was the surrender of Malta to a neutral[Pg 316]
power. The treaty was signed. Napoleon promptly
and scrupulously fulfilled his agreements. Several
embarrassments, for which England was not
responsible, delayed for a few months the evacuation
of Malta. But now nearly a year had passed
since the signing of the treaty. All obstacles
were removed from the way of its entire fulfillment,
and yet the troops of England remained
both in Egypt and in Malta. The question was
seriously discussed in Parliament and in the English
journals, whether England were bound to
fulfill her engagements, since France was growing
so alarmingly powerful. Generously and
eloquently Fox exclaimed, “I am astonished at
all I hear, particularly when I consider who they
are that speak such words. Indeed I am more
grieved than any of the honorable friends and
colleagues of Mr. Pitt, at the growing greatness
of France, which is daily extending her power
in Europe and in America. That France, now
accused of interfering with the concerns of others,
we invaded, for the purpose of forcing upon her
a government to which she would not submit,
and of obliging her to accept the family of the
Bourbons, whose yoke she spurned. By one of
those sublime movements, which history should
recommend to imitation, and preserve in eternal
memorial, she repelled her invaders. Though
warmly attached to the cause of England, we
have felt an involuntary movement of sympathy
with that generous outburst of liberty, and we
have no desire to conceal it. No doubt France
is great, much greater than a good Englishman
ought to wish, but that ought not to be a motive
for violating solemn treaties. But because France
now appears too great to us—greater than we
thought her at first—to break a solemn engagement,
to retain Malta, for instance, would be an
unworthy breach of faith, which would compromise
the honor of Britain. I am sure that if
there were in Paris an assembly similar to that
which is debating here, the British navy and its
dominion over the seas would be talked of, in
the same terms as we talk in this house of the
French armies, and their dominion over the
land.”
Napoleon sincerely wished for peace. He was
constructing vast works to embellish and improve
the empire. Thousands of workmen were employed
in cutting magnificent roads across the
Alps. He was watching with intensest interest
the growth of fortifications and the excavation of
canals. He was in the possession of absolute
power, was surrounded by universal admiration,
and, in the enjoyment of profound peace, was
congratulating himself upon being the pacificator
of Europe. He had disbanded his armies, and
was consecrating all the resources of the nation
to the stimulation of industry. He therefore left
no means of forbearance and conciliation untried
to avert the calamities of war. He received Lord
Whitworth, the English embassador in Paris,
with great distinction. The most delicate attentions
were paid to his lady, the Duchess of Dorset.
Splendid entertainments were given at the
Tuileries and at St. Cloud in their honor. Talleyrand
consecrated to them all the resources of
his courtly and elegant manners. The two Associate
Consuls, Cambaceres and Lebrun, were
also unwearied in attentions. Still all these
efforts on the part of Napoleon to secure friendly
relations with England were unavailing. The
British government still, in open violation of the
treaty, retained Malta. The honor of France was
at stake in enforcing the sacredness of treaties.
Malta was too important a post to be left in the
hands of England. Napoleon at last resolved to
have a personal interview himself with Lord
Whitworth, and to explain to him, with all frankness,
his sentiments and his resolves.
NAPOLEON AND THE BRITISH EMBASSADOR.
It was on the evening of the 18th of February,
1803, that Napoleon received Lord Whitworth in
his cabinet in the Tuileries. A large writing-table
occupied the middle of the room. Napoleon
invited the embassador to take a seat at one
end of the table, and seated himself at the other.
“I have wished,” said he, “to converse with you
in person, that I may fully convince you of my
real opinions and intentions.” Then with that
force of language and that perspicuity which no
man ever excelled, he recapitulated his transactions
with England from the beginning; that he
had offered peace immediately upon his accession
to the consulship; that peace had been refused;
that eagerly he had renewed negotiations as soon
as he could with any propriety do so; and that
he had made great concessions to secure the
peace of Amiens. “But my efforts,” said he,
“to live on good terms with England, have met
with no friendly response. The English newspapers
breathe but animosity against me. The
journals of the emigrants are allowed a license
of abuse which is not justified by the British constitution.
Pensions are granted to Georges and
his accomplices, who are plotting my assassination.
The emigrants, protected in England, are
continually making excursions to France to stir
up civil war. The Bourbon princes are received
with the insignia of the ancient royalty. Agents
are sent to Switzerland and Italy to raise up difficulties
against France. Every wind which blows
from England brings me but hatred and insult.
Now we have come to a situation from which
we must relieve ourselves. Will you or will you
not execute the treaty of Amiens? I have executed
it on my part with scrupulous fidelity.
That treaty obliged me to evacuate Naples,
Tarento, and the Roman States, within three[Pg 318]
months. In less than two months, all the
French troops were out of those countries. Ten
months have elapsed since the exchange of the
ratifications, and the English troops are still in
Malta, and at Alexandria. It is useless to try
to deceive us on this point. Will you have
peace, or will you have war? If you are for
war, only say so; we will wage it unrelentingly.
If you wish for peace, you must evacuate
Alexandria and Malta. The rock of Malta,
on which so many fortifications have been erected,
is, in a maritime point of view, an object of
great importance; but, in my estimation, it has
an importance infinitely greater, inasmuch as it
implicates the honor of France. What would
the world say, if we were to allow a solemn
treaty, signed with us, to be violated? It would
doubt our energy. For my part, my resolution
is fixed. I had rather see you in possession of
the Heights of Montmartre, than in possession
of Malta.”
“If you doubt my desire to preserve peace,
listen, and judge how far I am sincere. Though
yet very young, I have attained a power, a renown
to which it would be difficult to add. Do
you imagine that I am solicitous to risk this
power, this renown, in a desperate struggle? If
I have a war with Austria, I shall contrive to
find the way to Vienna. If I have a war with
you, I will take from you every ally upon the
Continent. You will blockade us; but I will
blockade you in my turn. You will make the
Continent a prison for us; but I will make the
seas a prison for you. However, to conclude the
war, there must be more direct efficiency. There
must be assembled 150,000 men, and an immense
flotilla. We must try to cross the Strait, and
perhaps I shall bury in the depths of the sea my
fortune, my glory, my life. It is an awful temerity,
my lord, the invasion of England.” Here, to
the amazement of Lord Whitworth, Napoleon
enumerated frankly and powerfully all the perils
of the enterprise: the enormous preparations it
would be necessary to make of ships, men, and
munitions of war—the difficulty of eluding the
English fleet. “The chance that we shall perish,”
said he, “is vastly greater than the chance
that we shall succeed. Yet this temerity, my
lord, awful as it is, I am determined to hazard,
if you force me to it. I will risk my army and
my life. With me that great enterprise will
have chances which it can not have with any
other. See now if I ought, prosperous, powerful,
and peaceful as I now am, to risk power,
prosperity, and peace in such an enterprise.
Judge, if when I say I am desirous of peace, if
I am not sincere. It is better for you; it is better
for me to keep within the limits of treaties.
You must evacuate Malta. You must not harbor
my assassins in England. Let me be abused, if
you please, by the English journals, but not by
those miserable emigrants, who dishonor the
protection you grant them, and whom the Alien
Act permits you to expel from the country. Act
cordially with me, and I promise you, on my part,
an entire cordiality. See what power we should
exercise over the world, if we could bring our
two nations together. You have a navy, which,
with the incessant efforts of ten years, in the employment
of all my resources, I should not be able
to equal. But I have 500,000 men ready to march,
under my command, whithersoever I choose to
lead them. If you are masters of the seas, I am
master of the land. Let us then think of uniting,
rather than of going to war, and we shall
rule at pleasure the destinies of the world.
France and England united, can do every thing
for the interests of humanity.”
England, however, still refused, upon one pretense
and another, to yield Malta; and both parties
were growing more and more exasperated,
and were gradually preparing for the renewal of
hostilities. Napoleon, at times, gave very free
utterance to his indignation. “Malta,” said he,
“gives the dominion of the Mediterranean. Nobody
will believe that I consent to surrender the
Mediterranean to the English, unless I fear their
power. I thus loose the most important sea in[Pg 319]
the world, and the respect of Europe. I will
fight to the last, for the possession of the Mediterranean;
and if I once get to Dover, it is all
over with those tyrants of the seas. Besides, as
we must fight, sooner or later, with a people to
whom the greatness of France is intolerable, the
sooner the better. I am young. The English
are in the wrong; more so than they will ever
be again. I had rather settle the matter at once.
They shall not have Malta.”
Still Napoleon assented to the proposal for
negotiating with the English for the cession of
some other island in the Mediterranean. “Let
them obtain a port to put into,” said he. “To
that I have no objection. But I am determined
that they shall not have two Gibraltars in that
sea: one at the entrance, and one in the middle.”
To this proposition, however, England
refused assent.
Napoleon then proposed that the Island of
Malta should be placed in the hands of the Emperor
of Russia; leaving it with him in trust,
till the discussions between France and England
were decided. It had so happened that the emperor
had just offered his mediation, if that could
be available, to prevent a war. This the English
government also declined, upon the plea that it
did not think that Russia would be willing to
accept the office thus imposed upon her. The
English embassador now received instructions
to demand that France should cede to England,
Malta for ten years; and that England, by way
of compensation, would recognize the Italian republic.
The embassador was ordered to apply
for his passports, if these conditions were not
accepted within seven days. To this proposition
France would not accede. The English minister
demanded his passports, and left France. Immediately
the English fleet commenced its attack
upon French merchant-ships, wherever they
could be found. And the world was again deluged
in war.
SEA COMBAT.
THE PALACES OF FRANCE.
BY JOHN S. C. ABBOTT.
France has recorded her past history and
her present condition, in the regal palaces
she has reared. Upon these monumental walls
are inscribed, in letters more legible than the
hieroglyphics of Egypt, and as ineffaceable, the
long and dreary story of kingly vice, voluptuousness
and pride, and of popular servility and
oppression. The unthinking tourist saunters
through these magnificent saloons, upon which
have been lavished the wealth of princes and the
toil of ages, and admires their gorgeous grandeur.
In marbled floors and gilded ceilings and damask
tapestry, and all the appliances of boundless
luxury and opulence, he sees but the triumphs
of art, and bewildered by the dazzling spectacle,
forgets the burning outrage upon human rights
which it proclaims. Half-entranced, he wanders
through uncounted acres of groves and lawns,
and parterres of flowers, embellished with lakes,
fountains, cascades, and the most voluptuous
statuary, where kings and queens have reveled,
and he reflects not upon the millions who have
toiled, from dewy morn till the shades of night,
through long and joyless years, eating black
bread, clothed in coarse raiment—the man, the
woman, the ox, companions in toil, companions
in thought—to minister to this indulgence. But
the palaces of France proclaim, in trumpet tones,
the shame of France. They say to her kings,
Behold the undeniable monuments of your pride,
your insatiate extortion, your measureless extravagance
and luxury. They say to the people,
Behold the proofs of the outrages which
your fathers, for countless ages, have endured.
They lived in mud hovels that their
licentious kings might riot haughtily in the
apartments, canopied with gold, of Versailles,
the Tuileries, and St. Cloud—the Palaces of
France. The mind of the political economist
lingers painfully upon them. They are gorgeous
as specimens of art. They are sacred as
memorials of the past. Vandalism alone would
raze them to their foundations. Still, the judgment
says, It would be better for the political
regeneration of France, if, like the Bastile, their
very foundations were plowed up, and sown
with salt. For they are a perpetual provocative
to every thinking man. They excite unceasingly
democratic rage against aristocratic
arrogance. Thousands of noble women, as they
traverse those gorgeous halls, feel those fires of
indignation glowing in their souls, which glowed
in the bosom of Madame Roland. Thousands
of young men, with compressed lip and moistened
eye, lean against those marble pillars, lost
in thought, and almost excuse even the demoniac
and blood-thirsty mercilessness of Danton,
Marat, and Robespierre. These palaces are a
perpetual stimulus and provocative to governmental
aggression. There they stand, in all
their gorgeousness, empty, swept, and garnished.
They are resplendently beautiful. They are supplied
with every convenience, every luxury. King
and Emperor dwelt there. Why should not the
President? Hence the palace becomes the home
of the Republican President. The expenses of
the palace, the retinue of the palace, the court
etiquette of the palace become the requisitions
of good taste. In America, the head of the government,
in his convenient and appropriate mansion,
receives a salary of twenty-five thousand
dollars a year. In France, the President of the
Republic receives four hundred thousand dollars
a year, and yet, even with that vast sum, can not
keep up an establishment at all in accordance
with the dwellings of grandeur which invite his
occupancy, and which unceasingly and irresistibly
stimulate to regal pomp and to regal extravagance.
The palaces of France have a vast
influence upon the present politics of France.
There is an unceasing conflict between those
marble walls of monarchical splendor, and the
principles of republican simplicity. This contest
will not soon terminate, and its result no
one can foresee. Never have I felt my indignation
more thoroughly aroused than when wandering[Pg 320]
hour after hour through the voluptuous
sumptuousness of Versailles. The triumphs of
taste and art are admirable, beyond the power
of the pen to describe. But the moral of execrable
oppression is deeply inscribed upon all.
In a brief description of the Palaces of France,
I shall present them in the order in which I
chanced to visit them.
1. Palais des Thermes.—In long-gone centuries,
which have faded away into oblivion,
a wandering tribe of barbarians alighted from
their canoes, upon a small island in the Seine,
and there reared their huts. They were called
the Parisii. The slow lapse of centuries rolled
over them, and there were wars and woes, bridals
and burials, and still they increased in numbers
and in strength, and fortified their little isle
against the invasions of their enemies; for man,
whether civilized or savage, has ever been the
most ferocious wild beast man has had to encounter.
But soon the tramp of the Roman legions
was heard upon the banks of the Seine,
and all Gaul, with its sixty tribes, came under
the power of the Cæsars. Extensive marshes
and gloomy forests surrounded the barbarian
village; but, gradually, Roman laws and institutions
were introduced; and Roman energy
changed the aspect of the country. Immediately
the proud conquerors commenced rearing a
palace for the provincial governor. The Palace
of Warm Baths rose, with its massive walls, and
in imposing grandeur. Roman spears drove the
people to the work; and Roman ingenuity knew
well how to extort from the populace the revenue
which was required. Large remains of that
palace continue to the present day. It is the
most interesting memorial of the past which
can now be found in France. The magnificence
of its proportions still strike the beholder with
awe. “Behold,” says a writer, who trod its
marble floors nearly a thousand years ago: “Behold
the Palace of the Kings, whose turrets pierce
the skies, and whose foundations penetrate even
to the empire of the dead.” Julius Cæsar gazed
proudly upon those turrets; and here the shouts
of Roman legions, fifteen hundred years ago, proclaimed
Julian emperor; and Roman maidens,
with throbbing hearts, trod these floors in the
mazy dance. No one can enter the grand hall of
the baths, without being deeply impressed with
the majestic aspect of the edifice, and with the
grandeur of its gigantic proportions. The decay
of nearly two thousand years has left its venerable
impress upon those walls. Here Roman
generals proudly strode, encased in brass and
steel, and the clatter of their arms resounded
through these arches. In these mouldering,
crumbling tubs of stone, they laved their sinewy
limbs. But where are those fierce warriors
now? In what employments have their turbulent
spirits been engaged, while generation after
generation has passed on earth, in the enactment
of the comedies and the tragedies of life? Did
their rough tutelage in the camp, and their proud
bearing in the court, prepare them for the love,
the kindness, the gentleness, the devotion of
Heaven? In fields of outrage, clamor, and
blood, madly rushing to the assault, shouting
in frenzy, dealing, with iron hand, every where
around, destruction and death, did they acquire
a taste for the “green pastures and the still waters?”
Alas! for the mystery of our being!
They are gone, and gone forever! Their name
has perished—their language is forgotten.
No more disturbs their deep repose,
Than summer evening’s gentlest sigh,
Which shuts the rose.”
Upon a part of the ruins of this old palace of
the Cæsars, there has been reared, by more modern
ancients, still another palace, where mirth
and revelry have resounded, where pride has
elevated her haughty head, and vanity displayed
her costly robes—but over all those scenes of
splendor, death has rolled its oblivious waves.
About four hundred years ago, upon a portion
of the crumbling walls of this old Roman mansion,
the Palace of Cluny was reared. For three
centuries, this palace was one of the abodes of
the kings of France. The tide of regal life
ebbed and flowed through those saloons, and
along those corridors. There is the chamber
where Mary of England, sister of Henry VIII.,
and widow of Louis XII., passed the weary
years of her widowhood. It is still called the
chamber of the “white queen,” from the custom
of the queens of France to wear white
mourning. Three hundred years ago, these
Gothic turrets, and gorgeously ornamented lucarne
windows, gleamed with illuminations, as
the young King of Scotland, James V., led
Madeleine, the blooming daughter of Francis I.,
to the bridal altar. Here the haughty family of
the Guises ostentatiously displayed their regal
retinue—vying with the kings of France in
splendor, and outvying them in power. These
two palaces, now blended by the nuptials of decay
into one, are converted into a museum of
antiquities—silent depositories of memorials of
the dead. Sadly one loiters through their deserted
halls. They present one of the most interesting
sights of Paris. In the reflective mind
they awaken emotions which the pen can not
describe.
2. The Louvre.—When Paris consisted only
of the little island in the Seine, and kings and
feudal lords, with wine and wassail were reveling
in the saloons of Cluny, a hunting-seat was
reared in the dense forest which spread itself
along the banks of the river. As the city extended,
and the forest disappeared, the hunting-seat
was enlarged, strengthened, and became a
fortress and a state-prison. Thus it continued
for three hundred years. In its gloomy dungeons
prisoners of state, and the victims of
crime, groaned and died; and countless tragedies
of despotic power there transpired, which
the Day of Judgment alone can reveal. Three
hundred years ago, Francis I. tore down the dilapidated
walls of this old castle, and commenced
the magnificent Palace of the Louvre upon their
foundations. But its construction has required[Pg 321]
the labor of ages, and upon it has been expended
millions, which despotic power has extorted
from the hard hands of penury. This gorgeous
palace contains a wilderness of saloons and corridors,
and flights of stairs; and seems rather
adapted to accommodate the population of a city,
than to be merely one of the residences of a royal
family. The visitor wanders bewildered through
its boundless magnificence. The spirits of the
dead rise again, and people these halls. Here
the pure and the noble Jeanne d’Albret was received
in courtly grandeur, by the impure and
the ignoble Catherine de Medici. Here Henry
IV. led his profligate and shameless bride to the
altar. From this window Charles IX. shot down
the Protestants as they fled, amidst the horrors
of the perfidious massacre of St. Bartholomew.
In this gilded chamber, with its lofty ceiling and
its tapestried walls, Catherine de Medici died in
the glooms of remorse and despair. Her bed of
down, her despotic power could present no refuge
against the King of Terrors; and the mind
is appalled with the thought, that from this very
room, now so silent and deserted, her guilty
spirit took its flight to the tribunal of the King
of kings, and the Lord of lords. Successive generations
of haughty sovereigns have here risen
and died. And if there be any truth in history,
they have been, almost without exception, proud,
merciless, licentious oppressors. The orgies of
sin have filled this palace. Defiance to God and
man has here held its high carnival.
THE LOUVRE.
The mind is indeed bewildered with a flood of
emotions rushing through it, as one is pointed
to the alcove where Henry IV. was accustomed
to sleep three hundred years ago, and to the
very spot where, in anguish, he gasped and
died, after having been stabbed by Ravaillac.
Here one sees the very helmet worn by Henry
II. on that unfortunate day, when the tilting
spear of the Count of Montgommeri, entering
his eye, pierced his brain. It requires the labor
of a day even to saunter through the innumerable
rooms of this magnificent abode. But it will
never again resound with the revelries of kings
and queens. Royalty has forsaken it forever.
Democracy has now taken strange and anomalous
possession of its walls. It is converted into
the most splendid museum in the world—filled
with the richest productions of ancient and modern
art. The people now enter freely that sanctuary,
where once none but kings and courtiers
ventured to appear. The Louvre now is useful
to the world; but upon its massive walls are
registered deeds of violence, oppression, and
crime which make the ear to tingle.
THE INNER COURT OF THE LOUVRE.
3. Malmaison.—When Napoleon was in the
midst of his Egyptian campaign, he wrote to
Josephine, to purchase somewhere in the vicinity
of Paris, a pleasant rural retreat, to which they
could retire from the bustle of the metropolis,
and enjoy the luxury of green fields and shady
groves. Josephine soon found a delightful chateau,
about nine miles from Paris, and five from
Versailles, which she purchased, with many acres
of land around it, for about one hundred thousand
dollars. The great value of the place was
in the spacious and beautiful grounds, not in the
buildings. The chateau itself was plain, substantial,
simple, far less ostentatious in its appearance
than many a country-seat erected upon
the banks of the Hudson, or in the environs of
Boston. Here Josephine resided most of the
time during the eighteen months of Napoleon’s
absence in Egypt. Upon Napoleon’s return,
this became the favorite residence of them both.
Amid all the splendors of the Empire, it was
ever their great joy to escape to the rural quietude
of Malmaison. There they often passed the
Sabbath, in the comparative happiness of private
life. Often Napoleon said, as he left those loved
haunts, to attend to the cares and toils of the
Tuileries, “Now I must again put on the yoke
of misery.” Napoleon ever spoke of the hours
passed at Malmaison, as the happiest of his life.
He erected for himself there, in a retired grove,[Pg 322]
a little pavilion, very simple, yet beautiful, in its
structure, which still retains the name of the
Pavilion of the Emperor. Here he passed
many hours of uninterrupted solitude, in profound
study of his majestic plans and enterprises.
Directly behind the chateau there was
a smooth and beautiful lawn, upon a level with
the ground floor of the main saloon. The windows,
extending to the floor, opened upon this
lawn. When all the kings of Europe were doing
homage to the mighty emperor, crowds of
visitors were often assembled at Malmaison; and
upon this lawn, with the characteristic gayety
of the French, many mirthful games were enacted.
The favorite amusement here was the game
of prisoners. Frequently, after dinner, the most
distinguished gentlemen and ladies, not of France
only, but of all Europe, were actively and mirthfully
engaged in this sport. Kings and queens,
and princes of the blood royal were seen upon
the green esplanade, pursuing and pursued. Napoleon
occasionally joined in the sport. He was
a poor runner, and not unfrequently fell and rolled
over upon the grass, while he and his companions
were convulsed with laughter. Josephine,
fond of deeds of benevolence, loved to visit the
cottages in the vicinity of Malmaison; and her
sympathy and kindness gave her enthronement
in the hearts of all their inmates. After the divorce
of Josephine, the Palace of Malmaison,
which Napoleon had embellished with all those
attractions which he thought could soothe the
anguish of his wounded, weeping, discarded
wife, was assigned to Josephine. A jointure of
six hundred thousand dollars a year was settled
upon her, and she retained the title and the rank
of Empress Queen. Here Napoleon frequently
called to see her; though from motives of delicacy,
he never saw her alone. Taking her arm,
he would walk for hours through those embowered
avenues, confiding to her all his plans.
Just before Napoleon set out for his fatal campaign
to Russia, he called to see Josephine.
Taking her hand, he led her out to a circular
seat in the garden, in front of the mansion, and
for two hours continued engaged with her in the
most earnest conversation. At last he rose and
affectionately kissed her hand. She followed
him to his carriage and bade him adieu. This was
their last interview but one. He soon returned
a fugitive from Moscow. All Europe was in
arms against him. He earnestly sought a hurried
interview with the faithful wife of his youth
in her retreat at Malmaison. As he gazed upon
her beloved features, tenderly and sadly he exclaimed,
“Josephine! I have been as fortunate
as was ever man upon the face of this earth. But
in this hour, when a storm is gathering over my
head, I have not any one in this wide world but
you upon whom I can repose.” With a moistened
eye he bade her farewell. They met not
again.
When the allied armies entered Paris a guard
was sent, out of respect to Josephine, to protect
Malmaison. The Emperor Alexander, with a
number of illustrious guests, dined with the
Empress Queen, and in the evening walked out
upon the beautiful lawn. Josephine, whose
health was shattered by sympathy and sorrow,
took cold, and after the illness of a few days
died. It was the 29th of May, 1814. It was the
serene and cloudless evening of a tranquil summer’s
day. The windows of the apartment were
open where the Empress was dying. The sun
was silently sinking behind the trees of Malmaison,
and its rays, struggling through the foliage,
shone cheerfully upon the bed of death. The
air was filled with the songs of birds, warbling,
as it were, the vespers of Josephine’s most eventful
life. Thus sweetly her gentle spirit sank into
its last sleep. In the antique village church of
Ruel, about two miles from Malmaison, the mortal
remains of this most lovely of women now
slumber. A beautiful monument of white marble,[Pg 323]
with a statue representing the Empress
kneeling in her coronation robes, is erected over
her burial place, with this simple but affecting
inscription:
TO
JOSEPHINE,
BY
EUGENE AND HORTENSE.
It was a bright and beautiful morning when I
took a carriage, with a friend, and set out from
Paris to visit Malmaison. We had been informed
that the property had passed into the hands
of Christina, the Queen-Mother of Spain, and
that she had given strict injunctions that no
visitors should be admitted to the grounds. My
great desire, however, to visit Malmaison induced
me to make special efforts to accomplish the object.
A recent rain had laid the dust, the trees were
in full leaf, the grass was green and rich, the
grain was waving in the wind, and the highly
cultivated landscape surrounding Paris presented
an aspect of extraordinary beauty. We rode
quietly along, enjoying the luxury of the emotions
which the scene inspired, till we came to
the village of Ruel. A French village has no
aspect of beauty. It is merely the narrow street
of a city set down by itself in the country. The
street is paved, the cheerless, tasteless houses
are huddled as closely as possible together. There
is no yard for shrubbery and flowers, apparently
no garden, no barn-yards with lowing herds. The
flowers of the empire have been garnered in the
palaces of the kings. The taste of the empire
has been concentrated upon the Tuileries, Versailles,
St. Cloud, Fontainebleau, and none has
been left to embellish the home of the peasant.
The man who tills the field must toil day and
night, with his wife, his daughter, and his donkey,
to obtain food and clothing for his family, as animals.
This centralization of taste and opulence
in particular localities, is one of the greatest of national
mistakes and wrongs. America has no Versailles.
May God grant that she never may have.
But thousands of American farmers have homes
where poets would love to dwell. Their daughters
trim the shrubbery in the yard, and cultivate
the rose, and partake themselves of the purity
and the refinement of the rural scenes in the
midst of which they are reared. In the village
of Ruel, so unattractive to one accustomed to the
rich beauty of New England towns, we found the
church, an old, cracked, mouldering and crumbling
stone edifice, built five hundred years ago.
It was picturesque in its aspect, venerable from
its historical associations, and as poorly adapted
as can well be imagined for any purposes to
which we in America appropriate our churches.
The floor was of crumbling stone, worn by the
footfalls of five centuries. There were enormous
pillars supporting the roof, alcoves running
in here and there, a pulpit stuck like the mud
nest of a swallow upon a rock. The village
priest was there catechising the children. A
large number of straight-backed, rush-bottomed
chairs were scattered about in confusion, instead
of pews. These old Gothic churches, built in a
semi-barbarian age, and adapted to a style of
worship in which the pomp of paganism and a
corrupted Christianity were blended, are to my
mind gloomy memorials of days of darkness.
Visions of hooded monks, of deluded penitents,
of ignorant, joyless generations toiling painfully
through them to the grave, impress and oppress
the spirit. In one corner of the church, occupying
a space some twenty feet square, we saw the
beautiful monument reared by Eugene and Hortense
to their mother. It was indeed a privilege
to stand by the grave of Josephine; there to
meditate upon life’s vicissitudes, there to breathe
the prayer for preparation for that world of
spirits to which Josephine has gone. How faithful
her earthly love; how affecting her dying
prayer! clasping the miniature of the Emperor
fervently to her bosom, she exclaimed, “O God!
watch over Napoleon while he remains in the
desert of this world. Alas! though he hath
committed great faults, hath he not expiated
them by great sufferings? Just God, thou hast
looked into his heart, and hast seen by how ardent
a desire for useful and durable improvements
he was animated! Deign to approve my
last petition. And may this image of my husband
bear me witness that my latest wish and my
latest prayer were for him and for my children.”
As the Emperor Alexander gazed upon her
lifeless remains, he exclaimed, “She is no more;
that woman whom France named the Beneficent;
that angel of goodness is no more. Those who
have known Josephine can never forget her. She
dies regretted by her offspring, her friends, and
her contemporaries.”
In the same church, opposite to the tomb of
Josephine, stands the monument of her daughter
Hortense. Her life was another of those tragedies
of which this world has been so full. Her son,
the present President of France, has reared to
her memory a tasteful monument of various
colored marble, emblematic, as it were, of the
vicissitudes of her eventful life. The monument
bears the inscription—”To Queen Hortense, by
Prince Louis Bonaparte.” She is represented
kneeling in sorrowful meditation. As I stood by
their silent monuments, and thought of the bodies
mouldering to dust beneath them, the beautiful
lines of Kirke White rose most forcibly to my
mind:
In this their last retreat,
Unheeded o’er their silent dust
The storms of life shall beat.”
From Ruel we rode slowly along, through
vineyards and fields of grain, with neither hedges
nor fences to obstruct the view, for about two
miles, when we arrived at the stone wall and iron
entrance-gate of the chateau of Malmaison. The
concierge, a pleasant-looking woman, came from
the porter’s lodge, and looking through the bars
of the gate very politely and kindly told us that
we could not be admitted. I gave her my passport,
my card, and a copy of the Life of Josephine,
which I had written in America, and requested
her to take them to the head man of the[Pg 324]
establishment, and to say to him that I had written
the life of Josephine, and that I had come to
France to visit localities which had been made
memorable by Napoleon and Josephine, and that
I was exceedingly desirous to see Malmaison.
The good woman most obligingly took my parcel,
and tripping away as lightly as a girl, disappeared
in the windings of the well-graveled
avenue, skirted with trees and shrubbery. In
about ten minutes she returned, and smiling and
shaking her head, said that the orders were positive,
and that we could not be admitted. I then
wrote a note to the keeper, in French, which I
fear was not very classical, informing him “that
I was writing the life of Napoleon; that it was
a matter of great importance that I should see
Malmaison, his favorite residence; that I had
recently been favored with a private audience
with the Prince President, and that he had assured
me that he would do every thing in his
power to facilitate my investigations, and that he
would give me free access to all sources of information.
But that as I knew the chateau
belonged to the Queen of Spain, I had made no
efforts to obtain from the French authorities a
ticket of admission.” Then for the first time I
reflected that the proper course for me to have
pursued was to have called upon the Spanish
embassador, a very gentlemanly and obliging
man, who would unquestionably have removed
every obstacle from my way. Giving the good
woman a franc to quicken her steps, again she
disappeared, and after a considerable lapse of
time came back, accompanied by the keeper. He
was a plain, pleasant-looking man, and instead
of addressing me with that angry rebuff, which,
in all probability in America one, under similar
circumstances, would have encountered, he politely
touched his hat, and begged that I would
not consider his refusal as caprice in him, but
that the Queen of Spain did not allow any visitors
to enter the grounds of Malmaison. The
French are so polite, that an American is often
mortified by the consciousness of his own want
of corresponding courtesy. Assuming, however,
all the little suavity at my command, I very politely
touched my hat, and said: “My dear sir,
is it not rather a hard case? I have crossed three
thousand miles of stormy ocean to see Malmaison.
Here I am at the very gate of the park, and
these iron bars won’t let me in.” The kind-hearted
man hesitated for a moment, looked down
upon the ground as if deeply thinking, and then
said, “Let me see your passports again, if you
please.” My companion eagerly drew out his
passport, and pointed to the cabalistic words—”Bearer
of dispatches.” Whether this were the
talisman which at last touched the heart of our
friend I know not, but suddenly relenting he exclaimed,
with a good-natured smile, “Eh bien!
Messieurs, entrez, entrez,” and rolling the iron
gate back upon its hinges, we found ourselves in
the enchanting park of Malmaison.
Passing along a beautiful serpentine avenue,
embowered in trees and shrubbery, and presenting
a scene of very attractive rural beauty, we
came in sight of the plain, comfortable home-like
chateau. A pleasant garden, smiling with flowers,
bloomed in solitude before the windows of the
saloon, and a statue of Napoleon, in his familiar
form, was standing silently there. An indescribable
air of loneliness and yet of loveliness was
spread over the scene. It was one of the most
lovely of May days. Nearly all the voices of nature
are pensive; the sighing of the zephyr and
the wailing of the tempest, the trickling of the
rill and the roar of the ocean, the vesper of the
robin and the midnight cry of the wild beast in
his lair. Nature this morning and in this scene
displayed her mood of most plaintive pathos.
There was Napoleon, standing in solitude in the
garden. All was silence around him. The chateau
was empty and deserted. Josephine and
Hortense were mouldering to dust in the damp
tombs of Ruel. The passing breeze rustled the
leaves of the forest, and the birds with gushes of
melody sung their touching requiems. Shall I
be ashamed to say that emotions uncontrollable
overcame me, and I freely wept? No! For there
are thousands who will read this page who will
sympathize with me in these feelings, and who
will mingle their tears with mine.
We entered the house, and walked from room
to room through all its apartments. Here was
the library of Napoleon, for he loved books.
Christina has converted it into a billiard-room,
for she loves play. Here was the little boudoir
where Napoleon and Josephine met in their hours
of sacred confidence, and the tapestry and the
window curtains, in their simplicity, remain as
arranged by Josephine’s own hands. Here is the
chamber in which Josephine died, and the very
bed upon which she breathed her last. The afternoon
sun was shining brilliantly in through
the windows, which we had thrown open, as it
shone forty years ago upon the wasted form and
pallid cheek of the dying Josephine. The forest,
so secluded and beautiful, waved brightly in the
sun and in the breeze then as now; the birds
then filled the air with the same plaintive melody.
The scene of nature and of art—house,
lawn, shrubbery, grove, cascade, grotto—remains
unchanged; but the billows of revolution
and death have rolled over the world-renowned
inmates of Malmaison, and they are all swept
away.
An old-serving man, eighty years of age, conducted
us through the silent and deserted apartments.
The affection with which he spoke of
Napoleon and of Josephine amounted almost to
adoration. He was in their service when the
Emperor and Empress, arm-in-arm, sauntered
through these apartments and these shady walks.
There must have been some most extraordinary
fascination in Napoleon, by which he bound to
him so tenaciously all those who were brought
near his person. His history in that respect is
without a parallel. No mortal man, before or
since, has been so enthusiastically loved. The
column in the Place Vendome is still hung with
garlands of flowers by the hand of affection. It
is hardly too much to say, that the spirit of[Pg 325]
Napoleon, emerging from his monumental tomb
under the dome of the Invalids, still reigns in
France. Louis Napoleon is nothing in himself.
His power is but the reflected power of the
Emperor.
We passed from the large saloon, upon the
smooth green lawn, which has so often resounded
with those merry voices, which are now all
hushed in death. We looked upon trees which
Napoleon and Josephine had planted, wandered
through the walks along which their footsteps
had strayed, reclined upon the seats where they
had found repose, and culling many wild flowers,
as memorials of this most beautiful spot, with
lingering footsteps retired. Nothing which I
have seen in France has interested me so much
as Malmaison. Galignani’s Guide-Book says:
“The park and extensive gardens in which
Josephine took so much delight are nearly destroyed.
The chateau still exists, but the Queen
Dowager of Spain, to whom Malmaison now
belongs, has strictly forbidden all visits.” This
appears to be, in part, a mistake. The park
and the grounds immediately around the mansion,
as well as the chateau itself, remain essentially
as they were in the time of Josephine.
France contains no spot more rich in touching
associations.
4. The Tuileries.—”Will Prince Louis Napoleon,”
inquired a gentleman, of a French lady,
“take up his residence in the Tuileries?” “He
had better not,” was the laconic reply. “It is
an unlucky place.” It requires not a little effort
of imagination to invest this enormous pile of
blackened buildings with an aspect of beauty.
Three hundred years ago the palace was commenced
by Catherine de Medici. But it has
never been a favorite residence of the kings of
France, and no effort of the imagination, and
no concomitants of regal splendor can make it
an agreeable home. It has probably witnessed
more scenes of woe, and more intensity of unutterable
anguish, than any other palace upon
the surface of the globe. Its rooms are of spacious,
lofty, cheerless grandeur. Though millions
have been expended upon this structure, it
has had but occasional occupants. A few evenings
ago I was honored with an invitation to a
party given by Prince Louis Napoleon in the
palace of the Tuileries. Four thousand guests
were invited. The vast palace, had all its rooms
been thrown open, might perhaps have accommodated
twice as many more. When I arrived
at half-past nine o’clock at the massive gateway
which opens an entrance to the court of
the Tuileries, I found a band of soldiers stationed
there to preserve order. Along the street, also,
for some distance, armed sentinels were stationed
on horseback, promptly to summon, in case
of necessity, the 80,000 troops who, with spear
and bayonet, keep the restless Parisians tranquil.
The carriage, following a long train, and
followed by a long train, entered, between files
of soldiers with glittering bayonets, the immense
court-yard of the palace, so immense that the
whole military force of the capital can there
be assembled. The court-yard was illuminated
with almost the brilliance of noon-day, by various
pyramids of torches; and dazzling light
gleamed from the brilliant windows of the palace,
proclaiming a scene of great splendor within.
A band of musicians, stationed in the court-yard,
pealed forth upon the night air the most
animating strains of martial music. At the door,
an armed sentry looked at my ticket of invitation,
and I was ushered into a large hall. It
was brilliantly lighted, and a swarm of servants,
large, imposing-looking men in gorgeous livery,
thronged it. One of these servants very respectfully
conducted the guest through the hall to a
spacious ante-room. This room also was dazzling
with light, and numerous servants were
there to take the outer garments of the guests,
and to give them tickets in return. My number
was 2004. We then ascended a magnificent
flight of marble stairs, so wide that twenty men
could, with ease, march up them abreast. Sentinels
in rich uniform stood upon the stairs with[Pg 326]
glittering bayonets. We were ushered into the
suit of grand saloons extending in long perspective,
with regal splendor. Innumerable chandeliers
suspended from the lofty gilded ceilings,
threw floods of light upon the brilliant throng
which crowded this abode of royalty. In two
different saloons bands of musicians were stationed,
and their liquid notes floated through the
hum of general conversation. Men of lofty lineage
were there, rejoicing in their illustrious birth,
and bearing upon their breasts the jeweled insignia
of their rank. Generals of armies were
there, decorated with garments inwoven with
gold. Ladies, almost aerial in their gossamer
robes, floated like visions through the animated
assembly. Occasionally the dense throng was
pressed aside, and a little space made for the
dancers. The rooms were warm, the crowd
immense, the champagne abundant, and the
dancers seemed elated and happy. As the hours
of the night wore away, and the throng was
a little diminished, and the bottles emptied, I
thought that I could perceive that the polka
and the waltz were prosecuted with a decided
increase of fervor. I must confess that, with
my Puritan notions, I should not like to see a
friend of mine, whose maiden delicacy I desired
to cherish, exposed to such hugs and such
twirls.
About half-past ten o’clock, a wide door was
thrown open at one end of the long suit of
rooms, and the Prince President, accompanied
by a long retinue of lords, ladies, embassadors,
&c., entered the apartments. They passed along
through the crowd, which opened respectfully
before them, and entering one of the main
saloons, took their seats upon an elevated platform,
which had been arranged and reserved for
them. All eyes were fastened upon the President.
Every one seemed to feel an intense
curiosity to see him. Wherever he moved, a
circle, about ten feet in diameter, was left around
him. It was curious to see the promptness with
which the crowd would disperse before him, and
close up behind him, whenever he changed his
position. There were two immense refreshment
rooms, supplied with every luxury, at the two
ends of the suit of apartments, filled with guests.
These rooms of vast capacity—for four thousand
hungry people were to be provided for—were
fitted up with counters running along three of
their sides like those of a shop. Behind these
counters stood an army of waiters; before them,
all the evening long, an eager crowd. As soon
as one had obtained his supply, there were two
or three others ready to take his place. In one
of the rooms there were provided wines, meats
of all kinds, and a most luxurious variety of
substantial viands. In the other refreshment-room,
at the other end of the thronged apartments,
there were ices, confectionery, fruits, and
all the delicacies of the dessert.
This was seeing the Palace of the Tuileries
in all its glory. Embassadors of all nations
were there—the turbaned Turk, the proud Persian,
the white-robed Arab. Many of the ladies
were glittering with diamonds and every variety
of precious stones.
And all went merry as a marriage bell.”
But as I sauntered through the brilliant scene,
visions of other days, and of spectacles more
impressive, filled my mind. Through these very
halls, again and again, has rolled an inundation
of all that Paris can furnish of vulgarity, degradation,
and violence. Into the embrasure of this
very window the drunken mob of men and women
drove, with oaths and clubs, Louis XVI.,
and compelled him to drink the cup of humiliation
to its very dregs. It was from this window
that the hapless Maria Antoinette looked,
when the sentinel beneath brutally exclaimed to
her, “I wish, Austrian woman, that I had your
head upon my bayonet here, that I might pitch
it over the wall to the dogs in the street!” It
was upon this balcony that the sainted Madame
Elizabeth and Maria Antoinette stepped, that
dark and dreadful night when frenzied Paris,
from all its garrets, and all its kennels, was
surging like the billows of the ocean against the
Tuileries. Their hearts throbbed with terror
as they heard the tolling of the alarm bells, the
rumbling of artillery wheels, and the rattle of
musketry, as the infuriate populace thronged
the palace, thirsting for their blood. From this
balcony that awful night, Maria entered the
chamber where her beautiful son was sleeping,
gazed earnestly upon him, and left a mother’s
loving kiss upon his cheek. She then went to
the apartment of her daughter. The beautiful
child, fifteen years of age, comprehending the
peril of the hour, could not sleep. Maria pressed
her to her throbbing heart, and a mother’s
tenderness triumphed over the stoicism of the
Queen. Her pent-up feelings burst through
all restraints, and she wept with anguish unendurable.
THE TUILERIES.
The Tuileries! It is, indeed, an “unlucky
palace.” This saloon, now resounding with music
and mirth, is the very spot where Josephine,
with swollen eyes and heart of agony, signed
that cruel deed of divorcement which sundered
the dearest hopes and the fondest ties which a
human heart can cherish. History contains not
a more affecting incident than her final adieu to
her husband, which occurred in this chamber
the night after the divorce. The Emperor, restless
and wretched, had just placed himself in
the bed from which he had ejected his faithful
wife, when the door of his chamber was slowly
opened, and Josephine tremblingly entered. She
tottered into the middle of the room, and approached
the bed. Here, irresolutely stopping,
she burst into a flood of tears. She seemed for
a moment to reflect that it was no longer proper
for her to approach the bed of Napoleon. But
suddenly the pent-up fountains of love and grief
in her heart burst forth; and, forgetting every
thing, in the fullness of her anguish, she threw
herself upon the bed, clasped Napoleon’s neck
in her arms, and exclaiming, “My husband! my
husband!” wept in agony which could not be[Pg 327]
controlled. The firm spirit of Napoleon was
vanquished: he folded her to his bosom, pressed
her cheek to his, and their tears were mingled
together. He assured her of his love, of
his ardent and undying love, and endeavored in
every way to sooth her anguish.
It was down this marble staircase, now thronged
with brilliant guests, that the next morning
Josephine descended, vailed from head to foot.
Her grief was too deep for utterance. Waving
an adieu to the affectionate and weeping friends
who surrounded her, she entered her carriage,
sank back upon the cushion, buried her face in
her handkerchief, and, sobbing bitterly, left the
Tuileries forever. It is not probable that the
Tuileries will ever again be inhabited by royalty.
There are too many mournful associations connected
with the place ever to render it agreeable
as a residence. When Louis Philippe was driven
from the Tuileries, the mob again sacked it, and
its vast saloons are unfurnished and empty.
Four years ago, the Provisional Government
passed a decree that this palace should be converted
into a hospital for invalid workmen. The
Provisional Government, however, has passed
away, and the decree has not been carried into
effect. After the insurrection in June of 1848 it
was used as a hospital for the wounded. More
recently it has been used as a museum for
the exhibition of paintings. Its days of regal
pride and splendor have now passed away for
ever.
GRAND AVENUE OF THE TUILERIES.
5. The Palace Elysée.—This is a beautiful rural
home in the very heart of Paris. It is now
occupied by Prince Louis Napoleon. For a regal
residence it is quite unostentatious, and
few abodes could any where be found, combining
more attractions, for one of refined and
simple tastes. Through the kindness of our
minister, Mr. Rives, I obtained an audience
with Count Roguet, who is at the head of the
Presidential household, and through him secured
an “audience particulière” with Prince
Louis Napoleon in the Elysée. As I alighted
from a hackney-coach at the massive gateway
of the palace, armed sentinels were walking to
and fro upon the pavements, surrounding the
whole inclosure of the palace with a vigilant
guard. At the open iron gate two more were
stationed. I passed between their bayonets and
was directed into a small office where a dignified-looking
official examined my credentials,
and then pointed my steps along the spacious
court-yard to the door of the mansion. Armed
soldiers were walking their patrols along the
yard, and upon the flight of steps two stood
guarding the door, with their glittering steel.
They glanced at my note of invitation, and I
entered the door. Several servants were there,
evidently picked men, large and imposing in
figure, dressed in small-clothes, and silk stockings,
and laced with rich livery. One glanced
at my letter, and conducting me across the hall
introduced me into another room. There I
found another set of servants and three clerks
writing at a long table. One took my note of
invitation and sat down, as if to copy it, and I
was ushered into the third room. This was a
large room in the interior of the palace, richly
ornamented with gilded pilasters and ceiling.
The walls were painted with landscapes, representing
many scenes of historic interest. There
were ten gentlemen, who had come before me,
waiting for an audience. Some were nobles,
with the full display upon their breasts of the
decorations of their rank. Others were generals,
in brilliant military costume. Several I
observed with the modest red ribbon in the button
hole, indicating that they were members of
the Legion of Honor. All spoke in low and
subdued tones of voice, and with soft footsteps
moved about the room. Occasionally, an officer
of the household would enter the room with a
paper in his hands, apparently containing a list[Pg 328]
of the names of those who had arrived, and
softly would call out the name of one, who immediately
followed him into another room. As
I at once saw that I had at least an hour to
wait in the ante-room, I turned my thoughts to
the scenes which, in years gone by, have transpired
in this palace of Elysium. Nearly 150
years ago, the Count of Evreux built it for his
aristocratic city residence. It was afterward
purchased, enlarged, and beautified for the residence
of Madame de Pompadour, the frail, voluptuous,
intriguing paramour of Louis XV.; and
often have they, arm-in-arm, paced this floor.
They have passed out at these open French windows
into the beautiful lawn which spreads before
the mansion, and sauntered until lost in the wilderness
of fountains, flowers, shrubbery, grove,
and serpentine walks which spread over these
enchanting grounds. But inexorable death
struck down both king and mistress, and they
passed away to the Judgment. The Revolution
came, the awful retribution for centuries of
kingly pride and oppression, and the regal palace
became a printing-office for the irreligion
of Voltaire, and the Jacobinism of Marat. These
saloons and boudoirs were turned into eating
rooms, and smoking rooms. The girls of the
street crowded this spacious parlor, and where
kings and queens had danced before them, they
proudly danced with liberté, fraternité, égalité,
in red cap and blouse. Then came the young
soldier from Corsica, and with a whip of small
cords drove printer, blouse, and grisette into
the street. By his side stands the tall, athletic,
mustached inn-keeper’s boy, who had learned to
ride when grooming the horses of his father’s
guests. With his whirlwind cloud of cavalry
he had swept Italy and Egypt, and now enriched
and powerful, Murat claims the hand of Caroline
Bonaparte, the sister of the great conqueror.
With his bride he takes the palace of the Elysée,
and lives here in extravagance which even Louis
XV. could not surpass. These paintings on the
wall, Murat placed here. These pyramids of
Egypt ever remind his guests that Murat, with
his crushing squadrons, trampled down the defiant
Mamelukes upon the Nile. This lady,
walking beneath the trees of the forest, is Caroline,
his wife. The children filling this carriage
so joyously, are his sons and daughters. But
he who had crowns at his disposal, places his
brother-in-law upon the throne of Naples, and
Napoleon himself chooses this charming spot
for his favorite city residence. Weary with the
cares of empire, he has often sought repose in
these shady bowers. But allied Europe drove
him from his Elysium, and the combined forces
of Russia, Prussia, and Austria, take possession
of the capital of his empire, and reinstate
the Bourbons upon the throne from which
they had been driven. Napoleon returns from
Elba, and again hastens to his beloved Elysée.
A hundred days glide swiftly by, and
he is a prisoner, bound to St. Helena, to die
a captive in a dilapidated stable. As I was
reflecting upon the changes, and upon the painful
contrast which must have presented itself
to Napoleon, between the tasteful and exquisite
seclusion of the Elysée, and the cheerless,
barren, mist-enveloped rock of St. Helena, I was
awakened from my reverie by a low tone of
voice calling my name. I followed the messenger
through a door, expecting to enter the
presence of Louis Napoleon. Instead of that I
was ushered into a large, elegantly furnished
saloon—the council chamber of the Emperor
Napoleon, but it was empty. There was a large
folio volume, resembling one of the account
books of a merchant, lying open upon a table.
The messenger who summoned me, with my
note of invitation in his hand, went to the book,
passed his finger down the page, and soon I saw
it resting upon my name. He read, apparently,
a brief description of my character, and then,
leaving me alone, went into another room, I
suppose to inform the President who was to be
introduced to him. In a few moments he returned,
and I was ushered into the presence of
the Prince President of Republican France. He
was seated in an arm-chair, at the side of a
table covered with papers. Louis Napoleon is
a small man, with a mild, liquid, rather languid
eye, and a countenance expressive of much passive
resolution rather than of active energy. In
his address, he is courteous, gentle, and retiring,
and those who know him best, assign him a far
higher position in the grade of intellect than is
usually in our country allotted to him. His government
is an utter despotism, sustained by the
bayonets of the army. I have made great efforts,
during the two months in which I have been in
Paris, to ascertain the state of public opinion
respecting the government of Louis Napoleon.
Circumstances have thrown me much into
French society, both into the society of those
who are warm friends, and bitter enemies of the
present government. So far as I can ascertain
facts, they seem to be these. There are four parties
who divide France—the Bourbonists, the
Orleanists, the Socialists, and the Bonapartists.
Like the military chieftains in Mexico, they are
all struggling for dominion. There is not sufficient
intelligence and virtue in France, for it to
be governed by opinion, by a vote. The bayonet
is the all-availing argument. If Louis Napoleon
is overthrown, it must be to give place to some
one, who, like him, must call the army and despotic
power to his support. Consequently, multitudes
say, What shall we gain by the change?
We shall have new barricades in the street, new
rivulets of blood trickling down our gutters, and
simply another name in the Elysée.—I can see
no indication that Louis Napoleon has any personal
popularity. The glory of his uncle over-shadows
him and renders him available. The
army and the church, but without any enthusiasm,
are in his favor. Most of the men in active
business who seek protection and good order,
support his claims. The American merchants,
settled in Paris, generally feel that the overthrow
of Louis Napoleon would be to them a serious
calamity, and that they should hardly dare in[Pg 329]
that case, to remain in Paris. His government
is submitted to, not merely as a choice of evils,
but there is a kind of approval of his despotism
as necessary to sustain him in power, and for
the repose of France. I do not say that these
views are correct. I only say, that so far as I
can learn, this appears to me to be the state of
the public mind.
It is very evident that no portion of the people
regard Louis Napoleon with enthusiasm.
At the great fête in the Champs Elysée, which
called all Europe to Paris, to witness the restoration
of the ancient eagles of France to the
standards of the army, it was almost universally
supposed out of Paris, that the hundred thousand
troops then passing in proud array before
the President would hail him Emperor. A countless
throng encircled the area of that vast field.
It was estimated that nearly a million of people
were there assembled. Yet when Louis Napoleon
made his appearance with his brilliant staff,
I did not hear one single citizen’s voice raised in
applause. As he rode along the ranks of the
army, a murmur of recognition followed his progress,
but no shouts of enthusiasm.
Immediately after the fête, a magnificent ball
and entertainment were given by the army, to
Prince Louis Napoleon. It is said, that one
hundred and sixty thousand dollars were expended
in canopying the vast court yard of the
Ecole Militaire, and in decorating it for this occasion.
Fifteen thousand guests were invited.
The scene of brilliance and splendor, no pen
can describe. About half-past twelve o’clock
the President entered upon an elevated platform,
accompanied by the foreign ministers and the
members of his court. But not one single voice
even shouted a welcome. He remained a couple
of hours conversing with those around him,
and then bowing to the enormous throng of
those whose invited guest he was, retired. One
man, by my side, shouted in a clear, shrill voice
which filled the vast saloons, “Vive l’Empereur,”
two others promptly responded, “Vive Napoleon.”
No other acclaim was heard.
The prospect of France is gloomy. Such a
government as the present can not be popular.
No other seems possible. No one seems to expect
that the government can last for many
years. And yet a change is dreaded. Rich
men are transferring their property to England
and America. Never did I love my own country
as now. Never did I appreciate as now, the
rich legacy we have inherited from our fathers.
The hope of the world is centred in America.
We must let Europe alone. To mortal vision
her case is hopeless. We must cultivate our
country, spread over our land, virtue and intelligence,
and freedom; and welcome to peaceful
homes in the new world, all who can escape
from the taxation and despotism of the old. In
half a century from now, the United States will
be the most powerful nation upon which our
sun has ever shone. Then we can speak with a
voice that shall be heard. Our advice will have
the efficiency of commands. Europe now has
apparently but to choose between the evils of
despotism, and the evils of anarchy. And still
it is undeniable that the progress, though slow
and painful is steadily onward toward popular
liberty.
In this paper I have but commenced the description
of the Palaces of France. In a subsequent
number I may continue the subject.
A LEAF FROM A TRAVELER’S NOTE-BOOK.
BY MAUNSELL B. FIELD.
“Another flask of Orvieto, Gaetano, and
tell the vetturino that we start to-morrow
morning, punctually at six,” exclaimed one of
three foreigners, seated around a table, in the
smokiest corner of the “Lepre“—the artist-haunt
of the Via Condotti.
The speaker was a plain looking French gentleman,
who, under the simplest exterior, concealed
the most admirable mind and the highest
personal qualities. A Provincial by birth, a
Parisian by education, and a cosmopolite by
travel, he united all the peculiar sagacity of his
nation with that more dignified tone of character
so rarely met with in his countrymen. Descended
from a family of Lorraine, who had inherited
the magistracy for centuries, and who, ruined
at the emigration, had only partially recovered
their fortunes at the restoration, our friend (ours,
at least, reader) found himself, on attaining his
majority, possessed of a sufficient competency
to enable him to travel in a moderate way, so
long as the taste should continue. And here he
had been residing in Rome a twelvemonth (not
rushing through it with cis-Atlantic steam-power),
studying art with devotion, and living the intense
life of Italian existence. His companions at the
moment our recital commences, were an old Hollander,
who had emerged from commerce into
philosophy (no very usual exit!) and myself,
whom chance had made a lounger in European
capitals—a pilgrim from both Mecca and Jerusalem—and
a connoisseur in every vintage from
Burgundy to Xeres.
Carnival, with its fantastic follies, when the
most constitutionally sedate by a species of frenzied
reaction become the most reckless in absurdity,
was past. Holy Week, with its gorgeous
ecclesiastical mummery—its magnificent
fire-works, and its still more magnificent illumination
was likewise gone. Nearly all the travelers
who had been spending the winter in
Rome, including the two thousand English faces
which, from their constant repetition at every
public place, seemed at least two hundred thousand,
had disappeared. Our own party had
lingered after the rest, loath to leave, perhaps
forever, the most fascinating city in the world
to an intelligent mind. But at last we too,
had determined to go, and our destination was
Naples.
That very afternoon we had taken one of the
tumble-down carriages, which station on the
Piazza di Spagna, to make a farewell giro
through the Forum. Leaving Rome is not like[Pg 330]
leaving any other town. Associations dating
from early childhood, and linking the present with
the past, make familiar, before they are known,
objects in themselves so intrinsically interesting
and beautiful, that the strongest attachment is
sure to follow a first actual acquaintance with
them. And when that acquaintance has been
by daily intercourse matured, it is hard to give
it up.
The weather was delicious. And as our crazy
vehicle rattled over the disjointed pavement of
the Appian way, among sandaled monks, lounging
Jesuits, and herdsmen from the Campagna,
a heart-sickness came over us which, in the instance
of one, at least, of the party, has since
settled down into a chronic mal du pays.
We had been taking our last meal at the
“Trattoria Lepre,” where we had so often, after a
hard day’s work, feasted upon cignale (wild boar),
or something purporting so to be, surrounded by
the bearded pensionnaires of all the academies.
Our Figaro-like attendant, who had served us
daily for so many months, was more than commonly
officious in the consciousness that the
next morning we proposed to start for Naples.
And, in fact, on the succeeding day at an early
hour, an antediluvian vehicle, with chains and
baskets slung beneath, drawn by three wild uncouth-looking
animals, under the guidance of a
good-for-nothing, half-bandit Trasteverino, in a
conical hat and unwashed lineaments, might be
seen emerging from the Porta San Giovanni,
with their three Excellenzas in the inside.
The hearts of all three were too full for utterance—several
miles we jogged on in silence,
straining our eyes with last glimpses of St. Peter’s,
the Pantheon, and St. John Lateran.
At Albano we proposed to breakfast; and,
while the meal was being prepared and the
horses being refreshed, we started for a walk
to the Lake, familiar to all the party from previous
visits.
As we were seated on the bank, cigars in
mouth, and as moody as might be, the Frenchman
first endeavored to turn the current of our
thoughts by speaking of Naples, which he alone
of us knew. The effort was not particularly
successful. But the Frenchman promised that
when we resumed our journey, he would tell us
a Neapolitan story, the effect of which, he hoped,
would be to raise our spirits.
After returning to the inn, and breakfasting
upon those mysterious Italian cutlets, the thick
breading upon which defies all satisfactory investigation
into their original material, we resumed
our journey.
Legs dovetailed, and cigars relighted, the
Frenchman thus commenced the story of
CARLO CARRERA.
The summer before last, after a shocking
soaking in crossing the Apennines, I contracted
one of those miserable fevers that nature seems
to exact as a toll from unfortunate Trans-Alpines
for a summer’s residence in Italy. I had no faith
in Italian doctors, and as there was no medical
man from my own country in Florence, I was
persuaded to call in Doctor Playfair a Scotch
physician, long domiciled in Italy, and as I afterwards
discovered, both a skillful practitioner and
a charming companion. I was kept kicking my
heels against the footboard in all some six weeks,
and when I had become sufficiently convalescent
to sit up, the doctor used to make me long and
friendly visits. In these visits he kept me posted
up with all the chit-chat of the town; and
upon one occasion related to me, better than I
can tell it, the following story, of the truth of
which (in all seriousness), he was perfectly satisfied,
having heard it from the mouth of one of
the parties concerned.
“Do throw some bajocchi to those clamorous
natives, my dear Republican, that I may proceed
with my story in peace.”
Well, then, to give you a little preliminary
history—don’t be alarmed—a very little. The
liberal government established in Naples in the
winter of 1820-21, on the basis of the Spanish
Cortes of 1812, was destined to a speedy dissolution.
The despotic powers of the Continent,
at the instigation of Austria, refused to enter
into diplomatic relations with a kingdom which
had adopted the representative system, after an
explicit and formal engagement to maintain the
institutions of absolutism. An armed intervention
was decided upon at the Congress of Laybach,
with the full consent and approbation of
Ferdinand I., who treacherously abandoned the
cause of his subjects. It was agreed to send an
Austrian army, backed by a Russian one, into
the Neapolitan dominions, for the purpose of
putting down the Carbornari and other insurgents
who, to the number of one hundred and
fifty thousand men, badly armed, badly clothed,
and badly disciplined, had assembled under the
command of that notorious adventurer, Guiliemo
Pepe, for the protection of those feebly secured
liberties which had resulted to their country from
the Sicilian revolution of the previous summer.
This foreign force was to be maintained entirely
at the expense of Ferdinand, and to remain in
his kingdom, if necessary, for three years. The
feeble resistance offered by the patriots to the
invading forces—their defeat at the very outset—and
their subsequent flight and disbandment—constitute
one of those disgraceful denouements
so common to Italian attempts at political regeneration.
“By all the storks in Holland,” exclaimed the
Dutchman, “cut short your story—I see nothing
in it particularly enlivening.”
“Badinage à part,” resumed the Frenchman,
“I have done in a word.”
After the disastrous engagement of March 7,
at Rieti, and the restoration of the old government,
the patriot forces were scattered over the
country; and as has too often been the case in
southern Europe upon the discomfiture of a revolutionary
party, many bands of banditti were
formed from the disorganized remnants of the defeated
army. For a long time the whole of the
kingdom, particularly the Calabrias, was infested
by robber gangs, whose boldness only equaled[Pg 331]
their necessities. Most of these banditti were
hunted down and transferred to the galleys. The
Neapolitan police has at all times been active in
the suppression of disorders known or suspected
to have a political origin. Fear of a revolution
has ever been a more powerful incentive to the
government than respect for justice or love of
order; and “Napoli la Fidelissima” has so far
reserved the name, and inspired such confidence
in the not particularly intellectual sovereign who
now sits on the throne, that the last time that I
was there, his Majesty was in the habit of parading
his bewhiskered legions through the streets
of his capital, completely equipped at all points—except
that they were unarmed!
And now for the story.
Among the most notorious of the banditti chieftains
was one Carlo Carrera. This person, who
had been a subaltern officer, succeeded for a long
time, with some thirty followers, in defying the
attempts of the police to capture him. Driven
from hold to hold, and from fastness to fastness,
he had finally been pursued to the neighborhood
of Naples. Here the gendarmes of the government
were satisfied that he was so surrounded as
soon to be compelled to surrender at discretion.
This was late in the following winter.
About this time his Britannic Majesty’s frigate
“Tagus,” commanded by Captain, now Vice-Admiral,
Sir George Dundas, was cruising in the
Mediterranean. In the month of February Sir
George anchored in the bay of Naples, with the
intention of remaining there some weeks. It
happened that another officer in his Majesty’s
navy, Captain, now Vice-Admiral, Sir Edward
Owen, was wintering at Naples for the benefit
of his health, accompanied by his wife and her
sister, Miss V——, a young lady of extraordinary
beauty and accomplishments. Sir George and
Sir Edward were old friends. They had been
together in the same ship as captain and first-lieutenant
on the African station, and their accidental
meeting when equals in rank was as cordial
as it was unexpected.
A few days after the arrival of the frigate, a
pic-nic excursion to the shores of Lake Agnano
was proposed. The party was to consist of the
persons of whom I have just been speaking,
together with a few other English friends, chiefly
gentlemen from the embassy. Accordingly they
set off on one of those delightful mornings which
are of themselves almost sufficient to make strangers
exclaim with the enthusiastic Neapolitans,
“Vedi Napoli e poi mori!” The surpassing
loveliness of the scene, its perfect repose with so
many elements of action, brought to the soul
such a luxurious sense of passive enjoyment,
that it seemed like the echo of all experienced
happiness. I can not say if the Strada Nuova,
in all its present paved perfection, then existed;
but there must have been some sort of a road following
the indentations of that lovely shore.
I have traced from Genoa to Nice the far-famed
windings of the Maritime Alps—I have
sailed along the glittering shores of the Bosphorus—I
have admired the boasted site of the Lusitanian
capital—and yet I feel, as all travelers
must feel, that the combined charms of all these
would fail to make another Naples.
Far out before them lay the fair island of
Capri, like a sea goddess, with arms outstretched
to receive the playful waters of the Mediterranean.
Behind, Vesuvius rose majestically, the
blue smoke lazily curling from its summit, as
peaceful as if it had only been placed there as an
accessory to the beauty of the scene; and further
on, as they turned the promontory, lay the bright
islets of Nisita and Procida, so fantastic in their
shapes and so romantic in their outlines.
On reaching the shore of Lake Agnano, our travelers
left their carriage near the villa of Lucullus.
Of course they suffocated themselves, according
to the approved habit of tourists, in the vapor
baths of San Germano—and according to the
same approved habit, devoted an unfortunate dog
to temporary strangulation in the mephitic air of
the Grotta del cane. After doing up the lions of
the neighborhood, our friends seated themselves
near the shore, to partake of the cold fowls and
champagne, of which ample provision had been
made for the excursion.
“I should have preferred the native Lachrymæ
Christi to champagne,” interrupted the Dutchman,
“if the usual quality compares with that
of some I once drank at Rotterdam.”
The repast finished, resumed the Frenchman,
most of the party strolled off to the other extremity
of the lake—until after a short time no one
was left but Miss V——, who was amusing herself
by making a sketch of the landscape. What
a pity that the women of other nations are so
rarely accomplished in drawing, while the English
ladies are almost universally so!
Well then, our fair heroine for the moment,
had got on most industriously with her work,
when suddenly, on raising her eyes from her
paper to a stack of decayed vines, she was disagreeably
surprised at finding a pair of questionable
optics leveled upon her. Retaining her
composure of manner, she continued tranquilly
her occupation, until she had time to remark
that the intruder was accompanied by at least a
dozen companions. At this moment the personage
whom she had first seen, quietly left his
place of partial concealment, walked up to the astonished
lady, folded his arms, and stationed himself
behind her back. He was a large, heavy,
good-looking person—but the circumstances under
which he presented himself, rather than any
peculiarity in his appearance, caused Miss V—— to
suspect the honesty of his profession.
“Indeed you are making an uncommonly
pretty picture there, if you will permit me to
say so,” remarked the stranger.
“I am glad you like it,” replied the young
lady. “I think, however, that it would be vastly
improved, if you would permit me to sketch your
figure in the foreground.”
“Nothing would flatter me more. But, cara
signorina, my present object is a much less romantic
one than sitting for my portrait to so fair an
artist. Will you allow me to gather up for myself[Pg 332]
and my half famished friends, the fragments
of your recent meal?”
“You are quite welcome to them, I assure
you.”
The dialogue had proceeded thus far when it
was interrupted by the return, to the no small
satisfaction of one of the party at least, of the
two English officers and some others of the
stragglers.
The stranger, in no way disconcerted, turned
to Sir Edward Owen, and said,
“I believe that I have the honor of addressing
his Excellency, the commander of the British
frigate in the harbor.”
“Excuse me,” said Sir George Dundas, “I
am that person.”
“Sono il servitore di Vostra Excellenza. The
young lady whom I found here has given me
permission to make use of the food that has been
left by your party. But if your Excellency, and
you, sir,” addressing the other officer, “will
grant me the favor of a moment’s private conversation,
you will increase the obligation already
conferred.”
The three, thereupon, retired to a short distance
from the rest of the company, when the
stranger resumed:
“If your Excellencies have been in this poor
country long enough, you must have heard speak
of one Carlo Carrera. You may or you may
not be surprised to hear that I am he—and
that my followers are not far off. I have no
desire to inconvenience your Excellencies, your
friends, or, least of all, the ladies who accompany
you, and shall, therefore, be but too happy
to release you at once—I say release, for you
are in my power—upon the single condition,
however, that you two gentlemen give me your
word of honor that you will both, or either of
you, come to me whenever or wherever I shall
send for you during the next two weeks—and
that you will not speak of this conversation to
any one.”
Disposed at all hazards to extricate the ladies
from any thing like an adventure, our travelers
willingly entered into the required engagement,
and, with a mutual “a rivederla,” the two parties
separated.
Our English friends returned to Naples, amused
at the singular episode to their excursion, and
rather disposed to admire the gallant behavior
of the intruder than to regard him with any unfavorable
sentiments.
Some three days after this, as Sir George
Dundas was strolling about nightfall in the Villa
Reale, a person in the dress of a priest approached
him, and beckoned him to follow. Leading
the officer into an obscure corner behind one of
the numerous statues, the stranger informed him
that he came from the bandit of Lake Agnano,
and that he was directed to request him to be at
seven o’clock that evening in front of the Filomarini
Chapel, in the Church of the Santissimi
Apostoli.
The gallant captain did not hesitate to obey.
At the appointed hour, on entering the church
and advancing to the indicated chapel, he found
before it what appeared to be an old woman on
her knees, engaged in the deepest devotion. At
a sign from the pretended worshiper, the captain
fell upon his knees at her side. The old crone
briefly whispered to him, that it was known to
Carrera that his Excellency was invited to a
ball at the British Embassy the next evening—that
he must by no means fail to go—but that
at midnight precisely he must leave the ball-room,
return home, remove his uniform, put on
a plain citizen’s dress, and be at the door of the
same church at one o’clock in the morning.
After these directions the old woman resumed
her devotions, and the captain left the church,
his curiosity considerably excited by the adventurous
turn that things were taking. His brother
officer, to whom he related the particulars of the
meeting at the Villa Reale, and of the interview
in the church, strongly urged him to fulfill the
promise which he had made at Lake Agnano,
and to follow to the letter the mysterious instructions
which he had received.
Of course, the ball at the British Embassy on
the following evening was graced by the presence
of nearly all the distinguished foreigners in
town. The English wintered at Naples at that
time in almost as large numbers as they do at
present; and in all matters of gayety and festivity,
display and luxury, they as far exceeded
the Italians as they now do. It is a curious circumstance,
which both of you must have had
occasion to remark, that the English, so rigid
and austere at home, when transplanted south
of the Alps, surpass the natives themselves in
license and frivolity.
