AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES. 

BY

THOMAS DE QUINCEY

SELECTIONS, GRAVE AND GAY, FROM WRITINGS PUBLISHED AND UNPUBLISHED, BYTHOMAS DE QUINCEY. 

EXTRACT FROM A LETTERWRITTEN BY MR. DE QUINCEY TO THE AMERICAN EDITOR OF THIS WORKS. 

Lasswade, _January 8_, 1853

MY DEAR SIR:

I am on the point of revising and considerably altering, forrepublication in England, an edition of such amongst my writings asit may seem proper deliberately to avow. Not that I have any intention, or consciously any reason, expressly to disown any one thing that Ihave ever published; but some things have sufficiently accomplishedtheir purpose when they have met the call of that particular transientoccasion in which they arose; and others, it may be thought on review, might as well have been suppressed from the very first. Things immoralwould of course fall within that category; of these, however, I cannotreproach myself with ever having published so much as one. But evenpure levities, simply _as_ such, and without liability to any worseobjection, may happen to have no justifying principle of life withinthem; and if, any where, I find such a reproach to lie against a paperof mine, that paper I should wish to cancel. So that, upon the whole, my new and revised edition is likely to differ by very considerablechanges from the original papers; and, consequently, to that extentis likely to differ from your existing Boston reprint. 

These changes, as sure to be more or less advantageous to the collection, it is my wish to place at your disposal as soon as possible, in orderthat you may make what use of them you see fit, be it little or much. Itmay so happen that the public demand will give you no opportunity forusing them at all. I go on therefore to mention, that over and abovethese changes, which may possibly strike you as sometimes mere caprices, pulling down in order to rebuild, or turning squares into rotundas, (_diruit, aedificat, mutat quadrata rotundis_, ) it is my purpose toenlarge this edition by as many new papers as I find available for such astation. These I am anxious to put into the hands of your house, and, sofar as regards the U. S. , of _your_ house exclusively; not with any viewto further emolument, but as an acknowledgment of the services which youhave already rendered me; viz. , first, in having brought together sowidely scattered a collection--a difficulty which in my own hands by toopainful an experience I had found from nervous depression to beabsolutely insurmountable; secondly, in having made me a participator inthe pecuniary profits of the American edition, without solicitation orthe shadow of any expectation on my part, without any legal claim that Icould plead, or equitable warrant in established usage, solely and merelyupon your own spontaneous motion. Some of these new papers, I hope, willnot be without their value in the eyes of those who have taken aninterest in the original series. But at all events, good or bad, they arenow tendered to the appropriation of your individual house, the Messrs. TICKNOR, REED, & FIELDS, according to the amplest extent of any power tomake such a transfer that I may be found to possess by law or custom inAmerica. 

I wish this transfer were likely to be of more value. But the veriesttrifle, interpreted by the spirit in which I offer it, may express mysense of the liberality manifested throughout this transaction by yourhonorable house. 

Ever believe me my dear sir, Your faithful and obliged, THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 

PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION

The miscellaneous writings which I propose to lay before the public inthis body of selections are in part to be regarded as a republication ofpapers scattered through several British journals twenty or thirty yearsago, which papers have been reprinted in a collective form by an Americanhouse of high character in Boston; but in part they are to be viewed asentirely new, large sections having been intercalated in the presentedition, and other changes made, which, even to the old parts, by givingvery great expansion, give sometimes a character of absolute novelty. Once, therefore, at home, with the allowance for the changes hereindicated, and once in America, it may be said that these writings havebeen in some sense published. But _publication_ is a great idea nevereven approximated by the utmost anxieties of man. Not the Bible, not thelittle book which, in past times, came next to the Bible in Europeandiffusion and currency, [1] viz. , the treatise "De Imitatione Christi, "has yet in any generation been really published. Where is the _printed_book of which, in Coleridge's words, it may not be said that, after allefforts to publish itself, still it remains, for the world of possiblereaders, "as good as manuscript"? Not to insist, however, upon anyromantic rigor in constructing this idea, and abiding by the ordinarystandard of what is understood by _publication_, it is probable that, inmany cases, my own papers must have failed in reaching even this. Forthey were printed as contributions to journals. Now, that mode ofpublication is unavoidably disadvantageous to a writer, except underunusual conditions. By its harsh peremptory punctuality, it drives a maninto hurried writing, possibly into saying the thing that is not. Theywon't wait an hour for you in a magazine or a review; they won't wait fortruth; you may as well reason with the sea, or a railway train, as insuch a case with an editor; and, as it makes no difference whether thatsea which you desire to argue with is the Mediterranean or the Baltic, so, with that editor and his deafness, it matters not a straw whether hebelong to a northern or a southern journal. Here is one evil of journalwriting--viz. , its overmastering precipitation. A second is, its effectat times in narrowing your publicity. Every journal, or pretty nearly so, is understood to hold (perhaps in its very title it makes proclamation ofholding) certain fixed principles in politics, or possibly religion. These distinguishing features, which become badges of enmity andintolerance, all the more intense as they descend upon narrower andnarrower grounds of separation, must, at the very threshold, by warningoff those who dissent from them, so far operate to limit your audience. To take my own case as an illustration: these present sketches werepublished in a journal dedicated to purposes of political change such asmany people thought revolutionary. I thought so myself, and did not goalong with its politics. Inevitably that accident shut them out from theknowledge of a very large reading class. Undoubtedly this journal, beingably and conscientiously conducted, had some circulation amongst aneutral class of readers; and amongst its own class it was popular. Butits own class did not ordinarily occupy that position in regard to socialinfluence which could enable them rapidly to diffuse the knowledge of awriter. A reader whose social standing is moderate may communicate hisviews upon a book or a writer to his own circle; but his own circle is anarrow one. Whereas, in aristocratic classes, having more leisure andwealth, the intercourse is inconceivably more rapid; so that thepublication of any book which interests _them_ is secured at once; andthis publishing influence passes downwards; but rare, indeed, is theinverse process of publication through an influence spreading upwards. 

According to the way here described, the papers now presented to thepublic, like many another set of papers nominally published, were _not_so in any substantial sense. Here, at home, they may be regarded asstill unpublished. [2] But, in such a case, why were not the papers atonce detached from the journal, and reprinted? In the neglect to do this, some there are who will read a blamable carelessness in the author; but, in that carelessness, others will read a secret consciousness that thepapers were of doubtful value. I have heard, indeed, that some persons, hearing of this republication, had interpreted the case thus: Within thelast four or five years, a practice has arisen amongst authors ofgathering together into volumes their own scattered contributions toperiodical literature. Upon that suggestion, they suppose me suddenly tohave remembered that I also had made such contributions; that mine mightbe entitled to their chance as well as those of others; and, accordingly, that on such a slight invitation _ab extra_, I had called back into lifewhat otherwise I had long since regarded as having already fulfilled itsmission, and must doubtless have dismissed to oblivion. 

I do not certainly know, or entirely believe, that any such thing wasreally said. But, however that may be, no representation can be moreopposed to the facts. Never for an instant did I falter in my purposeof republishing most of the papers which I had written. Neither, ifI myself had been inclined to forget them, should I have been allowedto do so by strangers. For it happens that, during the fourteen lastyears, I have received from many quarters in England, in Ireland, inthe British colonies, and in the United States, a series of lettersexpressing a far profounder interest in papers written by myself thanany which I could ever think myself entitled to look for. Had I, therefore, otherwise cherished no purposes of republication, it nowbecame a duty of gratitude and respect to these numerous correspondents, that I should either republish the papers in question, or explain whyI did not. The obstacle in fact had been in part the shifting stateof the law which regulated literary property, and especially theproperty in periodical literature. But a far greater difficulty layin the labor (absolutely insurmountable to myself) of bringing togetherfrom so many quarters the scattered materials of the collection. Thislabor, most fortunately, was suddenly taken off my hands by the eminenthouse of Messrs TICKNOR, REED, & FIELDS, Boston, U. S. To them I owemy acknowledgments, first of all, for that service: they have broughttogether a great majority of my fugitive papers in a series of volumesnow amounting to twelve. And, secondly, I am bound to mention thatthey have made me a sharer in the profits of the publication, calledupon to do so by no law whatever, and assuredly by no expectation ofthat sort upon my part. 

Taking as the basis of my remarks this collective American edition, I will here attempt a rude general classification of all the articleswhich compose it. I distribute them grossly into three classes: _First_, into that class which proposes primarily to amuse the reader; butwhich, in doing so, may or may not happen occasionally to reach ahigher station, at which the amusement passes into an impassionedinterest. Some papers are merely playful; but others have a mixedcharacter. These present _Autobiographic Sketches_ illustrate whatI mean. Generally, they pretend to little beyond that sort of amusementwhich attaches to any real story, thoughtfully and faithfully related, moving through a succession of scenes sufficiently varied, that arenot suffered to remain too long upon the eye, and that connectthemselves at every stage with intellectual objects. But, even here, I do not scruple to claim from the reader, occasionally, a higherconsideration. At times, the narrative rises into a far higher key. Most of all it does so at a period of the writer's life where, ofnecessity, a severe abstraction takes place from all that could investhim with any alien interest; no display that might dazzle the reader, nor ambition that could carry his eye forward with curiosity to thefuture, nor successes, fixing his eye on the present; nothing on thestage but a solitary infant, and its solitary combat with grief--amighty darkness, and a sorrow without a voice. But something of thesame interest will be found, perhaps, to rekindle at a maturer age, when the characteristic features of the individual mind have beenunfolded. And I contend that much more than amusement ought to settleupon any narrative of a life that is really _confidential_. It issingular--but many of my readers will know it for a truth--that vastnumbers of people, though liberated from all reasonable motives toself-restraint, _cannot_ be confidential--have it not in their powerto lay aside reserve; and many, again, cannot be so with particularpeople. I have witnessed more than once the case, that a young femaledancer, at a certain turn of a peculiar dance, could not--though shehad died for it--sustain a free, fluent motion. Aerial chains fellupon her at one point; some invisible spell (who could say _what_?)froze her elasticity. Even as a horse, at noonday on an open heath, starts aside from something his rider cannot see; or as the flamewithin a Davy lamp feeds upon the poisonous gas up to the meshes thatsurround it, but there suddenly is arrested by barriers that no Aladdinwill ever dislodge. It is because a man cannot see and measure thesemystical forces which palsy him, that he cannot deal with themeffectually. If he were able really to pierce the haze which so oftenenvelops, even to himself, his own secret springs of action and reserve, there cannot be a life moving at all under intellectual impulses thatwould not, through that single force of absolute frankness, fall withinthe reach of a deep, solemn, and sometimes even of a thrilling interest. Without pretending to an interest of this quality, I have done whatwas possible on _my_ part towards the readiest access to such aninterest by perfect sincerity--saying every where nothing _but_ thetruth; and in any case forbearing to say the _whole_ truth only throughconsideration for others. 

Into the second class I throw those papers which address themselvespurely to the understanding as an insulated faculty; or do so primarily. Let me call them by the general name of ESSAYS. These, as in othercases of the same kind, must have their value measured by two separatequestions. A. What is the problem, and of what rank in dignity or inuse, which the essay undertakes? And next, that point being settled, B. What is the success obtained? and (as a separate question) what isthe executive ability displayed in the solution of the problem? Thislatter question is naturally no question for myself, as the answerwould involve a verdict upon my own merit. But, generally, there willbe quite enough in the answer to question A for establishing the valueof any essay on its soundest basis. _Prudens interrogatio est dimidiumscientiae. _ Skilfully to frame your question, is half way towardsinsuring the true answer. Two or three of the problems treated in theseessays I will here rehearse. 

1. ESSENISM--The essay on this, where mentioned at all in print, hasbeen mentioned as dealing with a question of pure speculative curiosity:so little suspicion is abroad of that real question which lies below. Essenism means simply this--Christianity before Christ, and consequentlywithout Christ. If, therefore, Essenism could make good its pretensions, there at one blow would be an end of Christianity, which in that caseis not only superseded as an idle repetition of a religious systemalready published, but also as a criminal plagiarism. Nor can the witof man evade that conclusion. But even _that_ is not the worst. Whenwe contemplate the total orb of Christianity, we see it divide intotwo hemispheres: first, an ethical system, differing _centrally_ fromany previously made known to man; secondly, a mysterious and divinemachinery for reconciling man to God; a teaching to be taught, butalso a work to be worked. Now, the first we find again in the ethicsof the counterfeit Essenes--which ought not to surprise us at all;since it is surely an easy thing for him who pillages my thoughts _adlibitum_ to reproduce a perfect resemblance in his own: [3] but whathas become of the second, viz. , not the teaching, but the operativeworking of Christianity? The ethical system is replaced by a stolensystem; but what replaces the mysterious _agencies_ of the Christianfaith? In Essenism we find again a saintly scheme of ethics; but whereis the scheme of mediation?

In the Roman church, there have been some theologians who have alsoseen reason to suspect the romance of "Essenismus. " And I am not surethat the knowledge of this fact may not have operated to blunt thesuspicions of the Protestant churches. I do not mean that such a factwould have absolutely deafened Protestant ears to the grounds ofsuspicion when loudly proclaimed; but it is very likely to haveindisposed them towards listening. Meantime, so far as I am acquaintedwith these Roman Catholic demurs, the difference between _them_ andmy own is broad. They, without suspecting any subtle, fraudulentpurpose, simply recoil from the romantic air of such a statement--whichbuilds up, as with an enchanter's wand, an important sect, such ascould not possibly have escaped the notice of Christ and his apostles. I, on the other hand, insist not only upon the revolting incompatibilityof such a sect with the absence of all attention to it in the NewTestament, but (which is far more important) the incompatibility ofsuch a sect (as a sect elder than Christ) with the originality andheavenly revelation of Christianity. Here is my first point ofdifference from the Romish objectors. The second is this: not contentwith exposing the imposture, I go on, and attempt to show in what realcircumstances, fraudulently disguised, it might naturally have arisen. In the real circumstances of the Christian church, when strugglingwith _Jewish_ persecution at some period of the generation between thecrucifixion and the siege of Jerusalem, arose probably that secretdefensive society of Christians which suggested to Josephus his knavishforgery. We must remember that Josephus did not write until _after_the great ruins effected by the siege; that he wrote at Rome, farremoved from the criticism of those survivors who could have exposed, or had a motive for exposing, his malicious frauds; and, finally, thathe wrote under the patronage of the Flavian family: by his sycophancyhe had won their protection, which would have overawed any Christianwhatever from coming forward to unmask him, in the very improbablecase of a work so large, costly, and, by its title, merelyarchaeological, finding its way, at such a period, into the hands ofany poor hunted Christian. [4]

2. THE CAESARS. --This, though written hastily, and in a situation whereI had no aid from books, is yet far from being what some people havesupposed it--a simple recapitulation, or _resumé_, of the Romanimperatorial history. It moves rapidly over the ground, but still withan exploring eye, carried right and left into the deep shades that havegathered so thickly over the one solitary road [5] traversing that partof history. Glimpses of moral truth, or suggestions of what may lead toit; indications of neglected difficulties, and occasionally conjecturalsolutions of such difficulties, --these are what this essay offers. It wasmeant as a specimen of fruits, gathered hastily and without effort, by avagrant but thoughtful mind: through the coercion of its theme, sometimesit became ambitious; but I did not give to it an ambitious title. Still Ifelt that the meanest of these suggestions merited a valuation: derelictsthey were, not in the sense of things willfully abandoned by mypredecessors on that road, but in the sense of things blindly overlooked. And, summing up in one word the pretensions of this particular essay, Iwill venture to claim for it so much, at least, of originality as ought_not_ to have been left open to any body in the nineteenth century. 

3. CICERO. --This is not, as might be imagined, any literary valuationof Cicero; it is a new reading of Roman history in the most dreadfuland comprehensive of her convulsions, in that final stage of hertransmutations to which Cicero was himself a party--and, as I maintain, a most selfish and unpatriotic party. He was governed in one half byhis own private interest as a _novus homo_ dependent upon a wickedoligarchy, and in the other half by his blind hatred of Caesar; thegrandeur of whose nature he could not comprehend, and the realpatriotism of whose policy could never be appreciated by one bribedto a selfish course. The great mob of historians have but one way ofconstructing the great events of this era--they succeed to it as toan inheritance, and chiefly under the misleading of that _prestige_which is attached to the name of Cicero; on which account it was thatI gave this title to my essay. Seven years after it was published, this essay, slight and imperfectly developed as is the exposition ofits parts, began to receive some public countenance. 

I was going on to abstract the principle involved in some other essays. But I forbear. These specimens are sufficient for the purpose ofinforming the reader that I do not write without a thoughtfulconsideration of my subject; and also, that to think reasonably uponany question has never been allowed by me as a sufficient ground forwriting upon it, unless I believed myself able to offer some considerablenovelty. Generally I claim (not arrogantly, but with firmness) the meritof rectification applied to absolute errors or to injurious limitationsof the truth. 

Finally, as a third class, and, in virtue of their aim, as a far higherclass of compositions included in the American collection, I rank _TheConfessions of an Opium Eater_, and also (but more emphatically) the_Suspiria de Profundis_. On these, as modes of impassioned prose rangingunder no precedents that I am aware of in any literature, it is muchmore difficult to speak justly, whether in a hostile or a friendlycharacter. As yet, neither of these two works has ever received theleast degree of that correction and pruning which both require soextensively; and of the _Suspiria_, not more than perhaps one thirdhas yet been printed. When both have been fully revised, I shall feelmyself entitled to ask for a more determinate adjudication on theirclaims as works of art. At present, I feel authorized to make haughtierpretensions in right of their _conception_ than I shall venture to do, under the peril of being supposed to characterize their _execution_. Two remarks only I shall address to the equity of my reader. First, Idesire to remind him of the perilous difficulty besieging all attemptsto clothe in words the visionary scenes derived from the world ofdreams, where a single false note, a single word in a wrong key, ruinsthe whole music; and, secondly, I desire him to consider the uttersterility of universal literature in this one department of impassionedprose; which certainly argues some singular difficulty suggesting asingular duty of indulgence in criticizing any attempt that evenimperfectly succeeds. The sole Confessions, belonging to past times, that have at all succeeded in engaging the attention of men, are thoseof St. Augustine and of Rousseau. The very idea of breathing a recordof human passion, not into the ear of the random crowd, but of thesaintly confessional, argues an impassioned theme. Impassioned, therefore, should be the tenor of the composition. Now, in St. Augustine's Confessions is found one most impassioned passage, viz. , the lamentation for the death of his youthful friend in the fourthbook; one, and no more. Further there is nothing. In Rousseau thereis not even so much. In the whole work there is nothing grandlyaffecting but the character and the inexplicable misery of the writer. 

Meantime, by what accident, so foreign to my nature, do I find myselflaying foundations towards a higher valuation of my own workmanship?O reader, I have been talking idly. I care not for any valuation thatdepends upon comparison with others. Place me where you will on thescale of comparison: only suffer me, though standing lowest in yourcatalogue, to rejoice in the recollection of letters expressing themost fervid interest in particular passages or scenes of the_Confessions_, and, by rebound from _them_, an interest in their author:suffer me also to anticipate that, on the publication of some partsyet in arrear of the _Suspiria_, you yourself may possibly write aletter to me, protesting that your disapprobation is just where itwas, but nevertheless that you are disposed to shake hands with me--byway of proof that you like me better than I deserve. 

FOOTNOTES

[1] "_Next to the bible in currency_. "--That is, next in the fifteenthcentury to the Bible of the nineteenth century. The diffusion of the "DeImitatione Christi" over Christendom (the idea of Christendom, it must beremembered, not then including any part of America) anticipated, in 1453, the diffusion of the Bible in 1853. But why? Through what causes?Elsewhere I have attempted to show that this enormous (and seeminglyincredible) popularity of the "De Imitatione Christi" is virtually to beinterpreted as a vicarious popularity of the Bible. At that time theBible itself was a fountain of inspired truth every where sealed up; buta whisper ran through the western nations of Europe that the work ofThomas à Kempis contained some slender rivulets of truth silentlystealing away into light from that interdicted fountain. This belief (soat least I read the case) led to the prodigious multiplication of thebook, of which not merely the reimpressions, but the separatetranslations, are past all counting; though bibliographers _have_undertaken to count them. The book came forward as an answer to thesighing of Christian Europe for light from heaven. I speak of Thomas àKempis as the author; but his claim was disputed. Gerson was adopted byFrance as the author; and other local saints by other nations. 

[2] At the same time it must not be denied, that, if you lose by ajournal in the way here described, you also gain by it. The journal givesyou the benefit of its own separate audience, that might else never haveheard your name. On the other hand, in such a case, the journal securesto you the special enmity of its own peculiar antagonists. These papers, for instance, of mine, not being political, were read possibly in afriendly temper by the regular supporters of the journal that publishedthem. But some of my own political friends regarded me with displeasurefor connecting myself at all with a reforming journal. And far more, whowould have been liberal enough to disregard that objection, naturallylost sight of me when under occultation to _them_ in a journal which theynever saw. 

[3] The crime of Josephus in relation to Christianity is the same, infact, as that of Lauder in respect to Milton. It was easy enough todetect plagiarisms in the "Paradise Lost" from Latin passages fatheredupon imaginary writers, when these passages had previously been forged byLauder himself for the purpose of sustaining such a charge. 

[4] It is a significant fact, that Dr. Strauss, whose sceptical spirit, left to its own disinterested motions, would have looked through andthrough this monstrous fable of Essenism, coolly adopted it, no questionsasked, as soon as he perceived the value of it as an argument againstChristianity. 

[5] "_Solitary road_. "--The reader must remember that, until the seventhcentury of our era, when Mahometanism arose, there was no _collateral_history. Why there was none, why no Gothic, why no Parthian history, itis for Rome to explain. We tax ourselves, and are taxed by others, withmany an imaginary neglect as regards India; but assuredly we cannot betaxed with _that_ neglect. No part of our Indian empire, or of itsadjacencies, but has occupied the researches of our Oriental scholars. 

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I. THE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD DREAM ECHOES OF THESE INFANT EXPERIENCES DREAM ECHOES FIFTY YEARS LATER

CHAPTER II. INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE

CHAPTER III. INFANT LITERATURE

CHAPTER IV. THE FEMALE INFIDEL

CHAPTER V. I AM INTRODUCED TO THE WARFARE OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL

CHAPTER VI. I ENTER THE WORLD

CHAPTER VII. THE NATION OF LONDON

CHAPTER VIII. DUBLIN

CHAPTER IX. FIRST REBELLION IN IRELAND

CHAPTER X. FRENCH INVASION OF IRELAND, AND SECOND REBELLION

CHAPTER XI. TRAVELLING

CHAPTER XII. MY BROTHER

CHAPTER XIII. PREMATURE MANHOOD

AUTOBIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES. 

CHAPTER I. 

THE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD. 

About the close of my sixth year, suddenly the first chapter of mylife came to a violent termination; that chapter which, even withinthe gates of recovered paradise, might merit a remembrance. "_Life isfinished!_" was the secret misgiving of my heart; for the heart ofinfancy is as apprehensive as that of maturest wisdom in relation toany capital wound inflicted on the happiness. "_Life is finished!Finished it is!_" was the hidden meaning that, half unconsciously tomyself, lurked within my sighs; and, as bells heard from a distanceon a summer evening seem charged at times with an articulate form ofwords, some monitory message, that rolls round unceasingly, even sofor me some noiseless and subterraneous voice seemed to chantcontinually a secret word, made audible only to my own heart--that"now is the blossoming of life withered forever. " Not that such wordsformed themselves vocally within my ear, or issued audibly from mylips; but such a whisper stole silently to my heart. Yet in what sensecould _that_ be true? For an infant not more than six years old, wasit possible that the promises of life had been really blighted, orits golden pleasures exhausted? Had I seen Rome? Had I read Milton?Had I heard Mozart? No. St. Peter's, the "Paradise Lost, " the divinemelodies of "Don Giovanni, " all alike were as yet unrevealed to me, and not more through the accidents of my position than through thenecessity of my yet imperfect sensibilities. Raptures there might bein arrear; but raptures are modes of _troubled_ pleasure. The peace, the rest, the central security which belong to love that is past allunderstanding, --these could return no more. Such a love, sounfathomable, --such a peace, so unvexed by storms, or the fear ofstorms, --had brooded over those four latter years of my infancy, whichbrought me into special relations to my elder sister; she being atthis period three years older than myself. The circumstances whichattended the sudden dissolution of this most tender connection I willhere rehearse. And, that I may do so more intelligibly, I will firstdescribe that serene and sequestered position which we occupied inlife. [1]

Any expression of personal vanity, intruding upon impassioned records, is fatal to their effect--as being incompatible with that absorptionof spirit and that self-oblivion in which only deep passion originatesor can find a genial home. It would, therefore, to myself be exceedinglypainful that even a shadow, or so much as a _seeming_ expression ofthat tendency, should creep into these reminiscences. And yet, on theother hand, it is so impossible, without laying an injurious restraintupon the natural movement of such a narrative, to prevent obliquegleams reaching the reader from such circumstances of luxury oraristocratic elegance as surrounded my childhood, that on all accountsI think it better to tell him, from the first, with the simplicity oftruth, in what order of society my family moved at the time from whichthis preliminary narrative is dated. Otherwise it might happen that, merely by reporting faithfully the facts of this early experience, Icould hardly prevent the reader from receiving an impression as ofsome higher rank than did really belong to my family. And thisimpression might seem to have been designedly insinuated by myself. 

My father was a merchant; not in the sense of Scotland, where it meansa retail dealer, one, for instance, who sells groceries in a cellar, but in the English sense, a sense rigorously exclusive; that is, hewas a man engaged in _foreign_ commerce, and no other; therefore, in_wholesale_ commerce, and no other--which last limitation of the ideais important, because it brings him within the benefit of Cicero'scondescending distinction [2] as one who ought to be despised certainly, but not too intensely to be despised even by a Roman senator. He--thisimperfectly despicable man--died at an early age, and very soon after theincidents recorded in this chapter, leaving to his family, thenconsisting of a wife and six children, an unburdened estate producingexactly sixteen hundred pounds a year. Naturally, therefore, at the dateof my narrative, --whilst he was still living, --he had an income very muchlarger, from the addition of current commercial profits. Now, to any manwho is acquainted with commercial life as it exists in England, it willreadily occur that in an opulent English family of that class--opulent, though not emphatically _rich_ in a mercantile estimate--the domesticeconomy is pretty sure to move upon a scale of liberality altogetherunknown amongst the corresponding orders in foreign nations. Theestablishment of servants, for instance, in such houses, measured even_numerically_ against those establishments in other nations, wouldsomewhat surprise the foreign appraiser, simply as interpreting therelative station in society occupied by the English merchant. But thissame establishment, when measured by the quality and amount of theprovision made for its comfort and even elegant accommodation, would fillhim with twofold astonishment, as interpreting equally the socialvaluation of the English merchant, and also the social valuation of theEnglish servant; for, in the truest sense, England is the paradise ofhousehold servants. Liberal housekeeping, in fact, as extending itself tothe meanest servants, and the disdain of petty parsimonies, are peculiarto England. And in this respect the families of English merchants, as aclass, far outrun the scale of expenditure prevalent, not only amongstthe corresponding bodies of continental nations, but even amongst thepoorer sections of our own nobility--though confessedly the mostsplendid in Europe; a fact which, since the period of my infancy, Ihave had many personal opportunities for verifying both in England andin Ireland. From this peculiar anomaly, affecting the domestic economyof English merchants, there arises a disturbance upon the usual scalefor measuring the relations of rank. The equation, so to speak, betweenrank and the ordinary expressions of rank, which usually runs parallelto the graduations of expenditure, is here interrupted and confounded, so that one rank would be collected from the name of the occupation, andanother rank, much higher, from the splendor of the domestic _ménage_. I warn the reader, therefore, (or, rather, my explanation has alreadywarned him, ) that he is not to infer, from any casual indications ofluxury or elegance, a corresponding elevation of rank. 

We, the children of the house, stood, in fact, upon the very happiesttier in the social scaffolding for all good influences. The prayer ofAgur--"Give me neither poverty nor riches"--was realized for us. Thatblessing we had, being neither too high nor too low. High enough wewere to see models of good manners, of self-respect, and of simpledignity; obscure enough to be left in the sweetest of solitudes. Amplyfurnished with all the nobler benefits of wealth, with _extra_ meansof health, of intellectual culture, and of elegant enjoyment, on theother hand, we knew nothing of its social distinctions. Not depressedby the consciousness of privations too sordid, not tempted intorestlessness by the consciousness of privileges too aspiring, we hadno motives for shame, we had none for pride. Grateful also to thishour I am, that, amidst luxuries in all things else, we were trainedto a Spartan simplicity of diet--that we fared, in fact, very muchless sumptuously than the servants. And if (after the model of theEmperor Marcus Aurelius) I should return thanks to Providence for allthe separate blessings of my early situation, these four I would singleout as worthy of special commemoration--that I lived in a rusticsolitude; that this solitude was in England; that my infant feelingswere moulded by the gentlest of sisters, and not by horrid, pugilisticbrothers; finally, that I and they were dutiful and loving members ofa pure, holy, and magnificent church. 

 * * * * *

The earliest incidents in my life, which left stings in my memory soas to be remembered at this day, were two, and both before I couldhave completed my second year; namely, 1st, a remarkable dream ofterrific grandeur about a favorite nurse, which is interesting tomyself for this reason--that it demonstrates my dreaming tendenciesto have been constitutional, and not dependent upon laudanum; [3] and, 2dly, the fact of having connected a profound sense of pathos with thereappearance, very early in the spring, of some crocuses. This I mentionas inexplicable: for such annual resurrections of plants and flowersaffect us only as memorials, or suggestions of some higher change, andtherefore in connection with the idea of death; yet of death I could, at that time, have had no experience whatever. 

This, however, I was speedily to acquire. My two eldest sisters--eldest of three _then_ living, and also elder than myself--were summonedto an early death. The first who died was Jane, about two years olderthan myself. She was three and a half, I one and a half, more or lessby some trifle that I do not recollect. But death was then scarcelyintelligible to me, and I could not so properly be said to suffersorrow as a sad perplexity. There was another death in the house aboutthe same time, namely, of a maternal grandmother; but, as she had cometo us for the express purpose of dying in her daughter's society, andfrom illness had lived perfectly secluded, our nursery circle knew herbut little, and were certainly more affected by the death (which Iwitnessed) of a beautiful bird, viz. , a kingfisher, which had beeninjured by an accident. With my sister Jane's death (though otherwise, as I have said, less sorrowful than perplexing) there was, however, connected an incident which made a most fearful impression upon myself, deepening my tendencies to thoughtfulness and abstraction beyond whatwould seem credible for my years. If there was one thing in this worldfrom which, more than from any other, nature had forced me to revolt, it was brutality and violence. Now, a whisper arose in the family thata female servant, who by accident was drawn off from her proper dutiesto attend my sister Jane for a day or two, had on one occasion treatedher harshly, if not brutally; and as this ill treatment happened withinthree or four days of her death, so that the occasion of it must havebeen some fretfulness in the poor child caused by her sufferings, naturally there was a sense of awe and indignation diffused throughthe family. I believe the story never reached my mother, and possiblyit was exaggerated; but upon me the effect was terrific. I did notoften see the person charged with this cruelty; but, when I did, myeyes sought the ground; nor could I have borne to look her in the face;not, however, in any spirit that could be called anger. The feelingwhich fell upon me was a shuddering horror, as upon a first glimpseof the truth that I was in a world of evil and strife. Though born ina large town, (the town of Manchester, even then amongst the largestof the island, ) I had passed the whole of my childhood, except for thefew earliest weeks, in a rural seclusion. With three innocent littlesisters for playmates, sleeping always amongst them, and shut up foreverin a silent garden from all knowledge of poverty, or oppression, oroutrage, I had not suspected until this moment the true complexion ofthe world in which myself and my sisters were living. Henceforward thecharacter of my thoughts changed greatly; for so _representative_ aresome acts, that one single case of the class is sufficient to throwopen before you the whole theatre of possibilities in that direction. I never heard that the woman accused of this cruelty took it at allto heart, even after the event which so immediately succeeded hadreflected upon it a more painful emphasis. But for myself, that incidenthad a lasting revolutionary power in coloring my estimate of life. 