Our captain was of course there, and at an
early hour. After mingling freely in the gayeties
of the evening, at midnight precisely he
withdrew from the ball-room, sans congé, and
hastened to his apartments. Changing his dress,
and arming himself with a brace of pistols, he
hurried to the Church of the Apostoli. In his
excess of punctuality, he arrived too early at the
rendezvous; and it was only after the expiration
of some twenty minutes, that he was joined by
the withered messenger before employed to summon
him. Bidding him follow her, the old woman
led the way with an activity little to have
been expected in one apparently so feeble. Turning
down the Chiaja, they followed the course
of the bay a weary way beyond the grotto of
Posilipo. The captain was already tolerably exhausted
when the guide turned off abruptly to
the right, and commenced the ascent of one of
those vine-clad hills which border the road. The
hill was thickly planted with the vine, so that
their progress was both difficult and fatiguing.
They had been toiling upward more than an
half hour since leaving the highway, and the
patience of Sir George was all but exhausted,
when on a sudden they came to one of those
huts constructed of interlaced boughs, which are
temporarily used by the vine-dressers in the
south of Italy. The entrance was closed by a
plaited mat of leaves and stalks. Raising this[Pg 333]
mat, the old woman entered, followed by her
companion.
The hut was dimly lighted by a small lantern.
Closing the entrance as securely as the nature
of the fastening would permit, the pretended old
woman threw off her disguise and disclosed the
well-remembered features of the courteous bandit
of Lake Agnano.
Thanking his guest for the punctuality with
which he had kept his appointment, Carrera motioned
him to follow him to the further extremity
of the hut. Taking the lantern in his hand,
and stooping, the Italian raised a square slab of
stone, which either from the skill with which it
was adjusted or from the partial obscurity which
surrounded him, had escaped Sir George’s eye.
As he did this a flood of light poured into the
hut. Descending by a flight of a dozen or more
steps, followed by the robber chieftain, who drew
back the stone after them, the captain found
himself in one of those spacious catacombs so
common in the neighborhood of Naples. Seated
around a table were a score or more of as fierce
looking vagabonds as the imagination could paint,
who all rose to their feet as their leader entered
with his guest, saluting both with that propriety
of address so peculiar to the lower classes of
Italians and Spaniards.
When all were seated, Carrera turned to the
Englishman, and said,
“Your Excellency will readily suppose that I
had a peculiar motive for desiring an interview.
God knows that I was not brought up to wrong
and violence—but evil times have sadly changed
the current of my life. A poor soldier, I have
become a poorer brigand—at least in these latter
days, when hunted like a wild beast I am
at last enveloped in the toils of my pursuers,
egress from which is now impossible by my own
unaided efforts. I have no particular claim upon
your excellency’s sympathy, but I have thought
that mere pity might induce you to receive me
and my followers on board your frigate, and
transport us to some place of safety beyond the
limits of unhappy Italy.”
Here the astonished Englishman sprang to
his feet, protesting that his position as a British
officer prevented him from entertaining for a
moment so extraordinary a proposition.
“Your Excellency will permit me, with all
respect, to observe,” Carrera resumed, “that I
have treated you and yours generously. Do not
compel me to regret that I have done so; and
do not force me to add another to the acts of
violence which already stain my hands. Your
Excellency knows too many of our secrets; we
could not, consistently with our own safety,
permit you to exist otherwise than as a friend.”
The discussion was long. The robbers pleaded
hard, pledging themselves not to disgrace the
captain’s generosity, if he would consent to save
them. Sir George could not prevent himself
from somewhat sympathizing with these unfortunate
men, who had been driven to the irregular
life they led as much by the viciousness of the
government under which they lived as by any
evil propensities of their own. It is not at all
probable that the threat had any thing to do with
his decision, but certain it is, that the dialogue
terminated by a conditional promise on his part
to yield to their request.
“If your Excellency will send a boat to a spot
on the shore, directly opposite where we now
are, to-morrow, at midnight, it will be easy for
us to dispatch the sentinel and jump aboard,”
continued Carrera.
“I will send the boat,” answered the Englishman,
“but will under no circumstances consent
to any bloodshed. You forget your own recently-expressed
scruples on the same subject.”
It was finally decided that the boat should be
sent—that the captain should arrange some plan
to divert the attention of the sentinel—and that
to their rescuer alone should be left the choice
of their destination.
Matters being thus arranged, Carrera resumed
his disguise, and conducted his guest
homeward as far as the outskirts of the town.
The following night at the appointed hour, a
boat with muffled oars silently approached the
designated spot. An officer, wrapped in a boat
cloak was seated in the stern. As the boat drew
near the shore, the sentinel presented his musket,
and challenged the party. The officer, with
an under-toned “Amici,” sprang to the beach.
A few hundred yards from the spot where the
landing had been effected, stood an isolated
house with a low verandah. The officer, slipping
a scudo into the sentinel’s hand, told him
that he was come for the purpose of carrying
off a young girl residing in that house, and begged
him to assist him by making a clatter on
the door at the opposite side, so as to divert the
attention of the parents while he received his
inamorata from the verandah. The credulous
Neapolitan was delighted to have an opportunity
to earn a scudo by so easy a service.
The moment that he disappeared, Carrera and
his band rushed to the boat. A few powerful
strokes of the oars and they were out of the
reach of musket-shot before the bewildered sentry
could understand that in some way or other
his credulity had been imposed upon.
That night the “Tagus” weighed anchor for
Malta. The port of destination was reached
after a short and prosperous voyage. Sir George
remained there only sufficiently long to discharge
his precious cargo, who left him, as may
be imagined, with protestations of eternal gratitude.
The fact that the frigate was on a cruise prevented
any particular surprise at her sudden
disappearance from the waters of Naples. And
when she returned to her anchorage after a
short absence, even the party to the pic-nic were
far from conjecturing that there was any connection
between her last excursion and the adventure
of Lake Agnano.
Carrera and his band enlisted in a body into
one of the Maltese regiments. A year or two
later, becoming dissatisfied, they passed over
into Albania, and took service with Ali Pasha.
Some seven years after these events, Sir
George Dundas was again at Naples. As he
was lounging one day in the Villa Reale, a tall
and noble-looking man, whose countenance seemed
familiar, approached him. Shaking him warmly
by the hand, the stranger whispered in his ear,
And thus ends the Frenchman’s story.
ALL BAGGAGE AT THE RISK OF THE OWNER.
A STORY OF THE WATERING-PLACES.
And not a drop to drink!”
I could never understand why we call our
summer resorts Watering-Places. I am but
an individual, quite anonymous, as you see, and
only graduated this summer, yet I have “known
life,” and there was no fool of an elephant in
our college town, and other towns and cities
where I have passed vacations. Now, if there
have been any little anti-Maine-Law episodes in
my life, they have been my occasional weeks at
the Watering-Places.
It was only this summer, as I was going down
the Biddle staircase at Niagara, that Keanne,
who was just behind me, asked quietly, and in a
wondering tone, “Why do cobblers drive the
briskest trade of all, from Nahant to Niagara?”
I was dizzy with winding down the spiral stairs,
and gave some philosophical explanation, showing
up my political economy. But when in the
evening, at the hotel, he invited me to accompany
him in an inquiry into the statistics of cobblers,
I understood him better.
So far from being Watering-Places, it is clear
that there is not only a spiritual but a sentimental
intoxication at all these pleasant retreats.
There is universal exhilaration. Youth, beauty,
summer, money, and moonlight conspire to make
water, or any thing of which water is a type,
utterly incredible. There is no practical joke
like that of asking a man if he came to Saratoga
to drink the waters. Every man justly feels insulted
by such a suspicion. “Am I an invalid,
sir? Have I the air of disease, I should like to
know?” responds Brummell, fiercely, as he turns
suddenly round from tying his cravat, upon which
he has lavished all his genius, and with which
he hoped to achieve successes. “Do I look weak,
sir? Why the deuce should you think I came
to Saratoga to drink the waters?”
At Niagara it is different. There you naturally
speak of water—over your champagne or
chambertin at dinner; and at evening you take
a little tipple to protect yourself against the
night air as you step out to survey the moonlight
effects of the cataract. You came professedly
to see the water. There is nothing else
to see or do there, but to look at the falls, eat
dinner, drink cobblers, and smoke. If you have
any doubt upon this point, run up in the train
and see. I think you will find people doing
those things and nothing else. I am not sure,
indeed, but you will find some young ladies upon
the piazza overhanging the rapids, rapt and fascinated
by the delirious dance of the water beneath,
who add a more alluring terror to the
weird awe that the cataract inspires, by wild
tales of ghosts and midnight marvels, which,
haply, some recent graduate more frightfully
emphasizes by the ready coinage of his brain.
No, it is a melancholy misnomer. To call
these gay summer courts of Bacchus and Venus
Watering-Places, is like the delightful mummery
of the pastoral revels of the king in the old Italian
romance, who attired himself as an abbot, and
all his rollicking court as monks and nuns, and
shaping his pavilion into the semblance of a monastery,
stole, from contrast, a sharper edge for
pleasure.
I must laugh when you call Saratoga, for instance,
a Watering-Place; because there, this
very summer, I was intoxicated with that elixir
of life, which young men do not name, and which
old men call love. Let me tell you the story;
for, if your eye chances to fall upon this page
while you are loitering at one of those pleasant
places, you can see in mine your own experience,
and understand why Homer is so intelligible
to you. Are you not all the time in the
midst of an Iliad? That stately woman who is
now passing along the piazza is beautiful Helen,
although she is called Mrs. Bigge in these degenerate
days, and Bigge himself is really the
Menelaus of the old Trojan story, although he
deals now in cotton. Paris, of course, is an
habitué of Saratoga in the season, goes to Newport
in the middle of August, and always wears
a mustache. But Paris is not so dangerous to
the connubial felicity of Menelaus Bigge, as he
was in the gay Grecian days.
Now what I say is this, that you who are
swimming down the current of the summer at a
Watering-Place, are really surrounded by the
identical material out of which Homer spun his
Iliad—yes, and Shakspeare his glowing and
odorous Romeo and Juliet—only it goes by different
names at Saratoga, Newport, and Niagara.
And to point the truth of what I say, I shall
tell you my little story, illustrative of summer
life, and shall leave your wit to define the difference
between my experience and yours. It is
of the simplest kind, mark you, and “as easy as
lying.”
I left college, in the early summer, flushed
with the honors of the valedictory. It was in
one of those quiet college towns which are the
pleasantest spots in New England, that I had
won and worn my laurels. After four years—so
long in passing, such a swift line of light
when passed—the eagerly-expected commencement
day arrived. It was the greatest day in
the year in that village, and I was the greatest
man of the day.
Ah! I shall always see the gathering groups
of students and alumni upon the college lawn,
in the “ambrosial darkness” of broad-branching
elms. I can yet feel the warm sunshine of that
quiet day—and see our important rustling about
in the black silk graduating gowns—I, chiefest[Pg 335]
of all, and pointed out, to the classes just entered,
as the valedictorian, saluted as I passed by the
homage of their admiring glances. Then winding
down the broad street, over which the trees
arched, and which they walled with green, again
my heart dilates upon the swelling music, that
pealed in front of the procession, while all the
town made holiday, and clustered under the
trees to see us pass. I hear still chiming, and
a little muffled even now, through memory, the
sweet church bell that rang gayly and festally,
not solemnly, that day—and how shall I forget
the choking and exquisite delight and excitement
with which, in the mingled confusion of
ringing bell and clanging martial instruments,
we passed from the warm, bright sunshine without,
into the cool interior of the church. As we
entered, the great organ aroused from its majestic
silence, and drowned bell and band in its
triumphant torrent of sound, while, to my excited
fancy, the church seemed swaying in the
music, it was so crowded with women, in light
summer muslins, bending forward, and whispering,
and waving fans. The rattling of pew-doors—the
busy importance of the “Professor
of Elocution and Belles-Lettres”—the dying
strains of the organ—the brief silence—the rustling
rising to hear the President’s prayer—it is
all as distinct in my mind as in yours, my young
friend fresh from college, and “watering” for
your first season.
Then, when the long list was called, and the
degrees had been conferred, came my turn—”the
valedictory addresses.” In that moment,
as I gathered my gown around me and ascended
the platform, I did not envy Demosthenes nor
Cicero, nor believe that a sweeter triumph was
ever won. That soft, country summer-day, and
I the focus of a thousand enthusiastic eyes to
which the low words of farewell I spoke to my
companions, brought a sympathetic moisture—that
is a picture which must burn forever, illuminating
life. The first palpable and visible evidence
of your power over others is that penetrating
aroma of success—sweeter than success
itself—which comes only once, and only for a
moment, but for that single moment is a dream
made real. The memory of that day makes
June in my mind forever.
You see I am growing garrulous, and do not
come to Saratoga by steam. But I did come,
fresh from that triumph, and full of it. I had
been the greatest man of the greatest day in a
town not five hundred miles away, and could
not but feel that my fame must have excited
Saratoga. With what modest trembling I wrote
my name in the office-book. The man scarcely
looked at it, but wrote a number against it,
shouted to the porter to take Mr. ——’s (excuse
my name) luggage to No. 310, and I mechanically
followed that functionary, and observed that
not a single loiterer in the office raised his head
at my name.
But worse than that, the name seemed to be
of no consequence. I was no longer Mr. —— with
“the valedictory addresses,” &c., &c. (including
the thousand eyes). I was merely No.
310—and you too have already observed, I am
sure, wherever you are passing the summer, that
you are not an individual at a Watering-Place.
You lose your personal identity in a great summer
hotel, as you would in a penitentiary; you are
No. this or No. that. It is No. 310 who wishes
his Champagne frappé. It is No. 310 who wishes
his card taken to No. 320. It is No. 310 who
goes in the morning, pays his bill, and hears, as
the porter slings on his luggage and takes his
shilling, “put No. 310 in order.”
This is one of the humiliating aspects of
Watering-Place life. You are one of a mass,
and distinguished by your number. Yet you
can never know the mortifying ignominy of such
treatment until it comes directly upon the glory
of a commencement, at which you have absorbed
all other individuality into yourself.
I reached Saratoga and came down to dinner.
I could not help laughing at the important procession
of negro-waiters stamping in with the
different courses, and concentrating attention
upon their movements. I felt then, instinctively,
how it is the last degree of vulgarity—that
the serving at table instead of being noiseless
as the wind that blows the ship along, is the
chief spectacle and amusement at dinner. Dinner
at Saratoga, or Newport, or Niagara is a
grand military movement of black waiters, who
advance, halt, load, present, and fire their dishes,
and in which the elegant ladies and the elegant
gentlemen are merely lay-figures, upon which
the African army exercise their skill by not hitting
or spilling. For the first days of my residence
it was a quiet enjoyment to me to see
with what elaborate care the fine ladies and gentlemen
arrayed themselves to play their inferior
parts at dinner. The chief actors in the ceremony—the
negro waiters—ran, a moment before
the last bell, to put on clean white jackets and
when the bell rang, and the puppets were seated—fancying,
with charming naïveté, that they
were the principle objects of the feast—then
thundered in the sable host and deployed right
and left, tramping like the ghost in Don Giovanni,
thumping, clashing, rattling, and all thought
of elegance or propriety was lost in the universal
tumult.
People who submit to this, consider themselves
elegant. But what if in their own houses
and dining-rooms there should be this “alarum,
enter an army,” as the old play-books say, whenever
they entertained their friends at dinner.
I was lonely at first. Nothing is so solitary
as a gay and crowded Watering-Place, where
you have few friends. The excessive hilarity
of others emphasizes your own quiet and solitude.
And especially at Saratoga, where there
is no resource but the company. You must
bowl, or promenade the piazza, or flirt, with the
women. You must drink, smoke, chat, and
game a little with the men. But if you know
neither women nor men, and have no prospect
of knowing them, then take the next train to
Lake George.
It is very different elsewhere. At Newport,
for instance, if you are only No. 310 at your hotel
and nothing more; if you know no one, and
have to drink your wine, and smoke, and listen
to the music alone, you have only to leap into
your saddle, gallop to the beach, and as you
pace along the margin of the sea, that will laugh
with you at the frivolities you have left behind—will
sometimes howl harsh scorn upon the
butterflies, who are not worth it, and who do
not deserve it—and the Atlantic will be to you
lover, counselor, and sweet society.
Toward the end of my first Saratoga week,
I met an old college friend. It was my old
chum, Herbert, from the South. Herbert, who,
over many a midnight glass and wasting weed,
had leaned out of my window in the moonlight,
and recited those burning lines of Byron which
all students do recite to that degree, that I have
often wondered what students did, in romantic
moonlights, before Byron was born. In those
midnight recitals Herbert used often to stop,
and say to me:
“I wonder if you would like my sister?”
Her name was not mentioned, but Herbert
was so handsome in the southern style; he was
so picturesque, and manly, and graceful—a kind
of Sidney and Bayard—that I was sure his sister
was not less than Amy Robsart, or Lucy of
Lammermoor, or perhaps Zuleika.
Toward the close of our course, we were one
day sauntering beyond the little college-town,
and dreaming dreams of that Future which, to
every ambitious young man, seems a stately
palace waiting to be royally possessed by him,
when Herbert, who really loved me, said:
“I wish you knew Lulu.”
“I wish I did know Lulu.”
And that was all we ever said about it.
When we met at Saratoga it was a pleasant
surprise to both, and doubly so to me, for I was
sadly bored by my want of acquaintances. We
fell into an earnest conversation, in the midst
of which Herbert suddenly said:
“Ah! there, I must run and join Lulu!”
and left me.
Who has not had just this experience, or a
similar one, at any Watering-Place? One day
you suddenly discover that some certain person
has arrived; and when you go to your room to
dress for dinner, your boots look splayed—your
waistcoats are not the thing—your coat isn’t
half as handsome as other coats—and you spoil
all your cravats in your nervous efforts to tie
them exquisitely. You get dressed, however,
and descend to dinner, giving yourself a Vivian
Grey-ish air—a combination of the coxcomb,
the poet, and the politician—and yet wonder
why your hands seem so large, and why you
do not feel at your ease, although every thing
is the same as yesterday, except that Lulu has
arrived.
And there she sits!
So sat Lulu, Herbert’s sister, cool in light
muslin, as if that sultry summer day she were
Undine draped in mist. She had the self-possession,
which many children have, and which
greatly differs from the elaborate sang froid of
elegant manners. There was no haughty reserve,
no cold unconsciousness, as if the world
were not worth her treading. But when Herbert
nodded to me—and I, knowing that she
was about to look at me, involuntarily put forward
the poet-aspect of Vivian—she turned and
looked toward me earnestly and unaffectedly for
a few moments, while I played with a sweet-bread,
and looked abstracted. It is a pity that
we men make such fools of ourselves when we
are in the callow state! Lulu turned back and
said something to Herbert; of course, it was
telling him her first impression of me! Do you
think I wished to hear it?
She was not tall nor superb: her face was
very changeful and singularly interesting. I
watched her during dinner, and such were my
impressions. If they were wrong, it was the
fault of my perceptions.
We met upon the piazza after dinner while
the beautifully-dressed throng was promenading,
and the band was playing. It was an Arcadian
moment and scene.
“Lulu, this is my friend, Mr. ——, of whom
I have spoken to you so often.”
Herbert remained but a moment. I offered
my arm to his sister, and we moved with the
throng. The whole world seemed a festival.
The day was golden—the music swelled in those
long, delicious chords, which imparadise the
moment, and make life poetry. In that strain,
and with that feeling, our acquaintance commenced.
It was Lulu’s first summer at a Watering-Place
(at least she said so); it was my first,
too, at a Watering-Place—but not my first at
a flirtation, thought I, loftily. She had all the
cordial freshness of a Southern girl, with that
geniality of manner which, without being in the
least degree familiar, is confiding and friendly,
and which to us, reserved and suspicious Northerners,
appears the evidence of the complete
triumph we have achieved, until we see that it
is a general and not a particular manner.
The band played on: the music seemed only
to make more melodious and expressive all that
we said. At intervals, we stopped and leaned
upon the railing by a column wreathed with a
flowering vine, and Lulu’s eye seeking the fairest
blossom, found it, and her hand placed it
in mine. I forgot commencement-day, and the
glory of the valedictory. Lulu’s eyes were
more inspiring than the enthusiastic thousand
in the church; and the remembered bursts of
the band that day were lost in the low whispers
of the girl upon my arm. I do not remember
what we said. I did not mean to flirt, in the
usual sense of that word (men at a Watering-Place
never do). It was an intoxication most
fatal of all, and which no Maine law can avert.
Herbert joined us later in the afternoon, and
proposed a drive; he was anxious to show me
his horses. We parted to meet at the door.
Lulu gently detached her arm from mine; said
gayly, “Au revoir, bientôt!” as she turned[Pg 337]
away; and I bounded into the hall, sprang up-stairs
into my room, and sat down, stone-still,
upon a chair.
I looked fixedly upon the floor, and remained
perfectly motionless for five minutes. I was lost
in a luxury of happiness! Without a profession,
without a fortune, I felt myself irresistibly
drawn toward this girl;—and the very fascination
lay here, that I knew, however wild and
wonderful a feeling I might indulge, it was all
hopeless. We should enjoy a week of supreme
happiness—suffer in parting—and presently
be solaced, and enjoy other weeks of
supreme felicity with other Lulus!
My young friends of the Watering-Places,
deny having had just such an emotion and
“course of thought,” if you dare!
We drove to the lake, and the whole world
of Saratoga with us. Herbert’s new bays sped
neatly along—he driving in front, Lulu and I
chatting behind. Arrived at the lake, we sauntered
down the steep slope to the beach. We
stepped into a boat and drifted out upon the
water. It was still and gleaming in the late
afternoon; and the pensive tranquillity of evening
was gathering before we returned. We sang
those passionate, desperate love-songs which
young people always sing when they are happiest
and most sentimental. So rapidly had we
advanced—for a Watering-Place is the very hot-bed
of romance—that I dropped my hand idly
upon Lulu’s; and finding that hers was not
withdrawn, gradually and gently clasped it in
mine. So, hand-in-hand, we sang, floating homeward
in the golden twilight.
There was a dance in the evening at the hotel.
Lulu was to dance with me, of course, the first
set, and as many waltzes as I chose. She was
so sparkling, so evidently happy, that I observed
the New York belles, to whom happiness is
an inexplicable word, scanned her with an air
of lofty wonder and elegant disdain. But Lulu
was so genuinely graceful and charming; she
remained so quietly superior in her simplicity to
the assuming hauteur of the metropolitan misses,
that I kept myself in perfect good-humor, and
did not feel myself at all humbled in the eyes
of the Young America of that city, because I
was the cavalier of the unique Southerner. So
far did this go, that in my desire to revenge myself
upon the New Yorkers, I resolved to increase
their chagrin by praising Lulu to the
chief belle of the set.
To her I was introduced. A New York belle
at a Watering-Place! “There’s a divinity doth
hedge her,” and a mystery too. She looked at
me with supreme indifference as I advanced to
the ordeal of presentation, evidently measuring
my claims upon her consideration by the general
aspect of my outer man. I moved with a certain
pride, because although I felt awkward before
the glance of Lulu, I was entirely self-possessed
in the consciousness of unexceptionable
attire before the unmeaning stare of the fashionable
parvenue. You see I do get a little warm
in speaking of her, and yet I was as cool as an
autumn morning, when I made my bow, and requested
her hand for the next set.
We danced vis-a-vis to Lulu. My partner
swung her head around upon her neck, as none
but Juno or Minerva should venture to do, and
looked at the other personal of the quadrille, to
see if she were in a perfectly safe set. I ventured
a brief remark upon nothing—the weather,
probably. The Queen of the Cannibal Islands
bent majestically in a monosyllabic response.
“It is very warm to-night,” continued I.
“Yes, very warm,” she responded.
“You have been long here?”
“Two weeks.”
“Probably you came from Niagara?”
“No, from Sharon.”
“Shall you go to Lake George?”
“No, we go to Newport.”
There I paused, and fondled my handkerchief,
while the impassible lady relapsed into her magnificent
silence, and offered no hope of any conversation
in any direction. But I would not be
balked of my object, and determined that if the
living stream did run “quick below,” the glaring
polish of ice which these “fine manners”
presented, my remark should be an Artesian bore
to it.
“How handsome our vis-a-vis is?” said I.
My stately lady said nothing, but tossed her
head slightly, without changing her expression,
except to make it more pointedly frigid, in a
reply which was a most vociferous negative,
petrified by politeness into ungracious assent.
“She is what Lucia of Lammermoor might
have been before she was unhappy,” continued
I, plunging directly off into the sea of trouble.
“Ah! I don’t know Miss Lammermoor,” responded
my partner, with sang-froid.
I am conscious that I winced at this. A New
York belle, hedged with divinity and awfulness,
&c., not know Miss Lammermoor. Such stately
naïveté of ignorance drew a smile into my eyes,
and I concluded to follow the scent.
“You misunderstand me,” said I. “I was
speaking of Scott’s Lucia—the Waverley novel,
you know.”
“Waverley, Waverley,” replied my Cannibal
Queen, who moved her head like Juno, but this
time lisping and somewhat confused, as if she
knew that, by the mention of books, we were
possibly nearing the verge of sentiment. “Waverley—I
don’t know what you mean: you’re
too deep for me.”
I was silent for that moment, and sat a mirthful
Marius, among the ruins of my proud idea
of a metropolitan belle. Had she not exquisitely
perfected my revenge? Could the contrast of
my next dance with Lulu have been pointed with
more diamond distinctness than by the unweeting
lady, whom I watched afterward, with my
eyes swimming in laughter, as she glided, passionlessly,
without smiling, without grace, without
life—like a statue clad in muslin, over grass-cloth,
around the hall. Once again, during the
evening, I went to her and said:
“How graceful that Baltimore lady is.”
“The Baltimore ladies may have what you
call grace and ease,” said she, with the same
delicious hauteur, “and the Boston ladies are
very ‘strong-minded,'” she continued, in a tone
intended for consuming satire, the more unhappy
that it was clear she could make no claim
to either of the qualities—”but the New York
women have air,” she concluded, and sailed
away with what “might be air,” said Herbert,
who heard her remark, “but certainly very bad
air.”
Learn from this passage of my experience,
beloved reader, you who are for the first time
encountering that Sphinx, a New York belle,
that she is not terrible. You shall find her irreproachable
in tournure, but it is no more exclusively
beautiful or admirable, than New York is
exclusively the fine city of the country. I am a
young man, of course, and inexperienced; but
I prefer that lovely languor of the Southern manners,
which is expressed in the negligence, and
sometimes even grotesqueness of dress, to the
vapid superciliousness, which is equally expressed
in the coarse grass cloth that imparts
the adorable Je ne sais quoi of style. “It is
truly amusing,” Herbert says, who has been a
far traveler, “to see these nice New Yorkers
assuming that the whole country outside their
city is provincial.” A Parisian lady who should
affect to treat a Florentine as a provincial, would
be exiled by derision from social consideration.
Fair dames of New York, I am but an anonymous
valedictorian; yet why not make your
beauty more beautiful, by that courtesy which
is loftier than disdain, and superior to superciliousness?
Ah, well! it was an aromatic evening. Disraeli
says that Ferdinand Armine had a Sicilian
conversation with Henrietta Temple, in the conservatory.
You know how it ended, and they
knew how it would end,—they were married.
But if Ferdinand had plunged into that abyss
of excitement, knowing that however Sicilian
his conversation might be, it would all end in a
bachelor’s quarters, with Henrietta as a lay figure
of memory, which he might amuse himself
in draping with a myriad rainbow fancies—if he
had known this, ought he to have advanced farther
in the divine darkness of that prospect?
Ought he not to have said, “Dear Miss Temple,
my emotions are waxing serious, and I am
afraid of them, and will retire.”
You will say, “certainly,” of course. We all
say, “certainly,” when we read or talk about it
quietly. Young men at Saratoga and Newport
say, “certainly,” over their cigars. But when
the weed is whiffed away, they dress for conquest,
and draw upon the Future for the consequences.
Unhappily, the Future is perfectly
“good,” and always settles to the utmost copper.
At least, so Herbert says, and he is older than
I am. I only know—in fact, I only cared, that
the evening fled away like a sky-lark singing up
to the sun at daybreak—(that was a much applauded
sentence in my valedictory). I deliberately
cut every cable of remorse that might have
held me to the “ingenuous course,” as it is called,
and drove out into the shoreless sea of enjoyment.
I revelled in Lulu’s beauty, in her grace,
in her thousand nameless charms. I was naturally
sorry for her. I knew her young affections
would “run to waste, and water but the desert.”
But if a girl will do so! Summer and the
midsummer sun shone in a cloudless sky. There
was nothing to do but live and love, and Lulu
and I did nothing else. Through the motley
aspects of Watering-Place existence, our life
shot like a golden thread, embroidering it with
beauty. We strolled on the piazza at morning
and evening. During the forenoon we sat in
the parlor, and Lulu worked a bag or a purse,
and I sat by her, gossiping that gossip which is
evanescent as foam upon champagne—yes, and
as odorous and piercing, for the moment it lasts.
We only parted to dress for dinner. I relinquished
the Vivian Grey style, and returned to
my own. Every day Lulu was more exquisitely
dressed, and when the band played, after dinner,
and the sunlight lay, golden-green, upon the
smooth, thick turf, our conversation was inspired
by the music, as on the first day, which
seemed to me centuries ago, so natural and essential
to my life had Lulu become. Toward
sunset we drove to the lake. Sometimes in a
narrow little wagon, not quite wide enough for
two, and in which I sat overdrifted by the azure
mist of the dress she wore—nor ever dreaming
of the Autumn or the morrow; and sometimes
with Herbert and his new horses.
Young America sipping cobblers, and roving
about in very loose and immoral coats, voted it
“a case.” The elderly ladies thought it a
“shocking flirtation.” The old gentlemen who
smoke cigars in the easy chairs under the cool
colonnade, watched the course of events through
the slow curling clouds of tobacco, and looked
at me, when I passed them, as if I were juvenile
for a Lothario; while the great dancing, bowling,
driving, flirting, and fooling mass of the
Saratoga population thought it all natural and
highly improper.
It is astonishing to recur to an acquaintance
which has become a large and luminous part of
your life, and discover that it lasted a week.
It is saddening to sit among the withered rose-leaves
of a summer, and remember that each
rose in its prime seemed the sweetest of roses.
The old ladies called it “shocking,” and the
young ladies sigh that it is “heartless,” and the
many condemn, while the few wrap themselves
in scornful pride at the criminal fickleness of
men.
One such I met on a quiet Sunday morning
when Lulu had just left me to go and read to
her mother.
“You are a vain coxcomb,” was the promising
prelude of my friend’s conversation. But
she was a friend, so I did not frown nor play that
I was offended.
“Why a coxcomb?”
“Because you are flirting with that girl merely[Pg 339]
for your own amusement. You know perfectly
well that she loves you, and you know
equally well that you mean nothing. You are
a flippant, shallow Arthur Pendennis—”
“Pas trop vite. If I meet a pleasant person
in a pleasant place, and we like each other, I,
for my part, will follow the whim of the hour.
I will live while I live—provided, always, that
I injure no other person in following that plan—and
in every fairly supposable case of this
kind the game is equal. Good morning.”
Now you will say that I was afraid to continue
the argument, and that I felt self-convicted
of folly. Not at all; but I chanced to see Lulu
returning, and I strolled down the piazza to
meet her.
She was flushed, and tears were ill-concealed
in her eyes. Her mother had apprised her that
she was to leave in the morning. It was all over.
I did not dare to trust my tongue, but seized
her hand a moment, and then ran for my life—literally
for my life. Reaching my room I sat
down in my chair again, and stared upon the floor.
I loved Lulu more than any woman in the world.
Yet I remembered precisely similar occasions before,
when I felt as if the sun and life were departing
when certain persons left my side, and I
therefore could not trust my emotion, and run
back again and swear absolute and eternal fidelity.
You think I was a great fool, and destitute of
feeling, and better not venture any more into
general female society. Perhaps so. But it was
written upon my consciousness suddenly and
dazzlingly, as the mystic words upon Nebuchadnezzar’s
hall, that this, though sweet and absorbing,
was but a summer fancy—offspring of
sunshine, flowers, and music—not the permanent
reality which all men seek in love. It was
one of the characteristic charms of the summer
life. It made the weeks a pleasant Masque of
Truth—a paraphrase of the poetry of Love. I
would not avoid it. I would not fail to sail
among the isles of Greece, though but for a
summer day—though Memory might forever
yearningly revert to that delight—conscious of
no dishonor, of no more selfishness than in
enjoying a day or a flower—exposed to all the
risks to which my partner in the delirious and
delicious game was exposed.
We met at dinner. We strolled after dinner,
and I felt the trembling of the arm within mine,
as we spoke of travel, of Niagara, of Newport,
and of parting. “Lulu,” said I, “the pleasure
of a Watering-Place is the meeting with a thousand
friends whom we never saw before, and
shall never see again.”
That was the way I began.
“We meet here, Lulu, like travelers upon a
mountain-top, one coming from the clear, green
north, another from the sun-loved south; and
we sit together for an hour talking, each of his
own, and each story by its strangeness fascinating
the other hearer. Then we rise, say farewell,
and each pursues his journey alone, yet
never forgetting that meeting on the mountain,
and the sweet discourse that charmed the hours.”
I found myself again delivering valedictory
addresses, and to an audience more moved than
the first.
Yet who would not have had the day upon
the mountain! Who would not once have seen
Helen, though he might never see her more?
Who would not wish to prove by a thousand-fold
experience Shelley’s lines—
That to divide is not to take away.”
Lulu said nothing, and we walked silently on.
“I hate the very name Watering-Place,” said
she, at length.
I did not ask her why.
When the full moonlight came, we went to
the ball-room. It is the way they treat moonlights
at a Watering-Place.
“Yes,” said Lulu, “let us die royally, wreathed
with flowers.”
And she smiled as she said it. Why did she
smile? It was just as we parted, and mark the
result. The moment I suspected that the flirtation
was not all on one side, I discovered—beloved
budding Flirt, male or female, of this
summer, you will also discover the same thing
in similar cases—that I was seriously in love.
Now that I fancied there was no reason to blind
my eyes to the fact, I stared directly upon it.
We went into the hall. It was a wild and
melancholy dance that we danced. There was
a frenzy in my movements, for I knew that I was
clasping for the last time the woman for whom
my admiring and tender compassion was by her
revelation of superiority to loving me, suddenly
kindled into devotion! She was very beautiful—at
least, she was so to me, and I could not
but mark a kind of triumph in her air, which
did not much perplex, but overwhelmed me. At
length she proposed stepping out upon the piazza,
and then we walked in the cool moonlight while
I poured out to her the overflowing enthusiasm
of my passion. Lulu listened patiently, and
then she said:
“My good friend (fancy such a beginning in
answer to a declaration), you have much to learn.
I thought from what you said this afternoon that
you were profoundly acquainted with the mystery
of Watering-Place life. You remember you
delivered a very polished disquisition on the subject
to me—to a woman who, you had every
reason to suppose, was deeply in love with you.
My good sir, a Watering-Place passion, you
ought to know, is an affair of sunshine, music,
and flowers. We meet upon a mountain-top,
and enjoy ourselves, then part with longing and
regret.”
Here she paused a moment, and my knees
smote together.
“You are a very young man, with very much
to learn, and if you mean to make the tour of
the Watering-Places during this or any summer,
you must understand this; and, as Herbert
tells me you were a very moving valedictorian
this year, this shall be my moving valedictory
to you, for I leave to-morrow—in all summer
encounters of the heart or head, at any of the[Pg 340]
leisure resorts where there is nothing to do but
to do nothing, never forget that all baggage is at
the risk of the owner.”
And so saying, Lulu slipped her arm from
mine, glided up the stairs into the hall, and the
next moment was floating down the room to a
fragrant strain of Strauss.
I, young reader, remained a few moments bewildered
in the moonlight, and the next morning
naturally left Saratoga. I am meditating
whether to go to Newport; but I am sure Lulu
is there. Let me advise you, meanwhile, to beware,
let me urge you to adapt the old proverb
to the meridian of a Watering-Place by reversing
it—that “whoever goes out to find a kingdom
may return an ass.”
THE MIDNIGHT MASS.
AN EPISODE IN THE HISTORY OF THE REIGN OF TERROR.
About eight o’clock on the night of the 22d
of January, 1793, while the Reign of Terror
was still at its height in Paris, an old woman descended
the rapid eminence in that city, which
terminates before the Church of St. Laurent.
The snow had fallen so heavily during the
whole day, that the sound of footsteps was
scarcely audible. The streets were deserted;
and the fear that silence naturally inspires, was
increased by the general terror which then assailed
France. The old woman passed on her
way, without perceiving a living soul in the
streets; her feeble sight preventing her from observing
in the distance, by the lamp-light, several
foot passengers, who flitted like shadows
over the vast space of the Faubourg, through
which she was proceeding. She walked on
courageously through the solitude, as if her age
were a talisman which could shield her from
every calamity. No sooner, however, had she
passed the Rue des Morts, than she thought she
heard the firm and heavy footsteps of a man
walking behind her. It struck her that she had
not heard this sound for the first time. Trembling
at the idea of being followed, she quickened
her pace, in order to confirm her suspicions
by the rays of light which proceeded from an
adjacent shop. As soon as she had reached
it, she abruptly turned her head, and perceived,
through the fog, the outline of a human form.
This indistinct vision was enough: she shuddered
violently the moment she saw it—doubting
not that the stranger had followed her from
the moment she had quitted home. But the
desire to escape from a spy soon renewed her
courage, and she quickened her pace, vainly
thinking that, by such means, she could escape
from a man necessarily much more active than
herself.
After running for some minutes, she arrived at
a pastry-cook’s shop—entered—and sank, rather
than sat down, on a chair which stood before
the counter. The moment she raised the latch
of the door, a woman in the shop looked quickly
through the windows toward the street; and,
observing the old lady, immediately opened a
drawer in the counter, as if to take out something
which she had to deliver to her. Not only
did the gestures and expression of the young
woman show her desire to be quickly relieved
of the new-comer, as of a person whom it was
not safe to welcome; but she also let slip a few
words of impatience at finding the drawer empty.
Regardless of the old lady’s presence, she
unceremoniously quitted the counter, retired to
an inner apartment, and called her husband,
who at once obeyed the summons.
“Where have you placed the—?” inquired
she, with a mysterious air, glancing toward the
visitor, instead of finishing the sentence.
Although the pastry-cook could only perceive
the large hood of black silk, ornamented with
bows of violet-colored ribbon, which formed the
old lady’s head-dress, he at once cast a significant
look at his wife, as much as to say, “Could you
think me careless enough to leave what you ask
for, in such a place as the shop!” and then hurriedly
disappeared.
Surprised at the silence and immobility of the
stranger lady, the young woman approached
her; and, on beholding her face, experienced a
feeling of compassion—perhaps, we may add, a
feeling of curiosity as well.
Although the complexion of the old lady was
naturally colorless, like that of one long accustomed
to secret austerities, it was easy to see
that a recent emotion had cast over it an additional
paleness. Her head-dress was so disposed
as completely to hide her hair; and thereby to
give her face an appearance of religious severity.
At the time of which we write, the manners and
habits of people of quality were so different from
those of the lower classes, that it was easy to
identify a person of distinction from outward appearance
alone. Accordingly, the pastry-cook’s
wife at once discovered that the strange visitor
was an ex-aristocrat—or, as we should now express
it, “a born lady.”
“Madame!” she exclaimed, respectfully, forgetting,
at the moment, that this, like all other
titles, was now proscribed under the Republic.
The old lady made no answer, but fixed her
eyes steadfastly on the shop windows, as if they
disclosed some object that terrified her.
“What is the matter with you, citizen?”
asked the pastry-cook, who made his appearance
at this moment, and disturbed her reverie
by handing her a small pasteboard box, wrapped
up in blue paper.
“Nothing, nothing, my good friends,” she replied,
softly. While speaking, she looked gratefully
at the pastry-cook; then, observing on his
head the revolutionary red cap, she abruptly exclaimed:
“You are a Republican! you have betrayed
me!”
The pastry-cook and his wife indignantly disclaimed
the imputation by a gesture. The old
lady blushed as she noticed it—perhaps with
shame, at having suspected them—perhaps with
pleasure, at finding them trustworthy.
“Pardon me,” said she, with child-like gentleness,
drawing from her pocket a louis d’or.[Pg 341]
“There,” she continued, “there is the stipulated
price.”
There is a poverty which the poor alone can
discover. The pastry-cook and his wife felt the
same conviction as they looked at each other—it
was perhaps the last louis d’or which the old
lady possessed. When she offered the coin her
hand trembled: she had gazed upon it with some
sorrow, but with no avarice; and yet, in giving
it, she seemed to be fully aware that she was
making a sacrifice. The shop-keepers, equally
moved by pity and interest, began by comforting
their consciences with civil words.
“You seem rather poorly, citizen,” said the
pastry-cook.
“Would you like to take any refreshment,
madame?” interrupted his wife.
“We have some excellent soup,” continued
the husband.
“The cold has perhaps affected you, madame,”
resumed the young woman; “pray, step
in, and sit and warm yourself by our fire.”
“We may be Republicans,” observed the pastry-cook;
“but the devil is not always so black
as he is painted.”
Encouraged by the kind words addressed to
her by the shop-keepers, the old lady confessed
that she had been followed by a strange man,
and that she was afraid to return home by herself.
“Is that all?” replied the valiant pastry-cook.
“I’ll be ready to go home with you in a minute,
citizen.”
He gave the louis d’or to his wife, and then—animated
by that sort of gratitude which all
tradesmen feel at receiving a large price for an
article of little value—hastened to put on his
National Guard’s uniform, and soon appeared in
complete military array. In the mean while,
however, his wife had found time to reflect; and
in her case, as in many others, reflection closed
the open hand of charity. Apprehensive that
her husband might be mixed up in some misadventure,
she tried hard to detain him; but, strong
in his benevolent impulse, the honest fellow
persisted in offering himself as the old lady’s
escort.
“Do you imagine, madame, that the man you
are so much afraid of, is still waiting outside the
shop?” asked the young woman.
“I feel certain of it,” replied the lady.
“Suppose he should be a spy! Suppose the
whole affair should be a conspiracy! Don’t go!
Get back the box we gave her.” These words
whispered to the pastry-cook by his wife, had
the effect of cooling his courage with extraordinary
rapidity.
“I’ll just say two words to that mysterious
personage outside, and relieve you of all annoyance
immediately,” said he, hastily quitting the
shop.
The old lady, passive as a child, and half-bewildered,
reseated herself.
The pastry-cook was not long before he returned.
His face, which was naturally ruddy,
had turned quite pale; he was so panic-stricken,
that his legs trembled under him, and his eyes
rolled like the eyes of a drunken man.
“Are you trying to get our throats cut for
us, you rascally aristocrat?” cried he, furiously.
“Do you think you can make me the tool of a
conspiracy? Quick! show us your heels! and
never let us see your face again!”
So saying, he endeavored to snatch away the
box, which the old lady had placed in her pocket.
No sooner, however, had his hands touched
her dress, than, preferring any perils in the
street to losing the treasure for which she had
just paid so large a price, she darted with the
activity of youth toward the door, opened it
violently, and disappeared in a moment from the
eyes of the bewildered shopkeepers.
Upon gaining the street again, she walked at
her utmost speed; but her strength soon failed,
when she heard the spy who had so remorselessly
followed her, crunching the snow under his
heavy tread. She involuntarily stopped short:
the man stopped short too! At first, her terror
prevented her from speaking, or looking round
at him; but it is in the nature of us all—even
of the most infirm—to relapse into comparative
calm immediately after violent agitation; for,
though our feelings may be unbounded, the
organs which express them have their limits.
Accordingly, the old lady, finding that she experienced
no particular annoyance from her
imaginary persecutor, willingly tried to convince
herself that he might be a secret friend, resolved
at all hazards to protect her. She reconsidered
the circumstances which had attended the stranger’s
appearance, and soon contrived to persuade
herself that his object in following her, was
much more likely to be a good than an evil one.
Forgetful, therefore, of the fear with which
he had inspired the pastry-cook, she now went
on her way with greater confidence. After a
walk of half an hour, she arrived at a house
situated at the corner of a street leading to the
Barrière Pantin—even at the present day, the
most deserted locality in all Paris. A cold northeasterly
wind whistled sharply across the few
houses, or rather tenements, scattered about this
almost uninhabited region. The place seemed,
from its utter desolation, the natural asylum of
penury and despair.
The stranger, who still resolutely dogged the
poor old lady’s steps, seemed struck with the
scene on which his eyes now rested. He stopped—erect,
thoughtful, and hesitating—his figure
feebly lighted by a lamp, the uncertain rays of
which scarcely penetrated the fog. Fear had
quickened the old lady’s eyes. She now thought
she perceived something sinister in the features
of the stranger. All her former terrors returned
and she took advantage of the man’s temporary
indecision, to steal away in the darkness toward
the door of a solitary house. She pressed a
spring under the latch, and disappeared with the
rapidity of a phantom.
The stranger, still standing motionless, contemplated
the house, which bore the same appearance
of misery as the rest of the Faubourg.[Pg 342]
Built of irregular stones, and stuccoed with yellowish
plaster, it seemed, from the wide cracks
in the walls, as if a strong gust of wind would
bring the crazy building to the ground. The
roof, formed of brown tiles, long since covered
with moss, was so sunk in several places that
it threatened to give way under the weight of
snow which now lay upon it. Each story had
three windows, the frames of which, rotted with
damp and disjointed by the heat of the sun,
showed how bitterly the cold must penetrate
into the apartments. The comfortless, isolated
dwelling resembled some old tower which Time
had forgotten to destroy. One faint light glimmered
from the windows of the gable in which
the top of the building terminated; the remainder
of the house was plunged in the deepest
obscurity.
Meanwhile, the old woman ascended with
some difficulty a rude and dilapidated flight of
stairs, assisting herself by a rope, which supplied
the place of bannisters. She knocked
mysteriously at the door of one of the rooms
situated on the garret-floor, was quickly let in
by an old man, and then sank down feebly into
a chair which he presented to her.
“Hide yourself! Hide yourself!” she exclaimed.
“Seldom as we venture out, our steps
have been traced; our proceedings are known!”
“What is the matter?” asked another old
woman, seated near the fire.
“The man whom we have seen loitering about
the house since yesterday, has followed me this
evening,” she replied.
At these words, the three inmates of the miserable
abode looked on each other in silent terror.
The old man was the least agitated—perhaps
for the very reason that his danger was
really the greatest. When tried by heavy affliction,
or threatened by bitter persecution, the
first principle of a courageous man is, at all
times, to contemplate calmly the sacrifice of
himself for the safety of others. The expression
in the faces of his two companions showed
plainly, as they looked on the old man, that he
was the sole object of their most vigilant solicitude.
“Let us not distrust the goodness of God,
my sisters,” said he, in grave, reassuring tones.
“We sang His praises even in the midst of the
slaughter that raged through our Convent. If
it was His good-will that I should be saved from
the fearful butchery committed in that holy place
by the Republicans, it was no doubt to reserve
me for another destiny, which I must accept
without a murmur. God watches over His
chosen, and disposes of them as seems best to
His good-will. Think of yourselves, my sisters—think
not of me!”
“Impossible!” said one of the women. “What
are our lives—the lives of two poor nuns—in
comparison with yours; in comparison with the
life of a priest?”
“Here, father,” said the old nun, who had
just returned; “here are the consecrated wafers
of which you sent me in search.” She
handed him the box which she had received
from the pastry-cook.
“Hark!” cried the other nun; “I hear footsteps
coming up-stairs.”
They all listened intently. The noise of
footsteps ceased.
“Do not alarm yourselves,” said the priest.
“Whatever happens, I have already engaged a
person, on whose fidelity we can depend, to
escort you in safety over the frontier; to rescue
you from the martyrdom which the ferocious
will of Robespierre and his coadjutors of the
Reign of Terror would decree against every
servant of the church.”
“Do you not mean to accompany us?” asked
the two nuns, affrightedly.
“My place, sisters, is with the martyrs—not
with the saved,” said the old priest, calmly.
“Hark! the steps on the staircase!—the
heavy steps we heard before!” cried the women.
This time it was easy to distinguish, in the
midst of the silence of night, the echoing sound
of footsteps on the stone stairs. The nuns, as
they heard it approach nearer and nearer, forced
the priest into a recess at one end of the room,
closed the door, and hurriedly heaped some old
clothes against it. The moment after, they
were startled by three distinct knocks at the
outer door.
The person who demanded admittance appeared
to interpret the terrified silence which
had seized the nuns on hearing his knock, into
a signal to enter. He opened the door himself,
and the affrighted women immediately recognized
him as the man whom they had detected
watching the house—the spy who had watched
one of them through the streets that night.
The stranger was tall and robust, but there
was nothing in his features or general appearance
to denote that he was a dangerous man.
Without attempting to break the silence, he
slowly looked round the room. Two bundles
of straw, strewn upon boards, served as a bed
for the two nuns. In the centre of the room
was a table, on which were placed a copper-candlestick,
some plates, three knives, and a
loaf of bread. There was but a small fire in the
grate, and the scanty supply of wood piled near
it, plainly showed the poverty of the inmates.
The old walls, which at some distant period
had been painted, indicated the miserable state
of the roof, by the patches of brown streaked
across them by the rain, which had filtered,
drop by drop, through the ceiling. A sacred
relic, saved probably from the pillage of the
convent to which the two nuns and the priest
had been attached, was placed on the chimney-piece.
Three chairs, two boxes, and an old
chest-of-drawers completed the furniture of the
apartment.
At one corner near the mantle-shelf, a door
had been constructed which indicated that there
was a second room in that direction.
An expression of pity appeared on the countenance
of the stranger, as his eyes fell on the[Pg 343]
two nuns, after having surveyed their wretched
apartment. He was the first to break the
strange silence that had hitherto prevailed, by
addressing the two poor creatures before him
in such tones of kindness as were best adapted
to the nervous terror under which they were
evidently suffering.
“Citizens!” he began, “I do not come to
you as an enemy.” He stopped for a moment,
and then continued: “If any misfortune has
befallen you, rest assured that I am not the
cause of it. My only object here is to ask a
great favor of you.”
The nuns still kept silence.
“If my presence causes you any anxiety,”
he went on, “tell me so at once, and I will depart;
but, believe me, I am really devoted to
your interests; and if there is any thing in
which I can befriend you, you may confide in
me without fear. I am, perhaps, the only man
in Paris whom the law can not assail, now that
the kings of France are no more.”
There was such a tone of sincerity in these
words, as he spoke them, that Sister Agatha
(the nun to whom the reader was introduced at
the outset of this narrative, and whose manners
exhibited all the court refinement of the old
school) instinctively pointed to one of the
chairs, as if to request the stranger to be seated.
His expression showed a mixture of satisfaction
and melancholy, as he acknowledged
this little attention, of which he did not take
advantage until the nuns had first seated themselves.
“You have given an asylum here,” continued
he, “to a venerable priest, who has miraculously
escaped from massacre at a Carmelite convent.”
“Are you the person,” asked Sister Agatha,
eagerly, “appointed to protect our flight
from—?”
“I am not the person whom you expected to
see,” he replied, calmly.
“I assure you, sir,” interrupted the other
nun, anxiously, “that we have no priest here;
we have not, indeed.”
“You had better be a little more careful
about appearances on a future occasion,” he
replied, gently, taking from the table a Latin
breviary. “May I ask if you are both in the
habit of reading the Latin language?” he inquired,
with a slight inflexion of sarcasm in his
voice.
No answer was returned. Observing the anguish
depicted on the countenance of the nuns,
the trembling of their limbs, the tears that filled
their eyes, the stranger began to fear that he
had gone too far.
“Compose yourselves,” he continued, frankly.
“For three days I have been acquainted
with the state of distress in which you are living.
I know your names, and the name of the
venerable priest whom you are concealing. It
is—”
“Hush! do not speak it,” cried Sister Agatha,
placing her finger on her lips.
“I have now said enough,” he went on, “to
show that if I had conceived the base design of
betraying you, I could have accomplished my
object before now.”
On the utterance of these words, the priest,
who had heard all that had passed, left his
hiding-place, and appeared in the room.
“I can not believe, sir,” said he, “that you
are leagued with my persecutors; and I therefore
willingly confide in you. What do you
require of me?”
The noble confidence of the priest—the saint-like
purity expressed in his features—must have
struck even an assassin with respect. The
mysterious personage who had intruded on the
scene of misery and resignation which the garret
presented, looked silently for a moment on
the three beings before him, and then, in tones
of secrecy, thus addressed the priest:
“Father, I come to entreat you to celebrate
a mortuary mass for the repose of the soul of—of
a—of a person whose life the laws once held
sacred, but whose corpse will never rest in holy
ground.”
An involuntary shudder seized the priest, as
he guessed the hidden meaning in these words.
The nuns unable to imagine what person was
indicated by the stranger, looked on him with
equal curiosity and alarm.
“Your wish shall be granted,” said the priest,
in low, awe-struck tones. “Return to this place
at midnight, and you will find me ready to celebrate
the only funeral service which the church
can offer in expiation of the crime to which I
understand you to allude.”
The stranger trembled violently for a moment,
then composed himself, respectfully saluted the
priest and the two nuns, and departed without
uttering a word.
About two hours afterward, a soft knock at
the outer door announced the mysterious visitor’s
return. He was admitted by Sister Agatha,
who conducted him into the second apartment
of their modest retreat, where every thing had
been prepared for the midnight mass. Near the
fire-place the nuns had placed their old chest of
drawers, the clumsy workmanship of which was
concealed under a rich altar-cloth of green velvet.
A large crucifix, formed of ivory and ebony
was hung against the bare plaster wall. Four
small tapers, fixed by sealing-wax on the temporary
altar, threw a faint and mysterious gleam
over the crucifix, but hardly penetrated to any
other part of the walls of the room. Thus almost
exclusively confined to the sacred objects
immediately above and around it, the glow from
the tapers looked like a light falling from heaven
itself on that unadorned and unpretending altar.
The floor of the room was damp. The miserable
roof, sloping on either side, was pierced with
rents, through which the cold night air penetrated
into the rooms. Nothing could be less
magnificent, and yet nothing could be more truly
solemn than the manner in which the preliminaries
of the funeral ceremony had been arranged.
A deep, dread silence, through which
the slightest noise in the street could be heard,[Pg 344]
added to the dreary grandeur of the midnight
scene—a grandeur majestically expressed by the
contrast between the homeliness of the temporary
church, and the solemnity of the service to
which it was now devoted. On each side of the
altar, the two aged women kneeling on the tiled
floor, unmindful of its deadly dampness, were
praying in concert with the priest, who, clothed
in his sacerdotal robes, raised on high a golden
chalice, adorned with precious stones, the most
sacred of the few relics saved from the pillage
of the Carmelite Convent.
The stranger, approaching after an interval,
knelt reverently between the two nuns. As he
looked up toward the crucifix, he saw, for the
first time, that a piece of black crape was attached
to it. On beholding this simple sign of mourning,
terrible recollections appeared to be awakened
within him; the big drops of agony started
thick and fast on his massive brow.
Gradually, as the four actors in this solemn
scene still fervently prayed together, their souls
began to sympathize the one with the other,
blending in one common feeling of religious awe.
Awful, in truth, was the service in which they
were now secretly engaged! Beneath that mouldering
roof, those four Christians were then interceding
with Heaven for the soul of a martyred
King of France; performing, at the peril of their
lives, in those days of anarchy and terror, a funeral
service for that hapless Louis the Sixteenth,
who died on the scaffold, who was buried without
a coffin or a shroud! It was, in them, the
purest of all acts of devotion—the purest, from
its disinterestedness, from its courageous fidelity.
The last relics of the loyalty of France were
collected in that poor room, enshrined in the
prayers of a priest and two aged women. Perhaps,
too, the dark spirit of the Revolution was
present there as well, impersonated by the stranger,
whose face, while he knelt before the altar,
betrayed an expression of the most poignant remorse.
The most gorgeous mass ever celebrated in
the gorgeous Cathedral of St. Peter, at Rome,
could not have expressed the sincere feeling of
prayer so nobly as it was now expressed, by
those four persons, under that lowly roof!
There was one moment, during the progress
of the service, at which the nuns detected that
tears were trickling fast over the stranger’s
cheeks. It was when the Pater Noster was said.
On the termination of the midnight mass, the
priest made a sign to the two nuns, who immediately
left the room. As soon as they were
alone, he thus addressed the stranger:
“My son, if you have imbrued your hands in
the blood of the martyred king, confide in me,
and in my sacred office. Repentance so deep
and sincere as yours appears to be, may efface
even the crime of regicide in the eyes of God.”
“Holy father,” replied the other, in trembling
accents, “no man is less guilty than I am of
shedding the king’s blood.”
“I would fain believe you,” answered the
priest. He paused for a moment as he said this,
looked steadfastly on the penitent man before
him, and then continued:
“But remember, my son, you can not be absolved
of the crime of regicide, because you have
not co-operated in it. Those who had the power
of defending their king, and who, having that
power, still left the sword in the scabbard, will
be called to render a heavy account at the day
of judgment, before the King of kings; yes, a
heavy and an awful account indeed! for, in remaining
passive, they became the involuntary
accomplices of the worst of murders.”
“Do you think then, father,” murmured the
stranger, deeply abashed, “that all indirect participations
are visited with punishment? Is the
soldier guilty of the death of Louis who obeyed
the order to guard the scaffold?”
The priest hesitated.
“I should be ashamed,” continued the other,
betraying by his expression some satisfaction at
the dilemma in which he had placed the old man—”I
should be ashamed of offering you any pecuniary
recompense for such a funeral service
as you have celebrated. It is only possible to
repay an act so noble by an offering which is
priceless. Honor me by accepting this sacred
relic. The day perhaps will come when you
will understand its value.”
So saying, he presented to the priest a small
box, extremely light in weight, which the aged
ecclesiastic took, as it were, involuntarily; for he
felt awed by the solemn tones in which the man
spoke as he offered it. Briefly expressing his
thanks for the mysterious present, the priest conducted
his guest into the outer room, where the
two nuns remained in attendance.
“The house you now inhabit,” said the
stranger, addressing the nuns as well as the
priest, “belongs to a landlord who outwardly
affects extreme republicanism, but who is at
heart devoted to the royal cause. He was formerly
a huntsman in the service of one of the
Bourbons, the Prince de Condé, to whom he is
indebted for all that he possesses. So long as
you remain in this house you are safer than in
any other place in France. Remain here, therefore.
Persons worthy of trust will supply all
your necessities, and you will be able to await
in safety the prospect of better times. In a
year from this day, on the 21st of January,
should you still remain the occupants of this
miserable abode, I will return to repeat with you
the celebration of to-night’s expiatory mass.”
He paused abruptly, and bowed without adding
another word; then delayed a moment more, to
cast a parting look on the objects of poverty
which surrounded him, and left the room.
To the two simple-minded nuns, the whole
affair had all the interest of a romance. Their
faces displayed the most intense anxiety, the
moment the priest informed them of the mysterious
gift which the stranger had so solemnly
presented to him. Sister Agatha immediately
opened the box, and discovered in it a handkerchief,
made of the finest cambric, and soiled
with marks of perspiration. They unfolded it[Pg 345]
eagerly, and then found that it was defaced in
certain places with dark stains.
“Those stains are blood stains!” exclaimed
the priest.
“The handkerchief is marked with the royal
crown!” cried Sister Agatha.
Both the nuns dropped the precious relic,
marked by the King’s blood, with horror. To
their simple minds, the mystery which was attached
to the stranger, now deepened fearfully.
As for the priest, from that moment he ceased,
even in thought, to attempt identifying his visitor,
or discovering the means by which he had
become possessed of the royal handkerchief.
Throughout the atrocities practiced during a
year of the Reign of Terror, the three refugees
were safely guarded by the same protecting interference,
ever at work for their advantage.
At first, they received large supplies of fuel and
provisions; then the two nuns found reason to
imagine that one of their own sex had become
associated with their invisible protector, for they
were furnished with the necessary linen and
clothing which enabled them to go out without
attracting attention by any peculiarities of attire.
Besides this, warnings of danger constantly
came to the priest in the most unexpected
manner, and always opportunely. And
then, again, in spite of the famine which at
that period afflicted Paris, the inhabitants of the
garret were sure to find placed every morning
at their door, a supply of the best wheaten
bread, regularly left for them by some invisible
hand.
They could only guess that the agent of the
charitable attentions thus lavished on them,
was the landlord of the house, and that the person
by whom he was employed was no other
than the stranger who had celebrated with them
the funeral mass for the repose of the King’s
soul. Thus, this mysterious man was regarded
with especial reverence by the priest and the
nuns, whose lives for the present, and whose
hopes for the future, depended on their strange
visitor. They added to their usual prayers at
night and morning, prayers for him.
At length the long-expected night of the 21st
of January arrived, and, exactly as the clock
struck twelve, the sound of heavy footsteps on
the stairs announced the approach of the stranger.
The room had been carefully prepared for
his reception, the altar had been arranged, and,
on this occasion, the nuns eagerly opened the
door, even before they heard the knock.
“Welcome back again! most welcome!” cried
they; “we have been most anxiously awaiting
you.”
The stranger raised his head, looked gloomily
on the nuns, and made no answer. Chilled by
his cold reception of their kind greeting, they
did not venture to utter another word. He
seemed to have frozen at their hearts, in an instant,
all the gratitude, all the friendly aspirations
of the long year that had passed. They
now perceived but too plainly that their visitor
desired to remain a complete stranger to them,
and that they must resign all hope of ever making
a friend of him. The old priest fancied
he had detected a smile on the lips of their
guest when he entered, but that smile—if it had
really appeared—vanished again the moment he
observed the preparations which had been made
for his reception. He knelt to hear the funeral
mass, prayed fervently as before, and then
abruptly took his departure; briefly declining,
by a few civil words, to partake of the simple
refreshment offered to him, on the expiration of
the service, by the two nuns.
Day after day wore on, and nothing more was
heard of the stranger by the inhabitants of the
garret. After the fall of Robespierre, the church
was delivered from all actual persecution, and
the priest and the nuns were free to appear
publicly in Paris, without the slightest risk of
danger. One of the first expeditions undertaken
by the aged ecclesiastic led him to a perfumer’s
shop, kept by a man who had formerly
been one of the Court tradesmen, and who had
always remained faithful to the Royal Family.
The priest, clothed once more in his clerical
dress, was standing at the shop door talking to
the perfumer, when he observed a great crowd
rapidly advancing along the street.
“What is the matter yonder?” he inquired
of the shopkeeper.
“Nothing,” replied the man carelessly, “but
the cart with the condemned criminals going to
the place of execution. Nobody pities them—and
nobody ought!”
“You are not speaking like a Christian,” exclaimed
the priest. “Why not pity them?”
“Because,” answered the perfumer, “those
men who are going to the execution are the last
accomplices of Robespierre. They only travel
the same fatal road which their innocent victims
took before them.”
The cart with the prisoners condemned to
the guillotine had by this time arrived opposite
the perfumer’s shop. As the old priest looked
curiously toward the state criminals, he saw,
standing erect and undaunted among his drooping
fellow prisoners, the very man at whose
desire he had twice celebrated the funeral service
for the martyred King of France!
“Who is that standing upright in the cart?”
cried the priest, breathlessly.
The perfumer looked in the direction indicated,
and answered—
“The Executioner of Louis the Sixteenth!“
PERSONAL HABITS AND APPEARANCE OF ROBESPIERRE.
Visionaries are usually slovens. They
despise fashions, and imagine that dirtiness
is an attribute of genius. To do the honorable
member for Artois justice, he was above this affectation.
Small and neat in person, he always
appeared in public tastefully dressed, according
to the fashion of the period—hair well combed
back, frizzled, and powdered; copious frills at
the breast and wrists; a stainless white waistcoat;[Pg 346]
light-blue coat, with metal buttons; the
sash of a representative tied round his waist;
light-colored breeches, white stockings, and shoes
with silver buckles. Such was his ordinary costume;
and if we stick a rose in his button-hole,
or place a nosegay in his hand, we shall have a
tolerable idea of his whole equipment. It is said
he sometimes appeared in top-boots, which is not
improbable; for this kind of boot had become
fashionable among the republicans, from a notion
that as top-boots were worn by gentlemen in
England, they were allied to constitutional government.
Robespierre’s features were sharp, and
enlivened by bright and deeply-sunk blue eyes.
There was usually a gravity and intense thoughtfulness
in his countenance, which conveyed an
idea of his being thoroughly in earnest. Yet, his
address was not unpleasing. Unlike modern
French politicians, his face was always smooth,
with no vestige of beard or whiskers. Altogether,
therefore, he may be said to have been a well-dressed,
gentlemanly man, animated with proper
self-respect, and having no wish to court vulgar
applause by neglecting the decencies of polite
society.
Before entering on his public career in Paris,
Robespierre had probably formed his plans, in
which, at least to outward appearance, there was
an entire negation of self. A stern incorruptibility
seemed the basis of his character; and it
is quite true that no offers from the court, no
overtures from associates, had power to tempt
him. There was only one way by which he could
sustain a high-souled independence, and that was
the course adopted in like circumstances by Andrew
Marvel—simple wants, rigorous economy,
a disregard of fine company, an avoidance of
expensive habits. Now, this is the curious thing
in Robespierre’s history. Perhaps there was a
tinge of pride in his living a life of indigence;
but in fairness it is entitled to be called an honest
pride, when we consider that the means of
profusion were within his reach. On his arrival
in Paris, he procured a humble lodging in the
Marais, a populous district in the northeastern
faubourgs; but it being represented to him sometime
afterward, that, as a public man, it was unsafe
to expose himself in a long walk daily to
and fro from this obscure residence, he removed
to a house in the Rue St. Honoré, now marked
No. 396, opposite the Church of the Assumption.
Here he found a lodging with M. Duplay,
a respectable but humble cabinet-maker, who had
become attached to the principles of the Revolution;
and here he was joined by his brother, who
played an inferior part in public affairs, and is
known in history as “the Younger Robespierre.”
The selection of this dwelling seems to have
fallen in with Robespierre’s notions of economy;
and it suited his limited patrimony, which consisted
of some rents irregularly paid by a few
small farmers of his property in Artois. These
ill-paid rents, with his salary as a representative,
are said to have supported three persons—himself,
his brother, and his sister; and so straitened
was he in circumstances, that he had to
borrow occasionally from his landlord. Even
with all his pinching, he did not make both ends
meet. We have it on authority, that at his death
he was owing £160; a small debt to be incurred
during a residence of five years in Paris, by a
person who figured as a leader of parties; and
the insignificance of this sum attests his remarkable
self-denial.
Lamartine’s account of the private life of
Robespierre in the house of the Duplays is exceedingly
fascinating, and we should suppose is
founded on well-authorized facts. “The house
of Duplay,” he says, “was low, and in a court
surrounded by sheds filled with timber and plants,
and had almost a rustic appearance. It consisted
of a parlor opening to the court, and communicating
with a sitting-room that looked into a
small garden. From the sitting-room a door led
into a small study, in which was a piano. There
was a winding staircase to the first floor, where
the master of the house lived, and thence to the
apartment of Robespierre.”
Here, long acquaintance, a common table, and
association for several years, “converted the
hospitality of Duplay into an attachment that became
reciprocal. The family of his landlord
became a second family to Robespierre, and
while they adopted his opinions, they neither lost
the simplicity of their manners nor neglected
their religious observances. They consisted of a
father, mother, a son yet a youth, and four
daughters, the eldest of whom was twenty-five,
and the youngest eighteen. Familiar with the
father, filial with the mother, paternal with the
son, tender and almost brotherly with the young
girls, he inspired and felt in this small domestic
circle all those sentiments that only an ardent
soul inspires and feels by spreading abroad its
sympathies. Love also attached his heart, where
toil, poverty, and retirement had fixed his life.
Eléonore Duplay, the eldest daughter of his host,
inspired Robespierre with a more serious attachment
than her sisters. The feeling, rather predilection
than passion, was more reasonable on
the part of Robespierre, more ardent and simple
on the part of the young girl. This affection
afforded him tenderness without torment, happiness
without excitement: it was the love adapted
for a man plunged all day in the agitation of
public life—a repose of the heart after mental
fatigue. He and Eléonore lived in the same
house as a betrothed couple, not as lovers.
Robespierre had demanded the young girl’s hand
from her parents, and they had promised it to
him.
“‘The total want of fortune,’ he said, ‘and the
uncertainty of the morrow, prevented him from
marrying her until the destiny of France was determined;
but he only awaited the moment when
the Revolution should be concluded, in order to
retire from the turmoil and strife, marry her
whom he loved, go to reside with her in Artois,
on one of the farms he had saved among the possessions
of his family, and there to mingle his
obscure happiness in the common lot of his family.’
“The vicissitudes of the fortune, influence, and
popularity of Robespierre effected no change in
his simple mode of living. The multitude came
to implore favor or life at the door of his house,
yet nothing found its way within. The private
lodging of Robespierre consisted of a low chamber,
constructed in the form of a garret, above
some cart-sheds, with the window opening upon
the roof. It afforded no other prospect than the
interior of a small court, resembling a wood-store,
where the sounds of the workmen’s hammers
and saws constantly resounded, and which
was continually traversed by Madame Duplay and
her daughters, who there performed all their
household duties. This chamber was also separated
from that of the landlord by a small room
common to the family and himself. On the other
side were two rooms, likewise attics, which were
inhabited, one by the son of the master of the
house, the other by Simon Duplay, Robespierre’s
secretary, and the nephew of his host.
“The chamber of the deputy contained only a
wooden bedstead, covered with blue damask ornamented
with white flowers, a table, and four
straw-bottomed chairs. This apartment served
him at once for a study and dormitory. His
papers, his reports, the manuscripts of his discourses,
written by himself in a regular but labored
hand, and with many marks of erasure,
were placed carefully on deal-shelves against the
wall. A few chosen books were also ranged
thereon. A volume of Jean Jacques Rousseau
or of Racine was generally open upon his table,
and attested his philosophical and literary predilections.”
With a mind continually on the stretch, and
concerned less or more in all the great movements
of the day, the features of this remarkable
personage “relaxed into absolute gayety when
in-doors at table, or in the evening around the
wood-fire in the humble chamber of the cabinet-maker.
His evenings were all passed with the
family, in talking over the feelings of the day,
the plans of the morrow, the conspiracies of the
aristocrats, the dangers of the patriots, and the
prospects of public felicity after the triumph of
the Revolution. Sometimes Robespierre, who
was anxious to cultivate the mind of his betrothed,
read to the family aloud, and generally from
the tragedies of Racine. He seldom went out in
the evening; but two or three times a year he
escorted Madame Duplay and her daughter to the
theatre. On other days, Robespierre retired
early to his chamber, lay down, and rose again
at night to work. The innumerable discourses
he had delivered in the two national assemblies,
and to the Jacobins; the articles written for his
journal while he had one; the still more numerous
manuscripts of speeches which he had prepared,
but never delivered; the studied style, so
remarkable; the indefatigable corrections marked
with his pen upon the manuscripts—attest his
watchings and his determination.
“His only relaxations were solitary walks in
imitation of his model, Jean Jacques Rousseau.
His sole companion in these perambulations was
his great dog, which slept at his chamber-door,
and always followed him when he went out. This
colossal animal, well known in the district, was
called Brount. Robespierre was much attached
to him, and constantly played with him. Occasionally,
on a Sunday, all the family left Paris
with Robespierre; and the politician, once more
the man, amused himself with the mother, the
sisters, and the brother of Eléonore in the wood
of Versailles or of Issy.” Strange contradiction!
The man who is thus described as so amiable, so
gentle, so satisfied with the humble pleasures of
an obscure family circle, went forth daily on a
self-imposed mission of turbulence and terror.
THE TWO SISTERS.
You sometimes find in the same family, children
of the same parents, who in all respects
present the most striking contrast. They not
only seem to be of different parentage, but of
different races; unlike in physical conformation,
in complexion, in features, in temperament, and
in moral and intellectual qualities. They are
sometimes to be found diametrically opposed to
each other in tastes, pursuits, habits, and sympathies,
though brought up under the same parental
eye, subject to the same circumstances
and conditions, and educated by the same teachers.
Indeed, education does comparatively little
toward the formation of character—that is to
say, in the determination of the individuality of
character. It merely brings out, or e-duces that
character, the germs of which are born in us,
and only want proper sunning, and warmth, and
geniality, to bring them to maturity.
You could scarcely have imagined that Elizabeth
and Jane Byfield were in any way related
to each other. They had not a feature in common.
The one was a brilliant beauty, the other
was plain in the extreme. Elizabeth had a dazzling
complexion, bright, speaking eyes, an oval
face, finely turned nose and chin, a mouth as pouting
as if “a bee had stung it newly;” she was
tall and lithe; taper, yet rounded—in short, she
was a regular beauty, the belle of her neighborhood,
pursued by admirers, besonneted by
poetasters, serenaded by musical amateurs, toasted
by spirit-loving old fogy bachelors, and last,
but not least, she was the subject of many a tit-bit
piece of scandal among her young lady rivals
in the country-town of Barkstone.
As for her sister Jane, with her demure, old-maidish
air, her little dumpy, thick-set figure,
her retroussé nose, and dingy features, nobody
bestowed a thought upon her. She had no
rival, she was no one’s competitor, she offended
nobody’s sense of individual prowess in grace or
charms, by her assumptions. Not at all. “That
horrid little fright, Jane Byfield,” as some of her
stylish acquaintances would speak of her, behind
her back, stood in no young lady’s way. She
was very much of a house-bird, was Jane. In
the evenings, while her sister was dashing off
some brilliant bravura in the drawing-room, Jane
would be seated in a corner, talking to some
person older than herself—or, perhaps you might[Pg 348]
find her in the little back parlor, knitting or
mending stockings. Not that she was without
a spice of fun in her; for, among children, she
romped like one of themselves; indeed, she was
a general favorite with those who were much
younger as well as much older than herself.
Yet, among those of her own age, she never
excited any admiration, except for her dutifulness—though
that, you know, is a very dull sort
of thing. Certainly, she never excited any young
lady’s envy, or attracted any young gentleman’s
homage, like her more highly favored sister.
Indeed, by a kind of general consent, she was
set down for “a regular old maid.”
I wish I could have told my readers that Jane
got married after all, and disappointed the prophetic
utterances of her friends. I am sure that,
notwithstanding her plainness, she would have
made a thrifty manager and a thorough good
housewife. But, as I am relating a true history,
I can not thus indulge my readers. Jane remained
single; but her temper continued unruffled.
As she did not expect, so she was not
disappointed. She preserved her cheerfulness,
continued to be useful, kept her heart warm and
her head well stored—for she was a great reader—another
of her “old-maidish” habits, though,
fortunately, the practice of reading good books
by young women is now ceasing to be “singular:”
readers are now of the plural number, and
every day adds to the list.
But what of Elizabeth—the beauty? Oh, she
got married—of course she did. The beautiful
are always sought after, often when they have
nothing but their beauty to recommend them.
And, after all, we can not wonder at this. Nature
has so ordered it, that beauty of person
must command admirers; and, where beauty of
heart and beauty of intellect are joined together
in the person of a beautiful woman, really nothing
in nature can be more charming. And
so Elizabeth got married; and a “good match”
she made, as the saying is, with a gentleman in
extensive business, rather stylish, but prosperous—likely
to get on in the world, and to accumulate
a fortune. But the fortune was to
make, and the business was speculative. Those
in business well know that it is not all gold that
glitters.
The married life of the “happy pair” commenced.
First one, and then another “toddling
wee thing” presented itself in the young mother’s
household, and the mother’s cares and responsibilities
multiplied. But, to tell the truth,
Elizabeth, though a beauty, was not a very good
manager. She could sit at the head of her husband’s
table, and do the honors of the house to
perfection. But look into her wardrobe, into her
drawers, into her kitchen, and you would say at
once, there was the want of the managing head,
and the ready hand. A good housewife, like a
good poet, is “born, not made”—nascitur non
fit. It’s true. There are some women whom no
measure of drilling can convert into good housewives.
They may lay down systems, cultivate
domesticity, study tidying, spending, house-drilling,
as an art, and yet they can not acquire it.
To others it comes without effort, without consciousness,
as a kind of second nature. They
are “to the manner born.” They don’t know
how it is themselves. Yet their hand seems to
shed abroad order, regularity, and peace, in the
household. Under their eye, and without any
seeming effort on their part, every thing falls
into its proper place, and every thing is done at
its proper time. Elizabeth did not know how it
was; yet, somehow, she could not get servants
like any body else (how often imperfect management
is set down to account of “bad servants!”);
she could not get things to go smoothly; there
was always something “getting across;” the
house got out of order; dinners were not ready
at the right time, and then the husband grew
querulous; somehow, the rooms could not be
kept very tidy, for the mistress of the household
having her hands full of children, of course she
“could not attend to every thing;” and, in short,
poor Elizabeth’s household was fast getting into
a state of muddle.
Now, husbands don’t like this state of things,
and so, the result of it was, that Elizabeth’s husband,
though not a bad-natured man, sometimes
grew cross and complaining, and the beautiful
wife found that her husband had “a temper”—as
who has not? And about the same time, the
husband found that his wife was “no manager,”
notwithstanding her good looks. Though his
wife studied economy, yet he discovered that,
somehow, she got through a deal of money, and
yet there was little comfort got in exchange for
it. Things were evidently in a bad way, and going
wrong entirely. What might have been the
end, who knows? But, happily, at this juncture,
aunt Jane, the children’s pet, the “little
droll old maid,” appeared on the stage; and
though sisters are not supposed to be of good
omen in other sisters’ houses, certainly it must
be admitted that, in this case, the “old maid”
at once worked a wonderful charm.
The quiet creature, in a few weeks, put quite
a new feature on the face of affairs. Under her
eye, things seemed at once to fall into their
proper places—without the slightest “ordering,”
or bustling, or noise, or palaver. Elizabeth
could not make out how it was, but sure enough
Jane “had such a way with her,” and always
had. The positions of the sisters seemed now
to be reversed. Jane was looked up to by her
sister, who no longer assumed those airs of superiority,
which, in the pride of her beauty and
attractiveness, had come so natural to her. Elizabeth
had ceased to be competed for by rival admirers;
and she now discovered that the fleeting
charms of her once beautiful person could not
atone for the want of those more solid qualities
which are indispensable in the house and the
home. What made Jane’s presence more valuable
at this juncture was, that illness had come
into the household, and, worst of all, it had
seized upon the head of the family. This is always
a serious calamity in any case; but in this
case the consequences threatened to be more[Pg 349]
serious than usual. An extensive business was
interrupted; large transactions, which only the
head of the concern himself, could adequately
attend to, produced embarrassments, the anxiety
connected with which impeded a cure. All the
resources of medicine were applied; all the comfort,
warmth, silence, and attention that careful
nursing could administer, were tried; and tried
in vain. The husband of Elizabeth died, and
her children were fatherless; but the fatherless
are not forsaken—they are the care of God.
Now it was that the noble nature of aunt Jane
came grandly into view. Her sister was stricken
down—swallowed up in grief. Life, for her,
had lost its charm. The world was as if left
without its sun. She was utterly overwhelmed.
Even the faces of her children served only to
awaken her to a quicker sense of misery. But
aunt Jane’s energies were only awakened to renewed
life and vigor. To these orphans she
was now both father and mother in one. What
woman can interfere in business matters without
risk of censure? But Jane interfered: she exerted
herself to wind up the affairs of the deceased;
and she did so; she succeeded! There
was but little left; only enough to live upon,
and that meanly. Every thing was sold off—the
grand house was broken up—and the family
subsided into the ranks of the genteel poor.
Elizabeth could not bear up under such a succession
of shocks. She was not querulous, but
her sorrows were too much for her, and she fed
upon them—she petted them, and they became
her masters. A few years passed, and the broken-down
woman was laid in the same grave
with her husband.
But Jane’s courage never flagged. The gentle,
dear, good creature, now advancing into
years, looked all manner of difficulties courageously
in the face; and she overcame them. They
fled before her resolution. Alone she bore the
burden of that family of sons and daughters not
her own, but as dear to her now as if they were.
What scheming and thought she daily exercised
to make the ends meet—to give to each of them
alike such an amount of school education as
would enable them “to make their way in the
world,” as she used to say—can not be described.
It would take a long chapter to detail
the patient industry, the frugal care, the motherly
help, and the watchful up-bringing with
which she tended the helpless orphans. But
her arduous labors were all more than repaid in
the end.
It was my privilege to know this noble woman.
I used occasionally to join the little family
circle in an evening, round their crackling
fire, and contribute my quota of wonderful stories
to the listening group. Aunt Jane herself,
was a capital story-teller; and it was her wont
thus, of an evening, to entertain the youngsters
after the chief part of the day’s work was done.
She would tell the boys—John and Edward—of
those self-helping and perseverant great men
who had climbed the difficult steeps of the world,
and elevated themselves to the loftiest stations by
their own energy, industry, and self-denial. The
great and the good were her heroes, and she labored
to form those young minds about her after
the best and noblest models which biographic
annals could furnish. “Without goodness,” she
would say—and her bright, speaking looks (plain
though her features were), with her animated and
glowing expression, on such occasions, made the
lessons root themselves firmly in their young
minds and hearts—”Without goodness, my dear
children, greatness is naught—mere gilding and
lacker; goodness is the real jewel in the casket;
so never forget to make that your end and
aim.”
I, too, used to contribute my share toward
those delightful evenings’ entertainments, and
aunt Jane would draw me on to tell the group
of the adventures and life of our royal Alfred—of
his struggles, his valor, his goodness, and his
greatness; of the old contests of the Danes and
the Saxons; of Harold, the last of the Saxon
kings; of William the Norman, and the troublous
times which followed the Conquest; and
of the valorous life of our forefathers, out of
which the living English character, habits, and
institutions had at length been formed. And
oftentimes the shadow would flit across those
young faces, by the fire’s light, when they were
told of perilous adventures on the lone sea; of
shipwrecked and cast-away sailors; of the escape
of Drake, and the adventures of Cook, and
of that never-ending source of wonderment and
interest—the life and wanderings of Robinson
Crusoe. And there was merriment and fun,
too, mixed with the marvelous and the imaginative—stories
of giants, and fairies, and Sleeping
Beauties—at which their eyes would glance
brightly in the beams of the glowing fire. Then,
first one little face, and then another, would
grow heavy and listless, and their little heads
begin to nod; at which the aunt would hear, one
by one, their little petitions to their “Father
which art in Heaven,” and with a soft kiss and
murmured blessing, would then lay them in their
little cribs, draw the curtains, and leave them to
sleep.
But, as for the good aunt, bless you, nearly
half of her work was yet to do! There she
would sit, far on into the night, till her eyes
were red and her cheeks feverish, with her
weary white seam in her hand; or, at another
time, she would be mending, patching, and eking
out the clothes of the children just put to bed—for
their wardrobe was scanty, and often very
far gone. Yes! poor thing! she was ready
to work her fingers to the bone for these dear
fatherless young ones, breathing so softly in the
next room, and whose muttered dreams would
now and then disturb the deep stillness of the
night; when she would listen, utter a heartfelt
“bless them,” and then go on with her work
again. The presence of those children seemed
only to remind her of the need of more toil for
their sakes. For them did aunt Jane work by
day, and work by night; for them did she ply
the brilliant needle, which, save in those gloaming[Pg 350]
hours by the fireside, was scarcely ever out
of her hand.
Sorrowful needle! What eyes have followed
thee, strained themselves at thee, wept over thee!
And what sorrow yet hangs about the glittering,
polished, silver-eyed needle! What lives hang
upon it! What toil and night-watching, what
laughter and tears, what gossip and misery,
what racking pains and weary moanings has it
not witnessed! And, would you know the poetry
it has inspired—then read poor Hood’s terrible
wail of “The Song of the Shirt!” The friend
of the needy, the tool of the industrious, the
helper of the starving, the companion of the desolate;
such is that weakest of human instruments—the
needle! It was all these to our
aunt Jane!
I can not tell you the life-long endurance and
courage of that woman; how she devoted herself
to the cherishment and domestic training
of the girls, and the intellectual and industrial
education of the boys, and the correct moral
culture of all the members of her “little family,”
as she styled them.
Efforts such as hers are never without their
reward, even in this world; and of her better
and higher reward, surely aunt Jane might well
feel assured. Her children did credit to her.
Years passed, and one by one they grew up
toward maturity. The character of the aunt
proved the best recommendation for the youths.
The boys got placed out at business—one in a
lawyer’s office, the second in a warehouse. I
do not specify further particulars; for the boys
are now men, well-known in the world; respected,
admired, and prosperous. One of them is a
barrister of the highest distinction in his profession,
and it has been said of him, that he has the
heart of a woman, and the courage of a lion.
The other is a well-known merchant, and he is
cited as a model of integrity among his class.
The girls have grown into women, and are all
married. With one of these aunt Jane now enjoys,
in quiet and ease, the well-earned comforts
and independence of a green old age. About her
knees now clamber a new generation—the children
of her “boys and girls.”
Need I tell you how that dear old woman is
revered! how her patient toils are remembered
and honored! how her nephews attribute all
their successes in life to her, to her noble example,
to her tender care, to her patient and long-suffering
exertions on their behalf. Never was
aunt so honored—so beloved! She declares
they will “spoil her”—a thing she is not used
to; and she often beseeches them to have done
with their acknowledgments of gratitude. But
she is never wearied of hearing them recall to
memory those happy hours, by the evening’s
fire-light, in the humble cottage in which I was
so often a sharer; and then her eye glistens,
and a large tear of thankfulness droops upon
the lower lid, which she wipes off as of old, and
the same heartfelt benison of “Bless them,”
mutters on her quivering lips.
I should like, some day, to indulge myself in
telling a long story about that dear aunt Jane’s
experiences; but I am growing old and a little
maudlin myself, and after all, her life and its results
are best told in the character and the history
of the children she has so faithfully nurtured
and educated.
VENTRILOQUISM.
The art and practice of ventriloquism, has of
late years exhibited so much improvement
that it deserves and will reward a little judicious
attention directed toward its all but miraculous
phenomena, and the causes and conditions of
their astonishing display. The art is of ancient
date, the peculiarity of the vocal organs in which
it originates, like other types of genius or aptitude,
having been at intervals repeated. References
in Scripture to “the familiar spirits that
peep and mutter” are numerous. In the early
Christian Church the practice also was known,
and a treatise was written on it by Eustathius,
Archbishop of Antioch, in Greek. The main
argument of the book is the evocation of the
ghost of Samuel.
By the Mosaic law the Hebrews were prohibited
from consulting those who had familiar
spirits. By one of such it is stated that the
Witch of Endor divined, or perhaps that she was
possessed by it; for the Hebrew ob designates
both those persons in whom there is a familiar
spirit, as well as those who divined by them.
The plural oboth corresponds with the word ventriloquism.
In the Septuagint, it is associated
with gastromancy—a mode of ancient divination,
wherein the diviner replied without moving his
lips, so that the consulter believed he actually
heard the voice of a spirit; from which circumstance,
many theologians have doubted whether
Samuel’s ghost really appeared, or rather whether
the whole were not a ventriloquial imposition on
the superstitious credulity of Saul. We may
see in this unfortunate monarch and his successor
the distinction between true religion and
false superstition; and, indeed, in the poets and
prophets generally of the Israelites, who continually
testify against the latter in all its forms.
To them, to the Greeks, the Egyptians, and the
Assyrians, ventriloquism was evidently well
known. By reference to Leviticus, we shall find,
as we have said, the law forbids the Hebrews to
consult those having familiar spirits. The prophet
Isaiah also draws an illustration from the kind of
voice heard in a case of divination. “Thou shalt
be brought down, shalt speak out of the ground,
and thy speech shall be low out of the dust; thy
voice shall be as one that hath a familiar spirit
out of the ground, and thy speech shall whisper
out of the dust.” It is curious that the Mormons
quote this text as prophetic of the discovery
of their Sacred Book. In the Acts, Paul
is described as depriving a young woman of a
familiar spirit, in the city of Philippi in Macedonia;—she
is announced as “a certain damsel
possessed with a spirit of divination, which
brought her master much gain by sooth-saying.”
There is also that well-known tale in[Pg 351]
Plutarch, which is so impressive even to this
day on the Christian imagination—the story we
mean, of Epitherses, who, having embarked for
Italy in the reign of Tiberius Cæsar, suddenly
heard a voice from the shore, while becalmed
one evening before the Paxe—two small islands
in the Ionian sea, which lie between Corcyra
and Leucadia; such voice addressing Thamus,
a pilot, and an Egyptian by birth, who refused
to answer till he received the third summons,
whereupon it said, “When thou art come to
the Palodes, proclaim aloud that the great Pan
is dead!” It is added, that “the passengers
were all amazed; but their amazement gave
place to the most alarming emotions, when, on
arriving at the specified place, Thamus stood in
the stern of the vessel, and proclaimed what he
had been commanded to announce.” St. Chrysostom
and the early fathers mention divination
by a familiar spirit as practiced in their day;
and the practice is still common in the East; as
it is also among the Esquimaux. As to the
treatise of Eustathius, the good bishop’s notion
was that the Witch of Endor was really possessed
of a demon; whose deception the vision was,
being produced by supernatural agency, not, as
cited in the Septuagint, by Engastrimism, or
Ventriloquy.
In the nineteenth century, we are told by Sir
David Brewster, that ventriloquists made great
additions to their art. The performances, he
says, of Fitzjames and Alexandré were far superior
to those of their predecessors. “Besides
the art of speaking by the muscles of the throat
and the abdomen, without moving those of the
face, these artists had not only studied, with
great diligence and success, the modifications
which sounds of all kinds undergo from distance,
obstructions, and other causes, but had
acquired the art of imitating them in the highest
perfection. The ventriloquist was therefore
able to carry on a dialogue in which the dramatis
voces, as they may be called, were numerous;
and, when on the outside of an apartment, could
personate a mob with its infinite variety of noise
and vociferation. Their influence over the minds
of an audience was still further extended by a
singular power which they had obtained over
the muscles of the body. Fitzjames actually
succeeded in making the opposite or corresponding
muscles act differently from each other;
and while one side of his face was merry and
laughing, the other side was full of sorrow and
tears. At one time, he was tall, and thin, and
melancholy, and after passing behind a screen,
he came out bloated with obesity and staggering
with fullness. M. Alexandré possessed the same
power over his face and figure, and so striking
was the contrast between two of these forms,
that an excellent sculptor (M. Joseph) has perpetuated
them in marble. This new acquirement
of the ventriloquist of the nineteenth century,
enabled him in his own single person, and
with his own single voice, to represent a dramatic
composition which would formerly have required
the assistance of several actors. Although
only one character in the piece could be seen at
the same time, yet they all appeared during its
performance; and the change of face and figure
on the part of the ventriloquist was so perfect
that his personal identity could not be recognized
in the dramatis personæ. This deception
was rendered still more complete by a particular
construction of the costumes, which enabled the
performer to appear in a new character, after
an interval so short that the audience necessarily
believed that it was another person.”
Some amusing anecdotes may be gathered,
illustrative of ventriloquism.
One M. St. Gille, a ventriloquist of France,
had once occasion to shelter himself from a sudden
storm in a monastery in the neighborhood
of Avranche. The monks were at the time in
deep sorrow for the loss of an esteemed member
of their fraternity, whom they had recently
buried. While lamenting over the tomb of their
departed brother the slight honors which had
been paid to his memory, a mysterious voice
was heard to issue from the vaults of the church,
bewailing the condition of the deceased in purgatory,
and reproving the monks in melancholy
tones for their want of zeal and reverence for
departed worth. Tidings of the event flew
abroad; and quickly brought the inhabitants to
the spot. The miraculous speaker still renewed
his lamentations and reproaches; whereupon
the monks fell on their faces, and vowed to repair
their neglect. They then chanted a De
profundis, and at intervals the ghostly voice of
the deceased friar expressed his satisfaction.
One Louis Brabant turned his ventriloquial
talent to profitable account. Rejected by the
parents of an heiress as an unsuitable match for
their daughter, Louis, on the death of the father,
paid a visit to the widow, during which the voice
of her deceased husband was all at once heard
thus to address her: “Give my daughter in
marriage to Louis Brabant:—he is a man of
fortune and character, and I endure the pains
of purgatory for having refused her to him.
Obey this admonition, and give repose to the
soul of your departed husband.” Of course, the
widow complied; but Brabant’s difficulties were
not yet all overcome. He wanted money to defray
the wedding expenses, and resolved to work
on the fears of an old usurer, a M. Cornu, of
Lyons. Having obtained an evening interview,
he contrived to turn the conversation on departed
spirits and ghosts. During an interval of
silence, the voice of the miser’s deceased father
was heard, complaining of his situation in purgatory,
and calling loudly upon his son to rescue
him from his sufferings, by enabling Brabant
to redeem the Christians at that time enslaved
by the Turks. Not succeeding on the first occasion,
Brabant was compelled to make a second
visit to the miser, when he took care to enlist
not only his father but all his deceased relations
in the appeal; and in this way he obtained a
thousand crowns.
There have been few female ventriloquists.
Effects produced by the female organs of speech[Pg 352]
have always manifested a deficiency of power.
The artificial voices have been few in number,
and those imperfectly defined. A woman at Amsterdam
possessed considerable powers in this
way. Conrad Amman, a Dutch doctor in medicine,
who published a Latin treatise at Amsterdam
in 1700, observes of her, that the effects she
exhibited were produced by a sort of swallowing
of the words, or forcing them to retrograde, as
it were, by the trachea, by speaking during the
inspiration of the breath, and not, as in ordinary
speech, during expiration. The same writer
notices also the performances of the famous
Casimir Schreckenstein.
Different professors of ventriloquism have
given different accounts of the manner in which
they succeeded in producing their illusions.
Baron Mengen, one of the household of Prince
Lichtenstein, at Vienna, said that it consisted
in a passion for counterfeiting the cries of animals
and the voices of different persons. M.
St. Gille referred his art to mimicry; and the
French Academy, combining these views, defines
the art as consisting in an accurate imitation
of any given sound as it reaches the ear.
Scientific solutions are various. Mr. Nicholson
thought that artists in this line, by continual
practice from childhood, acquire the power of
speaking during inspiration with the same articulation
as the ordinary voice, which is formed
by expiration. M. Richerand declares that every
time a professor exhibits his vocal peculiarities,
he suffers distension in the epigastric region;
and supposes that the mechanism of the art
consists in a slow, gradual expiration, drawn in
such a way, that the artist either makes use of
the influence exerted by volition over the parietes
of the thorax, or that he keeps the epiglottis
down by the base of the tongue, the apex of
which is not carried beyond the dental arches.
He observes, that ventriloquists possess the
power of making an exceedingly strong inspiration
just before the long expiration, and thus
convey into the lungs an immense quantity of
air, by the artistical management of the egress
of which they produce such astonishing effects
upon the hearing and imagination of their
auditors.
The theory propounded by Mr. Gough in the
“Manchester Memoir,” on the principle of reverberated
sound, is untenable, because ventriloquism
on that theory would be impossible in a
crowded theatre, which admits not of the predicated
echoes. Mr. Love, in his account of
himself, asserts a natural aptitude, a physical
predisposition of the vocal organs; which, in
his case, discovered itself as early as the age of
ten, and gradually improved with practice, without
any artistic study whatever. He states that
not only his pure ventriloquisms, but nearly all
his lighter vocal imitations of miscellaneous
sounds, were executed in the first instance on
the spur of the moment, and without any pre-meditation.
The artist must evidently possess
great flexibility of larynx and tongue. Polyphony,
according to our modern professor, is
produced by compression of the muscles of the
chest, and is an act entirely different from any
species of vocal deception or modulation. There
is no method, he tells us, of manufacturing true
ventriloquists. Nature must have commenced
the operation, by placing at the artist’s disposal
a certain quality of voice adapted for the purpose,
as the raw material to work upon. It is
like a fine ear or voice for singing—the gift of
Nature. It follows, therefore, that an expert
polyphonist must be as rare a personage as any
other man of genius in any particular art.
THE INCENDIARY.
FROM THE REMINISCENCES OF AN ATTORNEY.
I knew James Dutton, as I shall call him,
at an early period of life, when my present
scanty locks of iron-gray were thick and
dark, my now pale and furrowed cheeks were
fresh and ruddy, like his own. Time, circumstance,
and natural bent of mind, have done their
work on both of us; and if his course of life has
been less equable than mine, it has been chiefly
so because the original impulse, the first start
on the great journey, upon which so much depends,
was directed by wiser heads in my case
than in his. We were school-fellows for a considerable
time; and if I acquired—as I certainly
did—a larger stock of knowledge than he, it was
by no means from any superior capacity on my
part, but that his mind was bent on other pursuits.
He was a born Nimrod, and his father
encouraged this propensity from the earliest moment
that his darling and only son could sit a
pony or handle a light fowling-piece. Dutton,
senior, was one of a then large class of persons,
whom Cobbett used to call bull-frog farmers;
men who, finding themselves daily increasing in
wealth by the operation of circumstances, they
neither created nor could insure or control—namely,
a rapidly increasing manufacturing
population, and tremendous war-prices for their
produce—acted as if the chance-blown prosperity
they enjoyed was the result of their own forethought,
skill, and energy, and therefore, humanly
speaking, indestructible. James Dutton was,
consequently, denied nothing—not even the luxury
of neglecting his own education; and he
availed himself of the lamentable privilege to a
great extent. It was, however, a remarkable
feature in the lad’s character, that whatever he
himself deemed essential should be done, no
amount of indulgence, no love of sport or dissipation,
could divert him from thoroughly accomplishing.
Thus he saw clearly, that even in the
life—that of a sportsman-farmer he had chalked
out for himself, it was indispensably necessary
that a certain quantum of educational power
should be attained; and so he really acquired a
knowledge of reading, writing, and spelling, and
then withdrew from school to more congenial
avocations.
I frequently met James Dutton in after-years;
but some nine or ten months had passed since I
had last seen him, when I was directed by the
chief partner in the firm to which Flint and I[Pg 353]
subsequently succeeded, to take coach for Romford,
Essex, in order to ascertain from a witness
there what kind of evidence we might expect
him to give in a trial to come off in the then
Hilary term at Westminster Hall. It was the
first week in January: the weather was bitterly
cold; and I experienced an intense satisfaction
when, after dispatching the business I had come
upon, I found myself in the long dining-room of
the chief market-inn, where two blazing fires
shed a ruddy, cheerful light over the snow-white
damask table-cloth, bright glasses, decanters, and
other preparatives for the farmers’ market-dinner.
Prices had ruled high that day; wheat had
reached £30 a load; and the numerous groups
of hearty, stalwart yeomen present were in high
glee, crowing and exulting alike over their full
pockets and the news—of which the papers were
just then full—of the burning of Moscow, and
the flight and ruin of Bonaparte’s army. James
Dutton was in the room, but not, I observed, in
his usual flow of animal spirits. The crape
round his hat might, I thought, account for that,
and as he did not see me, I accosted him with
an inquiry after his health, and the reason of
his being in mourning. He received me very
cordially, and in an instant cast off the abstracted
manner I had noticed. His father, he informed
me, was gone—had died about seven
months previously, and he was alone now at
Ash Farm—why didn’t I run down there to see
him sometimes, &c.? Our conversation was interrupted
by a summons to dinner, very cheerfully
complied with; and we both—at least I
can answer for myself—did ample justice to a
more than usually capital dinner, even in those
capital old market-dinner times. We were very
jolly afterward, and amazingly triumphant over
the frost-bitten, snow-buried soldier-banditti that
had so long lorded it over continental Europe.
Dutton did not partake of the general hilarity.
There was a sneer upon his lip during the whole
time, which, however, found no expression in
words.
“How quiet you are, James Dutton!” cried
a loud voice from out the dense smoke-cloud that
by this time completely enveloped us. On looking
toward the spot from whence the ringing
tones came, a jolly, round face—like the sun as
seen through a London fog—gleamed redly dull
from out the thick and choking atmosphere.
“Every body,” rejoined Dutton, “hasn’t had
the luck to sell two hundred quarters of wheat
at to-day’s price, as you have, Tom Southall.”
“That’s true, my boy,” returned Master
Southall, sending, in the plentitude of his satisfaction,
a jet of smoke toward us with astonishing
force. “And, I say, Jem, I’ll tell ‘ee what
I’ll do; I’ll clap on ten guineas more upon what
I offered for the brown mare.”
“Done! She’s yours, Tom, then, for ninety
guineas!”
“Gie’s your hand upon it!” cried Tom Southall,
jumping up from his chair, and stretching a
fist as big as a leg of mutton—well, say lamb—over
the table. “And here—here,” he added,
with an exultant chuckle, as he extricated a
swollen canvas-bag from his pocket—”here’s the
dibs at once.”
This transaction excited a great deal of surprise
at our part of the table; and Dutton was
rigorously cross-questioned as to his reason for
parting with his favorite hunting mare.
“The truth is, friends,” said Dutton at last,
“I mean to give up farming, and—”
“Gie up farmin’!” broke in half-a-dozen
voices. “Lord!”
“Yes; I don’t like it. I shall buy a commission
in the army. There’ll be a chance against
Boney, now; and it’s a life I’m fit for.”
The farmers looked completely agape at this
announcement; but making nothing of it, after
silently staring at Dutton and each other, with
their pipes in their hands and not in their mouths,
till they had gone out, stretched their heads
simultaneously across the table toward the candles,
relit their pipes, and smoked on as before.
“Then, perhaps, Mr. Dutton,” said a young
man in a smartly-cut velveteen coat with mother-of-pearl
buttons, who had hastily left his seat
farther down the table—”perhaps you will sell
the double Manton, and Fanny and Slut?”
“Yes; at a price.”
Prices were named; I forget now the exact
sums, but enormous prices, I thought, for the
gun and the dogs, Fanny and Slut. The bargain
was eagerly concluded, and the money paid
at once. Possibly the buyer had a vague notion,
that a portion of the vender’s skill might come
to him with his purchases.
“You be in ‘arnest, then, in this fool’s business,
James Dutton,” observed a farmer, gravely.
“I be sorry for thee; but as I s’pose the lease
of Ash Farm will be parted with; why—John,
waiter, tell Master Hurst at the top of the table
yonder, to come this way.”
Master Hurst, a well-to-do, highly respectable-looking,
and rather elderly man, came in obedience
to the summons, and after a few words in
an under-tone with the friend that had sent for
him, said, “Is this true, James Dutton?”
“It is true that the lease and stock of Ash
Farm are to be sold—at a price. You, I believe,
are in want of such a concern for the young
couple just married.”
“Well, I don’t say I might not be a customer,
if the price were reasonable.”
“Let us step into a private room, then,” said
Dutton, rising. “This is not a place for business
of that kind. Sharp,” he added, sotto voce,
“come with us; I may want you.”
I had listened to all this with a kind of stupid
wonderment, and I now, mechanically, as it were,
got up and accompanied the party to another
room.
The matter was soon settled. Five hundred
pounds for the lease—ten years unexpired—of
Ash Farm, about eleven hundred acres, and the
stock and implements; the plowing, sowing, &c.,
already performed, to be paid for at a valuation
based on present prices. I drew out the agreement
in form, it was signed in duplicate, a large[Pg 354]
sum was paid down as deposit, and Mr. Hurst
with his friend withdrew.
“Well,” I said, taking a glass of port from a
bottle Dutton had just ordered in—”here’s fortune
in your new career; but, as I am a living
man, I can’t understand what you can be thinking
about.”
“You haven’t read the newspapers?”
“O yes, I have! Victory! Glory! March
to Paris! and all that sort of thing. Very fine,
I dare say; but rubbish, moonshine, I call it, if
purchased by the abandonment of the useful,
comfortable, joyous life of a prosperous yeoman.”
“Is that all you have seen in the papers?”
“Not much else. What, besides, have you
found in them?”
“Wheat, at ten or eleven pounds a load—less
perhaps—other produce in proportion.”
“Ha!”
“I see farther, Sharp, than you bookmen do,
in some matters. Boney’s done for; that to me
is quite plain, and earlier than I thought likely;
although I, of course, as well as every other man
with a head instead of a turnip on his shoulders,
knew such a raw-head-and-bloody-bones as that
must sooner or later come to the dogs. And as
I also know what agricultural prices were before
the war, I can calculate without the aid of vulgar
fractions, which, by-the-by, I never reached,
what they’ll be when it’s over, and the thundering
expenditure now going on is stopped. In
two or three weeks, people generally will get a
dim notion of all this; and I sell, therefore, while
I can, at top prices.”
The shrewdness of the calculation struck me
at once.
“You will take another farm when one can
be had on easier terms than now, I suppose?”
“Yes; if I can manage it. And I will manage
it. Between ourselves, after all the old man’s
debts are paid, I shall only have about nine or
ten hundred pounds to the good, even by selling
at the present tremendous rates; so it was time,
you see, I pulled up, and rubbed the fog out of
my eyes a bit. And hark ye, Master Sharp!”
he added, as we rose and shook hands with each
other—”I have now done playing with the world—it’s
a place of work and business; and I’ll do
my share of it so effectually, that my children,
if I have any, shall, if I do not, reach the class of
landed gentry; and this you’ll find, for all your
sneering, will come about all the more easily that
neither they nor their father will be encumbered
with much educational lumber. Good-by.”
I did not again see my old school-fellow till
the change he had predicted had thoroughly
come to pass. Farms were every where to let,
and a general cry to parliament for aid rang
through the land. Dutton called at the office
upon business, accompanied by a young woman
of remarkable personal comeliness, but, as a
very few sentences betrayed, little or no education
in the conventional sense of the word. She
was the daughter of a farmer, whom—it was no
fault of hers—a change of times had not found
in a better condition for weathering them.—Anne
Mosley, in fact, was a thoroughly industrious,
clever farm economist. The instant Dutton
had secured an eligible farm, at his own price
and conditions, he married her; and now, on
the third day after the wedding, he had brought
me the draft of his lease for examination.
“You are not afraid, then,” I remarked, “of
taking a farm in these bad times?”
“Not I—at a price. We mean to rough it,
Mr. Sharp,” he added gayly. “And, let me tell
you, that those who will stoop to do that—I
mean, take their coats off, tuck up their sleeves,
and fling appearances to the winds—may, and
will, if they understand their business, and have
got their heads screwed on right, do better here
than in any of the uncleared countries they talk
so much about. You know what I told you
down at Romford. Well, we’ll manage that
before our hair is gray, depend upon it, bad as
the times may be—won’t we, Nance?”
“We’ll try, Jem,” was the smiling response.
They left the draft for examination. It was
found to be correctly drawn. Two or three
days afterward, the deeds were executed, and
James Dutton was placed in possession. The
farm, a capital one, was in Essex.
His hopes were fully realized as to money-making,
at all events. He and his wife rose
early, sat up late, ate the bread of carefulness,
and altogether displayed such persevering energy,
that only about six or seven years had passed
before the Duttons were accounted a rich and
prosperous family. They had one child only—a
daughter. The mother, Mrs. Dutton, died
when this child was about twelve years of age;
and Anne Dutton became more than ever the
apple of her father’s eye. The business of the
farm went steadily on in its accustomed track;
each succeeding year found James Dutton
growing in wealth and importance; and his
daughter in sparkling, catching comeliness—although
certainly not in the refinement of manner
which gives a quickening life and grace to
personal symmetry and beauty. James Dutton
remained firm in his theory of the worthlessness
of education beyond what, in a narrow acceptation
of the term, was absolutely “necessary;”
and Anne Dutton, although now heiress to very
considerable wealth, knew only how to read,
write, spell, cast accounts, and superintend the
home-business of the farm. I saw a great deal
of the Duttons about this time, my brother-in-law,
Elsworthy and his wife having taken up
their abode within about half a mile of James
Dutton’s dwelling-house; and I ventured once
or twice to remonstrate with the prosperous
farmer upon the positive danger, with reference
to his ambitious views, of not at least so far
cultivating the intellect and taste of so attractive
a maiden as his daughter, that sympathy on her
part with the rude, unlettered clowns, with
whom she necessarily came so much in contact,
should be impossible. He laughed my hints to
scorn. “It is idleness—idleness alone,” he
said, “that puts love-fancies into girls’ heads.[Pg 355]
Novel-reading, jingling at a piano-forte—merely
other names for idleness—these are the parents
of such follies. Anne Dutton, as mistress of
this establishment, has her time fully and usefully
occupied; and when the time comes, not
far distant now, to establish her in marriage,
she will wed into a family I wot of; and the
Romford prophecy of which you remind me will
be realized, in great part at least.”
He found, too late, his error. He hastily entered
the office one morning, and although it
was only five or six weeks since I had last seen
him, the change in his then florid, prideful features
was so striking and painful, as to cause
me to fairly leap upon my feet with surprise.
“Good Heavens, Dutton!” I exclaimed,
“What is the matter? What has happened?”
“Nothing has happened, Mr. Sharp,” he replied,
“but what you predicted, and which, had
I not been the most conceited dolt in existence,
I too, must have foreseen. You know that good-looking,
idle, and, I fear, irreclaimable young
fellow, George Hamblin?”
“I have seen him once or twice. Has he
not brought his father to the verge of a work-house
by low dissipation and extravagance?”
“Yes. Well, he is an accepted suitor for
Anne Dutton’s hand. No wonder that you
start. She fancies herself hopelessly in love
with him—Nay, Sharp, hear me out. I have
tried expostulation, threats, entreaties, locking
her up; but it’s useless. I shall kill the silly
fool if I persist, and I have at length consented
to the marriage; for I can not see her die.” I
began remonstrating upon the folly of yielding
consent to so ruinous a marriage, on account of
a few tears and hysterics, but Dutton stopped
me peremptorily.
“It is useless talking,” he said. “The die is
cast; I have given my word. You would hardly
recognize her, she is so altered. I did not know
before,” added the strong, stern man, with trembling
voice and glistening eyes, “that she was
so inextricably twined about my heart—my
life!” It is difficult to estimate the bitterness
of such a disappointment to a proud, aspiring
man like Dutton. I pitied him sincerely, mistaken,
if not blameworthy, as he had been.
“I have only myself to blame,” he presently
resumed. “A girl of cultivated taste and mind
could not have bestowed a second thought on
George Hamblin. But let’s to business. I
wish the marriage-settlement, and my will, to
be so drawn, that every farthing received from
me during my life, and after my death, shall be
hers, and hers only; and so strictly and entirely
secured, that she shall be without power to
yield control over the slightest portion of it,
should she be so minded.” I took down his
instructions, and the necessary deeds were
drawn in accordance with them. When the
day for signing arrived, the bridegroom-elect
demurred at first to the stringency of the provisions
of the marriage-contract; but as upon
this point, Mr. Dutton was found to be inflexible,
the handsome, illiterate clown—he was little
better—gave up his scruples, the more readily as
a life of assured idleness lay before him, from
the virtual control he was sure to have over
his wife’s income. These were the thoughts
which passed across his mind, I was quite sure,
as taking the pen awkwardly in his hand, he
affixed his mark to the marriage-deed. I reddened
with shame, and the smothered groan
which at the moment smote faintly on my ear,
again brokenly confessed the miserable folly of
the father in not having placed his beautiful
child beyond all possibility of mental contact or
communion with such a person. The marriage
was shortly afterward solemnized, but I did not
wait to witness the ceremony.
The husband’s promised good-behavior did
not long endure; ere two months of wedded
life were past, he had fallen again into his old
habits; and the wife, bitterly repentant of her
folly, was fain to confess, that nothing but
dread of her father’s vengeance saved her from
positive ill usage. It was altogether a wretched,
unfortunate affair; and the intelligence—sad in
itself—which reached me about a twelvemonth
after the marriage, that the young mother had
died in childbirth of her first-born, a girl, appeared
to me rather a matter of rejoicing than
of sorrow or regret. The shock to poor Dutton
was, I understood, overwhelming for a time,
and fears were entertained for his intellects.
He recovered, however, and took charge of his
grandchild, the father very willingly resigning
the onerous burden.
My brother-in-law left James Dutton’s neighborhood
for a distant part of the country about
this period, and I saw nothing of the bereaved
father for about five years, save only at two
business interviews. The business upon which
I had seen him, was the alteration of his will,
by which all he might die possessed of was bequeathed
to his darling Annie. His health, I
was glad to find, was quite restored; and although
now fifty years of age, the bright light
of his young days sparkled once more in his
keen glance. His youth was, he said, renewed
in little Annie. He could even bear to speak,
though still with remorseful emotion, of his own
lost child. “No fear, Sharp,” he said, “that I
make that terrible mistake again. Annie will
fall in love, please God, with no unlettered,
soulless booby! Her mind shall be elevated,
beautiful, and pure as her person—she is the
image of her mother—promises to be charming
and attractive. You must come and see her.”
I promised to do so; and he went his way. At
one of these interviews—the first it must have
been—I made a chance inquiry for his son-in-law,
Hamblin. As the name passed my lips, a
look of hate and rage flashed out of his burning
eyes. I did not utter another word, nor did he;
and we separated in silence.
It was evening, and I was returning in a gig
from a rather long journey into the country, when
I called, in redemption of my promise, upon James
Dutton. Annie was really, I found, an engaging
pretty, blue-eyed, golden-haired child; and I[Pg 356]
was not so much surprised at her grandfather’s
doting fondness—a fondness entirely reciprocated,
it seemed, by the little girl. It struck
me, albeit, that it was a perilous thing for a
man of Dutton’s vehement, fiery nature to stake
again, as he evidently had done, his all of life
and happiness upon one frail existence. An
illustration of my thought or fear occurred just
after we had finished tea. A knock was heard
at the outer door, and presently a man’s voice,
in quarreling, drunken remonstrance with the
servant who opened it. The same deadly scowl
I had seen sweep over Dutton’s countenance
upon the mention of Hamblin’s name, again
gleamed darkly there; and finding, after a moment
or two, that the intruder would not be
denied, the master of the house gently removed
Annie from his knee, and strode out of the
room.
“Follow grandpapa,” whispered Mrs. Rivers,
a highly respectable widow of about forty years
of age, whom Mr. Dutton had engaged at a
high salary to superintend Annie’s education.
The child went out, and Mrs. Rivers, addressing
me, said in a low voice: “Her presence will
prevent violence; but it is a sad affair.” She
then informed me that Hamblin, to whom Mr.
Dutton allowed a hundred a year, having become
aware of the grandfather’s extreme fondness
for Annie, systematically worked that
knowledge for his own sordid ends, and preluded
every fresh attack upon Mr. Dutton’s
purse by a threat to reclaim the child. “It is
not the money,” remarked Mrs. Rivers in conclusion,
“that Mr. Dutton cares so much for,
but the thought that he holds Annie by the sufferance
of that wretched man, goads him at
times almost to insanity.”
“Would not the fellow waive his claim for a
settled increase of his annuity?”
“No; that has been offered to the extent of
three hundred a year; but Hamblin refuses,
partly from the pleasure of keeping such a man
as Mr. Dutton in his power, partly because he
knows that the last shilling would be parted
with rather than the child. It is a very unfortunate
business, and I often fear will terminate
badly.” The loud but indistinct wrangling
without ceased after a while, and I heard a key
turn stiffly in a lock. “The usual conclusion
of these scenes,” said Mrs. Rivers. “Another
draft upon his strong-box will purchase Mr.
Dutton a respite as long as the money lasts.”
I could hardly look at James Dutton when he
re-entered the room. There was that in his
countenance which I do not like to read in the
faces of my friends. He was silent for several
minutes; at last he said quickly, sternly: “Is
there no instrument, Mr. Sharp, in all the enginery
of law, that can defeat a worthless villain’s
legal claim to his child?”
“None; except, perhaps, a commission of
lunacy, or—”
“Tush! tush!” interrupted Dutton; “the
fellow has no wits to lose. That being so—But
let us talk of something else.” We did so,
but on his part very incoherently, and I soon
bade him good-night.
This was December, and it was in February
the following year that Dutton again called at
our place of business. There was a strange,
stern, iron meaning in his face. “I am in a
great hurry,” he said, “and I have only called
to say, that I shall be glad if you will run over
to the farm to-morrow on a matter of business.
You have seen, perhaps, in the paper, that my
dwelling-house took fire the night before last.
You have not? Well, it is upon that I would
consult you. Will you come?” I agreed to do
so, and he withdrew.
The fire had not, I found, done much injury.
It had commenced in a kind of miscellaneous
store-room; but the origin of the fire appeared
to me, as it did to the police-officers that had
been summoned, perfectly unaccountable. “Had
it not been discovered in time, and extinguished,”
I observed to Mrs. Rivers, “you would all
have been burned in your beds.”
“Why, no,” replied that lady, with some
strangeness of manner. “On the night of the
fire, Annie and I slept at Mr. Elsworthy’s” (I
have omitted to notice, that my brother-in-law
and family had returned to their old residence),
“and Mr. Dutton remained in London, whither
he had gone to see the play.”
“But the servants might have perished?”
“No. A whim, apparently, has lately seized
Mr. Dutton, that no servant or laborer shall
sleep under the same roof with himself; and
those new outhouses, where their bedrooms are
placed, are, you see, completely detached, and
are indeed, as regards this dwelling, made fire-proof.”
At this moment Mr. Dutton appeared, and
interrupted our conversation. He took me
aside. “Well,” he said, “to what conclusion
have you come? The work of an incendiary,
is it not? Somebody too, that knows I am not
insured—”
“Not insured!”
“No; not for this dwelling-house. I did not
renew the policy some months ago.”
“Then,” I jestingly remarked, “you, at all
events, are safe from any accusation of having
set fire to your premises with the intent to defraud
the insurers.”
“To be sure—to be sure, I am,” he rejoined
with quick earnestness, as if taking my remark
seriously. “That is quite certain. Some one,
I am pretty sure, it must be,” he presently added,
“that owes me a grudge—with whom I have
quarreled, eh?”
“It may be so, certainly.”
“It must be so. And what, Mr. Sharp, is the
highest penalty for the crime of incendiarism?”
“By the recent change in the law, transportation
only; unless, indeed, loss of human life
occur in consequence of the felonious act; in
which case, the English law construes the offense
to be willful murder, although the incendiary
may not have intended the death or injury
of any person.”
“I see. But here there could have been no
loss of life.”
“There might have been, had not you, Mrs.
Rivers, and Annie, chanced to sleep out of the
house.”
“True—true—a diabolical villain, no doubt.
But we’ll ferret him out yet. You are a keen
hand, Mr. Sharp, and will assist, I know. Yes,
yes—it’s some fellow that hates me—that I perhaps
hate and loathe—” he added with sudden
gnashing fierceness, and striking his hand with
furious violence on the table—”as I do a spotted
toad!”
I hardly recognized James Dutton in this fitful,
disjointed talk, and as there was really nothing
to be done or to be inquired into, I soon
went away.
“Only one week’s interval,” I hastily remarked
to Mr. Flint, one morning after glancing at
the newspaper, “and another fire at Dutton’s
farm-house!”
“The deuce! He is in the luck of it, apparently,”
replied Flint, without looking up from
his employment. My partner knew Dutton only
by sight.
The following morning, I received a note from
Mrs. Rivers. She wished to see me immediately
on a matter of great importance. I hastened to
Mr. Dutton’s, and found, on arriving there, that
George Hamblin was in custody, and undergoing
an examination, at no great distance off, before
two county magistrates, on the charge of
having fired Mr. Dutton’s premises. The chief
evidence was, that Hamblin had been seen lurking
about the place just before the flames broke
out, and that near the window where an incendiary
might have entered there were found portions
of several lucifer matches, of a particular
make, and corresponding to a number found in
Hamblin’s bedroom. To this Hamblin replied,
that he had come to the house by Mr. Dutton’s
invitation, but found nobody there. This however,
was vehemently denied by Mr. Dutton.
He had made no appointment with Hamblin to
meet at his (Dutton’s) house. How should he,
purposing as he did to be in London at the time?
With respect to the lucifer matches, Hamblin
said he had purchased them of a mendicant, and
that Mr. Dutton saw him do so. This also was
denied. It was further proved, that Hamblin,
when in drink, had often said he would ruin
Dutton before he died. Finally, the magistrates,
though with some hesitation, decided that there
was hardly sufficient evidence to warrant them
in committing the prisoner for trial, and he was
discharged, much to the rage and indignation of
the prosecutor.
Subsequently, Mrs. Rivers and I had a long
private conference. She and the child had again
slept at Elsworthy’s on the night of the fire, and
Dutton in London. “His excuse is,” said Mrs.
Rivers, “that he can not permit us to sleep here unprotected
by his presence.” We both arrived at
the same conclusion, and at last agreed upon
what should be done—attempted rather—and
that without delay.
Just before taking leave of Mr. Dutton, who
was in an exceedingly excited state, I said:
“By-the-by, Dutton, you have promised to dine
with me on some early day. Let it be next
Tuesday. I shall have one or two bachelor
friends, and we can give you a shake-down for
the night.”
“Next Tuesday?” said he quickly. “At
what hour do you dine?”
“At six. Not a half-moment later.”
“Good! I will be with you.” We then shook
hands, and parted.
The dinner would have been without interest
to me, had not a note previously arrived from
Mrs. Rivers, stating that she and Annie were
again to sleep that night at Elsworthy’s. This
promised results.
James Dutton, who rode into town, was punctual,
and, as always of late, flurried, excited,
nervous—not, in fact, it appeared to me, precisely
in his right mind. The dinner passed off as
dinners usually do, and the after-proceedings
went on very comfortably till about half-past
nine o’clock, when Dutton’s perturbation, increased
perhaps by the considerable quantity of
wine he had swallowed, not drunk, became, it
was apparent to every body, almost uncontrollable.
He rose—purposeless it seemed—sat
down again—drew out his watch almost every
minute, and answered remarks addressed to him
in the wildest manner. The decisive moment
was, I saw, arrived, and at a gesture of mine,
Elsworthy, who was in my confidence, addressed
Dutton. “By the way, Dutton, about Mrs.
Rivers and Annie. I forgot to tell you of it before.”
The restless man was on his feet in an instant,
and glaring with fiery eagerness at the
speaker.
“What! what!” he cried with explosive
quickness—”what about Annie? Death and
fury!—speak! will you?”
“Don’t alarm yourself, my good fellow. It’s
nothing of consequence. You brought Annie
and her governess, about an hour before I
started, to sleep at our house—”
“Yes—yes,” gasped Dutton, white as death,
and every fibre of his body shaking with terrible
dread. “Yes—well, well, go on. Thunder
and lightning! out with it, will you?”
“Unfortunately, two female cousins arrived
soon after you went away, and I was obliged to
escort Annie and Mrs. Rivers home again.” A
wild shriek—yell is perhaps the more appropriate
expression—burst from the conscience and
fear-stricken man. Another instant, and he
had torn his watch from the fob, glanced at it
with dilated eyes, dashed it on the table, and
was rushing madly toward the door, vainly
withstood by Elsworthy, who feared we had
gone too far.
“Out of the way!” screamed the madman.
“Let go, or I’ll dash you to atoms!” Suiting
the action to the threat, he hurled my brother-in-law
against the wall with stunning force,
and rushed on, shouting incoherently: “My[Pg 358]
horse! There is time yet! Tom Edwards, my
horse!”
Tom Edwards was luckily at hand, and although
mightily surprised at the sudden uproar,
which he attributed to Mr. Dutton being in
drink, mechanically assisted to saddle, bridle,
and bring out the roan mare; and before I could
reach the stables, Dutton’s foot was in the stirrup.
I shouted “Stop,” as loudly as I could,
but the excited horseman did not heed, perhaps
not hear me: and away he went, at a tremendous
speed, hatless, and his long gray-tinted
hair streaming in the wind. It was absolutely
necessary to follow. I therefore directed Elsworthy’s
horse, a much swifter and more peaceful
animal than Dutton’s, to be brought out;
and as soon as I got into the high country road,
I too dashed along at a rate much too headlong
to be altogether pleasant. The evening was
clear and bright, and I now and then caught a
distant sight of Dutton, who was going at a
frantic pace across the country, and putting his
horse at leaps that no man in his senses would
have attempted. I kept the high-road, and we
had thus ridden about half an hour perhaps,
when a bright flame about a mile distant, as the
crow flies, shot suddenly forth, strongly relieved
against a mass of dark wood just beyond it. I
knew it to be Dutton’s house, even without the
confirmation given by the frenzied shout which
at the same moment arose on my left hand. It
was from Dutton. His horse had been staked,
in an effort to clear a high fence, and he was
hurrying desperately along on foot. I tried to
make him hear me, or to reach him, but found I
could do neither: his own wild cries and imprecations
drowned my voice, and there were impassable
fences between the high-road and the
fields across which he madly hasted.
The flames were swift this time, and defied
the efforts of the servants and husbandmen who
had come to the rescue, to stay, much less to
quell them. Eagerly as I rode, Dutton arrived
before the blazing pile at nearly the same moment
as myself, and even as he fiercely struggled
with two or three men, who strove by main force
to prevent him from rushing into the flames,
only to meet with certain death, the roof and
floors of the building fell in with a sudden crash.
He believed that all was over with the child,
and again hurling forth the wild despairing cry
I had twice before heard that evening, he fell
down, as if smitten by lightning, upon the hard,
frosty road.
It was many days ere the unhappy, sinful
man recovered his senses, many weeks before he
was restored to his accustomed health. Very
cautiously had the intelligence been communicated
to him, that Annie had not met the terrible
fate, the image of which had incessantly
pursued him through his fevered dreams. He
was a deeply grateful, and, I believe, a penitent
and altogether changed man. He purchased,
through my agency, a valuable farm in a distant
county, in order to be out of the way, not only
of Hamblin, on whom he settled two hundred a
year, but of others, myself included, who knew
or suspected him of the foul intention he had
conceived against his son-in-law, and which, but
for Mrs. Rivers, would, on the last occasion,
have been in all probability successful, so cunningly
had the evidence of circumstances been
devised. “I have been,” said James Dutton to
me at the last interview I had with him, “all
my life an overweening, self-confident fool. At
Romford, I boasted to you that my children
should ally themselves with the landed gentry
of the country, and see the result! The future,
please God, shall find me in my duty—mindful
only of that, and content, while so acting, with
whatever shall befall me or mine.”
Dutton continues to prosper in the world;
Hamblin died several years ago of delirium tremens;
and Annie, I hear, will in all probability
marry into the squirearchy of the country. All
this is not perhaps what is called poetical justice,
but my experience has been with the actual, not
the ideal world.
BLEAK HOUSE.[7]
BY CHARLES DICKENS.
CHAPTER XIV.—Deportment
Richard left us on the very next evening, to
begin his new career, and committed Ada to
my charge with great love for her, and great trust
in me. It touched me then to reflect, and it
touches me now, more nearly, to remember (having
what I have to tell) how they both thought
of me, even at that engrossing time. I was a
part of all their plans, for the present and the
future. I was to write to Richard once a week,
making my faithful report of Ada, who was to
write to him every alternate day. I was to be
informed, under his own hand, of all his labors
and successes; I was to observe how resolute and
persevering he would be; I was to be Ada’s
bridesmaid when they were married; I was to
live with them afterward; I was to keep all the
keys of their house; I was to be made happy forever
and a day.
“And if the suit should make us rich, Esther—which
it may, you know!” said Richard, to
crown all.
A shade crossed Ada’s face.
“My dearest Ada,” asked Richard, pausing,
“why not?”
“It had better declare us poor at once,” said
Ada.
“O! I don’t know about that,” returned Richard;
“but at all events, it won’t declare any
thing at once. It hasn’t declared any thing in
Heaven knows how many years.”
“Too true,” said Ada.
“Yes, but,” urged Richard, answering what
her look suggested rather than her words, “the
longer it goes on, dear cousin, the nearer it must
be to a settlement one way or other. Now, is
not that reasonable?”
“You know best, Richard. But I am afraid if
we trust to it, it will make us unhappy.”
“But, my Ada, we are not going to trust to
it!” cried Richard, gayly. “We know it better
than to trust to it. We only say that if it should
make us rich, we have no constitutional objection
to being rich. The Court is, by solemn settlement
of law, our grim old guardian, and we are
to suppose that what it gives us (when it gives
us any thing) is our right. It is not necessary to
quarrel with our right.”
“No,” said Ada, “but it may be better to forget
all about it.”
“Well, well!” cried Richard, “then we will
forget all about it! We consign the whole thing
to oblivion. Dame Durden puts on her approving
face, and it’s done!”
“Dame Durden’s approving face,” said I, looking
out of the box in which I was packing his
books, “was not very visible when you called it
by that name; but it does approve, and she thinks
you can’t do better.”
So, Richard said there was an end of it—and
immediately began, on no other foundation, to
build as many castles in the air as would man
the great wall of China. He went away in high
spirits. Ada and I, prepared to miss him very
much, commenced our quieter career.
On our arrival in London, we had called with
Mr. Jarndyce at Mrs. Jellyby’s, but had not been
so fortunate as to find her at home. It appeared
that she had gone somewhere, to a tea-drinking,
and had taken Miss Jellyby with her. Besides
the tea-drinking, there was to be some considerable
speech-making and letter-writing on the general
merits of the cultivation of coffee, conjointly
with natives, at the Settlement of Borrioboola
Gha. All this involved, no doubt, sufficient active
exercise of pen and ink, to make her daughter’s
part in the proceedings, any thing but a
holiday.
It being, now, beyond the time appointed for
Mrs. Jellyby’s return, we called again. She was
in town, but not at home, having gone to Mile
End, directly after breakfast, on some Borrioboolan
business, arising out of a Society called the
East London Branch Aid Ramification. As I
had not seen Peepy on the occasion of our last
call (when he was not to be found any where,
and when the cook rather thought he must have
strolled away with the dustman’s cart) I now inquired
for him again. The oyster shells he had
been building a house with, were still in the passage,
but he was nowhere discoverable, and the
cook supposed that he had “gone after the sheep.”
When we repeated, with some surprise, “The
sheep?” she said, O yes, on market days he
sometimes followed them quite out of town, and
came back in such a state as never was!
I was sitting at the window with my Guardian,
on the following morning, and Ada was busy
writing—of course to Richard—when Miss Jellyby
was announced, and entered, leading the identical
Peepy, whom she had made some endeavors
to render presentable, by wiping the dirt into corners
of his face and hands, and making his hair
very wet, and then violently frizzling it with her
fingers. Every thing the dear child wore, was
either too large for him or too small. Among his
other contradictory decorations he had the hat of
a Bishop, and the little gloves of a baby. His
boots were, on a small scale, the boots of a plowman:
while his legs, so crossed and recrossed
with scratches that they looked like maps, were
bare, below a very short pair of plaid drawers,
finished off with two frills of perfectly different
patterns. The deficient buttons on his plaid
frock had evidently been supplied from one of
Mr. Jellyby’s coats, they were so extremely brazen
and so much too large. Most extraordinary specimens
of needlework appeared on several parts of
his dress, where it had been hastily mended; and
I recognized the same hand on Miss Jellyby’s.
She was, however, unaccountably improved in
her appearance, and looked very pretty. She was
conscious of poor little Peepy being but a failure,
after all her trouble, and she showed it as she
came in, by the way in which she glanced, first
at him, and then at us.
“O dear me!” said my Guardian, “Due
East!”
Ada and I gave her a cordial welcome, and
presented her to Mr. Jarndyce; to whom she
said, as she sat down:
“Ma’s compliments, and she hopes you’ll excuse
her, because she’s correcting proofs of the
plan. She’s going to put out five thousand new
circulars, and she knows you’ll be interested to
hear that. I have brought one of them with me.
Ma’s compliments.” With which she presented
it sulkily enough.
“Thank you,” said my Guardian. “I am
much obliged to Mrs. Jellyby. O dear me! This
is a very trying wind!”
We were busy with Peepy; taking off his clerical
hat; asking him if he remembered us; and
so on. Peepy retired behind his elbow at first,
but relented at the sight of sponge-cake, and allowed
me to take him on my lap, where he sat
munching quietly. Mr. Jarndyce then withdrawing
into the temporary Growlery, Miss Jellyby
opened a conversation with her usual abruptness.
“We are going on just as bad as ever in
Thavies Inn,” said she. “I have no peace of
my life. Talk of Africa! I couldn’t be worse
off if I was a what’s-his-name-man and a
brother!”
I tried to say something soothing.
“O, it’s of no use, Miss Summerson,” exclaimed
Miss Jellyby, “though I thank you for the
kind intention all the same. I know how I am
used, and I am not to be talked over. You
wouldn’t be talked over, if you were used so.
Peepy, go and play at Wild Beasts under the
piano!”
“I shan’t!” said Peepy.
“Very well, you ungrateful, naughty, hard-hearted
boy!” returned Miss Jellyby, with tears
in her eyes. “I’ll never take pains to dress you
any more.”
“Yes, I will go, Caddy!” cried Peepy, who[Pg 360]
was really a good child, and who was so moved
by his sister’s vexation that he went at once.
“It seems a little thing to cry about,” said
poor Miss Jellyby, apologetically, “but I am quite
worn out. I was directing the new circulars till
two this morning. I detest the whole thing so,
that that alone makes my head ache till I can’t
see out of my eyes. And look at that poor unfortunate
child. Was there ever such a fright as
he is!”
Peepy, happily unconscious of the defects in
his appearance, sat on the carpet behind one of
the legs of the piano, looking calmly out of his
den at us, while he ate his cake.
“I have sent him to the other end of the room,”
observed Miss Jellyby, drawing her chair nearer
ours, “because I don’t want him to hear the conversation.
Those little things are so sharp! I
was going to say, we really are going on worse
than ever. Pa will be a bankrupt before long,
and then I hope Ma will be satisfied. There’ll
be nobody but Ma to thank for it.”
We said we hoped Mr. Jellyby’s affairs were
not in so bad a state as that.
“It’s of no use hoping, though it’s very kind
of you!” returned Miss Jellyby, shaking her
head. “Pa told me, only yesterday morning
(and dreadfully unhappy he is), that he couldn’t
weather the storm. I should be surprised if he
could. When all our tradesmen send into our
house any stuff they like, and the servants do
what they like with it, and I have no time to improve
things if I knew how, and Ma don’t care
about any thing, I should like to make out how
Pa is to weather the storm. I declare if I was
Pa, I’d run away!”
“My dear!” said I, smiling. “Your papa, no
doubt, considers his family.”
“O yes, his family is all very fine, Miss Summerson,”
replied Miss Jellyby; “but what comfort
is his family to him? His family is nothing
but bills, dirt, waste, noise, tumbles down stairs,
confusion, and wretchedness. His scrambling
home, from week’s-end to week’s-end, is like one
great washing-day—only nothing’s washed!”
Miss Jellyby tapped her foot upon the floor,
and wiped her eyes.
“I am sure I pity Pa to that degree,” she said,
“and am so angry with Ma, that I can’t find
words to express myself! However, I am not
going to bear it, I am determined. I won’t be a
slave all my life, and I won’t submit to be proposed
to by Mr. Quale. A pretty thing, indeed,
to marry a Philanthropist! As if I hadn’t had
enough of that!” said poor Miss Jellyby.
I must confess that I could not help feeling
rather angry with Mrs. Jellyby, myself; seeing
and hearing this neglected girl, and knowing how
much of bitterly satirical truth there was in what
she said.
“If it wasn’t that we had been intimate when
you stopped at our house,” pursued Miss Jellyby,
“I should have been ashamed to come here to-day,
for I know what a figure I must seem to you
two. But, as it is, I made up my mind to call:
especially as I am not likely to see you again, the
next time you come to town.”
She said this with such great significance that
Ada and I glanced at one another, foreseeing
something more.
“No!” said Miss Jellyby, shaking her head.
“Not at all likely! I know I may trust you two.
I am sure you won’t betray me. I am engaged.”
“Without their knowledge at home?” said I.
“Why, good gracious me, Miss Summerson,”
she returned, justifying herself in a fretful but not
angry manner, “how can it be otherwise? You
know what Ma is—and I needn’t make poor Pa
more miserable by telling him.”
“But would it not be adding to his unhappiness,
to marry without his knowledge or consent,
my dear?” said I.
“No,” said Miss Jellyby, softening. “I hope
not. I should try to make him happy and comfortable
when he came to see me; and Peepy and
the others should take it in turns to come and
stay with me; and they should have some care
taken of them, then.”
There was a good deal of affection in poor
Caddy. She softened more and more while saying
this, and cried so much over the unwonted
little home-picture she had raised in her mind,
that Peepy, in his cave under the piano, was
touched, and turned himself over on his back with
loud lamentations. It was not until I had
brought him to kiss his sister, and had restored
him to his place in my lap, and had shown him
that Caddy was laughing (she laughed expressly
for the purpose), that we could recall his peace
of mind; even then, it was for some time conditional
on his taking us in turns by the chin, and
smoothing our faces all over with his hand. At
last, as his spirits were not yet equal to the piano,
we put him on a chair to look out of window; and
Miss Jellyby, holding him by one leg, resumed
her confidence.
“It began in your coming to our house,” she
said.
We naturally asked how?
“I felt I was so awkward,” she replied, “that
I made up my mind to be improved in that respect,
at all events, and to learn to dance. I told
Ma I was ashamed of myself, and I must be
taught to dance. Ma looked at me in that provoking
way of hers, as if I wasn’t in sight; but,
I was quite determined to be taught to dance,
and so I went to Mr. Turveydrop’s Academy in
Newman Street.”
“And was it there, my dear——” I began.
“Yes, it was there,” said Caddy, “and I am
engaged to Mr. Turveydrop. There are two Mr.
Turveydrops, father and son. My Mr. Turveydrop
is the son, of course. I only wish I had
been better brought up, and was likely to make
him a better wife; for I am very fond of him.”
“I am sorry to hear this,” said I, “I must
confess.”
“I don’t know why you should be sorry,” she
retorted, a little anxiously, “but I am engaged
to Mr. Turveydrop, whether or no, and he is very[Pg 361]
fond of me. It’s a secret as yet, even on his
side, because old Mr. Turveydrop has a share in
the connection, and it might break his heart, or
give him some other shock, if he was told of it
abruptly. Old Mr. Turveydrop is a very gentlemanly
man, indeed—very gentlemanly.”
“Does his wife know of it?” asked Ada.
“Old Mr. Turveydrop’s wife, Miss Clare?” returned
Miss Jellyby, opening her eyes. “There’s
no such person. He is a widower.”
We were here interrupted by Peepy, whose leg
had undergone so much on account of his sister’s
unconsciously jerking it, like a bell-rope, whenever
she was emphatic, that the afflicted child
now bemoaned his sufferings with a very low-spirited
noise. As he appealed to me for compassion,
and as I was only a listener, I undertook
to hold him. Miss Jellyby proceeded, after begging
Peepy’s pardon with a kiss, and assuring
him that she hadn’t meant to do it.
“That’s the state of the case,” said Caddy.