So passed away from earth one of those three sisters that made up mynursery playmates; and so did my acquaintance (if such it could becalled) commence with mortality. Yet, in fact, I knew little more ofmortality than that Jane had disappeared. She had gone away; but perhapsshe would come back. Happy interval of heaven-born ignorance! Graciousimmunity of infancy from sorrow disproportioned to its strength! I wassad for Jane's absence. But still in my heart I trusted that she wouldcome again. Summer and winter came again--crocuses and roses; why notlittle Jane?

Thus easily was healed, then, the first wound in my infant heart. Notso the second. For thou, dear, noble Elizabeth, around whose amplebrow, as often as thy sweet countenance rises upon the darkness, Ifancy a _tiara_ of light or a gleaming aureola [4] in token of thypremature intellectual grandeur, --thou whose head, for its superbdevelopments, was the astonishment of science, [5]--thou next, but afteran interval of happy years, thou also wert summoned away from ournursery; and the night, which for me gathered upon that event, ran aftermy steps far into life; and perhaps at this day I resemble little forgood or for ill that which else I should have been. Pillar of fire thatdidst go before me to guide and to quicken, --pillar of darkness, whenthy countenance was turned away to God, that didst too truly reveal tomy dawning fears the secret shadow of death, --by what mysteriousgravitation was it that _my_ heart had been drawn to thine? Could achild, six years old, place any special value upon intellectualforwardness? Serene and capacious as my sister's mind appeared to meupon after review, was _that_ a charm for stealing away the heart ofan infant? O, no! I think of it _now_ with interest, because it lends, in a stranger's ear, some justification to the excess of my fondness. But then it was lost upon me; or, if not lost, was perceived onlythrough its effects. Hadst thou been an idiot, my sister, not the lessI must have loved thee, having that capacious heart--overflowing, evenas mine overflowed, with tenderness; stung, even as mine was stung, by the necessity of loving and being loved. This it was which crownedthee with beauty and power. 

 "Love, the holy sense, Best gift of God, in thee was most intense. "

That lamp of paradise was, for myself, kindled by reflection from theliving light which burned so steadfastly in thee; and never but tothee, never again since _thy_ departure, had I power or temptation, courage or desire, to utter the feelings which possessed me. For I wasthe shyest of children; and, at all stages of life, a natural senseof personal dignity held me back from exposing the least ray of feelingswhich I was not encouraged _wholly_ to reveal. 

It is needless to pursue, circumstantially, the course of that sicknesswhich carried off my leader and companion. She (according to myrecollection at this moment) was just as near to nine years as I tosix. And perhaps this natural precedency in authority of years andjudgment, united to the tender humility with which she declined toassert it, had been amongst the fascinations of her presence. It wasupon a Sunday evening, if such conjectures can be trusted, that thespark of fatal fire fell upon that train of predispositions to a braincomplaint which had hitherto slumbered within her. She had beenpermitted to drink tea at the house of a laboring man, the father ofa favorite female servant. The sun had set when she returned, in thecompany of this servant, through meadows reeking with exhalations aftera fervent day. From that time she sickened. In such circumstances, a child, as young as myself, feels no anxieties. Looking upon medicalmen as people privileged, and naturally commissioned, to make war uponpain and sickness, I never had a misgiving about the result. I grieved, indeed, that my sister should lie in bed; I grieved still more to hearher moan. But all this appeared to me no more than as a night oftrouble, on which the dawn would soon arise. O moment of darkness anddelirium, when the elder nurse awakened me from that delusion, andlaunched God's thunderbolt at my heart in the assurance that my sisterMUST die! Rightly it is said of utter, utter misery, that it "cannotbe _remembered_. " [6] Itself, as a rememberable thing, is swallowed up inits own chaos. Blank anarchy and confusion of mind fell upon me. Deaf andblind I was, as I reeled under the revelation. I wish not to recall thecircumstances of that time, when _my_ agony was at its height, andhers, in another sense, was approaching. Enough it is to say that allwas soon over; and, the morning of that day had at last arrived whichlooked down upon her innocent face, sleeping the sleep from which thereis no awaking, and upon me sorrowing the sorrow for which there is noconsolation. 

On the day after my sister's death, whilst the sweet temple of herbrain was yet unviolated by human scrutiny, I formed my own scheme forseeing her once more. Not for the world would I have made this known, nor have suffered a witness to accompany me. I had never heard offeelings that take the name of "sentimental, " nor dreamed of such apossibility. But grief, even in a child, hates the light, and shrinksfrom human eyes. The house was large enough to have two staircases;and by one of these I knew that about midday, when all would be quiet, (for the servants dined at one o'clock, ) I could steal up into herchamber. I imagine that it was about an hour after high noon when Ireached the chamber door: it was locked, but the key was not takenaway. Entering, I closed the door so softly, that, although it openedupon a hall which ascended through all the stories, no echo ran alongthe silent walls. Then, turning round, I sought my sister's face. Butthe bed had been moved, and the back was now turned towards myself. Nothing met my eyes but one large window, wide open, through which thesun of midsummer, at midday, was showering down torrents of splendor. The weather was dry, the sky was cloudless, the blue depths seemed theexpress types of infinity; and it was not possible for eye to behold, or for heart to conceive, any symbols more pathetic of life and theglory of life. 

Let me pause in approaching a remembrance so affecting for my own mind, to mention, that, in the "Opium Confessions, " I endeavored to explainthe reason why death, other conditions remaining the same, is moreprofoundly affecting in summer than in other parts of the year--sofar, at least, as it is liable to any modification at all from accidentsof scenery or season. The reason, as I there suggested, lies in theantagonism between the tropical redundancy of life in summer and thefrozen sterilities of the grave. The summer we see, the grave we hauntwith our thoughts; the glory is around us, the darkness is within us;and, the two coming into collision, each exalts the other into strongerrelief. But, in my case, there was even a subtler reason why the summerhad this intense power of vivifying the spectacle or the thoughts ofdeath. And, recollecting it, I am struck with the truth, that far moreof our deepest thoughts and feelings pass to us through perplexedcombinations of _concrete_ objects, pass to us as _involutes_ (if Imay coin that word) in compound experiences incapable of beingdisentangled, than ever reach us _directly_, and in their own abstractshapes. It had happened, that amongst our vast nursery collection ofbooks was the Bible, illustrated with many pictures. And in long darkevenings, as my three sisters, with myself, sat by the firelight roundthe _guard_ [7] of our nursery, no book was so much in request among us. It ruled us and swayed us as mysteriously as music. Our younger nurse, whom we all loved, would sometimes, according to her simple powers, endeavor to explain what we found obscure. We, the children, were allconstitutionally touched with pensiveness: the fitful gloom and suddenlambencies of the room by firelight suited our evening state of feelings;and they suited, also, the divine revelations of power and mysteriousbeauty which awed us. Above all, the story of a just man, --man, and yet_not_ man, real above all things, and yet shadowy above all things, --whohad suffered the passion of death in Palestine, slept upon our minds likeearly dawn upon the waters. The nurse knew and explained to us the chiefdifferences in Oriental climates; and all these differences (as ithappens) express themselves, more or less, in varying relations to thegreat accidents and powers of summer. The cloudless sunlights of Syria--those seemed to argue everlasting summer; the disciples plucking the earsof corn--that _must_ be summer; but, above all, the very name of PalmSunday (a festival in the English church) troubled me like an anthem. "Sunday!" what was _that_? That was the day of peace which masked anotherpeace deeper than the heart of man can comprehend. "Palms!" what werethey? _That_ was an equivocal word; palms, in the sense of trophies, expressed the pomps of life; palms, as a product of nature, expressed thepomps of summer. Yet still even this explanation does not suffice; it wasnot merely by the peace and by the summer, by the deep sound of restbelow all rest and of ascending glory, that I had been haunted. It wasalso because Jerusalem stood near to those deep images both in timeand in place. The great event of Jerusalem was at hand when Palm Sundaycame; and the scene of that Sunday was near in place to Jerusalem. What then was Jerusalem? Did I fancy it to be the _omphalos_ (navel)or physical centre of the earth? Why should _that_ affect me? Such apretension had once been made for Jerusalem, and once for a Greciancity; and both pretensions had become ridiculous, as the figure of theplanet became known. Yes; but if not of the earth, yet of mortality;for earth's tenant, Jerusalem, had now become the _omphalos_ andabsolute centre. Yet how? There, on the contrary, it was, as we infantsunderstood, that mortality had been trampled under foot. True; but, for that very reason, there it was that mortality had opened its verygloomiest crater. There it was, indeed, that the human had risen onwings from the grave; but, for that reason, there also it was that thedivine had been swallowed up by the abyss; the lesser star could notrise before the greater should submit to eclipse. Summer, therefore, had connected itself with death, not merely as a mode of antagonism, but also as a phenomenon brought into intricate relations with deathby scriptual scenery and events. 

Out of this digression, for the purpose of showing how inextricablymy feelings and images of death were entangled with those of summer, as connected with Palestine and Jerusalem, let me come back to the bedchamber of my sister. From the gorgeous sunlight I turned around tothe corpse. There lay the sweet childish figure; there the angel face;and, as people usually fancy, it was said in the house that no featureshad suffered any change. Had they not? The forehead, indeed, --theserene and noble forehead, --_that_ might be the same; but the frozeneyelids, the darkness that seemed to steal from beneath them, themarble lips, the stiffening hands, laid palm to palm, as if repeatingthe supplications of closing anguish, --could these be mistaken forlife? Had it been so, wherefore did I not spring to those heavenlylips with tears and never-ending kisses? But so it was _not_. I stoodchecked for a moment; awe, not fear, fell upon me; and, whilst I stood, a solemn wind began to blow--the saddest that ear ever heard. It wasa wind that might have swept the fields of mortality for a thousandcenturies. Many times since, upon summer days, when the sun is aboutthe hottest, I have remarked the same wind arising and uttering thesame hollow, solemn, Memnonian, [8] but saintly swell: it is in thisworld the one great _audible_ symbol of eternity. And three times in mylife have I happened to hear the same sound in the same circumstances--namely, when standing between an open window and a dead body on asummer day. 

Instantly, when my ear caught this vast Aeolian intonation, when my eyefilled with the golden fulness of life, the pomps of the heavensabove, or the glory of the flowers below, and turning when it settledupon the frost which overspread my sister's face, instantly a trancefell upon me. A vault seemed to open in the zenith of the far bluesky, a shaft which ran up forever. I, in spirit, rose as if on billowsthat also ran up the shaft forever; and the billows seemed to pursuethe throne of God; but _that_ also ran before us and fled awaycontinually. The flight and the pursuit seemed to go on forever andever. Frost gathering frost, some Sarsar wind of death, seemed to repelme; some mighty relation between God and death dimly struggled toevolve itself from the dreadful antagonism between them; shadowymeanings even yet continued to exercise and torment, in dreams, thedeciphering oracle within me. I slept--for how long I cannot say:slowly I recovered my self-possession; and, when I woke, found myselfstanding, as before, close to my sister's bed. 

I have reason to believe that a _very_ long interval had elapsed duringthis wandering or suspension of my perfect mind. When I returned tomyself, there was a foot (or I fancied so) on the stairs. I was alarmed;for, if any body had detected me, means would have been taken to preventmy coming again. Hastily, therefore, I kissed the lips that I shouldkiss no more, and slunk, like a guilty thing, with stealthy steps fromthe room. Thus perished the vision, loveliest amongst all the showswhich earth has revealed to me; thus mutilated was the parting whichshould have lasted forever; tainted thus with fear was that farewellsacred to love and grief, to perfect love and to grief that could notbe healed. 

O Abasuerus, everlasting Jew! [9] fable or not a fable, thou, when firststarting on thy endless pilgrimage of woe, --thou, when first flyingthrough the gates of Jerusalem, and vainly yearning to leave the pursuingcurse behind thee, --couldst not more certainly in the words of Christhave read thy doom of endless sorrow, than I when passing forever from mysister's room. The worm was at my heart; and, I may say, the worm thatcould not die. Man is doubtless _one_ by some subtle _nexus_, some systemof links, that we cannot perceive, extending from the new-born infant tothe superannuated dotard; but, as regards many affections and passionsincident to his nature at different stages, he is _not_ one, but anintermitting creature, ending and beginning anew: the unity of man, inthis respect, is coextensive only with the particular stage to which thepassion belongs. Some passions, as that of sexual love, are celestial byone half of their origin, animal and earthly by the other half. Thesewill not survive their own appropriate stage. But love, which is_altogether_ holy, like that between two children, is privileged torevisit by glimpses the silence and the darkness of declining years; and, possibly, this final experience in my sister's bed room, or some other inwhich her innocence was concerned, may rise again for me to illuminatethe clouds of death. 

On the day following this which I have recorded came a body of medicalmen to examine the brain and the particular nature of the complaint, for in some of its symptoms it had shown perplexing anomalies. An hourafter the strangers had withdrawn, I crept again to the room; but thedoor was now locked, the key had been taken away, and I was shut outforever. 

Then came the funeral. I, in the ceremonial character of _mourner_, was carried thither. I was put into a carriage with some gentlemenwhom I did not know. They were kind and attentive to me; but naturallythey talked of things disconnected with the occasion, and theirconversation was a torment. At the church, I was told to hold a whitehandkerchief to my eyes. Empty hypocrisy! What need had _he_ of masksor mockeries, whose heart died within him at every word that wasuttered? During that part of the service which passed within the church, I made an effort to attend; but I sank back continually into my ownsolitary darkness, and I heard little consciously, except some fugitivestrains from the sublime chapter of St. Paul, which in England isalways read at burials. [10]

Lastly came that magnificent liturgical service which the Englishchurch performs at the side of the grave; for this church does notforsake her dead so long as they continue in the upper air, but waitsfor her last "sweet and solemn [11] farewell" at the side of the grave. There is exposed once again, and for the last time, the coffin. All eyessurvey the record of name, of sex, of age, and the day of departure fromearth--records how shadowy! and dropped into darkness as if messagesaddressed to worms. Almost at the very last comes the symbolic ritual, tearing and shattering the heart with volleying discharges, peal afterpeal, from the final artillery of woe. The coffin is lowered into itshome; it has disappeared from all eyes but those that look down into theabyss of the grave. The sacristan stands ready, with his shovel of earthand stones. The priest's voice is heard once more, --_earth to earth_, --and immediately the dread rattle ascends from the lid of the coffin;_ashes to ashes_--and again the killing sound is heard; _dust to dust_--and the farewell volley announces that the grave, the coffin, the faceare sealed up forever and ever. 

Grief! thou art classed amongst the depressing passions. And true itis that thou humblest to the dust, but also thou exaltest to the clouds. Thou shakest as with ague, but also thou steadiest like frost. Thousickenest the heart, but also thou healest its infirmities. Among thevery foremost of mine was morbid sensibility to shame. And, ten yearsafterwards, I used to throw my self-reproaches with regard to thatinfirmity into this shape, viz. , that if I were summoned to seek aidfor a perishing fellow-creature, and that I could obtain that aid onlyby facing a vast company of critical or sneering faces, I might, perhaps, shrink basely from the duty. It is true that no such case hadever actually occurred; so that it was a mere romance of casuistry totax myself with cowardice so shocking. But, to feel a doubt, was tofeel condemnation; and the crime that _might_ have been was, in myeyes, the crime that _had_ been. Now, however, all was changed; andfor any thing which regarded my sister's memory, in one hour I receiveda new heart. Once in Westmoreland I saw a case resembling it. I sawa ewe suddenly put off and abjure her own nature, in a service oflove--yes, slough it as completely as ever serpent sloughed his skin. Her lamb had fallen into a deep trench, from which all escape washopeless without the aid of man. And to a man she advanced, bleatingclamorously, until he followed her and rescued her beloved. Not lesswas the change in myself. Fifty thousand sneering faces would not havetroubled me _now_ in any office of tenderness to my sister's memory. Ten legions would not have repelled me from seeking her, if therehad been a chance that she could be found. Mockery! it was lost uponme. Laughter! I valued it not. And when I was taunted insultingly with"my girlish tears, " that word "_girlish_" had no sting for me, exceptas a verbal echo to the one eternal thought of my heart--that a girlwas the sweetest thing which I, in my short life, had known; that agirl it was who had crowned the earth with beauty, and had opened tomy thirst fountains of pure celestial love, from which, in this world, I was to drink no more. 

Now began to unfold themselves the consolations of solitude, thoseconsolations which only I was destined to taste; now, therefore, beganto open upon me those fascinations of solitude, which, when acting asa co-agency with unresisted grief, end in the paradoxical result ofmaking out of grief itself a luxury; such a luxury as finally becomesa snare, overhanging life itself, and the energies of life, with growingmenaces. All deep feelings of a _chronic_ class agree in this, thatthey seek for solitude, and are fed by solitude. Deep grief, deep love, how naturally do these ally themselves with religious feeling! and allthree--love, grief, religion--are haunters of solitary places. Love, grief, and the mystery of devotion, --what were these without solitude?All day long, when it was not impossible for me to do so, I sought themost silent and sequestered nooks in the grounds about the house orin the neighboring fields. The awful stillness oftentimes of summernoons, when no winds were abroad, the appealing silence of gray ormisty afternoons, --these were fascinations as of witchcraft. Into thewoods, into the desert air, I gazed, as if some comfort lay hid in_them_. I wearied the heavens with my inquest of beseeching looks. Obstinately I tormented the blue depths with my scrutiny, sweepingthem forever with my eyes, and searching them for one angelic facethat might, perhaps, have permission to reveal itself for a moment. 

At this time, and under this impulse of rapacious grief, that graspedat what it could not obtain, the faculty of shaping images in thedistance out of slight elements, and grouping them after the yearningsof the heart, grew upon me in morbid excess. And I recall at the presentmoment one instance of that sort, which may show how merely shadows, or a gleam of brightness, or nothing at all, could furnish a sufficientbasis for this creative faculty. 

On Sunday mornings I went with the rest of my family to church: it wasa church on the ancient model of England, having aisles, galleries, [12] organ, all things ancient and venerable, and the proportionsmajestic. Here, whilst the congregation knelt through the long litany, asoften as we came to that passage, so beautiful amongst many that are so, where God is supplicated on behalf of "all sick persons and youngchildren, " and that he would "show his pity upon all prisoners andcaptives, " I wept in secret; and raising my streaming eyes to the upperwindows of the galleries, saw, on days when the sun was shining, aspectacle as affecting as ever prophet can have beheld. The sides of thewindows were rich with storied glass; through the deep purples andcrimsons streamed the golden light; emblazonries of heavenly illumination(from the sun) mingling with the earthly emblazonries (from art and itsgorgeous coloring) of what is grandest in man. _There_ were the apostlesthat had trampled upon earth, and the glories of earth, out of celestiallove to man. _There_ were the martyrs that had borne witness to the truththrough flames, through torments, and through armies of fierce, insultingfaces. _There_ were the saints who, under intolerable pangs, hadglorified God by meek submission to his will. And all the time, whilstthis tumult of sublime memorials held on as the deep chords from someaccompaniment in the bass, I saw through the wide central field of thewindow, where the glass was _uncolored_, white, fleecy clouds sailingover the azure depths of the sky: were it but a fragment or a hint ofsuch a cloud, immediately under the flash of my sorrow-haunted eye, itgrew and shaped itself into visions of beds with white lawny curtains;and in the beds lay sick children, dying children, that were tossing inanguish, and weeping clamorously for death. God, for some mysteriousreason, could not suddenly release them from their pain; but he sufferedthe beds, as it seemed, to rise slowly through the clouds; slowly thebeds ascended into the chambers of the air; slowly, also, his armsdescended from the heavens, that he and his young children, whom inPalestine, once and forever, he had blessed, though they _must_ passslowly through the dreadful chasm of separation, might yet meet thesooner. These visions were self-sustained. These visions needed notthat any sound should speak to me, or music mould my feelings. Thehint from the litany, the fragment from the clouds, --those and thestoried windows were sufficient. But not the less the blare of thetumultuous organ wrought its own separate creations. And oftentimesin anthems, when the mighty instrument threw its vast columns of sound, fierce yet melodious, over the voices of the choir, --high in arches, when it seemed to rise, surmounting and overriding the strife of thevocal parts, and gathering by strong coercion the total storm intounity, --sometimes I seemed to rise and walk triumphantly upon thoseclouds which, but a moment before, I had looked up to as mementoes ofprostrate sorrow; yes, sometimes under the transfigurations of music, felt of grief itself as of a fiery chariot for mounting victoriouslyabove the causes of grief. 

God speaks to children, also, in dreams and by the oracles that lurkin darkness. But in solitude, above all things, when made vocal to themeditative heart by the truths and services of a national church, Godholds with children "communion undisturbed. " Solitude, though it maybe silent as light, is, like light, the mightiest of agencies; forsolitude is essential to man. All men come into this world _alone_;all leave it _alone_. Even a little child has a dread, whisperingconsciousness, that, if he should be summoned to travel into God'spresence, no gentle nurse will be allowed to lead him by the hand, normother to carry him in her arms, nor little sister to share histrepidations. King and priest, warrior and maiden, philosopher andchild, all must walk those mighty galleries alone. The solitude, therefore, which in this world appalls or fascinates a child's heart, is but the echo of a far deeper solitude, through which already he haspassed, and of another solitude, deeper still, through which he _has_to pass: reflex of one solitude--prefiguration of another. 

O burden of solitude, that cleavest to man through every stage of hisbeing! in his birth, which _has_ been--in his life, which _is_--in hisdeath, which _shall_ be--mighty and essential solitude! that wast, andart, and art to be; thou broodest, like the Spirit of God moving upon thesurface of the deeps, over every heart that sleeps in the nurseries ofChristendom. Like the vast laboratory of the air, which, seeming to benothing, or less than the shadow of a shade, hides within itself theprinciples of all things, solitude for the meditating child is theAgrippa's mirror of the unseen universe. Deep is the solitude ofmillions who, with hearts welling forth love, have none to love them. Deep is the solitude of those who, under secret griefs, have none to pitythem. Deep is the solitude of those who, fighting with doubtsor darkness, have none to counsel them. But deeper than the deepestof these solitudes is that which broods over childhood under the passionof sorrow--bringing before it, at intervals, the final solitude whichwatches for it, and is waiting for it within the gates of death. O mightyand essential solitude, that wast, and art, and art to be, thy kingdom ismade perfect in the grave; but even over those that keep watch outsidethe grave, like myself, an infant of six years old, thou stretchest out asceptre of fascination. 

 * * * * *

DREAM ECHOES OF THESE INFANT EXPERIENCES. 

[_Notice to the reader_. --The sun, in rising or setting, would producelittle effect if he were defrauded of his rays and their infinitereverberations. "Seen through a fog, " says Sara Coleridge, the nobledaughter of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "the golden, beaming sun lookslike a dull orange, or a red billiard ball. "--_Introd. To Biog. Lit. _, p. Clxii. And, upon this same analogy, psychological experiences ofdeep suffering or joy first attain their entire fulness of expressionwhen they are reverberated from dreams. The reader must, therefore, suppose me at Oxford; more than twelve years are gone by; I am in theglory of youth: but I have now first tampered with opium; and now firstthe agitations of my childhood reopened in strength; now first theyswept in upon the brain with power, and the grandeur of recoveredlife. ]

Once again, after twelve years' interval, the nursery of my childhoodexpanded before me: my sister was moaning in bed; and I was beginningto be restless with fears not intelligible to myself. Once again theelder nurse, but now dilated to colossal proportions, stood as uponsome Grecian stage with her uplifted hand, and, like the superb Medeatowering amongst her children in the nursery at Corinth, [13] smote mesenseless to the ground. Again I am in the chamber with my sister'scorpse, again the pomps of life rise up in silence, the glory of summer, the Syrian sunlights, the frost of death. Dream forms itself mysteriouslywithin dream; within these Oxford dreams remoulds itself continually thetrance in my sister's chamber--the blue heavens, the everlasting vault, the soaring billows, the throne steeped in the thought (but not thesight) of "_Who_ might sit thereon;" the flight, the pursuit, theirrecoverable steps of my return to earth. Once more the funeralprocession gathers; the priest, in his white surplus, stands waiting witha book by the side of an open grave; the sacristan is waiting with hisshovel; the coffin has sunk; the _dust to dust_ has descended. Again Iwas in the church on a heavenly Sunday morning. The golden sunlight ofGod slept amongst the heads of his apostles, his martyrs, his saints; thefragment from the litany, the fragment from the clouds, awoke again thelawny beds that went up to scale the heavens--awoke again the shadowyarms that moved downward to meet them. Once again arose the swell of theanthem, the burst of the hallelujah chorus, the storm, the tramplingmovement of the choral passion, the agitation of my own tremblingsympathy, the tumult of the choir, the wrath of the organ. Once more I, that wallowed in the dust, became he that rose up to the clouds. And nowall was bound up into unity; the first state and the last were meltedinto each other as in some sunny glorifying haze. For high in heavenhovered a gleaming host of faces, veiled with wings, around the pillowsof the dying children. And such beings sympathize equally with sorrowthat grovels and with sorrow that soars. Such beings pity alike thechildren that are languishing in death, and the children that live onlyto languish in tears. 

 * * * * *

DREAM ECHOES FIFTY YEARS LATER

[In this instance the echoes, that rendered back the infant experience, might be interpreted by the reader as connected with a _real_ ascentof the Brocken; which was not the case. It was an ascent through allits circumstances executed in dreams, which, under advanced stages inthe development of opium, repeat with marvellous accuracy the longestsuccession of phenomena derived either from reading or from actualexperience. That softening and spiritualizing haze which belongs atany rate to the action of dreams, and to the transfigurings workedupon troubled remembrances by retrospects so vast as those of fiftyyears, was in this instance greatly aided to my own feelings by thealliance with the ancient phantom of the forest mountain in NorthGermany. The playfulness of the scene is the very evoker of the solemnremembrances that lie hidden below. The half-sportive interlusoryrevealings of the symbolic tend to the same effect. One part of theeffect from the symbolic is dependent upon the great catholic principleof the _Idem in alio_. The symbol restores the theme, but under newcombinations of form or coloring; gives back, but changes; restores, but idealizes. ]

Ascend with me on this dazzling Whitsunday the Brocken of North Germany. The dawn opened in cloudless beauty; it is a dawn of bridal June; but, as the hours advanced, her youngest sister April, that sometimes careslittle for racing across both frontiers of May, --the rearward frontier, and the vanward frontier, --frets the bridal lady's sunny temper withsallies of wheeling and careering showers, flying and pursuing, openingand closing, hiding and restoring. On such a morning, and reachingthe summits of the forest mountain about sunrise, we shall have onechance the more for seeing the famous Spectre of the Brocken. [14] Whoand what is he? He is a solitary apparition, in the sense of lovingsolitude; else he is not always solitary in his personal manifestations, but, on proper occasions, has been known to unmask a strength quitesufficient to alarm those who had been insulting him. 

Now, in order to test the nature of this mysterious apparition, wewill try two or three experiments upon him. What we fear, and withsome reason, is, that, as he lived so many ages with foul pagansorcerers, and witnessed so many centuries of dark idolatries, hisheart may have been corrupted, and that even now his faith may bewavering or impure. We will try. 

Make the sign of the cross, and observe whether he repeats it, (as onWhitsunday [15] he surely ought to do. ) Look! he _does_ repeat it; butthese driving April showers perplex the images, and _that_, perhaps, itis which gives him the air of one who acts reluctantly or evasively. Now, again, the sun shines more brightly, and the showers have all swept offlike squadrons of cavalry to the rear. We will try him again. 

Pluck an anemone, one of these many anemones which once was called thesorcerer's flower, [16] and bore a part, perhaps, in this horrid ritualof fear; carry it to that stone which mimics the outline of a heathenaltar, and once was called the sorcerer's altar; [16] then, bending yourknee, and raising your right hand to God, say, "Father which art inheaven, this lovely anemone, that once glorified the worship of fear, hastravelled back into thy fold; this altar, which once reeked with bloodyrites to Cortho, has long been rebaptized into thy holy service. Thedarkness is gone; the cruelty is gone which the darkness bred; the moanshave passed away which the victims uttered; the cloud has vanished whichonce sat continually upon their graves--cloud of protestation thatascended forever to thy throne from the tears of the defenceless, andfrom the anger of the just. And lo! we--I thy servant, and this darkphantom, whom for one hour on this thy festival of Pentecost I make _my_servant--render thee united worship in this thy recovered temple. "

Lo! the apparition plucks an anemone, and places it on the altar; healso bends his knee, he also raises his right hand to God. Dumb he is;but sometimes the dumb serve God acceptably. Yet still it occurs toyou, that perhaps on this high festival of the Christian church he mayhave been overruled by supernatural influence into confession of hishomage, having so often been made to bow and bend his knee at murderousrites. In a service of religion he may be timid. Let us try him, therefore, with an earthly passion, where he will have no bias eitherfrom favor or from fear. 

If, then, once in childhood you suffered an affliction that wasineffable, --if once, when powerless to face such an enemy, you weresummoned to fight with the tiger that couches within the separationsof the grave, --in that case, after the example of Judaea, [17] sittingunder her palm tree to weep, but sitting with her head veiled, do youalso veil your head. Many years are passed away since then; and perhapsyou were a little ignorant thing at that time, hardly above six yearsold. But your heart was deeper than the Danube; and, as was your love, sowas your grief. Many years are gone since that darkness settled on yourhead; many summers, many winters; yet still its shadows wheel round uponyou at intervals, like these April showers upon this glory of bridalJune. Therefore now, on this dove-like morning of Pentecost, do you veilyour head like Judaea in memory of that transcendent woe, and intestimony that, indeed, it surpassed all utterance of words. Immediatelyyou see that the apparition of the Brocken veils _his_ head, after themodel of Judaea weeping under her palm tree, as if he also had a humanheart; and as if _he_ also, in childhood, having suffered an afflictionwhich was ineffable, wished by these mute symbols to breathe a sightowards heaven in memory of that transcendent woe, and by way of record, though many a year after, that it was indeed unutterable by words. 