“If I ever blame myself, I still think it’s Ma’s
fault. We are to be married whenever we can,
and then I shall go to Pa at the office, and write
to Ma. It won’t much agitate Ma: I am only
pen and ink to her. One great comfort is,” said
Caddy, with a sob, “that I shall never hear of
Africa after I am married. Young Mr. Turveydrop
hates it for my sake; and if old Mr. Turveydrop
knows there is such a place, it’s as much as
he does.”
“It was he who was very gentlemanly, I
think?” said I.
“Very gentlemanly, indeed,” said Caddy.
“He is celebrated, almost every where, for his
Deportment.”
“Does he teach?” asked Ada.
“No, he don’t teach any thing in particular,” replied
Caddy. “But his Deportment is beautiful.”
Caddy went on to say, with considerable hesitation
and reluctance, that there was one thing
more she wished us to know, and felt we ought
to know, and which, she hoped, would not offend
us. It was, that she had improved her acquaintance
with Miss Flite, the little crazy old lady;
and that she frequently went there early in the
morning, and met her lover for a few minutes
before breakfast—only for a few minutes. “I
go there, at other times,” said Caddy, “but
Prince does not come then. Young Mr. Turveydrop’s
name is Prince; I wish it wasn’t, because
it sounds like a dog, but of course he didn’t
christen himself. Old Mr. Turveydrop had him
christened Prince, in remembrance of the Prince
Regent. Old Mr. Turveydrop adored the Prince
Regent on account of his Deportment. I hope
you won’t think the worse of me for having
made these little appointments at Miss Flite’s,
where I first went with you; because I like the
poor thing for her own sake, and I believe she
likes me. If you could see young Mr. Turveydrop,
I am sure you would think well of him—at
least, I am sure you couldn’t possibly think
any ill of him. I am going there now, for my
lesson. I couldn’t ask you to go with me, Miss
Summerson; but if you would,” said Caddy,
who had said all this, earnestly and tremblingly,
“I should be very glad—very glad.”
It happened that we had arranged with my
Guardian to go to Miss Flite’s that day. We
had told him of our former visit, and our account
had interested him; but something had always
happened to prevent our going there again. As
I trusted that I might have sufficient influence
with Miss Jellyby to prevent her taking any very
rash step, if I fully accepted the confidence she
was so willing to place in me, poor girl, I proposed
that she, and I, and Peepy, should go to
the Academy, and afterward meet my guardian
and Ada at Miss Flite’s—whose name I now
learnt for the first time. This was on condition
that Miss Jellyby and Peepy should come back
with us to dinner. The last article of the agreement
being joyfully acceded to by both, we
smartened Peepy up a little, with the assistance
of a few pins, some soap and water, and a hair-brush;
and went out: bending our steps toward
Newman Street, which was very near.
I found the academy established in a sufficiently
dingy house at the corner of an arch-way,
with busts in all the staircase windows. In the
same house there were also established, as I
gathered from the plates on the door, a drawing-master,
a coal-merchant (there was, certainly,
no room for his coals), and a lithographic artist.
On the plate which, in size and situation, took
precedence of all the rest, I read, Mr. Turveydrop.
The door was open, and the hall was
blocked up by a grand piano, a harp, and several
other musical instruments in cases, all in progress
of removal, and all looking rakish in the
daylight. Miss Jellyby informed me that the
academy had been lent, last night, for a concert.
We went up-stairs—it had been quite a fine
house once, when it was any body’s business to
keep it clean and fresh, and nobody’s business to
smoke in it all day—and into Mr. Turveydrop’s
great room, which was built out into a mews at
the back, and was lighted by a skylight. It was
a bare, resounding room, smelling of stables;
with cane forms along the walls; and the walls
ornamented at regular intervals with painted
lyres, and little cut-glass branches for candles,
which seemed to be shedding their old-fashioned
drops as other branches might shed autumn
leaves. Several young lady pupils, ranging from
thirteen or fourteen years of age to two or three and
twenty, were assembled; and I was looking among
them for their instructor, when Caddy, pinching
my arm, repeated the ceremony of introduction.
“Miss Summerson, Mr. Prince Turveydrop!”
THE DANCING SCHOOL.
I courtesied to a little blue-eyed fair man of
youthful appearance, with flaxen hair parted in
the middle, and curling at the ends all round his
head. He had a little fiddle, which we used to
call at school a kit, under his left arm, and its
little bow in the same hand. His little dancing-shoes
were particularly diminutive, and he had
a little innocent, feminine manner, which not
only appealed to me in an amiable way, but[Pg 362]
[Pg 363]
made this singular effect upon me: that I received
the impression that he was like his mother,
and that his mother had not been much considered
or well used.
“I am very happy to see Miss Jellyby’s
friend,” he said, bowing low to me. “I began
to fear,” with timid tenderness, “as it was past
the usual time, that Miss Jellyby was not coming.”
“I beg you will have the goodness to attribute
that to me, who have detained her, and to receive
my excuses, sir,” said I.
“O dear!” said he.
“And pray,” I entreated, “do not allow me
to be the cause of any more delay.”
With that apology I withdrew to a seat between
Peepy (who, being well used to it, had
already climbed into a corner-place), and an old
lady of a censorious countenance, whose two
nieces were in the class, and who was very indignant
with Peepy’s boots. Prince Turveydrop
then tinkled the strings of his kit with his fingers,
and the young ladies stood up to dance. Just
then, there appeared from a side-door, old Mr.
Turveydrop, in the full lustre of his Deportment.
He was a fat old gentleman with a false complexion,
false teeth, false whiskers, and a wig.
He had a fur collar, and he had a padded breast
to his coat, which only wanted a star or a broad
blue ribbon to be complete. He was pinched in
and swelled out, and got up, and strapped down,
as much as he could possibly bear. He had
such a neck-cloth on (puffing his very eyes out
of their natural shape), and his chin and even
his ears so sunk into it, that it seemed as though
he must inevitably double up, if it were cast
loose. He had, under his arm, a hat of great
size and weight, shelving downward from the
crown to the brim; and in his hand a pair of
white gloves, with which he flapped it, as he stood
poised on one leg, in a high-shouldered, round-elbowed
state of elegance not to be surpassed.
He had a cane, he had an eye-glass, he had a
snuff-box, he had rings, he had wristbands, he
had every thing but any touch of nature; he was
not like youth, he was not like age, he was like
nothing in the world but a model of Deportment.
“Father! A visitor. Miss Jellyby’s friend,
Miss Summerson.”
“Distinguished,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “by
Miss Summerson’s presence.” As he bowed to
me in that tight state, I almost believed I saw
creases come into the whites of his eyes.
“My father,” said the son, aside to me, with
quite an affecting belief in him, “is a celebrated
character. My father is greatly admired.”
“Go on, Prince! Go on!” said Mr. Turveydrop,
standing with his back to the fire, and
waving his gloves condescendingly. “Go on,
my son!”
At this command, or by this gracious permission,
the lesson went on. Prince Turveydrop,
sometimes, played the kit, dancing; sometimes
played the piano, standing; sometimes hummed
the tune with what little breath he could spare,
while he set a pupil right; always conscientiously
moved with the least proficient through every
step and every part of the figure; and never
rested for an instant. His distinguished father
did nothing whatever, but stand before the fire,
a model of Deportment.
“And he never does any thing else,” said the
old lady of the censorious countenance. “Yet,
would you believe that it’s his name on the door-plate?”
“His son’s name is the same, you know,”
said I.
“He wouldn’t let his son have any name, if
he could take it from him,” returned the old
lady. “Look at the son’s dress!” It certainly
was plain—threadbare—almost shabby. “Yet
the father must be garnished and tricked out,”
said the old lady, “because of his Deportment.
I’d deport him! Transport him would be better!”
I felt curious to know more, concerning this
person. I asked, “Does he give lessons in Deportment,
now?”
“Now!” returned the old lady, shortly. “Never
did.”
After a moment’s consideration, I suggested
that perhaps fencing had been his accomplishment.
“I don’t believe he can fence at all, ma’am,”
said the old lady.
I looked surprised and inquisitive. The old
lady, becoming more and more incensed against
the Master of Deportment as she dwelt upon the
subject, gave me some particulars of his career,
with strong assurances that they were mildly
stated.
He had married a meek little dancing-mistress,
with a tolerable connection (having never in his
life before done any thing but deport himself),
and had worked her to death, or had, at the
best, suffered her to work herself to death, to
maintain him in those expenses which were indispensable
to his position. At once to exhibit
his Deportment to the best models, and to keep
the best models constantly before himself, he had
found it necessary to frequent all public places
of fashionable and lounging resort; to be seen
at Brighton and elsewhere at fashionable times,
and to lead an idle life in the very best clothes.
To enable him to do this, the affectionate little
dancing-mistress had toiled and labored, and
would have toiled and labored to that hour, if
her strength had lasted so long. For, the mainspring
of the story was, that, in spite of the
man’s absorbing selfishness, his wife (overpowered
by his Deportment) had, to the last, believed
in him, and had, on her death-bed in the most
moving terms, confided him to their son as one
who had an inextinguishable claim upon him,
and whom he could never regard with too much
pride and deference. The son, inheriting his
mother’s belief, and having the Deportment always
before him, had lived and grown in the
same faith, and now, at thirty years of age,
worked for his father twelve hours a day, and
looked up to him with veneration on the old
imaginary pinnacle.
“The airs the fellow gives himself!” said my
informant, shaking her head at old Mr. Turveydrop
with speechless indignation, as he drew on
his tight gloves; of course unconscious of the
homage she was rendering. “He fully believes
he is one of the aristocracy! And he is so condescending
to the son he so egregiously deludes,
that you might suppose him the most virtuous
of parents. O!” said the old lady, apostrophizing
him with infinite vehemence, “I could bite
you!”
I could not help being amused, though I heard
the old lady out with feelings of real concern.
It was difficult to doubt her, with the father and
son before me. What I might have thought of
them without the old lady’s account, or what I
might have thought of the old lady’s account
without them, I can not say. There was a fitness
of things in the whole that carried conviction
with it.
My eyes were yet wandering, from young Mr.
Turveydrop working so hard to old Mr. Turveydrop
deporting himself so beautifully, when the
latter came ambling up to me, and entered into
conversation.
He asked me, first of all, whether I conferred
a charm and a distinction on London by residing
in it? I did not think it necessary to reply that
I was perfectly aware I should not do that, in any
case, but merely told him where I did reside.
“A lady so graceful and accomplished,” he
said, kissing his right glove, and afterward extending
it toward the pupils, “will look leniently
on the deficiencies here. We do our best to polish—polish—polish!”
He sat down beside me; taking some pains to
sit on the form, I thought, in imitation of the
print of his illustrious model on the sofa. And
really he did look very like it.
“To polish—polish—polish!” he repeated,
taking a pinch of snuff, and gently fluttering his
fingers. “But we are not—if I may say so, to
one formed to be graceful both by Nature and
Art;” with the high-shouldered bow, which it
seemed impossible for him to make without lifting
up his eyebrows and shutting his eyes—”we
are not what we used to be in point of Deportment.”
“Are we not, sir?” said I.
“We have degenerated,” he returned, shaking
his head, which he could do, to a very limited
extent, in his cravat. “A leveling age is not
favorable to Deportment. It develops vulgarity.
Perhaps I speak with some little partiality. It
may not be for me to say that I have been called,
for some years now, Gentleman Turveydrop; or
that His Royal Highness the Prince Regent did
me the honor to inquire, on my removing my hat
as he drove out of the Pavilion at Brighton (that
fine building), ‘Who is he? Who the Devil is
he? Why don’t I know him? Why hasn’t he
thirty thousand a year?’ But these are little
matters of anecdote—the general property, ma’am—still
repeated, occasionally among the upper
classes.”
“Indeed?” said I.
He replied with the high-shouldered bow.
“Where what is left among us of Deportment,”
he added, “still lingers. England—alas, my
country!—has degenerated very much, and is
degenerating every day. She has not many gentlemen
left. We are few. I see nothing to succeed
us, but a race of weavers.”
“One might hope that the race of gentlemen
would be perpetuated here,” said I.
“You are very good,” he smiled, with the high-shouldered
bow again. “You flatter me. But,
no—no! I have never been able to imbue my
poor boy with that part of his art. Heaven forbid
that I should disparage my dear child, but
he has—no Deportment.”
“He appears to be an excellent master,” I observed.
“Understand me, my dear madam, he is an
excellent master. All that can be acquired, he
has acquired. All that can be imparted, he can
impart. But there are things”—he took another
pinch of snuff and made the bow again, as if to
add, “this kind of thing, for instance.”
I glanced toward the centre of the room, where
Miss Jellyby’s lover, now engaged with single
pupils, was undergoing greater drudgery than ever.
“My amiable child,” murmured Mr. Turveydrop,
adjusting his cravat.
“Your son is indefatigable,” said I.
“It is my reward,” said Mr. Turveydrop, “to
hear you say so. In some respects, he treads in
the footsteps of his sainted mother. She was a
devoted creature. But Wooman, lovely Wooman,”
said Mr. Turveydrop, with very disagreeable
gallantry, “what a sex you are!”
I rose and joined Miss Jellyby, who was, by
this time, putting on her bonnet. The time allotted
to a lesson having fully elapsed, there was
a general putting on of bonnets. When Miss
Jellyby and the unfortunate Prince found an opportunity
to become betrothed I don’t know, but
they certainly found none, on this occasion, to
exchange a dozen words.
“My dear,” said Mr. Turveydrop benignly to
his son, “do you know the hour?”
“No, father.” The son had no watch. The
father had a handsome gold one, which he pulled
out, with an air that was an example to mankind.
“My son,” said he, “it’s two o’clock. Recollect
your school at Kensington at three.”
“That’s time enough for me, father,” said
Prince. “I can take a morsel of dinner, standing,
and be off.”
“My dear boy,” returned his father, “you
must be very quick. You will find the cold mutton
on the table.”
“Thank you, father. Are you off now, father?”
“Yes, my dear. I suppose,” said Mr. Turveydrop,
shutting his eyes and lifting up his shoulders,
with modest consciousness, “that I must
show myself, as usual, about town.”
“You had better dine out comfortably, somewhere,”
said his son.
“My dear child, I intend to. I shall take my
little meal, I think, at the French house, in the
Opera Colonnade.”
“That’s right. Good-by, father!” said Prince,
shaking hands.
“Good-by, my son. Bless you!”
Mr. Turveydrop said this in quite a pious manner,
and it seemed to do his son good; who, in
parting from him, was so pleased with him, so
dutiful to him, and so proud of him, that I almost
felt as if it were an unkindness to the
younger man not to be able to believe implicitly
in the elder. The few moments that were occupied
by Prince in taking leave of us (and particularly
of one of us, as I saw, being in the secret),
enhanced my favorable impression of his almost
childish character. I felt a liking for him, and a
compassion for him, as he put his little kit in his
pocket—and with it his desire to stay a little
while with Caddy—and went away good-humoredly
to his cold mutton and his school at Kensington,
that made me scarcely less irate with
his father than the censorious old lady.
The father opened the room door for us, and
bowed us out, in a manner, I must acknowledge,
worthy of his shining original. In the same
style he presently passed us on the other side of
the street, on his way to the aristocratic part of
the town, where he was going to show himself
among the few other gentlemen left. For some
moments, I was so lost in reconsidering what I
had heard and seen in Newman Street, that I was
quite unable to talk to Caddy, or even to fix my
attention on what she said to me; especially,
when I began to inquire in my mind whether
there were, or ever had been, any other gentlemen,
not in the dancing profession, who lived
and founded a reputation entirely on their Deportment.
This became so bewildering, and suggested
the possibility of so many Mr. Turveydrops,
that I said, “Esther, you must make up
your mind to abandon this subject altogether,
and attend to Caddy.” I accordingly did so, and
we chatted all the rest of the way to Lincoln’s Inn.
Caddy told me that her lover’s education had
been so neglected, that it was not always easy to
read his notes. She said, if he were not so anxious
about his spelling, and took less pains to
make it clear, he would do better; but he put so
many unnecessary letters into short words, that
they sometimes quite lost their English appearance.
“He does it with the best intentions,”
observed Caddy, “but it hasn’t the effect he
means, poor fellow!” Caddy then went on to
reason, how could he be expected to be a scholar,
when he had passed his whole life in the dancing-school,
and had done nothing but teach and
fag, fag and teach, morning, noon, and night!
And what did it matter? She could write letters
enough for both, as she knew to her cost,
and it was far better for him to be amiable than
learned. “Besides, it’s not as if I was an accomplished
girl who had any right to give herself
airs,” said Caddy. “I know little enough, I am
sure, thanks to Ma!”
“There’s another thing I want to tell you,
now we are alone,” continued Caddy, “which I
should not have liked to mention unless you had
seen Prince, Miss Summerson. You know what
a house ours is. It’s of no use my trying to learn
any thing that it would be useful for Prince’s wife
to know, in our house. We live in such a state
of muddle that it’s impossible, and I have only
been more disheartened whenever I have tried.
So, I get a little practice with—who do you
think? Poor Miss Flite! Early in the morning,
I help her to tidy her room, and clean her
birds; and I make her cup of coffee for her (of
course she taught me), and I have learnt to
make it so well that Prince says it’s the very
best coffee he ever tasted, and would quite delight
old Mr. Turveydrop, who is very particular
indeed about his coffee. I can make little puddings
too; and I know how to buy neck of mutton,
and tea, and sugar, and butter, and a good
many housekeeping things. I am not clever at
my needle, yet,” said Caddy, glancing at the repairs
on Peepy’s frock, “but perhaps I shall
improve. And since I have been engaged to
Prince, and have been doing all this, I have felt
better-tempered, I hope, and more forgiving to
Ma. It rather put me out, at first this morning,
to see you and Miss Clare looking so neat and
pretty, and to feel ashamed of Peepy and myself
too; but on the whole, I hope I am better-tempered
than I was, and more forgiving to Ma.”
The poor girl, trying so hard, said it from her
heart, and touched mine. “Caddy, my love,”
I replied, “I begin to have a great affection for
you, and I hope we shall become friends.”
“Oh, do you?” cried Caddy; “how happy that
would make me!” “My dear Caddy,” said I,
“let us be friends from this time, and let us
often have a chat about these matters, and try
to find the right way through them.” Caddy
was overjoyed. I said every thing I could, in my
old-fashioned way, to comfort and encourage
her; and I would not have objected to old Mr.
Turveydrop, that day, for any smaller consideration
than a settlement on his daughter-in-law.
By this time, we were come to Mr. Krook’s,
whose private door stood open. There was a
bill, pasted on the door-post, announcing a room
to let on the second floor. It reminded Caddy to
tell me as we proceeded up-stairs, that there
had been a sudden death there, and an inquest;
and that our little friend had been ill of the
fright. The door and window of the vacant
room being open, we looked in. It was the
room with the dark door, to which Miss Flite
had secretly directed my attention when I was
last in the house. A sad and desolate place it
was; a gloomy, sorrowful place, that gave me a
strange sensation of mournfulness and even dread.
“You look pale,” said Caddy, when we came out,
“and cold!” I felt as if the room had chilled me.
We had walked slowly, while we were talking;
and my Guardian and Ada were here before
us. We found them in Miss Flite’s garret.
They were looking at the birds, while a medical[Pg 366]
gentleman who was so good as to attend Miss
Flite with much solicitude and compassion, spoke
with her cheerfully by the fire.
“I have finished my professional visit,” he
said, coming forward. “Miss Flite is much better,
and may appear in court (as her mind is set
upon it) to-morrow. She has been greatly missed
there, I understand.”
Miss Flite received the compliment with complacency,
and dropped a general courtesy to us.
“Honored, indeed,” said she, “by another
visit from the Wards in Jarndyce! Ve-ry happy
to receive Jarndyce of Bleak House beneath
my humble roof!” with a special courtesy.
“Fitz-Jarndyce, my dear;” she had bestowed
that name on Caddy, it appeared, and always
called her by it; “a double welcome!”
“Has she been very ill?” asked Mr. Jarndyce
of the gentleman whom we had found in attendance
on her. She answered for herself directly,
though he had put the question in a whisper.
“O, decidedly unwell! O, very unwell indeed,”
she said, confidentially. “Not pain, you know—trouble.
Not bodily so much as nervous, nervous!
The truth is,” in a subdued voice and
trembling, “we have had death here. There
was poison in the house. I am very susceptible
to such horrid things. It frightened me. Only
Mr. Woodcourt knows how much. My physician,
Mr. Woodcourt!” with great stateliness.
“The Wards in Jarndyce—Jarndyce of Bleak
House—Fitz-Jarndyce!”
“Miss Flite,” said Mr. Woodcourt, in a grave,
kind voice as if he were appealing to her while
speaking to us; and laying his hand gently on
her arm; “Miss Flite describes her illness with
her usual accuracy. She was alarmed by an occurrence
in the house which might have alarmed
a stronger person, and was made ill by the distress
and agitation. She brought me here in the
first hurry of the discovery, though too late for
me to be of any use to the unfortunate man. I
have compensated myself for that disappointment
by coming here since, and being of small
use to her.”
“The kindest physician in the college,” whispered
Miss Flite to me. “I expect a Judgment.
On the day of Judgment. And shall
then confer estates.”
“She will be as well, in a day or two,” said
Mr. Woodcourt, looking at her with an observant
smile, “as she ever will be. In other words,
quite well, of course. Have you heard of her
good fortune?”
“Most extraordinary!” said Miss Flite, smiling
brightly. “You never heard of such a thing,
my dear! Every Saturday, Conversation Kenge,
or Guppy (clerk to Conversation K.), places in
my hand a paper of shillings. Shillings. I assure
you! Always the same number in the
paper. Always one for every day in the week.
Now you know, really! So well-timed, is it
not? Ye-es! From whence do these papers
come, you say? That is the great question.
Naturally. Shall I tell you what I think? I
think,” said Miss Flite, drawing herself back
with a very shrewd look, and shaking her right
forefinger in a most significant manner, “that
the Lord Chancellor, aware of the length of time
during which the Great Seal has been open (for
it has been open a long time!) forwards them.
Until the Judgment I expect, is given. Now
that’s very creditable, you know. To confess in
that way that he is a little slow for human life.
So delicate! Attending Court the other day—I
attend it regularly—with my documents—I taxed
him with it, and he almost confessed. That
is, I smiled at him from my bench, and he smiled
at me from his bench. But it’s great good fortune,
is it not? And Fitz-Jarndyce lays the
money out for me to great advantage. O, I
assure you to the greatest advantage!”
I congratulated her (as she addressed herself
to me) upon this fortunate addition to her income,
and wished her a long continuance of it.
I did not speculate upon the source from which
it came, or wonder whose humanity was so considerate.
My Guardian stood before me, contemplating
the birds, and I had no need to look beyond
him.
“And what do you call these little fellows,
ma’am?” said he in his pleasant voice. “Have
they any names?”
“I can answer for Miss Flite that they have,”
said I, “for she promised to tell us what they
were. Ada remembers?”
Ada remembered very well.
“Did I?” said Miss Flite.—”Who’s that at
my door? What are you listening at my door
for, Krook?”
The old man of the house, pushing it open
before him, appeared there with his fur-cap in
his hand, and his cat at his heels.
“I warn’t listening, Miss Flite,” he said. “I
was going to give a rap with my knuckles, only
you’re so quick!”
“Make your cat go down. Drive her away!”
the old lady angrily exclaimed.
“Bah, bah!—There ain’t no danger, gentle-folks,”
said Mr. Krook, looking slowly and sharply
from one to another, until he had looked at all
of us; “she’d never offer at the birds when I
was here, unless I told her to do it.”
“You will excuse my landlord,” said the old
lady with a dignified air. “M, quite M! What
do you want, Krook, when I have company?”
“Hi!” said the old man. “You know I am
the Chancellor.”
“Well?” returned Miss Flite. “What of
that?”
“For the Chancellor,” said the old man, with
a chuckle, “not to be acquainted with a Jarndyce
is queer, ain’t it, Miss Flite? Mightn’t I
take the liberty?—Your servant, sir. I know
Jarndyce and Jarndyce a’most as well as you do,
sir. I knowed old Squire Tom, sir. I never to my
knowledge see you afore though, not even in court.
Yet, I go there a mortal sight of times in the course
of the year, taking one day with another.”
“I never go there,” said Mr. Jarndyce (which[Pg 367]
he never did on any consideration). “I would
sooner go—somewhere else.”
“Would you though?” returned Krook, grinning.
“You’re bearing hard upon my noble and
learned brother in your meaning, sir; though,
perhaps, it is but nat’ral in a Jarndyce. The
burnt child, sir! What, you’re looking at my
lodger’s birds, Mr. Jarndyce?” The old man
had come by little and little into the room, until
he now touched my Guardian with his elbow,
and looked close up into his face with his spectacled
eyes. “It’s one of her strange ways, that
she’ll never tell the names of these birds if she
can help it, though she named ’em all.” This
was in a whisper. “Shall I run ’em over, Flite?”
he asked aloud, winking at us and pointing at
her as she turned away, affecting to sweep the
grate.
“If you like,” she answered hurriedly.
The old man, looking up at the cages, after
another look at us, went through the list.
“Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust,
Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despair, Madness,
Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags,
Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon,
and Spinach. That’s the whole collection,” said
the old man, “all cooped up together, by my noble
and learned brother.
“This is a bitter wind!” muttered my Guardian.
“When my noble and learned brother gives
his Judgment, they’re to be let go free,” said
Krook, winking at us again. “And then,” he
added, whispering and grinning, “if that ever
was to happen—which it won’t—the birds that
have never been caged would kill ’em.”
“If ever the wind was in the east,” said my
Guardian, pretending to look out of the window
for a weathercock, “I think it’s there to-day!”
We found it very difficult to get away from
the house. It was not Miss Flite who detained
us; she was as reasonable a little creature in
consulting the convenience of others, as there
possibly could be. It was Mr. Krook. He seemed
unable to detach himself from Mr. Jarndyce.
If he had been linked to him, he could hardly
have attended him more closely. He proposed
to show us his Court of Chancery, and all the
strange medley it contained; during the whole
of our inspection (prolonged by himself) he kept
close to Mr. Jarndyce, and sometimes detained
him, under one pretense or other, until we had
passed on, as if he were tormented by an inclination
to enter upon some secret subject, which he
could not make up his mind to approach. I can
not imagine a countenance and manner more
singularly expressive of caution and indecision,
and a perpetual impulse to do something he could
not resolve to venture on, than Mr. Krook’s
was, that day. His watchfulness of my Guardian
was incessant. He rarely removed his eyes
from his face. If he went on beside him, he observed
him with the slyness of an old white fox.
If he went before, he looked back. When we
stood still, he got opposite to him, and drawing
his hand across and across his open mouth with
a curious expression of a sense of power, and
turning up his eyes, and lowering his gray eyebrows
until they appeared to be shut, seemed to
scan every lineament of his face.
At last, having been (always attended by the
cat) all over the house, and having seen the
whole stock of miscellaneous lumber, which was
certainly curious, we came into the back part of
the shop. Here, on the head of an empty barrel
stood on end, were an ink-bottle, some old stumps
of pens, and some dirty playbills; and against
the wall were pasted several large printed alphabets
in several plain hands.
“What are you doing here?” asked my Guardian.
“Trying to learn myself to read and write,”
said Krook.
“And how do you get on?”
“Slow. Bad,” returned the old man, impatiently.
“It’s hard at my time of life.”
“It would be easier to be taught by some one,”
said my Guardian.
“Ay, but they might teach me wrong!” returned
the old man, with a wonderfully suspicious
flash of his eye. “I don’t know what I may
have lost, by not being learned afore. I wouldn’t
like to lose any thing by being learned wrong
now.”
“Wrong?” said my Guardian, with his good-humored
smile. “Who do you suppose would
teach you wrong?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House!”
replied the old man, turning up his spectacles on
his forehead, and rubbing his hands. “I don’t
suppose as any body would—but I’d rather trust
my own self than another!”
These answers, and his manner, were strange
enough to cause my Guardian to inquire of Mr.
Woodcourt, as we all walked across Lincoln’s
Inn together, whether Mr. Krook were really, as
his lodger represented him, deranged? The young
surgeon replied, no, he had seen no reason to
think so. He was exceedingly distrustful, as
ignorance usually was, and he was always more
or less under the influence of raw gin: of which
he drank great quantities, and of which he and
his back shop, as we might have observed, smelt
strongly; but he did not think him mad, as
yet.
On our way home, I so conciliated Peepy’s
affections by buying him a windmill and two
flour-sacks, that he would suffer nobody else to
take off his hat and gloves, and would sit nowhere
at dinner but at my side. Caddy sat upon
the other side of me, next to Ada, to whom we
imparted the whole history of the engagement as
soon as we got back. We made much of Caddy,
and Peepy too; and Caddy brightened exceedingly;
and my Guardian was as merry as we were;
and we were all very happy indeed; until Caddy
went home at night in a hackney-coach, with
Peepy fast asleep, but holding tight to the windmill.
I have forgotten to mention—at least I have[Pg 368]
not mentioned—that Mr. Woodcourt was the
same dark young surgeon whom we had met at
Mr. Badger’s. Or, that Mr. Jarndyce invited
him to dinner that day. Or, that he came. Or,
that when they were all gone, and I said to Ada,
“Now, my darling, let us have a little talk about
Richard!” Ada laughed, and said—
But, I don’t think it matters what my darling
said. She was always merry.
CHAPTER XV.—Bell Yard.
While we were in London, Mr. Jarndyce was
constantly beset by the crowd of excitable ladies
and gentlemen whose proceedings had so much
astonished us. Mr. Quale, who presented himself
soon after our arrival, was in all such excitements.
He seemed to project those two shining
knobs of temples of his into every thing that went
on, and to brush his hair farther and farther back,
until the very roots were almost ready to fly out
of his head in inappeasable philanthropy. All
objects were alike to him, but he was always particularly
ready for any thing in the way of a
testimonial to any one. His great power seemed
to be his power of indiscriminate admiration.
He would sit, for any length of time, with the
utmost enjoyment, bathing his temples in the
light of any order of luminary. Having first seen
him perfectly swallowed up in admiration of Mrs.
Jellyby, I had supposed her to be the absorbing
object of his devotion. I soon discovered my
mistake, and found him to be train-bearer and
organ-blower to a whole procession of people.
Mrs. Pardiggle came one day for a subscription
to something—and with her, Mr. Quale. Whatever
Mrs. Pardiggle said, Mr. Quale repeated to
us; and just as he had drawn Mrs. Jellyby out,
he drew Mrs. Pardiggle out. Mrs. Pardiggle
wrote a letter of introduction to my Guardian, in
behalf of her eloquent friend, Mr. Gusher. With
Mr. Gusher, appeared Mr. Quale again. Mr.
Gusher, being a flabby gentleman with a moist
surface, and eyes so much too small for his moon
of a face that they seemed to have been originally
made for somebody else, was not at first sight
prepossessing; yet, he was scarcely seated, before
Mr. Quale asked Ada and me, not inaudibly,
whether he was not a great creature—which he
certainly was, flabbily speaking; though Mr.
Quale meant in intellectual beauty—and whether
we were not struck by his massive configuration
of brow? In short, we heard of a great many
missions of various sorts, among this set of people;
but, nothing respecting them was half so
clear to us, as that it was Mr. Quale’s mission to
be in ecstasies with everybody else’s mission, and
that it was the most popular mission of all.
Mr. Jarndyce had fallen into this company, in
the tenderness of his heart and his earnest desire
to do all the good in his power; but, that he felt
it to be too often an unsatisfactory company,
where benevolence took spasmodic forms; where
charity was assumed, as a regular uniform, by
loud professors and speculators in cheap notoriety,
vehement in profession, restless and vain in
action, servile in the last degree of meanness to
the great, adulatory of one another, and intolerable
to those who were anxious quietly to help
the weak from falling, rather than with a great
deal of bluster and self-laudation to raise them
up a little way when they were down; he plainly
told us. When a testimonial was originated to
Mr. Quale, by Mr. Gusher (who had already got
one, originated by Mr. Quale), and when Mr.
Gusher spoke for an hour and a half on the subject
to a meeting, including two charity schools
of small boys and girls, who were specially reminded
of the widow’s mite, and requested to
come forward with half-pence and be acceptable
sacrifices; I think the wind was in the east for
three whole weeks.
I mention this, because I am coming to Mr.
Skimpole again. It seemed to me that his off-hand
professions of childishness and carelessness
were a great relief to my Guardian, by contrast
with such things, and were the more readily believed
in; since, to find one perfectly undesigning
and candid man, among many opposites,
could not fail to give him pleasure. I should be
sorry to imply that Mr. Skimpole divined this,
and was politic: I really never understood him
well enough to know. What he was to my Guardian,
he certainly was to the rest of the world.
He had not been very well; and thus, though
he lived in London, we had seen nothing of him
until now. He appeared one morning, in his
usual agreeable way, and as full of pleasant
spirits as ever.
Well, he said, here he was! He had been
bilious, but rich men were often bilious, and
therefore he had been persuading himself that
he was a man of property. So he was, in a certain
point of view—in his expansive intentions.
He had been enriching his medical attendant in
the most lavish manner. He had always doubled,
and sometimes quadrupled, his fees. He
had said to the doctor, “Now my dear doctor, it
is quite a delusion on your part to suppose that
you attend me for nothing. I am overwhelming
you with money—in my expansive intentions—if
you only knew it!” And really (he said) he
meant it to that degree, that he thought it much
the same as doing it. If he had had those bits of
metal or thin paper to which mankind attached
so much importance, to put in the doctor’s hand,
he would have put them in the doctor’s hand.
Not having them, he substituted the will for the
deed. Very well! If he really meant it—if his
will were genuine and real: which it was—it
appeared to him that it was the same as coin,
and canceled the obligation.
“It may be, partly, because I know nothing
of the value of money,” said Mr. Skimpole, “but
I often feel this. It seems so reasonable! My
butcher says to me, he wants that little bill. It’s
a part of the pleasant unconscious poetry of the
man’s nature, that he always calls it a ‘little’
bill—to make the payment appear easy to both
of us. I reply to the butcher, My good friend, if
you knew it, you are paid. You haven’t had the[Pg 369]
trouble of coming to ask for the little bill. You
are paid. I mean it.”
“But suppose,” said my Guardian, laughing,
“he had meant the meat in the bill, instead of
providing it?”
“My dear Jarndyce,” he returned, “you surprise
me. You take the butcher’s position. A
butcher I once dealt with, occupied that very
ground. Says he, ‘Sir, why did you eat spring
lamb at eighteen pence a pound?’ ‘Why did I
eat spring lamb at eighteen pence a pound, my
honest friend?’ said I, naturally amazed by the
question. ‘I like spring lamb!’ This was so
far convincing. ‘Well, sir,’ says he, ‘I wish I
had meant the lamb, as you mean the money?’
‘My good fellow,’ said I, ‘pray let us reason like
intellectual beings. How could that be? It
was impossible. You had got the lamb, and I
have not got the money. You couldn’t really
mean the lamb without sending it in, whereas I
can, and do, really mean the money without
paying it?’ He had not a word. There was an
end of the subject.”
“Did he take no legal proceedings?” inquired
my Guardian.
“Yes, he took legal proceedings,” said Mr.
Skimpole. “But in that, he was influenced by
passion; not by reason. Passion reminds me of
Boythorn. He writes me that you and the ladies
have promised him a short visit at his bachelor-house
in Lincolnshire.”
“He is a great favorite with my girls,” said
Mr. Jarndyce, “and I have promised for them.”
“Nature forgot to shade him off, I think?”
observed Mr. Skimpole to Ada and me. “A
little too boisterous—like the sea? A little too
vehement—like a bull who has made up his
mind to consider every color scarlet? But I
grant a sledge-hammering sort of merit in
him!”
I should have been surprised if those two could
have thought very highly of one another; Mr.
Boythorn attaching so much importance to many
things, and Mr. Skimpole caring so little for any
thing. Besides which, I had noticed Mr. Boythorn
more than once on the point of breaking
out into some strong opinion, when Mr. Skimpole
was referred to. Of course I merely joined
Ada in saying that we had been greatly pleased
with him.
“He has invited me,” said Mr. Skimpole;
“and if a child may trust himself in such hands:
which the present child is encouraged to do, with
the united tenderness of two angels to guard
him: I shall go. He proposes to frank me
down and back again. I suppose it will cost
money? Shillings perhaps? Or pounds? Or
something of that sort? By-the-by. Coavinses.
You remember our friend Coavinses, Miss
Summerson?”
He asked me as the subject arose in his mind,
in his graceful, light-hearted manner, and without
the least embarrassment.
“O yes?” said I.
“Coavinses has been arrested by the great
Bailiff,” said Mr. Skimpole. “He will never do
violence to the sunshine any more.”
It quite shocked me to hear it; for, I had already
recalled, with any thing but a serious
association, the image of the man sitting on the
sofa that night, wiping his head.
“His successor informed me of it yesterday,”
said Mr. Skimpole, “His successor is in my
house now—in possession, I think he calls it.
He came yesterday, on my blue-eyed daughter’s
birth-day. I put it to him. ‘This is unreasonable
and inconvenient. If you had a blue-eyed
daughter, you wouldn’t like me to come, uninvited,
on her birthday?’ But he staid.”
Mr. Skimpole laughed at the pleasant absurdity,
and lightly touched the piano by which he
was seated.
“And he told me,” he said, playing little
chords where I shall put full stops. “That
Coavinses had left. Three children. No mother.
And that Coavinses’ profession. Being unpopular.
The rising Coavinses. Were at a considerable
disadvantage.”
Mr. Jarndyce got up, rubbing his head, and
began to walk about. Mr. Skimpole played the
melody of one of Ada’s favorite songs. Ada
and I both looked at Mr. Jarndyce, thinking that
we knew what was passing in his mind.
After walking, and stopping, and several times
leaving off rubbing his head, and beginning
again, my Guardian put his hand upon the keys
and stopped Mr. Skimpole’s playing. “I don’t
like this, Skimpole,” he said, thoughtfully.
Mr. Skimpole, who had quite forgotten the subject,
looked up surprised.
“The man was necessary,” pursued my Guardian,
walking backward and forward in the very
short space between the piano and the end of the
room, and rubbing his hair up from the back of
his head as if a high east wind had blown it
into that form. “If we make such men necessary
by our faults and follies, or by our want of
worldly knowledge, or by our misfortunes, we
must not revenge ourselves upon them. There
was no harm in his trade. He maintained his
children. One would like to know more about
this.”
“O! Coavinses?” cried Mr. Skimpole, at
length perceiving what he meant. “Nothing
easier. A walk to Coavinses head-quarters, and
you can know what you will.”
Mr. Jarndyce nodded to us, who were only
waiting for the signal. “Come! We will walk
that way, my dears. Why not that way, as soon
as another!” We were quickly ready, and went
out. Mr. Skimpole went with us, and quite enjoyed
the expedition. It was so new and so refreshing,
he said, for him to want Coavinses, instead
of Coavinses wanting him!
He took us, first, to Cursitor Street, Chancery
Lane, where there was a house with barred windows,
which he called Coavinses Castle. On our
going into the entry and ringing a bell, a very
hideous boy came out of a sort of office, and looked
at us over a spiked wicket.
“Who did you want?” said the boy, fitting
two of the spikes into his chin.
“There was a follower, or an officer, or something,
here,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “who is dead.”
“Yes,” said the boy. “Well?”
“I want to know his name, if you please.”
“Name of Neckett,” said the boy.
“And his address?”
“Bell Yard,” said the boy. “Chandler’s shop,
left hand side, name of Blinder.”
“Was he—I don’t know how to shape the
question,” murmured my Guardian—”industrious?”
“Was Neckett?” said the boy. “Yes, wery
much so. He was never tired of watching. He’d
sit upon a post at a street corner, eight or ten
hours at a stretch, if he undertook to do it.”
“He might have done worse,” I heard my
Guardian soliloquize. “He might have undertaken
to do it, and not done it. Thank you.
That’s all I want.”
We left the boy, with his head on one side, and
his arms on the gate, fondling and sucking the
spikes, and went back to Lincoln’s Inn, where
Mr. Skimpole, who had not cared to remain nearer
Coavinses, awaited us. Then, we all went to
Bell Yard: a narrow alley, at a very short distance.
We soon found the chandler’s shop. In
it was a good-natured-looking old woman, with
a dropsy or an asthma, or perhaps both.
“Neckett’s children?” said she, in reply to my
inquiry. “Yes, surely, miss. Three pair, if you
please. Door right opposite the top of the stairs.”
And she handed me a key across the counter.
I glanced at the key, and glanced at her; but,
she took it for granted that I knew what to do
with it. As it could only be intended for the
children’s door, I came out, without asking any
more questions, and led the way up the dark
stairs. We went as quietly as we could; but
four of us, made some noise on the aged boards;
and, when we came to the second story, we found
we had disturbed a man who was standing there,
looking out of his room.
“Is it Gridley that’s wanted?” he said, fixing
his eyes on me with an angry stare.
“No, sir,” said I, “I am going higher up.”
He looked at Ada, and at Mr. Jarndyce, and
at Mr. Skimpole: fixing the same angry stare on
each in succession, as they passed and followed
me. Mr. Jarndyce gave him good-day! “Good-day!”
he said, abruptly and fiercely. He was a
tall sallow man, with a care-worn head, on which
but little hair remained, a deeply-lined face, and
prominent eyes. He had a combative look; and
a chafing, irritable manner, which, associated
with his figure—still large and powerful, though
evidently in its decline—rather alarmed me. He
had a pen in his hand, and, in the glimpse I
caught of his room in passing, I saw that it was
covered with a litter of papers.
Leaving him standing there, we went up to the
top room. I tapped at the door, and a little shrill
voice inside said, “We are locked in. Mrs. Blinder’s
got the key.”
I applied the key on hearing this, and opened
the door. In a poor room with a sloping ceiling,
and containing very little furniture, was a mite
of a boy, some five or six years old, nursing and
hushing a heavy child of eighteen months. There
was no fire, though the weather was cold; both
children were wrapped in some poor shawls
and tippets, as a substitute. Their clothing
was not so warm, however, but that their noses
looked red and pinched, and their small figures
shrunken, as the boy walked up and down, nursing
and hushing the child, with its head on his
shoulder.
“Who has locked you up here alone?” we
naturally asked.
“Charley,” said the boy, standing still to gaze
at us.
“Is Charley your brother?”
“No. She’s my sister, Charlotte. Father
called her Charley.”
“Are there any more of you besides Charley?”
“Me,” said the boy “and Emma,” patting the
limp bonnet of the child he was nursing. “And
Charley.”
“Where is Charley now?”
“Out a-washing,” said the boy, beginning to
walk up and down again, and taking the nankeen
bonnet much too near the bedstead, by trying
to gaze at us at the same time.
We were looking at one another, and at these
two children, when there came into the room a very
little girl, childish in figure but shrewd and older-looking
in the face—pretty faced too—wearing a
womanly sort of bonnet much too large for her,
and drying her bare arms on a womanly sort of
apron. Her fingers were white and wrinkled
with washing, and the soap-suds were yet smoking
which she wiped off her arms. But for this,
she might have been a child, playing at washing,
and imitating a poor working woman with a
quick observation of the truth.
She had come running from some place in the
neighborhood, and had made all the haste she
could. Consequently, though she was very light,
she was out of breath, and could not speak at
first, as she stood panting, and wiping her arms,
and looking quietly at us.
“O, here’s Charley!” said the boy.
The child he was nursing, stretched forth its
arms, and cried out to be taken by Charley. The little
girl took it, in a womanly sort of manner belonging
to the apron and the bonnet, and stood looking
at us over the burden that clung to her most
affectionately.
“Is it possible,” whispered my Guardian, as
we put a chair for the little creature, and got her
to sit down with her load: the boy keeping close
to her, holding to her apron, “that this child
works for the rest? Look at this! For God’s
sake look at this!”
It was a thing to look at. The three children
close together, and two of them relying solely on
the third, and the third so young and yet with an
air of age and steadiness that sat so strangely on
the childish figure.
“Charley, Charley!” said my Guardian. “How
old are you?”
“Over thirteen, sir,” replied the child.
“O! What a great age,” said my Guardian.
“What a great age, Charley!”
I can not describe the tenderness with which
he spoke to her; half playfully, yet all the more
compassionately and mournfully.
“And do you live alone here with these babies,
Charley?” said my Guardian.
“Yes, sir,” returned the child, looking up into
his face with perfect confidence, “since father
died.”
“And how do you live, Charley? O! Charley,”
said my Guardian, turning his face away for a
moment, “how do you live?”
“Since father died, sir, I’ve gone out to work.
I’m out washing to-day.”
“God help you, Charley!” said my Guardian.
“You’re not tall enough to reach the tub!”
“In pattens I am, sir,” she said quickly.
“I’ve got a high pair as belonged to mother.”
“And when did mother die? Poor mother!”
“Mother died, just after Emma was born,”
said the child, glancing at the face upon her
bosom. “Then, father said I was to be as good
a mother to her as I could. And so I tried.
And so I worked at home, and did cleaning and
nursing and washing, for a long time before I
began to go out. And that’s how I know how;
don’t you see, sir?”
“And do you often go out?”
“As often as I can,” said Charley, opening her
eyes, and smiling, “because of earning sixpences
and shillings!”
“And do you always lock the babies up when
you go out?”
“To keep ’em safe, sir, don’t you see?” said
Charley. “Mrs. Blinder comes up now and then,
and Mr. Gridley comes up sometimes, and perhaps
I can run in sometimes, and they can play, you
know, and Tom ain’t afraid of being locked up,
are you, Tom?”
“No-o!” said Tom, stoutly.
“When it comes on dark, the lamps are lighted
down in the court, and they show up here quite
bright—almost quite bright. Don’t they, Tom?”
“Yes, Charley,” said Tom, “almost quite
bright.”
“Then he’s as good as gold,” said the little
creature—O! in such a motherly, womanly way!
“And when Emma’s tired, he puts her to bed.
And when he’s tired, he goes to bed himself.
And when I come home and light the candle,
and has a bit of supper, he sits up again and has
it with me. Don’t you, Tom?”
“O yes, Charley!” said Tom. “That I do!”
And either in this glimpse of the great pleasure
of his life, or in gratitude and love for Charley,
who was all in all to him, he laid his face among
the scanty folds of her frock, and passed from
laughing into crying.
It was the first time since our entry, that a
tear had been shed among these children. The
little orphan girl had spoken of their father, and
their mother, as if all that sorrow were subdued
by the necessity of taking courage, and by her
childish importance in being able to work, and by
her bustling busy way. But, now, when Tom
cried, although she sat quite tranquil, looking
quietly at us, and did not by any movement disturb
a hair of the head of either of her little
charges, I saw two silent tears fall down her
face.
I stood at the window with Ada, pretending to
look at the housetops, and the blackened stacks
of chimneys, and the poor plants, and the birds in
little cages belonging to the neighbors, when I
found that Mrs. Blinder, from the shop below,
had come in (perhaps it had taken her all this
time to get up-stairs) and was talking to my
Guardian.
“It’s not much to forgive ’em the rent, sir,”
she said: “who could take it from them!”
“Well, well!” said my Guardian to us two.
“It is enough that the time will come when this
good woman will find that it was much, and that
forasmuch as she did it unto the least of these—!
This child,” he added, after a few moments,
“could she possibly continue this?”
“Really, sir, I think she might,” said Mrs.
Blinder, getting her heavy breath by painful
degrees. “She’s as handy as it’s possible to be.
Bless you, sir, the way she tended them two
children, after the mother died, was the talk of
the yard! And it was a wonder to see her with
him after he was took ill, it really was! ‘Mrs.
Blinder,’ he said to me the very last he spoke—he
was lying there—’Mrs. Blinder, whatever my
calling may have been, I see a Angel sitting in
this room last night along with my child, and I
trust her to Our Father!'”
“He had no other calling?” said my Guardian.
“No, sir,” returned Mrs. Blinder, “he was nothing
but a follerer. When he first came to lodge
here, I didn’t know what he was, and I confess
that when I found out I gave him notice. It
wasn’t liked in the yard. It wasn’t approved by
the other lodgers. It is not a genteel calling,”
said Mrs. Blinder, “and most people do object to
it. Mr. Gridley objected to it, very strong; and
he is a good lodger, though his temper has been
hard tried.”
“So you gave him notice?” said my Guardian.
“So I gave him notice,” said Mrs. Blinder.
“But really when the time came, and I knew no
other ill of him, I was in doubts. He was punctual
and diligent; he did what he had to do, sir,”
said Mrs. Blinder, unconsciously fixing Mr. Skimpole
with her eye; “and it’s something, in this
world, even to do that.”
“So you kept him, after all?”
“Why, I said that if he could arrange with
Mr. Gridley, I could arrange it with the other
lodgers, and should not so much mind its being
liked or disliked in the yard. Mr. Gridley gave
his consent gruff—but gave it. He was always
gruff with him, but he has been kind to the children
since. A person is never known till a person
is proved.”
“Have many people been kind to the children?”
asked Mr. Jarndyce.
“Upon the whole, not so bad, sir,” said Mrs.
Blinder, “but, certainly not so many as would
have been, if their father’s calling had been different.
Mr. Coavins gave a guinea, and the follerers
made up a little purse. Some neighbors
in the yard, that had always joked and tapped
their shoulders when he went by, came forward
with a little subscription, and—in general—not
so bad. Similarly with Charlotte. Some people
won’t employ her because she was a follerer’s
child; some people that do employ her, cast it
at her; some make a merit of having her to work
for them, with that and all her drawbacks upon
her: and perhaps pay her less and put upon her
more. But she’s patienter than others would be,
and is clever too, and always willing, up to the
full mark of her strength and over. So I should
say, in general, not so bad sir, but might be
better.”
Mrs. Blinder sat down to give herself a more
favorable opportunity of recovering her breath,
exhausted anew by so much talking before it was
fully restored. Mr. Jarndyce was turning to speak
to us, when his attention was attracted by the
abrupt entrance into the room of the Mr. Gridley
who had been mentioned, and whom we had seen
on our way up.
“I don’t know what you may be doing here,
ladies and gentlemen,” he said, as if he resented
our presence, “but you’ll excuse my coming in. I
don’t come in, to stare about me. Well, Charley!
Well, Tom! Well, little one! How is it with
us all to-day?”
He bent over the group, in a caressing way,
and clearly was regarded as a friend by the children,
though his face retained its stern character,
and his manner to us was as rude as it could be.
My Guardian noticed it, and respected it.
“No one, surely, would come here to stare
about him,” he said mildly.
“May be so, sir, may be so,” returned the
other, taking Tom upon his knee, and waving
him off impatiently. “I don’t want to argue
with ladies and gentlemen. I have had enough
of arguing, to last one man his life.”
“You have sufficient reason, I dare say,” said
Mr. Jarndyce, “for being chafed and irritated—”
“There again!” exclaimed the man, becoming
violently angry. “I am of a quarrelsome temper.
I am irascible. I am not polite!”
“Not very, I think.”
“Sir,” said Gridley, putting down the child,
and going up to him as if he mean to strike him,
“Do you know any thing of Courts of Equity?”
“Perhaps I do, to my sorrow.”
“To your sorrow?” said the man, pausing in
his wrath. “If so, I beg your pardon. I am
not polite, I know. I beg your pardon! Sir,”
with renewed violence, “I have been dragged for
five-and-twenty years over burning iron, and I
have lost the habit of treading upon velvet. Go
into the Court of Chancery yonder, and ask what
is one of the standing jokes that brighten up their
business sometimes, and they will tell you that
the best joke they have, is the man from Shropshire.
I,” he said, beating one hand on the other
passionately, “am the man from Shropshire.”
“I believe, I and my family have also had the
honor of furnishing some entertainment in the
same grave place,” said my Guardian, composedly.
“You may have heard my name—Jarndyce.”
“Mr. Jarndyce,” said Gridley, with a rough
sort of salutation, “you bear your wrongs more
quietly than I can bear mine. More than that,
I tell you—and I tell this gentleman, and these
young ladies, if they are friends of yours—that if
I took my wrongs in any other way, I should be
driven mad! It is only by resenting them, and
by revenging them in my mind, and by angrily
demanding the justice I never get, that I am able
to keep my wits together. It is only that!” he
said, speaking in a homely, rustic way, and with
great vehemence. “You may tell me that I over-excite
myself. I answer that it’s in my nature to
do it, under wrong, and I must do it. There’s
nothing between doing it, and sinking into the
smiling state of the poor little mad woman that
haunts the Court. If I was once to sit down
under it, I should become imbecile.”
The passion and heat in which he was, and
the manner in which his face worked, and the
violent gestures with which he accompanied what
he said, were most painful to see.
“Mr. Jarndyce,” he said, “consider my case.
As true as there is a Heaven above us, this is my
case. I am one of two brothers. My father (a
farmer) made a will, and left his farm and stock,
and so forth, to my mother, for her life. After
my mother’s death, all was to come to me, except
a legacy of three hundred pounds that I was then
to pay my brother. My mother died. My brother,
some time afterward, claimed his legacy. I, and
some of my relations, said that he had had a part
of it already, in board and lodging, and some
other things. Now, mind! That was the question,
and nothing else. No one disputed the will!
no one disputed any thing but whether part of
that three hundred pounds had been already
paid or not. To settle that question, my brother
filing a bill, I was obliged to go into this accursed
Chancery; I was forced there, because the law
forced me, and would let me go nowhere else.
Seventeen people were made defendants to that
simple suit! It first came on, after two years.
It was then stopped for another two years, while
the Master (may his head rot off!) inquired
whether I was my father’s son—about which,
there was no dispute at all with any mortal
creature. He then found out, that there were
not defendants enough—remember, there were
only seventeen as yet!—but, that we must have
another who had been left out; and must begin
all over again. The costs at that time—before
the thing was begun!—were three times the
legacy. My brother would have given up the
legacy, and joyful, to escape more costs. My
whole estate, left to me in that will of my[Pg 373]
father’s, has gone in costs. The suit still undecided,
has fallen into rack, and ruin, and despair,
with every thing else—and here I stand this day!
Now, Mr. Jarndyce, in your suit there are thousands
and thousands involved where in mine there
are hundreds. Is mine less hard to bear, or is it
harder to bear, when my whole living was in it,
and has been thus shamefully sucked away?”
Mr. Jarndyce said that he condoled with him
with all his heart, and that he set up no monopoly,
himself, in being unjustly treated by this
monstrous system.
“There again!” said Mr. Gridley, with no
diminution of his rage. “The system! I am
told, on all hands, it’s the system. I mustn’t
look to individuals. It’s the system. I mustn’t
go into Court, and say, ‘My Lord, I beg to know
this from you—is this right or wrong? Have
you the face to tell me I have received justice,
and therefore am dismissed?’ My Lord knows
nothing of it. He sits there to administer the
system. I mustn’t go to Mr. Tulkinghorn, the
solicitor in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and say to him
when he makes me furious, by being so cool and
satisfied—as they all do; for I know they gain
by it while I lose, don’t I?—I mustn’t say to
him, I will have something out of some one for
my ruin, by fair means or foul! He is not responsible.
It’s the system. But if I do no violence
to any of them, here—I may! I don’t
know what may happen if I am carried beyond
myself at last!—I will accuse the individual
workers of that system against me, face to face,
before the great eternal bar!”
His passion was fearful. I could not have believed
in such rage without seeing it.
“I have done!” he said, sitting down and
wiping his face. “Mr. Jarndyce, I have done!
I am violent, I know. I ought to know it. I
have been in prison for contempt of Court. I
have been in prison for threatening the solicitor.
I have been in this trouble, and that trouble, and
shall be again. I am the man from Shropshire,
and I sometimes go beyond amusing them—though
they have found it amusing, too, to see
me committed into custody, and brought up in
custody, and all that. It would be better for
me, they tell me, if I restrained myself. I tell
them, that if I did restrain myself, I should become
imbecile. I was a good-enough-tempered
man once, I believe. People in my part of the
country, say, they remember me so; but, now, I
must have this vent under my sense of injury, or
nothing could hold my wits together. ‘It would
be far better for you, Mr. Gridley,’ the Lord Chancellor
told me last week, ‘not to waste your time
here, and to stay, usefully employed, down in
Shropshire.’ ‘My Lord, my Lord, I know it
would,’ said I to him, ‘and it would have been
far better for me never to have heard the name
of your high office; but, unhappily for me, I can’t
undo the past, and the past drives me here!’—Besides,”
he added, breaking fiercely out, “I’ll
shame them. To the last, I’ll show myself in
that court to its shame. If I knew when I was
going to die, and could be carried there, and had
a voice to speak with, I would die there, saying,
‘You have brought me here, and sent me from
here, many and many a time. Now send me
out, feet foremost!'”
His countenance had, perhaps for years, become
so set in its contentious expression that it
did not soften, even now when he was quiet.
“I came to take these babies down to my
room for an hour,” he said, going to them again,
“and let them play about. I didn’t mean to say
all this, but it don’t much signify. You’re not
afraid of me, Tom; are you?”
“No!” said Tom. “You ain’t angry with
me.”
“You are right, my child. You’re going back,
Charley? Ay? Come then, little one!” He
took the youngest child on his arm, where she
was willing enough to be carried. “I shouldn’t
wonder if we found a gingerbread soldier down-stairs.
Let’s go and look for him!”
He made his former rough salutation, which
was not deficient in a certain respect, to Mr.
Jarndyce; and bowing slightly to us, went down-stairs
to his room.
Upon that, Mr. Skimpole began to talk, for the
first time since our arrival, in his usual gay
strain. He said, Well, it was really very pleasant
to see how things lazily adapted themselves
to purposes. Here was this Mr. Gridley, a man
of a robust will, and surprising energy—intellectually
speaking, a sort of inharmonious black-smith—and
he could easily imagine that there
Gridley was, years ago, wandering about in life
for something to expend his superfluous combativeness
upon—a sort of Young Love among the
thorns—when the Court of Chancery came in his
way, and accommodated him with the exact thing
he wanted. There they were, matched ever afterward!
Otherwise he might have been a great
general, blowing up all sorts of towns, or he might
have been a great politician, dealing in all sorts
of parliamentary rhetoric; but, as it was, he and
the Court of Chancery had fallen upon each other
in the pleasantest way, and nobody was much
the worse, and Gridley was, so to speak, from that
hour provided for. Then look at Coavinses!
How delightfully poor Coavinses (father of these
charming children) illustrated the same principle!
He, Mr. Skimpole, himself, had sometimes repined
at the existence of Coavinses. He had found
Coavinses in his way. He could have dispensed
with Coavinses. There had been times, when,
if he had been a Sultan, and his Grand Vizier
had said one morning, “What does the Commander
of the Faithful require at the hands of
his slave?” he might have even gone so far as
to reply, “The head of Coavinses!” But what
turned out to be the case? That, all that time,
he had been giving employment to a most deserving
man; that he had been a benefactor to Coavinses;
that he had actually been enabling Coavinses
to bring up these charming children in this
agreeable way, developing these social virtues!
Insomuch that his heart had just now swelled, and[Pg 374]
the tears had come into his eyes, when he had
looked round the room, and thought, “I was the
great patron of Coavinses, and his little comforts
were my work!”
There was something so captivating in his
light way of touching these fantastic strings, and
he was such a mirthful child by the side of the
graver childhood we had seen, that he made my
Guardian smile even as he turned toward us from
a little private talk with Mrs. Blinder. We kissed
Charley, and took her down stairs with us, and
stopped outside the house to see her run away to
her work. I don’t know where she was going,
but we saw her run, such a little, little creature,
in her womanly bonnet and apron, through a
covered way at the bottom of the court; and
melt into the city’s strife and sound, like a dew-drop
in an ocean.
CHAPTER XVI.—Tom-all-alone’s.
My Lady Dedlock is restless, very restless. The
astonished fashionable intelligence hardly knows
where to have her. To-day, she is at Chesney
Wold; yesterday, she was at her house in town;
to-morrow, she may be abroad, for any thing the
fashionable intelligence can with confidence predict.
Even Sir Leicester’s gallantry has some
trouble to keep pace with her. It would have
more, but that his other faithful ally, for better
and for worse—the gout—darts into the old oak
bed-chamber at Chesney Wold, and grips him by
both legs.
Sir Leicester receives the gout as a troublesome
demon, but still a demon of the patrician
order. All the Dedlocks, in the direct male line,
through a course of time during and beyond which
the memory of man goeth not to the contrary,
have had the gout. It can be proved, sir. Other
men’s fathers may have died of the rheumatism,
or may have taken base contagion from the
tainted blood of the sick vulgar; but, the Dedlock
family have communicated something exclusive,
even to the leveling process of dying, by
dying of their own family gout. It has come
down, through the illustrious line, like the plate,
or the pictures, or the place in Lincolnshire. It
is among their dignities. Sir Leicester is, perhaps,
not wholly without an impression, though
he has never resolved it into words, that the angel
of death in the discharge of his necessary duties
may observe to the shades of the aristocracy,
“My lords and gentlemen, I have the honor to
present to you another Dedlock, certified to have
arrived per the family gout.”
Hence, Sir Leicester yields up his family legs
to the family disorder, as if he held his name and
fortune on that feudal tenure. He feels, that for
a Dedlock to be laid upon his back and spasmodically
twitched and stabbed in his extremities, is
a liberty taken somewhere; but, he thinks, “We
have all yielded to this; it belongs to us; it has,
for some hundreds of years, been understood that
we are not to make the vaults in the park interesting
on more ignoble terms; and I submit myself
to the compromise.”
And a goodly show he makes, lying in a flush
of crimson and gold, in the midst of the great
drawing-room, before his favorite picture of my
Lady, with broad strips of sunlight shining in,
down the long perspective, through the long line
of windows, and alternating with soft reliefs of
shadow. Outside, the stately oaks, rooted for
ages in the green ground which has never known
plowshare, but was still a Chase when kings rode
to battle with sword and shield, and rode a-hunting
with bow and arrow; bear witness to his
greatness. Inside, his forefathers, looking on him
from the walls, say, “Each of us was a passing
reality here, and left this colored shadow of himself,
and melted into remembrance as dreamy as
the distant voices of the rooks now lulling you to
rest;” and bear their testimony to his greatness
too. And he is very great, this day. And woe
to Boythorn, or other daring wight, who shall
presumptuously contest an inch with him!
My Lady is at present represented, near Sir
Leicester, by her portrait. She has flitted away
to town, with no intention of remaining there, and
will soon flit hither again, to the confusion of the
fashionable intelligence. The house in town is
not prepared for her reception. It is muffled and
dreary. Only one Mercury in powder, gapes disconsolate
at the hall-window; and he mentioned
last night to another Mercury of his acquaintance,
also accustomed to good society, that if that sort
of thing was to last—which it couldn’t, for a man
of his spirits couldn’t bear it, and a man of his
figure couldn’t be expected to bear it—there would
be no resource for him, upon his honor, but to cut
his throat!
What connection can there be between the
place in Lincolnshire, the house in town, the
Mercury in powder, and the whereabout of Jo the
outlaw with the broom, who had that distant ray
of light upon him when he swept the churchyard-step?
What connection can there have been between
many people in the innumerable histories
of this world, who, from opposite sides of great
gulfs, have, nevertheless, been very curiously
brought together!
Jo sweeps his crossing all day long, unconscious
of the link, if any link there be. He sums up his
mental condition, when asked a question, by replying
that he “don’t know nothink.” He knows
that it’s hard to keep the mud off the crossing in
dirty weather, and harder still to live by doing it.
Nobody taught him, even that much; he found
it out.
Jo lives—that is to say, Jo has not yet died—in
a ruinous place, known to the like of him by
the name of Tom-all-alone’s. It is a black, dilapidated
street, avoided by all decent people;
where the crazy houses were seized upon, when
their decay was far advanced, by some bold vagrants,
who, after establishing their own possession,
took to letting them out in lodgings. Now
these tumbling tenements contain, by night, a
swarm of misery. As, on the ruined human
wretch, vermin parasites appear, so, these ruined
shelters have bred a crowd of foul existence, that[Pg 375]
crawls in and out of gaps in walls and boards;
and coils itself to sleep, in maggot numbers,
where the rain drips in; and comes and goes,
fetching and carrying fever, and sowing more
evil in its every footprint than Lord Coodle, and
Sir Thomas Doodle, and the Duke of Foodle, and
all the fine gentlemen in office, down to Zoodle,
shall set right in five hundred years—though born
expressly to do it.
Twice, lately, there has been a crash and a
cloud of dust, like the springing of a mine, in
Tom-all-alone’s; and, each time, a house has
fallen. These accidents have made a paragraph
in the newspapers, and have filled a bed or two in
the nearest hospital. The gaps remain, and there
are not unpopular lodgings among the rubbish.
As several more houses are nearly ready to go,
the next crash in Tom-all-alone’s may be expected
to be a good one.
This desirable property is in Chancery, of course.
It would be an insult to the discernment of any
man with half an eye, to tell him so. Whether
“Tom” is the popular representative of the original
plaintiff or defendant in Jarndyce and Jarndyce;
or, whether Tom lived here when the suit
had laid the street waste, all alone, until other
settlers came to join him, or, whether the traditional
title is a comprehensive name for a retreat
cut off from honest company and put out of the
pale of hope; perhaps nobody knows. Certainly,
Jo don’t know.
“For I don’t,” says Jo, “I don’t know nothink.”
It must be a strange state to be like Jo! To
shuffle through the streets, unfamiliar with the
shapes, and in utter darkness as to the meaning,
of those mysterious symbols, so abundant over
the shops, and at the corners of streets, and on
the doors, and in the windows! To see people
read, and to see people write, and to see the postmen
deliver letters, and not to have the least idea
of all that language—to be, to every scrap of it,
stone blind and dumb! It must be very puzzling
to see the good company going to the churches on
Sundays, with their books in their hands, and to
think (for perhaps Jo does think, at odd times)
what does it all mean, and if it means any thing
to any body, how comes it that it means nothing
to me? To be hustled, and jostled and moved
on; and really to feel that it would appear to be
perfectly true that I have no business, here, or
there, or any where; and yet to be perplexed by
the consideration that I am here somehow too,
and every body overlooked me until I became the
creature that I am! It must be a strange state,
not merely to be told that I am scarcely human
(as in the case of my offering myself for a witness),
but to feel it of my own knowledge all my
life! To see the horses, dogs, and cattle, go by
me, and to know that in ignorance I belong to
them, and not to the superior beings in my shape,
whose delicacy I offend! Jo’s ideas of a Criminal
Trial, or a Judge, or a Bishop, or a Government,
or that inestimable jewel to him (if he only
knew it) the Constitution, should be strange!
His whole material and immaterial life is wonderfully
strange; his death, the strangest thing
of all.
Jo comes out of Tom-all-alone’s, meeting the
tardy morning which is always late in getting
down there, and munches his dirty bit of bread
as he comes along. His way lying through many
streets, and the houses not yet being open, he sits
down to breakfast on the door-step of the Society
for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign
Parts, and gives it a brush when he has finished,
as an acknowledgment of the accommodation.
He admires the size of the edifice, and wonders
what it’s all about. He has no idea, poor wretch,
of the spiritual destitution of a coral reef in the
Pacific, or what it costs to look up the precious
souls among the cocoa-nuts and bread-fruit.
He goes to his crossing, and begins to lay it
out for the day. The town awakes; the great
tee-totum is set up for its daily spin and whirl;
all that unaccountable reading and writing, which
has been suspended for a few hours, recommences.
Jo, and the other lower animals, get on in the
unintelligible mess as they can. It is market-day.
The blinded oxen, over-goaded, over-driven,
never guided, run into wrong places and are
beaten out; and plunge, red-eyed and foaming,
at stone walls; and often sorely hurt the innocent,
and often sorely hurt themselves. Very
like Jo and his order; very, very like!
A band of music comes and plays. Jo listens
to it. So does a dog—a drover’s dog, waiting
for his master outside a butcher’s shop, and evidently
thinking about those sheep he has had
upon his mind for some hours, and is happily rid
of. He seems perplexed respecting three or four;
can’t remember where he left them; looks up
and down the street, as half expecting to see
them astray; suddenly pricks up his ears and
remembers all about it. A thoroughly vagabond
dog, accustomed to low company and public-houses;
a terrific dog to sheep; ready at a whistle
to scamper over their backs, and tear out mouthfuls
of their wool; but an educated, improved,
developed dog, who has been taught his duties
and knows how to discharge them. He and Jo
listen to the music, probably with much the same
amount of animal satisfaction; likewise, as to
awakened association, aspiration or regret, melancholy
or joyful reference to things beyond the
senses, they are probably upon a par. But, otherwise,
how far above the human listener is the
brute!
Turn that dog’s descendants wild, like Jo,
and in a very few years they will so degenerate
that they will lose even their bark—but not their
bite.
The day changes as it wears itself away, and
becomes dark and drizzly. Jo fights it out, at
his crossing, among the mud and wheels, the
horses, whips, and umbrellas, and gets but a
scanty sum to pay for the unsavory shelter of
Tom-all-alone’s. Twilight comes on; gas begins
to start up in the shops; the lamp-lighter,
with his ladder, runs along the margin of the[Pg 376]
pavement. A wretched evening is beginning to
close in.
In his chambers, Mr. Tulkinghorn sits meditating
an application to the nearest magistrate
to-morrow morning for a warrant. Gridley, a
disappointed suitor, has been here to-day, and
has been alarming. We are not to be put in
bodily fear, and that ill-conditioned fellow shall
be held to bail again. From the ceiling, foreshortened
allegory, in the person of one impossible
Roman upside down, points with the arm of
Samson (out of joint, and an odd one) obtrusively
toward the window. Why should Mr. Tulkinghorn,
for such no reason, look out of window?
Is the hand not always pointing there? So he
does not look out of window.
And if he did, what would it be to see a woman
going by? There are women enough in the
world, Mr. Tulkinghorn thinks—too many; they
are at the bottom of all that goes wrong in it
though, for the matter of that, they create business
for lawyers. What would it be to see a
woman going by, even though she were going
secretly? They are all secret. Mr. Tulkinghorn
knows that, very well.
But they are not all like the woman who now
leaves him and his house behind; between whose
plain dress, and her refined manner, there is
something exceedingly inconsistent. She should
be an upper servant by her attire, yet, in her air
and step, though both are hurried and assumed—as
far as she can assume in the muddy streets,
which she treads with an unaccustomed foot—she
is a lady. Her face is vailed, and still she
sufficiently betrays herself to make more than
one of those who pass her look round sharply.
She never turns her head. Lady or servant,
she has a purpose in her, and can follow it. She
never turns her head, until she comes to the
crossing where Jo plies with his broom. He[Pg 377]
crosses with her, and begs. Still, she does not
turn her head until she has landed on the other
side. Then, she slightly beckons to him, and
says, “Come here!”
Jo follows her, a pace or two, into a quiet
court.
“Are you the boy I have read of in the papers?”
she asks, behind her vail.
“I don’t know,” says Jo, staring moodily at
the vail, “nothink about no papers. I don’t
know nothink about nothink at all.”
“Were you examined at an Inquest?”
“I don’t know nothink about no—where I was
took by the beadle, do you mean?” says Jo.
“Was the boy’s name at the Inkwhich, Jo?”
“Yes.”
“That’s me!” says Jo.
“Come farther up.”
“You mean about the man?” says Jo, following.
“Him as was dead?”
“Hush! Speak in a whisper! Yes. Did he
look, when he was living, so very ill and poor!”
“O jist!” says Jo.
“Did he look like—not like you?” says the
woman with abhorrence.
“O not so bad as me,” says Jo. “I’m a
reg’lar one, I am! You didn’t know him, did
you?”
“How dare you ask me if I knew him?”
“No offense, my lady,” says Jo, with much
humility; for even he has got at the suspicion
of her being a lady.
“I am not a lady. I am a servant.”
“You are a jolly servant!” says Jo; without
the least idea of saying any thing offensive;
merely as a tribute of admiration.
“Listen and be silent. Don’t talk to me, and
stand farther from me! Can you show me all
those places that were spoken of in the account
I read? The place he wrote for, the place he
died at, the place where you were taken to, and
the place where he was buried? Do you know
the place where he was buried?”
Jo answers with a nod; having also nodded
as each other place was mentioned.
“Go before me, and show me all those dreadful
places. Stop opposite to each, and don’t
speak to me unless I speak to you. Don’t look
back. Do what I want, and I will pay you
well.”
Jo attends closely while the words are being
spoken; tells them off on his broom-handle, finding
them rather hard; pauses to consider their
meaning; considers it satisfactory, and nods his
ragged head.
“I am fly,” says Jo. “But fen larks, you
know! Stow hooking it!”
“What does the horrible creature mean?”
exclaims the servant, recoiling from him.
“Stow cutting away, you know!” says Jo.
“I don’t understand you. Go on before! I
will give you more money than you ever had in
your life.”
Jo screws up his mouth into a whistle, gives
his ragged head a rub, takes his broom under
his arm, and leads the way; passing deftly, with
his bare feet, over the hard stones, and through
the mud and mire.
Cook’s Court. Jo stops. A pause.
“Who lives here?”
“Him wot give him his writing, and give me
half a bull,” says Jo in a whisper, without looking
over his shoulder.
“Go on to the next.”
Krook’s house. Jo stops again. A longer
pause.
“Who lives here!”
“He lived here,” Jo answers as before.
After a silence, he is asked “In which room?”
“In the back room up there. You can see
the winder from this corner. Up there! That’s
where I see him stritched out. This is the public
ouse where I was took to.”
“Go on to the next!”
It is a longer walk to the next; but, Jo relieved
of his first suspicions, sticks to the terms imposed
upon him, and does not look round. By many
devious ways, reeking with offense of many
kinds, they come to the little tunnel of a court,
and to the gas-lamp (lighted now), and to the
iron gate.
“He was put there,” says Jo, holding to the
bars and looking in.
“Where? O, what a scene of horror!”
“There!” says Jo, pointing. “Over yinder.
Among them piles of bones, and close to that
there kitchin winder! They put him very nigh
the top. They was obliged to stamp upon it to
git it in. I could unkiver it for you, with my
broom, if the gate was open. That’s why they
locks it, I s’pose,” giving it a shake. “It’s always
locked. Look at the rat!” cries Jo, excited.
“Hi! Look! There he goes! Ho!
Into the ground!”
The servant shrinks into a corner—into a corner
of that hideous archway, with its deadly
stains contaminating her dress; and putting out
her two hands, and passionately telling him
to keep away from her, for he is loathsome to
her, so remains for some moments. Jo stands
staring, and is still staring when she recovers
herself.
CONSECRATED GROUND.
“Is this place of abomination, consecrated
ground?”
“I don’t know nothink of consequential ground,”
says Jo, still staring.
“Is it blessed?”
“Which?” says Jo, in the last degree amazed.
“Is it blessed?”
“I’m blest if I know,” says Jo, staring more
than ever; “but I shouldn’t think it warn’t.
Blest?” repeats Jo, something troubled in his
mind. “It an’t done it much good if it is.
Blest? I should think it was t’othered myself.
But I don’t know nothink!”
The servant takes as little heed of what he
says, as she seems to take of what she has said
herself. She draws off her glove, to get some
money from her purse. Jo silently notices how
white and small her hand is, and what a jolly[Pg 378]
servant she must be to wear such sparkling
rings.
She drops a piece of money in his hand, without
touching it, and shuddering as their hands
approach. “Now,” she adds, “show me the
spot again!”
Joe thrusts the handle of his broom between
the bars of the gate, and, with his utmost power
of elaboration, points it out. At length, looking
aside to see if he has made himself intelligible,
he finds that he is alone.
His first proceeding is, to hold the piece of
money to the gas-light, and to be overpowered
at finding that it is yellow—gold. His next, is,
to give it a one-sided bite at the edge, as a test
of its quality. His next, to put it in his mouth
for safety, and to sweep the step and passage
with great care. His job done, he sets off for
Tom-all-alone’s; stopping in the light of innumerable
gas-lamps to produce the piece of gold,
and give it another one-sided bite, as a re-assurance
of its being genuine.
The Mercury in powder is in no want of society
to-night, for my Lady goes to a grand dinner and
three or four balls. Sir Leicester is fidgety,
down at Chesney Wold, with no better company
than the gout; he complains to Mrs. Rouncewell
that the rain makes such a monotonous pattering
on the terrace, that he can’t read the paper, even
by the fireside in his own snug dressing-room.
“Sir Leicester would have done better to try
the other side of the house, my dear,” says Mrs.
Rouncewell to Rosa. “His dressing-room is on
my Lady’s side. And in all these years I never
heard the step upon the Ghost’s Walk, more distinct
than it is to-night!”
(TO BE CONTINUED.)
MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.[8]
CHAPTER XIII.
We have seen Squire Hazeldean (proud of the
contents of his pocket-book, and his knowledge
of the mercenary nature of foreign women),
set off on his visit to Beatrice di Negra. Randal,
thus left musing lone in the crowded streets, revolved
with astute complacency the probable results
of Mr. Hazeldean’s bluff negotiation; and,
convincing himself that one of his vistas toward
Fortune was becoming more clear and clear, he
turned, with the restless activity of some founder
of destined cities in a new settlement, to lop the
boughs that cumbered and obscured the others.
For truly, like a man in a vast Columbian forest,
opening entangled space, now with the ready ax,
now with the patient train, that kindles the slower
fire, this child of civilized life went toiling on
against surrounding obstacles, resolute to destroy,
but ever scheming to construct. And now Randal
has reached Levy’s dainty business-room, and
is buried deep in discussion how to secure to himself,
at the expense of his patron, the representation
of Lansmere, and how to complete the contract
which shall reannex to his forlorn inheritance
some fragments of its ancient wealth.
Meanwhile, Chance fought on his side in the
boudoir of May Fair. The Squire had found the
Marchesa at home—briefly introduced himself
and his business—told her she was mistaken if
she had fancied she had taken in a rich heir in
his son—that, thank Heaven, he could leave his
estates to his plowman, if he so pleased, but that
he was willing to do things liberally; and whatever
she thought Frank was worth, he was very
ready to pay for.
At another time Beatrice would perhaps have
laughed at this strange address; or she might, in
some prouder moment, have fired up with all a
patrician’s resentment and a woman’s pride; but
now her spirit was crushed, her nerves shattered;
the sense of her degraded position, of her dependence
on her brother, combined with her supreme
unhappiness at the loss of those dreams with
which Leonard had for a while charmed her wearied
waking life—all came upon her. She listened,
pale and speechless; and the poor Squire
thought he was quietly advancing toward a favorable
result, when she suddenly burst into a
passion of hysterical tears; and just at that moment
Frank himself entered the room. At the
sight of his father, of Beatrice’s grief, his sense
of filial duty gave way. He was maddened by
irritation—by the insult offered to the woman he
loved, which a few trembling words from her explained
to him; maddened yet more by the fear
that the insult had lost her to him—warm words
ensued between son and father, to close with the
peremptory command and vehement threat of the
last.
“Come away this instant, sir! Come with
me, or before the day is over I strike you out of
my will!”
The son’s answer was not to his father; he
threw himself at Beatrice’s feet.
“Forgive him—forgive us both—”
“What! you prefer that stranger to me—to
the inheritance of Hazeldean!” cried the Squire,
stamping his foot.
“Leave your estates to whom you will; all
that I care for in life is here!”
The Squire stood still a moment or so, gazing
on his son, with a strange bewildered marvel at
the strength of that mystic passion, which none
not laboring under its fearful charm can comprehend,
which creates the sudden idol that no reason
justifies, and sacrifices to its fatal shrine alike
the Past and the Future. Not trusting himself
to speak, the father drew his hand across his
eyes, and dashed away the bitter tear that sprang
from a swelling indignant heart; then he uttered
an inarticulate sound, and, finding his voice gone,
moved away to the door, and left the house.
He walked through the streets, bearing his
head very erect, as a proud man does when deeply
wounded, and striving to shake off some affection
that he deems a weakness; and his trembling,
nervous fingers fumbled at the button on
his coat, trying to tighten the garment across his
chest, as if to confirm a resolution that still sought
to struggle out of the revolting heart.
Thus he went on, and the reader, perhaps, will
wonder whither; and the wonder may not lessen
when he finds the Squire come to a dead pause
in Grosvenor Square, and at the portico of his
“distant brother’s” stately house.
At the Squire’s brief inquiry whether Mr. Egerton
was at home, the porter summoned the groom
of the chambers; and the groom of the chambers,
seeing a stranger, doubted whether his master
was not engaged, but would take in the stranger’s
card and see.
“Ay, ay,” muttered the Squire, “this is true
relationship—my child prefers a stranger to me.
Why should I complain that I am a stranger in
a brother’s house. Sir,” added the Squire aloud,
and very meekly—”Sir, please to say to your
master that I am William Hazeldean.”
The servant bowed low, and without another
word conducted the visitor into the statesman’s
library, and announcing Mr. Hazeldean, closed
the door.
Audley was seated at his desk, the grim iron
boxes still at his feet, but they were now closed
and locked. And the ex-minister was no longer
looking over official documents; letters spread
open before him, of far different nature; in his
hand there lay a long lock of fair silken hair, on
which his eyes were fixed sadly and intently. He
started at the sound of his visitor’s name, and
the tread of the Squire’s stalwart footstep; and
mechanically thrust into his bosom the relic of
younger and warmer years, keeping his hand to
his heart, which beat loud with disease, under
the light pressure of that golden hair.
The two brothers stood on the great man’s
lonely hearth, facing each other in silence, and
noting unconsciously the change made in each
during the long years in which they had never
met.
The Squire, with his portly size, his hardy,
sun-burnt cheeks, the partial baldness of his unfurrowed
open forehead, looked his full age—deep
into middle life. Unmistakably he seemed the
paterfamilias—the husband and the father—the
man of social domestic ties. But about Audley
(really some few years junior to the Squire), despite
the lines of care on his handsome face, there
still lingered the grace of youth. Men of cities
retain youth longer than those of the country—a
remark which Buffon has not failed to make and
to account for. Neither did Egerton betray the
air of the married man; for ineffable solitariness
seemed stamped upon the man, whose private
life had long been so stern a solitude. No ray
from the focus of Home played round that reserved,
unjoyous, melancholy brow. In a word,
Audley looked still the man for whom some young
female heart might fondly sigh; and not the less
because of the cold eye and compressed lip, which
challenged interest even while seeming to repel it.
Audley was the first to speak, and to put forth
the right hand, which he stole slowly from its
place at his breast, on which the lock of hair still
stirred to and fro at the heave of the laboring
heart. “William,” said he, with his rich, deep
voice, “this is kind. You are come to see me,
now that men say I am fallen. The minister
you censured is no more; and you see again the
brother.”
The Squire was softened at once by this address.
He shook heartily the hand tendered to
him; and then, turning away his head, with an
honest conviction that Audley ascribed to him a
credit which he did not deserve, he said, “No,
no, Audley; I am more selfish than you think
me. I have come—I have come to ask your advice—no,
not exactly that—your opinion. But
you are busy—?”
“Sit down, William. Old days were coming
over me when you entered; days earlier still return
now—days, too, that leave no shadow when
their suns are set.”
The proud man seemed to think he had said
too much. His practical nature rebuked the
poetic sentiment and phrase. He re-collected
himself, and added, more coldly, “You would
ask my opinion? What on? Some public matter—some
Parliamentary bill that may affect
your property?”
“Am I such a mean miser as that? Property—property?
What does property matter,
when a man is struck down at his own hearth?
Property, indeed! But you have no child—happy
brother!”
“Ay, ay; as you say, I am a happy man;
childless! Has your son displeased you? I
have heard him spoken of well, too.”
“Don’t talk of him. Whether his conduct be
good or ill is my affair,” resumed the poor father
with a testy voice—jealous alike of Audley’s
praise or blame of his rebellious son. Then he
rose a moment, and made a strong gulp as if for
air; and laying his broad brown hand on his
brother’s shoulder, said, “Randal Leslie tells me
you are wise—a consummate man of the world.
No doubt you are so. And Parson Dale tells me
that he is sure you have warm feelings—which
I take to be a strange thing for one who has
lived so long in London, and has no wife and no
child—a widower, and a Member of Parliament—for
a commercial city, too. Never smile; it
is no smiling matter with me. You know a
foreign woman, called Negra or Negro—not a
blackymoor, though, by any means—at least on
the outside of her. Is she such a woman as a
plain country gentleman would like his only son
to marry—ay or no?”
“No, indeed,” answered Audley, gravely,
“and I trust your son will commit no action so
rash. Shall I see him or her? Speak, my dear
William. What would you have me do?”
“Nothing; you have said enough,” replied
the Squire, gloomily; and his head sank on his
breast.
Audley took his hand, and pressed it fraternally.
“William,” said the statesman, “we have
been long estranged; but I do not forget that
when we last met, at—at Lord Lansmere’s
house, and when I took you aside, and said,
‘William, if I lose this election, I must resign[Pg 380]
all chance of public life: my affairs are embarrassed;
I may need—I would not accept money
from you—I would seek a profession, and you
can help me there,’ you divined my meaning,
and said—’Take orders; the Hazeldean living is
just vacant. I will get some one to hold it till
you are ordained.’ I do not forget that. Would
that I had thought earlier of so serene an escape
from all that then tormented me. My lot might
have been far happier.”
The Squire eyed Audley with a surprise that
broke forth from his more absorbing emotions.
“Happier! Why, all things have prospered
with you; and you are rich enough now; and—you
shake your head. Brother, is it possible! do
you want money? Pooh, not accept money from
your mother’s son!—stuff.” Out came the
Squire’s pocket-book. Audley put it gently aside.
“Nay,” said he, “I have enough for myself;
but since you seek and speak with me thus affectionately,
I will ask you one favor. Should I die
before I can provide for my wife’s kinsman, Randal
Leslie, as I could wish, will you see to his
fortunes, so far as you can, without injury to
others—to your own son?”
“My son! He is provided for. He has the
Casino estate—much good may it do him. You
have touched on the very matter that brought
me here. This boy, Randal Leslie, seems a
praiseworthy lad, and has Hazeldean blood in
his veins. You have taken him up because he
is connected with your late wife. Why should
not I take him up, too, when his grandmother
was a Hazeldean? I wanted to ask you what
you meant to do for him; for if you did not mean
to provide for him, why I will, as in duty bound.
So your request comes at the right time; I think
of altering my will. I can put him into the entail,
besides a handsome legacy. You are sure
he is a good lad—and it will please you too,
Audley?”
“But not at the expense of your son. And
stay, William—as to this foolish marriage with
Madame di Negra, who told you Frank meant to
take such a step?”
“He told me himself; but it is no matter.
Randal and I both did all we could to dissuade
him; and Randal advised me to come to you.”
“He has acted generously, then, our kinsman
Randal—I am glad to hear it”—said Audley, his
brow somewhat clearing. “I have no influence
with this lady; but at least, I can counsel her.
Do not consider the marriage fixed because a
young man desires it. Youth is ever hot and
rash.”
“Your youth never was,” retorted the Squire,
bluntly. “You married well enough, I’m sure.
I will say one thing for you: you have been, to
my taste, a bad politician—beg pardon—but you
were always a gentleman. You would never
have disgraced your family and married a—”
“Hush!” interrupted Egerton, gently. “Do
not make matters worse than they are. Madame
di Negra is of high birth in her own country;
and if scandal—”
“Scandal!” cried the Squire, shrinking and
turning pale. “Are you speaking of the wife of
a Hazeldean? At least, she shall never sit by
the hearth at which now sits his mother; and
whatever I may do for Frank, her children shall
not succeed. No mongrel cross-breed shall kennel
in English Hazeldean. Much obliged to you,
Audley, for your good feeling—glad to have seen
you; and harkye, you startled me by that shake
of your head, when I spoke of your wealth; and,
from what you say about Randal’s prospects, I
guess that you London gentlemen are not so thrifty
as we are. You shall let me speak. I say again,
that I have some thousands quite at your service.
And though you are not a Hazeldean, still you
are my mother’s son; and now that I am about
to alter my will, I can as well scratch in the
name of Egerton as that of Leslie. Cheer up,
cheer up; you are younger than I am, and you
have no child; so you will live longer than I
shall.”
“My dear brother,” answered Audley, “believe
me, I shall never live to want your aid. And
as to Leslie, add to the £5000 I mean to give
him, an equal sum in your will, and I shall feel
that he has received justice.”
Observing that the Squire, though he listened
attentively, made no ready answer, Audley turned
the subject again to Frank; and with the adroitness
of a man of the world, backed by cordial sympathy
in his brother’s distress, he pleaded so well
Frank’s lame cause, urged so gently the wisdom of
patience and delay, and the appeal to filial feeling
rather than recourse to paternal threats, that the
Squire grew molified in spite of himself, and left
his brother’s house a much less angry, and less
doleful man.
Mr. Hazeldean was still in the square when he
came upon Randal himself, who was walking
with a dark-whiskered, showy gentleman, toward
Egerton’s house. Randal and the gentleman
exchanged a hasty whisper, and the former
exclaimed,
“What, Mr. Hazeldean, have you just left
your brother’s house? Is it possible?”
“Why, you advised me to go there, and I did.
I scarcely knew what I was about. I am very
glad I did go. Hang politics! hang the landed
interest! what do I care for either now?”
“Foiled with Madame di Negra?” asked Randal,
drawing the Squire aside.
“Never speak of her again!” cried the Squire,
fiercely. “And as to that ungrateful boy—but I
don’t mean to behave harshly to him—he shall
have money enough to keep her if he likes—keep
her from coming to me—keep him, too, from
counting on my death, and borrowing post-obits
on the Casino—for he’ll be doing that next—no,
I hope I wrong him there; I have been too good
a father for him to count on my death already.
After all,” continued the Squire, beginning to
relax, “as Audley says, the marriage is not yet
made; and if the woman has taken him in, he is
young, and his heart is warm. Make yourself
easy, my boy. I don’t forget how kindly you[Pg 381]
took his part; and before I do any thing rash,
I’ll at least take advice with his poor mother.”
Randal gnawed his pale lip, and a momentary
cloud of disappointment passed over his face.
“True, sir,” said he, gently; “true, you must
not be rash. Indeed, I was thinking of you and
poor dear Frank at the very moment I met you.
It occurred to me whether we might not make
Frank’s very embarrassments a reason to induce
Madame di Negra to refuse him; and I was
on my way to Mr. Egerton, in order to ask his
opinion, in company with the gentleman yonder.”
“Gentleman yonder? Why should he thrust
his long nose into my family affairs? Who the
devil is he?”
“Don’t ask, sir. Pray let me act.”
But the Squire continued to eye askant the
dark-whiskered personage thus thrust between
himself and his son, and who waited patiently a
few yards in the rear, carelessly readjusting the
camellia in his button-hole.
“He looks very outlandish. Is he a foreigner,
too?” asked the Squire, at last.
“No, not exactly. However, he knows all
about Frank’s embarrassments; and—”
“Embarrassments! what, the debt he paid for
that woman? How did he raise the money?”
“I don’t know,” answered Randal; “and
that is the reason I asked Baron Levy to accompany
me to Egerton’s, that he might explain in
private what I have no reason—”
“Baron Levy!” interrupted the Squire. “Levy,
Levy—I have heard of a Levy who has nearly
ruined my neighbor, Thornhill—a money-lender.
Zounds! is that the man who knows my
son’s affairs? I’ll soon learn, sir.”
Randal caught hold of the Squire’s arm:
“Stop, stop; if you really insist upon learning
more about Frank’s debts, you must not appeal to
Baron Levy directly, and as Frank’s father; he
will not answer you. But if I present you to
him as a mere acquaintance of mine, and turn
the conversation, as if carelessly, upon Frank—why,
since, in the London world, such matters
are never kept secret except from the parents of
young men—I have no doubt he will talk out
openly.”
“Manage it as you will,” said the Squire.
Randal took Mr. Hazeldean’s arm, and joined
Levy—”A friend of mine from the country,
Baron.” Levy bowed profoundly, and the three
walked slowly on.
“By-the-by,” said Randal, pressing significantly
upon Levy’s arm, “my friend has come
to town upon the somewhat unpleasant business
of settling the debts of another—a young man
of fashion—a relation of his own. No one, sir
(turning to the Squire), could so ably assist you
in such arrangements as could Baron Levy.”
Baron (modestly, and with a moralizing air).—”I
have some experience in such matters, and
I hold it a duty to assist the parents and relations
of young men who, from want of reflection,
often ruin themselves for life. I hope the young
gentleman in question is not in the hands of the
Jews?”
Randal.—”Christians are as fond of good interest
for their money as ever the Jews can be.”
Baron.—”Granted, but they have not always
so much money to lend. The first thing, sir
(addressing the Squire)—the first thing for you
to do is to buy up such of your relation’s bills
and notes of hand as may be in the market. No
doubt we can get them a bargain, unless the
young man is heir to some property that may
soon be his in the course of nature.”
Randal.—”Not soon—heaven forbid! His
father is still a young man—a fine healthy man,”
leaning heavily on Levy’s arm; “and as to post-obits—”
Baron.—”Post-obits on sound security cost
more to buy up, however healthy the obstructing
relative may be.”
Randal.—”I should hope that there are not
many sons who can calculate, in cold blood, on
the death of their fathers.”
Baron.—”Ha, ha—he is young, our friend,
Randal; eh, sir?”
Randal.—”Well, I am not more scrupulous
than others, I dare say: and I have often been
pinched hard for money, but I would go barefoot
rather than give security upon a father’s grave!
I can imagine nothing more likely to destroy
natural feeling, nor to instill ingratitude and
treachery into the whole character, than to press
the hand of a parent, and calculate when that
hand may be dust—than to sit down with strangers
and reduce his life to the measure of an insurance
table—than to feel difficulties gathering
round one, and mutter in fashionable slang, ‘But
it will be all well if the governor would but die.’
And he who has accustomed himself to the relief
of post-obits must gradually harden his mind to
all this.”
The Squire groaned heavily; and had Randal
proceeded another sentence in the same strain,
the Squire would have wept outright. “But,”
continued Randal, altering the tone of his voice,
“I think that our young friend of whom we were
talking just now, Levy, before this gentleman
joined us, has the same opinion as myself on
this head. He may accept bills, but he would
never sign post-obits.”
Baron (who with the apt docility of a managed
charger to the touch of a rider’s hand, had
comprehended and complied with each quick sign
of Randal’s).—”Pooh! the young fellow we are
talking of? Nonsense. He would not be so
foolish as to give five times the percentage he
otherwise might. Not sign post-obits! Of
course he has signed one.”
Randal.—”Hist—you mistake, you mistake.”
Squire (leaving Randal’s arm and seizing
Levy’s).—”Were you speaking of Frank Hazeldean?”
Baron.—”My dear sir, excuse me; I never
mention names before strangers.”
Squire.—”Strangers again! Man, I am the
boy’s father! Speak out, sir,” and his hand[Pg 382]
closed on Levy’s arm with the strength of an iron
vice.
Baron.—”Gently; you hurt me, sir; but I excuse
your feelings. Randal, you are to blame
for leading me into this indiscretion; but I beg
to assure Mr. Hazeldean, that though his son has
been a little extravagant—”
Randal.—”Owing chiefly to the arts of an
abandoned woman.”
Baron.—”Of an abandoned woman; still he
has shown more prudence than you would suppose;
and this very post-obit is a proof of it. A
simple act of that kind has enabled him to pay
off bills that were running on till they would have
ruined even the Hazeldean estate; whereas a
charge on the reversion of the Casino—”
Squire.—”He has done it then? He has
signed a post-obit?”
Randal.—”No, no; Levy must be wrong.”
Baron.—”My dear Leslie, a man of Mr. Hazeldean’s
time of life can not have your romantic
boyish notions. He must allow that Frank has
acted in this like a lad of sense—very good head
for business has my young friend Frank! And
the best thing Mr. Hazeldean can do is quietly to
buy up the post-obit, and thus he will place his
son henceforth in his own power.”
Squire.—”Can I see the deed with my own
eyes?”
Baron.—”Certainly, or how could you be induced
to buy it up? But on one condition; you
must not betray me to your son. And, indeed,
take my advice, and don’t say a word to him on
the matter.”
Squire.—”Let me see it, let me see it with
my own eyes. His mother else will never believe
it—nor will I.”
Baron.—”I can call on you this evening.”
Squire.—”Now—now.”
Baron.—”You can spare me, Randal; and
you yourself can open to Mr. Egerton the other
affair, respecting Lansmere. No time should be
lost, lest L’Estrange suggest a candidate.”
Randal (whispering).—”Never mind me.—This
is more important. (Aloud)—Go with Mr.
Hazeldean. My dear kind friend (to the Squire),
do not let this vex you so much. After all, it is
what nine young men out of ten would do in the
same circumstances. And it is best you should
know it; you may save Frank from farther ruin,
and prevent, perhaps, this very marriage.”
“We will see,” exclaimed the Squire, hastily.
“Now, Mr. Levy, come.”
Levy and the Squire walked on not arm-in-arm,
but side by side. Randal proceeded to
Egerton’s house.
“I am glad to see you, Leslie,” said the ex-minister.
“What is it I have heard? My
nephew, Frank Hazeldean, proposes to marry
Madame di Negra against his father’s consent?
How could you suffer him to entertain an idea so
wild? And how never confide it to me?”
Randal.—”My dear Mr. Egerton, it is only
to-day that I was informed of Frank’s engagement.
I have already seen him, and expostulated
in vain; till then, though I knew your
nephew admired Madame di Negra, I could never
suppose he harbored a serious intention.”
Egerton.—”I must believe you, Randal. I
will myself see Madame di Negra, though I have
no power, and no right, to dictate to her. I have
but little time for all such private business. The
dissolution of Parliament is so close at hand.”
Randal (looking down.)—”It is on that subject
that I wished to speak to you, sir. You
think of standing for Lansmere. Well, Baron
Levy has suggested to me an idea that I could not,
of course, even countenance, till I had spoken to
you. It seems that he has some acquaintance
with the state of parties in that borough! He
is informed that it is not only as easy to bring
in two of our side, as to carry one; but that it
would make your election still more safe, not to
fight single-handed against two opponents; that
if canvassing for yourself alone, you could not
carry a sufficient number of plumper votes; that
split votes would go from you to one or other of
the two adversaries; that, in a word, it is necessary
to pair you with a colleague. If it really
be so, you of course will learn best from your
own Committee; but should they concur in the
opinion Baron Levy has formed—do I presume
too much on your kindness—to deem it possible
that you might allow me to be the second candidate
on your side? I should not say this, but
that Levy told me you had some wish to see
me in Parliament, among the supporters of your
policy. And what other opportunity can occur?
Here the cost of carrying two would be scarcely
more than that of carrying one. And Levy
says, the party would subscribe for my election;
you, of course, would refuse all such aid for your
own; and indeed, with your great name, and
Lord Lansmere’s interest, there can be little beyond
the strict legal expenses.”
As Randal spoke thus at length, he watched
anxiously his patron’s reserved, unrevealing countenance.
Egerton (drily.)—”I will consider. You may
safely leave in my hands any matter connected
with your ambition and advancement. I have
before told you I hold it a duty to do all in my
power for the kinsman of my late wife—for one
whose career I undertook to forward—for one
whom honor has compelled to share in my own
political reverses.”
Here Egerton rang the bell for his hat, and
gloves, and walking into the hall, paused at
the street door. There beckoning to Randal, he
said slowly, “You seem intimate with Baron
Levy; I caution you against him—a dangerous
acquaintance, first to the purse, next to the
honor.”
Randal.—”I know it, sir; and am surprised
myself at the acquaintance that has grown up
between us. Perhaps its cause is in his respect
for yourself.”
Egerton.—”Tut.”
Randal.—”Whatever it be, he contrives to
obtain a singular hold over one’s mind, even[Pg 383]
where, as in my case, he has no evident interest
to serve. How is this? It puzzles me!”
Egerton.—”For his interest, it is most secured
where he suffers it to be least evident; for
his hold over the mind, it is easily accounted for.
He ever appeals to two temptations, strong with
all men—Avarice and Ambition.—Good-day.”
Randal.—”Are you going to Madame di
Negra’s? Shall I not accompany you? Perhaps
I may be able to back your own remonstrances.”
Egerton.—”No, I shall not require you.”
Randal.—”I trust I shall hear the result of
your interview? I feel so much interested in
it. Poor Frank!”
Audley nodded. “Of course, of course.”
CHAPTER XIV.
On entering the drawing-room of Madame di
Negra, the peculiar charm which the severe
Audley Egerton had been ever reputed to possess
with women, would have sensibly struck one who
had hitherto seen him chiefly in his relations with
men in the business-like affairs of life. It was a
charm in strong contrast to the ordinary manners
of those who are emphatically called “Ladies’
men.” No artificial smile, no conventional hollow
blandness, no frivolous gossip, no varnish
either of ungenial gayety or affected grace. The
charm was in a simplicity that unbent more into
kindness than it did with men. Audley’s nature,
whatever its faults and defects, was essentially
masculine; and it was the sense of masculine
power that gave to his voice a music when
addressing the gentler sex—a sort of indulgent
tenderness that appeared equally void of insincerity
and presumption.
Frank had been gone about half-an-hour, and
Madame di Negra was scarcely recovered from the
agitation into which she had been thrown by the
affront from the father and the pleading of the son.
Egerton took her passive hand cordially, and
seated himself by her side.
“My dear Marchesa,” said he, “are we then
likely to be near connections? And can you
seriously contemplate marriage with my young
nephew, Frank Hazeldean? You turn away.
Ah, my fair friend, there are but two inducements
to a free woman to sign away her liberty at the
altar. I say a free woman, for widows are free,
and girls are not. These inducements are, first,
worldly position; secondly, love. Which of these
motives can urge Madame di Negra to marry
Mr. Frank Hazeldean?”
“There are other motives than those you speak
of—the need of protection—the sense of solitude—the
curse of dependence—gratitude for honorable
affection. But you men never know women!”
“I grant that you are right there—we never
do; neither do women ever know men. And yet
each sex contrives to dupe and to fool the other!
Listen to me. I have little acquaintance with
my nephew, but I allow he is a handsome young
gentleman, with whom a handsome young lady
in her teens might fall in love in a ball-room.
But you who have known the higher order of our
species—you who have received the homage of
men, whose thoughts and mind leave the small
talk of drawing-room triflers—so poor and bald—you
can not look me in the face and say that it
is any passion resembling love which you feel for
my nephew. And as to position, it is right that
I should inform you that if he marry you he will
have none. He may risk his inheritance. You
will receive no countenance from his parents.
You will be poor, but not free. You will not gain
the independence you seek for. The sight of a
vacant, discontented face in that opposite chair
will be worse than solitude. And as to grateful
affection,” added the man of the world, “it is a
polite synonym for tranquil indifference.”
“Mr. Egerton,” said Beatrice, “people say
you are made of bronze. Did you ever feel the
want of a home?”
“I answer you frankly,” replied the statesman,
“if I had not felt it, do you think I should have
been, and that I should be to the last, the joyless
drudge of public life? Bronze though you call
my nature, it would have melted away long since
like wax in the fire, if I had sat idly down and
dreamed of a Home!”
“But we women,” answered Beatrice, with
pathos, “have no public life, and we do idly sit
down and dream. Oh,” she continued, after a
short pause, and clasping her hands firmly
together, “you think me worldly, grasping,
ambitious; how different my fate had been had
I known a home!—known one whom I could love
and venerate—known one whose smiles would
have developed the good that was once within
me, and the fear of whose rebuking or sorrowful
eye would have corrected what is evil.”
“Yet,” answered Audley, “nearly all women
in the great world have had that choice once in
their lives, and nearly all have thrown it away.
How few of your rank really think of home when
they marry—how few ask to venerate as well as
to love—and how many of every rank, when the
home has been really gained, have willfully lost
its shelter; some in neglectful weariness—some
from a momentary doubt, distrust, caprice—a
wild fancy—a passionate fit—a trifle—a straw—a
dream! True, you women are ever dreamers.
Common sense, common earth, is above or below
your comprehension.”
Both now were silent, Audley first roused himself
with a quick, writhing movement. “We
two,” said he, smiling half sadly, half cynically—”we
two must not longer waste time in talking
sentiment. We know both too well what life,
as it has been made for us by our faults or our misfortunes,
truly is. And once again, I entreat you
to pause before you yield to the foolish suit of my
foolish nephew. Rely on it, you will either command
a higher offer for your prudence to accept;
or, if you needs must sacrifice rank and fortune,
you, with your beauty and your romantic heart,
will see one who, at least for a fair holiday season
(if human love allows no more), can repay you
for the sacrifice. Frank Hazeldean never can.”
Beatrice turned away to conceal the tears that
rushed to her eyes.
“Think over this well,” said Audley, in the
softest tone of his mellow voice. “Do you remember
that when you first came to England, I
told you that neither wedlock nor love had any
lures for me. We grew friends upon that rude
avowal, and therefore I now speak to you like some
sage of old, wise because standing apart and aloof
from all the affections and ties that mislead our
wisdom. Nothing but real love—(how rare it is;
has one human heart in a million ever known it!)
nothing but real love can repay us for the loss of
freedom—the cares and fears of poverty—the cold
pity of the world that we both despise and respect.
And all these, and much more, follow the
step you would inconsiderately take—an imprudent
marriage.”
“Audley Egerton,” said Beatrice, lifting her
dark, moistened eyes, “you grant that real love
does compensate for an imprudent marriage. You
speak as if you had known such love—you! Can
it be possible?”
“Real love—I thought that I knew it once.
Looking back with remorse, I should doubt it now
but for one curse that only real love, when lost,
has the power to leave evermore behind it.”
“What is that?”
“A void here,” answered Egerton, striking his
heart. “Desolation!—Adieu!”
He rose and left the room.
“Is it,” murmured Egerton, as he pursued
his way through the streets—”is it that, as we
approach death, all the first fair feelings of young
life come back to us mysteriously? Thus I have
heard, or read, that in some country of old, children
scattering flowers, preceded a funeral bier.”
CHAPTER XV.
And so Leonard stood beside his friend’s mortal
clay, and watched, in the ineffable smile of
death, the last gleam which the soul had left
there; and so, after a time, he crept back to the
adjoining room with a step as noiseless as if he
had feared to disturb the dead. Wearied as he
was with watching, he had no thought of sleep.
He sate himself down by the little table, and
leaned his face on his hand, musing sorrowfully.
Thus time passed. He heard the clock from below
strike the hours. In the house of death the
sound of a clock becomes so solemn. The soul
that we miss has gone so far beyond the reach
of time! A cold, superstitious awe gradually
stole over the young man. He shivered, and
lifted his eyes with a start, half scornful, half defying.
The moon was gone—the gray, comfortless
dawn gleamed through the casement, and
carried its raw, chilling light through the open
doorway, into the death-room. And there, near
the extinguished fire, Leonard saw the solitary
woman, weeping low, and watching still. He
returned to say a word of comfort—she pressed
his hand, but waved him away. He understood.
She did not wish for other comfort than her
quiet relief of tears. Again, he returned to his
own chamber, and his eyes this time fell upon the
papers which he had hitherto disregarded. What
made his heart stand still, and the blood then
rush so quickly through his veins? Why did he
seize upon those papers with so tremulous a
hand—then lay them down—pause, as if to nerve
himself—and look so eagerly again? He recognized
the handwriting—those fair, clear characters—so
peculiar in their woman-like delicacy and
grace—the same as in the wild, pathetic poems, the
sight of which had made an era in his boyhood.
From these pages the image of the mysterious Nora
rose once more before him. He felt that he was
with a mother. He went back, and closed the door
gently, as if with a jealous piety, to exclude each
ruder shadow from the world of spirits, and be
alone with that mournful ghost. For a thought
written in warm, sunny life, and then suddenly
rising up to us, when the hand that traced, and
the heart that cherished it, are dust, is verily as
a ghost. It is a likeness struck off of the fond
human being, and surviving it. Far more truthful
than bust or portrait, it bids us see the tear
flow, and the pulse beat. What ghost can the
church-yard yield to us like the writing of the
dead?
The bulk of the papers had been once lightly
sewn to each other—they had come undone, perhaps
in Burley’s rude hands; but their order was
easily apparent. Leonard soon saw that they
formed a kind of journal—not, indeed, a regular
diary, nor always relating to the things of the day.
There were gaps in time—no attempt at successive
narrative. Sometimes, instead of prose, a
hasty burst of verse, gushing evidently from the
heart—sometimes all narrative was left untold,
and yet, as it were, epitomized, by a single burning
line—a single exclamation—of woe, or joy!
Everywhere you saw records of a nature exquisitely
susceptible; and where genius appeared, it
was so artless, that you did not call it genius, but
emotion. At the outset the writer did not speak
of herself in the first person. The MS. opened
with descriptions and short dialogues, carried on
by persons to whose names only initial letters
were assigned, all written in a style of simple,
innocent freshness, and breathing of purity and
happiness, like a dawn of spring. Two young
persons, humbly born—a youth and a girl—the
last still in childhood, each chiefly self-taught,
are wandering on Sabbath evenings among green
dewy fields, near the busy town, in which labor
awhile is still. Few words pass between them.
You see at once, though the writer does not mean
to convey it, how far beyond the scope of her
male companion flies the heavenward imagination
of the girl. It is he who questions—it is
she who answers; and soon there steals upon
you, as you read, the conviction that the youth
loves the girl, and loves in vain. All in this
writing, though terse, is so truthful! Leonard,
in the youth, already recognizes the rude, imperfect
scholar—the village bard—Mark Fairfield.
Then, there is a gap in description—but
there are short weighty sentences, which show[Pg 385]
deepening thought, increasing years, in the writer.
And though the innocence remains, the happiness
begins to be less vivid on the page.
Now, insensibly, Leonard finds that there is a
new phase in the writer’s existence. Scenes, no
longer of humble work-day rural life, surround
her. And a fairer and more dazzling image succeeds
to the companion of the Sabbath eves.
This image Nora evidently loves to paint—it is
akin to her own genius—it captivates her fancy—it
is an image that she (inborn artist, and conscious
of her art) feels to belong to a brighter and
higher school of the Beautiful. And yet the
virgin’s heart is not awakened—no trace of the
heart yet there. The new image thus introduced
is one of her own years, perhaps; nay, it may be
younger still—for it is a boy that is described,
with his profuse fair curls, and eyes new to grief,
and confronting the sun as a young eagle’s; with
veins so full of the wine of life, that they overflow
into every joyous whim; with nerves quiveringly
alive to the desire of glory; with the frank
generous nature rash in its laughing scorn of the
world, which it has not tried. Who was this
boy, it perplexed Leonard. He feared to guess.
Soon, less told than implied, you saw that this
companionship, however it chanced, brings fear
and pain on the writer. Again (as before), with
Mark Fairfield, there is love on the one side and
not on the other; with her there is affectionate,
almost sisterly, interest, admiration, gratitude—but
a something of pride or of terror that keeps
back love.
Here Leonard’s interest grew intense. Were
there touches by which conjecture grew certainty;
and he recognized, through the lapse of years, the
boy lover in his own generous benefactor?
Fragments of dialogue now began to reveal the
suit of an ardent impassioned nature, and the
simple wonder and strange alarm of a listener
who pitied but could not sympathize. Some
great worldly distinction of rank between the
two became visible—that distinction seemed to
arm the virtue and steel the affections of the
lowlier born. Then a few sentences, half blotted
out with tears, told of wounded and humbled
feelings—some one invested with authority, as
if the suitor’s parent, had interfered, questioned,
reproached, counseled. And it was now evident
that the suit was not one that dishonored;—it
wooed to flight, but still to marriage.
And now these sentences grew briefer still, as
with the decision of a strong resolve. And to
these there followed a passage so exquisite, that
Leonard wept unconsciously as he read. It was
the description of a visit spent at home previous
to some sorrowful departure. There rose up the
glimpse of a proud and vain, but a tender wistful
mother—of a father’s fonder but less thoughtful
love. And then came a quiet soothing scene
between the girl and her first village lover, ending
thus—”So she put M’s hand into her sister’s,
and said: ‘You loved me through the fancy,
love her with the heart,’ and left them comprehending
each other, and betrothed.”
Leonard sighed. He understood now how
Mark Fairfield saw in the homely features of his
unlettered wife the reflection of the sister’s soul
and face.
A few words told the final parting—words
that were a picture. The long friendless highway,
stretching on—on—toward the remorseless
city. And the doors of home opening on the
desolate thoroughfare—and the old pollard tree
beside the threshold, with the ravens wheeling
round it and calling to their young. He too had
watched that threshold from the same desolate
thoroughfare. He too had heard the cry of the
ravens. Then came some pages covered with
snatches of melancholy verse, or some reflections
of dreamy gloom.
The writer was in London, in the house of some
highborn patroness—that friendless shadow of a
friend which the jargon of society calls “companion.”
And she was looking on the bright
storm of the world as through prison bars. Poor
bird, afar from the greenwood, she had need of
song—it was her last link with freedom and
nature. The patroness seems to share in her
apprehensions of the boy suitor, whose wild rash
prayers the fugitive had resisted: but to fear
lest the suitor should be degraded, not the one
whom he pursues—fears an alliance ill-suited to
a highborn heir. And this kind of fear stings
the writer’s pride, and she grows harsh in her
judgment of him who thus causes but pain
where he proffers love. Then there is a reference
to some applicant for her hand, who is pressed
upon her choice. And she is told that it is her
duty so to choose, and thus deliver a noble family
from a dread that endures so long as her hand is
free. And of this fear, and of this applicant,
there breaks out a petulant yet pathetic scorn.
After this, the narrative, to judge by the dates,
pauses for days and weeks, as if the writer had
grown weary and listless—suddenly to reopen in
a new strain, eloquent with hopes, and with
fears never known before. The first person was
abruptly assumed—it was the living “I” that
now breathed and moved along the lines. How
was this? The woman was no more a shadow
and a secret unknown to herself. She had assumed
the intense and vivid sense of individual
being. And love spoke loud in the awakened
human heart.
A personage not seen till then appeared on the
page. And ever afterward this personage was
only named as “He,” as if the one and sole representative
of all the myriads that walk the earth.
The first notice of this prominent character on
the scene showed the restless, agitated effect produced
on the writer’s imagination. He was invested
with a romance probably not his own. He
was described in contrast to the brilliant boy
whose suit she had feared, pitied, and now sought
to shun—described with a grave and serious, but
gentle mein—a voice that imposed respect—an
eye and lip that showed collected dignity of will.
Alas! the writer betrayed herself, and the charm
was in the contrast, not to the character of the[Pg 386]
earlier lover, but her own. And now, leaving
Leonard to explore and guess his way through
the gaps and chasms of the narrative, it is time
to place before the reader what the narrative
alone will not reveal to Leonard.
CHAPTER XVI.
Nora Avenel had fled from the boyish love
of Harley L’Estrange—recommended by Lady
Lansmere to a valetudinarian relative of her own,
Lady Jane Horton, as companion. But Lady
Lansmere could not believe it possible that the
low-born girl could long sustain her generous
pride, and reject the ardent suit of one who could
offer to her the prospective coronet of a countess.
She continually urged upon Lady Jane the necessity
of marrying Nora to some one of rank
less disproportioned to her own, and empowered
the lady to assure any such wooer of a dowry far
beyond Nora’s station. Lady Jane looked around,
and saw in the outskirts of her limited social ring,
a young solicitor, a peer’s natural son, who was
on terms of more than business-like intimacy
with the fashionable clients whose distresses made
the origin of his wealth. The young man was
handsome, well-dressed, and bland. Lady Jane
invited him to her house; and, seeing him struck
dumb with the rare loveliness of Nora, whispered
the hint of the dower. The fashionable solicitor,
who afterward ripened into Baron Levy, did not
need that hint; for, though then poor, he relied
on himself for fortune, and, unlike Randal, he
had warm blood in his veins. But Lady Jane’s
suggestions made him sanguine of success; and
when he formally proposed, and was as formally
refused, his self-love was bitterly wounded. Vanity
in Levy was a powerful passion; and with
the vain, hatred is strong, revenge is rankling.
Levy retired, concealing his rage; nor did he
himself know how vindictive that rage, when it
cooled into malignancy, could become, until the
arch-fiend Opportunity prompted its indulgence
and suggested its design.
Lady Jane was at first very angry with Nora
for the rejection of a suitor whom she had presented
as eligible. But the pathetic grace of this
wonderful girl had crept into her heart, and softened
it even against family prejudice; and she
gradually owned to herself that Nora was worthy
of some one better than Mr. Levy.
Now, Harley had ever believed that Nora returned
his love, and that nothing but her own
sense of gratitude to his parents—her own instincts
of delicacy, made her deaf to his prayers.
To do him justice, wild and headstrong as he then
was, his suit would have ceased at once had he
really deemed it persecution. Nor was his error
unnatural; for his conversation, till it had revealed
his own heart, could not fail to have
dazzled and delighted the child of genius; and
her frank eyes would have shown the delight.
How, at his age, could he see the distinction between
the Poetess and the Woman? The poetess
was charmed with rare promise in a soul of
which the very errors were the extravagances of
richness and beauty. But the woman—no! the
woman required some nature not yet undeveloped,
and all at turbulent if brilliant strife with its own
noble elements—but a nature formed and full
grown. Harley was a boy, and Nora was one of
those women who must find or fancy an Ideal
that commands and almost awes them into love.
Harley discovered, not without difficulty, Nora’s
new residence. He presented himself at Lady
Jane’s, and she, with grave rebuke, forbade him
the house. He found it impossible to obtain an
interview with Nora. He wrote, but he felt sure
that his letters never reached her, since they were
unanswered. His young heart swelled with rage.
He dropped threats, which alarmed all the fears
of Lady Lansmere, and even the prudent apprehensions
of his friend, Audley Egerton. At the
request of the mother, and equally at the wish of
the son, Audley consented to visit at Lady Jane’s,
and make acquaintance with Nora.
“I have such confidence in you,” said Lady
Lansmere, “that if you once know the girl, your
advice will be sure to have weight with her. You
will show her how wicked it would be to let Harley
break our hearts and degrade his station.”
“I have such confidence in you,” said young
Harley, “that if you once know my Nora, you
will no longer side with my mother. You will
recognize the nobility which Nature only can create—you
will own that Nora is worthy a rank more
lofty than mine; and my mother so believes in
your wisdom, that if you plead in my cause, you
will convince even her.”
Audley listened to both with his intelligent,
half-incredulous smile; and wholly of the same
advice as Lady Lansmere, and sincerely anxious
to save Harley from an indiscretion that his own
notions led him to regard as fatal, he resolved to
examine this boasted pearl, and to find out its
flaws. Audley Egerton was then in the prime
of his earnest, resolute, ambitious youth. The
stateliness of his natural manners had then a
suavity and polish which, even in later and busier
life, it never wholly lost; since, in spite of the
briefer words and the colder looks by which care
and powers mark the official man, the Minister
had ever enjoyed that personal popularity which
the indefinable, external something, that wins
and pleases, can alone confer. But he had even
then, as ever, that felicitous reserve which Rochefoucault
has called the “mystery of the body”—that
thin yet guardian vail which reveals but
the strong outlines of character, and excites so
much of interest by provoking so much of conjecture.
To the man who is born with this reserve,
which is wholly distinct from shyness, the
world gives credit for qualities and talents beyond
those that it perceives; and such characters are
attractive to others in proportion as these last are
gifted with the imagination which loves to divine
the unknown.
At the first interview, the impression which
this man produced upon Nora Avenel was profound
and strange. She had heard of him before
as the one whom Harley most loved and looked[Pg 387]
up to; and she recognized at once in his mien,
his aspect, his words, the very tone of his deep
tranquil voice, the power to which woman, whatever
her intellect, never attains; and to which,
therefore, she imputes a nobility not always genuine—viz.,
the power of deliberate purpose, and
self-collected, serene ambition. The effect that
Nora produced on Egerton was not less sudden.
He was startled by a beauty of face and form
that belonged to that rarest order, which we never
behold but once or twice in our lives. He was
yet more amazed to discover that the aristocracy
of mind could bestow a grace that no aristocracy
of birth could surpass. He was prepared
for a simple, blushing village girl, and involuntarily
he bowed low his proud front at the first sight
of that delicate bloom, and that exquisite gentleness
which is woman’s surest passport to the
respect of man. Neither in the first, nor the
second, nor the third interview, nor, indeed, till
after many interviews, could he summon up courage
to commence his mission, and allude to Harley.
And when he did so at last, his words
faltered. But Nora’s words were clear to him.
He saw that Harley was not loved; and a joy
that he felt as guilty, darted through his whole
frame. From that interview Audley returned
home greatly agitated, and at war with himself.
Often, in the course of this story, has it been hinted
that under all Egerton’s external coldness, and
measured self-control, lay a nature capable of
strong and stubborn passions. Those passions
broke forth then. He felt that love had already
entered into the heart, which the trust of his
friend should have sufficed to guard.
“I will go there no more,” said he, abruptly,
to Harley.
“But why?”
“The girl does not love you. Cease then to
think of her.”
Harley disbelieved him, and grew indignant.
But Audley had every worldly motive to assist his
sense of honor. He was poor, though with the
reputation of wealth—deeply involved in debt—resolved
to rise in life—tenacious of his position
in the world’s esteem. Against a host of counteracting
influences, love fought single-handed.
Audley’s was a strong nature; but, alas! in
strong natures, if resistance to temptation is of
granite, so the passions that they admit are of
fire.
Trite is the remark, that the destinies of our
lives often date from the impulses of unguarded
moments. It was so with this man, to an ordinary
eye so cautious and so deliberate. Harley
one day came to him in great grief; he had heard
that Nora was ill; he implored Audley to go once
more and ascertain. Audley went. Lady Jane
Horton, who was suffering under a disease which
not long afterward proved fatal, was too ill to receive
him. He was shown into the room set
apart as Nora’s. While waiting for her entrance,
he turned mechanically over the leaves of an
album which Nora, suddenly summoned away to
attend Lady Jane, had left behind her on the
table. He saw the sketch of his own features;
he read words inscribed below it—words of such
artless tenderness, and such unhoping sorrow—words
written by one who had been accustomed
to regard her genius as her sole confidant, under
Heaven, to pour out to it, as the solitary poet-heart
is impelled to do, thoughts, feelings, and
confession of mystic sighs, which it would never
breathe to a living ear, and, save at such moments,
scarcely acknowledge to itself. Audley
saw that he was beloved, and the revelation, with
a sudden light, consumed all the barriers between
himself and his own love. And at that moment
Nora entered. She saw him bending over the
book. She uttered a cry—sprang forward—and
then sank down, covering her face with her hands.
But Audley was at her feet. He forgot his friend,
his trust; he forgot ambition—he forgot the
world. It was his own cause that he pleaded—his
own love that burst forth from his lips. And
when the two that day parted, they were betrothed
each to each. Alas for them, and alas for Harley!
And now this man, who had hitherto valued
himself as the very type of gentleman—whom all
his young contemporaries had so regarded and
so revered—had to press the head of a confiding
friend and bid adieu to truth. He had to amuse,
to delay, to mislead his boy-rival—to say that he
was already subduing Nora’s hesitating doubts—and
that within a little time, she could be induced
to consent to forget Harley’s rank, and his
parent’s pride, and become his wife. And Harley
believed in Egerton, without one suspicion on
the mirror of his loyal soul.
Meanwhile Audley impatient of his own position—impatient,
as strong minds ever are, to
hasten what they have once resolved—to terminate
a suspense that every interview with Harley
tortured alike by jealousy and shame—to put
himself out of the reach of scruples, and to say to
himself, “Right or wrong, there is no looking
back; the deed is done;”—Audley, thus hurried
on by the impetus of his own power of will,
pressed for speedy and secret nuptials—secret till
his fortunes, then wavering, were more assured—his
career fairly commenced. This was not
his strongest motive, though it was one. He
shrank from the discovery of his wrong to his
friend—desired to delay the self-humiliation of
such announcement, until, as he persuaded himself,
Harley’s boyish passion was over—had yielded
to the new allurements that would naturally
beset his way. Stifling his conscience, Audley
sought to convince himself that the day would
soon come when Harley could hear with indifference
that Nora Avenel was another’s “The
dream of an hour, at his age,” murmured the
elder friend; “but at mine, the passion of a life!”
He did not speak of these latter motives for concealment
to Nora. He felt that, to own the extent
of his treason to a friend, would lower him
in her eyes. He spoke therefore but slightingly
of Harley—treated the boy’s suit as a thing past
and gone. He dwelt only on reasons that compelled[Pg 388]
self-sacrifice on his side or hers. She did
not hesitate which to choose. And so, where
Nora loved, so submissively did she believe in the
superiority of the lover, that she would not pause
to hear a murmur from her own loftier nature,
or question the propriety of what he deemed wise
and good.
Abandoning prudence in this arch affair of life,
Audley still preserved his customary caution in
minor details. And this indeed was characteristic
of him throughout all his career—heedless
in large things—wary in small. He would not
trust Lady Jane Horton with his secret, still less
Lady Lansmere. He simply represented to the
former, that Nora was no longer safe from Harley’s
determined pursuit under Lady Jane’s roof,
and that she had better elude the boy’s knowledge
of her movements, and go quietly away for
a while, to lodge with some connection of her
own.
And so, with Lady Jane’s acquiescence, Nora
went first to the house of a very distant kinswoman
of her mother’s, and afterward to one
that Egerton took as their bridal home, under
the name of Bertram. He arranged all that
might render their marriage most free from the
chance of premature discovery. But it so happened,
on the very morning of their bridal, that
one of the witnesses he selected (a confidential
servant of his own) was seized with apoplexy.
Considering, in haste, where to find a substitute,
Egerton thought of Levy, his own private solicitor,
his own fashionable money-lender, a man
with whom he was then as intimate as a fine
gentleman is with the lawyer of his own age,
who knows all his affairs, and has helped from
pure friendship, to make them as bad as they
are! Levy was thus suddenly summoned. Egerton,
who was in great haste, did not at first
communicate to him the name of the intended
bride; but he said enough of the imprudence of
the marriage, and his reasons for secrecy, to
bring on himself the strongest remonstrances;
for Levy had always reckoned on Egerton’s making
a wealthy marriage, leaving to Egerton the
wife, and hoping to appropriate to himself the
wealth, all in the natural course of business.
Egerton did not listen to him, but hurried him
on toward the place at which the ceremony was
to be performed; and Levy actually saw the
bride, before he had learned her name. The
usurer masked his raging emotions, and fulfilled
his part in the rites. His smile, when he congratulated
the bride, might have shot cold into
her heart; but her eyes were cast on the earth,
seeing there but a shadow from heaven, and her
heart was blindly sheltering itself in the bosom
to which it was given evermore. She did not
perceive the smile of hate that barbed the words
of joy. Nora never thought it necessary later to
tell Egerton that Levy had been a refused suitor.
Indeed, with the exquisite taste of love, she saw
that such a confidence, the idea of such a rival,
would have wounded the pride of her high-bred,
well-born husband.
And now, while Harley L’Estrange, frantic
with the news that Nora had left Lady Jane’s
roof, and purposely misled into wrong directions,
was seeking to trace her refuge in vain—now
Egerton, in an assumed name, in a remote quarter,
far from the clubs in which his word was
oracular—far from the pursuits, whether of pastime
or toil, that had hitherto engrossed his active
mind, gave himself up, with wonder at himself,
to the only vision of fairyland that ever weighs
down the watchful eyelids of hard Ambition.
The world for a while shut out, he missed it not.
He knew not of it. He looked into two loving
eyes that haunted him ever after, through a stern
and arid existence, and said murmuringly, “Why,
this, then, is real happiness!” Often, often, in
the solitude of other years, to repeat to himself
the same words, save that for is, he then murmured
was! And Nora, with her grand, full
heart, all her luxuriant wealth of fancy and of
thought, child of light and of song, did she then
never discover that there was something comparatively
narrow and sterile in the nature to which
she had linked her fate? Not there, could ever
be sympathy in feelings, brilliant and shifting as
the tints of the rainbow. When Audley pressed
her heart to his own, could he comprehend one
finer throb of its beating? Was all the iron of
his mind worth one grain of the gold she had cast
away in Harley’s love?
Did Nora already discover this? Surely no.
Genius feels no want, no repining, while the
heart is contented. Genius in her paused and
slumbered: it had been as the ministrant of solitude:
it was needed no more. If a woman loves
deeply some one below her own grade in the mental
and spiritual orders, how often we see that
she unconsciously quits her own rank, comes
meekly down to the level of the beloved, is afraid
lest he should deem her the superior—she who
would not even be the equal. Nora knew no
more that she had genius; she only knew that
she had love.
And so here, the journal which Leonard was
reading changed its tone, sinking into that quiet
happiness which is but quiet because it is so
deep. This interlude in the life of a man like
Audley Egerton could never have been long;
many circumstances conspired to abridge it. His
affairs were in great disorder; they were all under
Levy’s management. Demands that had
before slumbered, or been mildly urged, grew
menacing and clamorous. Harley, too, returned
to London from his futile researches, and looked
out for Audley. Audley was forced to leave his
secret Eden, and re-appear in the common world;
and thenceforward it was only by stealth that he
came to his bridal home—a visitor, no more the
inmate. But more loud and fierce grew the demands
of his creditors, now when Egerton had
most need of all which respectability, and position,
and belief of pecuniary independence can do
to raise the man who has encumbered his arms,
and crippled his steps toward fortune. He was
threatened with writs, with prisons. Levy said[Pg 389]
“that to borrow more would be but larger ruin”—shrugged
his shoulders, and even recommended
a voluntary retreat to the King’s Bench. “No
place so good for frightening one’s creditors into
compounding their claims; but why,” added
Levy, with covert sneer, “why not go to young
L’Estrange—a boy made to be borrowed from?”
Levy, who had known from Lady Jane of Harley’s
pursuit of Nora, had learned already how to
avenge himself on Egerton. Audley could not
apply to the friend he had betrayed. And as to
other friends, no man in town had a greater number.
And no man in town knew better that he
should lose them all if he were once known to
be in want of their money. Mortified, harassed,
tortured—shunning Harley—yet ever sought by
him—fearful of each knock at his door, Audley
Egerton escaped to the mortgaged remnant of
his paternal estate, on which there was a gloomy
manor-house long uninhabited, and there applied
a mind, afterward renowned for its quick comprehension
of business, to the investigation of his
affairs, with a view to save some wreck from the
flood that swelled momently around him.
And now—to condense as much as possible a
record that runs darkly on into pain and sorrow—now
Levy began to practice his vindictive arts;
and the arts gradually prevailed. On pretense
of assisting Egerton in the arrangement of his
affairs—which he secretly contrived, however,
still more to complicate—he came down frequently
to Egerton Hall for a few hours, arriving
by the mail, and watching the effect which
Nora’s almost daily letters produced on the bridegroom,
irritated by the practical cares of life.
He was thus constantly at hand to instill into the
mind of the ambitious man a regret for the imprudence
of hasty passion, or to embitter the
remorse which Audley felt for his treachery to
L’Estrange. Thus ever bringing before the mind
of the harassed debtor images at war with love,
and with the poetry of life, he disattuned it (so
to speak) for the reception of Nora’s letters, all
musical as they were with such thoughts as the
most delicate fancy inspires to the most earnest
love. Egerton was one of those men who never
confide their affairs frankly to women. Nora,
when she thus wrote, was wholly in the dark as
to the extent of his stern prosaic distress. And
so—and so—Levy always near—(type of the
prose of life in its most cynic form)—so, by degrees,
all that redundant affluence of affection,
with its gushes of grief for his absence, prayers
for his return, sweet reproach if a post failed to
bring back an answer to the woman’s yearning
sighs—all this grew, to the sensible, positive
man of real life, like sickly romantic exaggeration.
The bright arrows shot too high into
heaven to hit the mark set so near to the earth.
Ah! common fate of all superior natures! What
treasure, and how wildly wasted!
“By-the-by,” said Levy, one morning, as he
was about to take leave of Audley and return to
town—”by-the-by, I shall be this evening in the
neighborhood of Mrs. Egerton.”
Egerton.—”Say Mrs. Bertram!”
Levy.—”Ay; will she not be in want of some
pecuniary supplies?”
Egerton.—”My wife!—not yet. I must first
be wholly ruined before she can want; and if I
were so, do you think I should not be by her side?”
Levy.—”I beg pardon, my dear fellow; your
pride of gentleman is so susceptible that it is
hard for a lawyer not to wound it unawares.
Your wife, then, does not know the exact state
of your affairs?”
Egerton.—”Of course not. Who would confide
to a woman things in which she could do
nothing, except to tease one the more?”
Levy.—”True, and a poetess, too! I have
prevented your finishing your answer to Mrs.
Bertram’s last letter. Can I take it—it may
save a day’s delay—that is, if you do not object
to my calling on her this evening.”
Egerton (sitting down to his unfinished letter).—”Object!
no!”
Levy (looking at his watch).—”Be quick, or
I shall lose the coach.”
Egerton (sealing the letter).—”There. And
I should be obliged to you if you would call; and
without alarming her as to my circumstances,
you can just say that you know I am much harassed
about important affairs at present, and so
soothe the effects of my very short answers—”
Levy.—”To those doubly-crossed, very long,
letters—I will.”
“Poor Nora,” said Egerton, sighing, “she
will think this answer brief and churlish enough.
Explain my excuses kindly, so that they will
serve for the future. I really have no time, and
no heart for sentiment. The little I ever had is
well-nigh worried out of me. Still I love her
fondly and deeply.”
Levy.—”You must have done so. I never
thought it in you to sacrifice the world to a
woman.”
Egerton.—”Nor I either; but,” added the
strong man, conscious of that power which rules
the world infinitely more than knowledge—conscious
of tranquil courage—”but I have not sacrificed
the world yet. This right arm shall bear
up her and myself too.”
Levy.—”Well said! But in the mean while,
for heaven’s sake, don’t attempt to go to London,
nor to leave this place; for, in that case, I know
you will be arrested, and then adieu to all hopes
of Parliament—of a career.”
Audley’s haughty countenance darkened; as
the dog, in his bravest mood, turns dismayed
from the stone plucked from the mire, so, when
Ambition rears itself to defy mankind, whisper
“disgrace and a jail,” and, lo, crest-fallen, it
slinks away! That evening Levy called on Nora,
and ingratiating himself into her favor by praise
of Egerton, with indirect humble apologetic allusions
to his own former presumption, he prepared
the way to renewed visits; she was so
lonely, and she so loved to see one who was fresh
from seeing Audley—one who would talk to her
of him! By degrees the friendly respectful visitor[Pg 390]
thus stole into her confidence; and then,
with all his panegyrics on Audley’s superior
powers and gifts, he began to dwell upon the
young husband’s worldly aspirations, and care
for his career; dwelt on them so as vaguely to
alarm Nora—to imply that, dear as she was, she
was still but second to Ambition. His way thus
prepared, he next began to insinuate his respectful
pity at her equivocal position, dropped hints
of gossip and slander, feared that the marriage
might be owned too late to preserve reputation.
And then what would be the feelings of the proud
Egerton if his wife were excluded from that world,
whose opinion he so prized? Insensibly thus he
led her on to express (though timidly) her own
fear—her own natural desire, in her letters to
Audley. When could the marriage be proclaimed?
Proclaimed! Audley felt that to proclaim
such a marriage, at such a moment, would be to
fling away his last cast for fame and fortune.
And Harley, too—Harley still so uncured of his
frantic love. Levy was sure to be at hand when
letters like these arrived.
And now Levy went further still in his determination
to alienate these two hearts. He contrived,
by means of his various agents, to circulate
through Nora’s neighborhood the very slanders at
which he had hinted. He contrived that she
should be insulted when she went abroad, outraged
at home by the sneers of her own servant,
and tremble with shame at her own shadow upon
her abandoned bridal hearth.
Just in the midst of this intolerable anguish,
Levy reappeared. His crowning hour was ripe.
He intimated his knowledge of the humiliations
Nora had undergone, expressed his deep compassion,
offered to intercede with Egerton “to do her
justice.” He used ambiguous phrases that shocked
her ear and tortured her heart, and thus provoked
her on to demand him to explain; and then,
throwing her into a wild state of indefinite alarm,
in which he obtained her solemn promise not to
divulge to Audley what he was about to communicate,
he said, with villainous hypocrisy of
reluctant shame, “that her marriage was not
strictly legal; that the forms required by the law
had not been complied with; that Audley, unintentionally
or purposely, had left himself free to
disown the rite and desert the bride.” While
Nora stood stunned and speechless at a falsehood
which, with lawyer-like show, he contrived
to make truth-like to her inexperience,
he hurried rapidly on, to reawake on her mind
the impression of Audley’s pride, ambition, and
respect for worldly position. “These are your
obstacles,” said he; “but I think I may induce
him to repair the wrong, and right you at last.”
Righted at last—oh infamy!
Then Nora’s anger burst forth. She believe
such a stain on Audley’s honor!
“But where was the honor when he betrayed
his friend? Did you not know that he was intrusted
by Lord L’Estrange to plead for him.
How did he fulfill the trust?”
Plead for L’Estrange! Nora had not been exactly
aware of this. In the sudden love preceding
those sudden nuptials, so little touching Harley
(beyond Audley’s first timid allusions to his suit,
and her calm and cold reply) had been spoken by
either.
Levy resumed. He dwelt fully on the trust and
the breach of it, and then said—”In Egerton’s
world, man holds it far more dishonor to betray a
man than to dupe a woman; and if Egerton
could do the one, why doubt that he would do
the other? But do not look at me with those indignant
eyes. Put himself to the test; write to
him to say that the suspicions amid which you
live have become intolerable—that they infect
even yourself, despite your reason—that the secrecy
of your nuptials, his prolonged absence, his
brief refusal, on unsatisfactory grounds, to proclaim
your tie, all distract you with a terrible
doubt. Ask him, at least (if he will not yet declare
your marriage), to satisfy you that the rites
were legal.”
“I will go to him,” cried Nora impetuously.
“Go to him!—in his own house! What a
scene, what a scandal! Could he ever forgive
you?”
“At least, then, I will implore him to come
here. I can not write such horrible words; I can
not—I can not—Go, go.”
Levy left her, and hastened to two or three of
Audley’s most pressing creditors—men, in fact,
who went entirely by Levy’s own advice. He
bade them instantly surround Audley’s country
residence with bailiffs. Before Egerton could
reach Nora, he would thus be lodged in a jail.
These preparations made, Levy himself went
down to Audley, and arrived, as usual, an hour
or two before the delivery of the post.
And Nora’s letter came; and never was Audley’s
grave brow more dark than when he read it.
Still, with his usual decision, he resolved to obey
her wish—rang the bell, and ordered his servant
to put up a change of dress, and send for post-horses.
Levy then took him aside, and led him to the
window.
“Look under yon trees. Do you see those
men? They are bailiffs. This is the true reason
why I come to you to-day. You can not
leave this house.”
Egerton recoiled. “And this frantic, foolish
letter at such a time,” he muttered, striking the
open page, full of love in the midst of terror, with
his clenched hand.
O Woman, Woman! if thy heart be deep, and
its chords tender, beware how thou lovest the
man with whom all that plucks him from the
hard cares of the work-day world is a frenzy or
a folly! He will break thy heart, he will shatter
its chords, he will trample out from its delicate
frame-work every sound that now makes musical
the common air, and swells into unison with the
harps of angels.