FOOTNOTES

[1] As occasions arise in these Sketches, when, merely for the purposesof intelligibility, it becomes requisite to call into notice suchpersonal distinctions in my family as otherwise might be unimportant, Ihere record the entire list of my brothers and sisters, according totheir order of succession; and Miltonically I include myself; havingsurely as much logical right to count myself in the series of my ownbrothers as Milton could have to pronounce Adam the goodliest of his ownsons. First and last, we counted as eight children, viz. , four brothersand four sisters, though never counting more than six living at once, viz. , 1. _William_, older than myself by more than five years; 2. _Elizabeth_; 3. _Jane_, who died in her fourth year; 4. _Mary_; 5. Myself, certainly not the goodliest man of men since born my brothers; 6. _Richard_, known to us all by the household name of _Pink_, who in hisafter years tilted up and down what might then be called his Britannicmajesty's oceans (viz. , the Atlantic and Pacific) in the quality ofmidshipman, until Waterloo in one day put an extinguisher on that wholegeneration of midshipmen, by extinguishing all further call for theirservices; 7. A second _Jane_; 8. _Henry_, a posthumous child, whobelonged to Brazennose College, Oxford, and died about his twenty-sixthyear. 

[2] Cicero, in a well-known passage of his "Ethics", speaks of trade asirredeemably base, if petty, but as not so absolutely felonious ifwholesale. 

[3] It is true that in those days _paregoric elixir_ was occasionallygiven to children in colds; and in this medicine there is a smallproportion of laudanum. But no medicine was ever administered to anymember of our nursery except under medical sanction; and this, assuredly, would not have been obtained to the exhibition of laudanum in a case suchas mine. For I was then not more that twenty-one months old: at which agethe action of opium is capricious, and therefore perilous. 

[4] "_Aureola_. "--The _aureola_ is the name given in the "Legends of theChristian Saints" to that golden diadem or circlet of supernatural light(that _glory_, as it is commonly called in English) which, amongst thegreat masters of painting in Italy, surrounded the heads of Christ and ofdistinguished saints. 

[5] "_The astonishment of science_. "--Her medical attendants were Dr. Percival, a well-known literary physician, who had been a correspondentof Condorcet, D'Alembert, &c. , and Mr. Charles White, the mostdistinguished surgeon at that time in the north of England. It was hewho pronounced her head to be the finest in its development of any thathe had ever seen--an assertion which, to my own knowledge, he repeated inafter years, and with enthusiasm. That he had some acquaintance with thesubject may be presumed from this, that, at so early a stage of suchinquiries, he had published a work on human craniology, supported bymeasurement of heads selected from all varieties of the human species. Meantime, as it would grieve me that any trait of what might seem vanityshould creep into this record, I will admit that my sister died ofhydrocephalus; and it has been often supposed that the prematureexpansion of the intellect in cases of that class is altogether morbid--forced on, in fact, by the mere stimulation of the disease. I would, however, suggest, as a possibility, the very opposite order of relationbetween the disease and the intellectual manifestations. Not the diseasemay always have caused the preternatural growth of the intellect; but, inversely, this growth of the intellect coming on spontaneously, andoutrunning the capacities of the physical structure, may have caused thedisease. 

[6] "I stood in unimaginable trance And agony which cannot be remembered. " _Speech of Alhadra, in Coleridge's Remorse_

[7] "_The guard_. "--I know not whether the word is a local one in thissense. What I mean is a sort of fender, four or five feet high, whichlocks up the fire from too near an approach on the part of children. 

[8] "_Memnonian_. "--For the sake of many readers, whose hearts may goalong earnestly with a record of infant sorrow, but whose course of lifehas not allowed them much leisure for study, I pause to explain--that thehead of Memnon, in the British Museum, that sublime head which wears uponits lips a smile coextensive with all time and all space, an Aeoniansmile of gracious love and Pan-like mystery, the most diffusive andpathetically divine that the hand of man has created, is represented, onthe authority of ancient traditions, to have uttered at sunrise, or soonafter as the sun's rays had accumulated heat enough to rarefy the airwithin certain cavities in the bust, a solemn and dirge-like series ofintonations; the simple explanation being, in its general outline, this--that sonorous currents of air were produced by causing chambers of coldand heavy air to press upon other collections of air, warmed, andtherefore rarefied, and therefore yielding readily to the pressure ofheavier air. Currents being thus established by artificial arrangementsof tubes, a certain succession of notes could be concerted and sustained. Near the Red Sea lies a chain of sand hills, which, by a natural systemof grooves inosculating with each other, become vocal under changingcircumstances in the position of the sun, &c. I knew a boy who, uponobserving steadily, and reflecting upon a phenomenon that met him in hisdaily experience, viz. , that tubes, through which a stream of water waspassing, gave out a very different sound according to the varyingslenderness or fulness of the current, devised an instrument that yieldeda rude hydraulic gamut of sounds; and, indeed, upon this simplephenomenon is founded the use and power of the stethoscope. For exactlyas a thin thread of water, trickling through a leaden tube, yields astridulous and plaintive sound compared with the full volume of soundcorresponding to the full volume of water, on parity of principles, nobody will doubt that the current of blood pouring through the tubes ofthe human frame will utter to the learned ear, when armed with thestethoscope, an elaborate gamut or compass of music recording the ravagesof disease, or the glorious plenitudes of health, as faithfully as thecavities within this ancient Memnonian bust reported this mighty event ofsunrise to the rejoicing world of light and life; or, again, under thesad passion of the dying day, uttered the sweet requiem that belonged toits departure. 

[9] "_Everlasting Jew_. "--_Der ewige Jude_--which is the common Germanexpression for "The Wandering Jew, " and sublimer even than our own. 

[10] First Epistle to Corinthians, chap. Xv. , beginning at ver. 20. 

[11] This beautiful expression, I am pretty certain, must belong to Mrs. Trollope; I read it, probably, in a tale of hers connected with thebackwoods of America, where the absence of such a farewell mustunspeakably aggravate the gloom at any rate belonging to a householdseparation of that eternal character occurring amongst the shadows ofthose mighty forests. 

[12] "_Galleries_. "--These, though condemned on some grounds by therestorers of authentic church architecture, have, nevertheless, this oneadvantage--that, when the _height_ of a church is that dimension whichmost of all expresses its sacred character, galleries expound andinterpret that height. 

[13] Euripides. 

[14] "_Spectre of the Brocken_. "--This very striking phenomenon has beencontinually described by writers, both German and English, for the lastfifty years. Many readers, however, will not have met with thesedescriptions; and on _their_ account I add a few words in explanation, referring them for the best scientific comment on the case to Sir DavidBrewster's "Natural Magic. " The spectre takes the shape of a humanfigure, or, if the visitors are more than one, then the spectresmultiply; they arrange themselves on the blue ground of the sky, or thedark ground of any clouds that may be in the right quarter, or perhapsthey are strongly relieved against a curtain of rock, at a distance ofsome miles, and always exhibiting gigantic proportions. At first, fromthe distance and the colossal size, every spectator supposes theappearances to be quite independent of himself. But very soon he issurprised to observe his own motions and gestures mimicked, and wakens tothe conviction that the phantom is but a dilated reflection of himself. This Titan amongst the apparitions of earth is exceedingly capricious, vanishing abruptly for reasons best known to himself, and more coy incoming forward than the Lady Echo of Ovid. One reason why he is seen soseldom must be ascribed to the concurrence of conditions under which onlythe phenomenon can be manifested; the sun must be near to the horizon, (which, of itself, implies a time of day inconvenient to a personstarting from a station as distant as Elbingerode;) the spectator musthave his back to the sun; and the air must contain some vapor, but_partially_ distributed. Coleridge ascended the Brocken on the Whitsundayof 1799, with a party of English students from Goettingen, but failed tosee the phantom; afterwards in England (and under the three sameconditions) he saw a much rarer phenomenon, which he described in thefollowing lines:--

 "Such thou art as when The woodman winding westward up the glen At wintry dawn, when o'er the sheep-track's maze The viewless snow mist weaves a glistening haze, Sees full before him, gliding without tread, An image with a glory round its head; This shade he worships for its golden hues, And _makes_ (not knowing) that which he pursues. "

[15] "_On Whitsunday_. "--It is singular, and perhaps owing to thetemperature and weather likely to prevail in that early part of summer, that more appearances of the spectre have been witnessed on Whitsundaythan on any other day. 

[16] "_The sorcerer's flower_, " and "_The sorcerer's altar_. "--These arenames still clinging to the anemone of the Brocken, and to an altar-shaped fragment of granite near one of the summits; and there is no doubtthat they both connect themselves, through links of ancient tradition, with the gloomy realities of paganism, when the whole Hartz and theBrocken formed for a very long time the last asylum to a ferocious butperishing idolatry. 

[17] On the Roman coins. 

CHAPTER II. 

INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE. 

So, then, one chapter in my life had finished. Already, before thecompletion of my sixth year, this first chapter had run its circle, had rendered up its music to the final chord--might seem even, likeripe fruit from a tree, to have detached itself forever from all therest of the arras that was shaping itself within my loom of life. NoEden of lakes and forest lawns, such as the _mirage_ suddenly evokesin Arabian sands, --no pageant of air-built battlements and towers, that ever burned in dream-like silence amongst the vapors of summersunsets, mocking and repeating with celestial pencil "the fumingvanities of earth, "--could leave behind it the mixed impression of somuch truth combined with so much absolute delusion. Truest of allthings it seemed by the excess of that happiness which it had sustained:most fraudulent it seemed of all things, when looked back upon as somemysterious parenthesis in the current of life, "self-withdrawn intoa wonderous depth, " hurrying as if with headlong malice to extinction, and alienated by _every_ feature from the new aspects of life thatseemed to await me. Were it not in the bitter corrosion of heart thatI was called upon to face, I should have carried over to the presentno connecting link whatever from the past. Mere reality in thisfretting it was, and the undeniableness of its too potent remembrances, that forbade me to regard this burned-out inaugural chapter of my lifeas no chapter at all, but a pure exhalation of dreams. Misery is aguaranty of truth too substantial to be refused; else, by itsdeterminate evanescence, the total experience would have worn thecharacter of a fantastic illusion. 

Well it was for me at this period, if well it were for me to live atall, that from any continued contemplation of my misery I was forcedto wean myself, and suddenly to assume the harness of life. Else underthe morbid languishing of grief, and of what the Romans called_desiderium_, (the yearning too obstinate after one irrecoverableface, ) too probably I should have pined away into an early grave. Harshwas my awaking; but the rough febrifuge which this awaking administeredbroke the strength of my sickly reveries through a period of more thantwo years; by which time, under the natural expansion of my bodilystrength, the danger had passed over. 

In the first chapter I have rendered solemn thanks for having beentrained amongst the gentlest of sisters, and not under "horridpugilistic brothers. " Meantime, one such brother I had, senior by muchto myself, and the stormiest of his class: him I will immediatelypresent to the reader; for up to this point of my narrative he may bedescribed as a stranger even to myself. Odd as it sounds, I had atthis time both a brother and a father, neither of whom would have beenable to challenge me as a relative, nor I _him_, had we happened tomeet on the public roads. 

In my father's case, this arose from the accident of his having livedabroad for a space that, measured against _my_ life, was a very longone. First, he lived for months in Portugal, at Lisbon, and at Cintra;next in Madeira; then in the West Indies; sometimes in Jamaica, sometimes in St. Kitt's; courting the supposed benefit of hot climatesin his complaint of pulmonary consumption. He had, indeed, repeatedlyreturned to England, and met my mother at watering-places on the southcoast of Devonshire, &c. But I, as a younger child, had not been oneof the party selected for such excursions from home. And now, at last, when all had proved unavailing, he was coming home to die amongst hisfamily, in his thirty-ninth year. My mother had gone to await hisarrival at the port (whatever port) to which the West India packetshould bring him; and amongst the deepest recollections which I connectwith that period, is one derived from the night of his arrival atGreenhay. 

It was a summer evening of unusual solemnity. The servants, and fourof us children, were gathered for hours, on the lawn before the house, listening for the sound of wheels. Sunset came--nine, ten, eleveno'clock, and nearly another hour had passed--without a warning sound;for Greenhay, being so solitary a house, formed a _terminus ad quem_, beyond which was nothing but a cluster of cottages, composing thelittle hamlet of Greenhill; so that any sound of wheels coming fromthe winding lane which then connected us with the Rusholme Road, carriedwith it, of necessity, a warning summons to prepare for visitors atGreenhay. No such summons had yet reached us; it was nearly midnight;and, for the last time, it was determined that we should move in abody out of the grounds, on the chance of meeting the travelling party, if, at so late an hour, it could yet be expected to arrive. In fact, to our general surprise, we met it almost immediately, but coming atso slow a pace, that the fall of the horses' feet was not audible untilwe were close upon them. I mention the case for the sake of the undyingimpressions which connected themselves with the circumstances. Thefirst notice of the approach was the sudden emerging of horses' headsfrom the deep gloom of the shady lane; the next was the mass of whitepillows against which the dying patient was reclining. The hearse-likepace at which the carriage moved recalled the overwhelming spectacleof that funeral which had so lately formed part in the most memorableevent of my life. But these elements of awe, that might at any ratehave struck forcibly upon the mind of a child, were for me, in mycondition of morbid nervousness, raised into abiding grandeur by theantecedent experiences of that particular summer night. The listeningfor hours to the sounds from horses' hoofs upon distant roads, risingand falling, caught and lost, upon the gentle undulation of such fitfulairs as might be stirring--the peculiar solemnity of the hourssucceeding to sunset--the glory of the dying day--the gorgeousnesswhich, by description, so well I knew of sunset in those West Indianislands from which my father was returning--the knowledge that hereturned only to die--the almighty pomp in which this great idea ofDeath apparelled itself to my young sorrowing heart--the correspondingpomp in which the antagonistic idea, not less mysterious, of life, rose, as if on wings, amidst tropic glories and floral pageantriesthat seemed even _more_ solemn and pathetic than the vapory plumes andtrophies of mortality, --all this chorus of restless images, or ofsuggestive thoughts, gave to my father's return, which else had beenfitted only to interpose one transitory red-letter day in the calendarof a child, the shadowy power of an ineffaceable agency among my dreams. This, indeed, was the one sole memorial which restores my father'simage to me as a personal reality; otherwise he would have been forme a bare _nominis umbra_. He languished, indeed, for weeks upon asofa; and, during that interval, it happened naturally, from my reposeof manners, that I was a privileged visitor to him throughout hiswaking hours. I was also present at his bedside in the closing hourof his life, which exhaled quietly, amidst snatches of deliriousconversation with some imaginary visitors. 

My brother was a stranger from causes quite as little to be foreseen, but seeming quite as natural after they had really occurred. In anearly stage of his career, he had been found wholly unmanageable. Hisgenius for mischief amounted to inspiration; it was a divine _afflatus_which drove him in that direction; and such was his capacity for ridingin whirlwinds and directing storms, that he made it his trade to createthem, as a _nephelaegereta Zeus_, a cloud-compelling Jove, in order thathe _might_ direct them. For this, and other reasons, he had been sent tothe Grammar School of Louth, in Lincolnshire--one of those many oldclassic institutions which form the peculiar [1] glory of England. Tobox, and to box under the severest restraint of honorable laws, was inthose days a mere necessity of schoolboy life at _public_ schools; andhence the superior manliness, generosity, and self-control of thosegenerally who had benefited by such discipline--so systematically hostileto all meanness, pusillanimity, or indirectness. Cowper, in his"Tyrocinium, " is far from doing justice to our great public schools. Himself disqualified, by a delicacy of temperament, for reaping thebenefits from such a warfare, and having suffered too much in his ownWestminster experience, he could not judge them from an impartialstation; but I, though ill enough adapted to an atmosphere so stormy, yethaving tried both classes of schools, public and private, am compelled inmere conscience to give my vote (and, if I had a thousand votes, to give_all_ my votes) for the former. 

Fresh from such a training as this, and at a time when his additionalfive or six years availed nearly to make _his_ age the double of mine, my brother very naturally despised me; and, from his exceedingfrankness, he took no pains to conceal that he did. Why should he? Whowas it that could have a right to feel aggrieved by this contempt?Who, if not myself? But it happened, on the contrary, that I had aperfect craze for being despised. I doted on it, and considered contempta sort of luxury that I was in continual fear of losing. Why not?Wherefore should any rational person shrink from contempt, if it happento form the tenure by which he holds his repose in life? The caseswhich are cited from comedy of such a yearning after contempt, standupon a footing altogether different: _there_ the contempt is wooed asa serviceable ally and tool of religious hypocrisy. But to me, at thatera of life, it formed the main guaranty of an unmolested repose; andsecurity there was not, on any lower terms, for the _latentis semitavitae_. The slightest approach to any favorable construction of myintellectual pretensions alarmed me beyond measure; because it pledgedme in a manner with the hearer to support this first attempt by asecond, by a third, by a fourth--O Heavens! there is no saying how farthe horrid man might go in his unreasonable demands upon me. I groanedunder the weight of his expectations; and, if I laid but the firstround of such a staircase, why, then, I saw in vision a vast Jacob'sladder towering upwards to the clouds, mile after mile, league afterleague; and myself running up and down this ladder, like any fatigueparty of Irish hodmen, to the top of any Babel which my wretched admirermight choose to build. But I nipped the abominable system of extortionin the very bud, by refusing to take the first step. The man couldhave no pretence, you know, for expecting me to climb the third orfourth round, when I had seemed quite unequal to the first. Professingthe most absolute bankruptcy from the very beginning, giving the manno sort of hope that I would pay even one farthing in the pound, Inever could be made miserable by unknown responsibilities. 

Still, with all this passion for being despised, which was so essentialto my peace of mind, I found at times an altitude--a starryaltitude--in the station of contempt for me assumed by my brother thatnettled me. Sometimes, indeed, the mere necessities of dispute carriedme, before I was aware of my own imprudence, so far up the staircaseof Babel, that my brother was shaken for a moment in the infinity ofhis contempt; and before long, when my superiority in some bookishaccomplishments displayed itself, by results that could not be entirelydissembled, mere foolish human nature forced me into some trifle ofexultation at these retributory triumphs. But more often I was disposedto grieve over them. They tended to shake that solid foundation ofutter despicableness upon which I relied so much for my freedom fromanxiety; and therefore, upon the whole, it was satisfactory to my mindthat my brother's opinion of me, after any little transient oscillation, gravitated determinately back towards that settled contempt which hadbeen the result of his original inquest. The pillars of Hercules, uponwhich rested the vast edifice of his scorn, were these two--1st, myphysics; he denounced me for effeminacy; 2d, he assumed, and evenpostulated as a _datum_, which I myself could never have the face torefuse, my general idiocy. Physically, therefore, and intellectually, he looked upon me as below notice; but, _morally_, he assured me thathe would give me a written character of the very best description, whenever I chose to apply for it. "You're honest, " he said; "you'rewilling, though lazy; you _would_ pull, if you had the strength of aflea; and, though a monstrous coward, you don't run away. " My owndemurs to these harsh judgments were not so many as they might havebeen. The idiocy I confessed; because, though positive that I was notuniformly an idiot, I felt inclined to think that, in a majority ofcases, I really _was_; and there were more reasons for thinking sothan the reader is yet aware of. But, as to the effeminacy, I deniedit _in toto_; and with good reason, as will be seen. Neither did mybrother pretend to have any experimental proofs of it. The ground hewent upon was a mere _a priori_ one, viz. , that I had always been tiedto the apron string of women or girls; which amounted at most tothis--that, by training and the natural tendency of circumstances, I_ought_ to be effeminate; that is, there was reason to expect beforehandthat I _should_ be so; but, then, the more merit in me, if, in spiteof such reasonable presumptions, I really were _not_. In fact, mybrother soon learned, by a daily experience, how entirely he mightdepend upon me for carrying out the most audacious of his own warlikeplans--such plans, it is true, that I abominated; but _that_ made nodifference in the fidelity with which I tried to fulfil them. 

This eldest brother of mine was in all respects a remarkable boy. Haughtyhe was, aspiring, immeasurably active; fertile in resources as RobinsonCrusoe; but also full of quarrel as it is possible to imagine; and, indefault of any other opponent, he would have fastened a quarrel upon hisown shadow for presuming to run before him when going westwards in themorning, whereas, in all reason, a shadow, like a dutiful child, ought tokeep deferentially in the rear of that majestic substance which is theauthor of its existence. Books he detested, one and all, excepting onlysuch as he happened to write himself. And these were not a few. On allsubjects known to man, from the Thirty-nine Articles of our Englishchurch down to pyrotechnics, legerdemain, magic, both black and white, thaumaturgy, and necromancy, he favored the world (which world was thenursery where I lived amongst my sisters) with his select opinions. Onthis last subject especially--of necromancy--he was very great: witnesshis profound work, though but a fragment, and, unfortunately, long sincedeparted to the bosom of Cinderella, entitled "How to raise a Ghost; andwhen you've got him down, how to keep him down. " To which work he assuredus that some most learned and enormous man, whose name was a foot and ahalf long, had promised him an appendix, which appendix treated of theRed Sea and Solomon's signet ring, with forms of _mittimus_ for ghoststhat might be refractory, and probably a riot act, for any _émeute_amongst ghosts inclined to raise barricades; since he often thrilled ouryoung hearts by supposing the case, (not at all unlikely, he affirmed, )that a federation, a solemn league and conspiracy, might take placeamongst the infinite generations of ghosts against the single generationof men at any one time composing the garrison of earth. The Roman phrasefor expressing that a man had died, viz. , "_Abiit ad plures_" (He hasgone over to the majority, ) my brother explained to us; and we easilycomprehended that any one generation of the living human race, even ifcombined, and acting in concert, must be in a frightful minority, bycomparison with all the incalculable generations that had trot this earthbefore us. The Parliament of living men, Lords and Commons united, what amiserable array against the Upper and Lower House composing theParliament of ghosts! Perhaps the Pre-Adamites would constitute one wingin such a ghostly army. My brother, dying in his sixteenth year, was farenough from seeing or foreseeing Waterloo; else he might have illustratedthis dreadful duel of the living human race with its ghostlypredecessors, by the awful apparition which at three o'clock in theafternoon, on the 18th of June, 1815, the mighty contest at Waterloo musthave assumed to eyes that watched over the trembling interests of man. The English army, about that time in the great agony of its strife, wasthrown into squares; and under that arrangement, which condensed andcontracted its apparent numbers within a few black geometrical diagrams, how frightfully narrow, how spectral, did its slender quadrangels appearat a distance, to any philosophic spectators that knew about the amountof human interests confided to that army, and the hopes for Christendomthat even then were trembling in the balance! Such a disproportion, itseems, might exist, in the case of a ghostly war, between the harvest ofpossible results and the slender band of reapers that were to gather it. And there was even a worse peril than any analogous one that has been_proved_ to exist at Waterloo. A British surgeon, indeed, in a work oftwo octavo volumes, has endeavored to show that a conspiracy was tracedat Waterloo, between two or three foreign regiments, for kindling a panicin the heat of battle, by flight, and by a sustained blowing up oftumbrils, under the miserable purpose of shaking the British steadiness. But the evidences are not clear; whereas my brother insisted that thepresence of sham men, distributed extensively amongst the human race, andmeditating treason against us all, had been demonstrated to thesatisfaction of all true philosophers. Who were these shams and make-believe men? They were, in fact, people that had been dead for centuries, but that, for reasons best known to themselves, had returned to thisupper earth, walked about amongst us, and were undistinguishable, exceptby the most learned of necromancers, from authentic men of flesh andblood. I mention this for the sake of illustrating the fact, of which thereader will find a singular instance in the foot note attached, that thesame crazes are everlastingly revolving upon men. [2]

This hypothesis, however, like a thousand others, when it happenedthat they engaged no durable sympathy from his nursery audience, hedid not pursue. For some time he turned his thoughts to philosophy, and read lectures to us every night upon some branch or other ofphysics. This undertaking arose upon some one of us envying or admiringflies for their power of walking upon the ceiling. "Poh!" he said, "they are impostors; they pretend to do it, but they can't do it asit ought to be done. Ah! you should see _me_ standing upright on theceiling, with my head downwards, for half an hour together, andmeditating profoundly. " My sister Mary remarked, that we should allbe very glad to see him in that position. "If that's the case, " hereplied, "it's very well that all is ready, except as to a strap ortwo. " Being an excellent skater, he had first imagined that, if heldup until he had started, he might then, by taking a bold sweep ahead, keep himself in position through the continued impetus of skating. Butthis he found not to answer; because, as he observed, "the frictionwas too retarding from the plaster of Paris, but the case would bevery different if the ceiling were coated with ice. " As it was _not_, he changed his plan. The true secret, he now discovered, was this: hewould consider himself in the light of a humming top; he would makean apparatus (and he made it) for having himself launched, like a top, upon the ceiling, and regularly spun. Then the vertiginous motion ofthe human top would overpower the force of gravitation. He should, ofcourse, spin upon his own axis, and sleep upon his own axis--perhapshe might even dream upon it; and he laughed at "those scoundrels, theflies, " that never improved in their pretended art, nor made any thingof it. The principle was now discovered; "and, of course, " he said, if a man can keep it up for five minutes, what's to hinder him fromdoing so for five months?" "Certainly, nothing that I can think of, "was the reply of my sister, whose scepticism, in fact, had not settledupon the five months, but altogether upon the five minutes. Theapparatus for spinning him, however, perhaps from its complexity, wouldnot work--a fact evidently owing to the stupidity of the gardener. Onreconsidering the subject, he announced, to the disappointment of someamongst us, that, although the physical discovery was now complete, he saw a moral difficulty. It was not a _humming_ top that was required, but a peg top. Now, this, in order to keep up the _vertigo_ at fullstretch, without which, to a certainty, gravitation would prove toomuch for him, needed to be whipped incessantly. But that was preciselywhat a gentleman ought not to tolerate: to be scourged unintermittinglyon the legs by any grub of a gardener, unless it were father Adamhimself, was a thing that he could not bring his mind to face. However, as some compensation, he proposed to improve the art of flying, whichwas, as every body must acknowledge, in a condition disgraceful tocivilized society. As he had made many a fire balloon, and had succeededin some attempts at bringing down cats by _parachutes_, it was notvery difficult to fly downwards from moderate elevations. But, as hewas reproached by my sister for never flying back again, --which, however, was a far different thing, and not even attempted by thephilosopher in "Rasselas, "--(for

 "Revocare gradum, et _superas_ evadere ad auras Hic labor, hoc opus est, ")

he refused, under such poor encouragement, to try his winged parachutesany more, either "aloft or alow, " till he had thoroughly studied BishopWilkins [3] on the art of translating right reverend gentlemen to themoon; and, in the mean time, he resumed his general lectures on physics. From these, however, he was speedily driven, or one might say shelledout, by a concerted assault of my sister Mary's. He had been in the habitof lowering the pitch of his lectures with ostentatious condescension tothe presumed level of our poor understandings. This superciliousnessannoyed my sister; and accordingly, with the help of two young femalevisitors, and my next younger brother, --in subsequent times a littlemiddy on board many a ship of H. M. , and the most predestined rebel uponearth against all assumptions, small or great, of superiority, --shearranged a mutiny, that had the unexpected effect of suddenlyextinguishing the lectures forever. He had happened to say, what was nounusual thing with him, that he flattered himself he had made the pointunder discussion tolerably clear; "clear, " he added, bowing round thehalf circle of us, the audience, "to the meanest of capacities;" and thenhe repeated, sonorously, "clear to the most excruciatingly mean ofcapacities. " Upon which, a voice, a female voice, --but whose voice, inthe tumult that followed, I did not distinguish, --retorted, "No, youhaven't; it's as dark as sin; "and then, without a moment's interval, asecond voice exclaimed, "Dark as night;" then came my young brother'sinsurrectionary yell, "Dark as midnight;" then another female voicechimed in melodiously, "Dark as pitch;" and so the peal continued to comeround like a catch, the whole being so well concerted, and the rollingfire so well sustained, that it was impossible to make head against it;whilst the abruptness of the interruption gave to it the protectingcharacter of an oral "round robin, " it being impossible to challenge anyone in particular as the ringleader. Burke's phrase of "the swinishmultitude, " applied to mobs, was then in every body's mouth; and, accordingly, after my brother had recovered from his first astonishmentat this audacious mutiny, he made us several sweeping bows that lookedvery much like tentative rehearsals of a sweeping _fusillade_, and thenaddressed us in a very brief speech, of which we could distinguish thewords _pearls_ and _swinish multitude_, but uttered in a very low key, perhaps out of some lurking consideration for the two young strangers. Weall laughed in chorus at this parting salute; my brother himselfcondescended at last to join us; but there ended the course of lectureson natural philosophy. 

As it was impossible, however, that he should remain quiet, he announcedto us, that for the rest of his life he meant to dedicate himself tothe intense cultivation of the tragic drama. He got to work instantly;and very soon he had composed the first act of his "Sultan Selim;"but, in defiance of the metre, he soon changed the title to "SultanAmurath, " considering _that_ a much fiercer name, more bewhiskered andbeturbaned. It was no part of his intention that we should sit lollingon chairs like ladies and gentleman that had paid opera prices forprivate boxes. He expected every one of us, he said, to pull an oar. We were to _act_ the tragedy. But, in fact, we had many oars to pull. There were so many characters, that each of us took four at the least, and the future middy had six. He, this wicked little middy, [4] causedthe greatest affliction to Sultan Amurath, forcing him to order theamputation of his head six several times (that is, once in every one ofhis six parts) during the first act. In reality, the sultan, thoughotherwise a decent man, was too bloody. What by the bowstring, and whatby the cimeter, he had so thinned the population with which he commencedbusiness, that scarcely any of the characters remained alive at theend of act the first. Sultan Amurath found himself in an awkwardsituation. Large arrears of work remained, and hardly any body to doit but the sultan himself. In composing act the second, the author hadto proceed like Deucalion and Pyrrha, and to create an entirely newgeneration. Apparently this young generation, that ought to have beenso good, took no warning by what had happened to their ancestors inact the first: one must conclude that they were quite as wicked, sincethe poor sultan had found himself reduced to order them all forexecution in the course of this act the second. To the brazen age hadsucceeded an iron age; and the prospects were becoming sadder andsadder as the tragedy advanced. But here the author began to hesitate. He felt it hard to resist the instinct of carnage. And was it rightto do so? Which of the felons whom he had cut of prematurely couldpretend that a court of appeal would have reversed his sentence? Butthe consequences were distressing. A new set of characters in everyact brought with it the necessity of a new plot; for people could notsucceed to the arrears of old actions, or inherit ancient motives, like a landed estate. Five crops, in fact, must be taken off the groundin each separate tragedy, amounting, in short, to five tragediesinvolved in one. 