“She has before written to me,” continued
Audley, pacing the room with angry, disordered
strides, “asking me when our marriage can be proclaimed,[Pg 391]
and I thought my replies would have
satisfied any reasonable woman. But now, now
this is worse, immeasurably worse—she actually
doubts my honor! I, who have made such sacrifices—actually
doubts whether I, Audley Egerton,
an English gentleman, could have been base
enough to—”
“What?” interrupted Levy, “to deceive your
friend L’Estrange? Did not she know that?”
“Sir,” exclaimed Egerton, turning white.
“Don’t be angry—all’s fair in love as in
war; and L’Estrange will live yet to thank you
for saving him from such a mésalliance. But you
are seriously angry; pray, forgive me.”
With some difficulty, and much fawning, the
usurer appeased the storm he had raised in Audley’s
conscience. And he then heard, as if with
surprise, the true purport of Nora’s letter.
“It is beneath me to answer, much less to
satisfy such a doubt,” said Audley. “I could
have seen her, and a look of reproach would have
sufficed; but to put my hand to paper, and condescend
to write, ‘I am not a villain, and I will
give you the proofs that I am not’—never.”
“You are quite right; but let us see if we can
not reconcile matters between your pride and her
feelings. Write simply this: ‘All that you ask
me to say or to explain, I have instructed Levy, as
my solicitor, to say and explain for me; and you
may believe him as you would myself.'”
“Well, the poor fool, she deserves to be punished;
and I suppose that answer will punish
her more than a lengthier rebuke. My mind is
so distracted I can not judge of these trumpery
woman-fears and whims; there, I have written
as you suggest. Give her all the proof she needs,
and tell her that in six months at farthest, come
what will, she shall bear the name of Egerton, as
henceforth she must share his fate.”
“Why say six months?”
“Parliament must be dissolved before then. I
shall either obtain a seat, be secure from a jail,
have won field for my energies, or—”
“Or what?”
“I shall renounce ambition altogether—ask
my brother to assist me toward whatever debts
remain when all my property is fairly sold—they
can not be much. He has a living in his gift—the
incumbent is old, and, I hear, very ill. I
can take orders.”
“Sink into a country parson!”
“And learn content. I have tasted it already.
She was then by my side. Explain all to her.
This letter, I fear, is too unkind—But to doubt
me thus!”
Levy hastily placed the letter in his pocket-book;
and, for fear it should be withdrawn, took
his leave.
And of that letter he made such use, that the
day after he had given it to Nora, she had left
the house—the neighborhood; fled, and not a
trace! Of all the agonies in life, that which is
most poignant and harrowing—that which for
the time most annihilates reason, and leaves our
whole organization one lacerated, mangled heart—is
the conviction that we have been deceived
where we placed all the trust of love. The moment
the anchor snaps, the storm comes on—the
stars vanish behind the cloud.
When Levy returned, filled with the infamous
hope which had stimulated his revenge—the
hope that if he could succeed in changing into
scorn and indignation Nora’s love for Audley, he
might succeed also in replacing that broken and
degraded idol—his amaze and dismay were great
on hearing of her departure. For several days
he sought her traces in vain. He went to Lady
Jane Horton’s—Nora had not been there. He
trembled to go back to Egerton. Surely Nora
would have written to her husband, and, in spite
of her promise, revealed his own falsehood; but
as days passed and not a clew was found, he had
no option but to repair to Egerton Hall, taking
care that the bailiffs still surrounded it. Audley
had received no line from Nora. The young
husband was surprised and perplexed, uneasy—but
had no suspicion of the truth.
At length Levy was forced to break to Audley
the intelligence of Nora’s flight. He gave his
own color to it. Doubtless she had gone to seek
her own relations, and take, by their advice,
steps to make her marriage publicly known.
This idea changed Audley’s first shock into deep
and stern resentment. His mind so little comprehended
Nora’s, and was ever so disposed to
what is called the common-sense view of things,
that he saw no other mode to account for her
flight and her silence. Odious to Egerton as
such a proceeding would be, he was far too proud
to take any steps to guard against it. “Let her
do her worst,” said he, coldly, masking emotion
with his usual self-command; “it will be but a
nine-days’ wonder to the world—a fiercer rush
of my creditors on their hunted prey—”
“And a challenge from Lord L’Estrange.”
“So be it,” answered Egerton, suddenly placing
his hand at his heart.
“What is the matter? Are you ill?”
“A strange sensation here. My father died
of a complaint of the heart, and I myself was
once told to guard, through life, against excess
of emotion. I smiled at such a warning then.
Let us sit down to business.”
But when Levy had gone, and solitude reclosed
round that Man of the Iron Mask, there grew
upon him more and more the sense of a mighty
loss, Nora’s sweet loving face started from the
shadows of the forlorn walls. Her docile, yielding
temper—her generous, self-immolating spirit—came
back to his memory, to refute the idea
that wronged her. His love, that had been suspended
for awhile by busy cares, but which, if
without much refining sentiment, was still the
master-passion of his soul, flowed back into all
his thoughts—circumfused the very atmosphere
with a fearful softening charm. He escaped
under cover of the night from the watch of the
bailiffs. He arrived in London. He himself
sought every where he could think of for his
missing bride. Lady Jane Horton was confined[Pg 392]
to her bed, dying fast—incapable even to receive
and reply to his letter. He secretly sent down
to Lansmere to ascertain if Nora had gone to her
parents. She was not there. The Avenels believed
her still with Lady Jane Horton.
He now grew most seriously alarmed; and, in
the midst of that alarm, Levy contrived that he
should be arrested for debt; but he was not detained
in confinement many days. Before the
disgrace got wind, the writs were discharged—Levy
baffled. He was free. Lord L’Estrange
had learned from Audley’s servant what Audley
would have concealed from him out of all the
world. And the generous boy—who, besides the
munificent allowance he received from the Earl,
was heir to an independent and considerable
fortune of his own, when he should obtain his
majority—hastened to borrow the money and
discharge all the obligations of his friend. The
benefit was conferred before Audley knew of it,
or could prevent. Then a new emotion, and
perhaps scarce less stinging than the loss of
Nora, tortured the man who had smiled at the
warning of science; and the strange sensation at
the heart was felt again and again.
And Harley, too, was still in search of Nora—would
talk of nothing but her—and looked so
haggard and grief-worn. The bloom of the boy’s
youth was gone. Could Audley then have said,
“She you seek is another’s; your love is razed
out of your life. And, for consolation, learn that
your friend has betrayed you?” Could Audley
say this? He did not dare. Which of the two
suffered the most?
And these two friends, of characters so different,
were so singularly attached to each other.
Inseparable at school—thrown together in the
world, with a wealth of frank confidences between
them, accumulated since childhood. And now,
in the midst of all his own anxious sorrow, Harley
still thought and planned for Egerton. And self-accusing
remorse, and all the sense of painful
gratitude, deepened Audley’s affection for Harley
into a devotion as to a superior, while softening
it into a reverential pity that yearned to relieve,
to atone;—but how—oh; how?
A general election was now at hand, still no
news of Nora. Levy kept aloof from Audley,
pursuing his own silent search. A seat for the
borough of Lansmere was pressed upon Audley
not only by Harley, but his parents, especially
by the Countess, who tacitly ascribed to Audley’s
wise counsels Nora’s mysterious disappearance.
Egerton at first resisted the thought of a new
obligation to his injured friend; but he burned to
have it some day in his power to repay at least
his pecuniary debt: the sense of that debt humbled
him more than all else. Parliamentary success
might at last obtain for him some lucrative
situation abroad, and thus enable him gradually
to remove this load from his heart and his honor.
No other chance of repayment appeared open to
him. He accepted the offer, and went down
to Lansmere. His brother, lately married, was
asked to meet him; and there, also, was Miss
Leslie the heiress, whom Lady Lansmere secretly
hoped her son Harley would admire, but who had
long since, no less secretly, given her heart to the
unconscious Egerton.
Meanwhile, the miserable Nora, deceived by
the arts and representations of Levy—acting on
the natural impulse of a heart so susceptible to
shame—flying from a home which she deemed
dishonored—flying from a lover whose power over
her she knew to be so great, that she dreaded lest
he might reconcile her to dishonor itself—had no
thought save to hide herself forever from Audley’s
eye. She would not go to her relations—to Lady
Jane; that were to give the clew, and invite the
pursuit. An Italian lady of high rank had visited
at Lady Jane’s—taken a great fancy to Nora—and
the lady’s husband, having been obliged to precede
her return to Italy, had suggested the notion
of engaging some companion—the lady had spoken
of this to Nora and to Lady Jane Horton, who
had urged Nora to accept the offer, elude Harley’s
pursuit, and go abroad for a time. Nora then had
refused;—for she then had seen Audley Egerton.
To this Italian lady she now went, and the offer
was renewed with the most winning kindness,
and grasped at in the passion of despair. But
the Italian had accepted invitations to English
country houses before she finally departed for the
Continent. Meanwhile Nora took refuge in a
quiet lodging in a sequestered suburb, which an
English servant in the employment of the fair
foreigner recommended. Thus had she first came
to the cottage in which Burley died. Shortly
afterward she left England with her new companion,
unknown to all—to Lady Jane as to her
parents.
All this time the poor girl was under a moral
delirium—a confused fever—haunted by dreams
from which she sought to fly. Sound physiologists
agree that madness is rarest among persons
of the finest imagination. But those persons are,
of all others, liable to a temporary state of mind
in which judgment sleeps—imagination alone
prevails with a dire and awful tyranny. A
single idea gains ascendency—expels all others—presents
itself every where with an intolerable
blinding glare. Nora was at that time under the
dread one idea—to fly from shame!
(TO BE CONTINUED.)
HENRY CLAY.
PERSONAL ANECDOTES, INCIDENTS, ETC.
We have just returned from the Park and
City-Hall, and from witnessing the long
procession, “melancholy, slow,” that accompanied
the remains of the “Great Commoner” and
great statesman, Henry Clay, to their temporary
resting-place in the Governor’s Room. It was
not the weeping flags at half-mast throughout
the city; not the tolling of the bells, the solemn
booming of the minute-guns, nor the plaintive
strains of funereal music, which brought the
tears to the eyes of thousands, as the mournful
cavalcade passed on. For here were the lifeless
limbs, the dimmed eye, the hushed voice, that[Pg 393]
never should move, nor sparkle, nor resound in
eloquent tones again!
The last time we had seen Henry Clay was,
standing in an open barouche, on the very spot
where his hearse now paused, in front of the
City-Hall. He was addressing then a vast concourse
of his fellow-citizens, who had assembled
to do him honor; and never shall we forget the
exquisite grace of his gestures, the melodious
tones of his matchless voice, and the interior look
of his eyes—as if he were rather spoken from,
than speaking. It was an occasion not to be forgotten.
It is proposed, in the present article, to afford
the reader some opportunity of judging of the
character and manner of Mr. Clay, both as an
orator and a man, and of his general habits, from
a few characteristic anecdotes and incidents,
which have been well authenticated heretofore,
or are now for the first time communicated to
the writer. Biography, in Mr. Clay’s case, has
already occupied much of the space of all our
public journals; we shall, therefore, omit particulars
which are now more or less familiar to
the general reader.
It was the remark of a distinguished Senator,
that Mr. Clay’s eloquence was absolutely intangible
to delineation; that the most labored and
thrilling description could not embrace it; and
that, to be understood, it must be seen and felt.
During his long public life he enchanted millions,
and no one could tell how he did it. He was an
orator by nature. His eagle eye burned with true
patriotic ardor, or dashed indignation and defiance
upon his foes, or was suffused with tears
of commiseration or of pity; and it was because
he felt, that he made others feel. “The clear
conception, the high purpose, the firm resolve,
the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue,
beaming from the eye, informing every feature,
and urging the whole man onward, right onward
to his object”—this was the eloquence of Henry
Clay; or, rather, to pursue the definition, “it
was something greater and higher than eloquence;
it was action—noble, sublime, God-like.”
While the coffin containing all that remained
of the great Orator of Nature was being carried
up the steps of the City-Hall, a by-stander remarked,
in hearing of the writer:
Well, we never shall look upon his like again.
What an orator he was! I heard him speak but
once, yet that once I shall always remember. It
was a good many years ago, now. It was in the
immense car-house, or dépôt, at Syracuse. The
crowd was immense; and every eye was turned
toward the platform from which he was to speak,
as if the whole crowd were but one expectant
face.
Presently he arose—tall, erect as a statue;
looked familiarly around upon the audience, as if
he were in an assembly of personal friends (as
in truth he was), and began. He commenced
amidst the most breathless silence; and as he
warmed up with his subject, there was not a look
of his eye, not a movement of his long, graceful
right arm, not a swaying of his body, that was
not full of grace and effect. Such a voice I
never heard. It was wonderful![9]
Once he took out his snuff-box, and, after
taking a pinch of snuff, and returning the box to
his pocket, he illustrated a point which he was
making by an anecdote:
“While I was abroad,” said he, “laboring to
arrange the terms of the Treaty of Ghent, there
appeared a report of the negotiations, or letters
relative thereto; and several quotations from my
remarks or letters, touching certain stipulations
in the treaty, reached Kentucky, and were read
by my constituents.
“Among them, was an odd old fellow, who
went by the nickname of ‘Old Sandusky,’ and
he was reading one of these letters, one evening,
at a near resort, to a small collection of the
neighbors. As he read on, he came across the
sentence, ‘This must be deemed a sine qua non.”
“‘What’s a sine qua non?’ said a half-dozen
by-standers.
“‘Old Sandusky’ was a little bothered at first,
but his good sense and natural shrewdness was
fully equal to a ‘mastery of the Latin.’
“‘Sine—qua—non?‘ said ‘Old Sandusky,’ repeating
the question very slowly; ‘why, Sine
Qua Non is three islands in Passamaquoddy Bay,
and Harry Clay is the last man to give them up!
‘No Sine Qua Non, no treaty,’ he says; and he’ll
stick to it!'”
You should have seen the laughing eye, the
change in the speaker’s voice and manner, said
the narrator, to understand the electric effect
the story had upon the audience.
Previous to Mr. Clay’s entrance upon public life
in the service of his country, and while he was
yet young in the practice of the law, in Kentucky,
the following striking incident is related of him:
Two Germans, father and son, were indicted
for murder, and were tried for the crime. Mr.
Clay was employed to defend them. The act of
killing was proved by evidence so clear and
strong, that it was considered not only a case
of murder, but an exceedingly aggravated one.
The trial lasted five days, at the close of which
he addressed the jury in the most impassioned
and eloquent manner; and they were so moved
by his pathetic appeals, that they rendered a
verdict of manslaughter only. After another
hard day’s struggle, he succeeded in obtaining
an arrest of judgment, by which his clients, in
whose case he thought there was an absence of
all “malice prepense,” were set at liberty.
They expressed their gratitude in the warmest
terms to their deliverer, in which they were
joined by an old and ill-favored female, the wife
of one and the mother of the other, who adopted
a different mode, however, of tendering her
thanks, which was by throwing her arms round
Mr. Clay’s neck, and repeatedly kissing him, in
the presence of a crowded court-room!
Mr. Clay respected her feelings too much to repulse
her; but he was often afterward heard to say,
that it was “the longest and strongest embrace
he ever encountered in his professional practice!”
In civil suits, at this period, Mr. Clay gained
almost equal celebrity, and especially in the settlement
of land claims, at that time an important
element in Western litigation. It is related of
him, at this stage of his career, that being engaged
in a case which involved immense interests,
he associated with him a prominent lawyer
to whom he intrusted its management, as urgent
business demanded his absence from court.
Two days were occupied in discussing the legal
points that were to govern the instructions of
the court to the jury, on every one of which his
colleague was frustrated. Mr. Clay returned,
however, before a decision was rendered, and
without acquainting himself with the nature of
the testimony, or ascertaining the manner in
which the discussion had been conducted, after
conferring a few moments with his associate,
he prepared and presented in a few words the
form in which he wished the instructions to be
given, accompanying it with his reasons, which
were so convincing that the suit was terminated
in his favor in less than one hour after he re-entered
the court-room.
Thus early, and in a career merely professional,
did Henry Clay commence his sway over the
minds of deliberative men.
The subjoined incident, connected with Mr.
Clay’s style of “stump-speaking” is related in
“Mallory’s Life” of our illustrious subject. It
illustrates his tact and ingenuity in seizing and
turning to good account trivial circumstances:
Mr. Clay had been speaking for some time,
when a company of riflemen, who had been
performing military exercise, attracted by his
attitude, concluded to “go and hear what the
fellow had to say,” as they termed it, and accordingly
drew near. They listened with respectful
attention, and evidently with deep
interest, until he closed, when one of their
number, a man of about fifty years of age, who
had seen much back-wood’s service, stood leaning
on his rifle, regarding the young speaker
with a fixed and sagacious look.
He was apparently the Nimrod of the company,
for he exhibited every characteristic of a
“mighty hunter.” He had buckskin breeches,
and hunting-shirt, coon-skin cap, black bushy
beard, and a visage of the color and texture of
his bullet-pouch. At his belt hung the knife
and hatchet, and the huge, indispensable powder-horn
across a breast bare and brown as the
hills he traversed in his forays, yet it covered a
brave and noble heart.
He beckoned with his hand to Mr. Clay to
approach him.
Mr. Clay immediately complied.
“Young man,” said he, “you want to go to
the Legislature, I see.”
“Why, yes,” replied Mr. Clay; “yes, I should
like to go, since my friends have put me up as
a candidate before the people. I don’t wish to
be defeated, of course; few people do.”
“Are you a good shot, young man?” asked
the hunter.
“I consider myself as good as any in the
county.”
“Then you shall go: but you must give us a
specimen of your skill; we must see you shoot.”
“I never shoot any rifle but my own, and
that is at home,” said the young orator.
“No matter,” quickly responded the hunter,
“here’s Old Bess; she never failed yet in the
hands of a marksman. She has put a bullet
through many a squirrel’s head at a hundred
yards, and day-light through many a red-skin
twice that distance. If you can shoot any gun,
young man, you can shoot ‘Old Bess!'”
“Very well, then,” replied Mr. Clay, “put
up your mark! put up your mark!”
The target was placed at about the distance
of eighty yards, when, with all the coolness and
steadiness of an old experienced marksman, he
drew “Old Bess” to his shoulder, and fired.
The bullet pierced the target near the centre.
“Oh, that’s a chance-shot! a chance-shot!”
exclaimed several of his political opponents; “he
might shoot all day, and not hit the mark again.
Let him try it over!—let him try it over!”
“No, no,” retorted Mr. Clay, “beat that, and
then I will!”
As no one seemed disposed to make the attempt,
it was considered that he had given satisfactory
proof of being, as he said, “the best
shot in the county;” and this unimportant incident
gained him the vote of every hunter and
marksman in the assembly, which was composed
principally of that class of persons, as well as
the support of the same throughout the county.
Mr. Clay was frequently heard to say: “I had
never before fired a rifle, and have not since!”
It was in turning little things like these to
account, that Mr. Clay, in the earlier period of
his career, was so remarkable. Two other instances
in this kind, although not new, may be
appropriately mentioned in this connection.
In 1805 an attempt was made to obtain the removal
of the capital from Frankfort, Kentucky.
Mr. Clay, in a speech delivered at the time, reverted
to the physical appearance of the place, as
furnishing an argument in favor of the proposed
removal. Frankfort is walled in on all sides by
towering, rocky precipices, and in its general
conformation, is not unlike a great pit. “It
presents,” said Mr. Clay, in his remarks upon
the subject, “the model of an inverted hat.
Frankfort is the body of the hat, and the lands
adjacent are the brim. To change the figure, it
is Nature’s great penitentiary; and if the members
would know the bodily condition of the[Pg 395]
prisoners, let them look at those poor creatures
in the gallery.”
As he said this, he directed the attention of
the members of the Legislature to some half-dozen
emaciated, spectre-like specimens of humanity,
who happened to be moping about there,
looking as if they had just stolen a march from
the grave-yard. On observing the eyes of the
House thus turned toward them, and aware of
their ill-favored aspect, they screened themselves
with such ridiculous precipitancy behind the pillars
and railing, as to cause the most violent
laughter. This well-directed hit was successful;
and the House gave their votes in favor of
the measure.
The second instance is doubtless more familiar
to the reader; but having “spoken of guns,” it
may not be amiss to quote it here:
During an excited political canvass, Mr. Clay
met an old hunter, who had previously been his
devoted friend, but who now opposed him, on the
ground of “the Compensation bill.”
“Have you a good rifle, my friend?” asked
Mr. Clay.
“Yes,” said the hunter.
“Does it ever flash in the pan?” continued
Mr. Clay.
“It never did but once in the world,” said the
hunter, exultingly.
“Well, what did you do with it? You didn’t
throw it away, did you?”
“No; I picked the flint, tried it again, and
brought down the game.”
“Have I ever ‘flashed,'” continued Mr. Clay,
“except on the ‘Compensation bill?'”
“No, I can’t say that you ever did.”
“Well, will you throw me away?” said Mr.
Clay.
“No, no!” responded the huntsman, touched
on the right point; “no; I’ll pick the flint, and
try you again!“
And ever afterward he was the unwavering
friend of Mr. Clay.
From the same authority we derive another
election anecdote, which Mr. Clay was wont to
mention to his friends. In a political canvass
in Kentucky, Mr. Clay, and Mr. Pope a one-armed
man, were candidates for the same office.
An Irish barber, residing at Lexington, had always
given Mr. Clay his vote, and on all occasions,
when he was a candidate for office, electioneered
warmly for him. He was “Irish all
over,” and was frequently in “scrapes,” from
which Mr. Clay generally succeeded in rescuing
him. Somebody, just before the election took
place, “came the evil eye” over him; for when
asked who he was going to vote for, he replied,
“I mane to vote for the man who can’t put more
nor one hand into the threasury!”
A few days after the election, the barber met
Mr. Clay in Lexington, and approaching him,
began to cry, saying that he had wronged him,
and repented his ingratitude. “My wife,” said
he, “got round me, blubbering, and tould me
that I was too bad, to desert, like a base spalpeen,
me ould frind. ‘Niver’s the time,’ says
she ‘when you got in jail or in any bad fix
niver’s the time he didn’t come and help you out.
Och! bad luck to ye for not giving him your
vote!'” Mr. Clay never failed to gain his vote
afterward.
An anecdote is related of Mr. Clay, aptly
illustrating his ability to encounter opposition,
in whatever manner presented. A Senator from
Connecticut had endeavored to inspire the younger
members of the Senate with a respect for him,
nearly allied to awe; and to this end was accustomed
to use toward them harsh and haughty
language, but especially to make an ostentatious
display of his attainments, and his supposed
superior knowledge of the subject under discussion.
Mr. Clay could ill brook his insolent looks
and language, and haughty, overbearing manner,
and took occasion in his speech to hit them off,
which he did by quoting Peter Pindar’s Magpie,
A chattering bird we often meet,
A bird for curiosity well known,
With head awry,
And cunning eye,
Peep knowingly into a marrow-bone!”
“It would be difficult,” says the biographer
who relates this circumstance, “to say which
was the greater, the merriment which this sally
caused, or the chagrin of the satirized Senator.”
A striking instance of the simplicity as well
as humanity of Mr. Clay’s character is given in
the following authentic anecdote of him, while a
member of the House of Representatives:
“Almost every body in Washington City will
remember an old he-goat, which formerly inhabited
a livery-stable on Pennsylvania Avenue. This
animal was the most independent citizen of the
metropolis. He belonged to no party, although
he frequently gave pedestrians ‘striking’ proofs
of his adhesion to the ‘leveling’ principle; for,
whenever a person stopped any where in the
vicinity, ‘Billy’ was sure to ‘make at him,’ horns
and all. The boys took delight in irritating him,
and frequently so annoyed him that he would
‘butt’ against lamp-posts and trees, to their
great amusement.
“One day, Henry Clay was passing along the
avenue, and seeing the boys intent on worrying
Billy into a fever, stopped, and with characteristic
humanity expostulated with them upon their
cruelty. The boys listened in silent awe to the
eloquent appeal of the ‘Luminary of the West,’
but it was all Cherokee to Billy, who—the ungrateful
scamp!—arose majestically on his hind
legs, and made a desperate plunge at his friend
and advocate. Mr. Clay, however, proved too
much for his horned adversary. He seized both
horns of the dilemma, and then came the ‘tug
of war.’ The struggle was long and doubtful.
“‘Ha!’ exclaimed the statesman, ‘I’ve got
you fast, you old rascal! I’ll teach you better
manners than to attack your friends! But, boys,
he continued, ‘what shall I do now?’
“‘Why, trip up his feet, Mr. Clay.’ Mr. Clay
did as he was told, and after many severe efforts[Pg 396]
brought Billy down on his side. Here he looked
at the boys imploringly, seeming to say, ‘I never
was in such a fix as this before!’
“The combatants were now nearly exhausted;
but the goat had the advantage, for he was gaining
breath all the while the statesman was losing
it.
“‘Boys!’ exclaimed Mr. Clay, puffing and
blowing, ‘this is rather an awkward business.
What am I to do next?”
“‘Why, don’t you know?’ said a little fellow,
making his own preparations to run, as he spoke:
‘all you’ve got to do is to let go, and run like
blazes!’ The hint was taken at once, much to
the amusement of the boys who had been ‘lectured.'”
The collisions between Mr. Clay and Randolph
in Congress and out of it, are well known
to the public. The following circumstance, however,
has seldom been quoted. When the Missouri
Compromise question was before Congress,
and the fury of the contending parties had broken
down almost every barrier of order and decency,
Mr. Randolph, much excited, approaching
Mr. Clay, said:
“Mr. Speaker, I wish you would leave the
House. I will follow you to Kentucky, or any
where else in the world.”
Mr. Clay regarded him with one of his most
searching looks for an instant; and then replied,
in an under-tone:
“Mr. Randolph, your proposition is an exceedingly
serious one, and demands most serious
consideration. Be kind enough to call at my
room to-morrow morning, and we will deliberate
over it together.”
Mr. Randolph called punctually at the moment;
they talked long upon the much-agitated
subject, without coming to any agreement, and
Mr. Randolph arose to leave.
“Mr. Randolph,” said Mr. Clay, as the former
was about stepping from the house, “with
your permission, I will embrace the present
occasion to observe, that your language and
deportment on the floor of the House, it has
occurred to me, were rather indecorous and ungentlemanly,
on several occasions, and very annoying,
indeed, to me; for, being in the chair,
I had no opportunity of replying.”
While admitting that this might, perhaps, be
so, Mr. Randolph excused it, on the ground of
Mr. Clay’s inattention to his remarks, and asking
for a pinch of snuff while he was addressing
him, &c., &c. Mr. Clay, in reply, said:
“Oh, you are certainly mistaken, Mr. Randolph,
if you think I do not listen to you. I
frequently turn away my head, it is true, and
ask for a pinch of snuff; still, I hear every thing
you say, although I may seem to hear nothing;
and, retentive as I know your memory to be, I
will wager that I can repeat as many of your
speeches as you yourself can!”
“Well,” answered Randolph, “I don’t know
but I am mistaken; and suppose we drop the
matter, shake hands, and become good friends
again?”
“Agreed!” said Mr. Clay, extending his hand,
which was cordially grasped by Mr. Randolph.
During the same session, and some time before
this interview, Mr. Randolph accosted Mr.
Clay with a look and manner much agitated,
and exhibited to him a letter, couched in very
abusive terms, threatening to cowhide him, &c.,
and asked Mr. Clay’s advice as to the course he
should pursue in relation to it.
“What caused the writer to send you such
an insulting epistle, Mr. Randolph?” asked Mr.
Clay.
“Why, I suppose,” said Randolph, “it was
in consequence of what I said to him the other
day.”
“What did you say?”
“Why, sir, I was standing in the vestibule of
the house, when the writer came up and introduced
to me a gentleman who accompanied him;
and I asked him what right he had to introduce
that man to me, and told him that the man had
just as good a right to introduce him to me;
whereat he was very indignant, said I had treated
him scandalously, and turning on his heel, went
away. I think that must have made him write
the letter.”
“Don’t you think he was a little out of his
head to talk in that way?” asked Mr. Clay.
“Why, I’ve been thinking about that,” said
Randolph: “I have some doubts respecting his
sanity.”
“Well, that being the case, would it not be
the wisest course not to bring the matter before
the House? I will direct the sergeant-at-arms
to keep a sharp look-out for the man, and to
cause him to be arrested should he attempt any
thing improper.”
Mr. Randolph acquiesced in this opinion, and
nothing more was ever heard of the subject.
Another incident, touching Mr. Clay and Mr.
Randolph, will be read with interest:
At one time Mr. Randolph, in a strain of most
scorching irony, had indulged in some personal
taunts toward Mr. Clay, commiserating his ignorance
and limited education, to whom Mr. Clay
thus replied:
“Sir, the gentleman from Virginia was pleased
to say, that in one point at least he coincided
with me—in an humble estimate of my philological
acquirements. Sir, I know my deficiencies.
I was born to no proud patrimonial estate from
my father. I inherited only infancy, ignorance,
and indigence. I feel my defects: but, so far
as my situation in early life is concerned, I may
without presumption say, they are more my misfortune
than my fault. But, however I may
deplore my inability to furnish to the gentleman
a better specimen of powers of verbal criticism,
I will venture to say my regret is not greater
than the disappointment of this committee, as to
the strength of his argument.”
The particulars of the duel between Mr. Randolph
and Mr. Clay may be unknown to some
of our readers. The eccentric descendant of
Pocahontas appeared on the ground in a huge
morning gown. This garment constituted such[Pg 397]
a vast circumference that the “locality of the
swarthy Senator,” was at least a matter of very
vague conjecture. The parties exchanged shots,
and the ball of Mr. Clay hit the centre of the
visible object, but Mr. Randolph was not there!
The latter had fired in the air, and immediately
after the exchange of shots he walked up to Mr.
Clay, parted the folds of his gown, pointed to the
hole where the bullet of the former had pierced
his coat, and, in the shrillest tones of his piercing
voice, exclaimed, “Mr. Clay, you owe me a coat—you
owe me a coat!” to which Mr. Clay replied,
in a voice of slow and solemn emphasis, at
the same time pointing directly at Mr. Randolph’s
heart, “Mr. Randolph, I thank God that I am
no deeper in your debt!”
The annexed rejoinder aptly illustrates Mr.
Clay’s readiness at repartee:
At the time of the passage of the tariff-bill, as
the house was about adjourning, a friend of the
bill observed to Mr. Clay, “We have done pretty
well to-day.” “Very well, indeed,” rejoined Mr.
Clay—”very well: we made a good stand, considering
we lost both our Feet;” alluding to Mr.
Foote of New York, and Mr. Foot of Connecticut,
both having opposed the bill, although it
was confidently expected, a short time previous,
that both would support it.
After the nomination of General Taylor as a
candidate for the Presidency, made by the Whig
Convention at Philadelphia, in June, 1848, many
of the friends of Mr. Clay were greatly dissatisfied,
not to say exasperated, by what they deemed
an abandonment of principle, and unfairness in
the proceedings of that body: meetings were
held in this city, at which delegates from the
northern and western parts of this State and
from the State of New Jersey attended, and various
arrangements, preliminary to placing Mr.
Clay again in nomination for that office, were
made, and perfected. These steps were not concealed,
and many of the friends of General Taylor
were so uncharitable as to avow their belief
that this dissatisfaction was fostered and encouraged
by Mr. Clay himself. The following extract
from a letter written to a friend in this
city,[10] one who had from the beginning opposed
the movement, will exhibit Mr. Clay’s true sentiments
on that subject:
“Ashland, 16th October, 1848.
“My dear Sir—I duly received your obliging letter
of the 5th instant, and I have perused it with the
greatest satisfaction.“The vivid picture which you have drawn of the
enthusiastic attachment, the unbounded confidence,
and the entire devotion of my warm-hearted friends
in the city of New York, has filled me with the liveliest
emotions of gratitude.“There was but one more proof wanting of their
goodness, to complete and perpetuate my great obligations
to them, and that they have kindly given, in
deference to my anxious wishes; it was, not to insist
upon the use of my name as a candidate for the
Presidency, after the promulgation of my desire to
the contrary.”
In another letter, to the same party, written a
few weeks earlier, occurs the following touching
passage, indicating his sense of the oppressive
loneliness with which he was then surrounded.
Referring to the recent departure of his son
James on his mission to Portugal, accompanied
by his family, he says:
“If they had, as I hope, a prosperous voyage, they
will have arrived at Liverpool about the same day
that I reached home. My separation from them, probably
for a length of time, the uncertainty of life rendering
it not unlikely that I may never see them
again, and the deep and affectionate interest I take
in their welfare and happiness, has been extremely
painful.“I find myself now, toward the close of my life, in
one respect, in a condition similar to that with which
I began it. Mrs. Clay and I commenced it alone:
and after having had eleven children, of whom four
only remain, our youngest son is the sole white person
residing with us.”
We are indebted to the same obliging gentleman
from whom we derive the foregoing, for the
following graphic description of a visit paid to
Mr. Clay in his sick chamber at Washington:
“On Monday, the first of March last, at about
one o’clock, at the National Hotel, Washington,
having sent in my name, Mr. Clay kindly admitted
me to his room. I found it darkened by
heavy closed curtains, and the sufferer seated
in an easy chair at the remote end, near a moderate
coal-fire. I approached him rapidly, and,
taking his extended soft hand and attenuated
fingers, said, ‘My dear sir, I am most honored
and gratified by this privilege of being again permitted
to renew to you, personally, the expression
of my unabated attachment and reverence.’
“‘But, my dear sir,’ he playfully answered,
‘you have a very cold hand to convey these
sentiments to an invalid such as I am. Come,
draw up a chair, and sit near me; I am compelled
to use my voice but little, and very carefully.’
“Doing as he desired, I expressed my deep regret
that he was still confined to a sick room,
and added, that I hoped the return of spring,
and the early recurrence of warmer weather
would mitigate his more urgent symptoms, and
enable him again to visit the Senate Chamber.
“‘Sir,’ said he, ‘these are the kind wishes
of a friend, but that hope does not commend
itself to my judgment. You may remember
that last year I visited the Havanna, in the expectation
that its remarkably genial and mild
climate would benefit me—but I found no relief;
thence to New Orleans, a favorite resort of mine,
with no better result. I even became impatient
for the return of autumn, thinking that possibly
its clear bracing atmosphere at Ashland might
lessen my distressing cough; but sir, the Havanna,
New Orleans, and Ashland have all failed
to bring me any perceptible benefit.’
“‘May I ask, my dear sir, what part of the
twenty-four hours are you most comfortable?’
“‘Fortunately, sir, very fortunately—I should
add, mercifully—during the night. Then, I am
singularly placid and composed: I am very wakeful,
and during the earlier part of it my thoughts
take a wide range, but I lie most tranquilly, without[Pg 398]
any sensation of weariness, or nervous excitement,
and toward day fall into a quiet and
undisturbed sleep; this continues to a late hour
in the morning, when I rise and breakfast about
ten o’clock. Subsequently my cough for an
hour or two, is very exhausting. After one
o’clock, and during the evening, I am tolerably
free of it, and during this period, I see a few of
my close personal friends. And thus passes the
twenty-four hours.’
“‘I was grieved to learn, through the public
prints, that Mrs. Clay has been ill; may I hope
that she is better?’
“‘She has been sick; indeed, at one time, I
was much alarmed at her situation; but I thank
God,’ (with deep emotion,) ‘she is quite recovered.’
“‘I almost expected the gratification of meeting
your son James and his wife here.’
“‘No, sir; you may remember that I once told
you that he had made a very fortunate investment
in the suburbs of St. Louis. This property
has become valuable, and requires his attention
and management: he has removed thither
with his family. It’s a long way off, and I would
not have them make a winter journey here; beside,
I have every comfort and attention that a
sick man can require. My apartments, as you
perceive, are far removed from the noise and
bustle of the house; and I am surrounded by
warm and anxious friends, ever seeking to anticipate
my wishes.’
“During this brief conversation—in which we
were quite alone—Mr. Clay had several paroxysms
of coughing. Once he rose and walked
across the room to a spittoon. The most careful
use of his voice seemed greatly and constantly
to irritate his lungs. I could not prolong the
interview, though thoroughly impressed with the
belief—since mournfully verified—that it would
be the last.
“I rose, took my leave, invoking God’s blessing
on him; and, as in the presence of Royalty,
bowed myself out of the room backward.
“On rising from his seat, as above remarked,
he stood as erect and commanding as ever; and
while sitting in close proximity to him, his burning
eye fixed intently upon me, it seemed as if
rays of light were emitted from each. This
phenomenon is not unusual in consumptive patients,
the extraordinary brilliancy of the eye being
often remarked; but in Mr. Clay’s case it was so
intense as to make me almost nervous, partaking
as it did of the supernatural.
“I have thus given you the arrangement, and
very nearly the precise words,[11] of this my last
interview with one of the greatest men of the
age. It was altogether a scene to be remembered—a
sick room, with the thoughts of a nation
daily directed to it! It is full of pathos,
and approaches the sublime.”
The day previous to the call and conversation
above described, the Editor of the Knickerbocker
Magazine saw Mr. Clay in the street at Washington,
and thus mentions the fact in the “Gossip”
of his April Number: “Passing the National
Hotel at two o’clock, on this bright and cloudless
warm Sunday, we saw a tall figure, clad in a
blue cloak, attended only by a lady and child,
enter a carriage before the door. Once seen, it
was a face never to be forgotten. It was Henry
Clay. That eagle-eye was not dimmed, although
the great statesman’s force was abated. We
raised our hat, and bowed our reverence and admiration.
Our salutation was gracefully returned,
and the carriage was driven away.
“As we walked on, to keep an engagement
to dine, we thought of the late words of that
eminent patriot: ‘If the days of my usefulness,
as I have too much reason to fear, be indeed
passed, I desire not to linger an impotent spectator
of the oft-scanned field of life. I have never
looked upon old age, deprived of the faculty of
enjoyment, of intellectual perceptions and energies,
with any sympathy; and for such I think
the day of fate can not arrive too soon.’ One
can hardly choose but drop a tear over such a
remark from such a man.”
Thus “broken with the storms of state,” and
scathed with many a fiery conflict, Henry Clay
gradually descended toward the tomb. “During
this period,” says one of his Kentucky colleagues,
“he conversed much and cheerfully with his
friends, and took great interest in public affairs.
While he did not expect a restoration to health,
he cherished the hope that the mild season of
spring would bring him strength enough to return
to Ashland, that he might die in the bosom
of his family. But, alas! spring, that brings
life to all Nature, brought no life nor hope to
him. After the month of March, his vital powers
rapidly wasted, and for weeks he lay patiently
awaiting the stroke of death. The approach of
the destroyer had no terror for him. No clouds
overhung his future. He met his end with composure,
and his pathway to the grave was lightened
by the immortal hopes which spring from
the Christian faith. Not long before his death,
having just returned from Kentucky, I bore to
him a token of affection from his excellent wife.
Never can I forget his appearance, his manner,
or his words. After speaking of his family and
his country, he changed the conversation to his
own fortune, and, looking on me with his fine
eyes undimmed, and his voice full of its original
compass and melody, he said: ‘I am not afraid
to die, sir; I have hope, faith, and some confidence:
I do not think any man can be entirely
certain in regard to his future state, but I have
an abiding trust in the merits and mediation of
our Saviour.'”
“On the evening previous to his departure,”
writes his excellent pastor and faithful attendant,
Rev. Dr. Butler, “sitting an hour in silence
by his side, I could not but realize—when I heard
him in the slight wanderings of his mind, to other
days and other scenes, murmuring the words,
‘My mother, mother, mother!’ and saying, ‘My
dear wife!’ as if she were present. I could not
but realize then, and rejoiced to think, how near
was the blessed re-union of his weary heart with[Pg 399]
the loved dead, and the living who must soon
follow him to his rest, whose spirits even then
seemed to visit and to cheer his memory and his
hope.”
Mr. Clay’s countenance immediately after death
looked like an antique cast. His features seemed
to be perfectly classical; and the repose of all
the muscles gave the lifeless body a quiet majesty,
seldom reached by living human being. His last
request was that his body might be buried, not
in Washington, but in his own family vault in
his beloved Kentucky, by the side of his relations
and friends. May he rest in peace in his honored
grave!
A DUEL IN 1830.
I had just arrived at Marseilles with the diligence,
in which three young men, apparently
merchants or commercial travelers, were the
companions of my journey. They came from
Paris, and were enthusiastic about the events
which had lately happened there, and in which
they boasted of having taken part. I was, for
my part, quiet and reserved; for I thought it
much better, at a time of such political excitement
in the south of France, where party passions
always rise so high, to do nothing that
would attract attention; and my three fellow-travelers
no doubt looked on me as a plain,
common-place seaman, who had been to the luxurious
metropolis for his pleasure or on business.
My presence, it seemed, did not incommode
them, for they talked on as if I had not been
there. Two of them were gay, merry, but rather
coarse boon-companions; the third, an elegant
youth, blooming and tall, with luxuriant black
curling hair, and dark soft eyes. In the hotel
where we dined, and where I sat a little distance
off, smoking my cigar, the conversation turned
on various love-adventures, and the young man,
whom they called Alfred, showed his comrades
a packet of delicately perfumed letters, and a
superb lock of beautiful fair hair.
He told them that in the days of July he had
been slightly wounded, and that his only fear,
while he lay on the ground, was, that if he died,
some mischance might prevent Clotilde from
weeping over his grave. “But now all is well,”
he continued. “I am going to fetch a nice little
sum from my uncle at Marseilles, who is just at
this moment in good-humor, on account of the
discomfiture of the Jesuits and the Bourbons.
In my character of one of the heroes of July, he
will forgive me all my present and past follies:
I shall pass an examination at Paris, and then
settle down in quiet, and live happily with my
Clotilde.” Thus they talked together; and by-and-by
we parted in the court-yard of the coach-office.
Close by was a brilliantly-illumined coffee-house.
I entered, and seated myself at a little
table, in a distant corner of the room. Two persons
only were still in the saloon, in an opposite
corner, and before them stood two glasses of
brandy. One was an elderly, stately, and portly
gentleman, with dark-red face, and dressed in a
quiet colored suit; it was easy to perceive that
he was a clergyman. But the appearance of the
other was very striking. He could not be far
from sixty years of age, was tall and thin, and
his gray, indeed almost white hair, which, however,
rose from his head in luxurious fullness,
gave to his pale countenance a peculiar expression
that made one feel uncomfortable. The
brawny neck was almost bare; a simple, carelessly-knotted
black kerchief alone encircled it;
thick, silver-gray whiskers met together at his
chin; a blue frock-coat, pantaloons of the same
color, silk stockings, shoes with thick soles, and
a dazzlingly-white waistcoat and linen, completed
his equipment. A thick stick leant in
one corner, and his broad-brimmed hat hung
against the wall. There was a certain convulsive
twitching of the thin lips of this person,
which was very remarkable; and there seemed,
when he looked fixedly, to be a smouldering fire
in his large, glassy, grayish-blue eyes. He was,
it was evident, a seaman like myself—a strong
oak that fate had shaped into a mast, over which
many a storm had blustered, but which had been
too tough to be shivered, and still defied the tempest
and the lightning. There lay a gloomy
resignation as well as a wild fanaticism in those
features. The large bony hand, with its immense
fingers, was spread out or clenched, according
to the turn which the conversation with
the clergyman took. Suddenly he stepped up to
me. I was reading a royalist newspaper. He
lighted his cigar.
“You are right, sir; you are quite right not
to read those infamous Jacobin journals.” I
looked up, and gave no answer. He continued:
“A sailor?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And have seen service?”
“Yes.”
“You are still in active service?”
“No.” And then, to my great satisfaction,
for my patience was well-nigh exhausted, the
examination was brought to a conclusion.
Just then, an evil destiny led my three young
fellow-travelers into the room. They soon seated
themselves at a table, and drank some glasses of
champagne to Clotilde’s health. All went on
well; but when they began to sing the Marseillaise
and the Parisienne, the face of the gray
man began to twitch, and it was evident a storm
was brewing. Calling to the waiter, he said with
a loud voice, “Tell those blackguards yonder not
to annoy me with their low songs!”
The young men sprang up in a fury, and asked
if it was to them he alluded.
“Whom else should I mean,” said the gray
man, with a contemptuous sneer.
“But we may drink and sing if we like, and
to whom we like,” said the young man. “Vive
la République et vive Clotilde!“
“One as blackguardly as the other!” cried the
gray-beard tauntingly; and a wine-glass, that
flew at his head from the hand of the dark-haired
youth, was the immediate rejoinder. Slowly
wiping his forehead, which bled and dripped[Pg 400]
with the spilled wine, the old man said quite
quietly “To-morrow, at the Cap Verd!” and
seated himself again with the most perfect
composure.
The young man expressed his determination
to take the matter on himself; that he alone
would settle the quarrel, and promised to appear
on the morrow at the appointed time. They
then all departed noisily. The old man rose
quietly, and turning to me, said: “Sir, you have
been witness to the insult; be witness also to
the satisfaction. Here is my address: I shall
expect you at five o’clock. Good-night, Monsieur
l’Abbé! To-morrow, there will be one
Jacobin less, and one lost soul the more. Good-night!”
and taking his hat and stick, he departed.
His companion the abbé followed soon
after.
I now learned the history of this singular man.
He was descended from a good family of Marseilles.
Destined for the navy while still young,
he was sent on board ship before the Revolution,
and while yet of tender years. Later, he was
taken prisoner; and after many strange adventures,
returned in 1793 to France: was about to
marry, but having been mixed up with the disturbances
at Toulon, managed to escape by a
miracle to England; and learned before long
that his father, mother, one brother, a sister of
sixteen years of age, and his betrothed, had all
been led to the guillotine to the tune of the Marseillaise.
Thirst for revenge, revenge on the
detested Jacobins, was now his sole aim. For a
long time he roved about in the Indian seas,
sometimes as a privateer, at others as a slave-dealer;
and was said to have caused the tri-colored
flag much damage, while he acquired a
considerable fortune for himself. With the return
of the Bourbons, he came back to France,
and settled at Marseilles. He lived, however,
very retired, and employed his large fortune
solely for the poor, for distressed seamen, and
for the clergy. Alms and masses were his only
objects of expense. It may easily be believed,
that he acquired no small degree of popularity
among the lower classes and the clergy. But,
strangely enough, when not at church, he spent
his time with the most celebrated fencing-masters,
and had acquired in the use of the pistol
and the sword a dexterity that was hardly to be
paralleled. In the year 1815, when the royalist
reaction broke out in La Vendee, he roved about
for a long time at the head of a band of followers.
When at last this opportunity of cooling
his rage was taken from him by the return of
order, he looked out for some victim who was
known to him by his revolutionary principles,
and sought to provoke him to combat. The
younger, the richer, the happier the chosen victim
was, the more desirable did he seem. The
landlord told me he himself knew of seven young
persons who had fallen before his redoubted
sword.
The next morning at five o’clock, I was at the
house of this singular character. He lived on
the ground-floor, in a small simple room, where,
excepting a large crucifix, and a picture covered
with black crape, with the date, 1794, under it,
the only ornaments were some nautical instruments,
a trombone, and a human skull. The picture
was the portrait of his guillotined bride; it
remained always vailed, excepting only when he
had slaked his revenge with blood; then he uncovered
it for eight days, and indulged himself in
the sight. The skull was that of his mother. His
bed consisted of the usual hammock slung from
the ceiling. When I entered, he was at his devotions,
and a little negro brought me meanwhile
a cup of chocolate and a cigar. When he had
risen from his knees, he saluted me in a friendly
manner, as if we were merely going for a morning
walk together; afterward he opened a closet,
took out of it a case with a pair of English pistols,
and a couple of excellent swords, which I
put under my arm; and thus provided, we proceeded
along the quay toward the port. The
boatmen seemed all to know him: “Peter, your
boat!” He seated himself in the stern.
“You will have the goodness to row,” he
said; “I will take the tiller, so that my hand
may not become unsteady.”
I took off my coat, rowed away briskly, and
as the wind was favorable, we hoisted a sail, and
soon reached Cap Verd. We could remark
from afar our three young men, who were sitting
at breakfast in a garden, not far from the
shore. This was the garden of a restaurateur,
and was the favorite resort of the inhabitants of
Marseilles. Here you find excellent fish; and
also, in high perfection, the famous bollenbresse,
a national dish in Provence, as celebrated as the
olla podrida of Spain. How many a love-meeting
has occurred in this place! But this time it
was not Love that brought the parties together,
but Hate, his step-brother; and in Provence the
one is as ardent, quick, and impatient as the
other.
My business was soon accomplished. It
consisted in asking the young men what weapons
they chose, and with which of them the
duel was to be fought. The dark-haired youth—his
name was M—— L——,—insisted that
he alone should settle the business, and his
friends were obliged to give their word not to
interfere.
“You are too stout,” he said to the one,
pointing to his portly figure; “and you”—to the
other—”are going to be married; besides, I am
a first-rate hand with the sword. However, I will
not take advantage of my youth and strength,
but will choose the pistol, unless the gentleman
yonder prefers the sword.”
A movement of convulsive joy animated the
face of my old captain: “The sword is the
weapon of the French gentleman,” he said; “I
shall be happy to die with it in my hand.”
“Be it so. But your age?”
“Never mind; make haste, and en garde.”
It was a strange sight: the handsome young
man on one side, overbearing confidence in his
look, with his youthful form, full of grace and
suppleness; and opposite him that long figure,[Pg 401]
half naked—for his blue shirt was furled up
from his sinewy arm, and his broad, scarred
breast was entirely bare. In the old man, every
sinew was like iron wire: his whole weight
resting on his left hip, the long arm—on which,
in sailor fashion, a red cross, three lilies, and
other marks, were tattooed—held out before
him, and the cunning, murderous gaze riveted
on his adversary.
“‘Twill be but a mere scratch,” said one of
the three friends to me. I made no reply, but
was convinced beforehand that my captain, who
was an old practitioner, would treat the matter
more seriously. Young L——, whose perfumed
coat was lying near, appeared to me to be already
given over to corruption. He began the attack,
advancing quickly. This confirmed me in my
opinion; for although he might be a practiced
fencer in the schools, this was proof that he could
not frequently have been engaged in serious combat,
or he would not have rushed forward so incautiously
against an adversary whom he did not
as yet know. His opponent profited by his ardor,
and retired step by step, and at first only
with an occasional ward and half thrust. Young
L——, getting hotter and hotter, grew flurried;
while every ward of his adversary proclaimed, by
its force and exactness, the master of the art of
fence. At length the young man made a lunge;
the captain parried it with a powerful movement,
and, before L—— could recover his position,
made a thrust in return, his whole body falling
forward as he did so, exactly like a picture at the
Académie des Armes—”the hand elevated, the leg
stretched out”—and his sword went through his
antagonist, for nearly half its length, just under
the shoulder. The captain made an almost imperceptible
turn with his hand, and in an instant
was again en garde. L—— felt himself wounded;
he let his sword fall, while with his other
hand he pressed his side; his eyes grew dim,
and he sank into the arms of his friends. The
captain wiped his sword carefully, gave it to me,
and dressed himself with the most perfect composure.
“I have the honor to wish you good-morning,
gentlemen: had you not sung yesterday,
you would not have had to weep to-day;” and
thus saying, he went toward his boat. “‘Tis
the seventeenth!” he murmured; “but this was
easy work—a mere greenhorn from the fencing-schools
of Paris. ‘Twas a very different thing
when I had to do with the old Bonapartist officers,
those brigands of the Loire.” But it is
quite impossible to translate into another language
the fierce energy of this speech. Arrived
at the port, he threw the boatman a few
pieces of silver, saying: “Here, Peter; here’s
something for you.”
“Another requiem and a mass for a departed
soul, at the church of St. Géneviève—is it not so,
captain? But that is a matter of course.” And
soon after we reached the dwelling of the
captain.
The little negro brought us a cold pasty,
oysters, and two bottles of vin d’Artois. “Such
a walk betimes gives an appetite,” said the captain,
gayly. “How strangely things fall out!”
he continued, in a serious tone. “I have long
wished to draw the crape-vail from before that
picture, for you must know I only deem myself
worthy to do so when I have sent some Jacobin
or Bonapartist into the other world, to crave
pardon from that murdered angel; and so I went
yesterday to the coffee-house with my old friend
the abbé, whom I knew ever since he was field-preacher
to the Chouans, in the hope of finding
a victim for the sacrifice among the readers of
the liberal journals. The confounded waiters,
however, betray my intention; and when I
am there, nobody will ask for a radical paper.
When you appeared, my worthy friend, I at first
thought I had found the right man, and I was
impatient—for I had been waiting for more
than three hours for a reader of the ‘National’
or of ‘Figaro.’ How glad I am that I at once
discovered you to be no friend of such infamous
papers! How grieved should I be, if I
had had to do with you instead of with that
young fellow!” For my part, I was in no
mood even for self-felicitations. At that time,
I was a reckless young fellow, going through the
conventionalisms of society without a thought;
but the event of the morning had made even
me reflect.
“Do you think he will die, captain?” I asked.
“Is the wound mortal?”
“For certain!” he replied, with a slight smile.
“I have a knack—of course for Jacobins and
Bonapartists only—when I thrust en quarte, to
draw out the sword by an imperceptible movement
of the hand, en tierce, or vice versâ, according to
circumstances; and thus the blade turns in the
wound—and that kills; for the lung is injured,
and mortification is sure to follow.”
On returning to my hotel, where L—— also
was staying, I met the physician, who had just
visited him. He gave up all hope. The captain
spoke truly, for the slight movement of the
hand and the turn of the blade had accomplished
their aim, and the lung was injured beyond the
power of cure. The next morning early, L——
died. I went to the captain, who was returning
home with the abbé. “The abbé has just been
to read a mass for him,” he said; “it is a benefit
which, on such occasions, I am willing he
should enjoy—more, however, from friendship
for him, than out of pity for the accursed soul
of a Jacobin, which in my eyes is worth less
than a dog’s! But walk in, sir.”
The picture, a wonderfully lovely maidenly
face, with rich curls falling around it, and in
the costume of the last ten years of the preceding
century, was now unvailed. A good breakfast,
like that of yesterday, stood on the table.
With a moistened eye, and, turning to the portrait,
he said: “Thérèse, to thy memory!” and
emptied his glass at a draught. Surprised and
moved, I quitted the strange man. On the stairs
of the hotel I met the coffin, which was just
being carried up for L——; and I thought to
myself: “Poor Clotilde! you will not be able to
weep over his grave.”
Monthly Record of Current Events.
THE UNITED STATES.
Our last Monthly Record reported the proceedings
of the Democratic National Convention held at
Baltimore on the 1st of June. On the 16th of the
same month, the Whig National Convention met at
the same place, and was permanently organized by
the election of Hon. John G. Chapman, of Maryland,
President, with thirty-one Vice-Presidents and thirteen
Secretaries. Two days were occupied in preliminary
business, part of which was the investigation
of the right to several contested seats from the
States of Vermont and New York. On the third
day, a committee, consisting of one from each State,
selected by the delegation thereof, was appointed to
report a series of resolutions for the action of the
Convention. The resolutions were reported at the
ensuing session, on the same day, by Hon. George
Ashmun, of Massachusetts. They set forth that the
Government of the United States is one of limited
powers, all powers not expressly granted, or necessarily
implied by the Constitution, being reserved to
the States or the people;—that while struggling freedom
every where has the warmest sympathy of the
Whig party, our true mission as a Republic is not to
propagate our opinions, or to impose on other countries
our form of government by artifice or force, but
to teach by our example, and to show by our success,
moderation, and justice, the blessings of self-government
and the advantage of free institutions;—that
revenue ought to be raised by duties on imports laid
with a just discrimination, whereby suitable encouragement
may be afforded to American Industry;—that
Congress has power to open and repair harbors,
and remove obstructions from navigable rivers, whenever
such improvements are necessary for the common
defense and for the protection and facility of
commerce with foreign nations or among the States;—that
the Compromise acts, including the fugitive
slave law, are received and acquiesced in as a final
settlement, in principle and substance, of the dangerous
and exciting questions which they embrace;
that the Whig party will maintain them, and insist
upon their strict enforcement until time and experience
shall demonstrate the necessity of further
legislation, to guard against their evasion or abuse,
not impairing their present efficiency; and that all
further agitation of the questions thus settled is deprecated
as dangerous to our peace; and all efforts to
continue or renew that agitation, whenever, wherever,
or however the attempt may be made, will be
discountenanced.—These resolutions, after some discussion,
were adopted by a vote of 227 yeas, and
66 nays. Ballotings for a Presidential candidate
were then commenced, and continued until Monday,
the fifth day of the session. There were 396 electoral
votes represented in Convention, which made
149 (a majority) essential to a choice. Upon the
first ballot, President Fillmore received 133, General
Scott 131, and Daniel Webster 29 votes; and for
fifty ballotings this was nearly the relative number
of votes received by each. On the fifty-third ballot,
General Scott receiving 159 votes, Mr. Fillmore
112, and Mr. Webster 21, the former was
declared to have been duly nominated, and that
nomination was made unanimous. Hon. William
A. Graham, of North Carolina, was then nominated
on the second ballot for Vice-President; and resolutions
were adopted complimentary to Mr. Fillmore
and Mr. Webster; after which the Convention
adjourned.
In reply to a communication from the President
of the Convention, apprising him of his nomination,
General Scott has written a letter, dated June 24th,
declaring that he “accepts it with the resolutions
annexed.” He adds, that if elected, he shall recommend
or approve of “such measures as shall secure
an early settlement of the public domain favorable
to actual settlers, but consistent, nevertheless, with
a due regard to the equal rights of the whole American
people in that vast national inheritance;”—and
also of an amendment to our Naturalization laws,
“giving to all foreigners the right of citizenship who
shall faithfully serve, in time of war, one year on
board of our public ships, or in our land-forces, regular
or volunteer, on their receiving an honorable
discharge from the service.” He adds, that he should
not tolerate any sedition, disorder, faction, or resistance
to the law or the Union on any pretext, in any
part of the land; and that his leading aim would be
“to advance the greatness and happiness of this
Republic, and thus to cherish and encourage the
cause of constitutional liberty throughout the world.”
Mr. Graham also accepted his nomination, with a
cordial approval of the declarations made in the
resolutions adopted by the Convention.——Since
the adjournment of the Convention, a letter from
President Fillmore, addressed to that body, has been
published. It was intrusted to the care of Mr. Babcock,
the delegate in Convention from the Erie, N. Y.,
district, in which Mr. Fillmore resides; and he was
authorized to present it, and withdraw Mr. Fillmore’s
name as a candidate whenever he should think it
proper to do so. In this letter, Mr. Fillmore refers
to the circumstances of embarrassment under which
he entered upon the duties of the Presidency, and
says that he at once determined within himself to
decline a re-election, and to make that decision
public. From doing so, however, he was at that
time, as well as subsequently, dissuaded by the
earnest remonstrances of friends. He expresses the
hope that the Convention may be able to unite in
nominating some one who, if elected, may be more
successful in retaining the confidence of the party
than he has been;—he had endeavored faithfully to
discharge his duty to the country, and in the consciousness
of having acted from upright motives and
according to his best judgment, for the public good,
he was quite willing to have sacrificed himself for
the sake of his country.
The death of Henry Clay has been the most
marked event of the month. He expired at Washington,
on Tuesday, June 29, after a protracted illness,
and at the advanced age of 75 years. His decease
was announced in eloquent and appropriate terms
in both branches of Congress, and general demonstrations
of regard for his memory and regret at his
loss took place throughout the country. His history
is already so familiar to the American public, that
we add nothing here to the notice given of him in
another part of this Magazine. His remains were
taken to Lexington, Ky., for interment.
The proceedings of Congress since our last Record
have not been of special importance. In the Senate
on the 28th of June a communication was received
from the President communicating part of the correspondence
had with the Austrian government concerning[Pg 403]
the imprisonment of Mr. C. L. Brace. The
principal document was a letter from Prince Schwarzenberg,
stating that Mr. Brace was found to have
been the bearer of important papers from Hungarian
fugitives in America to persons in Hungary very
much suspected, and also to have had in his possession
inflammatory and treasonable pamphlets; and
that his imprisonment was therefore fully justified.
A letter from Mr. Webster to the American Chargé
at Vienna, in regard to Chevalier Hulsemann’s complaints
of the U. S. government, has been also submitted
to the Senate. Mr. W. says that notwithstanding
his long residence in this country Mr.
Hulsemann seems to have yet to learn that no foreign
government, or its representative, can take just
offense at any thing which an officer of this government
may say in his private capacity; and that a
Chargé d’Affairs can only hold intercourse with this
government through the Department of State. Mr.
W. declines to take any notice of the specific subjects
of complaint presented by Mr. H.——In the
House of Representatives the only important action
taken has been the passage of a bill providing for
the donation to the several States, for purposes of
education and internal improvement, of large tracts
of the public domain. Each of the old States receives
one hundred and fifty thousand acres for each
Senator and Representative in the present Congress:
to the new States the portions awarded are still larger.
The bill was passed in the House on the 26th of
June by a vote of ayes 96, nays 86. The bill was
presented by Mr. Bennett of New York, and is regarded
as important, inasmuch as it secures to the
old States a much larger participation in the public
lands than they have hitherto seemed likely to obtain.
A National Agricultural Convention was held at
Washington on the 24th of June, of which Marshall
Wilder of Massachusetts was elected President. It
was decided to form a National Agricultural Society,
to hold yearly meetings at Washington.——The
Supreme Court in New York on the 11th of June
pronounced a judgment, by a majority, declaring
the American Art-Union to be a lottery within the
prohibition of the Constitution of the State, and that
it was therefore illegal. An appeal has been taken
by the Managers to the Court of Appeals, where it
has been argued, but no decision has yet been given.——Madame
Alboni, the celebrated contralto singer,
arrived in New York early in June and has given
two successful concerts.——Governor Kossuth delivered
an address in New York on the 21st of June
upon the future of nations, insisting that it was the
duty of the United States to establish, what the
world has not yet seen, a national policy resting
upon Christian principles as its basis. He urged
the cause of his country upon public attention, and
declared his mission to the United States to be
closed. On the 23d he delivered a farewell address
to the German citizens of New York, in which he
spoke at length of the relations of Germany to the
cause of European freedom and of the duty of the
German citizens of the United States to exert an
influence upon the American government favorable
to the protection of liberty throughout the world. It
is stated that his aggregate receipts of money in this
country have been somewhat less than one hundred
thousand dollars.
In Texas, a company of dragoons, under Lieutenant
Haven, has had a skirmish with the Camanche Indians,
from whom four captive children and thirty-eight
stolen horses were recovered. About the 1st
of June a family, consisting of a father, mother, and
six children, while encamped at La Mina, were attacked
by a party of Camanches, and all killed except
the father and one daughter, who were severely
wounded, and two young children who were rescued.
A few days previous a party of five Californians were
all killed by Mexicans near San Fernando. On the
evening of the 10th of May seven Americans were
attacked by a gang of about forty Mexicans and Indians,
at a lake called Campacuas, and five of them
were killed. A good deal of excitement prevailed in
consequence of these repeated outrages, and of the
failure of the General Government to provide properly
for the protection of the parties.——Early in
June, as the U. S. steamer Camanche was ascending
the Rio Bravo, five persons landed from her and killed
a cow, when the owner came forward and demanded
payment. This was refused with insults, and the
marauders returned on board. The steamer continued
her voyage, and the pilot soon saw a party of
men approaching the bank, and fired upon them.
They soon after returned the fire, wounding two of
the passengers, one being the deputy-collector of
the Custom-house of Rio Grande, and the other his
son.
From California we have intelligence to the
1st of June. There is no political news of interest.
A party of seventy-four Frenchmen left California last
fall for Sonora in Mexico, accompanied by one American,
named Moore. Mr. M. had returned to San
Francisco with intelligence that the party had been
favorably received by the Mexican authorities, who
had bestowed upon them a grant of three leagues of
land near Carcospa, at the head of the Santa Cruz
valley, on condition that they should cultivate it for
ten years without selling it, and should not permit
any Americans to settle among them. They had also
received from the Mexican government horses, farming
utensils, provisions, and other necessaries, with
permission to have five hundred of their countrymen
join them. They were intending soon to begin working
the rich mines in that neighborhood. Mr. Moore
had been compelled by threats and force to leave
them. On his way back he met at Guyamas a party
of twelve who had been driven back, while going to
California, by Indians. While on their way to Sonora,
they had fallen in with a settlement of seventy-five
Frenchmen, who treated them with great harshness,
and would have killed them but for the protection
of the Mexican authorities. This hostility between
the French and American settlers in California is
ascribed to difficulties which occurred in the mines
between them. The Mexicans, whose hatred of the
Americans in that part of the country seems to be
steadily increasing, have taken advantage of these
dissensions, and encourage the French in their hostility
to the Americans.——Previous to its adjournment,
which took place on the 5th of May, the Legislature
passed an act to take the census of the State
before the 1st of November.——The feeling of hostility
to the Chinese settlers in California seems to
be increasing. Public meetings had been held in
various quarters, urging their removal, and Committees
of Correspondence had been formed to concert
measures for effecting this object. It appears
from official reports that the whole number of Chinamen
who had arrived at San Francisco, from February,
1848, to May, 1852, was 11,953, and that of these
only 167 had returned or died. Of the whole number
arrived only seven were women.—Nine missionaries
of the Methodist Episcopal Church had recently arrived,
intending to labor in California and Oregon.—The
intelligence from the mines continued to be
highly encouraging. The weather was favorable; the
deposits continued to yield abundantly, and labor was
generally well rewarded.
From the Sandwich Islands our intelligence is
to the 18th of May. The session of the Hawaiian
Parliament was opened on the 13th of April. The
opening speech of the King sets forth that the foreign
relations of the island are of a friendly character, except
so far as regards France, from the government
of which no response has been received as yet to
propositions on the part of Hawaii. He states that
the peace of his dominions has been threatened by
an invasion of private adventurers from California;
but that an appeal to the United States Commissioner,
promptly acted upon by Captain Gardner, of the
U. S. ship Vandalia, tranquilized the public mind.
He had taken steps to organize a military force for
the future defense of the island. In the Upper
House the draft of a new Constitution had been reported,
and was under discussion. In the other
House steps had been taken to contradict the report
that the islands desired annexation to the United
States.
From New Mexico we learn that Colonel Sumner
had removed his head-quarters to Santa Fé, in
order to give more effective military support to the
government. Governor Calhoun had left the country
for a visit to Washington, and died on the way: the
government was thus virtually in the hands of Colonel
Sumner. The Indians and Mexicans continued
to be troublesome.
From Utah our advices are to May 1st. Brigham
Young had been again elected President. The receipts
at the tithing office from November, 1848, to
March, 1852, were $244,747, mostly in property; in
loans, &c., $145,513; the expenditures were $353,765—leaving
a balance of $36,495. Missionaries
were appointed at the General Conference to Italy,
Calcutta, and England. Edward Hunter was ordained
presiding bishop of the whole church: sixty-seven
priests were ordained. The Report speaks of
the church and settlements as being in a highly
flourishing condition.
MEXICO.
We have intelligence from Mexico to the 5th of
June. Political affairs seem to be in a confused
and unpromising condition. Previous to the adjournment
of the present Congress the Cabinet addressed
a note to the Chamber of Deputies, asking them to
take some decided step whereby to rescue the government
from the difficult position in which it will be
placed, without power or resources, and to save the
nation from the necessary consequences of such a
crisis. It was suggested that the government might
be authorized to take, in connection with committees
to be appointed by the Chamber, the resolutions
necessary—such resolutions to be executed under the
responsibility of the Ministry. This note was referred
to a committee, which almost immediately
reported that there was no reason why this demand
for extraordinary powers should be granted. This
report was adopted by a vote of 74 to 13. Congress
adjourned on the 21st of May. The President’s Address
referred to the critical circumstances in which
the country was placed when the Congress first met,
which made it to be feared that its mission would be
only the saddest duty reserved to man on earth, that
of assisting at the burial of his country. The flame
of war still blazed upon their frontier: negotiations
designed to facilitate means of communication which
would make Mexico the centre of the commercial
world, had terminated in a manner to render possible
a renewal of that war; and the commercial crisis had
reached a development which threatened the domestic
peace and the foreign alliances of the country.
There was a daily increase in the deficit; distrust
prevailed between the different departments; the
country was fatigued by its convulsions and disorders,
and weakened by its dissensions; and it seemed
impossible to prolong the existence of the government.
How the country had been rescued from such
perils it was not easy to say, unless it were by the
special aid and protection of Providence. Guided
by its convictions and sustained by its hope, the
government had employed all the means at its disposal,
and would still endeavor to draw all possible
benefit from its resources, stopping only when those
resources should arrest its action. Fearing that this
event might speedily happen, a simplification of the
powers of the Legislature, during its vacation, had
been proposed, instead of leaving all to the exercise
of a discretionary power by the Executive. To this,
however, the Legislature had not assented: and,
consequently, the government considering its responsibility
protected for the future, would spare no
means or sacrifices to fulfill its difficult and delicate
mission. To this address the Vice President of the
Chamber replied, sketching the labors of the session,
and saying that the legislative donation of the extraordinary
powers demanded, could not have been
granted without a violation of the Constitution—a
fact with which the Executive should be deeply impressed.
The means made use of up to the present
time would be sufficient, if applied with care. The
Legislature hoped, as much as it desired, that such
would be the case. Great anxiety was felt as to the
nature of the measures which the government would
adopt: the general expectation seemed to be that the
President Arista would take the whole government
into his own hands, and the suggestion was received
with a good deal of favor. It was rumored that the aid
of the United States had been sought for such an attempt—to
be given in the shape of six millions of dollars,
in return for abrogating that clause of the treaty
which requires them to protect the Mexican frontier
from the Indians. This, however, is mere conjecture
as yet.——Serious difficulties have arisen between
the Mexican authorities and the American Consul,
Mr. F. W. Rice, at Acapulco. Mr. Rice sold the propeller
Stockton, for wages due to her hands: she was
bid off by Mr. Snyder, the chief engineer, at $3000
cash down, and $8500 within twenty-four hours after
the sale. He asked and obtained two delays in
making the first payment; and finally said he could
not pay it until the next day. Upon this Mr. Rice
again advertised the vessel for sale, on his account:
she was sold to Capt. Triton, of Panama, for $4250.
Mr. Snyder then applied to the Mexican court, and
the judge went on board, broke the Consular seals,
took possession of the vessel, and advertised her
again for sale. Mr. Rice proclaimed the sale illegal,
and protested against it, and, further, prevented Mr.
Snyder forcibly from tearing down his posted protest.
At the day of sale no bidders appeared. The Mexican
authorities then arrested Mr. Rice, and committed
him to prison, where he remained at the latest
dates. Proper representations have of course been
made to the U. S. government, and the matter
will doubtless receive proper attention.——An encounter
had taken place in Sonora, between a party
of 300 Indians and a detachment of regular Mexican
troops and National Guards. The latter were forced
to retreat.——Gen. Mejia; who acquired some distinction
during the late war, died recently in the city
of Mexico, and Gen. Michelena, at Morelia.——The
refusal of Congress to admit foreign flour, free of
duty, had created a good deal of feeling in those districts
where the want of it is most severely felt. In
Vera Cruz, a large public meeting was held, at which[Pg 405]
it was determined to request the local authorities to
send for a supply of flour, without regard to the law.——The
State of Durango is in a melancholy condition:
hunger, pestilence, and continued incursions of
the Indians, have rendered it nearly desolate.——Four
of the revolutionists under Caravajal, captured
by the Mexicans, were executed by Gen. Avalos, at
Matamoras, in June: two of them were Americans.
SOUTH AMERICA.
There is no intelligence of special interest from any
of the South American States. From Buenos Ayres,
our dates are to the 15th of May, when every thing
was quiet, and political affairs were in a promising
condition. The new Legislature met on the 1st, and
resolutions had been introduced tendering public
thanks to General Urquiza for having delivered the
country from tyranny. He had been invested with
complete control of the foreign relations, and the
affairs of peace and war. Don Lopez was elected
Governor of the province of Buenos Ayres on the 13th,
receiving 33 of the 38 votes in the Legislative Chamber.
The choice gives universal satisfaction to the
friends of the new order of things. The Governors
of all the provinces were to meet at Santa Fé on the
29th, to determine upon the form of a Central Government.
General Urquiza was to meet them in
Convention there, and it is stated that he was to be
accompanied by Mr. Pendleton, the United States
Chargé, whose aid had been asked, especially in explaining
in Convention the nature and working of
American institutions.——At Rio Janeiro a dissolution
of the Cabinet was anticipated. Great dissatisfaction
was felt at certain treaties recently concluded
with Montevideo, and at the correspondence of Mr.
Hudson, the late English Minister, upon the Slave
Trade, which had been lately published in London.——From
Ecuador there is nothing new. Flores still
remained at Puna, below Guayaquil, with his forces.——In
Chili there was a slight attempt at insurrection
in the garrison at Trospunta, but it was soon put
down. Six persons implicated in previous revolts
were executed at Copiapo on the 22d of May.
GREAT BRITAIN.
Public attention in England has been to a very
considerable extent engrossed by the approaching
elections. The Ministry maintain rigid silence as
to the policy they intend to pursue though it is of
course impossible to avoid incidental indications of
their sentiments and purposes. The Chancellor of
the Exchequer, Mr. Disraeli, has issued an address
to his constituents, which shows even more distinctly
than his financial exposé, of which we gave a
summary last month, that the cause of Protection is,
in his judgment, well-nigh obsolete. In that address
he states that the time has gone by when the injuries
which the great producing interests have sustained
from the Free Trade policy of 1846, can be alleviated
or removed by a recurrence to laws which existed
before that time:—”The spirit of the age,” he says,
“tends to free intercourse, and no statesman can
disregard with impunity the genius of the epoch in
which he lives.” It is, however, the intention of
the Ministry to recommend such measures as shall
tend to relieve the producer from the unequal competition
he is now compelled to wage, and the possibility
of doing this by a revision and reduction of
taxation, seems to loom in the future. Still, the
Chancellor urges, nothing useful can be done in this
direction, unless the Ministry is sustained by a powerful
majority in Parliament; and he accordingly
presses the importance of electing members of the
Ministerial party.——A declaration of at least equal
importance was drawn from the Premier, the Earl of
Derby, in the House of Lords, on the 24th of May, by
Earl Granville, who incidentally quoted a remark ascribed
to Lord Derby that a recurrence to the duty on
corn would be found necessary for purposes of revenue
and protection. Lord Derby rose to correct him. He had
not represented it as necessary, but only as desirable,—and
whether it should be done or not, depended
entirely on the elections. But he added, that in his
opinion, from what he had since heard and learned,
there certainly would not be in favor of the imposition
of a duty on foreign corn, that extensive majority
in the country without which it would not be desirable
to impose it.——Lord John Russell has issued
an address to his constituents, for a re-election, rehearsing
the policy of the government while it was
under his direction, sketching the proceedings of the
new Ministry, and declaring his purpose to contend
that no duty should be imposed on the import of
corn, either for revenue or protection; and that the
commercial policy of the last ten years is not an evil
to be mitigated, but a good to be extended—not an
unwise or disastrous policy which ought to be reversed,
altered, or modified, but a just and beneficial
system which should be supported, strengthened, and
upheld.——The course of the Earl of Malmesbury,
the Foreign Secretary, in regard to the case of Mr.
Mather, an English subject, who had been treated
with gross indignities and serious personal injuries
by officers of the Tuscan government, has excited a
good deal of attention. He had first demanded compensation
from the government as a matter of right,
and, after consulting Mr. Mather’s father, had named
£5000 as the sum to be paid. It seems, however,
from the official documents since published, that he
accompanied this demand with an opinion that it
was exorbitant, and named £500 as a minimum.
The negotiation ended by Mr. Scarlett, the British
agent at Florence, accepting £222 as a compensation
and that as a donation from the Tuscan government—waiving
the principle of its responsibility. The
matter had been brought up in Parliament, and the
Earl had felt constrained to disavow wholly Mr.
Scarlett’s action.——The current debates in Parliament
have been devoid of special interest. On the
8th of June, in reply to a strong speech from Sir
James Graham, Mr. Disraeli vindicated himself from
the charge of having brought the public business into
an unsatisfactory and disgraceful condition, and
made a general statement of the bills which the government
thought it necessary to press upon the attention
of Parliament. On the 7th the Militia Bill
was read a third time and passed, by 220 votes to
184.——A bill was pressed upon the House of Lords
by the Earl of Malmesbury, proposing a Convention
with France for the mutual surrender of criminals,
which was found upon examination to give to the
French government very extraordinary powers over
any of its subjects in England. The list of crimes
embraced was very greatly extended—and alleged
offenders were to be surrendered upon the mere
proof of their identity. All the leading Peers spoke
very strongly of the objectionable features of the
measure, and it was sent to the committee for the
purpose of receiving the material alterations required.——Fergus
O’Connor has been consigned to a lunatic
asylum—his insane eccentricities having reached
a point at which it was no longer considered safe to
leave him at liberty.——Professor McDougall has
been elected to fill the chair of Moral Philosophy in
the University of Edinburgh, vacated by the resignation
of Professor Wilson.——The Irish Exhibition[Pg 406]
of Industry was opened at Cork, with public ceremonies,
in which the Lord Lieutenant participated,
on the 10th of June.——The General Assembly of
the Church of Scotland, and that of the Free Church
both commenced their sittings on the 20th of May.——The
electric telegraph has been carried across
the Irish Channel, from Holyhead to the Hill of
Howth, a distance of sixty-five miles;—the mode of
accomplishing this result was by sinking a cable, as
had previously been done across the Straits of Dover.——The
Queen has issued a proclamation forbidding
all Roman Catholic ceremonies, and all appearance
in Catholic vestments, except in Catholic churches
or in private houses.
FRANCE.
The month has not been marked by any event of
special importance in France. The government has
continued in its usual course, though indications are
apparent of impending difficulties in the near future.
The number of prominent men who refuse to take
the oath of allegiance is daily increasing, and many
who have hitherto filled places in the councils of the
Departments and of the Municipalities, have resigned
them to avoid the oath. General Bedeau has sent a
tart letter to the Minister of War, conveying his refusal;
and a public subscription has been set on foot,
with success, in Paris, for the relief of General
Changarnier, who has been reduced to poverty by
his firm refusal to yield to the usurpation.——The
President continues relentlessly his restriction of
the press, and has involved himself in considerable
embarrassment by the extent to which he carries it.
The organs of the Legitimist party in all the great
towns have received the warnings which empower
the President, as the next step, to suppress them
entirely. The Paris Débats has lately received a
warning for its silence upon political subjects. But
a very singular quarrel has arisen between the President
and the Constitutionnel, which has been from
the beginning the least scrupulous of all his defenders.
That paper contained an article intended to
influence the Belgian elections then pending, and
distinctly menacing that country with a retaliatory
tariff, if its hostility to Louis Napoleon were not
abandoned, or at least modified. The effect of the
publication of this article was such, that the Belgian
Minister demanded an explanation, and was
assured that the article did not meet the approbation
of the Government. This quasi disavowal was published
by the Belgian press, and in reply M. Granier
de Cassagnac, the writer of the article, declared that
he had not spoken in his own name, but at the direct
instance and with the full approval of the President.
The Paris Moniteur then contained an official announcement,
disavowing M. de Cassagnac’s articles,
and stating that “no organ can engage the responsibility
of the Government but the Moniteur.” The
Constitutionnel replied by a declaration signed by its
owner, Dr. Veron, that he still believed the original
article to have been sanctioned by the President.
This brought down upon it an official warning. Dr.
Veron rejoined by expressing his regret, but adding
that the Cabinet had ordered several hundred copies
of the paper containing the articles disavowed; and
this he considered prima facie evidence that they met
with the approbation of the Government. This brought
upon the paper a second warning: the next step, of
course, is suppression.——The Paris Correspondents
of three of the London papers have been summoned to
the department of Police, and assured by the Director
that they are hereafter to be held personally responsible,
not only for the contents of their own letters,
but for whatever the journals with which they are
connected may say, in leading articles or otherwise,
concerning French affairs. A strong effort was made
by them to change this determination, but without
effect.——Girardin, in the Presse, states that General
Changarnier, in 1848, proposed to the Provisional
Government the military invasion of England. The
General himself has authorized the Times to give
the statement an explicit contradiction.——M. Heckeren,
who was sent by the French Government to
Vienna and Berlin, to ascertain more definitely the
disposition of the Northern Powers toward Louis
Napoleon, had returned from his mission, but its results
had not been authoritatively made known. The
London Times has, however, given what purports to
be a synopsis of the documents relating to it. From
this it appears that the allied sovereigns will connive
at Louis Napoleon’s usurpation of sovereignty in
France for life; but so long as one Bourbon exists
they can recognize no other person as hereditary sovereign
of that country; and they hold themselves
bound and justified by the treaties of 1815 to oppose
the establishment of a Bonapartist dynasty. The
three Great Northern Powers, it would seem, are
combining to resuscitate the principles of the Holy
Alliance, and to impose them upon the European
system of States as the international law, notwithstanding
the events of the last two-and-twenty years
have rendered them practically obsolete.
From the other European countries there is little intelligence
worthy of record.——In Belgium the elections
have resulted in the increase of the liberal
members of the Chamber. An editor, prosecuted
for having libeled Louis Napoleon, has been acquitted
by a jury.——In Austria a new law has been
enacted imposing rigorous restrictions upon the press.
Editor’s Table.
The Moral Influences of the Stage is a
subject which, although earnestly discussed for
centuries, still maintains all its theoretical and practical
importance. The weight of argument, we think,
has ever been with the assailants, and yet candor
requires the concession, that there have been, at
times, thinking men, serious men, may we not also
say, Christian men, to be found among the defenders
of theatrical representations? On a fair statement
of the case, however, it will plainly appear, that
these have ever been the defenders of an imaginary,
or hypothetical, instead of a really existing stage.
Never—we think we may safely say it—never has
any true friend of religion and morality been found
upholding the theatre as it actually is, or was, at any
particular period. Indeed, this may also be said of
its most partial advocates. Their warmest defense
is ever coupled with the admission, that, as at present
managed, it needs some thorough and decided
reform to make it, in all respects, what it ought to
be. We do not think that we ever read any thing
in advocacy of the stage without some proviso of
this kind. It never is—it never was—what it ought
to be, and might be. But then the idea is ever held[Pg 407]
forth of some future reform. We are told, for example,
what the theatre might become, if, instead of
being condemned by the more moral and religious
part of the community, it received the support of
their presence, and could have the benefit of their
regulation.
So plausible have these arguments appeared, that
the experiment has again and again been tried. Reforms
have been attempted in the characters of the
plays, of the actors, and of the audiences. Good
men and good women have written expressly for the
stage. Johnson and Hannah Moore, and Young—to
say nothing of Buchanan and Addison—have contributed
their services in these efforts at expurgation,
but all alike in vain. Some of these have
afterward confessed the hopelessness of the undertaking,
and lamented that by taking part in it they
had given a seeming encouragement to what they
really meant to condemn. The expected reform has
never appeared. If, through great exertion, some
improvement may have manifested itself for a time,
yet, sooner or later, the relapse comes on. Nature—our
human nature—will have its way. The evil elements
predominate; and the stage sinks again, until
its visible degradation once more arouses attention,
and calls for some other spasmodic effort, only to
meet the same failure, and to furnish another proof
of some radical inherent vitiosity.
Good plays may, indeed, be acted; but they will
not long continue to call forth what are styled good
audiences—the term having reference to numbers and
pecuniary avails, rather than to moral worth. In
fact, the theatre presents its most mischievous aspect
when it claims to be a school of morals. Its
advocates may talk as they will about “holding the
mirror up to Nature, showing Virtue its own feature,
Vice its own image;” but it can only remind us
that there is a cant of the play-house as well as of
the conventicle, and that Shaftsbury and his sentimental
followers can “whine” as well as Whitfield
and Beecher. The common sense of mankind pronounces
it at once the worst of all hypocrisies—the
hypocrisy of false sentiment ashamed of its real
name and real character. As a proof of this, we
may say that the stage has never been known in any
language by any epithet denoting instruction, either
moral or otherwise. It is the play-house, or house
of amusement—the theatrum, the place for shows,
for spectacles, for pleasurable emotions through the
senses and the excitements of the sensitive nature.
There may have been periods when moral or religious
instruction of some kind could, perhaps, have
been claimed as one end of dramatic representations,
but that was before there was a higher stage,
a higher pulpitum divinely instituted for the moral
tuition of mankind. Since that time, the very profanity
of the claim to be a “school of morals” has
only set in a stronger light the fact that, instead of
elevating an immoral community, the stage is itself
ever drawn down by it into a lower, and still lower
degradation.
We will venture the position, that no open vice is
so pernicious to the soul as what may be called a
false virtue; and this furnishes the kind of morality
to which the stage is driven when it would make
the fairest show of its moral pretensions. The virtues
of the stage are not Christian virtues. If they are
not Christian, they are anti-Christian; for on this
ground there can be no via media, no neutrality.
Who would ever think of making the moral excellences
commended in the Sermon on the Mount, or
in Paul’s Epistles, the subjects of theatrical instruction?
How would humility, forgiveness, poverty of
spirit, meekness, temperance, long-suffering, charity,
appear in a stage hero? In what way may they be
made to minister to the exciting, the sentimental,
the melodramatic? These virtues have, indeed, an
elevation to which no stage-heroism or theatrical
affectation ever attained; but such a rising ever implies
a previous descent into the vale of personal
humility, a previous lowliness of spirit altogether
out of keeping with any dramatic or merely æsthetic
representation. The Christian moralities can come
upon the stage only in the shape of caricatures, or
as the hypocritical disguise through which some
Joseph Surface is placed in most disparaging contrast
with the false virtues or splendid vices the
theatre-going public most admires.
It is equally true that the most tender emotions
find no fitting-place upon the stage. The deepest
pathetic—the purest, the most soul-healing—in other
words, the pathetic of common life, can not be acted
without revolting us. Hence, to fit it for the stage,
pity must be mingled with other ingredients of a
more exciting or spicy kind. It must be associated
with the extravagance of love, or stinging jealousy,
or complaining madness, or some other less usual
semi-malevolent passion, which, while it adds to the
theatrical effect, actually deadens the more genial
and deeper sympathies that are demanded for the
undramatic or ordinary sufferings of humanity. We
can not illustrate this thought better than by referring
the reader to that most touching story which is
given in the July number of our Magazine, and entitled,
“The Mourner and the Comforter.” How
rich the effect of such a tale when simply read,
without any external accompaniments!—how much
richer, we might say, for the very want of them!
How its “rain of tears” mellows and fertilizes the
hard soil of the human heart! And yet how few
and simple the incidents! How undramatic the outward
fictitious dress, through which are represented
emotions the most vitally real in human nature!
Like a strain of the richest, yet simplest music, in
which the accompaniment is just sufficient to call
out the harmonious relations of the melody, without
marring by its artistic or dramatic prominence the
deep spiritual reality that dwells in the tones. We
appeal to every one who has read that touching
narrative—how utterly would it be spoiled by being
acted! There might be some theatrical effect given
to the agitated scene upon the balcony, but a vail
would have to be drawn around the chamber of the
mourner, and the more than heroic friend who sits
by her in the long watches of the night. Such scenes,
it may be said, are too common for the stage—ay,
and too holy for it, too. They are too pure for the
Kembles and Sinclairs ever to meddle with, and
they know it, and their audiences feel it. We decide
instinctively that all acting here would be more
than out of place. The very thought of theatrical
representation would seem like a profanation of the
purest and holiest affections of our nature.
And so too of others, which, although not virtues
have more of a prudential or worldly aspect. The
stage may sometimes tolerate a temperance or an
anti-gambling hero, but it is only to feed a temporary
public excitement, and the moment that excitement
manifests the first symptom of a relapse, this school
of morals must immediately follow, instead of directing
the new public sentiment. The wonder is, that
any thinking man could ever expect it to be otherwise.
Every one knows that the tastes of the audience
make the law to the writer, the actor, and the
manager. In this view of the matter, we need only
the application of a very few plain principles and[Pg 408]
facts, to show how utterly hopeless must be the idea
of the moral improvement of any representation which
can only be sustained on the tenure of pleasing the
largest audiences, without any regard to the materials
of which they are composed. The first of these
is, that the mass of mankind are not virtuous, they
are not intelligent—the second, that even the more
virtuous portions are worse in the midst of an applauding
and condemning crowd than they would be in
other circumstances; and the third, that the evil aspects
of our humanity furnish the most exciting
themes, or those best adapted to theatrical representations.
But the world will become better—the world is
becoming better, it may be said—and why should not
the stage share in the improvement? If the world is
becoming better, it is altogether through different and
higher means. If it is becoming better, it is by the
influence of truth and grace—through the Church—upon
individual souls brought to a right view, first of
all, of the individual depravity, and thus by individual
accretion, contributing to the growth of a better public
sentiment. The spirit of theatrical representations
is directly the reverse of this. It operates upon
men in crowds, not as assembled in the same space
merely, but through those feelings and influences
which belong to them solely or chiefly in masses.
Deriving its aliment from the most outward public
sentiment, its tendency is ever, instead of “holding
the mirror up to Nature,” in any self-revealing light,
to hide men from themselves. By absorbing the soul
in exciting representations, in which the most depraved
can take a sort of abstract or sentimental interest,
it causes men to mistake this feeling for true
virtue and true philanthropy, when they may be in
the lowest hell of selfishness. It may become, in
this way, more demoralizing than a display of the
most revolting vices, because it buries the individual
character beneath a mass of sentiments and emotions
in which a man or a woman may luxuriate without
one feeling of penitence for their own transgressions,
or one thought of dissatisfaction with their own
wretchedly diseased moral state.
The theatre might with far more truth and honesty
be defended on the ground of mere amusement. This
is, doubtless, its most real object; but there is an
instinctive feeling in the human soul that it would
not do to trust its defense solely to such a plea. In
the first place, it may be charged with inordinate excess.
Who dare justify the spending night after night
in such ceaseless pleasure-seeking? And if there
were not vast numbers who did this, our theatres
could never be supported. To say nothing here of
religion, or a life to come, the mere consideration of
this world, and the poor suffering humanity by which
it is tenanted, would urgently forbid that much of
this life, or even a small portion of it, should be devoted
to mere amusement. Within a very few rods
of every theatre in our city, almost every species of
misery to which man is subject is daily and nightly
experienced. How, in view of this, can any truly
feeling soul (and we mean by this a very different
species of feeling from that which is commonly generated
in theatres) talk of amusing himself? In the
year 1832, during the severest prevalence of the
cholera, the theatres in New York were closed. We
well remember the impatience manifested at the event
by those who claimed to represent the theatre-going
public, and with what exulting spirits they called upon
their patrons to improve the jubilee of their opening.
We well remember how freely the terms “bigot” and
“sour religionist” were applied to all who thought a
further suppression of heartless amusements was due,
if only as a sorrowing tribute of respect to suffering
humanity. It was all the sheerest Pharisaism, they
said, thus to stand in the way of the innocent and
rational amusements of mankind; as though, forsooth,
amusement was the great end of human existence,
and they who so impatiently claimed it actually
needed some relaxation from the arduous and unremitted
exertions they had been making for the relief
of the sorrowing and toiling millions of their race.
But if not for amusement, it might be said, then for
recreation, which is a very different thing. The former
term is used when the end aimed at is pleasure
merely, without any reference to the good, as a something
higher and better than pleasurable sensations,
sought simply because they are pleasurable, and
without regard to the spiritual health. In its contemptible
French etymology we see the very soul of
the word, so far as such a word may be said to have
any soul. It is muser, s’amuser, having truly nothing
to do with music or the Muses, but signifying to
loiter, to idle, to kill time. We may well doubt
whether this ever can be innocent, even in the smallest
degree. Certainly, to devote to it any considerable
portion of our existence, especially in view of
what has been and is now the condition of our race,
must be not only the most heartless, but in its consequences
the most damning of sins. It is in this
sense that every true philanthropist, to say nothing
of the Christian, must utter his loud amen to the denunciation
of the heathen Seneca—Nihil est tam
damnosum bonis moribus quam in spectaculis desidere,
tunc enim per voluptatem facilius vitia surrepunt.—”Nothing
is so destructive to good morals as mere
amusement, or the indolent waste of time in public
spectacles; it is through such pleasure that all vices
most readily come creeping into the soul.”
We would have our Editor’s Table ever serious,
ever earnest, and yet in true harmony with all that
innocent and cheerful and even mirthful recreation,
which is as necessary sometimes for the spiritual as
for the bodily health. We would avoid every appearance
of sermonizing, and yet we can not help
quoting here an authority higher than Seneca—Vanis
mundi pompis renuntio.—”The vain pomp of the world
I renounce,” is the language of the primitive form of
Christian baptism, still literally in use in one of our
largest Christian denominations, and expressed in
substance by them all. Now it can be clearly shown
that this word, pompæ, was not used, as it now often
is, in a vague and general manner, but was employed
with special reference to public theatrical shows and
representations. To every baptized Christian, it
seems to us, the argument must be conclusive. If
theatrical shows (pompæ) are not “the world,” in
the New Testament sense, what possible earthly
thing can be included under this once most significant
name? If they are not embraced in “the lust
of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life,”
then not only has language no fixed meaning, but even
ideas themselves have wholly changed.
Recreation, as we have said, is something very
different from amusement. It is the re-creating or
renewing the overtasked mental or bodily powers, by
some relaxing and restoring exercise. It is pleasurable,
as all right things ever are; but here is the all-important
distinction—pleasure is not its end. The
accompanying enjoyment is only a laxative and recreative
means to something higher and more ultimate,
and more real in human existence; and it is only on
this ground that it becomes either rational or innocent.
Amusement never can be either.
But those who need recreation in this sense will
never seek it in the theatre. The reason presents[Pg 409]
itself at once. Experience concurs with the a priori
view, derived from the very nature of the thing, in
declaring that it can never be found there. The
emotions called out in the play-house are exciting—they
are exhausting—they are dissipating. In each
of these aspects they are at war with the legitimate
idea of the recreative. They stimulate but do not
invigorate. All mere pleasure-seeking has in it an
element of death. It has its ground in a morbid feeling
of want which is ever rendered still more morbid
by gratification. It is the same with that which
lies at the foundation of the appetite for stimulating
drinks, except that here it affects the whole spiritual
system. In a word, the truly recreative exercises
of the soul, in which pleasure is a means and not an
end, are ever attended by a sense of freedom, and
this is the best characteristic by which they are to
be distinguished from others that assume the appearance
and the name. Whatever is healthful, either
to body or soul, is never enslaving. The counterfeit
passion for enjoyment, on the other hand, is ever
binding the spirit to a deeper and still deeper bondage.
From the one, the mind returns with a healthier
and heartier relish to the more arduous and serious
duties of life; the other at every repetition renders
such duties more and more the objects of an ever
growing distaste and aversion. The slightest observation
of the habitual frequenters of the theatre will
determine to which class of mental exercises the
influence of its representations are to be assigned.
But there is another thought connected with this.
We find in such an idea of the nature and end of
theatrical representations the true reason why actors
and actresses never have been, and never can be
regarded as a reputable class in society. They may
contribute ever so much to our amusement, but no
principle of gratitude, even if there were any ground
for so sacred a feeling, will ever bring the very persons
who use them as a means of enjoyment to recognize
their social equality. A favorite actor may
now and then be toasted at a public dinner. Grave
men may sometimes manifest a public interest in
some actress who has furnished an exciting theme
of newspaper discussion, or judicial investigation.
But let the higher tests be demanded, and the instinctive
feeling of our humanity manifests itself at
once. They never have been, they never will be
admitted freely to the more intimate social relations.
The fashionable frequenter of the theatre would not
cordially give his daughter in marriage to the most
popular of actors; he would turn with aversion from
the thought that his son should choose for his bride
the most accomplished actress that ever called forth
the rapturous plaudits of a pleasure-maddened audience.
We need not go far for the reason. It may
be partly found in the fact, or suspicion, of their
generally vicious lives. But of that, and the cause
of it, in another place. It is a different though related
thought to which we would here give prominence.
With all that is pretended about the theatre
being a place of instruction, or recreation, there is
an under-consciousness that its great end is pleasurable
emotion merely—in a word, amusement. Along
with this there is another suppressed consciousness
that such an end is not honorable to our humanity,
and that those, therefore, whose chief employment
is to minister to it, can not be regarded as having a
high or even a reputable calling. This decision may
be called unjust, but we can not alter it, even though
we fail to discover the true ground in which it has
its origin. The distinctions exist in the very nature
of things and ideas. No theoretical fraternization
can ever essentially change them.
There are three grades of employment whose respective
rank must ever be independent of all conventionalities.
Two are reputable, though differing in
degree. The third is essentially dishonorable through
all its great variety of departments. The highest
place is given, and must ever be given, to those who
live for the spirit’s good, or the health of the body as
conducive to it—the second to those most useful
and reputable employments that have for their end
the material well-being, in itself considered. The
region of dishonor embraces all of every class whose
aim is the ἡδὑ instead of the ἁγαθὁν, the pleasurable
instead of the good or the truly useful, whether in
respect to soul or body—all who live to please, to
gratify simply—to amuse mankind—in other words,
to aid them in annihilating their precious earthly
time, and in turning away their thoughts from the
great ends of their immortal existence. The poorest
mechanic, or day-laborer, who is toiling in the lowest
department of the utile (or useful as we have defined
it) is of a higher rank, belongs to a more honorable
class, than the proudest play-actor that ever trod the
boards of a theatre. Among these “men and women
of pleasure,” there may be also numerous varieties
and degrees, from the female balancer on the tight
rope to the most fashionable danseuse; from the
clown of the circus to the Forrest or Macready of the
aristocratic theatre; but the instinct of the human
consciousness recognizes in them all but one genus.
They all live to amuse, and such a life can not be
honorable.
It may be said, perhaps, that this dishonor should
attach to those who are amused as well as to the
amusers. It might be so on the score of abstract
justice; but, in fact, from the very thought there
comes an additional load of obloquy upon the condemned
caste. Mere pleasure-seeking, mere amusement,
is felt to be, in itself, a degradation of the
rational nature, and a semi-conscious sense of this
finds relief by casting it upon the instruments who
are supposed to receive pecuniary emolument in
place of the unavoidable dishonor. It may be thus
seen that the disrepute of actors and actresses is no
accidental disadvantage, but has an unchangeable
reason in the laws of the human consciousness.
From no other cause could have come that universal
reprobation of the scenic character, to be found in the
writings of the most enlightened heathen as well as
in those of the most zealous Christian Fathers. The
opinions of Plato and Socrates on this point are most
express, and Augustine only utters the sentiment
of the Classical as well as the Christian world when
he says (De Civ. Dei, 2. 14), Adores removent a
societate civitatis—ab honoribus omnibus repellunt ho
mines scenicos—”They remove actors from civic society—from
all honors do they repel the men of the
stage.” The exceptions to this only prove the rule.
The fact that in a very few cases, like those of Garrick
and Mrs. Siddons, they have barely emerged
from this load of dishonor, only shows how universal
and how deep is the opprobrium.
The stage can not be reformed. Our proof of this
has, thus far, been drawn mainly from historical experience.
But such experience, like every other
legitimate induction, forces upon us the thought of
some underlying principle of evil, some inherent
vitiosity which no change of outward circumstances
could be ever expected to eradicate. In searching
for this essential vice we need not indulge in any
affectation of profundity. It will be found, we think,
lying nearer the surface than is commonly imagined.
Why is play-acting radically vicious? Because, we
answer, it is just what its name imports. It is acting—acting[Pg 410]
in the theatrical sense—acting a part—an
unreal part, in distinction from the stern verities
which ever ought to occupy this serious and earnest
life of ours. We have alluded to the heartlessness
of the stage in view of the abounding sufferings and
sorrows of the world. It is a varied aspect of the
same truth we would here present. We have no
right to waste upon mere amusement the precious
time that might be employed in the alleviation of so
much misery. We have no right to be acting, or to
take delight in seeing others acting, in a world where
abounding insincerity, falsehood, and disguise, are
ever demanding truthfulness, and earnestness, and
reality, as the noblest and most valuable elements in
human character. Certainly there is a call upon us
to avoid every thing of even a seemingly contrary tendency,
in whatever fair disguise it may present itself,
or under whatever fair name of art, or æsthetics, or
literature, it may claim our admiration. The objection
is not so much that the representation is fictitious
in itself, as its tendency to generate fictitious characters
in the actors and spectators. No sober thinking
man can look round upon our world without
perceiving that its prevailing depravity is just that
which the theatre is most adapted to encourage.
There is acting, stage-acting, every where—in politics,
in literature, and even in religion. Men are
playing State and playing Church. Artificialness
of character is pervading our “world of letters” to
a most demoralizing extent. We are every where
living too much out of ourselves—alternately the
victims and creators of false public sentiments under
which the theatrical spirit of the times is burying
every thing real and truthful in human nature. Our
morals are theatrical; our public and social life is
theatrical; our revolutions and our sympathy with
revolutions are theatrical; our political conventions
are theatrical; our philanthropy and our reforms are
theatrical.
But we can not at present dwell upon this view
in its more general aspects. In the more immediate
effect upon actors and actresses themselves we find
the radical cause of the vicious lives which have ever
characterized them as a class. Men and women who
act every character will have no character of their
own. The dangerous faculty of assuming any passion,
and any supposed moral state, must, in the end,
be inconsistent with that earnestness of feeling without
which there can be neither moral nor intellectual
depth. We have neither time nor space to dwell
upon those evil effects of theatrical representations
which are best known and most generally admitted.
Whoever demands proof of them may be referred to
the records of our Criminal Courts. We would
rather search for the root of the evil. It is here in
the most interior idea of the drama that we find the
virus fountain from which all its poison flows, and
of which what are called the incidental evils, are but
the necessary ultimate manifestations. It is not
found simply in the personation of vicious characters,
whether in the shape of heroic crime or vulgar
comedy. The radical mischief is in the fact that
the theatre is the great storehouse and seminary of
false feeling; and all false feeling, without the exception
even of the religious (in fact, the higher the
pretension the greater the evil), is so much spiritual
poison. By this we mean an emotion and a sentimentality
having no ground in any previous healthy
moral state with which they may be organically connected.
No fact is more certain than that such a
seeming virtue may be called out in the worst of
men, and that instead of truly softening and meliorating,
it invariably exerts a hardening influence, rendering
the affections less capable of being aroused to
the genuine duties and genuine benevolence of real
life. It is indeed a blessed and a blissful thing to
have a feeling heart; but, then, the feeling must be
real; that is, as we have defined it, flowing from within
as the legitimate product of a true, moral organism.
Better be without all feeling than have that
which is the unnatural result of artificial stimulus.
Better that the soul be an arid desert than that it
should be watered by such Stygian streams, or luxuriate
in the rank Upas of such a deadly verdure.
There is evidence in abundance that a man may melt
under the influence of a theatrical sentimentality,
and yet go forth to the commission of the worst of
crimes; with a freedom, too, all the greater for the
fictitious virtue under which his true character has
been so completely concealed from his own eyes.
It might, at first, seem strange that this should be
so. The emotions of benevolence, of compassion,
of patriotism, it might be said, must be the same
whatever calls them forth. But a true analysis will
show that there is not only a great but an essential
difference. In the one case feeling is the natural result
of a sound soul in direct communion with the
realities of life. In the other it is entirely artificial.—One
has its ground in the reason and the conscience;
the other in the sensitive and imaginative
nature. One comes to us in the due course of
things; the other we create for ourselves. The one
is ever recuperative, elevating while it humbles, softening
while it invigorates. It grows stronger and
purer by exercise. It never satiates, never exhausts,
never reacts. The other ever produces an exhaustion
corresponding to the unnatural excitement, and like
every other artificial stimulus reduces the spiritual
nature to a lower state at every repetition. In short,
to use the expressive Scriptural comparisons, the
one is a continual pouring into broken cisterns; the
other is like a well of living water, springing up to
everlasting life. Nothing is more alluringly deceptive,
and therefore more dangerous, than the cultivation
of the æsthetic nature, either to the exclusion
of the moral, or by cherishing a public sentiment that
confounds them together. We should be warned by
the fact, of which history furnishes more than one
example, that a nation may be distinguished for artistic
and dramatic refinement, and yet present the
most horrid contrast of crime and cruelty. A similar
view may be taken of an age noted for a theoretical,
or sentimental, or theatrical philanthropy. There is
great reason to fear that it will be followed, if not
accompanied, by one distinguished for great ferocity
and recklessness of actual human suffering.
But to return to our analogy. It might with equal
justice be maintained, in respect to the body, that
physical strength is the same, whatever the cause by
which it is produced. And yet we all know that
there is a most essential difference between that vigor
of nerve and muscle which is the result of the real
and natural exercise of the healthy organism, in the
performance of its legitimate functions, and that which
comes from maddening artificial stimulants. They
may appear the same for the moment; and yet we
know that the one has an element of invigorating and
re-creating life; the other has the seeds of death, and
brings death into the human microcosm with all its
train of physical as well as spiritual woes.
And this suggests that idea in which we find the
most interior difference between true and false feeling.
In the one the emotion is sought for its own
sake as an end. In the other it is the means to a
higher good. One seeks to save its life and loses it.
The other loses its life and finds it. The true benevolence[Pg 411]
is unconscious of itself as an end, and
through such unconsciousness attains to substantial
satisfaction. The spurious looks to nothing but the
luxury of its own emotion, and thus continually
transmutes into poison the very aliment on which it
feeds. Like Milton’s incestuous monsters, so do the
matricidal pleasures of artificial sentiment.
That bred them ever more return—
engendering, in the end, a fiercer want, and giving
birth to a more intolerable pain—
And hourly born with sorrow infinite.
There, too, we find the right notion of that word
which would seem so incapable of all strict definition—we
mean the much-used and much-abused
term, sentimentalism. It differs from true feeling in
this, that it is a feeling to feel—or, for the sake of
feeling—a feeling of one’s own feelings (if we may
use the strange expression), instead of the woes and
sufferings of others, which are not strictly the objects,
but only the means of luxurious excitement,
to this introverted state of the affections. Hence,
while true benevolence ever goes forth in the freedom
of its unconsciousness, sentimentalism is ever
most egotistical, ever turning inward to gaze upon
itself, and feel itself, and thus ever more in the most
rigorous and ignominious bondage.
The same position, had we time, might be taken
in respect to what may be styled false, or theatrical
mirth. Even mirth, which, under other circumstances,
and when produced by other causes, might be
an innocent and healthful recreation, is here utterly
spoiled, because we know it to be all acting. It is
all false; there is no reality in it; there is no true
merry heart there. To the right feeling, there is even
a thought of sadness in the spectacle, when we reflect
how often amid the wearisome repetition of
what must be to him the same stale buffoonery, the
soul of the wretched actor may be actually aching,
and bitterly aching, beneath his comic mask.
Our argument might, perhaps, be charged with
proving too much—with invading the sacred domain
of poetry—with condemning all works of fiction and
all reading, as well as acting, of plays. We would
like to dispose of these objections if we had time.
In some respects, and to a certain extent, their
validity might be candidly admitted. In others, we
might make modifications and distinctions, drawing
the line, as we think we could, in accordance with
the demands of right reason, right faith, right taste,
and right morals. But the limits of our Editorial
Table do not permit; and we, therefore, leave our
readers to draw this line for themselves, believing
that, in so doing, a sound moral sense, proceeding
on the tests here laid down, will easily distinguish
all healthful and recreative reading from those inherent
evils that must ever belong to dramatic
representations.
Editor’s Easy Chair.
“Ouf! ouf!”—The French have a funny way of
writing a letter, as well as of telling a story.
For instance, our friend of the Courrier, whose gossip
we have time and again transmuted, with some latitude
of construction into our own noon-tide sentences,
commences one of his later epistles with the
exclamation, “Ouf! ouf!” “And this,” says he, “is
the best resumé that I can give you of the situation of
Paris.” It is a cry of distress, and of lassitude,
breaking out from the Parisian heart, over-burdened
with plenitude of pleasure; it is the re-action of the
fêtes of May. How many things in ten days! How
much dust—cannon-smoke—fire—fury—Roman
candles—thunder—melodramas—and provincials! How
much theatre-going—dining out—spent francs—demitasses—and
ennui!
It is no wonder that your true Parisian is troubled
with the crowd and uproar that the fêtes bring to
Paris, and, above all, with the uncouth hordes of
banditti provincials. The New-Yorker or the Philadelphian
can look complacently upon the throngs
that our Eastern and Northern steamers disgorge
upon the city, and upon the thousand wagons of
“Market-street;” for these, all of them, not only
bring their quota of money to his till, but they lend
a voice and a tread to the hurry and the noise in
which, and by which, your true-blooded American
feels his fullest life.
But the Parisian—living by daily, methodic, quiet,
uninterrupted indulgence of his tastes and humors—looks
harshly upon the stout wool-growers and
plethoric vineyard men, who elbow him out of the
choicest seats at the Theatre of the Palais Royal,
and who break down his appreciative chuckle at a
stroke of wit, with their immoderate guffaw. Then,
the dresses of these provincials are a perpetual eye-sore
to his taste. Such coats! such hats! such
canes! The very sight of them makes misery for
your habitual frequenter of the Maison d’or, or of the
Café Anglais.
Moreover, there is something in the very insouciance
of these country-comers to Paris which provokes
the citizen the more. What do they care for their
white bell-crowns of ten years ago? or what, for
marching and counter-marching the Boulevard, with
a fat wife on one arm, and a fat daughter on the
other? What do they care for the fashion of a dinner,
as they call for a bouillon, followed with a steak
and onions, flanked by a melon, and wet with a deep
bottle of Julienne premier?
What do they care for any mode, or any proprieties
of the Faubourg St. Honoré, as they leer at the
dancers of the Bal Mabil, or roar once and again at
the clown who figures at the Estaminet-Café of the
Champs Elyssées?
In short, says our aggrieved friend, the letter-writer,
they press us, and torture us every where;
they eat our bread, and drink our wine, and tread on
our toes, and crowd us from our seats, as if the gay
capital were made for them alone! Nor is the story
unreal: whoever has happened upon that mad French
metropolis, in the days of its fête madness, can recall
the long procession of burly and gross provincials
who swarm the streets and gardens, like the lice in
the Egypt of Pharaoh.
In the old kingly times, when fêtes were regal,
and every Frenchman gloated at the velvet panoply,
worked over with golden fleurs-de-lis, as they now
gloat at the columns of their Republican journals,
their love for festal-days was well hit off in an old
comedy. The shopkeeper (in the play) says to his
wife, “Take care of the shop; I am going to see
the king.” And the wife presently says to the chief
clerk, “Take care of the shop; I am going to see
the king.” And the clerk, so soon as the good woman
is fairly out of sight, says to the garçon, “Take
care of the shop; I am going to see the king.” And
the garçon enjoins upon the dog to “take care of the
shop, as he is going to see the king.” And the dog,
stealing his nose out at the door, leaves all in charge
of the parroquet, and goes to see the king!
The joke made a good laugh in those laughing
days: nor is the material for as good a joke wanting
now. The prefect leaves business with the sub-prefect,
that he may go up to the Paris fête. The
sub-prefect leaves his care with some commissioner,
that he may go up to the Paris fête. And the commissioner,
watching his chance, steals away in his
turn, and chalks upon the door of the prefecture,
“Gone to the fêtes of May.”
All this, to be sure, is two months old, and belonged
to that festive season of the Paris year,
which goes before the summer. Now, if report
speaks true, with provincials gone home, and the
booths along the Champs Elyssées struck, and the
theatric stars escaped to Belgium, or the Springs, the
Parisian is himself again. He takes his evening
drive in the Bois de Boulogne; he fishes for invitations
to Meudon, or St. Cloud; he plots a descent
upon Boulogne, or Aix la Chapelle; he studies the
summer fashions from his apartments on the Boulevard
de la Madeleine; he takes his river-bath by the
bridge of the Institute; he smokes his evening cigar
under the trees by the National Circus; and he speculates
vaguely upon the imperial prospects of his
President, the Prince Louis.
Meantime, fresh English and Americans come
thronging in by the Northern road, and the Havre
road, and the road from Strasbourg. They cover
every floor of every hotel and maison garnie in the
Rue Rivoli. They buy up all the couriers and
valets-de-place; they swarm in the jewelry and
the bronze shops of the Rue de la Paix; and they
call, in bad French, for every dish that graces the
carte du jour in the restaurants of the Palais Royal.
They branch off toward the Apennines and the Alps,
in flocks; and, if report speak true, the Americans
will this year outnumber upon the mountains of
Switzerland both French and German travelers.
Indeed, Geneva, and Zurich, and Lucerne, are now
discussed and brought into the map of tourists, as
thoughtlessly as, ten years since, they compared the
charms of the Blue Lick and the Sharon waters.
Look at it a moment: Ten days, under the Collins
guidance, will land a man in Liverpool. Three
days more will give him a look at the Tower, the
Parks, Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace, and
Paternoster Row; and on the fourth he may find
himself swimming in a first-class French car, on
damask cushions, at forty miles the hour from Boulogne
to Paris. Five days in the capital will show
him (specially if he is free of service-money) the
palaces of Versailles, the Louvre, the park at St.
Cloud, the church of Notre Dame, the Madeleine,
the Bourse, the Dead House, a score of balls, half
as many theatres, the pick of the shops, and the
great Louis himself.
Three other summer days, allowing a ten hours’
tramp over the galleries and sombre grounds of
Fontainebleau, will set him down, at the door of
“mine host” of the Hotel de l’Ecu, in the city of
Geneva, and he will brush the dews from his eyes
in the morning, within sight of the “blue, arrowy
Rhone,” and “placid Leman, and the bald white
peak of Mont Blanc.” A Sunday in the Genevese
church, will rest his aching limbs, and give him hearing
of such high doctrine as comes from the lips of
Merle d’Aubigné, and Monday will drift him on
char-a-banc straight down through wooded Sardinia—reading
Coleridge’s Hymn—into the marvelous valley
of Chamouny.
There, he may take breath before he goes up upon
the Sea of Ice; and afterward he may idle, on donkeys
or his own stout feet, over such mountain passes as
will make Franconia memories tame, and boat it
upon the Lake of Lucerne; and dine at the White
Swan of Frankfort, and linger at Bingen, and drink
Hock at Heidelberg; and chaffer with Jean Maria
Farina at Cologne, and measure the stairs of the
belfry at Antwerp, and toss in a cockle shell of a
steamer across the straits, and lay him down in his
Collins berth one month from his landing, a fresher
and fuller man—with only six weeks cloven from
his summer, and a short “five hundred” lifted from
his purse.
The very fancy of it all—so easy, and so quick-coming—makes
our blood beat in the office-chair, and
tempts us strangely to fling down the pen, and to
book ourselves by the Arctic.
We happened the other day upon an old French
picture of Washington, which it may be worth while
to render into passable English. It comes from the
writings of M. de Broglie.
“I urged,” he says, “M. de Rochambeau to present
me, and the next day was conducted by him to
dine with the great general. He received, most
graciously, a letter from my father, and gave me a
pleasant welcome. The general is about forty-nine—tall,
well-made, and of elegant proportions. His
face is much more agreeable than generally represented:
notwithstanding the fatigues of the last few
years, he seems still to possess all the agility and
freshness of youth.
“His expression is sweet and frank; his address
rather cold, though polished; his eye, somewhat pensive,
is more observant than flashing; and his look
is full of dignified assurance. He guards always a
dignity of manner which forbids great familiarity,
while it seems to offend none. He seems modest,
even to humility; yet he accepts, kindly and graciously,
the homage which is so freely rendered him.
His tone of voice is exceedingly low; and his attention
to what is addressed to him, so marked, as to
make one sure he has fully understood, though he
should venture no reply. Indeed this sort of circumspection
is a noted trait of his character.
“His courage is rather calm than brilliant, and
shows itself rather in the coolness of his decision,
than in the vigor with which he battles against
odds.
“He usually dines in company with twenty or
thirty of his officers; his attention to them is most
marked and courteous; and his dignity, at table only,
sometimes relapses into gayety. He lingers at dessert
for an hour or two, eating freely of nuts, and
drinking wine with his guests. I had the honor of
interchanging several toasts with the general; among
others, I proposed the health of the Marquis de Lafayette.
He accepted the sentiment with a very
benevolent smile, and was kind enough to offer, in
turn, the health of my own family.
“I was particularly struck with the air of respect
and of admiration with which his officers uniformly
treated General Washington.”
M. de Broglie makes mention of the meeting of
Washington and Gates, after their unfortunate difference,
and speaks in high praise of the conduct of
both. He furthermore suggests that the assignment
of the chief command of the army to General Greene
was owing to a certain feeling of jealousy which
Washington entertained for the reputation of Gates:
a suggestion, which neither contemporaneous history,
or the relative merits of Greene and of Gates would
confirm.
It is not a little singular how greedy we become
to learn the most trivial details of the private life of[Pg 413]
the men we admire. Who would not welcome nowadays
any bona fide contemporaneous account of the
meals or dress of William Shakspeare, or of Francis
Bacon? And what a jewel of a spirit that would be,
who would make some pleasant letter-writer for the
Tribune, the medium of communicating to us what
colored coat Shakspeare wore when he wooed Ann
Hathaway, and how much wine he drank for the
modeling of Jack Falstaff! Were there no Boswells
in those days, whose spirits might be coaxed into
communicative rappings about the king of the poets?
We recommend the matter, in all sincerity, to the
Misses Media.
A French court-room is not unfrequently as “good
as a play:” besides which, the Paris reporters have
a dainty way of working up the infirmities of a weak
wicked man into a most captivating story. They
dramatize, even to painting the grave nod of the
judge; and will work out a farce from a mere broken
bargain about an ass!—as one may see from this trial
of Léonard Vidaillon.
Léonard Vidaillon, as brave a cooper as ever hammered
a hoop, having retired from business, bethought
him of buying an equipage for his family; but hesitated
between the purchase of a pony or a donkey.
“A pony,” said he, to himself, “is a graceful
little beast, genteel, coquet, and gives a man a ‘certain
air;’ but on the other hand, your pony is rather
hard to keep, and costly to equip. The donkey takes
care of himself—eats every thing—wants no comb
or brush; but, unfortunately, is neither vivacious or
elegant.”
In the midst of this embarrassment, an old friend
recommended to him—a mule. With this idea flaming
in his thought, Léonard ran over all of Paris in
search of a mule, and ended with finding, at the stable
of a worthy donkey-drover, a little mule of a year
old—of “fine complexion”—smaller than a horse—larger
than a donkey—with a lively eye—in short,
such a charming little creature as bewitched the
cooper, and secured the sale.
The price was a hundred francs, it being agreed
that the young mule should have gratuitous nursing
of its donkey-mother for three months; at the expiration
of which time our cooper should claim his
own.
The next scene opens in full court.
Léonard, the defendant, is explaining.
“Yes, your honor, I bought the mule, to be delivered
at the end of three months. At the end of three
months I fell sick; I lay a-bed twelve weeks; I drugged
myself to death; I picked up on water-gruel; I
got on my legs; and the second day out I went after
my little mule.”
Donkey-man (being plaintiff).—The court will
observe that three months and twelve weeks make
six months.
The Judge nods acquiescence.
Leonard.—Agreed. They make six months. I
went then after my little mule, a delicate creature,
not larger than a large ass, that I had picked out expressly
for my little wagon. I went, as I said, to see
my little mule. And what does the man show me?
A great, yellow jackass, high in the hips, with a big
belly, that would be sure to split the shafts of my
carriage! I said to him, “M. Galoupeau, this is not
my little mule, and I sha’n’t pay you.”
Galoupeau (plaintiff).—And what did I say?
Leonard.—You swore it was my mule.
Galoupeau.—I said better than that: I said I
couldn’t constrain the nature of the beast, and hinder
a little mule from growing large.
Leonard.—But mine was a blond, and yours is
yellow.
Galoupeau.—Simply another effect of nature!
And I have seen a little black ass foal turn white at
three months old!
Leonard.—Do you think I have filled casks so
long, not to know that red wine is red, and white
wine, white.
Galoupeau.—I don’t know. I don’t understand
the nature of wines; but donkeys—yes.
Judge (to the defendant).—So you refuse to take
the mule?
Leonard.—I rather think so—a mule like a camel,
and such a ferocious character, that he came within
an ace of taking my life!
Judge.—You will please to make good this point
of the injuries sustained.
Leonard.—The thing is easy. This M. Galoupeau
insisted that I should take a look at his beast, and
brought him out of the stable. The animal made off
like a mad thing, and came near killing all the poultry.
Then M. Galoupeau, who professes to know
his habits, followed him up to the bottom of the yard,
spoke gently to him, and after getting a hand upon
his shoulder, called me up. As for myself, I went
up confidently. I came near the beast, and just as
I was about to reach out my hand for a gentle caress,
the brute kicked me in the stomach—such a kick!—Mon
Dieu! but here, your Honor, is the certificate—”twelve
days a-bed; one hundred and fifty leeches.”
All that for caressing the brute!
Galoupeau.—If you were instructed, M. Léonard,
in the nature of these beasts, you would understand
that they never submit to any flattery from behind;
and you know very well that you approached him by
the tail.
Here two stable-boys were called to the stand,
who testified that Signor Léonard Vidaillon, late
cooper, did approach their master’s jackass by the
tail; and furthermore, that the mule (or jackass) was
ordinarily of a quiet and peaceable disposition. This
being shown to the satisfaction of the Court, and since
it appeared that an inexperience, arising out of ignorance
of the nature of the beast, had occasioned
the injury to Signor Vidaillon, the case was decided
for the plaintiff. Poor Léonard was mulcted in the
cost of the mule, the costs of the suit, the cost of a
hundred and fifty leeches, and the cost of broader
shafts to his family wagon.
We have entertained our reader with this report—first,
to show how parties to a French suit plead their
own cause; and next, to show how the French reporters
render the cause into writing. The story is
headed in the French journal, like a farce—”A little
mule will grow.”
As for the town, in these hot days of summer, it
looks slumberous. The hundreds who peopled the
up-town walks with silks and plumes, are gone to
the beach of Newport, or the shady verandas of the
“United States.” Even now, we will venture the
guess, there are scores of readers running over this
page under the shadow of the Saratoga colonnades, or
in view of the broad valley of the Mohawk, who
parted from us last month in some cushioned fauteuil
of the New York Avenues.
The down-town men wear an air of ennui, and slip
uneasily through the brick and mortar labyrinths of
Maiden-lane and of John-street. Brokers, even, long
for their Sunday’s recess—when they can steal one
breath of health and wideness at New Rochelle, or
Rockaway. Southerners, with nurses and children,
begin to show themselves in the neighborhood of the[Pg 414]
Union and Clarendon, and saunter through our sunshine
as if our sunshine were a bath of spring.
Fruits meantime are ripening in all our stalls; and
it takes the edge from the sultriness of the season to
wander at sunrise, through the golden and purple
show of our Washington market. Most of all, to
such as are tied, by lawyer’s tape or editorial pen,
to the desks of the city, does it bring a burst of country
glow to taste the firstlings of the country’s growth,
and to doat upon the garden glories of the year—as
upon so many testimonial clusters, brought back
from a land of Canaan.
And in this vein, we can not avoid noting and commending
the increasing love for flowers. Bouquets
are marketable; they are getting upon the stalls; they
flank the lamb and the butter. Our civilization is
ripening into a sense of their uses and beauties.
They talk to us even now—(for a tenpenny bunch of
roses is smiling at us from our desk) of fields, fragrance,
health, and wanton youth. They take us
back to the days when with urchin fingers we grappled
the butter-cup and the mountain daisy—days
when we loitered by violet banks, and loved to loiter—days
when we loved the violets, and loved to love;
and they take us forward too—far forward to the
days that always seem coming, when flowers shall
bless us again, and be plucked again, and be loved
again, and bloom around us, year after year; and
bloom over us, year after year!
The two great hinges of public chat are—just now—the
rival candidates, Generals Pierce and Scott;
serving not only for the hot hours of lunch under
the arches of the Merchants’ Exchange, but toning
the talk upon every up-bound steamer of the Hudson,
and giving their creak to the breezes of Cape May.
Poor Generals!—that a long and a worthy life
should come to such poor end as this. To be vilified
in the journals, to be calumniated with dinner-table
abuse, or with worse flattery—to have their religion,
their morals, their courage, their temper, all brought
to the question;—to have their faces fly-specked in
every hot shop of a barber—to have their grandparents,
and parents all served up in their old clothes;
to have their school-boy pranks ferreted out, and
every forgotten penny pitched into their eyes; to
have their wine measured by the glass, and their
tears by the tumbler; to have their names a bye-word,
and their politics a reproach—this is the honor
we show to these most worthy candidates!
As a relief to the wearisome political chat, our
city has just now been blessed with Alboni; and it
is not a little curious to observe how those critics
who were coy of running riot about Jenny Lind, are
lavishing their pent-up superlatives upon the new-comer.
The odium of praising nothing, it appears,
they do not desire; and seize the first opportunity to
win a reputation for generosity. The truth is, we
suspect, that Alboni is a highly cultivated singer,
with a voice of southern sweetness, and with an air
of most tempered pleasantness; but she hardly brings
the prestige of that wide benevolence, noble action,
and naïve courtesy, which made the world welcome
Jenny as a woman, before she had risked a note.
In comparing the two as artists, we shall not venture
an opinion; but we must confess to a strong
liking for such specimen of humanity, as makes its
humanity shine through whatever art it embraces.
Such humanity sliding into song, slides through the
song, and makes the song an echo; such humanity
reveling in painting, makes the painting only a
shadow on the wall. Every true artist should be
greater than his art; or else it is the art that makes
him great.
And while we are upon this matter of song, we
take the liberty of suggesting, in behalf of plain-spoken,
and simple-minded people, that musical
criticism is nowadays arraying itself in a great brocade
of words, of which the fustian only is clear to
common readers. We can readily understand that
the art of music, like other arts, should have its
technicalities of expression; but we can not understand
with what propriety those technicalities should
be warped into such notices, as are written professedly
for popular entertainment and instruction.
If, Messrs. Journalists, your musical critiques are
intended solely for the eye of connoisseurs, stick to
your shady Italian; but if they be intended for the
enlightenment of such hungry outside readers, as
want to know, in plain English, how such or such a
concert went off, and in what peculiar way each
artist excels, for Heaven’s sake, give us a taste
again of old fashioned Saxon expletive! He seems
to us by far the greatest critic, who can carry to the
public mind the clearest and the most accurate idea
of what was sung, and of the way in which it was
sung. It would seem, however, that we are greatly
mistaken; and that the palm of excellence should lie
with those, whose periods smack most of the green-room,
and cover up opinions with a profusion of
technicalities. We shall not linger here, however, lest
we be attacked in language we can not understand.
Among the novelties which have provoked their
share of the boudoir chit-chat, and which go to make
our monthly digest of trifles complete, may be
reckoned the appearance of a company of trained animals
at the Astor Place Opera House. Their débût
was modest and maidenly; and could hardly have
made an eddy in the talk, had not the purveyors of
that classic temple, entered an early protest against
the performance, as derogatory to the dignity of the
place.
This difficulty, and the ensuing discussions, naturally
led to a comparison of the habits of the various
animals, who are accustomed to appear in that place,
whether as spectators, or as actors. What the judicial
decision may have been respecting the matter, we
are not informed. Public opinion, however, seems
to favor the conclusion that the individuals composing
the monkey troup would compare well, even
on the score of dignity, with very many habitués of
the house; and that the whole monkey tribe, being
quite harmless and inoffensive, should remain, as
heretofore, the subjects of Christian toleration, whether
appearing on the bench (no offense to the Judges)
or the boards.
With this theatric note, to serve as a snapper to
our long column of gossip, we beg to yield place to
that very coy lady—the Bride of Landeck.
AN OLD GENTLEMAN’S LETTER.
“THE BRIDE OF LANDECK.”
Dear Sir—The small village of Landeck is situated
in a very beautiful spot near the river Inn, with
a fine old castle to the southeast, against the winds
from which quarter it shelters the greater part of the
village—a not unnecessary screen; for easterly winds
in the Tyrol are very detestable. Indeed I know no
country in which they are any thing else, or where
the old almanac lines are not applicable—
‘Tis neither good for man or beast.”
Some people, however, are peculiarly affected by the
influence of that wind; and they tell a story of Dr.[Pg 415]
Parr—for the truth of which I will not vouch, but
which probably has some foundation in fact. When
a young man, he is said to have had an attack of
ague, which made him dread the east wind as a pestilence.
He had two pupils at the time, gay lads,
over whose conduct, as well as whose studies, he exercised
a very rigid superintendence. When they
went out to walk, Parr was almost sure to be with
them, much to their annoyance on many occasions.
There were some exceptions, however; and they remarked
that these exceptions occurred when the wind
was easterly. Boys are very shrewd, and it did not
escape the lads’ attention, that every day their tutor
walked to the window, and looked up at the weather-cock
on the steeple of the little parish church. Conferences
were held between the young men; and a
carpenter consulted. A few days after, the wind was
in the east, and the Doctor suffered them to go out
alone. The following day it was in the east still.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,
Saturday, all easterly wind—if the weather-cock
might be believed. Sunday, Parr went to church,
and shivered all day. The next week it was just the
same thing. Never was such a spell of easterly wind.
Parr was miserable. But at the end of some five
weeks, a friend, and man of the world, came to visit
him, with the common salutation of—”A fine day,
Doctor!”
“No day is a fine day, sir, with an easterly wind,”
said Parr, with his usual acerbity.
“Easterly wind?” said his visitor, walking toward
the window; “I don’t think the wind is east—yes it
is, indeed.”
“Ay, sir, and has been for these six weeks,” answered
Parr, sharply. “I could tell it by my own
sensations, without looking at the weather-cock.”
“Why, Doctor,” answered the other, “the wind
was west yesterday: that I know; and I thought it
was west to-day.”
“Then you thought like a fool, sir,” answered
Parr. “A man who can not tell when the wind is
in the east, has no right to think at all. Let him look
at the weather-cock.”
“But the weather-cock may be rusty,” answered
the other; “and your weather-cock must be rusty if
it pointed to the east yesterday; for it blew pretty
smartly from the west all day.”
“Do you think I am a fool, sir: do you think I am
a liar?” asked Parr, angrily.
“No; but you may be mistaken, Doctor,” replied
the other. “Even Solomon, as you know, made a
mistake sometimes; and you are mistaken now; and
the weather-cock too. Look at the clouds: they are
coming rapidly from the west. If you would take my
advice, you would look to our friend there on the top
of the steeple.”
“I will, sir—I will this moment,” replied Parr;
and ringing the bell violently, he ordered his servant
to take the village carpenter and a bottle of oil, and
have the weather-cock examined and greased. He
and his visitor watched the whole proceeding from
the window—the bringing forth of the ladders, the
making them fast with ropes, the perilous ascent,
and then the long operations which seemed much
more complicated than the mere process of greasing
the rusty weather-cock. “What can the fools be
about?” said Parr. In the end, however, the deed,
whatever it was, was done; and the servant and the
carpenter descended, and came toward the house. By
this time the weather-cock had whirled round, pointing
directly to the west, and the Doctor asked eagerly,
as soon as the men appeared. “Well, sir—well:
what prevented the vane from turning?”
“A large nail, sir,” answered the man.
“I will never trust a weather-cock again,” cried
Parr.
“Nor your own sensations either, Doctor,” said
his friend, “unless you are very sure they are right
ones; for if you pin them to a weather-cock, there
may be people who will find it for their interest to
pin the weather-cock to the post.”
The two poor pupils from that day forward lost
their advantage; but they had six weeks of fun out
of it, and, like the fishes in the Arabian tale, “were
content.”
There is an old proverb, that “Fancy is as good
for a fool as physic,” and I believe the saying might
be carried further still; for there is such a thing as
corporeal disease, depending entirely upon the mind;
and that with very wise men too. The effect of mental
remedies we all know, even in very severe and
merely muscular diseases. Whether Doctor Parr
was cured of his aguish sensations or not, I can not
tell; but I have known several instances of mental
remedies applied with success; to say nothing of
having actually seen the incident displayed by old
Bunbury’s caricature of a rheumatic man enabled to
jump over a high fence by the presence of a mad bull.
I will give you one instance of a complete, though
temporary cure, performed upon a young lady by what
I can only consider mental agency. One of the
daughters of a Roman Catholic family, named V——,
a very beautiful and interesting girl, had entirely lost
the use of her limbs for nearly three years, and was
obliged to be fed and tended like a child. Her mind
was acute and clear, however, and as at that time the
celebrated Prince Hohenloe was performing, by his
prayers, some cures which seemed miraculous, her
father entered into correspondence with him, to see
if any thing could be done for the daughter. The distance
of some thousand miles lay between the Prince
and the patient; but he undertook to pray and say
mass for her on a certain day, and at a certain hour,
and directed that mass should also be celebrated in
the city where she resided, exactly at the same moment.
As the longitude of the two places was very
different, a great deal of fuss was made to ascertain
the precise time. All this excited her imagination a
good deal, and at the hour appointed the whole family
went to mass, leaving her alone, and in bed. On their
return they found Miss V——, who for years had not
been able to stir hand or foot, up, dressed, and in the
drawing-room. For the time, she was perfectly cured;
but I have been told that she gradually fell back into
the same state as before.
Mental medicine does not always succeed, however;
and once, in my own case, failed entirely.
When traveling in Europe, in the year 1825, I was
attacked with very severe quartan fever. I was
drugged immensely between the paroxysms, and the
physician conspired with my friends to persuade me
I was quite cured. They went so far as, without
my knowing it, to put forward a striking-clock that
was on the mantle-piece, and when the hour struck,
at which the fit usually seized me, without any appearance
of its return, they congratulated me on my
recovery, and actually left me. Nevertheless, at the
real hour, the fever seized me again, and shook me
nearly to pieces. Neither is it that mental medicine
sometimes fails; but it sometimes operates in a most
unexpected and disastrous manner; especially when
applied to mental disease; and I am rather inclined
to believe, that corporeal malady may often be best
treated by mental means; mental malady by corporeal
means.
A friend of my youth, poor Mr. S—— lost his only[Pg 416]
son, in a very lamentable manner. He had but two
children: this son and a daughter. Both were exceedingly
handsome, full of talent and kindly affection;
and the two young people were most strongly
attached to each other. Suddenly, the health of
young S—— was perceived to decline. He became
grave—pale—sad—emaciated. His parents took the
alarm. Physicians were sent for. No corporeal disease
of any kind could be discovered. The doctors
declared privately that there must be something on
his mind, as it is called, and his father with the utmost
kindness and tenderness, besought him to confide
in him, assuring him that if any thing within the
reach of fortune or influence could give him relief,
his wishes should be accomplished, whatever they
might be.
“You can do nothing for me, my dear father,” replied
the young man, sadly; “but you deserve all
my confidence, and I will not withhold it. That
which is destroying me, is want of rest. Every
night, about an hour after I lie down, a figure dressed
in white, very like the figure of my dear sister, glides
into the room, and seats itself on the right side of
my bed, where it remains all night. If I am asleep
at the time of its coming, I am sure to wake, and I
remain awake all night with my eyes fixed upon it.
I believe it to be a delusion; but I can not banish
it; and the moment it appears, I am completely
under its influence. This is what is killing me.”
The father reasoned with him, and took every
means that could be devised either by friends or
physicians, to dispel this sad phantasy. They gave
parties; they sat up late; they changed the scene;
but it was all in vain. The figure still returned;
and the young man became more and more feeble.
He was evidently dying; and as a last resource, it
was determined to have recourse to a trick to produce
a strong effect upon his mind. The plan arranged
was as follows. His sister was to dress herself in
white, as he had represented the figure to be dressed,
and about the hour he mentioned, to steal into his
room, and seat herself on the other side of the bed,
opposite to the position which the phantom of his
imagination usually occupied, while the parents remained
near the door to hear the result. She undertook
the task timidly; but executed it well. Stealing
in, with noiseless tread, she approached her brother’s
bed-side, and by the faint moonlight, saw his eyes
fixed with an unnatural stare upon vacancy, but directed
to the other side. She seated herself without
making the least noise, and waited to see if he would
turn his eyes toward her. He did not stir in the
least, however; but lay, as if petrified by the sight
his fancy presented. At length she made a slight
movement to call his attention, and her garments
rustled. Instantly the young man turned his eyes to
the left, gazed at her—looked back to the right—gazed
at her again; and then exclaimed, almost with
a shriek, “Good God: there are two of them!”
He said no more. His sister darted up to him. The
father and mother ran in with lights; but the effect
had been fatal. He was gone.
Nor is this the only case in which I have known
the most detrimental results occur from persons attempting
indiscreetly to act upon the minds of the
sick while in a very feeble state. Once, indeed, the
whole medical men—and they were among the most
famous of their time in the world—belonging to one
of the chief hospitals of Edinburgh, were at fault in
a similar manner. The case was this: A poor woman
of the port of Leith had married a sailor, to whom she
was very fondly attached. They had one or two children,
and were in by no means good circumstances.
The man went to sea in pursuit of his usual avocations,
and at the end of two or three months intelligence
was received in Leith of the loss of the vessel
with all on board. Left in penury, with no means of
supporting her children but her own hard labor, the
poor woman, who was very attractive in appearance,
was persuaded to marry a man considerably older
than herself, but in very tolerable circumstances. By
him she had one child; and in the summer of the
year 1786, she was sitting on the broad, open way,
called Leith-walk, with a baby on her lap. Suddenly,
she beheld her first husband walk up the street
directly toward her. The man recognized her instantly,
approached, and spoke to her. But she
neither answered nor moved. She was struck with
catalepsy. In this state she was removed to the
Royal Infirmary, and her case, from the singular circumstances
attending it, excited great interest in the
medical profession in Edinburgh, which at that time
numbered among its professors the celebrated Cullen,
and no less celebrated Gregory. The tale was related
to me by one of their pupils, who was present,
and who assured me that every thing was done that
science could suggest, till all the ordinary remedial
means were exhausted. The poor woman remained
without speech or motion. In whatever position the
body was placed, there it remained; and the rigidity
of the muscles was such, that when the arm was extended,
twenty minutes elapsed before it fell to her
side by its own weight. Death was inevitable, unless
some means could be devised of rousing the
mind to some active operation on the body. From
various indications, it was judged that the poor woman
was perfectly sensible, and at a consultation of all the
first physicians of the city, the first husband was sent
for, and asked if he was willing to co-operate, in order
to give his poor wife a chance of life. He replied,
with deep feeling, that he was willing to lay down
his own life, if it would restore her: that he was perfectly
satisfied with her conduct; knew that she had
acted in ignorance of his existence; and explained,
that having floated to the coast of Africa upon a piece
of the wreck, he had been unable for some years to
return to his native land, or communicate with any
one therein. In these circumstances, it was determined
to act immediately. The Professors grouped
themselves round the poor woman, and the first husband
was brought suddenly to the foot of the bed,
toward which her eyes were turned, carrying the child
by the second husband in his arms. A moment of
silence and suspense succeeded; but then, she who
had lain for so many days like a living corpse, rose
slowly up, and stretched out her hands toward the
poor sailor. Her lips moved, and with a great effort
she exclaimed, “Oh, John, John—you know that it
was nae my fault.” The effort was too much for her
exhausted frame: she fell back again immediately,
and in five minutes was a corpse indeed.