Such, according to the rapid sketch which at this moment my memoryfurnishes, was the brother who now first laid open to me the gates ofwar. The occasion was this. He had resented, with a shower of stones, anaffront offered to us by an individual boy, belonging to a cottonfactory: for more than two years afterwards this became the _teterrimacausa_ of a skirmish or a battle as often as we passed the factory; and, unfortunately, _that_ was twice a day on every day except Sunday. Oursituation in respect to the enemy was as follows: Greenhay, a countryhouse newly built by my father, at that time was a clear mile from theoutskirts of Manchester; but in after years Manchester, throwing out the_tentacula_ of its vast expansions, absolutely enveloped Greenhay; and, for any thing I know, the grounds and gardens which then insulated thehouse may have long disappeared. Being a modest mansion, which (includinghot walls, offices, and gardener's house) had cost only six thousandpounds, I do not know how it should have risen to the distinction ofgiving name to a region of that great town; however, it _has_ done so;[5] and at this time, therefore, after changes so great, it will bedifficult for the _habitué_ of that region to understand how my brotherand myself could have a solitary road to traverse between Greenhay andPrincess Street, then the termination, on that side, of Manchester. Butso it was. Oxford _Street_, like its namesake in London, was then calledthe Oxford _Road_; and during the currency of our acquaintance with it, arose the first three houses in its neighborhood; of which the third wasbuilt for the Rev. S. H. , one of our guardians, for whom his friends hadalso built the Church of St. Peter's--not a bowshot from the house. Atpresent, however, he resided in Salford, nearly two miles from Greenhay;and to him we went over daily, for the benefit of his classicalinstructions. One sole cotton factory had then risen along the line ofOxford Street; and this was close to a bridge, which also was a newcreation; for previously all passengers to Manchester went round byGarrat. This factory became to us the _officina gentium_, from whichswarmed forth those Goths and Vandals that continually threatened oursteps; and this bridge became the eternal arena of combat, we taking goodcare to be on the right side of the bridge for retreat, _i. E. _, on thetown side, or the country side, accordingly as we were going out in themorning, or returning in the afternoon. Stones were the implements ofwarfare; and by continual practice both parties became expert in throwingthem. 

The origin of the feud it is scarcely requisite to rehearse, since theparticular accident which began it was not the true efficient causeof our long warfare, but simply the casual occasion. The cause lay inour aristocratic dress. As children of an opulent family, where allprovisions were liberal, and all appointments elegant, we were uniformlywell dressed; and, in particular, we wore troussers, (at that timeunheard of, except among sailors, ) and we also wore Hessian boots--acrime that could not be forgiven in the Lancashire of that day, becauseit expressed the double offence of being aristocratic and beingoutlandish. We were aristocrats, and it was vain to deny it; couldwe deny our boots? whilst our antagonists, if not absolutely _sansculottes_, were slovenly and forlorn in their dress, often unwashed, with hair totally neglected, and always covered with flakes of cotton. Jacobins they were not, as regarded any sympathy with the Jacobinismthat then desolated France; for, on the contrary, they detested everything French, and answered with brotherly signals to the cry of "Churchand king, " or "King and constitution. " But, for all that, as they wereperfectly independent, getting very high wages, and these wages in amode of industry that was then taking vast strides ahead, they contrivedto reconcile this patriotic anti-Jacobinism with a personal Jacobinismof that sort which is native to the heart of man, who is by naturalimpulse (and not without a root of nobility, though also of base envy)impatient of inequality, and submits to it only through a sense ofits necessity, or under a long experience of its benefits. 

It was on an early day of our new _tyrocinium_, or perhaps on the veryfirst, that, as we passed the bridge, a boy happening to issue fromthe factory [6] sang out to us derisively, "Hollo, bucks!" In this thereader may fail to perceive any atrocious insult commensurate to the longwar which followed. But the reader is wrong. The word "_dandies_" [7]which was what the villain meant, had not then been born, so that hecould not have called us by that name, unless through the spirit ofprophecy. _Buck_ was the nearest word at hand in his Manchestervocabulary: he gave all he could, and let us dream the rest. But in thenext moment he discovered our boots, and he consummated his crime bysaluting us as "Boots! boots!" My brother made a dead stop, surveyed himwith intense disdain, and bade him draw near, that he might "give hisflesh to the fowls of the air. " The boy declined to accept thisliberal invitation, and conveyed his answer by a most contemptuous andplebian gesture, [8] upon which my brother drove him in with a showerof stones. 

During this inaugural flourish of hostilities, I, for my part, remainedinactive, and therefore apparently neutral. But this was the last timethat I did so: for the moment, indeed, I was taken by surprise. To becalled a _buck_ by one that had it in his choice to have called me acoward, a thief, or a murderer, struck me as a most pardonable offence;and as to _boots_, that rested upon a flagrant fact that could not bedenied; so that at first I was green enough to regard the boy as veryconsiderate and indulgent. But my brother soon rectified my views; or, if any doubts remained, he impressed me, at least, with a sense of myparamount duty to himself, which was threefold. First, it seems thatI owed military allegiant to _him_, as my commander-in-chief, wheneverwe "took the field;" secondly, by the law of nations, I, being a cadetof my house, owed suit and service to him who was its head; and heassured me, that twice in a year, on _my_ birthday and on _his_, hehad a right, strictly speaking, to make me lie down, and to set hisfoot upon my neck; lastly, by a law not so rigorous, but valid amongstgentlemen, --viz. , "by the _comity_ of nations, "--it seems I owed eternaldeference to one so much older than myself, so much wiser, stronger, braver, more beautiful, and more swift of foot. Something like allthis in tendency I had already believed, though I had not so minutelyinvestigated the modes and grounds of my duty. By temperament, andthrough natural dedication to despondency, I felt resting upon mealways too deep and gloomy a sense of obscure duties attached to life, that I never _should_ be able to fulfil; a burden which I could notcarry, and which yet I did not know how to throw off. Glad, therefore, I was to find the whole tremendous weight of obligations--the law andthe prophets--all crowded into this one pocket command, "Thou shaltobey thy brother as God's vicar upon earth. " For now, if, by any futurestone levelled at him who had called me a "buck, " I should chance todraw blood, perhaps I might not have committed so serious a trespasson any rights which he could plead; but if I _had_, (for on this subjectmy convictions were still cloudy, ) at any rate, the duty I might haveviolated in regard to this general brother, in right of Adam, wascancelled when it came into collision with my paramount duty to thisliege brother of my own individual house. 

From this day, therefore, I obeyed all my brother's military commandswith the utmost docility; and happy it made me that every sort ofdoubt, or question, or opening for demur was swallowed up in the unityof this one papal principle, discovered by my brother, viz. , that allrights and duties of casuistry were transferred from me to himself. _His_ was the judgment--_his_ was the responsibility; and to me belongedonly the sublime obligation of unconditional faith in _him_. That faithI realized. It is true that he taxed me at times, in his reports ofparticular fights, with "horrible cowardice, " and even with "a cowardicethat seemed inexplicable, except on the supposition of treachery. " Butthis was only a _façon de parler_ with him: the idea of secret perfidy, that was constantly moving under ground, gave an interest to theprogress of the war, which else tended to the monotonous. It was adramatic artifice for sustaining the interest, where the incidentsmight happen to be too slightly diversified. But that he did not believehis own charges was clear, because he never repeated them in his"General History of the Campaigns, " which was a _resumé_, orrecapitulating digest, of his daily reports. 

We fought every day, and, generally speaking, _twice_ every day; andthe result was pretty uniform, viz. , that my brother and I terminatedthe battle by insisting upon our undoubted right to run away. _MagnaCharta_, I should fancy, secures that great right to every man; else, surely, it is sadly defective. But out of this catastrophe to most ofour skirmishes, and to all our pitched battles except one, grew astanding schism between my brother and myself. My unlimited obediencehad respect to action, but not to opinion. Loyalty to my brother didnot rest upon hypocrisy: because I was faithful, it did not followthat I must be false in relation to his capricious opinions. And theseopinions sometimes took the shape of acts. Twice, at the least, inevery week, but sometimes every night, my brother insisted on singing"Te Deum" for supposed victories which he had won; and he insistedalso on my bearing a part in these "Te Deums. " Now, as I knew of nosuch victories, but resolutely asserted the truth, --viz. , that we ranaway, --a slight jar was thus given to the else triumphal effect ofthese musical ovations. Once having uttered my protest, however, willingly I gave my aid to the chanting; for I loved unspeakably thegrand and varied system of chanting in the Romish and English churches. And, looking back at this day to the ineffable benefits which I derivedfrom the church of my childhood, I account among the very greatestthose which reached me through the various chants connected with the"O, Jubilate, " the "Magnificat, " the "Te Deum, " the "Benedicite, " &c. Through these chants it was that the sorrow which laid waste my infancy, and the devotion which nature had made a necessity of my being, wereprofoundly interfused: the sorrow gave reality and depth to thedevotion; the devotion gave grandeur and idealization to the sorrow. Neither was my love for chanting altogether without knowledge. A sonof my reverend guardian, much older than myself, who possessed asingular faculty of producing a sort of organ accompaniment with onehalf of his mouth, whilst he sang with the other half, had given mesome instructions in the art of chanting; and, as to my brother, he, the hundred-handed Briareus, could do all things; of course, therefore, he could chant. 

Once having begun, it followed naturally that the war should deepenin bitterness. Wounds that wrote memorials in the flesh, insults thatrankled in the heart, --these were not features of the case likely tobe forgotten by our enemies, and far less by my fiery brother. I, formy part, entered not into any of the passions that war may be supposedto kindle, except only the chronic passion of anxiety. _Fear_ it wasnot; for experience had taught me that, under the random firing of ourundisciplined enemies, the chances were not many of being wounded. Butthe uncertainties of the war; the doubts in every separate actionwhether I could keep up the requisite connection with my brother, and, in case I could not, the utter darkness that surrounded my fate;whether, as a trophy won from Israel, I should be dedicated to theservice of some Manchester Dagon, or pass through fire to Moloch, --allthese contingencies, for me that had no friend to consult, ran tooviolently into the master current of my constitutional despondencyever to give way under any casual elation of success. Success, however, we really had at times; in slight skirmishes pretty often; and once, at least, as the reader will find to his mortification, if he is wickedenough to take the side of the Philistines, a most smashing victoryin a pitched battle. But even then, and whilst the hurrahs were yetascending from our jubilating lips, the freezing remembrance came backto my heart of that deadly depression which, duly at the coming roundof the morning and evening watches, travelled with me like my shadowon our approach to the memorable bridge. A bridge of sighs [9] too surelyit was for me; and even for my brother it formed an object of fierce yetanxious jealousy, that he could not always disguise, as we first came insight of it; for, if it happened to be occupied in strength, there was anend of all hope that we could attempt the passage; and _that_ was afortunate solution of the difficulty, as it imposed no evil beyond acircuit; which, at least, was safe, if the world should choose to call itinglorious. Even this shade of ignominy, however, my brother contrivedto color favorably, by calling us--that is, me and himself--"a corpsof observation;" and he condescendingly explained to me, that, althoughmaking "a lateral movement, " he had his eye upon the enemy, and "mightyet come round upon his left flank in a way that wouldn't, perhaps, prove very agreeable. " This, from the nature of the ground, neverhappened. We crossed the river at Garrat, out of sight from the enemy'sposition; and, on our return in the evening, when we reached that pointof our route from which the retreat was secure to Greenhay, we tooksuch revenge for the morning insult as might belong to extra liberalityin our stone donations. On this line of policy there was, therefore, no cause for anxiety; but the common case was, that the numbers mightnot be such as to justify this caution, and yet quite enough formischief. To my brother, however, stung and carried headlong intohostility by the martial instincts of his nature, the uneasiness ofdoubt or insecurity was swallowed up by his joy in the anticipationof victory, or even of contest; whilst to myself, whose exultation waspurely official and ceremonial, as due by loyalty from a cadet to thehead of his house, no such compensation existed. The enemy was no enemyin _my_ eyes; his affronts were but retaliations; and his insultswere so inapplicable to my unworthy self, being of a calibre exclusivelymeant for the use of my brother, that from me they recoiled, one andall, as cannon shot from cotton bags. 

The ordinary course of our day's warfare was this: between nine andten in the morning occurred our first transit, and, consequently, ourearliest opportunity for doing business. But at this time the greatsublunary interest of breakfast, which swallowed up all noblerconsiderations of glory and ambition, occupied the work people of thefactory, (or what in the pedantic diction of this day are termed the"operatives, ") so that very seldom any serious business was transacted. Without any formal armistice, the paramount convenience of such anarrangement silently secured its own recognition. Notice there needednone of truce, when the one side yearned for breakfast, and the otherfor a respite: the groups, therefore, on or about the bridge, if anyat all, were loose in their array, and careless. We passed throughthem rapidly, and, on my part, uneasily; exchanging a few snarls, perhaps, but seldom or ever snapping at each other. The tameness wasalmost shocking of those who, in the afternoon, would inevitably resumetheir natural characters of tiger cats and wolves. Sometimes, however, my brother felt it to be a duty that we should fight in the morning;particularly when any expression of public joy for a victory, --bellsringing in the distance, --or when a royal birthday, or some traditionalcommemoration of ancient feuds, (such as the 5th of November, ) irritatedhis martial propensities. Some of these being religious festivals, seemed to require of us an _extra_ homage, for which we knew not howto find any natural or significant expression, except through sharpdischarges of stones, that being a language older than Hebrew orSanscrit, and universally intelligible. But, excepting these highdays of religious solemnity, when a man is called upon to show thathe is not a pagan or a miscreant in the eldest of senses, by thumping, or trying to thump, somebody who is accused or accusable of beingheterodox, the great ceremony of breakfast was allowed to sanctify thehour. Some natural growls we uttered, but hushed them soon, regardless

 "Of the sweeping whirlpool's sway, That, hushed in grim repose, looked for his evening prey. "

_That_ came but too surely. Yes, evening never forgot to come; thisodious necessity of fighting never missed its road back, or fell asleep, or loitered by the way, more than a bill of exchange or a tertianfever. Five times a week (Saturday sometimes, and Sunday always, weredays of rest) the same scene rehearsed itself in pretty nearly thesame succession of circumstances. Between four and five o'clock we hadcrossed the bridge to the safe, or Greenhay side; then we paused, andwaited for the enemy. Sooner or later a bell rang, and from the smokyhive issued the hornets that night and day stung incurably my peaceof mind. The order and procession of the incidents after this wereodiously monotonous. My brother occupied the main high road, preciselyat the point where a very gentle rise of the ground attained its summit;for the bridge lay in a slight valley, and the main military positionwas fifty or eighty yards above the bridge: then--but having firstexamined my pockets, in order to be sure that my stock of ammunition, stones, fragments of slate, with a reasonable proportion of brickbats, was all correct and ready for action--he detached me about forty yardsto the right, my orders being invariable, and liable to no doubts or"quibbling. " Detestable in _my_ ears was that word "_quibbling_, " bywhich, for a thousand years, if the war had happened to last so long, he would have fastened upon me the imputation of meaning, or wishing, at least, to do what he called "pettifogulizing"--that is, to pleadsome distinction, or verbal demur, in bar of my orders, under somecolorable pretence that, according to their literal construction, theyreally did not admit of being fulfilled, or perhaps that they admittedit too much as being capable of fulfilment in two senses, either ofthem a practicable sense. True it was that my eye was preternaturallykeen for flaws of language, not from pedantic exaction of superfluousaccuracy, but, on the contrary, from too conscientious a wish to escapethe mistakes which language not rigorous is apt to occasion. So farfrom seeking to "pettifogulize"--_i. E. _, to find evasions for anypurpose in a trickster's minute tortuosities of construction--exactlyin the opposite direction, from mere excess of sincerity, mostunwillingly I found, in almost every body's words, an unintentionalopening left for double interpretations. Undesigned equivocationprevails every where; [10] and it is not the cavilling hair splitter, but, on the contrary, the single-eyed servant of truth, that is mostlikely to insist upon the limitation of expressions too wide or toovague, and upon the decisive election between meanings potentiallydouble. Not in order to resist or evade my brother's directions, but forthe very opposite purpose--viz. , that I might fulfil them to the letter;thus and no otherwise it happened that I showed so much scrupulosityabout the exact value and position of his words, as finally to draw uponmyself the vexatious reproach of being habitually a "pettifogulizer. "

Meantime, our campaigning continued to rage. Overtures of pacificationwere never mentioned on either side. And I, for _my_ part, with thepassions only of peace at my heart, did the works of war faithfullyand with distinction. I presume so, at least, from the results. It istrue, I was continually falling into treason, without exactly knowinghow I got into it, or how I got out of it. My brother also, it is true, sometimes assured me that he could, according to the rigor of martialjustice, have me hanged on the first tree we passed; to which my prosaicanswer had been, that of trees there _were_ none in OxfordStreet--[which, in imitation of Von Troil's famous chapter on thesnakes of Lapland, the reader may accept, if he pleases, as a completecourse of lectures on the "dendrology" of Oxford Street. ] But, notwithstanding such little stumblings in my career, I continued toascend in the service; and, I am sure, it will gratify my friendlyreaders to hear, that, before my eighth birthday, I was promoted tothe rank of major general. Over this sunshine, however, soon swept atrain of clouds. Three times I was taken prisoner, and with differentresults. The first time I was carried to the rear, and not molestedin any way. Finding myself thus ignominiously neglected, I watched myopportunity; and, by making a wide circuit, easily effected my escape. In the next case, a brief council was held over me; but I was notallowed to hear the deliberations; the result only being communicatedto me--which result consisted in a message not very complimentary tomy brother, and a small present of kicks to myself. This present waspaid down without any discount, by means of a general subscriptionamongst the party surrounding me--that party, luckily, not being verynumerous; besides which, I must, in honesty, acknowledge myself, generally speaking, indebted to their forbearance. They were notdisposed to be too hard upon me. But, at the same time, they clearlydid not think it right that I should escape altogether from tastingthe calamities of war. And this translated the estimate of my guiltfrom the public jurisdiction to that of the individual, sometimescapricious and harsh, and carrying out the public award by means oflegs that ranged through all gradations of weight and agility. Onekick differed exceedingly from another kick in dynamic value; and, insome cases, this difference was so distressingly conspicuous as toimply special malice, unworthy, I conceive, of all generous soldiership. 

On returning to our own frontiers, I had an opportunity of displayingmy exemplary greenness. That message to my brother, with all its_virus_ of insolence I repeated as faithfully for the spirit as, andas literally for the expressions, as my memory allowed me to do; andin that troublesome effort, simpleton that I was, fancied myselfexhibiting a soldier's loyalty to his commanding officer. My brotherthought otherwise: he was more angry with me than with the enemy. Iought, he said, to have refused all participation in such _sanscullotes_ insolence; to carry it was to acknowledge it as fit to becarried. One, grows wiser every day; and on this particular day I madea resolution that, if again made prisoner, I would bring no more "jaw"(so my brother called it) from the Philistines. If these people _would_send "jaw, " I settled that, henceforwards, it must go through the postoffice. 

In my former captures, there had been nothing special or worthy ofcommemoration in the circumstances. Neither was there in the third, excepting that, by accident, in the second stage of the case, I wasdelivered over to the custody of young women and girls; whereas theordinary course would have thrown me upon the vigilant attentions(relieved from monotony by the experimental kicks) of boys. So far, the change was very much for the better. I had a feeling myself, onfirst being presented to my new young mistresses, of a distressingsort. Having always, up to the completion of my sixth year, been aprivileged pet, and almost, I might say, ranking amongst the sanctitiesof the household, with all its female sections, whether young or old, (an advantage which I owed originally to a long illness, an ague, stretching over two entire years of my infancy, ) naturally I had learnedto appreciate the indulgent tenderness of women; and my heart thrilledwith love and gratitude, as often as they took me up into their armsand kissed me. Here it would have been as every where else; but, unfortunately, my introduction to these young women was in the veryworst of characters. I had been taken in arms--in arms against theirown brothers, cousins, sweethearts, and on pretexts too frivolous tomention. If asked the question, it would be found that I should notmyself deny the fact of being at war with their whole order. What wasthe meaning of _that_? What was it to which war pledged a man? Itpledged him, in case of opportunity, to burn, ravage, and depopulatethe houses and lands of the enemy; which enemy was these fair girls. The warrior stood committed to universal destruction. Neither sex norage, neither the smiles of unoffending infancy nor the gray hairs ofthe venerable patriarch, neither the sanctity of the matron nor theloveliness of the youthful bride, would confer any privilege with thewarrior, consequently not with me. 

Many other hideous features in the military character will be foundin books innumerable--levelled at those who make war, and thereforeat myself. And it appears finally by these books, that, as one of myordinary practices, I make a wilderness, and call it a pacification;that I hold it a duty to put people to the sword; which done, to ploughup the foundations of their hearths and altars, and then to sow theground with salt. 

All this passing through my brain, when suddenly one young womansnatched me up in her arms, and kissed me: from _her_, I was passedround to others of the party, who all in turn caressed me, with noallusion to that warlike mission against them and theirs, which onlyhad procured me the honor of an introduction to themselves in thecharacter of captive. The too palpable fact that I was not the personmeant by nature to exterminate their families, or to make wildernesses, and call them pacifications, had withdrawn from their minds thecounterfact--that whatever had been my performances, my intentions hadbeen hostile, and that in such a character only I could have becometheir prisoner. Not only did these young people kiss me, but I (seeingno military reason against it) kissed _them_. Really, if young womenwill insist on kissing major generals, they must expect that thegenerals will retaliate. One only of the crowd adverted to the characterin which I came before them: to be a lawful prisoner, it struck hertoo logical mind that I must have been caught in some aggressivepractices. "Think, " she said, "of this little dog fighting, and fightingour Jack. " "But, " said another in a propitiatory tone, "perhaps he'llnot do so any more. " I was touched by the kindness of her suggestion, and the sweet, merciful sound of that same "_Not do so any more_" whichreally was prompted, I fear, much more by that charity in her whichhopeth all things than by any signs of amendment in myself. Well wasit for me that no time was allowed for an investigation into my moralsby point-blank questions as to my future intentions. In which case itwould have appeared too undeniably, that the same sad necessity whichhad planted me hitherto in a position of hostility to their estimablefamilies would continue to persecute me; and that, on the very nextday, duty to my brother, howsoever it might struggle with gratitudeto themselves, would range me in martial attitude, with a pocketfulof stones, meant, alas! for the exclusive use of their respectablekinsmen. Whilst I was preparing myself, however, for this painfulexposition, my female friends observed issuing from the factory a crowdof boys not likely at all to improve my prospects. Instantly settingme down on my feet, they formed a sort of _cordon sanitaire_ behindme, by stretching out their petticoats or aprons, as in dancing, soas to touch; and then crying out, "Now, little dog, run for thy life, "prepared themselves (I doubt not) for rescuing me, should my recapturebe effected. 

But this was not effected, although attempted with an energy thatalarmed me, and even perplexed me with a vague thought (far tooambitious for my years) that one or two of the pursuing party mightbe possessed by some demon of jealousy, as eye witnesses to my revellingamongst the lips of that fair girlish bevy, kissing and being kissed, loving and being loved; in which case, from all that ever I had readabout jealousy, (and I had read a great deal--viz. , "Othello, " andCollins's "Ode to the Passions, ") I was satisfied that, if againcaptured, I had very little chance for my life. That jealousy was agreen-eyed monster, nobody could know better than _I_ did. "O, my lord, beware of jealousy!" Yes; and my lord couldn't possibly have morereason for bewaring of it than myself; indeed, well it would have beenhad his lordship run away from all the ministers of jealousy--Iago, Cassio, and embroidered handkerchiefs--at the same pace of six milesan hour which kept me ahead of my infuriated pursuers. Ah, that maniac, white as a leper with flakes of cotton, can I ever forget him--_him_that ran so far in advance of his party? What passion but jealousycould have sustained him in so hot a chase? There were some lovelygirls in the fair company that had so condescendingly caressed me;but, doubtless, upon that sweet creature his love must have settled, who suggested, in her soft, relenting voice, a penitence in me that, alas! had not dawned, saying, "_Yes; but perhaps he will not do so anymore. _" Thinking, as I ran, of her beauty, I felt that this jealousdemoniac must fancy himself justified in committing seven times sevenmurders upon me, if he should have it in his power. But, thank Heaven, if jealousy can run six miles an hour, there are other passions--as, for instance, panic--that can run, upon occasion, six and a half; so, as I had the start of him, (you know, reader, ) and not a very shortstart, --thanks be to the expanded petticoats of my dear femalefriends!--naturally it happend that the green-eyed monster came insecond best. Time, luckily, was precious with _him_; and, accordingly, when he had chased me into the by-road leading down to Greenhay, heturned back. For the moment, therefore, I found myself suddenly releasedfrom danger. But this counted for nothing. The same scene would probablyrevolve upon me continually; and, on the next rehearsal, Green-eyesmight have better luck. It saddened me, besides, to find myself underthe political necessity of numbering amongst the Philistines, and asdaughters of Gath, so many kind-hearted girls, whom, by personal proof, I knew to be such. In the profoundest sense, I was unhappy; and, notfrom any momentary accident of distress, but from deep glimpses whichnow, and heretofore, had opened themselves, as occassions arose, intothe inevitable conflicts of life. One of the saddest among suchconflicts is the necessity, wheresoever it occurs, of adopting--thoughthe heart should disown--the enmities of one's own family, or country, or religious sect. In forms how afflicting must that necessity havesometimes occurred during the Parliamentary war! And, in after years, amongst our beautiful old English metrical romances, I found the sameimpassioned complaint uttered by a knight, Sir Ywain, as early as A. D. 1240--

 "But now, where'er I stray or go, My heart SHE has that is my foe!"

I knew--I anticipated to a certainty--that my brother would not hearof any merit belonging to the factory population whom every day we hadto meet in battle; on the contrary, even submission on _their_ part, and willingness to walk penitentially through the _Furcae Caudinae_, would hardly have satisfied his sense of their criminality. Often, indeed, as we came in view of the factory, he would shake his fist atit, and say, in a ferocious tone of voice, "_Delenda est Carthago!_"And certainly, I thought to myself, it must be admitted by every body, that the factory people are inexcusable in raising a rebellion againstmy brother. But still rebels were men, and sometimes were women; andrebels, that stretch out their petticoats like fans for the sake ofscreening one from the hot pursuit of enemies with fiery eyes, (greenor otherwise, ) really are not the sort of people that one wishes tohate. 

Homewards, therefore, I drew in sadness, and little doubting that_hereafter_ I might have verbal feuds with my brother on behalf of myfair friends, but not dreaming how much displeasure I had alreadyincurred by my treasonable collusion with their caresses. That partof the affair he had seen with his own eyes, from his position on thefield; and then it was that he left me indignantly to my fate, which, by my first reception, it was easy to see would not prove very gloomy. When I came into our own study, I found him engaged in preparing a_bulletin_, (which word was just then travelling into universal use, )reporting briefly the events of the day. The art of drawing, as I shallagain have occasion to mention, was amongst his foremost accomplishments;and round the margin of the border ran a black border, ornamented withcyprus and other funereal emblems. When finished, it was carried into theroom of Mrs. Evans. This Mrs. Evans was an important person in ouraffairs. My mother, who never chose to have any direct communication withher servants, always had a housekeeper for the regulation of all domesticbusiness; and the housekeeper, for some years, was this Mrs. Evans. Intoher private parlor, where she sat aloof from the under servants, mybrother and I had the _entrée_ at all times, but upon very differentterms of acceptance: he as a favorite of the first class; _I_, bysufferance, as a sort of gloomy shadow that ran after _his_ person, andcould not well be shut out if _he_ were let in. Him she admired in thevery highest degree; myself, on the contrary, she detested, which made meunhappy. But then, in some measure, she made amends for this, bydespising me in extremity; and for _that_ I was truly thankful--I neednot say _why_, as the reader already knows. Why she detested me, so faras I know, arose in part out of my thoughtfulness indisposed togarrulity, and in part out of my savage, Orson-like sincerity. I had agreat deal to say, but then I could say it only to a very few people, amongst whom Mrs. Evans was certainly not one; and, when I _did_ say anything, I fear that dire ignorance prevented my laying the properrestraints upon my too liberal candor; and _that could not proveacceptable to one who thought nothing of working for any purpose, or forno purpose, by petty tricks, or even falsehoods--all which I held instern abhorrence that I was at no pains to conceal. The _bulletin_ onthis occasion, garnished with this pageantry of woe, cypress wreaths, andarms reversed, was read aloud to Mrs. Evans, indirectly, therefore, tome. It communicated with Spartan brevity, the sad intelligence (but notsad to Mrs. E. ) "that the major general had forever disgraced himself, bysubmitting to the ........ Caresses of the enemy. " I leave a blank forthe epithet affixed to "caresses, " not because there _was_ any blank, but, on the contrary, because my brother's wrath had boiled over in sucha hubble-bubble of epithets, some only half erased, some doubtfullyerased, that it was impossible, out of the various readings, to pickout the true classical text. "Infamous, " "disgusting, " and "odious"struggled for precedency; and _infamous_ they might be; but on theother affixes I held my own private opinions. For some days my brother'sdispleasure continued to roll in reverberating thunders; but at lengthit growled itself to rest; and at last he descended to mildexpostulations with me, showing clearly, in a series of general orders, what frightful consequences must ensue, if major generals (as a generalprinciple) should allow themselves to be kissed by the enemy. 

About this time my brother began to issue, instead of occasionalbulletins, through which hitherto he had breathed his opinions intothe ear of the public, (viz. , of Mrs. Evans, ) a regular gazette, which, in imitation of the London Gazette, was published twice a week. Isuppose that no creature ever led such a life as _I_ did in thatgazette. Run up to the giddiest heights of promotion on on day, formerits which I could not myself discern, in a week or two I was broughtto a court martial for offenses equally obscure. I was cashiered; Iwas restored "on the intercession of a distinguished lady;" (Mrs. Evans, to wit;) I was threatened with being drummed out of the army, to the music of the "Rogue's March;" and then, in the midst of allthis misery and degradation, upon the discovery of some supposed energythat I had manifested, I was decorated with the Order of the Bath. Myreading had been extensive enough to give me some vague aerial senseof the honor involved in such a decoration, whilst I was profoundlyignorant of the channels through which it could reach an individual, and of the sole fountain from which it could flow. But, in this enormityof disproportion between the cause and the effect, between the agencyand the result, I saw nothing more astonishing than I had seen in manyother cases confessedly true. Thousands of vast effects, by all thatI had heard, linked themselves to causes apparently trivial. Thedreadful taint of scrofula, according to the belief of all Christendom, fled at the simple touch of a Stuart [11] sovereign: no miracle in theBible, from Jordan or from Bethesda, could be more sudden or moreastoundingly victorious. By my own experience, again, I knew that a_styan_ (as it is called) upon the eyelid could be easily reduced, thoughnot instantaneously, by the slight application of any golden trinket. Warts upon the fingers of children I had myself known to vanish under the_verbal_ charm of a gypsy woman, without any medicinal applicationwhatever. And I well knew, that almost all nations believed in thedreadful mystery of the _evil eye_; some requiring, as a condition of theevil agency, the co-presence of malice in the agent; but others, asappeared from my father's Portuguese recollections, ascribing the samehorrid power to the eye of certain select persons, even though innocentof all malignant purpose, and absolutely unconscious of their own fatalgift, until awakened to it by the results. Why, therefore, should therebe any thing to shock, or even to surprise, in the power claimed by mybrother, as an attribute inalienable from primogeniture in certain selectfamilies, of conferring knightly honors? The red ribbon of the Bath hecertainly _did_ confer upon me; and once, in a paroxysm of imprudentliberality, he promised me at the end of certain months, supposing that Iswerved from my duty by no atrocious delinquency, the Garter itself. This, I knew, was a far loftier distinction than the Bath. Even then itwas so; and since those days it has become much more so; because the longroll of martial services in the great war with Napoleon compelled ourgovernment greatly to widen the basis of the Bath. This promise was neverfulfilled; but not for any want of clamorous persecution on my partaddressed to my brother's wearied ear and somewhat callous sense ofhonor. Every fortnight, or so, I took care that he should receive a"refresher, " as lawyers call it, --a new and revised brief, --memorializingmy pretensions. These it was my brother's policy to parry, by allegedinstances of recent misconduct on my part. But all such offences, Iinsisted, were thoroughly washed away by subsequent services in momentsof peril, such as he himself could not always deny. In reality, Ibelieve his real motive for withholding the Garter was, that he hadnothing better to bestow upon himself. 

"Now, look here, " he would say, appealing to Mrs. Evans; "I supposethere's a matter of half a dozen kings on the continent, that wouldconsent to lose three of their fingers, if by such a sacrifice theycould purchase the blue ribbon; and here is this little scamp, conceiting himself entitled to it before he has finished two campaigns. "But I was not the person to be beaten off in this fashion. I took mystand upon the promise. A promise _was_ a promise, even if made to ascamp; and then, besides--but there I hesitated; awful thoughtsinterposed to check me; else I wished to suggest that, perhaps, sometwo or three among that half dozen kings might also be scamps. However, I reduced the case to this plain dilemma: These six kings had receiveda promise, or they had not. If they had not, my case was better thantheirs; if they _had_, then, said I, "all seven of us"--I was goingto add, "are sailing in the same boat, " or something to that effect, though not so picturesquely expressed; but I was interrupted by hisdeadly frown at my audacity in thus linking myself on as a seventh tothis _attelage_ of kings, and that such an absolute grub should dreamof ranking as one in a bright pleiad of pretenders to the Garter. Ihad not particularly thought of that; but now, that such a demur wasoffered to my consideration, I thought of reminding him that, in acertain shadowy sense, I also might presume to class myself as a king, the meaning of which was this: Both my brother and myself, for thesake of varying our intellectual amusements, occupied ourselves attimes in governing imaginary kingdoms. I do not mention this as anything unusual; it is a common resource of mental activity and ofaspiring energies amongst boys. Hartley Coleridge, for example, hada kingdom which he governed for many years; whether well or ill, ismore than I can say. Kindly, I am sure, he would govern it; but, unlessa machine had been invented for enabling him to write without effort, (as was really done for our fourth George during the pressure ofillness, ) I fear that the public service must have languished deplorablyfor want of the royal signature. In sailing past his own dominions, what dolorous outcries would have saluted him from the shore--"Hollo, royal sir! here's the deuse to pay: a perfect lock there is, as tightas locked jaw, upon the course of our public business; throats thereare to be cut, from the product of ten jail deliveries, and nobodydares to cut them, for want of the proper warrant; archbishoprics thereare to be filled; and, because they are _not_ filled, the whole nationis running helter skelter into heresy--and all in consequence of yourmajesty's sacred laziness. " _Our_ governments were less remisslyadministered; since each of us, by continued reports of improvementsand gracious concessions to the folly or the weakness of our subjects, stimulated the zeal of his rival. And here, at least, there seemed tobe no reason why I should come into collision with my brother. At anyrate, I took pains _not_ to do so. But all was in vain. My destinywas, to live in one eternal element of feud. 

My own kingdom was an island called Gombroon. But in what parallel ofnorth or south latitude it lay, I concealed for a time as rigorouslyas ancient Rome through every century concealed her real name. [12] The object in this provisional concealment was, to regulatethe position of my own territory by that of my brother's; for I wasdetermined to place a monstrous world of waters between us as the onlychance (and a very poor one it proved) for compelling my brother tokeep the peace. At length, for some reason unknown to me, and much tomy astonishment, he located his capital city in the high latitude of65 deg. N. That fact being once published and settled, instantly Ismacked my little kingdom of Gombroon down into the tropics, 10 deg. , I think, south of the line. Now, at least, I was on the right side ofthe hedge, or so I flattered myself; for it struck me that my brothernever would degrade himself by fitting out a costly nautical expeditionagainst poor little Gombroon; and how else could he get at me? Surelythe very fiend himself, if he happened to be in a high arctic latitude, would not indulge his malice so far as to follow its trail into thetropic of Capricorn. And what was to be got by such a freak? There wasno Golden Fleece in Gombroon. If the fiend or my brother fancied _that_, for once they were in the wrong box; and there was no variety ofvegetable produce, for I never denied that the poor little island wasonly 270 miles in circuit. Think, then, of sailing through 75 deg. Oflatitude only to crack such a miserable little filbert as that. Butmy brother stunned me by explaining, that, although his capital layin lat. 65 deg. N. , not the less his dominions swept southwards througha matter of 80 or 90 deg. ; and as to the tropic of Capricorn, much ofit was his own private property. I was aghast at hearing _that_. Itseemed that vast horns and promontories ran down from all parts of hisdominions towards any country whatsoever, in either hemisphere, --empireor republic, monarchy, polyarchy, or anarchy, --that he might havereasons for assaulting. 

Here in one moment vanished all that I had relied on for protection:distance I had relied on, and suddenly I was found in close neighborhoodto my most formidable enemy. Poverty I had rolled on, and _that_ wasnot denied: he granted the poverty, but it was dependent on thebarbarism of the Gombroonians. It seems that in the central forestsof Gombroonia there were diamond mines, which my people, from theirlow condition of civilization, did not value, nor had any means ofworking. Farewell, therefore, on _my_ side, to all hopes of enduringpeace, for here was established, in legal phrase, _a lien_ foreverupon my island, and not upon its margin, but its very centre, in favorof any invaders better able than the natives to make its treasuresavailable. For, of old, it was an article in my brother's code ofmorals, that, supposing a contest between any two parties, of whichone possessed an article, whilst the other was better able to use it, the rightful property vested in the latter. As if you met a man witha musket, then you might justly challenge him to a trial in the artof making gunpowder; which if you _could_ make, and he could _not_, in that case the musket was _de jure_ yours. For what shadow of a righthad the fellow to a noble instrument which he could not "maintain" ina serviceable condition, and "feed" with its daily rations of powderand shot? Still, it may be fancied that, since all the relations betweenus as independent sovereigns (whether of war, or peace, or treaty)rested upon our own representations and official reports, it was surelywithin my competence to deny or qualify as much as within his to assert. But, in reality, the _law_ of the contest between us, as suggested bysome instinct of propriety in my own mind, would not allow me to proceedin such a method. What he said was like a move at chess or draughts, which it was childish to dispute. The move being made, my businesswas--to face it, to parry it, to evade it, and, if I could, to overthrowit. I proceeded as a lawyer who moves as long as he can, not by blankdenial of facts, (or _coming to an issue_, ) but by _demurring_, (_i. E. _, admitting the allegations of fact, but otherwise interpreting theirconstruction. ) It was the understood necessity of the case that I mustpassively accept my brother's statements so far as regarded their verbalexpression; and, if _I_ would extricate my poor islanders from theirtroubles, it must be by some distinction or evasion lying _within_ thisexpression, or not blankly contradicting it. 

"How, and to what extent, " my brother asked, "did I raise taxes uponmy subjects?" My first impulse was to say, that I did not tax them atall, for I had a perfect horror of doing so; but prudence would notallow of my saying _that_; because it was too probable he would demandto know how, in that case, I maintained a standing army; and if I onceallowed it to be supposed that I had none, there was an end foreverto the independence of my people. Poor things! they would have beeninvaded and dragooned in a month. I took some days, therefore, toconsider that point; but at last replied, that my people, beingmaritime, supported themselves mainly by a herring fishery, from whichI deducted a part of the produce, and afterwards sold it for manureto neighboring nations. This last hint I borrowed from the conversationof a stranger who happened to dine one day at Greenhay, and mentionedthat in Devonshire, or at least on the western coast of that county, near Ilfracombe, upon any excessive take of herrings, beyond what themarkets could absorb, the surplus was applied to the land as a valuabledressing. It might be inferred from this account, however, that thearts must be in a languishing state amongst a people that did notunderstand the process of salting fish; and my brother observedderisively, much to my grief, that a wretched ichthyophagous peoplemust make shocking soldiers, weak as water, and liable to be knockedover like ninepins; whereas, in _his_ army, not a man ever ateherrings, pilchards, mackerels, or, in fact, condescended to any thingworse than surloins of beef. 

At every step I had to contend for the honor and independence of myislanders; so that early I came to understand the weight of Shakspeare'ssentiment--

 "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown!"

O reader, do not laugh! I lived forever under the terror of two separatewars in two separate worlds: one against the factory boys, in a realworld of flesh and blood, of stones and brickbats, of flight andpursuit, that were any thing but figurative; the other in a worldpurely aerial, where all the combats and the sufferings were absolutemoonshine. And yet the simple truth is, that, for anxiety and distressof mind, the reality (which almost every morning's light brought round)was as nothing in comparison of that dream kingdom which rose like avapor from my own brain, and which apparently by _fiat_ of my willcould be forever dissolved. Ah! but no; I had contracted obligationsto Gombroon; I had submitted my conscience to a yoke; and in secrettruth my will had no such autocratic power. Long contemplation of ashadow, earnest study for the welfare of that shadow, sympathy withthe wounded sensibilities of that shadow under accumulated wrongs, these bitter experiences, nursed by brooding thought, had graduallyfrozen that shadow into a rigor of reality far denser than the materialrealities of brass or granite. Who builds the most durable dwellings?asks the laborer in "Hamlet;" and the answer is, The gravedigger. Hebuilds for corruption; and yet _his_ tenements are incorruptible: "thehouses which _he_ makes last to doomsday. " [13] Who is it that seeks forconcealment? Let him hide himself [14] in the unsearchable chambers oflight, --of light which at noonday, more effectually than any gloom, conceals the very brightest stars, --rather than in labyrinths of darknessthe thickest. What criminal is that who wishes to abscond from publicjustice? Let him hurry into the frantic publicities of London, and by nomeans into the quiet privacies of the country. So, and upon the analogyof these cases, we may understand that, to make a strife overwhelming bya thousand fold to the feelings, it must not deal with gross materialinterests, but with such as rise into the world of dreams, and actupon the nerves through spiritual, and not through fleshly torments. Mine, in the present case, rose suddenly, like a rocket, into theirmeridian altitude, by means of a hint furnished to my brother from aScotch advocate's reveries. 

This advocate, who by his writings became the remote cause of so muchaffliction to my childhood, and struck a blow at the dignity ofGombroon, that neither my brother nor all the forces of Tigrosylvania(my brother's kingdom) ever could have devised, was the celebratedJames Burnett, better known to the English public by his judicial titleof Lord Monboddo. The Burnetts of Monboddo, I have often heard, werea race distinguished for their intellectual accomplishments throughseveral successive generations; and the judge in question was eminentlyso. It did him no injury that many people regarded him as crazy. InEngland, at the beginning of the last century, we had a saying, [15] in reference to the Harveys of Lord Bristol's family, equallydistinguished for wit, beauty, and eccentricity, that at the creationthere had been three kinds of people made, viz. , men, women, and Harveys;and by all accounts, something of the same kind might plausibly have beensaid in Scotland about the Burnetts. Lord Monboddo's nieces, of whom oneperished by falling from a precipice, (and, as I have heard, through mereabsence of mind, whilst musing upon a book which she carried in herhand, ) still survive in the affection of many friends, through theinterest attached to their intellectual gifts; and Miss Burnett, thedaughter of the judge, is remembered in all the memorials of Burns thepoet, as the most beautiful, and otherwise the most interesting, of hisfemale aristocratic friends in Edinburgh. Lord Monboddo himself trod aneccentric path in literature and philosophy; and our tutor, who spenthis whole life in reading, withdrawing himself in that way from theanxieties incident to a narrow income and a large family, found, nodoubt, a vast fund of interesting suggestions in Lord M. 's "Dissertationson the Origin of Language;" but to us he communicated only one section ofthe work. It was a long passage, containing some very usefulillustrations of a Greek idiom; useful I call them, because four yearsafterwards, when I had made great advances in my knowledge of Greek, theyso appeared to me. [16] But then, being scarcely seven yearsold, as soon as our tutor had finished his long extract from theScottish judge's prelection, I could express my thankfulness for whatI had received only by composing my features to a deeper solemnity andsadness than usual--no very easy task, I have been told; otherwise, I really had not the remotest conception of what his lordship meant. I knew very well the thing called a _tense_; I knew even then by namethe _Aoristus Primus_, as a respectable tense in the Greek language. It (or shall we say _he_?) was known to the whole Christian world bythis distinction of _Primus_; clearly, therefore, there must be somelow, vulgar tense in the background, pretending also to the name ofAorist, but universally scouted as the _Aoristus Secundus_, orBirmingham counterfeit. So that, unable as I was, from ignorance, togo along with Lord M. 's appreciation of his pretensions, still, hadit been possible to meet an Aoristus Primus in the flesh, I shouldhave bowed to him submissively, as to one apparently endowed with themysterious rights of primogeniture. Not so my brother. 

Aorist, indeed! Primus or Secundus, what mattered it? Paving stoneswere something, brickbats were something; but an old superannuatedtense! That any grown man should trouble himself about _that!_ Indeedthere _was_ something extraordinary there. For it is not amongst theordinary functions of lawyers to take charge of Greek; far less, onemight suppose, of lawyers of Scotland, where the _general_ system ofeducation has moved for two centuries upon a principle of slight regardto classical literature. Latin literature was very much neglected, andGreek nearly altogether. The more was the astonishment at finding arare delicacy of critical instinct, as well as of critical sagacity, applied to the Greek idiomatic niceties by a Scottish lawyer, viz. , that the same eccentric judge, first made known to us by our tutor. 

To the majority of readers, meantime, at this day, Lord M. Is memorablechiefly for his craze about the degeneracy of us poor moderns, whencompared with the men of pagan antiquity; which craze itself mightpossibly not have been generally known, except in connection with thelittle skirmish between him and Dr. Johnson, noticed in Boswell'saccount of the doctor's Scottish tour. "Ah, doctor, " said Lord M. , upon some casual suggestion of that topic, "poor creatures are we ofthis eighteenth century; our fathers were better men than we!" "O, no, my lord, " was Johnson's reply; "we are quite as strong as ourforefathers, and a great deal wiser! "Such a craze, however, is toowidely diffused, and falls in with too obstinate a preconception[17] in the human race, which has in every age hypochondriacally regardeditself as under some fatal necessity of dwindling, much to havechallenged public attention. As real paradoxes (spite of the idle meaningattached usually to the word _paradox_) have often no falsehood in them, so here, on the contrary, was a falsehood which had in it nothingparadoxical. It contradicted all the indications of history andexperience, which uniformly had pointed in the very opposite direction;and so far it ought to have been paradoxical, (that is, revolting topopular opinion, ) but was _not_ so; for it fell in with prevailingopinions, with the oldest, blindest, and most inveterate of humansuperstitions. If extravagant, yet to the multitude it did not _seem_extravagant. So natural a craze, therefore, however baseless, would neverhave carried Lord Monboddo's name into that meteoric notoriety andatmosphere of astonishment which soon invested it in England. And, inthat case, my childhood would have escaped the deadliest blight ofmortification and despondency that could have been incident to a mostmorbid temperament concurring with a situation of visionary (yes! if youplease, of fantastic) but still of most real distress. 

How much it would have astonished Lord Monboddo to find himself madeanswerable, virtually made answerable, by the evidence of secret tears, for the misery of an unknown child in Lancashire. Yet night and daythese silent memorials of suffering were accusing him as the founderof a wound that could not be healed. It happened that the severalvolumes of his work lay for weeks in the study of our tutor. Chancedirected the eye of my brother, one day, upon that part of the workin which Lord M. Unfolds his hypothesis that originally the human racehad been a variety of the ape. On which hypothesis, by the way, Dr. Adam Clarke's substitution of _ape_ for _serpent_, in translating theword _nachash_, (the brute tempter of Eve, ) would have fallen to theground, since this would simply have been the case of one human beingtempting another. It followed inevitably, according to Lord M. , howeverpainful it might be to human dignity, that in this, their early stageof brutality, men must have had tails. My brother mused upon thisrevery, and, in a few days, published an extract from some scoundrel'stravels in Gombroon, according to which the Gombroonians had not yetemerged from this early condition of apedom. They, it seems, were still_homines caudati_. Overwhelming to me and stunning was the ignominyof this horrible discovery. Lord M. Had not overlooked the naturalquestion--In what way did men get rid of their tails? To speak thetruth, they never _would_ have got rid of them had they continued torun wild; but growing civilization introduced arts, and the artsintroduced sedentary habits. By these it was, by the mere necessityof continually sitting down, that men gradually wore off their tails. Well, and what should hinder the Gombroonians from sitting down?_Their_ tailors and shoemakers would and could, I hope, sit down, aswell as those of Tigrosylvania. Why not? Ay, but my brother had insistedalready that they _had_ no tailors, that they _had_ no shoemakers;which, _then_, I did not care much about, as it merely put back theclock of our history--throwing us into an earlier, and therefore, perhaps, into a more warlike stage of society. But, as the case stoodnow, this want of tailors, &c. , showed clearly that the process ofsitting down, so essential to the ennobling of the race, had notcommenced. My brother, with an air of consolation, suggested that Imight even now, without an hour's delay, compel the whole nation tosit down for six hours a day, which would always "make a beginning. "But the truth would remain as before, viz. , that I was the king of apeople that had tails; and the slow, slow process by which, in a courseof many centuries, their posterity might rub them off, --a hope ofvintages never to be enjoyed by any generations that are yet heavingin sight, --_that_ was to me the worst form of despair. 

Still there was one resource: if I "didn't like it, " meaning the stateof things in Gombroon, I might "abdicate. " Yes, I knew _that_. I mightabdicate; and, once having cut the connection between myself and thepoor abject islanders, I might seem to have no further interest in thedegradation that affected them. After such a disruption between us, what was it to me if they had even three tails apiece? Ah, _that_ wasfine talking; but this connection with my poor subjects had grown upso slowly and so genially, in the midst of struggles so constant againstthe encroachments of my brother and his rascally people; we had sufferedso much together; and the filaments connecting them with my heart wereso aerially fine and fantastic, but for that reason so inseverable, that I abated nothing of my anxiety on their account; making thisdifference only in my legislation and administrative cares, that Ipursued them more in a spirit of despondency, and retreated more shylyfrom communicating them. It was in vain that my brother counselled meto dress my people in the Roman toga, as the best means of concealingtheir ignominious appendages: if he meant this as comfort, it was noneto me; the disgrace lay in the fact, not in its publication; and inmy heart, though I continued to honor Lord Monboddo (whom I heard myguardian also daily delighting to honor) as a good Grecian, yet secretlyI cursed the Aoristus Primus, as the indirect occasion of a miserywhich was not and could not be comprehended. 

From this deep degradation of myself and my people, I was drawn offat intervals to contemplate a different mode of degradation affectingtwo persons, twin sisters, whom I saw intermittingly; sometimes oncea week, sometimes frequently on each separate day. You have heard, reader, of pariahs. The pathos of that great idea possibly never reachedyou. Did it ever strike you how far that idea had extended? Do notfancy it peculiar to Hindostan. Before Delhi was, before Agra, orLahore, might the pariah say, I was. The most interesting, if only asthe most mysterious, race of ancient days, the Pelasgi, that overspread, in early times of Greece, the total Mediterranean, --a race distinguishedfor beauty and for intellect, and sorrowful beyond all power of manto read the cause that could lie deep enough for so imperishable animpression, --_they_ were pariahs. The Jews that, in the twenty-eighthchapter of Deuteronomy, were cursed in a certain contingency with asublimer curse than ever rang through the passionate wrath of prophecy, and that afterwards, in Jerusalem, cursed themselves, voluntarilytaking on their own heads, and on the heads of their children's childrenforever and ever, the guilt of innocent blood, --_they_ are pariahsto this hour. Yet for _them_ there has ever shone a sullen light ofhope. The gypsies, for whom no conscious or acknowledged hope burnsthrough the mighty darkness that surrounds them, --they are pariahs ofpariahs. Lepers were a race of mediaeval pariahs, rejected of men, thatnow have gone to rest. But travel into the forests of the Pyrenees, and there you will find their modern representatives in the Cagots. Are these Pyrenean Cagots pagans? Not at all, They are good Christians. Wherefore, then, that low door in the Pyrenean churches, through whichthe Cagots are forced to enter, and which, obliging them to stoopalmost to the ground, is a perpetual memento of their degradation?Wherefore is it that men of pure Spanish blood will hold no intercoursewith the Cagot? Wherefore is it that even the shadow of a Cagot, ifit falls across a fountain, is held to have polluted that fountain?All this points to some dreadful taint of guilt, real or imputed, inages far remote. [18]

But in ages far nearer to ourselves, nay, in our own generation andour own land, are many pariahs, sitting amongst us all, nay, oftentimessitting (yet not recognized for what they really are) at good men'stables. How general is that sensuous dulness, that deafness of theheart, which the Scriptures attribute to human beings! "Having ears, they hear not; and, seeing, they do not understand. " In the very actof facing or touching a dreadful object, they will utterly deny itsexistence. Men say to me daily, when I ask them, in passing, "Any thingin this morning's paper?" "O, no; nothing at all. " And, as I never hadany other answer, I am bound to suppose that there never _was_ anything in a daily newspaper; and, therefore, that the horrible burdenof misery and of change, which a century accumulates as its _facit_or total result, has not been distributed at all amongst its thirty-sixthousand five hundred and twenty-five days: every day, it seems, wasseparately a blank day, yielding absolutely nothing--what childrencall a deaf nut, offering no kernel; and yet the total product hascaused angels to weep and tremble. Meantime, when I come to look atthe newspaper with my own eyes, I am astonished at the misreport ofmy informants. Were there no other section in it than simply thatallotted to the police reports, oftentimes I stand aghast at therevelations there made of human life and the human heart; at itscolossal guilt, and its colossal misery; at the suffering whichoftentimes throws its shadow over palaces, and the grandeur of muteendurance which sometimes glorifies a cottage. Here transpires thedreadful truth of what is going on forever under the thick curtainsof domestic life, close behind us, and before us, and all around us. Newspapers are evanescent, and are too rapidly recurrent, and peoplesee nothing great in what is familiar, nor can ever be trained to readthe silent and the shadowy in what, for the moment, is covered withthe babbling garrulity of daylight. I suppose now, that, in the nextgeneration after that which is here concerned, had any neighbor of ourtutor been questioned on the subject of a domestic tragedy, whichtravelled through its natural stages in a leisurely way, and under theeyes of good Dr. S----, he would have replied, "Tragedy! O, sir, nothingof the kind! You have been misled; the gentleman must lie under amistake: perhaps it was in the next street. " No, it was _not_ in thenext street; and the gentleman does not lie under a mistake, or, infact, lie at all. The simple truth is, blind old neighbor, that you, being rarely in the house, and, _when_ there, only in one particularroom, saw no more of what was hourly going on than if you had beenresiding with the Sultan of Bokhara. But I, a child between seven andeight years old, had access every where. I was privileged, and had the_entree_ even of the female apartments; one consequence of which was, that I put _this_ and _that_ together. A number of syllables, thateach for itself separately might have meant nothing at all, did yet, when put together, through weeks and months, read for _my_ eyes intosentences, as deadly and significant as _Tekel, upharsin. _ And anotherconsequence was, that, being, on account of my age, nobody at all, orvery near it, I sometimes witnessed things that perhaps it had notbeen meant for any body to witness, or perhaps some half-consciousnegligence overlooked my presence. "Saw things! What was it now? Wasit a man at midnight, with a dark lantern and a six-barrel revolver?"No, _that_ was not in the least like what I saw: it was a great dealmore like what I will endeavor to describe. Imagine two young girls, of what exact age I really do not know, but apparently from twelve tofourteen, twins, remarkably plain in person and features, unhealthy, and obscurely reputed to be idiots. Whether they really were such wasmore than I knew, or could devise any plan for learning. Withoutdreaming of any thing unkind or uncourteous, my original impulse hadbeen to say, "If you please, are you idiots?" But I felt that such aquestion had an air of coarseness about it, though, for my own part, I had long reconciled myself to being called an idiot by my brother. There was, however, a further difficulty: breathed as a gentle murmuringwhisper, the question might possibly be reconciled to an indulgent earas confidential and tender. Even to take a liberty with those you loveis to show your trust in their affection; but, alas! these poor girlswere deaf; and to have shouted out, "Are you idiots, if you please?"in a voice that would have rung down three flights of stairs, promised(as I felt, without exactly seeing why) a dreadful exaggeration towhatever incivility might, at any rate, attach to the question; andsome _did_ attach, that was clear, even if warbled through an air ofCherubini's and accompanied on the flute. Perhaps they were _not_idiots, and only seemed to be such from the slowness of apprehensionnaturally connected with deafness. That I saw them but seldom, arosefrom their peculiar position in the family. Their father had no privatefortune; his income from the church was very slender; and, thoughconsiderably increased by the allowance made for us, his two pupils, still, in a great town, and with so large a family, it left him littleroom for luxuries. Consequently, he never had more than two servants, and at times only one. Upon this plea rose the scheme of the motherfor employing these two young girls in menial offices of the householdeconomy. One reason for that was, that she thus indulged her dislikefor them, which she took no pains to conceal; and thus, also, shewithdrew them from the notice of strangers. In this way, it happenedthat I saw them myself but at uncertain intervals. Gradually, however, I came to be aware of their forlorn condition, to pity them, and tolove them. The poor twins were undoubtedly plain to the degree whichis called, by unfeeling people, ugliness. They were also deaf, as Ihave said, and they were scrofulous; one of them was disfigured by thesmall pox; they had glimmering eyes, red, like the eyes of ferrets, and scarcely half open; and they did not walk so much as stumble along. There, you have the worst of them. Now, hear something on the otherside. What first won my pity was, their affection for each other, united to their constant sadness; secondly, a notion which had creptinto my head, probably derived from something said in my presence byelder people, that they were destined to an early death; and, lastly, the incessant persecutions of their mother. This lady belonged, bybirth, to a more elevated rank than that of her husband, and she wasremarkably well bred as regarded her manners. But she had probably aweak understanding; she was shrewish in her temper; was a severeeconomist; a merciless exactor of what she viewed as duty; and, inpersecuting her two unhappy daughters, though she yielded blindly toher unconscious dislike of them, as creatures that disgraced her, shewas not aware, perhaps, of ever having put forth more expressions ofanger and severity than were absolutely required to rouse theconstitutional torpor of her daughters' nature; and where disgust hasonce rooted itself, and been habitually expressed in tones of harshness, the mere sight of the hateful object mechanically calls forth theeternal tones of anger, without distinct consciousness or separateintention in the speaker. Loud speaking, besides, or even shouting, was required by the deafness of the two girls. From anger so constantlydischarging its thunders, naturally they did not show open signs ofrecoiling; but that they felt it deeply, may be presumed from theirsensibility to kindness. My own experience showed _that_; for, asoften as I met them, we exchanged kisses; and my wish had always beento beg them, if they really _were_ idiots, not to mind it, since Ishould not like them the less on that account. This wish of mine nevercame to utterance; but not the less they were aware, by my manner ofsalutation, that one person at least, amongst those who might beconsidered strangers, did not find any thing repulsive about them; andthe pleasure they felt was expressed broadly upon their kindling faces. 

Such was the outline of their position; and, that being explained, what I saw was simply this: it composed a silent and symbolic scene, a momentary interlude in dumb show, which interpreted itself, andsettled forever in my recollection, as if it had prophesied andinterpreted the event which soon followed. They were resting from toil, and both sitting down. This had lasted for perhaps ten or fifteenminutes. Suddenly from below stairs the voice of angry summons rangup to their ears. Both rose, in an instant, as if the echoing scourgeof some avenging Tisiphone were uplifted above their heads; both openedtheir arms; flung them round each other's necks; and then, unclaspingthem, parted to their separate labors. This was my last rememberableinterview with the two sisters; in a week both were corpses. They haddied, I believe, of scarlatina, and very nearly at the same moment. 

 * * * * *

But surely it was no matter for grief, that the two scrofulous idiotswere dead and buried. O, no! Call them idiots at your pleasure, serfsor slaves, strulbrugs [19] or pariahs; _their_ case was certainly notworsened by being booked for places in the grave. Idiocy, for any thing Iknow, may, in that vast kingdom, enjoy a natural precedency; scrofula andleprosy may have some mystic privilege in a coffin; and the pariahsof the upper earth may form the aristocracy of the dead. That theidiots, real or reputed, were at rest, --that their warfare wasaccomplished, --might, if a man happened to know enough, be interpretedas a glorious festival. The sisters were seen no more upon staircasesor in bed rooms, and deadly silence had succeeded to the sound ofcontinual uproars. Memorials of _them_ were none surviving on earth. Not _they_ it was that furnished mementoes of themselves. The motherit was, the father it was--that mother who by persecution had avengedthe wounds offered to her pride; that father, who had tolerated thispersecution; she it was, he it was, that by the altered glances of herhaunted eye, that by the altered character of his else stationaryhabits, had revived for me a spectacle, once real, of visionary twinsisters, moving forever up and down the stairs--sisters, patient, humble, silent, that snatched convulsively at a loving smile, or lovinggesture, from a child, as at some message of remembrance from God, whispering to them, "You are not forgotten"--sisters born apparentlyfor the single purpose of suffering, whose trials, it is true, wereover, and could not be repeated, but (alas for her who had been theircause!) could not be recalled. Her face grew thin, her eye sunken andhollow, after the death of her daughters; and, meeting her on thestaircase, I sometimes fancied that she did not see me so much assomething beyond me. Did any misfortune befall her after this doublefuneral? Did the Nemesis that waits upon the sighs of children pursueher steps? Not apparently: externally, things went well; her sons werereasonably prosperous; her handsome daughter--for she had a moreyouthful daughter, who really _was_ handsome--continued to improve inpersonal attractions; and some years after, I have heard, she marriedhappily. But from herself, so long as I continued to know her, thealtered character of countenance did not depart, nor the gloomy eye, that seemed to converse with secret and visionary objects. 