This story may have been told by others before me,
for the thing was not done in a corner. But I always
repeat it, when occasion serves, in order to warn
people against an incautious use of means to which
we are accustomed to attribute less power than they
really possess.
And now, I will really go on with “The Bride of
Landeck” in my next letter.—Yours faithfully,
P.
Editor’s Drawer.
Here is a very amusing picture of that species
of odd fish known as a Matter-of-Fact Man:
“I am what the old women call ‘An Odd Fish.’
I do nothing, under heaven, without a motive—never.
I attempt nothing unless I think there is a probability
of my succeeding. I ask no favors when I think they
won’t be granted. I grant no favors when I think
they are not deserved; and finally, I don’t wait upon
the girls when I think my attentions would be disagreeable.
I am a matter-of-fact man—I am. I do
things seriously. I once offered to attend a young
lady home—I did, seriously: that is, I meant to wait
on her home if she wanted me. She accepted my
offer. I went home with her; and it has ever since
been an enigma to me whether she wanted me or not.
She took my arm, and said not a word. I bade her
‘Good Night,’ and she said not a word. I met her
the next day, and I said not a word. I met her again,
and she gave a two-hours’ talk. It struck me as curious.
She feared I was offended, she said, and
couldn’t for the life of her conceive why. She begged
me to explain, but didn’t give me the ghost of a
chance to do it. She said she hoped I wouldn’t be
offended: asked me to call: and it has ever since
been a mystery to me whether she really wanted me
to call or not.
“I once saw a lady at her window. I thought I
would call. I did. I inquired for the lady, and was
told that she was not at home. I expect she was. I
went away thinking so. I rather think so still. I met
her again. She was offended—said I had not been
‘neighborly.’ She reproached me for my negligence;
said she thought I had been unkind. And I’ve ever
since wondered whether she was sorry or not.
“A lady once said to me that she should like to be
married, if she could get a good congenial husband,
who would make her happy, or at least try to. She
was not difficult to please, she said. I said, ‘I should
like to get married too, if I could get a wife that
would try to make me happy.’ She said, ‘Umph!’
and looked as if she meant what she said. She did.
For when I asked her if she thought she could be persuaded
to marry me, she said, she’d rather be excused.
I excused her. I’ve often wondered why I
excused her.
“A good many things of this kind have happened
to me that are doubtful, wonderful, mysterious. What,
then, is it that causes doubt and mystery to attend the
ways of men? It is the want of fact. This is a
matter-of-fact world, and in order to act well in it,
we must deal in matter-of-fact.”
Some modern author says of gambling, that it is “a
magical stream, into which, if a man once steps, and
wets the sole of his foot, he must needs keep on until
he is overwhelmed.” Perhaps some readers of the
“Drawer” may have heard of the officer, who, having
lost all his money at play, received assistance from a
friend, on condition that he would never after touch
a pack of cards. A few weeks after, however, he was
found in an out-house drawing short and long straws
with a brother-gamester for hundreds of pounds!
“The most singular species of gambling, however,
is one which is said to be practiced among the blacks
in Cuba. Many of these stout, hearty, good-humored
fellows daily collect about the docks in Havanna,
waiting for employment, and gambling in cigars, for
they are inveterate smokers. This forms one of their
most favorite amusements. Two parties challenge
each other, and each lays down, in separate places,
three or more cigars, forming a figure resembling a
triangle: they then withdraw a few paces, and eagerly
watch their respective ‘piles.’ The owner of the ‘pile’
on which a fly first alights, is entitled to the whole!
“It should be added, that a pile smeared any
where with molasses, to attract the more ready visit
of the flies, was considered in the light of ‘loaded
dice’ among ‘professional men’ of a kindred stamp.”
Let any man, “in populous city pent,” who has
left the cares, turmoils, and annoyances of the town
for a brief time behind him, with the heated bricks
and stifling airs, that make a metropolis almost a burthen
in the fierce heats of a summer solstice, say
whether or no this passage be not true, both in “letter”
and in “spirit:”
“In the country a man’s spirit is free and easy;
his mind is discharged, and at its own disposal: but
in the city, the persons of friends and acquaintances,
one’s own and other people’s business, foolish quarrels,
ceremonious visits, impertinent discourses, and
a thousand other fopperies and diversions, steal away
the greater part of our time, and leave us no leisure
for better and more necessary employment. Great
towns are but a larger sort of prison to the soul, like
cages to birds, or ‘pounds’ to beasts.”
There is a good story told, and we believe a new
one—(at least, so far as we know, it is such, as the
manuscript which records it is from a traveled friend,
in whose “hand-of-write” it has remained long in the
“Drawer”)—a story of Samuel Rogers, the rich
banker, and accomplished poet of “The Pleasures
of Memory:”
Rogers arrived at Paris at noon one day in the year
18—. He found all his countrymen prepared to attend
a splendid party at Versailles. They were all
loud in expressing their regrets that he could not
accompany them. They were “very sorry”—but “the
thing was impossible:” “full court-dresses alone
were admissible;” and to obtain one then—why “of
course it was in vain to think of it.”
Rogers listened very patiently; told them to “leave
him entirely to himself;” and added, that “he was
sure he could find some amusement somewhere.”
No sooner were they gone, than he began to dress;
and within the space of a single hour he was on the
road to Versailles, fully equipped, in a blue coat,
white waistcoat, and drab pantaloons. At the door
of the splendid mansion in which the company were
assembled, his further progress was opposed by a
servant whose livery was far more showy and imposing
than his own costume.
Rogers affected the utmost astonishment at the
interruption, and made as if he would have passed
on. The servant pointed to his dress:
“It is not comme il faut: you can not pass in: Monsieur
must retire.”
“Dress! dress!” exclaimed Rogers, with well-feigned
surprise: “Not pass! not enter! Why,
mine is the same dress that is worn by the General
Court at Boston!”
No sooner were the words uttered, than the doors
flew open, and the obsequious valet, “booing and
booing,” like Sir Pertinax Macsycophant in the play,
preceded the poet, and in a loud voice announced:
“Monsieur le General Court, de Boston!“
The amusement of the Americans in the group
scarcely exceeded that of the new-made “General”
himself.
On another occasion, Rogers relates, he was announced
at a Parisian party as “Monsieur le Mort,”
by a lackey, who had mistaken him for “Tom
Moore.”
Not unlike an old New-Yorker, who was announced
from his card as
“Monsieur le Koque en Bow!“
His simple name was Quackenbos!
Now that we are hearing of the manner in which
foolish and ostentatious Americans are lately representing
themselves in Paris by military titles, as if
connected with the army of the United States, perhaps
“Monsieur le General Court, de Boston” may
“pass muster” with our readers.
The implied satire, however, of the whole affair,
strikes us as not altogether without a valuable lesson
for those miscalled “Americans” who forget alike
their country and themselves while abroad.
When the oxy-hydrogen microscope was first exhibited
in Edinburgh, a poor woman, whose riches
could never retard her ascent to the kingdom above,
took her seat in the lecture-room where the wonders
of the instrument were shown, and which were, for
the first time, to meet her sight. A piece of lace
was magnified into a salmon-net; a flea was metamorphosed
into an elephant; and other the like marvels
were performed before the eyes of the venerable
dame, who sat in silent astonishment staring open-mouthed
at the disk. But when, at length, a milliner’s
needle was transformed into a poplar-tree, and
confronted her with its huge eye, she could “hold
in” no longer.
“My goodness!” she exclaimed, “a camel could
get through that! There’s some hopes for the rich
folk yet!”
Legal tautology and unnecessary formulas have
often been made the theme of ridicule and satire;
but we suspect that it is somewhat unusual to find a
simple “levy” made with such elaborate formalities,
or, more properly, “solemnities,” as in the following
instance:
The Dogberryan official laid his execution very
formally upon a saddle; and said:
“Saddle, I level upon you, in the name of the
State!”
“Bridle, I level upon you, in the name of the
State!”
Then, turning to a pair of martingales, the real
name of which he did not know, he said:
“Little forked piece of leather, I level on you, in
the name of the State!”
“Oh, yes! oh, yes! oh, yes! Saddle, and Bridle,
and little forked piece of leather, I now inds you
upon this execution, and summon you to be and
appear at my sale-ground, on Saturday, the tenth of
this present month, to be executed according to law.
Herein fail not, or you will be proceeded against
for contempt of the constable!”
We find recorded in the “Drawer” two instances
where ingenuity was put in successful requisition,
to obviate the necessity of “making change,” a matter
of no little trouble oftentimes to tradesmen and
others. A rude fellow, while before the police-magistrate
for some misdemeanor, was fined nine dollars
for eighteen oaths uttered in defiance of official
warning that each one would cost him fifty cents.
He handed a ten-dollar bill to the Justice, who was
about returning the remaining one to the delinquent,
when he broke forth:
“No, no! keep the whole, keep the whole! I’ll
swear it out!“
And he proceeded to expend the “balance” in as
round and condensed a volley of personal denunciation
as had ever saluted the ears of the legal
functionary. He then retired content.
Something similar was the “change” given to one
of our hack-drivers by a jolly tar, who was enjoying
“a sail” in a carriage up Broadway. A mad bull,
“with his spanker-boom rigged straight out abaft,”
or some other animal going “at the rate of fourteen
knots an hour” in the street, attracted Jack’s attention,
as he rode along; and, unable to let the large
plate-glass window down, he broke it to atoms, that
he might thrust forth his head.
“A dollar and a half for that!” says Jehu.
“Vot of it?—here’s the blunt,” said the sailor,
handing the driver a three-dollar note.
“I can’t change it,” said the latter.
“Well, never mind!” rejoined the tar; “this will
make it right!”
The sudden crash of the other window told the
driver in what manner the “change” had been
made!
Some bachelor-reader, pining in single-blessedness,
may be induced, by the perusal of the ensuing
parody upon Romeo’s description of an apothecary,
to “turn from the error of his way” of life, and both
confer and receive “reward:”
And hereabout he dwells; whom late I noted
In suit of sables, with a care-worn brow,
Conning his books; and meagre were his looks;
Celibacy had worn him to the bone;
And in his silent chamber hung a coat,
The which the moths had used not less than he.
Four chairs, one table, and an old hair trunk,
Made up ‘the furniture;’ and on his shelves
A greasy candle-stick; a broken mug,
Two tables, and a box of old cigars;
Remnants of volumes, once in some repute,
Were thinly scattered round, to tell the eye
Of prying strangers, “This man had no wife!“
His tattered elbow gaped most piteously;
And ever as he turned him round; his skin
Did through his stockings peep upon the day.
Noting his gloom, unto myself I said:
‘And if a man did covet single life,
Reckless of joys that matrimony gives,
Here lives a gloomy wretch would show it him
In such most dismal colors, that the shrew,
Or slut, or idiot, or the gossip spouse,
Were each an heaven, compared to such a life!'”
“There are always two sides to a question,” the
bachelor-“defendant” may affirm, in answer to this;
and possibly himself try a hand at a contrast-parody.
There are a good many proverbs that will not
stand a very close analysis; and some one who is
of this way of thinking has selected a few examples,
by way of illustration. The following are specimens:
“The more the merrier.“—Not so, “by a jug-full,”
one hand, for example, is quite enough in a purse.
“He that runs fastest gets most ground.“—Not
exactly; for then footmen would get more than their
masters.
“He runs far who never turns.“—”Not quite: he
may break his neck in a short course.
“No man can call again yesterday.“—Yes, he may
call till his heart ache, though it may never come.
“He that goes softly goes safely.“—Not among
thieves.
“Nothing hurts the stomach more than surfeiting.“—Yes;
lack of meat.
“Nothing is hard to a willing mind.“—Surely; for
every body is willing to get money, but to many it is
hard.
“None so blind as those that will not see.“—Yes;
those who can not see.
“Nothing but what is good for something.“—”Nothing”
isn’t good for any thing.
“Nothing but what has an end.“—A ring hath no
end; for it is round.
“Money is a great comfort.“—But not when it
brings a thief to the State Prison.
“The world is a long journey.“—Not always; for
the sun goes over it every day.
“It is a great way to the bottom of the sea.“—Not
at all; it is merely “a stone’s throw.”
“A friend is best found in adversity.“—”No, sir;”
for then there are none to be found.
“The pride of the rich makes the labor of the poor.“—By
no manner of means. The labor of the poor
makes the pride of the rich.
The following lines, accompanying a trifling present,
are not an unworthy model for those who wish to
say a kind word in the most felicitous way:
Hath made my gift so small;
Then, loving heart, take hearty love,
To make amends for all.
Take gift with heart, and heart with gift,
Let will supply my want;
For willing heart, nor hearty will,
Nor is, nor shall be scant.”
Please to observe how adroitly an unforced play
upon words is embodied in these eight lines.
There is “more truth than poetry” in the subjoined
Extract from a Modern Dictionary.
The Grave.—An ugly hole in the ground, which
lovers and poets very often wish they were in, but
at the same time take precious good care to keep
out of.
Constable.—A species of snapping-turtle.
Modesty.—A beautiful flower, that flourishes only
in secret places.
Lawyer.—A learned gentleman who rescues your
estate from the hands of your opponent, and keeps
it himself.
“My Dear.”—An expression used by man and
wife at the commencement of a quarrel.
“Joining Hands” in Matrimony.—A custom arising
from the practice of pugilists shaking hands before
they begin to fight.
“Watchman.”—A man employed by the corporation
to sleep in the open air.
Laughter.—A singular contortion of the human
countenance, when a friend, on a rainy day, suddenly
claims his umbrella.
Dentist.—A person who finds work for his own
teeth by taking out those of other people.
A singular anecdote of Thomas Chittenden the
first Governor of the State of Vermont, has found its
way into our capacious receptacle. “Mum,” said
he, one night (his usual way of addressing his wife),
“Mum, who is that stepping so softly in the kitchen?”
It was midnight, and every soul in the house was
asleep, save the Governor and his companion. He
left his bed as stealthily as he possibly could, followed
the intruder into the cellar, and, without himself
being perceived, heard him taking large pieces
of pork out of his meat-barrel, and stowing them
away in a bag.
“Who’s there?” exclaimed the Governor, in a
stern, stentorian voice, as the intruder began to
make preparations to “be off.”
The thief shrank back into the corner, as mute as
a dead man.
“Bring a candle, Mum!”
The Governor’s wife went for the light.
“What are you waiting for, Mr. Robber, Thief, or
whatever your Christian-name may be?” said the
Governor.
The guilty culprit shook as if his very joints would
be sundered.
“Come, sir,” continued Governor Chittenden,
“fill up your sack and be off, and don’t be going
round disturbing honest people so often, when they
want to be taking their repose.”
The thief, dumb-founded, now looked more frightened
than ever.
“Be quick, man,” said the Governor, “fill up, sir!
I shall make but few words with you!”
He was compelled to comply.
“Have you got enough, now? Begone, then, in
one minute! When you have devoured this, come
again in the day-time, and I’ll give you more, rather
than to have my house pillaged at such an hour as
this. One thing more, let me tell you, and that is,
that, as sure as fate, if I ever have the smallest reason
to suspect you of another such an act, the law shall
be put in force, and the dungeon receive another
occupant. Otherwise, you may still run at large for
any thing that I shall do.”
The man went away, and was never afterward
known to commit an immoral act.
This story is related, as a veritable fact, of a
Dutch justice, residing in the pleasant valley of the
Mohawk not a thousand miles from the city of Schenectady:
He kept a small tavern, and was not remarkable
for the acuteness of his mental perceptions, nor
would it appear was at least one of his customers
much better off in the matter of “gumption.” One
morning a man stepped in and bought a bottle of
small-beer. He stood talking a few minutes, and
by-and-by said:
“I am sorry I purchased this beer. I wish you
would exchange it for some crackers and cheese to
the same amount.”
The simple-minded Boniface readily assented, and
the man took the plate of crackers and cheese, and
ate them. As he was going out, the old landlord hesitatingly
reminded him that he hadn’t paid for them.
“Yes, I did,” said the customer; “I gave you the
beer for ’em.”
“Vell den, I knowsh dat; but den you haven’t give
me de monish for de beersh.”
“But I didn’t take the beer: there stands the same
bottle now!”
The old tavern-keeper was astounded. He looked
sedate and confused; but all to no purpose was his
laborious thinking. The case was still a mystery.
“Vell den,” said he, at length, “I don’t zee how
it ish: I got de beersh—yaäs, I got de beersh; but
den, same times, I got no monish! Vell, you keeps
de grackers—und—gheese; but I don’t want any
more o’ your gustoms. You can keeps away from
my davern!”
Some years ago, at the Hartford (Conn.) Retreat
for the Insane, under the excellent management of
Doctor B——, a party used occasionally to be given,
to which those who are called “sane” were also invited;
and as they mingled together in conversation,
promenading, dancing, &c., it was almost impossible
for a stranger to tell “which was which.”
On one of these pleasant occasions a gentleman-visitor
was “doing the agreeable” to one of the
ladies, and inquired how long she had been in the
Retreat. She told him; and he then went on to
make inquiries concerning the institution, to which
she rendered very intelligent answers; and when he
asked her, “How do you like the Doctor?” she gave
him such assurances of her high regard for the physician,[Pg 420]
that the stranger was entirely satisfied of the
Doctor’s high popularity among his patients, and he
went away without being made aware that his partner
was no other than the Doctor’s wife!
She tells the story herself, with great zest; and is
very frequently asked by her friends, who know the
circumstances, “how she likes the Doctor!”
A fine and quaint thought is this, of the venerable
Archbishop Leighton:
“Riches oftentimes, if nobody take them away,
make to themselves wings, and fly away; and truly,
many a time the undue sparing of them is but letting
their wings grow, which makes them ready to fly
away; and the contributing a part of them to do good
only clips their wings a little, and makes them stay
the longer with their owner.”
This last consideration may perhaps be made
“operative” with certain classes of the opulent.
Is not the following anecdote of the late King of
the French not only somewhat characteristic, but indicative
of a superior mind?
Lord Brougham was dining with the King in the
unceremonious manner in which he was wont to delight
to withdraw himself from the trammels of state,
and the conversation was carried on entirely as if
between two equals. His Majesty (inter alia) remarked:
“I am the only sovereign now in Europe fit to fill
a throne.”
Lord Brougham, somewhat staggered by this piece
of egotism, muttered out some trite compliments
upon the great talent for government which his royal
entertainer had always displayed, &c., when the
King burst into a fit of laughter, and exclaimed:
“No, no; that isn’t what I mean; but kings are
at such a discount in our days, that there is no knowing
what may happen; and I am the only monarch who
has cleaned his own boots—and I can do it again!”
His own reverses followed so soon after, that the
“exiled Majesty of France” must have remembered
this conversation.
Mrs. P. was a dumpy little Englishwoman, with
whom and her husband we once performed the voyage
of the Danube from Vienna to Constantinople.
She was essentially what the English call “a nice
person,” and as adventurous a little body as ever
undertook the journey “from Cheapside to Cairo.”
She had left home a bride, to winter at Naples, intending
to return in the spring. But both she and
her husband had become so fascinated with travel,
that they had pushed on from Italy to Greece, and
from Greece to Asia Minor. In the latter country,
they made the tour of the Seven Churches—a pilgrimage
in which it was our fortune afterward to
follow them. Upon one occasion, somewhere near
Ephesus, they were fallen upon by a lot of vagabonds,
and Mr. P. got most unmercifully beaten.
His wife did not stop to calculate the damage, but
whipping up her horse, rode on some two miles further,
where she awaited in safety her discomfited
lord. Upon the return of the warm season, our
friends had gone up to Ischl in the Tyrol, to spend
the summer, and when we had the pleasure of meeting
them, they were “en route” for Syria, the Desert,
and Egypt.
Mrs. P., although a most amiable woman, had a
perverse prejudice against America and the Americans.
Among other things, she could not be convinced
that any thing like refinement among females
could possibly exist on this side of the Atlantic.
We did our utmost to dispel this very singular illusion,
but we do not think that we ever entirely succeeded.
Upon one occasion, when we insisted upon
her giving us something more definite than mere
general reasons for her belief, she answered us in
substance as follows: She had met, the summer before,
she said, at Ischl, a gentleman and his wife
from New York, who were posting in their own carriage,
and traveling with all the appendages of
wealth. They were well-meaning people, she declared,
but shockingly coarse. That they were representatives
of the best class at home, she could not
help assuming. Had she met them in London or
Paris, however, she said, she might have thought
them mere adventurers, come over for a ten days’ trip.
The lady, she continued, used to say the most extraordinary
things imaginable. Upon one occasion,
when they were walking together, they saw, coming
toward them, a gentleman of remarkably attenuated
form. The American, turning to her companion, declared
that the man was so thin, that if he were to
turn a quid of tobacco, from one cheek to the other, he
would lose his balance and fall over. This was too
much for even our chivalry, and for the moment we
surrendered at discretion.
Our traveling companion for the time was a young
Oxonian, a Lancashire man of family and fortune.
T. C. was (good-naturedly, of course,) almost as
severe upon us Americans as was Mrs. P. One
rather chilly afternoon, he and ourselves were sitting
over the fire in the little cabin of the steamer
smoking most delectable “Latakea,” when he requested
us to pass him the tongues (meaning the
tongs).
“The what!” we exclaimed.
“The tongues,” he repeated.
“Do you mean the tongs?” we asked.
“The tongs! and do you call them tongs? Come,
now, that is too good,” was his reply.
“We do call them the tongs, and we speak properly
when we call them so,” we rejoined, a little nettled
at his contemptuous tone; “and, if you please, we
will refer the matter for decision to Mrs. P., but
upon this condition only, that she shall be simply
asked the proper pronunciation of the word, without
its being intimated to her which of us is for tongues,
and which for tongs.” We accordingly proceeded at
once to submit the controversy to our fair arbitrator.
Our adversary was the spokesman, and he had hardly
concluded when Mrs. P. threw up her little fat
hands, and exclaimed, as soon as the laughter, which
almost suffocated her, permitted her to do so, “Now,
you don’t mean to say that you are barbarous enough
to say tongues in America?” It was our turn, then,
to laugh, and we took advantage of it.
A pilgrim from the back woods, who has just been
awakened from a Rip-Van-Winkleish existence of
a quarter of a century by the steam-whistle of the
Erie Railroad, recently came to town to see the
sights—Barnum’s anacondas and the monkeys at the
Astor Place Opera House included. Our friend, who
is of a decidedly benevolent and economical turn of
mind, while walking up Broadway, hanging on our
arm, the day after his arrival, had his attention attracted
to a watering-cart which was ascending the
street and spasmodically sprinkling the pavement.
Suddenly darting off from the wing of our protection,
our companion rushed after the man of Croton,
at the same time calling out to him at the top of his
voice, “My friend! my friend! your spout behind
is leaking; and if you are not careful you will lose
all the water in your barrel!”
He of the cart made no reply, but merely drawing
down the lid of his eye with his fore-finger, “went
on his way rejoicing.”
The following epigram was written upon a certain
individual who has rendered himself notorious,
if not famous, in these parts. His name we suppress,
leaving it to the ingenuity of the reader to
place the cap upon whatever head he thinks that it
will best fit:
The wonder of his time;
A stranger one, as strange at least,
The subject of my rhyme;
One twice as full of talk and gas,
And at the same time twice—the ass!”
Among the many good stories told of that ecclesiastical
wag, Sydney Smith, the following is one
which we believe has never appeared in print, and
which we give upon the authority of a gentleman
representing himself to have been present at the
occurrence.
Mr. Smith had a son who, as is frequently the
case with the offshoots of clergymen (we suppose
from a certain unexplained antagonism in human
nature)—
But spent his days in riot most uncouth,
And vex’d with mirth the drowsy ear of night,
Ah, me! in sooth he was a shameless wight,
Sore given to revel and ungodly glee!”
So fast indeed was this young gentleman, that for
several years he was excluded from the parental
domicile. At length, however, the prodigal repented,
and his father took him home upon his entering into
a solemn engagement to mend his ways and his
manners. Shortly after the reconciliation had taken
place, Mr. Smith gave a dinner-party, and one of his
guests was Sumner, the present Bishop of Winchester.
Before dinner, the facetious clergyman took his
son aside, and endeavored to impress upon him the
necessity of his conducting himself with the utmost
propriety in the distinguished company to which
he was about to be introduced. “Charles, my boy,”
he said, “I intend placing you at table next to the
bishop; and I hope that you will make an effort to
get up some conversation which may prove interesting
to his lordship.” Charles promised faithfully to
do as his father requested.
At the dinner the soup was swallowed with the
usual gravity. In the interval before the fish, hardly
a word was spoken, and the silence was becoming
positively embarrassing, when all of a sudden, Charles
attracted the attention of all at table to himself, by
asking the dignitary upon his right if he would do
him the favor to answer a Scriptural question which
had long puzzled him. Upon Doctor Sumner’s promising
to give the best explanation in his power, the
questioner, with a quizzical expression of countenance,
begged to be informed, “how long it took
Nebuchadnezzar to get into condition after he returned
from grass?“
It is needless to say that a hearty laugh echoed
this professional inquiry on every side, and how
unanimously young Smith was voted a genuine chip
off the old block.
Miss C——, of the Fifth Avenue, was complaining
the other day to Mrs. F——, of Bond-street, that
she could never go shopping without taking cold,
because the shops are kept open, and not closed like
the rooms of a house. Mrs. F—— thereupon dryly
advised her friend to confine her visits to Stewart’s
and Beck’s to Sundays.
Some one says that the reason why so few borrowed
books are ever returned, is because it is so
much easier to keep them than what is in them.
The following matrimonial dialogue was accidentally
overheard one day last week on the piazza of
the United States Hotel at Saratoga.
Wife.—”My dear, I can not, for the life of me,
recollect where I have put my pink bonnet.”
Husband.—”Very likely. You have so many
bonnets and so little head!”
Mr. Andrew Jackson Allen, who was one of
the prominent witnesses in the recent Forrest Divorce
case, is evidently an original. While passing up the
Bowery the other day, our editorial eye was attracted
by a curious sign on the east side of the street,
and we crossed over for the purpose of more conveniently
reading it. It was as follows:
ALLEN
INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL
COSTUMER.
FOOD FOR THE HUNGRY, DRINK FOR THE DRY,
REST FOR THE WEARY, AND TOGGERY FOR THE NAKED,
WHERE YOU CAN BLOOM OUT IF YOU PLEASE.
And under this was a smaller sign upon which
was inscribed the following piece of Macawber-like
advice:
CHERISH HOPE
AND
TRUST TO FORTUNE.
We take the liberty of expressing our desire that
Mr. Allen may be as fortunate (if he has not already
been so) in having something “turn up” in the end,
as was the illustrious Wilkins of “hopeful” and
“trustful” memory.
Two of our lady friends were reading, the other
day, Byron’s “Prisoner of Chillon.” We intended
to say that the one lady was pretending to read it
aloud to the other lady. No woman ever has been,
now is, or ever will be, capable of listening without
interrupting. So that at the very commencement
when the reader read the passage,
In a single night
As man’s have grown from sudden fears—”
the readee interposed as follows: “White? How
odd, to be sure. Well, I know nothing about men’s
hair; but there is our friend, Mrs. G——, of Twelfth-street,
the lady who has been just twenty-nine years
old for the last fifteen years; her husband died, you
know, last winter, at which misfortune her grief was
so intense that her hair turned completely black within
twenty-four hours after the occurrence of that sad
event.”
This bit of verbal annotation satisfied us, and we
withdrew.
Epitaphs are notoriously hyperbolical. It is refreshing
occasionally to meet with one which is
terse, business-like, and to the point. Such an one
any antiquarian may find, who has the patience to
hunt it out, upon the tombstone of a juvenile pilgrim
father (in embryo) somewhere in the New Haven
graveyard. For fear that it may not be found in the
first search, we give it from memory.
I wonder what I was begun for.”
Literary Notices.
A new work, by George W. Curtis (the Howadji
of Oriental travel), entitled Lotus-Eating, published
by Harper and Brothers, is a delightful reminiscence
of Summer Rambles, describing some of the most
attractive points of American scenery, with impressions
of life at famous watering-places, and suggestive
comparisons with celebrated objects of interest in
Europe. Dreamy, imaginative, romantic, but reposing
on a basis of the healthiest reality—tinged with
the richest colors of poetry, but full of shrewd observation
and mischievous humor—clothed in delicate
and dainty felicities of language—this volume is
what its title indicates—the reverie of a summer’s
pastime, and should be read in summer haunts, accompanied
with the music of the sea-shore or breezy
hill-sides. Although claiming no higher character
than a pleasant book of light reading, it will enhance
the reputation of the author both at home and abroad,
as one of the most picturesque and original of American
writers.
A New Harmony and Exposition of the Gospels, by
James Strong. This elaborate volume, intended
for the popular illustration of the New Testament,
consists of a parallel and combined arrangement of
the Four Gospel Narratives, a continuous commentary
with brief additional notes, and a supplement
containing several chronological and topographical
dissertations. The Harmony is constructed on a
novel plan, combining the methods of Newcome and
Townsend, and securing the conveniences of both,
without the defects of either. A continuous narrative
is formed by the selection of a leading text,
while at the same time, the different narratives are
preserved in parallel columns, so that they may be
examined and compared with perfect facility. The
Exposition of the text is given in the form of a free
translation of the original, in which the sense of the
sacred writers is expressed in modern phraseology,
and slightly paraphrased. This was the most delicate
portion of the author’s task. The venerable
simplicity of the inspired volume can seldom be departed
from, without a violation of good taste. As a
general rule, a strict adherence to the original language
best preserves its significance and beauty.
This was the plan adopted by the translators of the
received version, and their admirable judgment in
this respect, is evinced by the fact that almost every
modern attempt to improve upon their labors has
been a failure. No new translations have even approached
the place of the received one, in the estimation
either of the people or of scholars, while
many, with the best intentions, no doubt, on the part
of their authors, present only a painful caricature of
the original. Mr. Strong has done well in avoiding
some of the most prominent faults of his predecessors.
He has generally succeeded in preserving the
logical connection of thought, which often appears in
a clearer light in his paraphrase. His explanation
of passages alluding to ancient manners and customs
is highly satisfactory and valuable. But to our taste,
he frequently errs by the ambitious rhetorical language
in which he has clothed the discourses of the
Great Teacher. The reverent simplicity of the original
is but poorly reproduced by the florid phrases
of modern oratory. In this way, the sacred impression
produced by the Evangelists is injured, a lower
tone of feeling is substituted, and the refined religious
associations connected with their purity of language
is sacrificed to the intellectual clearness which
is aimed at by a more liberal use of rhetorical expressions
than a severe and just taste would warrant.
With this exception, we regard the present work as an
important and valuable contribution to biblical literature.
It displays extensive research, various and
sound learning, and indefatigable patience. The
numerous engravings with which the volume is illustrated,
are selected from the most authentic sources,
and are well adapted to throw light on the principal
localities alluded to in the text, as well as attractive
by their fine pictorial effect. We have no doubt that
the labors of the studious author will be welcomed
by his fellow students of the sacred writings, by
preachers of the Gospel, and by Sunday School
teachers, no less than by the great mass of private
Christians of every persuasion, who can not consult
his volume without satisfaction and advantage. (Published
by Lane and Scott.)
A valuable manual of ecclesiastical statistics is
furnished by Fox and Hoyt’s Quadrennial Register
of the Methodist Episcopal Church, of which the first
Number has been recently published by Case, Tiffany,
and Co., Hartford. It is intended to exhibit the condition,
economy, institutions, and resources of the
Methodist Episcopal Church in this country, in a
form adapted to popular use and general reference.
Among the contents of this Number, we find a complete
Report of the General Conference for 1852, a
copious Church Directory, an Abstract of the Discipline
of the Church, a list of the Seminaries of
Learning and their officers, and a general view of the
various religious denominations in this country. The
work evinces a great deal of research, and the compilers
have evidently spared no pains to give it the
utmost fullness of detail as well as accuracy of statement.
It does credit both to their judgment and
diligence. To the clergy of the Methodist Church
it will prove an indispensable companion in their
journeys and labors. Nor is it confined in its interest
to that persuasion of Christians. Whoever has
occasion to consult an ecclesiastical directory, will
find this volume replete with useful information, arranged
in a very convenient method, and worthy of
implicit reliance for its general correctness.
A new edition of The Mother at Home, by John
S. C. Abbott, with copious additions and numerous
engravings, is published by Harper and Brothers.
The favor with which this work has been universally
received by the religious public renders any exposition
of its merits a superfluous task.
We have received the second volume of Lippincott,
Grambo & Co.’s elegant and convenient edition
of The Waverley Novels, containing The Antiquary,
The Black Dwarf, and Old Mortality. With the Introduction
and Notes by Sir Walter Scott, and the
beautiful style of typography in which it is issued,
this edition leaves nothing to be desired by the most
fastidious book-fancier.
Another work in the department of historical romance,
by Henry William Herbert, has been
issued by Redfield. It is entitled The Knights of
England, France, and Scotland, and consists of “Legends
of the Norman Conquerors,” “Legends of the
Crusaders,” “Legends of Feudal Days,” and “Legends
of Scotland.” Mr. Herbert has a quick and[Pg 423]
accurate eye for the picturesque features of the romantic
Past; he pursues the study of history with
the soul of the poet; and skillfully availing himself
of the most striking traditions and incidents, has produced
a series of fascinating portraitures. Whoever
would obtain a vivid idea of the social and domestic
traits of France and Great Britain in the olden time,
should not fail to read the life-like descriptions of
this volume.
Marco Paul’s Voyages and Travels, by Jacob
Abbott (published by Harper and Brothers), is another
series for juvenile reading from the prolific pen
of the writer, who, in his peculiar department of
composition, stands without a rival. It is Mr. Abbott’s
forte to describe familiar scenes in a manner
which attracts and charms every variety of taste.
He produces this effect by his remarkable keenness
of observation, the facility with which he detects the
relations and analogies of common things, his unpretending
naturalness of illustration, and his command
of the racy, home-bred, idiomatic language of daily
life, never descending, however, to slang or vulgarity.
The series now issued describes the adventures of
Marco Paul in New York, on the Erie Canal, in
Maine, in Vermont, in Boston, and at the Springfield
Armory. It is emphatically an American work. No
American child can read it without delight and instruction.
But it will not be confined to the juvenile
library. Presenting a vivid commentary on American
society, manners, scenery, and institutions, it has a
powerful charm for readers of all ages. It will do
much to increase the great popularity of Mr. Abbott
as an instructor of the people.
Among the valuable educational works of the past
month, we notice Woodbury’s Shorter Course with
the German Language, presenting the main features
of the author’s larger work on a reduced scale. (Published
by Leavitt and Allen.)—Kiddle’s Manual of
Astronomy, an excellent practical treatise on the
elementary principles of the science, with copious
Exercises on the Use of the Globes (published by
Newman and Ivison),—and Russell’s University
Speaker, containing an admirable selection of pieces
for declamation and recitation. (published by J. Munroe
and Co.)
Summer Gleanings, is the title of a book for the
season by Rev. John Todd, consisting of sketches
and incidents of a pastor’s vacation, adventures of
forest life, legends of American history, and tales of
domestic experience. A right pleasant book it is,
and “good for the use of edifying” withal. Lively
description, touching pathos, playful humor, and useful
reflection, are combined in its pages in a manner
to stimulate and reward attention. Every where it
displays a keen and vigorous mind, a genuine love
of rural scenes, a habit of acute observation, and an
irrepressible taste for gayety and good-humor, which
the author wisely deems compatible with the prevailing
religious tone of his work. Among the best
pieces, to our thinking, are “The Poor Student,” “The
Doctor’s Third Patient,” and “The Young Lamb,”
though all will well repay perusal. (Northampton:
Hopkins, Bridgman and Co.)
The concluding volume of The History of the
United States, by Richard Hildreth, is issued
by Harper and Brothers, comprising the period from
the commencement of the Tenth Congress, in 1807,
to the close of the Sixteenth, in 1821. This period,
including the whole of Madison’s administration,
with a portion of that of Jefferson and of Monroe,
is one of the most eventful in American history, and
sustains a close relation to the existing politics of
the country. No one can expect an absolute impartiality
in the historian of such a recent epoch.
Mr. Hildreth’s narrative is undoubtedly colored, to a
certain degree, by his political convictions and preferences,
which, as we have seen, in the last volume,
are in favor of the old Federal party; but, he may
justly challenge the merit of diligent research in the
collection of facts, and acute judgment in the comparison
and sifting of testimony, and a prevailing
fairness in the description of events. He never suffers
the feelings of a partisan to prejudice the thoroughness
of his investigations; but always remains
clear, calm, philosophical, vigilant, and imperturbable.
His condensation of the debates in Congress,
on several leading points of dispute, exhibits the peculiarities
of the respective debaters in a lucid manner,
and will prove of great value for political reference.
His notices of Josiah Quincy, John Quincy
Adams, Madison, Monroe, and Henry Clay, are
among the topics on which there will be wide differences
of opinion; but they can not fail to attract attention.
The style of Mr. Hildreth, in the present
volume, preserves the characteristics, which we have
remarked in noticing the previous volumes. Occasionally
careless, it is always vigorous, concise, and
transparent. He never indulges in any license of
the imagination, never makes a display of his skill in
fine writing, and never suffers you to mistake his
meaning. Too uniform and severe for the romance
of history, it is an admirable vehicle for the exhibition
of facts, and for this reason, we believe that Mr.
Hildreth’s work will prove an excellent introduction
to the study of American history.
We congratulate the admirers of Fitz-Greene
Halleck—and what reader of American poetry is not
his admirer—on a new edition of his Poetical Works,
recently issued by Redfield, containing the old familiar
and cherished pieces, with some extracts from
a hitherto unpublished poem. The fame of Halleck
is identified with the literature of his country. The
least voluminous of her great poets, few have won
a more beautiful, or a more permanent reputation—a
more authentic claim to the sacred title of poet.
Combining a profuse wealth of fancy with a strong
and keen intellect, he tempers the passages in which
he most freely indulges in a sweet and tender pathos,
with an elastic vigor of thought, and dries the tears
which he tempts forth, by sudden flashes of gayety,
making him one of the most uniformly piquant of
modern poets. His expressions of sentiment never
fall languidly; he opens the fountains of the heart
with the master-touch of genius; his humor is as
gracious and refined as it is racy; and, abounding
in local allusions, he gives such a point and edge to
their satire, that they outlive the occasions of their
application, and may be read with as much delight
at the present time as when the parties and persons
whom they commemorate were in full bloom. The
terseness of Mr. Halleck’s language is in admirable
harmony with his vivacity of thought and richness
of fancy, and in this respect presents a most valuable
object of study for young poets.
Mysteries; or, Glimpses of the Supernatural, by C.
W. Elliott. (Published by Harper and Brothers.)
This is an original work, treating of certain manifestations
on the “Night-Side of Nature,” in a critico-historical
tone, rather than in either a dogmatic or
a skeptical spirit. “The Salem Witchcraft,” “The
Cock-Lane Ghost,” “The Rochester Knockings,”
“The Stratford Mysteries,” are some of the weird
topics on which it discourses, if not lucidly, yet genially
and quaintly. The author has evidently felt
a “vocation” to gather all the facts that have yet
come to light on these odd hallucinations, and he sets[Pg 424]
them forth with a certain grave naïveté and mock
Carlylese eloquence, which give a readable character
to his volume, in spite of the repulsiveness of its
themes. Of his discreet non-committalism we have
a good specimen in the close of the chapter on the
“The Stratford Mysteries,” of which the Rev. Dr.
Phelps is the chief hierophant. “Here the case
must rest; we would not willingly charge upon any one
deliberate exaggeration or falsehood, nor would any
fair-minded person decide that what seems novel and
surprising is therefore false. Every sane person will
appeal to the great laws of God ever present in history
and in his own consciousness, and by these he
will try the spirits, whether they be of God or of
man. The great jury of the public opinion will decide
this thing also; we have much of the evidence
before us. The burden of proof, however, rests
with Dr. Phelps himself. Fortunately he is a man
of character, property, and position, and he chooses
to stand where he does; no man will hinder him if
none heed him. Many believe, but may be thankful
for any help to their unbelief. Many more will be
strongly disposed to exclaim when they shall have
read through this mass of evidence—’It began with
nothing, it has ended with nothing.’ Ex nihil, nihil
fit!“
A perfect and liberal scheme has been matured, for
the publication of a complete edition of the Church
Historians of England, from Bede to Foxe. The
plan is worthy of support, and a large number of
subscribers have already enrolled their names. The
terms of publication are moderate, and the projectors
give the best guarantees of good faith.
Among recent English reprints worthy of notice
are Papers on Literary and Philosophical Subjects, by
Patrick C. Macdougall, Professor of Moral Philosophy
in New College, Edinburgh. They are collected
from various periodicals, and appear to be
published at present with a view to the author’s candidateship
for the Ethical chair in the University of
Edinburgh. The Essays on Sir James Mackintosh,
Jonathan Edwards, and Dr. Chalmers display high
literary taste as well as philosophical talent.
Mr. Kingsley, the author of Alton Locke, Yeast,
and other works, has published Sermons on National
Subjects, which are marked by the originality of
thought and force of utterance which characterize all
this author’s writings. Some of the sermons are
very much above the reach of village audiences to
which they were addressed, and in type will find a
more fitting circle of intelligent admirers. There is
much, however, throughout the volume suited to instruct
the minds and improve the hearts of the humblest
hearers, while the principles brought out in regard
to national duties and responsibilities, rewards
and punishments, are worthy of the attention of all
thoughtful men.
A new English translation of the Republic of
Plato, with an introduction, analysis, and notes, by
John Llewellyn Davies, M.A., and David James
Vaughan, M.A., Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge,
is a valuable contribution to the study of
classic literature. The translation is done in a scholar-like
way, and in the analysis and introduction the
editors show that they enter into the spirit of their
author as well as understand the letter of his work,
which is more than can be said of the greater number
of University translations. The text of the Zurich
edition of 1847 has been generally followed, and the
German translation of Schneider has evidently afforded
guidance in the rendering of various passages.
The Life of David Macbeth Moir, by Thomas
Aird, says the London Critic, is every way worthy
of Mr. Aird’s powers. It is written in a calm, dignified,
yet rich and poetical style. It is an offering
to the memory of dear, delightful “Delta,” equally
valuable from the tenderness which dictated it, and
from the intrinsic worth of the gift. Aird and “Delta”
were intimate friends. They had many qualities
in common. Both were distinguished by genuine
simplicity and sincerity of character, by a deep love
for nature, for poetry, and for “puir auld Scotland;”
and by unobtrusive, heart-felt piety. “Delta” had
not equal power and originality of genius with his
friend; but his vein was more varied, clearer, smoother,
and more popular. There was, in another respect,
a special fitness in Aird becoming “Delta’s” biographer.
He was with him when he was attacked
by his last illness. He watched his dying bed, received
his last blessing, and last sigh. And religiously
has he discharged the office thus sadly devolved
on him.
The fourth and last volume of The Life of Chalmers,
by Dr. Hanna, is principally devoted to the
connection of Chalmers with the Free Church movement.
The Athenæum says: “Altogether, Dr. Hanna
is to be congratulated on the manner in which he
has fulfilled the important task on which he has now
for several years been engaged. Dr. Chalmers is a
man whose life and character may well engage
many writers; but no one possessed such materials
as Dr. Hanna for writing a biography so full and detailed
as was in this case demanded. The four
volumes which he has laid before the public are not
only an ample discharge of his special obligations as
regards his splendid subject, but also a much needed
example of the manner in which biographies of this
kind, combining original narrative with extracts from
writings and correspondence, ought to be written.”
A meeting of literary men has been held at Lansdowne
House, for the purpose of raising a fund for
erecting a monument to the late Sir James Mackintosh.
The proposal for a monument was moved
by Mr. T. B. Macaulay, seconded by Lord Mahon.
Mr. Hallam moved the appointment of a committee,
which was seconded by Lord Broughton, Lord Lansdowne
agreeing to act as chairman, and Sir R. H.
Inglis as secretary. We are glad to see literary men
of all political parties uniting in this tribute of honor
to one of the greatest and best men of whom his
country could boast.
At the sixty-third anniversary of the Royal Literary
Fund, Lord Campbell presided effectively; and,
after stating that he owed his success in law to the
fostering aid of his labors in literature, he held out
hopes that he may yet live to produce a work which
shall give him a better title to a name in literature
than he has yet earned. Pleasant speeches were
made by Justice Talfourd, Mr. Monckton Milnes,
Chevalier Bunsen, Mr. Abbott Lawrence, and especially
by Mr. Thackeray, who improved the event of
the coming year of the society’s existence—that Mr.
Disraeli, M.P., is to be chairman of the anniversary
of 1853. The funds of the past year had been £600
more than in any former year.
William Maccall in The People, gives the following
graphic account of his first interview with[Pg 425]
John Stirling. “Sometime in March, 1841, I was
traveling by coach from Bristol to Devonport. I
had for companion part of the way a tall, thin gentleman,
evidently in bad health, but with a cheerful,
gallant look which repelled pity. We soon got into
conversation. I was much impressed by his brilliant
and dashing speech, so much like a rapid succession
of impetuous cavalry charges; but I was still more
impressed by his frankness, his friendliness, his manliness.
A sort of heroic geniality seemed to hang on
his very garments. We talked about German literature;
then about Carlyle. I said that the only attempt
at an honest and generous appreciation of
Carlyle’s genius was a recent article in The Westminster
Review. My companion replied, ‘I wrote
that article. My name is John Sterling.’ We
seemed to feel a warmer interest in each other from
that moment; and, by quick instinct, we saw that
we were brothers in God’s Universe, though we
might never be brought very near each other in
brotherhood on earth. Sterling left me at Exeter,
and a few days after my arrival at Devonport I received
a letter, which leavens my being with new
life, every time I read it, by its singular tenderness
and elevation.”
The English literary journals are always suggestive,
often amusing, and sometimes not a little
“verdant,” as the Yankees say, in their notices of
American books. We subjoin a few of their criticisms
on recent popular works. Of Queechy, by
Elizabeth Wetherell, the Literary Gazette discourses
as follows: “The authoress of ‘Queechy’
has every quality of a good writer save one. Good
feeling, good taste, fancy, liveliness, shrewd observation
of character, love of nature, and considerable
skill in the management of a story—all these she
possesses. But she has yet to learn how much
brevity is the soul of wit. Surely she must live in
some most quiet nook of ‘the wide, wide world,’ and
the greater part of her American readers must have
much of the old Dutch patience and the primitive
leisure of the days of Rip Van Winkle. Doubtless
the book will have admirers as ardent in the parlors
of Boston as in the farm-houses of the far West, who
will make no complaints of prolixity, and will wish
the book longer even than it is. There is a large
circle in this country also to whom it will be faultless.
The good people who take for gold whatever
glitters on the shelves of their favorite booksellers,
will be delighted with a work far superior to the
dreary volumes of commonplace which are prepared
for the use of what is called ‘the religious public.’
But we fear that those to whom such a book would
be the most profitable will deem ‘Queechy’ somewhat
tiresome. The story is too much drawn out,
and many of the dialogues and descriptions would
be wonderfully improved by condensation.”
The Athenæum has a decent notice of Curtis’s
Howadji in Syria, which by the by, has got metamorphosed
into The Wanderer in Syria, in the London
edition.
“It is about a year since we noticed a book of Eastern
travel called ‘Nile Notes’—evidently by a new
writer, and evincing his possession of various gifts
and graces—warmth of imagination, power of poetic
coloring, and a quick perception of the ludicrous in
character and in incident. We assumed that an author
of so much promise would be heard of again in
the literary arena; and accordingly he is now before
us as ‘The Wanderer in Syria,’ and has further
announced a third work under the suggestive title of
‘Lotus-Eating.’ ‘The Wanderer’ is a continuation
of the author’s travels—and is divided between
the Desert, Jerusalem, and Damascus. It is in the
same style of poetic reverie and sentimental scene-painting
as ‘Nile Notes,’—but it shows that Mr.
Curtis has more than one string to his harp. The
characteristic of his former volume was a low, sad
monotone—the music of the Memnon, in harmony
with the changeless sunshine and stagnant life of
Egypt—with the silence of its sacred river and the
sepulchral grandeur of its pyramids and buried cities.
‘The Wanderer,’ on the contrary, is never melancholy.
There is in him a prevailing sense of repose,
but the spirit breathes easily, and the languid hour is
followed by bracing winds from Lebanon. There is
the same warm sunshine,—but the gorgeous colors
and infinite varieties of Eastern life are presented
with greater vivacity and grace.
“Mr. Curtis’s fault is that of Ovid—an over-lusciousness
of style—too great a fondness for color.
He cloys the appetite with sweetness. His aim as
a writer should be to obtain a greater depth and variety
of manner—more of contrast in his figures.
He is rich in natural gifts, and time and study will
probably develop in him what is yet wanting of artistic
skill and taste.
“Of Mr. Curtis’s latest work, entitled ‘Lotus-Eating;
a Summer Book,’ the Literary Gazette says:
“A very cheerful and amusing, but always sensible
and intelligent companion is Mr. Curtis. Whether
on the Nile or the Hudson, on the Broadway of New
York or the Grand Canal of Venice, we have one
whose remarks are worth listening to. Not very
original in his thoughts, nor very deep in his feelings,
we yet read with pleasant assent the record of almost
every thing that he thinks and feels. This new summer
book is a rough journal of a ramble in the States,
but every chapter is full of reminiscences of the old
European world, and an agreeable medley he makes
of his remarks on scenery, and history, and literature,
and mankind. Mr. Curtis is one of the most cosmopolitan
writers that America has yet produced.
This light volume is fittingly called a summer book,
just such as will be read with pleasure on the deck
of a steamer, or under the cliffs of some of our modern
Baiæ. It may also teach thoughtless tourists
how to reflect on scenes through which they travel.”
The question whether the honor of the authorship
of the “Imitation of Jesus Christ,” a work held in
the highest esteem in the Roman Catholic church,
and which has been translated into almost every
living language, belongs to John Gersen or Gesson,
supposed to have been an abbot of the order of Saint
Benedict, at the beginning of the fourteenth century,
or to Thomas à Kempis, monk of the order of Regular
Canons of the monastery of Mount Saint Agnes,
has given rise to an immense deal of controversy
among Catholic ecclesiastical writers, and has set
the two venerable orders of Benedictines and Regular
Canons terribly by the ears. It has just, however,
been set at rest, by the discovery of manuscripts
by the Bishop of Bruges, in the Library at
Brussels, proving beyond all doubt, to his mind, that
Thomas à Kempis really was the author, and not, as the
partisans of Gersen assert, merely the copyist.
The Bishop of Munster has also, singular to relate,
recently discovered old manuscripts which lead him
to the same conclusion. The manuscript of Gersen,
on which his advocates principally relied to prove
that he was the author, must therefore henceforth be
considered only as a copy; it is in the public library
at Valenciennes.
The last two numbers of the “Leipzig Grenzboten”
contain, among some half-dozen articles of
special German interest, papers on Görgey’s Vindication,
on Longfellow, and Margaret Fuller Ossoli,
and on the department of northern antiquities in the
new museum at Berlin. The German critic considers
Professor Longfellow’s poetry as a cross between
the “Lakers” and Shelley. Longfellow’s
novels remind him of Goethe and Jean Paul Richter,
and in some instances of Hoffmann. The “Golden
Legend” is of course a frantic imitation of Goethe’s
“Faust.” Margaret Fuller, too, is represented as an
emanation from the German mind.
We learn from the “Vienna Gazette” that Dr.
Moritz Wagner, the renowned naturalist and member
of the Vienna Academy of Sciences, has set out
on a journey across the continent of America to New
Orleans, Panama, Columbia, and Peru. Dr. Wagner,
accompanied by Dr. Charles Scherzer, who has
undertaken to edit the literary portion of the description
of his travels, is expected to devote the next
three years to this expedition, and great are the
hopes of the Vienna papers as to its results.
The “Presse” of Vienna states that Prince Metternich
possesses an amulet which Lord Byron formerly
wore round his neck. This amulet, the inscriptions
of which have been recently translated by the celebrated
Orientalist, von Hammer-Purgstall, contains a
treaty entered into “between Solomon and a she-devil,”
in virtue of which no harm could happen to
the person who should wear the talisman. This
treaty is written half in Turkish and half in Arabic.
It contains besides, prayers of Adam, Noah, Job,
Jonah, and Abraham. The first person who wore
the amulet was Ibrahim, the son of Mustapha, in
1763. Solomon is spoken of in the Koran as the
ruler of men and of devils.
The University of Berlin has celebrated the fiftieth
anniversary of the nomination to the degree of
Doctor of M. Lichtenstein, the celebrated naturalist,
who, since the foundation of the university, in
1810, has occupied the chair of zoology. Three
busts of M. Lichtenstein were inaugurated—one
in the grand gallery of the University, one in the
Zoological Museum, and the third in the Zoological
Garden of Berlin. Baron Von Humboldt delivered
a speech to the professors and students, in which
he detailed at great length the scientific labors of M.
Lichtenstein. Some days before the ceremony, M.
Lichtenstein, who is remarkable for his modesty,
left Berlin for Trieste, from whence he was to proceed
to Alexandria.
Görgey’s Memoirs of the Hungarian Campaign have
been confiscated, and forbidden throughout Austria.
Exceptions, however, are made in favor of individuals.
This year, 1852, the Royal Academy of Sweden
has caused its annual medal to be struck to the
memory of the celebrated Swedenborg, one of its
first members. The medal, which has already been
distributed to the associates, has, on the obverse,
the head of Swedenborg, with, at the top, the name,
Emanuel Swedenborg; and underneath, Nat. 1688.
Den. 1772. And on the reverse, a man in a garment
reaching to the feet, with eyes unbandaged, standing
before the temple of Isis, at the base of which the
goddess is seen. Above is the inscription: Tantoque
exsultat alumno; and below: Miro naturæ investigatori
socio quond. æstimatiss. Acad. reg. Scient. Soec.
MDCCCLII.
In Sweden during the year 1851 there were 1060
books published, and 113 journals. Of the books,
182 were theological, 56 political, 123 legal, 80
historical, 55 politico-economical and technical, 45
educational, 40 philological, 38 medical, 31 mathematical,
22 physical, 18 geographical, 3 æsthetical,
and 3 philosophical. Fiction and Belles-Lettres
have 259; but they are mostly translations from English,
French, and German. Of these details we
are tempted to say, remarks the Leader, what Jean
Paul’s hero says of the lists of Errata he has been
so many years collecting—”Quintus Fixlein declared
there were profound conclusions to be drawn
from these Errata; and he advised the reader to
draw them!”
Another eminent and honorable name is added to
the list of victims to the present barbarian Government
of France. M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire has
refused to take the oath of allegiance—and he will
accordingly be deprived of the chair which he has
long filled with so much ability at the Collège de
France. The sacrifice which M. St. Hilaire has
made to principle is the more to be honored, since
he has no private fortune, and has reached a time of
life when it is hard to begin the world anew. But
the loss of his well-earned means of subsistence is,
we know, a light evil in his eyes compared to the
loss of a sphere of activity which he regarded as
eminently useful and honorable, and which he had
acquired by twenty-seven years of laborious devotion
to learning and philosophy.
Among the few French books worthy of notice,
says the Leader, let us not forget the fourth volume
of Saint Beuve’s charming Causeries du Lundi,
just issued. The volume opens with an account of
Mirabeau’s unpublished dialogues with Sophie, and
some delicate remarks by Sainte Beuve, in the
way of commentary. There are also admirable papers
on Buffon, Madame de Scudery, M. de Bonald,
Pierre Dupont, Saint Evremont et Ninon, Duc de
Lauzun, &c. Although he becomes rather tiresome
if you read much at a time, Sainte Beuve is the
best article writer (in our Macaulay sense) France
possesses. With varied and extensive knowledge,
a light, glancing, sensitive mind, and a style of great
finesse, though somewhat spoiled by affectation, he
contrives to throw a new interest round the oldest
topics; he is, moreover, an excellent critic.
Les Causeries du Lundi is by far the best of his
works.
Dramatic literature is lucrative in France. The
statement of finances laid before the Dramatic Society
shows, that during the years 1851-52, sums paid
for pieces amount to 917,531 francs (upward of
£36,000). It would be difficult to show that English
dramatists have received as many hundreds.
The sources of these payments are thus indicated.
Theatres of Paris, 705,363 francs; the provincial
theatres, 195,450 francs (or nearly eight thousand
pounds; whereas the English provinces return about
eight hundred pounds a year!)—and suburban theatres,
16,717 francs. To these details we may add
the general receipts of all the theatres in Paris during
the year—viz., six millions seven hundred and
seventy-one thousand francs, or £270,840.
Comicalities, Original and Selected.
MR. JOHN BULL’S IDEAS ON THE MUSQUITO QUESTION.
Young Ladies (both at once).—”Why, Mr. Bull! how terribly you have been bitten by the Musquitoes!”
Mr. Bull (a fresh importation).—”I can’t hunderstand ‘ow it ‘appened. I did hevery thing I could think
of to keep them hoff. I ‘ad my window hopen and a light burning hall night in my hapartment!”
STARVATION FOR THE DELICATE.
That exquisite young officer, Captain Gandaw,
was reading a newspaper, when his
brilliant eye lighted on the following passage in
a letter which had been written to the journal
by Mr. Mechi, on the subject of “Irrigation.”
“I may be thought rather speculative when I anticipate
that within a century from this period, the sewage
from our cities and towns will follow the lines of our
lines of railway, in gigantic arterial tubes, from which
diverging veins will convey to the eager and distant
farmer the very essence of the meat and bread which he
once produced at so much cost.”
“Fancy,” remarked the gallant Captain, “the
sewage of towns and cities being the essence
of owa bwead and meat—and of beeaw too, of
cawse, as beeaw is made from gwain! How
vewy disgasting! Mr. Mechi expects that his
ideas will be thought wathaw speculative.—He
flatters himself. They will only be consida’d
vewy dawty. The wetch! I shall be
obliged to abjaw bwead, and confine myself to
Iwish potatoes—which are the simple productions
of the awth—and avoid all animal food
but game and fish. And when fish and game
are not in season, I shall be unda the necessity
of westwicting my appetite to
YOUNG NEW YORK HARD UP.
Tender Mother.—”A hundred Dollars! why, what can you want a hundred dollars so soon for?”
Young New York.—”Why, Mother, I’m deucedly hard up. I’m almost out of Cologne and Cigars.
Besides, the fellows are going to run me for President of the St. Nicholas Club, and I must pony up my
dues, and stand the Champagne.”
A VICTIM OF THE TENDER PASSION.
Young Lady.—”Now then, what is it that you wish to say to me that so nearly
concerns your happiness?”Enamored Juvenile.—”Why, I love you to the verge of distraction, and can’t be
happy without you! Say, dearest, only say that you will be mine!”
A STRIKING EXPRESSION.
Roguy.—”See that girl looking at me, Poguy?”
Poguy.—”Don’t I? Why, she can’t keep her eyes off you.”
Roguy (poking Poguy in the waistcoat).—”What women care for, my
boy, isn’t Features, but Expression!”
SCENE IN A FASHIONABLE LADIES’ GROGGERY.
Young Lady “couldn’t take any thing—only a Pine-apple Ice”—but the ice once broken,
she makes such havoc upon pies, tongue, Roman punches, tarts, Champagne, and sundry other
potables and comestibles, as to produce a very perceptible feeling in the Funds.
RATHER A BAD LOOK-OUT.
Young Sister.—”Oh, Mamma! I wish I could go to a party.”
Mamma.—”Don’t be foolish. I’ve told you a hundred times that you can not go out until Flora is married.
So do not allude to the subject again, I beg. It’s utterly out of the question.”
THE ATTENTIVE HUSBAND IN AUGUST.
Edward.—”There, Dearest, do you feel refreshed?”
Angelina.—”Yes, my Love. A little more upon the left cheek, if you please.
That’s much nicer than fanning one’s self. Now a little higher, on my forehead.”
Fashions for Summer.
Figures 1 and 2.—Bride’s Toilet and Walking Dress.
Fig. 1.—Bride’s Toilet.—Hair in bands very
much puffed. Back hair tied rather low; the
wreath of white iris flowers, with foliage. Behind
this, and rather on one side, is the crown of orange
flowers that holds the vail, which is placed very
backward, and is of plain tulle, with a single hem.
Dress of taffeta, with bayadères, or, rather, velvet,
with rows of velvet flowers, appearing like terry velvet.
The body, almost high behind, opens very low
in front, and is trimmed with a double plain berthe,
that follows its cut. The waist is lengthened in
front, but not pointed. The bouquet decorates the
bottom of the body, and spreads in the form of a fan.
The sleeve pagoda-shaped, half-wide, and plain at
top, terminated by two trimmings worked like the
edge of the berthes; a wide lace under-sleeve covers
the arm. The habit shirt is square at the top, composed
of lace, the upper row raised at the edge and
four or five other rows below.
Fig. 2.—Walking Dress.—Bonnet of taffeta and
blond. The brim, high, narrow, and sitting close to
the chin, is of taffeta, gathered from the bottom of the
crown to the edge; on the sides of the crown an ornament
is placed, cut rather round at the ends, and
consisting of three rows of taffeta bouillonnes, fastened
together by a cross-piece of taffeta. The crown is
not deep, falls back, and has a soft top. The curtain,
of taffeta, cut cross-wise, is not gathered in the
seam. The blond that covers the lower part is gathered,
and ends in vandykes that hang below the curtain.
A like blond is sewed full on the cross-piece
that borders the ornament, and the points also reaching
beyond the edge are fastened to those of the other
blond, so that the edge of the brim is seen through
them. Toward the bottom the blond above separates
from that below, and sits full near the edge of the ornament.
A blond forming a fanchon on the calotte is
laid also under the other edge of the ornament.
Lastly the curtain itself is covered with blond. Inside
are white roses, mixed with bows of ribbon.
Dress of taffeta. Body high, buttoning straight up
in front. Two trimmings are put up the side of the
body. These trimmings, made of bands resembling
the narrow flounces, get narrower toward the bottom.
They are pinked at the edges, and shaded. The
sleeve is plain, and terminated by two trimmings,
pinked and shaded. The skirt has five flounces five
inches wide, then a sixth of eight, pinked and shaded.
Figure 3.—Bonnet.
Figure 5.—Bonnet.
Figure 4.—Bonnet.
Fig. 3.—Drawn Bonnet, of taffeta and blond;
the brim, which is four inches wide, is of taffeta
doubled, that is, the inside and outside are of one
piece. It has several gathers. The side of crown,
three inches and a quarter wide, is of the same material,
puffed at the sides for about an inch, and there
are also fourteen ribs in the whole circuit. The top
of crown is soft; a roll along the edge of the crown.
The ornaments consist of small rolls of taffeta, to
which are sewed two rows of blond three-quarters of
an inch wide. These same rolls ornament the brim,
being placed on the edge, and inside as well as outside.
There are seventeen of these ornaments on the
brim, with an inch and a half of interval between
them. The curtain is trimmed in the same manner,
and has ten of them. The top of crown has five rolls,
trimmed with blond. The inside is ornamented with
roses, brown foliage, and bouclettes of narrow blue
ribbons mixing with the flowers.
Fig. 4.—Drawn Bonnet of white tulle and straw-colored
taffeta, edged with a fringed guipure and
bouquets of Parma violets. The taffeta trimming is
disposed inside and outside the brim, in vandykes,
the points of which are nearly three inches apart. In
each space between them is a bouquet of Parma violets.
The points of the fanchon lie upon the crown.
Fig. 5.—Drawn Bonnet, of tulle, blond, taffeta,
and straw trimmings, with flowers of straw and
crape. The edge of the brim is cut in fourteen scollops.
The inside is puffed tulle, mixed with blond.
The scollops of the edge are continued all over the
bonnet, and are alternately tulle and white taffeta,
with a straw edging.
For morning and home costume, organdie muslins
will be in great favor, the bodies made in the loose
jacket style, and worn either with lace or silk waist
coats. Silks, with designs woven in them for each
part of the dress, are still worn; those woven with
plaided stripe, à-la robe, are very stylish.
White bodies will be worn with colored skirts
they will be beautifully embroidered, and will have a
very distinguée appearance.
Dress bodies are worn open; they have lappets or
small basquines: for all light materials, such as organdie,
tarlatane, barège, &c., the skirts will have
flounces. In striped and figured silks, the skirts are
generally preferred without trimming, as it destroys
the effect and beauty of the pattern. Black lace
mantillas and shawls will receive distinguished favor;
those of Chantilly lace are very elegant. Scarf
mantelets are worn low on the shoulders.
A novelty in the form of summer mantelets has just
been introduced in Paris, where it has met with pre-eminent
favor. It is called the mantelet echarpe, or
scarf mantelet; and it combines, as its name implies,
the effect of the scarf and mantelet. It may be made
in black or colored silk, and is frequently trimmed
simply with braid or embroidery. Sometimes the
trimming consists of velvet or passementerie, and
sometimes of fringe and lace.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Spelled variously, by different authors, Caïpha, Kaïfa,
Caiffa, and in other ways.
[2] The charts, as executed by the engineers, were on a
still larger scale than is here represented. It was necessary
to reduce the scale by one-fourth, in order to bring
the portion to be copied within the limits of a page.
[3] A striking example of this occurs at Long Branch in
New Jersey, where a stream crosses the beach in entering
the sea, at a point about half a mile to the southward
of the hotels resorted to on that coast in summer by
bathers. The visitor who walks along the shore in that
direction, sometimes at a certain point finds himself upon
an elevated sandy ridge, with the surf of the sea rolling
in upon one side of it, and what appears to be a large
inland pond lying quietly on the other. A few days afterward,
on visiting the spot, he observes, perhaps, that the
pond has disappeared; and a wide chasm has been made
across the ridge of sand that he walked over before in
safety, through the centre of which a small stream is
flowing quietly into the sea. Neither of these views are
of a nature to awaken any very special interest, except
when they are considered in connection with each other:
but if the observer should chance to come upon the ground
when the pond is nearly full, he may witness a very extraordinary
spectacle in the rushing out of the torrent by
which the barrier is carried away. The boys of the
vicinity often find amusement in hastening the catastrophe,
by digging a little channel in the sand with their
hands, when the water has risen nearly to the proper
level. The stream that flows through this opening is at
first extremely small, but it grows wider, deeper, and
more rapid every moment, as the opening enlarges, and
soon becomes a roaring torrent, spreading to a great
width, and tossing itself into surges and crests as it
rushes down the slope into the sea, in the most wild and
tumultuous manner.
The spectacle is almost equally imposing when, after
the pond has emptied itself, and the tide begins to rise,
the surf of the sea engages in its work of reconstructing
the dam.
[4] It is somewhat doubtful whether the very first discovery
of the art of making glass, took place here or not,
as learned men have noticed a considerable number of
allusions in various writings of a very high antiquity,
which they have thought might possibly refer to this substance.
An example of this kind is found in the book
of Job, where a word, translated crystal, is used. The
writer, speaking of wisdom, says, “It can not be equaled
with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the
sapphire. The gold and the crystal can not equal it.”
It has been considered doubtful whether the word crystal,
in this connection, is meant to denote a glass or some
transparent mineral.
[5] See 1 Kings xviii. 17-46. For other passages of
Scripture referring to Mt. Carmel see 2 Kings ii. 25; iv.
25; xix. 23. 2 Chron. xxvi. 10. Isa. xxxv. 2. Jer.
xlvi. 18. Amos i. 2; ix. 3. Micah vii. 14.
[6] 1 Kings xviii. 4
[7] Continued from the July Number.
[8] Continued from the July Number.
[9] A gentleman, after hearing one of Mr. Clay’s magnificent
performances in the Senate, thus describes him:
“Every muscle of the orator’s face was at work. His
whole body seemed agitated, as if each part was instinct
with a separate life; and his small white hand, with its
blue veins apparently distended almost to bursting, moved
gracefully, but with all the energy of rapid and vehement
gesture. The appearance of the speaker seemed that of a
pure intellect, wrought up to its mightiest energies, and
brightly shining through the thin and transparent vail of
flesh that invested it.” It is much to be lamented that no
painting exists of the departed statesman that really does
him justice. What a treasure to the country, and to the
friends of the “Great Commoner,” would be a portrait,
at this time, from the faithful and glowing pencil of our
pre-eminent artist, Elliott! But it is now “too late”.
[10] Nicholas Dean, Esq., President of the Croton Aqueduct
Board, a life-long friend of Mr. Clay.
[11] They were reduced to writing immediately afterward.
Transcriber’s Notes:
Obvious printer’s errors have been repaired, other inconsistent spellings have been kept, including variation in:
– use of accent (e.g. “Léonard” and “Leonard” in p. 413-414);
– use of hyphen (e.g. “archway” and “arch-way”);
– capitalisation (e.g. “Vice-president” and “Vice-President”).
Pg 356, word “upon” removed from sentence “…attack upon [upon] Mr. Dutton’s purse…”
Pg 378, sentence “(TO BE CONTINUED.)” added to the end of article.
Pg 386, word “of” added to sentence “…the wish of the son…”
Pg 416, word “is” removed from sentence “Here [is] is a very amusing picture…”