This result from the irrevocable past was not altogether confined toherself. It is one evil attached to chronic and domestic oppression, that it draws into its vortex, as unwilling, or even as loathing, coöperators, others who either see but partially the wrong they areabetting, or, in cases where they do see it, are unable to make headagainst it, through the inertia of their own nature, or through thecoercion of circumstances. Too clearly, by the restless irritationof his manner for some time after the children's death, their fathertestified, in a language not fully, perhaps, perceived by himself, ormeant to be understood by others, that to his inner conscience he alsowas not clear of blame. Had he, then, in any degree sanctioned theinjustice which sometimes he must have witnessed? Far from it; he hadbeen roused from his habitual indolence into energetic expressions ofanger; he had put an end to the wrong, when it came openly before him. I had myself heard him say on many occasions, with patriarchal fervor, "Woman, they are your children, and God made them. Show mercy to _them_, as you expect it for yourself. " But he must have been aware, that, forany three instances of tyrannical usage that fell under his notice, at least five hundred would escape it. That was the sting of thecase--that was its poisonous aggravation. But with a nature that soughtfor peace before all things, in this very worst of its aggravationswas found a morbid cure--the effectual temptation to wilful blindnessand forgetfulness. The sting became the palliation of the wrong, andthe poison became its anodyne. For together with the five hundredhidden wrongs, arose the necessity that they must be hidden. Could hebe pinned on, morning, noon, and night, to his wife's apron? And ifnot, what else should he do by angry interferences at chance timesthan add special vindictive impulses to those of general irritationand dislike? Some truth there was in this, it cannot be denied:innumerable cases arise, in which a man the most just is obliged, insome imperfect sense, to connive at injustice; his chance experiencemust convince him that injustice is continually going on; and yet, inany attempt to intercept it or to check it, he is met and baffled bythe insuperable obstacles of household necessities. Dr. S. Thereforesurrendered himself, as under a coercion that was none of _his_creating, to a passive acquiescence and a blindness that soothed hisconstitutional indolence; and he reconciled his feelings to a tyrannywhich he tolerated, under some self-flattering idea of submitting withresignation to a calamity that he suffered. 

Some years after this, I read "Agamemnon" of Aeschylus; and then, inthe prophetic horror with which Cassandra surveys the regal abode inMycenae, destined to be the scene of murders so memorable through thelong traditions of the Grecian stage, murders that, many centuriesafter all the parties to them--perpetrators, sufferers, avengers--hadbecome dust and ashes, kindled again into mighty life through a thousandyears upon the vast theaters of Athens and Rome, I retraced the horrors, not prophetic but memorial, with which I myself had invested thathumble dwelling of Dr. S. ; and read again, repeated in visionaryproportions, the sufferings which there had darkened the days of peopleknown to myself through two distinct successions--not, as was naturalto expect, of parents first and then children, but inversely of childrenand parents. Manchester was not Mycenae. No, but by many degrees nobler. In some of the features most favorable to tragic effects, it was so;and wanted only these idealizing advantages for withdrawing mean detailswhich are in the gift of distance and hazy antiquity. Even at that dayManchester was far larger, teeming with more and with stronger hearts;and it contained a population the most energetic even in the _modern_world--how much more so, therefore, by comparison with any race in_ancient_ Greece, inevitably rendered effeminate by dependence toogenerally upon slaves. Add to this superior energy in Lanceshire, theimmeasurably profounder feelings generated by the mysteries which standbehind Christianity, as compared with the shallow mysteries that stoodbehind paganism, and it would be easy to draw the inference, that, in the capacity for the infinite and impassioned, for horror and forpathos, Mycenae could have had no pretentions to measure herself againstManchester. Not that I had drawn such an inference myself. Why shouldI? there being nothing to suggest the points in which the two citiesdiffered, but only the single one in which they agreed, viz. , the duskyveil that overshadowed in both the noonday tragedies haunting theirhousehold recesses; which veil was raised only to the gifted eyes ofa Cassandra, or to the eyes that, like my own, had experimentallybecome acquainted with them as facts. Pitiably mean is he that measuresthe relations of such cases by the scenical apparatus of purple andgold. That which never _has_ been apparelled in royal robes, and hungwith theatrical jewels, is but suffering from an accidental fraud, having the same right to them that any similar misery can have, orcalamity upon an equal scale. These proportions are best measured fromthe fathoming ground of a real uncounterfeit sympathy. 

I have mentioned already that we had four male guardians, (a fifthbeing my mother. ) These four were B. , E. , G. , and H. The two consonants, B. And G. , gave us little trouble. G. , the wisest of the whole band, lived at a distance of more than one hundred miles: him, therefore, we rarely saw; but B. , living within four miles of Greenbay, washedhis hands of us by inviting us, every now and then, to spend a fewdays at his house. 

At this house, which stood in the country, there was a family of amiablechildren, who were more skilfully trained in their musical studiesthan at that day was usual. They sang the old English glees andmadrigals, and correctly enough for me, who, having, even at thatchildish age, a preternatural sensibility to music, had also, as maybe supposed, the most entire want of musical knowledge. No blunderscould do much to mar _my_ pleasure. There first I heard the concertosof Corelli; but also, which far more profoundly affected me, a fewselections from Jomelli and Cimarosa. With Handel I had long beenfamiliar, for the famous chorus singers of Lancashire sang continuallyat churches the most effective parts from his chief oratorios. Mozartwas yet to come; for, except perhaps at the opera in London, even atthis time, his music was most imperfectly diffused through England. But, above all, a thing which to my dying day I could never forget, at the house of this guardian I heard sung a long canon of Cherubini's. Forty years later I heard it again, and better sung; but at that timeI needed nothing better. It was sung by four male voices, and roseinto a region of thrilling passion, such as my heart had always dimlycraved and hungered after, but which now first interpreted itself, asa physical possibility, to my ear. 

My brother did not share my inexpressible delight; his taste ran ina different channel; and the arrangements of the house did not meethis approbation; particularly this, that either Mrs. B. Herself, orelse the governess, was always present when the young ladies joinedour society, which my brother considered particularly vulgar, sincenatural propriety and decorum should have whispered to an old ladythat a young gentleman might have "things" to say to her daughterswhich he could not possibly intend for the general ear ofeavesdroppers--things tending to the confidential or the sentimental, which none but a shameless old lady would seek to participate; by thatmeans compelling a young man to talk as loud as if he were addressinga mob at Charing Cross, or reading the Riot Act. There were otherout-of-door amusements, amongst which a swing--which I mention for thesake of illustrating the passive obedience which my brother leviedupon me, either through my conscience, as mastered by his doctrine ofprimogeniture, or, as in this case, through my sensibility to shameunder his taunts of cowardice. It was a most ambitious swing, ascendingto a height beyond any that I have since seen in fairs or publicgardens. Horror was at my heart regularly as the swing reached itsmost aerial altitude; for the oily, swallow-like fluency of the swoopdownwards threatened always to make me sick, in which it is probablethat I must have relaxed my hold of the ropes, and have been projected, with fatal violence, to the ground. But, in defiance of all thismiserable panic, I continued to swing whenever he tauntingly invitedme. It was well that my brother's path in life soon ceased to coincidewith my own, else I should infallibly have broken my neck in confrontingperils which brought me neither honor nor profit, and in acceptingdefiances which, issue how they might, won self-reproach from myself, and sometimes a gayety of derision from _him_. One only of thesedefiances I declined. There was a horse of this same guardian B. 's, who always, after listening to Cherubini's music, grew irritable toexcess; and, if any body mounted him, would seek relief to his woundedfeelings in kicking, more or less violently, for an hour. This habitendeared him to my brother, who acknowledged to a propensity of thesame amiable kind; protesting that an abstract desire of kicking seizedhim always after hearing good performers on particular instruments, especially the bagpipes. Of kicking? But of kicking what or _whom_?I fear of kicking the venerable public collectively, creditors withoutexception, but also as many of the debtors as might be found at large;doctors of medicine more especially, but with no absolute immunity forthe majority of their patients; Jacobins, but not the lessanti-Jacobins; every Calvinist, which seems reasonable; but then also, which is intolerable, every Arminian. Is philosophy able to accountfor this morbid affection, and particularly when it takes the restrictedform (as sometimes it does, in the bagpipe case) of seeking furiouslyto kick the piper, instead of paying him? In this case, my brother wasurgent with me to mount _en croupe_ behind himself. But weak as Iusually was, this proposal I resisted as an immediate suggestion ofthe fiend; for I had heard, and have since known proofs of it, thata horse, when he is ingeniously vicious, sometimes has the power, inlashing out, of curving round his hoofs, so as to lodge them, by wayof indorsement, in the small of his rider's back; and, of course, hewould have an advantage for such a purpose, in the case of a ridersitting on the crupper. That sole invitation I persisted in declining. 

A young gentleman had joined us as a fellow-student under the care ofour tutor. He was an only son; indeed, the only child of an amiablewidow, whose love and hopes all centred in _him_. He was destined toinherit several separate estates, and a great deal had been done tospoil him by indulgent aunts; but his good natural disposition defeatedall these efforts; and, upon joining us, he proved to be a very amiableboy, clever, quick at learning, and abundantly courageous. In thesummer months, his mother usually took a house out in the country, sometimes on one side of Manchester, sometimes on another. At theserusticating seasons, he had often much farther to come than ourselves, and on that account he rode on horseback. Generally it was a fiercemountain pony that he rode; and it was worth while to cultivate thepony's acquaintance, for the sake of understanding the extent to whichthe fiend can sometimes incarnate himself in a horse. I do not troublethe reader with any account of his tricks, and drolleries, andscoundrelisms; but this I may mention, that he had the propensityascribed many centuries ago to the Scandinavian horses for sharing andpractically asserting his share in the angry passions of a battle. Hewould fight, or attempt to fight, on his rider's side, by biting, rearing, and suddenly wheeling round, for the purpose of lashing outwhen he found himself within kicking range. [20] This little monster wascoal black; and, in virtue of his carcass, would not have seemed veryformidable; but his head made amends--it was the head of a buffalo, or ofa bison, and his vast jungle of mane was the mane of a lion. His eyes, byreason of this intolerable and unshorn mane, one did not often see, except as lights that sparkled in the rear of a thicket; but, once seenthey were not easily forgotten, for their malignity was diabolic. A fewmiles more of less being a matter of indifference to one who was so wellmounted, O. Would sometimes ride out with us to the field of battle; and, by manoeuvring so as to menace the enemy of the flanks, in skirmishes hedid good service. But at length came a day of pitched battle. The enemyhad mustered in unusual strength, and would certainly have accomplishedthe usual result of putting us to flight with more than usual ease, but, under the turn which things took, their very numbers aided theiroverthrow, by deepening their confusion. O. Had, on this occasion, accompanied us; and, as he had hitherto taken no very decisive partin the war, confining himself to distant "demonstrations, " the enemydid not much regard his presence in the field. This carelessness threwthem into a dense mass, upon which my brother's rapid eye saw instantlythe opportunity offered for operating most effectually by a charge. O. Saw it too; and, happening to have his spurs on, he compliedcheerfully with my brother's suggestion. He had the advantage of aslight descent: the wicked pony went down "with a will;" his echoinghoofs drew the general gaze upon him; his head, his leonine mane, hisdiabolic eyes, did the rest; and in a moment the whole hostile array hadbroken, and was in rapid flight across the brick fields. I leave thereader to judge whether "Te Deum" would be sung on that night. A GazetteExtraordinary was issued; and my brother had really some reason for hisassertion, "that in conscience he could not think of comparing Cannae tothis smashing defeat;" since at Cannae many brave men had refused tofly--the consul himself, Terentius Varro, amongst them; but, in thepresent rout, there was no Terentius Varro--_every body_ fled. 

The victory, indeed, considered in itself, was complete. But it hadconsequences which we had not looked for. In the ardor of our conflict, neither my brother nor myself had remarked a stout, square-built man, mounted on an uneasy horse, who sat quietly in his saddle as spectatorof the battle, and, in fact, as the sole non-combatant present. Thisman, however, had been observed by O. , both before and after his ownbrilliant charge; and, by the description, there could be no doubtthat it had been our guardian B. , as also, by the description of thehorse, we could as little doubt that he had been mounted on Cherubini. My brother's commentary was in a tone of bitter complaint, that sonoble an opportunity should have been lost for strengthening O. 'scharge. But the consequences of this incident were graver than weanticipated. A general board of our guardians, vowels and consonants, was summoned to investigate the matter. The origin of the feud, or"war, " as my brother called it, was inquired into. As well might thewar of Troy or the purser's accounts from the Argonautic expeditionhave been overhauled. Ancient night and chaos had closed over the"incunabula belli;" and that point was given up in despair. But whathindered a general pacification, no matter in how many wrongs theoriginal dispute had arisen? Who stopped the way which led to peace?Not we, was our firm declaration; we were most pacifically inclined, and ever had been; we were, in fact, little saints. But the enemy couldnot be brought to any terms of accommodation. "That we will try, " saidthe vowel amongst our guardians, Mr. E. He, being a magistrate, hadnaturally some weight with the proprietors of the cotton factory. Theforemen of the several floors were summoned, and gave it as theirhumble opinion that we, the aristocratic party in the war, were as badas the _sans culottes_--"not a pin to choose between us. " Well, butno matter for the past: could any plan be devised for a pacific future?Not easily. The workspeople were so thoroughly independent of theiremployers, and so careless of their displeasure, that finally thisonly settlement was available as wearing any promise of permanence, viz. , that we should alter our hours, so as not to come into collisionwith the exits or returns of the boys. 

Under this arrangement, a sort of hollow armistice prevailed for sometime; but it was beginning to give way, when suddenly an internalchange in our own home put an end to the war forever. My brother, amongst his many accomplishments, was distinguished for his skill indrawing. Some of his sketches had been shown to Mr. De Loutherbourg, an academician well known in those days, esteemed even in these days, after he has been dead for forty or fifty years, and personally adistinguished favorite with the king, (George III. ) He pronounced avery flattering opinion upon my brother's promise of excellence. Thisbeing known, a fee of a thousand guineas was offered to Mr. L. By theguardians; and finally that gentleman took charge of my brother as apupil. Now, therefore, my brother, King of Tigrosylvania, scourge ofGombroon, separated from me; and, as it turned out, forever. I neversaw him again; and, at Mr. De L. 's house in Hammersmith, before he hadcompleted his sixteenth year, he died of typhus fever. And thus ithappened that a little gold dust skilfully applied put an end to warsthat else threatened to extend into a Carthaginian length. In oneweek's time

 "Hi motus animorum atque haec certamina tanta Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quiêrunt. "

 * * * * *

Here I had terminated this chapter, as at a natural pause, which, whilstshutting out forever my eldest brother from the reader's sight andfrom my own, necessarily at the same moment worked a permanentrevolution in the character of my daily life. Two such changes, andboth so abrupt, indicated imperiously the close of one era and theopening of another. The advantages, indeed, which my brother had overme in years, in physical activities of every kind, in decision ofpurpose, and in energy of will, --all which advantages, besides, borrowed a ratification from an obscure sense, on my part, of duty asincident to what seemed an appointment of Providence, --inevitably _had_controlled, and for years to come _would have_ controlled, the freespontaneous movements of a contemplative dreamer like myself. Consequently, this separation, which proved an eternal one, andcontributed to deepen my constitutional propensity to gloomy meditation, had for me (partly on that account, but much more through the suddenbirth of perfect independence which so unexpectedly it opened) thevalue of a revolutionary experience. A new date, a new starting point, a redemption (as it might be called) into the golden sleep of halcyonquiet, after everlasting storms, suddenly dawned upon me; and not asany casual intercalation of holidays that would come to an end, but, for any thing that appeared to the contrary, as the perpetual tenorof my future career. No longer was the factory a Carthage for me: ifany obdurate old Cato there were who found his amusement in denouncingit with a daily _"Delenda est, "_ take notice, (I said silently tomyself, ) that I acknowledge no such tiger for a friend of mine. Nevermore was the bridge across the Irwell a bridge of sighs for me. And the meanest of the factory population--thanks be to theirdiscrimination--despised my pretensions too entirely to waste a thoughtor a menace upon a cipher so abject. 

This change, therefore, being so sudden and so total, ought to signalizeitself externally by a commensurate break in the narrative. A newchapter, at the least, with a huge interspace of blank white paper, or even a new book, ought rightfully to solemnize so profound arevolution. And virtually it shall. But, according to the generalagreement of antiquity, it is not felt as at all disturbing to theunity of that event which winds up the "Iliad, " viz. , the death ofHector, that Homer expands it circumstantially into the whole ceremonialof his funeral obsequies; and upon that same principle I--when lookingback to this abrupt close of all connection with, my brother, whetherin my character of major general or of potentate trembling daily formy people--am reminded that the very last morning of this connectionhad its own separate distinction from all other mornings, in a waythat entitles it to its own separate share in the general commemoration. A shadow fell upon this particular morning as from a cloud of danger, that lingered for a moment over our heads, might seem even to muse andhesitate, and then sullenly passed away into distant quarters. It isnoticeable that a danger which approaches, but wheels away, --whichthreatens, but finally forbears to strike, --is more interesting bymuch on a distant retrospect than the danger which accomplishes itsmission. The Alpine precipice, down which many pilgrims have fallen, is passed without much attention; but that precipice, within one inchof which a traveller has passed unconsciously in the dark, first tracinghis peril along the snowy margin on the next morning, becomes investedwith an attraction of horror for all who hear the story. The dignityof mortal danger ever after consecrates the spot; and, in thisparticular case which I am now recalling, the remembrance of such adanger consecrates the day. 

That day was amongst the most splendid in a splendid June: it was--toborrow the line of Wordsworth--

 "One of those heavenly days which cannot die;"

and, early as it was at that moment, we children, all six of us that thensurvived, were already abroad upon the lawn. There were two lawns atGreenhay in the shrubbery that invested three sides of the house: one ofthese, which ran along one side of the house, extended to a little bridgetraversed by the gates of entrance. The central gate admitted carriages:on each side of this was a smaller gate for foot passengers; and, in afamily containing so many as six children, it may be supposed that oftenenough one or other of the gates was open; which, most fortunately, onthis day was not the case. Along the margin of this side lawn ran alittle brook, which had been raised to a uniform level, and kept up bymeans of a wear at the point where it quitted the premises; after whichit resumed its natural character of wildness, as it trotted on to thelittle hamlet of Greenhill. This brook my brother was at one timedisposed to treat as Remus treated the infant walls of Rome; but, onmaturer thoughts, having built a fleet of rafts, he treated it morerespectfully; and this morning, as will be seen, the breadth of thelittle brook did us "yeoman's service. " Me at one time he had meant toput on board this fleet, as his man Friday; and I had a fair prospect offirst entering life in the respectable character of supercargo. But ithappened that the current carried his rafts and himself over the wear;which, he assured us, was no accident, but a lesson by way of practice inthe art of contending with the rapids of the St. Lawrence and otherCanadian streams. However, as the danger had been considerable, he wasprohibited from trying such experiments with me. On the centre of thelawn stood my eldest surviving sister, Mary, and my brother William. Round _him_, attracted (as ever) by his inexhaustible opulence of thoughtand fun, stood, laughing and dancing, my youngest sister, a second Jane, and my youngest brother Henry, a posthumous child, feeble, and in hisnurse's arms, but on this morning showing signs of unusual animation andof sympathy with the glorious promise of the young June day. Whirlinground on his heel, at a little distance, and utterly abstracted from allaround him, my next brother, Richard, he that had caused so muchaffliction by his incorrigible morals to the Sultan Amurath, pursued hisown solitary thoughts--whatever those might be. And, finally, as regardsmyself, it happened that I was standing close to the edge of the brook, looking back at intervals to the group of five children and two nursemaids who occupied the centre of the lawn; time, about an hour before_our_ breakfast, or about two hours before the world's breakfast, --_i. E. _, a little after seven, --when as yet in shady parts of the groundsthe dazzling jewelry of the early dews had not entirely exhaled. Sostanding, and so occupied, suddenly we were alarmed by shouts as of somegreat mob manifestly in rapid motion, and probably, at this instanttaking the right-angled turn into the lane connecting Greenhay with theOxford Road. The shouts indicated hostile and headlong pursuit: withinone minute another right-angled turn in the lane itself brought theuproar fully upon the ear; and it became evident that some imminentdanger--of what nature it was impossible to guess--must be hastilynearing us. We were all rooted to the spot; and all turned anxiously tothe gates, which happily seemed to be closed. Had this been otherwise, weshould have had no time to apply any remedy whatever, and theconsequences must probably have involved us all. In a few seconds, apowerful dog, not much above a furlong ahead of his pursuers, wheeledinto sight. We all saw him pause at the gates; but, finding no readyaccess through the iron lattice work that protected the side battlementsof the little bridge, and the pursuit being so hot, he resumed his coursealong the outer margin of the brook. Coming opposite to myself, he made adead stop. I had thus an opportunity of looking him steadily in the face;which I did, without more fear than belonged naturally to a case of somuch hurry, and to me, in particular, of mystery. I had never heard ofhydrophobia. But necessarily connecting the furious pursuit with the dogthat now gazed at me from the opposite side of the water, and feelingobliged to presume that he had made an assault upon somebody or other, Ilooked searchingly into his eyes, and observed that they seemed glazed, and as if in a dreamy state, but at the same time suffused with somewatery discharge, while his mouth was covered with masses of white foam. He looked most earnestly at myself and the group beyond me; but he madeno effort whatever to cross the brook, and apparently had not the energyto attempt it by a flying leap. My brother William, who did not in theleast suspect the real danger, invited the dog to try his chance in aleap--assuring him that, if he succeeded, he would knight him on thespot. The temptation of a knighthood, however, did not prove sufficient. A very few seconds brought his pursuers within sight; and steadily, without sound or gesture of any kind, he resumed his flight in the onlydirection open to him, viz. , by a field path across stiles to Greenhill. Half an hour later he would have met a bevy of children going to a dame'sschool, or carrying milk to rustic neighbors. As it was, the earlymorning kept the road clear in front. But behind immense was the body ofagitated pursuers. Leading the chase came, probably, half a troop oflight cavalry, all on foot, nearly all in their stable dresses, and armedgenerally with pitchforks, though some eight or ten carried carabines. Half mingled with these, and very little in the rear, succeeded a vastmiscellaneous mob, that had gathered on the chase as it hurried throughthe purlieus of Deansgate, and all that populous suburb of Manchester. From some of these, who halted to recover breath, we obtained anexplanation of the affair. About a mile and a half from Greenhay stoodsome horse barracks, occupied usually by an entire regiment of cavalry. Alarge dog--one of a multitude that haunted the barracks--had for somedays manifested an increasing sullenness, snapping occasionally at dogsand horses, but finally at men. Upon this, he had been tied up; but insome way he had this morning liberated himself: two troop horses he hadimmediately bitten; and had made attacks upon several of the men, whofortunately parried these attacks by means of the pitchforks standingready to their hands. On this evidence, coupled with the knowledge of hisprevious illness, he was summarily condemned as mad; and the generalpursuit commenced, which brought all parties (hunters and game) sweepingso wildly past the quiet grounds of Greenhay. The sequel of the affairwas this: none of the carabineers succeeded in getting a shot at the dog;in consequence of which, the chase lasted for 17 miles nominally; but, allowing for all the doublings and headings back of the dog, bycomputation for about 24; and finally, in a state of utter exhaustion, hewas run into and killed, somewhere in Cheshire. Of the two horses whom hehad bitten, both treated alike, one died in a state of furioushydrophobia some two months later, but the other (though the moreseriously wounded of the two) manifested no symptoms whatever ofconstitutional derangement. And thus it happened that for me this generalevent of separation from my eldest brother, and the particular morning onwhich it occurred, were each for itself separately and equally memorable. Freedom won, and death escaped, almost in the same hour, --freedom from ayoke of such secret and fretful annoyance as none could measure butmyself, and death probably through the fiercest of torments, --thesedouble cases of deliverance, so sudden and so _unlooked for_, signalizedby what heraldically might have been described as a two-headed memorial, the establishment of an _epoch_ in my life. Not only was the chapter ofINFANCY thus solemnly finished forever, and the record closed, but--whichcannot often happen--the chapter was closed pompously and conspicuouslyby what the early printers through the 15th and 16th centuries would havecalled a bright and illuminated colophon. 

FOOTNOTES

[1] "_Peculiar_. "--Viz. , as _endowed_ foundations to which those resortwho are rich and pay, and those also who, being poor, cannot pay, orcannot pay so much. This most honorable distinction amongst the servicesof England from ancient times to the interests of education--a serviceabsolutely unapproached by any one nation of Christendom--is amongst theforemost cases of that remarkable class which make England, whilst oftenthe most aristocratic, yet also, for many noble purposes, the mostdemocratic of lands. 

[2] Five years ago, during the carnival of universal anarchy equallyamongst doers and thinkers, a closely-printed pamphlet was published withthis title, "A New Revelation, or the Communion of the Incarnate Deadwith the Unconscious Living. Important Fact, without trifling Fiction, byHIM. " I have not the pleasure of knowing HIM; but certainly I mustconcede to HIM, that he writes like a man of extreme sobriety upon hisextravagant theme. He is angry with Swedenborg, as might be expected, forhis chimeras; some of which, however, of late years have signally alteredtheir aspect; but. As to HIM, there is no chance that he should beoccupied with chimeras, because (p. 6) "he has met with some who haveacknowledged the fact of their having come from the dead"--_habesconfitentem reum_. Few, however, are endowed with so much candor; and inparticular, for the honor of literature, it grieves me to find, by p. 10, that the largest number of these shams, and perhaps the most uncandid, are to be looked for amongst "publishers and printers, " of whom, itseems, "the great majority" are mere forgeries: a very few speak franklyabout the matter, and say they don't care who knows it, which, to mythinking, is impudence, but by far the larger section doggedly deny it, and call a policeman, if you persist in charging them with being shams. Some differences there are between my brother and HIM, but in the greatoutline of their views they coincide. 

[3] Charles II. , notoriously wrote a book on the possibility of a voyageto the moon, which, in a bishop, would be called a translation to themoon, and perhaps it was _his_ name in combination with _his_ book thatsuggested the "Adventures of Peter Wilkins. " It is unfair, however, tomention him in connection with that single one of his works whichannounces an extravagant purpose. He was really a scientific man, andalready in the time of Cromwell (about 1656) had projected that RoyalSociety of London which was afterwards realized and presided over byIsaac Barrow and Isaac Newton. He was also a learned man, but still witha veil of romance about him, as may be seen in his most elaborate work--"The Essay towards a Philosophic or Universal Language. "

[4] "_Middy_. "--I call him so simply to avoid confusion, and by way ofanticipation; else he was too young at this time to serve in the navy. Afterwards he did so for many years, and saw every variety of service inevery class of ships belonging to our navy. At one time, when yet a boy, he was captured by pirates, and compelled to sail with them; and the endof his adventurous career was, that for many a year he has been lying atthe bottom of the Atlantic. 

[5] "Green_heys_, " with slight variation in the spelling, is the namegiven to that district of which Greenhay formed the original nucleus. Probably it was the solitary situation of the house which (failing anyother grounds of denomination) raised it to this privilege. 

[6] "_Factory_. "--Such was the designation technically at that time. Atpresent, I believe that a building of that class would be called a"mill. "

[7] This word, however, exists in _Jack-a-dandy_--a very old Englishword. But what does _that_ mean?

[8] Precisely, however, the same gesture, plebian as it was, by which theEnglish commandant at Heligoland replied to the Danes when civillyinviting him to surrender. Southey it was, on the authority of LieutenantSouthey, his brother, who communicated to me this anecdote. 

[9] "_Bridge of sighs_. "--Two men of memorable genius, Hood last, andLord Byron by many years previously, have so appropriated this phrase, and reissued it as English currency, that many readers suppose it to betheirs. But the genealogies of fine expressions should be more carefullypreserved. The expression belongs originally to Venice. This _juspostliminii_ becomes of real importance in many cases, but especially inthe case of Shakspeare. Could one have believed it possible beforehand?And yet it is a fact that he is made to seem a robber of the lowestorder, by mere dint of suffering robbery. Purely through their ownjewelly splendor have many hundreds of his phrases forced themselves intousage so general, under the vulgar infirmity of seeking to strengthenweak prose by shreds of poetic quotation, that at length the majority ofcareless readers come to look upon these phrases as belonging to thelanguage, and traceable to no distinct proprietor any more than proverbs:and thus, on afterwards observing them in Shakspeare, they regard him inthe light of one accepting alms (like so many meaner persons) from thecommon treasury of the universal mind, on which treasury, meantime, hehad himself conferred these phrases as original donations of his own. Many expressions in the "Paradise Lost, " in "Il Penseroso, " and in"L'Allegro, " are in the same predicament. And thus the almost incrediblecase is realized which I have described, viz. , that simply by havingsuffered a robbery through two centuries, (for the first attempt atplundering Milton was made upon his juvenile poems, ) have Shakspeare andMilton come to be taxed as robbers. N. B. --In speaking of Hood as havingappropriated the phrase _Bridge of Sighs_, I would not be understood torepresent him as by possibility aiming at any concealment. He was as farabove such a meanness by his nobility of heart, as he was raised aboveall need for it by the overflowing opulence of his genius. 

[10] Geometry (it has been said) would not evade disputation, if a mancould find his interest in disputing it: such is the spirit of cavil. ButI, upon a very opposite ground, assert that there is not one page ofprose that could be selected from the best writer in the English language(far less in the German) which, upon a sufficient interest arising, wouldnot furnish matter, simply through its defects in precision, for a suitin Chancery. Chancery suits do not arise, it is true, because thedoubtful expressions do not touch any interest of property; but what_does_ arise is this--that something more valuable than a pecuniaryinterest is continually suffering, viz. , the interests of truth. 

[11] "_Of a Stuart sovereign_, " and by no means of a Stuart only. QueenAnne, the last Stuart who sat on the British throne, was the last of _ourprinces_ who touched for the _king's evil_, (as scrofula was generallycalled until lately;) but the Bourbon houses, on the thrones of France, Spain, and Naples, as well as the house of Savoy, claimed and exercisedthe same supernatural privilege down to a much later period than the year1714--the last of Queen Anne: according to their own and the popularfaith, they could have cleansed Naaman the Syrian, and Gehazi too. 

[12] One reason, I believe, why it was held a point of wisdom in ancientdays that the metropolis of a warlike state should have a secret namehidden from the world, lay in the pagan practice of _evocation_, appliedto the tutelary deities of such a state. These deities might be lured bycertain rites and briberies into a transfer of their favors to thebesieging army. But, in order to make such an evocation effectual, it wasnecessary to know the original and secret name of the beleaguered city;and this, therefore, was religiously concealed. 

[13] Hamlet, Act v. , scene 1. 

[14] "_Hide himself in--light_. "--The greatest scholar, by far, that thisisland ever produced, viz. , Richard Bentley, published (as is well known)a 4to volume that in some respects is the very worst 4to now extant inthe world--viz. , a critical edition of the. "Paradise Lost. " I observe, in the "Edinburgh Review, " (July, 1851, No. 191, p. 15, ) that a learnedcritic supposes Bentley to have meant this edition as a "practical jest. "Not at all. Neither could the critic have fancied such a possibility, ifhe had taken the trouble (which _I_ did many a year back) to examine it. A jest book it certainly is, and the most prosperous of jest books, butundoubtedly never meant for such by the author. A man whose lips arelivid with anger does not jest, and does not understand jesting. Still, the Edinburgh Reviewer is right about the proper functions of the book, though wrong about the intentions of the author. The fact is, the man wasmaniacally in error, and always in error, as regarded the ultimate orpoetic truth of Milton; but, as regarded truth reputed and truth_apparent_, he often had the air of being furiously in the right; anexample of which I will cite. Milton, in the First Book of the "ParadiseLost, " had said, --

 "That from the _secret_ top Of Oreb or of Sinai didst inspire;"

upon which Bentley comments in effect thus: "How!--the exposed summit ofa mountain _secret_? Why, it's like Charing Cross--always the leastsecret place in the whole county. " So one might fancy; since the summitof a mountain, like Plinlimmon or Cader Idris in Wales, like Skiddaw orHelvellyn in England, constitutes a central object of attention and gazefor the whole circumjacent district, measured by a radius sometimes of 15to 20 miles. Upon this consideration, Bentley instructs us to substituteas the true reading--"That on the _sacred_ top, " &c. Meantime, an actualexperiment will demonstrate that there is no place so absolutely secretand hidden as the exposed summit of a mountain, 3500 feet high, inrespect to an eye stationed in the valley immediately below. A wholeparty of men, women, horses, and even tents, looked at under thosecircumstances, is absolutely invisible unless by the aid of glasses: andit becomes evident that a murder might be committed on the bare opensummit of such a mountain with more assurance of absolute secrecy thanany where else in the whole surrounding district. 

[15] Which "_saying_" is sometimes ascribed, I know not how truly, toLady Mary Wortley Montagu. 

[16] It strikes me, upon second thoughts, that the particular idiom, which Lord Monboddo illustrated as regarded the Greek language, merits amomentary notice; and for this reason--that it plays a part not at allless conspicuous or less delicate in the Latin. Here is an instance ofits use in Greek, taken from the well-known night scene in the "Iliad:"--

 ------_gaethaese de poimenos aetor_, And the heart of the shepherd _rejoices_; where the verb _gaethaese_ isin the indefinite or aorist tense, and is meant to indicate a conditionof feeling not limited to any time whatever--past, present, or future. In Latin, the force and elegance of this usage are equally impressive, if not more so. At this moment, I remember two cases of this in Horace:--

 1. "Rarò antecedentem scelestum _Deseruit_ pede poena claudo;" 2. "saepe Diespiter Neglectus incesto _addidit_ integrum. "

That is--"oftentimes the supreme ruler, when treated with neglect, confounds or unites (not _has united_, as the tyro might fancy) theimpure man with the upright in one common fate. "

Exceedingly common is this usage in Latin poetry, when the object is togeneralize a remark--as not connected with one mode of time more thananother. In reality, all three modes of time--past, present, future--areused (though not equally used) in all languages for this purpose ofgeneralization. Thus, --

 1. The _future_; as, Sapiens dominabitur astris; 2. The _present_; as, Fortes fortuna juvat; 3. The _past_; as in the two cases cited from Horace. 

But this practice holds equally in English: as to the future and thepresent, nobody will doubt it; and here is a case from the past: "Thefool _hath said_ in his heart, There is no God;" not meaning, that insome past time he has said so, but that generally in all times he _does_say so, and _will_ say so. 

[17] "_Too obstinate a preconception_. "--Until the birth of geology, andfossil paleontology, concurring with vast strides ahead in the science ofcomparative anatomy, it is a well-established fact, that oftentimes themost scientific museum admitted as genuine fragments of the humanosteology what in fact belonged to the gigantic brutes of our earth inher earliest stages of development. This mistake would go some way inaccounting for the absurd disposition in all generations to viewthemselves as abridged editions of their forefathers. Added to which, asa separate cause of error, there can be little doubt, that intermingledwith the human race there has at most periods of the world been aseparate and Titanic race, such as the Anakim amongst the peoples ofPalestine, the Cyclopean race diffused over the Mediterranean in theelder ages of Greece, and certain tribes amongst the Alps, known toEvelyn in his youth (about Cromwell's time) by an unpleasant travellingexperience. These gigantic races, however, were no arguments for adegeneration amongst the rest of mankind. They were evidently a varietyof man, coexistent with the ordinary races, but liable to be absorbed andgradually lost by intermarriage amongst other tribes of the ordinarystandard. Occasional exhumations of such Titan skeletons would strengthenthe common prejudice. They would be taken, not for a local variety, butfor an antediluvian or prehistoric type, from which the present races ofman had arisen by gradual degeneration. 

These cases of actual but misinterpreted experience, at the same timethat they naturally must tend to fortify the popular prejudice, wouldalso, by accounting for it, and ingrafting it upon a reasonable origin, so far tend to take from it the reproach of a prejudice. Thougherroneous, it would yet seem to us, in looking back upon it, a rationaland even an inevitable opinion, having such plausible grounds to standupon; plausible, I mean, until science and accurate examination of theseveral cases had begun to read them into a different construction. Yet, on the other hand, in spite of any colorable excuses that may be pleadedfor this prejudice, it is pretty plain that, after all, there is in humannature a deep-laid predisposition to an obstinate craze of this nature. Else why is it that, in every age alike, men have asserted or evenassumed the downward tendency of the human race in all that regards_moral_ qualities. For the _physical_ degeneration of man there reallywere some apparent (though erroneous) arguments; but, for the moraldegeneration, no argument at all, small or great. Yet a bigotry of beliefin this idle notion has always prevailed amongst moralists, pagan alikeand Christian. Horace, for example, informs us that

 "Aetas parentum, pejor avis, tulit Nos nequiores--mox daturos Progeniem vitiosiorem. "

The last generation was worse, it seems, than the penultimate, as thepresent is worst than the last. We, however, of the present, bad as wemay be, shall be kept in countenance by the coming generation, which willprove much worse than ourselves. On the same precedent, all the sermonsthrough the last three centuries, if traced back through decennialperiods, so as to form thirty successive strata, will be found regularlyclaiming the precedency in wickedness for the immediate period of thewriter. Upon which theories, as men ought physically to have dwindledlong ago into pygmies, so, on the other hand, morally they must by thistime have left Sodom and Gomorrah far behind. What a strange animal mustman upon this scheme offer to our contemplation; shrinking in size, bygraduated process, through every century, until at last he would not risean inch from the ground; and, on the other hand, as regards villany, towering evermore and more up to the heavens. What a dwarf! what a giant!Why, the very crows would combine to destroy such a little monster. 

[18] The names and history of the Pyrenean Cagots are equally obscure. Some have supposed that, during the period of the Gothic warfare with theMoors, the Cagots were a Christian tribe that betrayed the Christiancause and interests at a critical moment. But all is conjecture. As tothe name, Southey has somewhere offered a possible interpretation of it;but it struck me as far from felicitous, and not what might have beenexpected from Southey, whose vast historical research and commandingtalent should naturally have unlocked this most mysterious of modernsecrets, if any unlocking does yet lie within the resources of humanskill and combining power, now that so many ages divide us from theoriginal steps of the case. I may here mention, as a fact accidentallymade known to myself, and apparently not known to Southey, that theCagots, under a name very slightly altered, are found in France also, aswell as Spain, and in provinces of France that have no connection at allwith Spain. 

[19] "_Strulbrugs_. "--Hardly _strulbrugs_, will be the thought of thelearned reader, who knows that _young_ women could not be strulbrugs;since the true strulbrug was one who, from base fear of dying, hadlingered on into an old age, omnivorous of every genial or vital impulse. The strulbrug of Swift (and Swift, being his horrid creator, ought tounderstand his own horrid creation) was a wreck, a shell, that had beenburned hollow, and cancered by the fierce furnace of life. His clockworkwas gone, or carious; only some miserable fragment of a pendulumcontinued to oscillate paralytically from mere incapacity of any thing soabrupt, and therefore so vigorous, as a decided HALT! However, the use ofthis dreadful word may be reasonably extended to the young who happen tohave become essentially old in misery. Intensity of a suffering existencemay compensate the want of extension; and a boundless depth of misery maybe a transformed expression for a boundless duration of misery. The mostaged person, to all appearance, that ever came under my eyes, was aninfant--hardly eight months old. He was the illegitimate son of a pooridiot girl, who had herself been shamefully ill treated; and the poorinfant, falling under the care of an enraged grandmother, who feltherself at once burdened and disgraced, was certainly not better treated. He was dying, when I saw him, of a lingering malady, with featuresexpressive of frantic misery; and it seemed to me that he looked at theleast three centuries old. One might have fancied him one of Swift'sstrulbrugs, that, through long attenuation and decay, had dwindled backinto infancy, with one organ only left perfect--the organ of fear andmisery. 

[20] This was a manoeuvre regularly taught to the Austrian cavalry in themiddle of the last century; as a ready way of opening the doors ofcottages. 

CHAPTER III. 

INFANT LITERATURE. 

"_The child_, " says Wordsworth, "_is father of the man;_" thus callinginto conscious notice the fact, else faintly or not at all perceived, that whatsoever is seen in the maturest adult, blossoming and bearingfruit, must have preëxisted by way of germ in the infant. Yes; allthat is now broadly emblazoned in the man once was latent--seen or notseen--as a vernal bud in the child. But not, therefore, is it trueinversely, that all which preëxists in the child finds its developmentin the man. Rudiments and tendencies, which _might_ have found, sometimes by accidental, _do_ not find, sometimes under the killingfrost of counter forces, _cannot_ find, their natural evolution. Infancy, therefore, is to be viewed, not only as part of a larger worldthat waits for its final complement in old age, but also as a separateworld itself; part of a continent, but also a distinct peninsula. Mostof what he has, the grown-up man inherits from his infant self; butit does not follow that he always enters upon the whole of his naturalinheritance. 

Childhood, therefore, in the midst of its intellectual weakness, andsometimes even by means of this weakness, enjoys a limited privilegeof strength. The heart in this season of life is apprehensive, and, where its sensibilities are profound, is endowed with a special powerof listening for the tones of truth--hidden, struggling, or remote;for the knowledge being then narrow, the interest is narrow in theobjects of knowledge; consequently the sensibilities are not scattered, are not multiplied, are not crushed and confounded (as afterwards theyare) under the burden of that distraction which lurks in the infinitelittleness of details. 

That mighty silence which infancy is thus privileged by nature and byposition to enjoy coöperates with another source of power, --almostpeculiar to youth and youthful circumstances, --which Wordsworth alsowas the first person to notice. It belongs to a profound experienceof the relations subsisting between ourselves and nature--that notalways are we called upon to seek; sometimes, and in childhood aboveall, we are sought. 

 "Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum Of things forever speaking, That noting _of itself_ will come, But we must still be seeking?"

And again:--

 "Nor less I deem that there are powers Which _of themselves_ our minds impress; And we can feed this mind of ours In a wise passiveness. "

These cases of infancy, reached at intervals by special revelations, or creating for itself, through it privileged silence of heart, authentic whispers of truth, or beauty, or power, have some analogyto those other cases, more directly supernatural, in which (accordingto the old traditional faith of our ancestors) deep messages ofadmonition reached an individual through sudden angular deflexions ofwords, uttered or written, that had not been originally addressed tohimself. Of these there were two distinct classes--those where theperson concerned had been purely passive; and, secondly, those in whichhe himself had to some extent coöperated. The first class have beennoticed by Cowper, the poet, and by George Herbert, the well-knownpious brother of the still better-known infidel, Lord Herbert, (ofCherbury, ) in a memorable sonnet; scintillations they are of what seemsnothing less than providential lights oftentimes arresting ourattention, from the very centre of what else seems the blank darknessof chance and blind accident. "Books lying open, millions ofsurprises, "--these are among the cases to which Herbert (and to whichCowper) alludes, --books, that is to say, left casually open withoutdesign or consciousness, from which some careless passer-by, whenthrowing the most negligent of glances upon the page, has been startledby a solitary word lying, as it were, in ambush, waiting and lurkingfor _him_, and looking at him steadily as an eye searching the hauntedplaces of his conscience. These cases are in principle identical withthose of the _second_ class, where the inquirer himself coöperated, or was not entirely passive; cases such as those which the Jews calledBath-col, or daughter of a voice, (the echo [1] augury, ) viz. , where aman, perplexed in judgment and sighing for some determining counsel, suddenly heard from a stranger in some unlooked-for quarter words notmeant for himself, but clamorously applying to the difficulty besettinghim. In these instances, the mystical word, that carried a secret meaningand message to one sole ear in the world, was unsought for: _that_constituted its virtue and its divinity; and to arrange means wilfullyfor catching at such casual words, would have defeated the purpose. A well-known variety of augury, conducted upon this principle, lay inthe "Sortes Biblicae, " where the Bible was the oracular book consulted, and far more extensively at a later period in the "Sortes Virgilianae, "[2] where the Aeneid was the oracle consulted. 

Something analogous to these spiritual transfigurations of a word ora sentence, by a bodily organ (eye or ear) that has been touched withvirtue for evoking the spiritual echo lurking in its recesses, belongs, perhaps, to every impassioned mind for the kindred result of forcingout the peculiar beauty, pathos, or grandeur that may happen to lodge(unobserved by ruder forms of sensibility) in special passages scatteredup and down literature. Meantime, I wish the reader to understand that, in putting forward the peculiar power with which my childish eyedetected a grandeur or a pomp of beauty not seen by others in somespecial instances, I am not arrogating more than it is lawful for everyman the very humblest to arrogate, viz. , an individuality of mentalconstitution so far applicable to special and exceptionable cases asto reveal in _them_ a life and power of beauty which others (andsometimes which _all_ others) had missed. 

The first case belongs to the march (or boundary) line between my eighthand ninth years; the others to a period earlier by two and a halfyears. But I notice the latest case before the others, as it connecteditself with a great epoch in the movement of my intellect. There isa dignity to every man in the mere historical assigning, if accuratelyhe can assign, the first dawning upon his mind of any godlike facultyor apprehension, and more especially if that first dawning happenedto connect itself with circumstances of individual or incommunicablesplendor. The passage which I am going to cite first of all revealedto me the immeasurableness of the morally sublime. What was it, andwhere was it? Strange the reader will think it, and strange [3] it is, that a case of colossal sublimity should first emerge from such a writeras Phaedrus, the Aesopian fabulist. A great mistake it was, on the partof Doctor S. , that the second book in the Latin language which I wassummoned to study should have been Phaedrus--a writer ambitious ofinvesting the simplicity, or rather homeliness, of Aesop with aulicgraces and satiric brilliancy. But so it was; and Phaedrus naturallytowered into enthusiasm when he had occasion to mention that the mostintellectual of all races amongst men, viz. , the Athenians, had raiseda mighty statue to one who belonged to the same class in a social senseas himself, viz. , the class of slaves, and rose above that class bythe same intellectual power applying itself to the same object, viz. , the moral apologue. These were the two lines in which that glory ofthe sublime, so stirring to my childish sense, seemed to burn as insome mighty pharos:--

 "Aesopo statuam ingentem posuere Attici; Servumque collocârunt eternâ in basi:"

_A colossal statue did the Athenians raise to Aesop; and a poor pariahslave they planted upon an everlasting pedestal. _ I have not scrupledto introduce the word _pariah_, because in that way only could Idecipher to the reader by what particular avenue it was that thesublimity which I fancy in the passage reached my heart. This sublimityoriginated in the awful chasm, in the abyss that no eye could bridge, between the pollution of slavery, --the being a man, yet without rightor lawful power belonging to a man, --between this unutterabledegradation and the starry altitude of the slave at that moment when, upon the unveiling of his everlasting statue, all the armies of theearth might be conceived as presenting arms to the emancipated man, the cymbals and kettledrums of kings as drowning the whispers of hisignominy, and the harps of all his sisters that wept over slavery yetjoining in one choral gratulation to the regenerated slave. I assignthe elements of what I did in reality feel at that time, which to thereader may seem extravagant, and by no means of what it was reasonableto feel. But, in order that full justice may be done to my childishself, I must point out to the reader another source of what strikesme as real grandeur. Horace, that exquisite master of the lyre, andthat most shallow of critics, it is needless to say that in those daysI had not read. Consequently I knew nothing of his idle canon, thatthe opening of poems must be humble and subdued. But my own sensibilitytold me how much of additional grandeur accrued to these two lines asbeing the immediate and all-pompous _opening_ of the poem. The samefeeling I had received from the crashing overture to the grand chapterof Daniel--"Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand ofhis lords. " But, above all, I felt this effect produced in the twoopening lines of "Macbeth:"--

"WHEN--(but watch that an emphasis of thunder dwells upon that word'when')--

 WHEN shall we three meet again-- In thunder, lightning, or in rain?"

What an orchestral crash bursts upon the ear in that all-shatteringquestion! And one syllable of apologetic preparation, so as to meetthe suggestion of Horace, would have the effect of emasculating thewhole tremendous alarum. The passage in Phaedrus differs thus far fromthat in "Macbeth, " that the first line, simply stating a matter offact, with no more of sentiment than belongs to the word _ingentem_, and to the antithesis between the two parties so enormouslydivided, --Aesop the slave and the Athenians, --must be read as an_appoggiatura_, or hurried note of introduction flying forward as ifon wings to descend with the fury and weight of a thousand orchestrasupon the immortal passion of the second line--"Servumque collocâruntETERNA IN BASI. " This passage from Phaedrus, which might be brieflydesignated _The Apotheosis of the Slave_, gave to me my first grandand jubilant sense of the moral sublime. 

Two other experiences of mine of the same class had been earlier, andthese I had shared with my sister Elizabeth. The first was derivedfrom the "Arabian Nights. " Mrs. Barbauld, a lady now very nearlyforgotten, [4] then filled a large space in the public eye; in fact, as a writer for children, she occupied the place from about 1780 to1805 which, from 1805 to 1835, was occupied by Miss Edgeworth. Only, as unhappily Miss Edgeworth is also now very nearly forgotten, thisis to explain _ignotum per ingnotius_, or at least one _ignotum_ byanother _ignotum_. However, since it cannot be helped, this unknownand also most well-known woman, having occassion, in the days of herglory, to speak of the "Arabian Nights, " insisted on Aladdin, andsecondly, on Sinbad, as the two jewels of the collection. Now, on thecontrary, my sister and myself pronounced Sinbad to be very bad, andAladdin to be pretty nearly the worst, and upon grounds that stillstrike me as just. For, as to Sinbad, it is not a story at all, buta mere succession of adventures, having no unity of interest whatsoever;and in Aladdin, after the possession of the lamp has been once securedby a pure accident, the story ceases to move. All the rest is a mererecord of upholstery: how this saloon was finished to-day, and thatwindow on the next day, with no fresh incident whatever, except thesingle and transient misfortune arising out of the advantage given tothe magician by the unpardonable stupidity of Aladdin in regard to thelamp. But, whilst my sister and I agreed in despising Aladdin so muchas almost to be on the verge of despising the queen of all thebluestockings for so ill-directed a preference, one solitary sectionthere was of that tale which was fixed and fascinated my gaze, in adegree that I never afterwards forgot, and did not at that timecomprehend. The sublimity which it involved was mysterious andunfathomable as regarded any key which I possessed for decipheringits law or origin. Made restless by the blind sense which I had of itsgrandeur, I could not for a moment succeed in finding out _why_ itshould be grand. Unable to explain my own impressions in "Aladdin, "I did not the less obstinately persist in believing a sublimity whichI could not understand. It was, in fact, one of those many importantcases which elsewhere I have called _involutes_ of human sensibility;combinations in which the materials of future thought or feeling arecarried as imperceptibly into the mind as vegetable seeds are carriedvariously combined through the atmosphere, or by means of rivers, bybirds, by winds, by waters, into remote countries. But the reader shalljudge for himself. At the opening of the tale, a magician living inthe central depths of Africa is introduced to us as one made aware byhis secret art of an enchanted lamp endowed with supernatural powersavailable for the service of any man whatever who should get it intohis keeping. But _there_ lies the difficulty. The lamp is imprisonedin subterraneous chambers, and from these it can be released only bythe hands of an innocent child. But this is not enough: the child musthave a special horoscope written in the stars, or else a peculiardestiny written in his constitution, entitling him to take possessionof the lamp. Where shall such a child be found? Where shall he besought? The magician knows: he applies his ear to the earth; he listensto the innumerable sounds of footsteps that at the moment of hisexperiment are tormenting the surface of the globe; and amongst themall, at a distance of six thousand miles, playing in the streets ofBagdad, he distinguishes the peculiar steps of the child Aladdin. Through this mighty labyrinth of sounds, which Archimedes, aided byhis _arenarius_, could not sum or disentangle, one solitary infant'sfeet are distinctly recognized on the banks of the Tigris, distantby four hundred and forty days' march of an army or a caravan. Thesefeet, these steps, the sorcerer knows, and challenges in his heart asthe feet, as the steps of that innocent boy, through whose hands onlyhe could have a chance for reaching the lamp. 

It follows, therefore, that the wicked magician exercises two demoniacgifts. First, he has the power to disarm Babel itself of its confusion. Secondly, after having laid aside as useless many billions of earthlysounds, and after having fastened his murderous [5] attention upon oneinsulated tread, he has the power, still more unsearchable, of reading inthat hasty movement an alphabet of new and infinite symbols; for, inorder that the sound of the child's feet should be significant andintelligible, that sound must open into a gamut of infinite compass. Thepulses of the heart, the motions of the will, the phantoms of the brainmust repeat themselves in secret hieroglyphics uttered by the flyingfootsteps. Even the inarticulate or brutal sounds of the globe mustbe all so many languages and ciphers that somewhere have theircorresponding keys--have their own grammar and syntax; and thus theleast things in the universe must be secret mirrors to the greatest. Palmistry has something of the same dark sublimity. All this, by rudeefforts at explanation that mocked my feeble command of words, Icommunicated to my sister; and she, whose sympathy with my meaning wasalways so quick and true, often outrunning electrically my imperfectexpressions, felt the passage in the same way as myself, [6] but not, perhaps, in the same degree. She was much beyond me in velocity ofapprehension and many other qualities of intellect. Here only, viz. , on cases of the _dark_ sublime, where it rested upon dim abstractions, and when no particular trait of _moral_ grandeur came forward, wediffered--differed, that is to say, as by more or by less. Else, evenas to the sublime, and numbers of other intellectual questions whichrose up to us from our immense reading, we drew together with a perfectfidelity of sympathy; and therefore I pass willingly from a case whichexemplified one of our rare differences to another, not less interestingfor itself, which illustrated (what occurred so continually) theintensity of our agreement. 

No instance of noble revenge that ever I heard of seems so effective, if considered as applied to a noble-minded wrong doer, or in any caseas so pathetic. From what quarter the story comes originally, wasunknown to us at the time, and I have never met it since; so thatpossibly it may be new to the reader. We found it in a book writtenfor the use of his own children by Dr. Percival, the physician whoattended at Greenhay. Dr. P. Was a literary man, of elegant tastes andphilosophic habits. Some of his papers may be found in the "ManchesterPhilosophic Transactions;" and these I have heard mentioned withrespect, though, for myself, I have no personal knowledge of them. Some presumption meantime arises in their favor from the fact that hehad been a favored correspondent of the most eminent Frenchmen at thattime who cultivated literature jointly with philosophy. Voltaire, Diderot, Maupertuis, Condorcet, and D'Alembert had all treated himwith distinction; and I have heard my mother say that, in days beforeI or my sister could have known him, he attempted vainly to interesther in these French luminaries by reading extracts from their frequentletters; which, however, so far from reconciling her to the letters, or to the writers of the letters, had the unhappy effect of rivetingher dislike (previously budding) to the doctor, as their reciever, andthe _proneur_ of their authors. The tone of the letters--hollow, insincere, and full of courtly civilities to Dr. P. , as a known friendof "_the tolerance_" (meaning, of toleration)--certainly was not adaptedto the English taste; and in this respect was specially offensive tomy mother, as always assuming of the doctor, that, by mere necessity, as being a philosopher, he must be an infidel. Dr. P. Left thatquestion, I believe, "_in medio_, " neither assenting nor denying; andundoubtedly there was no particular call upon him to publish hisconfession of Faith before one who, in the midst of her rigourouspoliteness, suffered it to be too transparent that she did not likehim. It is always a pity to see any thing lost and wasted, especiallylove; and, therefore, it was no subject for lamentation, that tooprobably the philosophic doctor did not enthusiastically like _her_. But, if really so, that made no difference in his feelings towards mysister and myself. Us he _did_ like; and, as one proof of his regard, he presented us jointly with such of his works as could be supposedinteresting to two young literati, whos combined ages made no more atthis period than a baker's dozen. These presentation copies amount totwo at the lest, both _octavoes_, and one of them entitled _TheFather's_--something or other; what was it?--_Assistant_, perhaps. Howmuch assistance the doctor might furnish to the fathers upon thiswicked little planet, I cannot say. But fathers are a stubborn race;it is very little use trying to assist _them_. Better always toprescribe for the rising generation. And certainly the impression whichhe made upon us--my sister and myself--by the story in question wasdeep and memorable: my sister wept over it, and wept over theremembrance of it; and, not long after, carried its sweet aroma offwith her to heaven; whilst I, for _my_ part, have never forgotten it. Yet, perhaps, it is injudicious to have too much excited the reader'sexpectations; therefore, reader, understand what it is that you areinvited to hear--not much of a story, but simply a noble sentiment, such as that of Louis XII, when he refused, as King of France, toavenge his own injuries as Duke of Orleans--such as that of Hadrian, when he said that a Roman imperator ought to die standing, meaningthat Caesar, as the man who represented almighty Rome, should face thelast enemy as the first in an attitude of unconquerable defiance. Hereis Dr. Percival's story, which (again I warn you) will collapse intonothing at all, unless you yourself are able to dilate it by expansivesympathy with its sentiment. 

A young officer (in what army, no matter) had so far forgotten himself, in a moment of irritation, as to strike a private soldier, full ofpersonal dignity, (as sometimes happens in all ranks, ) and distinguishedfor his courage. The inexorable laws of military discipline forbadeto the injured soldier any practical redress--he could look for noretaliation by acts. Words only were at his command; and, in a tumultof indignation, as he turned away, the soldier said to his officerthat he would "make him repent it. " This, wearing the shape of a menace, naturally rekindled the officer's anger, and intercepted any dispositionwhich might be rising within him towards a sentiment of remorse; andthus the irritation between the two young men grew hotter than before. Some weeks after this a partial action took place with the enemy. Suppose yourself a spectator, and looking down into a valley occupiedby the two armies. They are facing each other, you see, in martialarray. But it is no more than a skirmish which is going on; in thecourse of which, however, an occasion suddenly arises for a desperateservice. A redoubt, which has fallen into the enemy's hands, must berecaptured at any price, and under circumstances of all but hopelessdifficulty. A strong party has volunteered for the service; there isa cry for somebody to head them; you see a soldier step out from theranks to assume this dangerous leadership; the party moves rapidlyforward; in a few minutes it is swallowed up from your eyes in cloudsof smoke; for one half hour, from behind these clouds, you receivehieroglyphic reports of bloody strife--fierce repeating signals, flashesfrom the guns, rolling musketry, and exulting hurrahs advancing orreceding, slackening or redoubling. At length all is over; the redoubthas been recovered; that which was lost is found again; the jewel whichhad been made captive is ransomed with blood. Crimsoned with gloriousgore, the wreck of the conquering party is relieved, and at libertyto return. From the river you see it ascending. The plume-crestedofficer in command rushes forward, with his left hand raising his hatin homage to the blackened fragments of what once was a flag, whilst, with his right hand, he seizes that of the leader, though no more thana private from the ranks. _That_ perplexes you not; mystery you seenone in _that_. For distinctions of order perish, ranks are confounded, "high and low" are words without a meaning, and to wreck goes everynotion or feeling that divides the noble from the noble, or the braveman from the brave. But wherefore is it that now, when suddenly theywheel into mutual recognition, suddenly they pause? This soldier, thisofficer--who are they? O reader! once before they had stood face toface--the soldier it is that was struck; the officer it is that struckhim. Once again they are meeting; and the gaze of armies is upon them. If for a moment a doubt divides them, in a moment the doubt hasperished. One glance exchanged between them publishes the forgivenessthat is sealed forever. As one who recovers a brother whom he hadaccounted dead, the officer sprang forward, threw his arms around theneck of the soldier, and kissed him, as if he were some martyr glorifiedby that shadow of death from which he was returning; whilst, on _his_part, the soldier, stepping back, and carrying his open hand throughthe beautiful motions of the military salute to a superior, makes thisimmortal answer--that answer which shut up forever the memory of theindignity offered to him, even whilst for the last time alluding toit: "Sir, " he said, "I told you before that I would _make you repentit. _"

FOOTNOTES

[1] "_Echo augury_. "--The daughter of a voice meant an echo, the originalsound being viewed as the mother, and the reverberation, or secondarysound, as the daughter. Analogically, therefore, the direct and originalmeaning of any word, or sentence, or counsel, was the mother meaning butthe secondary, or mystical meaning, created by the peculiar circumstancesfor one separate and peculiar ear, the daughter meaning, or echo meaning. This mode of augury, through secondary interpretations of chance words, is not, as some readers may fancy, an old, obsolete, or merely Jewishform of seeking the divine pleasure. About a century ago, a man sofamous, and by repute so unsuperstitious, as Dr. Doddridge, was guided ina primary act of choice, influencing his whole after life, by a fewchance words from a child reading aloud to his mother. With the othermode of augury viz. , that noticed by Herbert, where not the ear but theeye presides, catching at some word that chance has thrown upon the eyein some book left open by negligence, or opened at random by one's self, Cowper, the poet, and his friend Newton, with scores of others that couldbe mentioned, were made acquainted through practical results and personalexperiences that in _their_ belief were memorably important. 

[2] "_Sortes Virgilianae_. "--Upon what principle could it have been thatVirgil was adopted as the oracular fountain in such a case? An author solimited even as to bulk, and much more limited as regards compass ofthought and variety or situation or character, was about the worst thatpagan literature offered. But I myself once threw out a suggestion, which(if it is sound) exposes a motive in behalf of such a choice that wouldbe likely to overrule the strong motives against it. That motive was, unless my whole speculation is groundless, the very same which led Dante, in an age of ignorance, to select Virgil as his guide in Hades. Theseventh son of a seventh son has always traditionally been honored as thedepositary of magical and other supernatural gifts. And the sametraditional privilege attached to any man whose maternal grandfather wasa sorcerer. Now, it happened that Virgil's maternal grandfather bore thename of _Magus_. This, by the ignorant multitude in Naples, &c. , who hadbeen taught to reverence his tomb, was translated from its true acceptionas a proper name, to a false one as an appellative: it was supposed toindicate, not the name, but the profession of the old gentleman. Andthus, according to the belief of the _lazzaroni_, that excellentChristian, P. Virgilius Maro, had stepped by mere succession and right ofinheritance into his wicked old grandpapa's infernal powers andknowledge, both of which he exercised, doubtless, for centuries withoutblame, and for the benefit of the faithful. 

[3] "_Strange_, " &c. --Yet I remember that, in "The Pursuits ofLiterature, "--a satirical poem once universally famous, --the lines aboutMnemosyne and her daughters, the Pierides, are cited as exhibitingmatchless sublimity. Perhaps, therefore, if carefully searched, thiswriter may contain other jewels not yet appreciated. 

 [4] "_Very nearly forgotten_. "--Not quite however. It must be hard uponeighty or eighty-five years since she first commenced authorship--aperiod which allows time for a great deal of forgetting; and yet, in thevery week when I am revising this passage, I observe advertised a newedition, attractively illustrated, of the "Evenings at Home"--a jointwork of Mrs. Barbauld's and her brother's, (the elder Dr. Aikin. ) Mrs. Barbauld was exceedingly clever. Her mimicry of Dr. Johnson's style wasthe best of all that exist. Her blank verse "Washing Day, " descriptive ofthe discomforts attending a mistimed visit to a rustic friend, under theaffliction of a family washing, is picturesquely circumstantiated. Andher prose hymns for children have left upon my childish recollection adeep impression of solemn beauty and simplicity. Coleridge, who scatteredhis sneering compliments very liberally up and down the world, used tocall the elder Dr. Aikin (allusively to Pope's well-known line--

 "No craving void left aching in the breast")

_an aching void_; and the nephew, Dr. Arthur Aikin, by way of variety, _avoid aching_; whilst Mrs. Barbault he designated as _that pleonasm ofnakedness_; since, as if it were not enough to be _bare_, she was also_bald_. 

[5] "_Murderous_;" for it was his intention to leave Aladdin immurred inthe subterraneous chambers. 

[6] The reader will not understand me as attributing to the Arabianoriginator of Aladdin all the sentiment of the case as I have endeavoredto disentangle it. He spoke what he did not understand; for, as tosentiment of any kind, all Orientals are obtuse and impassive. There areother sublimities (some, at least) in the "Arabian Nights, " which firstbecome such--a gas that first kindles--when entering into combinationwith new elements in a Christian atmosphere. 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE FEMALE INFIDEL. 

At the time of my father's death, I was nearly seven years old. In thenext four years, during which we continued to live at Greenhay, nothingmemorable occurred, except, indeed, that troubled parenthesis in mylife which connected me with my brother William, --this certainly wasmemorable to myself, --and, secondly, the visit of a most eccentricyoung woman, who, about nine years later, drew the eyes of all Englandupon herself by her unprincipled conduct in an affair affecting thelife of two Oxonian undergraduates. She was the daughter of Lord LeDespencer, (known previously as Sir Francis Dashwood;) and at thistime (meaning the time of her visit to Greenhay) she was abouttwenty-two years old, with a face and a figure classically beautiful, and with the reputation of extraordinary accomplishments; theseaccomplishments being not only eminent in their degree, but rare andinteresting in their kind. In particular, she astonished every personby her _impromptu_ performances on the organ, and by her powers ofdisputation. These last she applied entirely to attacks uponChristianity; for she openly professed infidelity in the most audaciousform; and at my mother's table she certainly proved more than a matchfor all the clergymen of the neighboring towns, some of whom (as themost intellectual persons of that neighborhood) were daily invited tomeet her. It was a mere accident which had introduced her to my mother'shouse. Happening to hear from my sister Mary's governess [1] that she andher pupil were going on a visit to an old Catholic family in the countyof Durham, (the family of Mr. Swinburne, who was known advantageouslyto the public by his "Travels in Spain and Sicily, " &c. , ) Mrs. Lee, whose education in a French convent, aided by her father's influence, had introduced her extensively to the knowledge of Catholic familiesin England land, and who had herself an invitation to the same houseat the same time, wrote to offer the use of her carriage to convey allthree--_i. E. _, herself, my sister, and her governess--to Mr. Swinburne's. This naturally drew forth from my mother an invitation to Greenhay; andto Greenhay she came. On the imperial of her carriage, and else-where, she described herself as the _Hon. _ Antonina Dashwood Lee. But, in fact, being only the illegitimate daughter of Lord Le Despencer, she was notentitled to that designation. She had, however, received a bequest evenmore enviable from her father, viz. , not less than forty-five thousandpounds. At a very early age, she had married a young Oxonian, distinguished for nothing but a very splendid person, which had procuredhim the distinguishing title of _Handsome Lee;_ and from him she hadspeedily separated, on the agreement of dividing the fortune. 

My mother little guessed what sort of person it was whom she had askedinto her family. So much, however, she had understood from MissWesley--that Mrs. Lee was a bold thinker; and that, for a woman, shehad an astonishing command of theological learning. This it was thatsuggested the clerical invitations, as in such a case likely to furnishthe most appropriate society. But this led to a painful result. Itmight easily have happened that a very learned clergyman should notspecially have qualified himself for the service of a theologicaltournament; and my mother's range of acquaintance was not very extensiveamongst the clerical body. But of these the two leaders, as regardedpublic consideration, were Mr. H----, my guardian, and Mr. Clowes, whofor more than fifty years officiated as rector of St. John's Churchin Manchester. In fact, the _golden_ [2] jubilee of his pastoralconnection with St. John's was celebrated many years after with muchdemonstrative expression of public sympathy on the part of universalManchester--the most important city in the island next after London. Nomen could have been found who were less fitted to act as champions in aduel on behalf of Christianity. Mr. H---- was dreadfully commonplace;dull, dreadfully dull; and, by the necessity of his nature, incapable ofbeing in deadly earnest, which his splendid antagonist at all times was. His encounter, therefore, with Mrs. Lee presented the distressingspectacle of an old, toothless, mumbling mastiff, fighting for thehousehold to which he owed allegiance against a young leopardess freshfrom the forests. Every touch from _her_, every velvety pat, drew blood. And something comic mingled with what my mother felt to be paramounttragedy. Far different was Mr. Clowes: holy, visionary, apostolic, hecould not be treated disrespectfully. No man could deny him a qualifiedhomage. But for any polemic service he wanted the taste, the training, and the particular sort of erudition required. Neither would suchadvantages, if he had happened to possess them, have at all availed himin a case like this. Horror, blank horror, seized him upon seeing awoman, a young woman, a woman of captivating beauty, whom God had adornedso eminently with gifts of person and of mind, breathing sentiments thatto him seemed fresh from the mintage of hell. He could have apostrophizedher (as long afterwards he himself told me) in the words of Shakspeare'sJuliet--

 "Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!"

for he was one of those who never think of Christianity as the subjectof defence. Could sunshine, could light, could the glories of the dawncall for defence? Not as a thing to be defended, but as a thing to beinterpreted, as a thing to be illuminated, did Christianity exist for_him_. He, therefore, was even more unserviceable as a champion againstthe deliberate impeacher of Christian evidences than my reverendguardian. 

Thus it was that he himself explained his own position in after days, when I had reached my sixteenth year, and visited him upon terms offriendship as close as can ever have existed between a boy and a manalready gray headed. Him and his noiseless parsonage, the pensive abodefor sixty years of religious revery and anchoritish self-denial, Ihave described farther on. In some limited sense he belongs to ourliterature, for he was, in fact, the introducer of Swedenborg to thiscountry; as being himself partially the translator of Swedenborg; andstill more as organizing a patronage to other people's translations;and also, I believe, as republishing the original Latin works ofSwedenborg. To say _that_ of Mr. Clowes, was, until lately, but anotherway of describing him as a delirious dreamer. At present, (1853, ) Ipresume the reader to be aware that Cambridge has, within the last fewyears, unsettled and even revolutionized our estimates of Swedenborgas a philosopher. That man, indeed, whom Emerson ranks as one amongsthis inner consistory of intellectual potentates cannot be the absolutetrifler that Kant, (who knew him only by the most trivial of hispretensions, ) eighty years ago, supposed him. Assuredly, Mr. Cloweswas no trifler, but lived habitually a life of power, though in a worldof religious mysticism and of apocalyptic visions. To him, being sucha man by nature and by habit, it was in effect the lofty Lady Geraldinefrom Coleridge's "Christabel" that stood before him in this infidellady. A magnificent witch she was, like the Lady Geraldine; having thesame superb beauty; the same power of throwing spells over the ordinarygazer; and yet at intervals unmasking to some solitary, unfascinatedspectator the same dull blink of a snaky eye; and revealing, throughthe most fugitive of gleams, a traitress couchant beneath what elseto all others seemed the form of a lady, armed with incomparablepretensions--one that was

 "Beautiful exceedingly, Like a lady from a far countrie. "

The scene, as I heard it sketched long years afterwards by more thanone of those who had witnessed it, was painful in excess. And the shockgiven to my mother was memorable. For the first and the last time inher long and healthy life, she suffered an alarming nervous attack. Partly this arose from the conflict between herself in the characterof hostess, and herself as a loyal daughter of Christian faith; sheshuddered, in a degree almost incontrollable and beyond her power todissemble, at the unfeminine intrepidity with which "the leopardess"conducted her assaults upon the sheepfolds of orthodoxy; and partly, also, this internal conflict arose from concern on behalf of her ownservants, who waited at dinner, and were inevitably liable toimpressions from what they heard. My mother, by original choice, andby early training under a very aristocratic father, recoiled asausterely from all direct communication with her servants as the Pythiaat Delphi from the attendants that swept out the temple. But not theless her conscience, in all stages of her life, having or _not_ havingany special knowledge of religion, acknowledged a pathetic weight ofobligation to remove from her household all confessedly corruptinginfluences. And here was one which she could not remove. What chieflyshe feared, on behalf of her servants, was either, 1st, the dangerfrom the simple _fact_, now suddenly made known to them, that it waspossible for a person unusually gifted to deny Christianity; such adenial and haughty abjuration could not but carry itself more profoundlyinto the reflective mind, even of servants, when the arrow came wingedand made buoyant by the gay feathering of so many splendidaccomplishments. This general fact was appreciable by those who wouldforget, and never could have understood, the particular arguments ofthe infidel. Yet, even as regarded these particular arguments, 2dly, my mother feared that some one--brief, telling, and rememberable--mightbe singled out from the rest, might transplant itself to the servants'hall, and take root for life in some mind sufficiently thoughtful toinvest it with interest, and yet far removed from any opportunities, through books or society, for disarming the argument of its sting. Such a danger was quickened by the character and pretensions of Mrs. Lee's footman, who was a daily witness, whilst standing behind hismistress's chair at dinner, to the confusion which she carried intothe hostile camp, and might be supposed to renew such discussions inthe servants' hall with singular advantages for a favorable attention. For he was a showy and most audacious Londoner, and what is _technically_known in the language of servants' hiring offices as "a man of figure. "He might, therefore, be considered as one dangerously armed for shakingreligious principles, especially amongst the female servants. Here, however, I believe that my mother was mistaken. Women of humble station, less than any other class, have any tendency to sympathize with boldnessthat manifests itself in throwing off the yoke of religion. Perhaps anatural instinct tells them that levity of that nature will pretty surelyextend itself contagiously to other modes of conscientious obligation; atany rate, my own experience would warrant me in doubting whether anyinstance were ever known of a woman, in the rank of servant, regardinginfidelity or irreligion as something brilliant, or interesting, or inany way as favorably distinguishing a man. Meantime, this conscientiousapprehension on account of the servants applied to contingencies thatwere remote. But the pity on account of the poor lady herself applied toa danger that seemed imminent and deadly. This beautiful and splendidyoung creature, as my mother knew, was floating, without anchor orknowledge of any anchoring grounds, upon the unfathomable ocean of aLondon world, which, for _her_, was wrapped in darkness as regarded itsdangers, and thus for _her_ the chances of shipwreck were seven timesmultiplied. It was notorious that Mrs. Lee had no protector or guide, natural or legal. Her marriage had, in fact, instead of imposing newrestraints, released her from old ones. For the legal separation ofDoctors' Commons--technically called a divorce simply _à mensâ et thoro_, (from bed and board, ) and not _à vinculo matrimonii_ (from the very tieand obligation of marriage)--had removed her by law from the control ofher husband; whilst, at the same time, the matrimonial condition, ofcourse, enlarged that liberty of action which else is unavoidablynarrowed by the reserve and delicacy natural to a young woman, whilstyet unmarried. Here arose one peril more; and, 2dly, arose this mostunusual aggravation of that peril--that Mrs Lee was deplorably ignorantof English life; indeed, of life universally. Strictly speaking, shewas even yet a raw, untutored novice, turned suddenly loose from thetwilight of a monastic seclusion. Under any circumstances, such asituation lay open to an amount of danger that was afflicting tocontemplate. But one dreadful exasperation of these fatal auguries layin the peculiar _temper_ of Mrs. Lee, as connected with her infidelthinking. Her nature was too frank and bold to tolerate any disguise;and my mother's own experience had now taught her that Mrs. Lee wouldnot be content, to leave to the random call of accident the avowal ofher principles. No passive or latent spirit of freethinking washers--headlong it was, uncompromising, almost fierce, and regardingno restraints of place or season. Like Shelley, some few years later, whose day she would have gloried to welcome, she looked upon herprinciples not only as conferring rights, but also as imposing dutiesof active proselytism. From this feature in her character it was thatmy mother foresaw an _instant_ evil, which she urged Miss Wesley topress earnestly on her attention, viz. , the inevitable alienation ofall her female friends. In many parts of the continent (but too muchwe are all in the habit of calling by the wide name of "the continent, "France, Germany, Switzerland, and Belgium) my mother was aware thatthe most flagrant proclamation of infidelity would not stand in theway of a woman's favorable reception into society. But in England, atthat time, this was far otherwise. A display such as Mrs. Lee habituallyforced upon people's attention would at once have the effect ofbanishing from her house all women of respectability. She would bethrown upon the society of _men_--bold and reckless, such as eitheragreed with herself, or, being careless on the whole subject ofreligion, pretended to do so. Her income, though diminished now by thepartition with Mr. Lee, was still above a thousand per annum; which, though trivial for any purpose of display in a place so costly asLondon, was still important enough to gather round her unprincipledadventurers, some of whom might be noble enough to obey no attractionbut that which lay in her marble beauty, in her Athenian grace andeloquence, and the wild, impassioned nature of her accomplishments. By her acting, her dancing, her conversation, her musicalimprovisations, she was qualified to attract the most intellectualmen; but baser attractions would exist for baser men; and my motherurged Miss Wesley, as one whom Mrs. Lee admitted to her confidence, above all things to act upon her pride by forewarning her that suchmen, in the midst of lip homage to her charms, would be sure to betrayits hollowness by declining to let their wives and daughters visither. Plead what excuses they would, Mrs. Lee might rely upon it, thatthe true ground for this insulting absence of female visitors wouldbe found to lie in her profession of infidelity. This alienation offemale society would, it was clear, be precipitated enormously by Mrs. Lee's frankness. A result that might by a dissembling policy have beendelayed indefinitely, would now be hurried forward to an immediatecrisis. And in this result went to wreck the very best part of Mrs. Lee's securities against ruin. 

It is scarcely necessary to say, that all the evil followed which hadbeen predicted, and through the channels which had been predicted. Some time was required on so vast a stage as London to publish thefacts of Mrs. Lee's free-thinking--that is, to publish it as a matterof systematic purpose. Many persons had at first made a liberalallowance for her, as tempted by some momentary impulse into opinionsthat she had not sufficiently considered, and might forget as hastilyas she had adopted them. But no sooner was it made known as a settledfact, that she had deliberately dedicated her energies to the interestsof an anti-Christian system, and that she hated Christianity, than thewhole body of her friends within the pale of social respectabilityfell away from her, and forsook her house. To _them_ succeeded a cliqueof male visitors, some of whom were doubtfully respectable, and others(like Mr. Frend, memorable for his expulsion from Cambridge on accountof his public hostility to Trinitarianism) were distinguished by atone of intemperate defiance to the spirit of English society. Thrownupon such a circle, and emancipated from all that temper of reservewhich would have been impressed upon her by habitual anxiety for thegood opinion of virtuous and high-principled women, the poor lady wastempted into an elopement with two dissolute brothers; for what ultimatepurpose on either side, was never made clear to the public. Why a ladyshould elope from her own house, and the protection of her own servants, under whatever impulse, seemed generally unintelligible. But apparentlyit was precisely this protection from her own servants which presenteditself to the brothers in the light of an obstacle to their objects. What these objects might ultimately be, I do not _entirely_ know; andI do not feel myself authorized, by any thing which of my own knowledgeI know, to load either of them with mercenary imputations. One of them(the younger) was, or fancied himself, in love with Mrs. Lee. It wasimpossible for him to marry her; and possibly he may have fancied thatin some rustic retirement, where the parties were unknown, it wouldbe easier than in London to appease the lady's scruples in respectto the sole mode of connection which the law left open to them. Thefrailty of the will in Mrs. Lee was as manifest in this stage of thecase as subsequently, when she allowed herself to be over-clamored byMr. Lee and his friends into a capital prosecution of the brothers. After she had once allowed herself to be put into a post chaise, shewas persuaded to believe (and such was her ignorance of English society, that possibly she _did_ believe) herself through the rest of the journeyliable at any moment to summary coercion in the case of attempting anyresistance. The brothers and herself left London in the evening. Consequently, it was long after midnight when the party halted at atown in Gloucestershire, two stages beyond Oxford. The younger gentlemanthen persuaded her, but (as she alleged) under the impression on herpart that resistance was unavailing, and that the injury to herreputation was by this time irreparable, to allow of his coming to herbed room. This was perhaps not entirely a fraudulent representationin Mrs. Lee. The whole circumstances of the case made it clear, that, with any decided opening for deliverance, she would have caught at it;and probably would again, from wavering of mind, have dallied with thedanger. 

Perhaps at this point, having already in this last paragraph shot aheadby some nine years of the period when she visited Greenhay, allowingmyself this license in order to connect my mother's warning throughMiss Wesley with the practical sequel of the case, it may be as wellfor me to pursue the arrears of the story down to its final incident. In 1804, at the Lent Assizes for the county of Oxford, she appearedas principal witness against two brothers, L--t G--n, and L--n G--n, on a capital charge of having forcibly carried her off from her ownhouse in London, and afterwards of having, at some place inGloucestershire, by collusion with each other and by terror, enabledone of the brothers to offer the last violence to her person. Thecircumstantial accounts published at the time by the newspapers wereof a nature to conciliate the public sympathy altogether to theprisoners; and the general belief accorded with what was, no doubt, the truth--that the lady had been driven into a false accusation bythe overpowering remonstrances of her friends, joined, in this instance, by her husband, all of whom were willing to believe, or willing tohave it believed by the public, that advantage had been taken of herlittle acquaintance with English usages. I was present at the trial. The court opened at eight o'clock in the morning; and such was theinterest in the case, that a mob, composed chiefly of gownsmen, besiegedthe doors for some time before the moment of admission. On thisoccasion, by the way, I witnessed a remarkable illustration of theprofound obedience which Englishmen under all circumstances pay to thelaw. The constables, for what reason I do not know, were very numerousand very violent. Such of us as happened to have gone in our academicdress had our caps smashed in two by the constables' staves; _why_, it might be difficult for the officers to say, as none of us weremaking any tumult, nor had any motive for doing so, unless by way ofretaliation. Many of these constables were bargemen or petty tradesmen, who in their ex-official character had often been engaged in rows withundergraduates, and usually had had the worst of it. At present, inthe service of the blindfold goddess, these equitable men were no doubttaking out their vengeance for past favors. But under all this wantondisplay of violence, the gownsmen practised the severest forbearance. The pressure from behind made it impossible to forbear pressing ahead;crushed, you were obliged to crush; but, beyond that, there was nomovement or gesture on our part to give any colorable warrant to thebrutality of the officers. For nearly a whole hour, I saw thisexpression of reverence to the law triumphant over all provocations. It may be presumed, that, to prompt so much crowding, there must havebeen some commensurate interest. There was so, but that interest wasnot at all in Mrs. Lee. She was entirely unknown; and even by reputationor rumor, from so vast a wilderness as London, neither her beauty norher intellectual pretensions had travelled down to Oxford. Possibly, in each section of 300 men, there might be one individual whom accidenthad brought acquainted, as it had myself, with her extraordinaryendowments. But the general and academic interest belonged exclusivelyto the accused. They were both Oxonians--one belonging to UniversityCollege, and the other, perhaps, to Baliol; and, as they had severallytaken the degree of A. B. , which implies a residence of _at least_three years, they were pretty extensively known. But, known or notknown personally, in virtue of the _esprit de corps_, the accusedparties would have benefited in any case by a general brotherlyinterest. Over and above which, there was in this case the interestattached to an almost unintelligible accusation. A charge of personalviolence, under the roof of a respectable English posting house, occupied always by a responsible master and mistress, and within callat every moment of numerous servants, --what could that mean? And, again, when it became understood that this violence was alleged tohave realized itself under a delusion, under a preoccupation of thevictim's mind, that resistance to it was hopeless, how, and under whatprofound ignorance of English society, had such a preoccupation beenpossible? To the accused, and to the incomprehensible accusation, therefore, belonged the whole weight of the interest; and it was avery secondary interest indeed, and purely as a reflex interest fromthe main one, which awaited the prosecutress. And yet, though so littlecuriosity "awaited" her, it happened of necessity that, within a fewmoments after her first coming forward in the witness box, she hadcreated a separate one for herself--first, through her impressiveappearance; secondly, through the appalling coolness of her answers. The trial began, I think, about nine o'clock in the morning; and, assome time was spent on the examination of Mrs. Lee's servants, ofpostilions, hostlers, &c. , in pursuing the traces of the affair fromLondon to a place seventy miles north of London, it was probably abouteleven in the forenoon before the prosecutress was summoned. My heartthrobbed a little as the court lulled suddenly into the deep stillnessof expectation, when that summons was heard: "Rachael Frances AntoninaDashwood Lee" resounded through all the passages; and immediately inan adjoining anteroom, through which she was led by her attorney, forthe purpose of evading the mob that surrounded the public approaches, we heard her advancing steps. Pitiable was the humiliation expressedby her carriage, as she entered the witness box. Pitiable was thechange, the world of distance, between this faltering and dejectedaccuser, and that wild leopardess that had once worked her pleasureamongst the sheepfolds of Christianity, and had cuffed my poor guardianso unrelentingly, right and left, front and rear, when he attemptedthe feeblest of defences. However, she was not long exposed to thesearching gaze of the court and the trying embarrassments of hersituation. A single question brought the whole investigation to aclose. Mrs. Lee had been sworn. After a few questions, she was suddenlyasked by the counsel for the defence whether she believed in theChristian religion? Her answer was brief and peremptory, withoutdistinction or circumlocution--_No_. Or, perhaps, not in God? Againshe replied, _No_; and again her answer was prompt and _sans phrase_. Upon this the judge declared that he could not permit the trial toproceed. The jury had heard what the witness said: she only could giveevidence upon the capital part of the charge; and she had openlyincapacitated herself before the whole court. The jury instantlyacquitted the prisoners. In the course of the day I left my name atMrs. Lee's lodgings; but her servant assured me that she was too muchagitated to see any body till the evening. At the hour assigned Icalled again. It was dusk, and a mob had assembled. At the moment Icame up to the door, a lady was issuing, muffled up, and in some measuredisguised. It was Mrs. Lee. At the corner of an adjacent street a postchaise was drawn up. Towards this, under the protection of the attorneywho had managed her case, she made her way as eagerly as possible. Before she could reach it, however, she was detected; a savage howlwas raised, and a rush made to seize her. Fortunately, a body ofgownsmen formed round her, so as to secure her from personal assault:they put her rapidly into the carriage; and then, joining the mob intheir hootings, sent off the horses at a gallop. Such was the mode ofher exit from Oxford. 

Subsequently to this painful collision with Mrs. Lee at the OxfordAssizes, I heard nothing of her for many years, excepting onlythis--that she was residing in the family of an English clergymandistinguished for his learning and piety. This account gave greatpleasure to my mother--not only as implying some chance that Mrs. Leemight be finally reclaimed from her unhappy opinions, but also as aproof that, in submitting to a rustication so mortifying to a womanof her brilliant qualifications, she must have fallen under someinfluences more promising for her respectability and happiness thanthose which had surrounded her in London. Finally, we saw by the publicjournals that she had written and published a book. The title I forget;but by its subject it was connected with political or social philosophy. And one eminent testimony to its merit I myself am able to allege, viz. , Wordsworth's. Singular enough it seems, that he who read so verylittle of modern literature, in fact, next to nothing, should be thesole critic and reporter whom I have happened to meet upon Mrs. Lee'swork. But so it was: accident had thrown the book in his way duringone of his annual visits to London, and a second time at Lowther Castle. He paid to Mrs. Lee a compliment which certainly he paid to no otherof her contemporaries, viz. , that of reading her book very nearly tothe end; and he spoke of it repeatedly as distinguished for vigor andoriginality of thought. 

FOOTNOTES

[1] "_My sister Mary's governess_. "--This governess was a Miss Wesley, niece to John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. And the mention of _her_recalls to me a fact, which was recently revived and misstated by thewhole newspaper press of the island. It had been always known that somerelationship existed between the Wellesleys and John Wesley. Their nameshad, in fact, been originally the same; and the Duke of Wellingtonhimself, in the earlier part of his career, when sitting in the IrishHouse of Commons, was always known to the Irish journals as CaptainWesley. Upon this arose a natural belief that the aristocratic branch ofthe house had improved the name into Wellesley. But the true process ofchange had been precisely the other way. Not Wesley had been expandedinto Wellesley, but, inversely, Wellesley had been contracted byhousehold usage into Wesley. The name must have been _Wellesley_ in itsearliest stage, since it was founded upon a connection with WellsCathedral, It had obeyed the same process as prevails in many hundreds ofother names: St. Leger, for instance, is always pronounced as if writtenSillinger; Cholmondeley as Chumleigh; Marjoribanks as Marchbanks; and theillustrious name of Cavendish was for centuries familiarly pronouncedCandish; and Wordsworth has even introduced this name into verse so as tocompel the reader, by a metrical coercion, into calling it Candish. MissWesley's family had great musical sensibility and skill. This led thefamily into giving musical parties, at which was constantly to be foundLord Mornington, the father of the Duke of Wellington. For these partiesit was, as Miss Wesley informed me, that the earl composed his mostcelebrated glee. 

Here also it was, or in similar musical circles gathered about himself bythe first Lord Mornington, that the Duke of Wellington had formed andcultivated his unaffected love for music of the highest class, _i. E. _, for the impassioned music of the serious opera. And it occurs to me ashighly probable, that Mrs. Lee's connection with the Wesleys, throughwhich it was that she became acquainted with my mother, must have restedupon the common interest which she and the Wesleys had in the organ andin the class of music suited to that instrument. Mrs. Lee herself was animprovisatrice of the first class upon the organ; and the two brothers ofMiss Wesley, Samuel and Charles, ranked for very many years as the firstorganists in Europe. 

[2] "_The golden jubilee_. "--This, in Germany, is used popularly as atechnical expression: a married couple, when celebrating the fiftiethanniversary of their marriage day, are said to keep their _golden_jubilee; but on the twenty-fifth anniversary they have credit only for a_silver_ jubilee. 

CHAPTER V. 

I AM INTRODUCED TO THE WARFARE OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL. 

Four years after my father's death, it began to be perceived that therewas no purpose to be answered in any longer keeping up the costlyestablishment of Greenhay. A head gardener, besides laborers equal toat least two more, were required for the grounds and gardens. And nomotive existed any longer for being near to a great trading town, solong after the commercial connection with it had ceased. Bath seemed, on all accounts, the natural station for a person in my mother'ssituation; and thither, accordingly, she went. I, who had been placedunder the tuition of one of my guardians, remained some time longerunder his care. I was then transferred to Bath. During this intervalthe sale of the house and grounds took place. It may illustrate thesubject of _guardianship_, and the ordinary execution of its duties, to mention the result. The year was in itself a year of greatdepression, and every way unfavorable to such a transaction; and theparticular night for which the sale had been fixed turned out remarkablywet; yet no attempt was made to postpone it, and it proceeded. Originally the house and grounds had cost about £6000. I have heardthat only one offer was made, viz. , of £2500. Be that as it may, forthe sum of £2500 it was sold; and I have been often assured that, bywaiting a few years, four to six times that sum might have been obtainedwith ease. This is not improbable, as the house was then out in thecountry; but since then the town of Manchester has gathered round itand enveloped it. Meantime, my guardians were all men of honor andintegrity; but their hands were filled with their own affairs. One (mytutor) was a clergyman, rector of a church, and having his parish, hislarge family, and three pupils to attend. He was, besides, a verysedentary and indolent man--loving books, hating business. Another wasa merchant. A third was a country magistrate, overladen with officialbusiness: him we rarely saw. Finally, the fourth was a banker in adistant county, having more knowledge of the world, more energy, andmore practical wisdom than all the rest united, but too remote forinterfering effectually. 

Reflecting upon the evils which befell me, and the gross mismanagement, under my guardians, of my small fortune, and that of my brothers andsisters, it has often occurred to me that so important an office, which, from the time of Demosthenes, has been proverbiallymaladministered, ought to be put upon a new footing, plainly guardedby a few obvious provisions. As under the Roman laws, for a long period, the guardian should be made responsible in law, and should give securityfrom the first for the due performance of his duties. But, to give hima motive for doing this, of course he must be paid. With the newobligations and liabilities will commence commensurate emoluments. Ifa child is made a ward in Chancery, its property is managed expensively, but always advantageously. Some great change is imperatively calledfor--no duty in the whole compass of human life being so scandalouslytreated as this. 

In my twelfth year it was that first of all I entered upon the arenaof a great public school, viz. , the Grammar School [1] of Bath, overwhich at that time presided a most accomplished Etonian--Mr. (or was heas yet Doctor?) Morgan. If he was not, I am sure he ought to have been;and, with the reader's concurrence, will therefore create him a doctor onthe spot. Every man has reason to rejoice who enjoys the advantage of apublic training. I condemned, and _do_ condemn, the practice of sendingout into such stormy exposures those who are as yet too young, toodependent on female gentleness, and endowed with sensibilities originallytoo exquisite for such a warfare. But at nine or ten the masculineenergies of the character are beginning to develop themselves; or, ifnot, no discipline will better aid in their development than the bracingintercourse of a great English classical school. Even the selfish are_there_ forced into accommodating themselves to a public standard ofgenerosity, and the effeminate in conforming to a rule of manliness. I was myself at two public schools, and I think with gratitude of thebenefits which I reaped from both; as also I think with gratitude ofthat guardian in whose quiet household I learned Latin so effectually. But the small private schools, of which I had opportunities forgathering some brief experience, --schools containing thirty to fortyboys, --were models of ignoble manners as regarded part of the juniors, and of favoritism as regarded the masters. Nowhere is the sublimityof public justice so broadly exemplified as in an English public schoolon the old Edward the Sixth or Elizabeth foundation. There is not inthe universe such an Areopagus for fair play, and abhorrence of allcrooked ways, as an English mob, or one of the time-honored English"foundation" schools. But my own first introduction to such anestablishment was under peculiar and contradictory circumstances. Whenmy "rating, " or graduation in the school, was to be settled, naturallymy altitude (to speak astronomically) was taken by my proficiency inGreek. But here I had no advantage over others of my age. My guardianwas a feeble Grecian, and had not excited my ambition; so that I couldbarely construe books as easy as the Greek Testament and the Iliad. This was considered quite well enough for my age; but still it causedme to be placed under the care of Mr. Wilkins, the second master outof four, and not under Dr. Morgan himself. Within one month, however, my talent for Latin verses, which had by this time gathered strengthand expansion, became known. Suddenly I was honored as never was manor boy since Mordecai the Jew. Without any colorable relation to thedoctor's jurisdiction, I was now weekly paraded for distinction at thesupreme tribunal of the school; out of which, at first, grew nothingbut a sunshine of approbation delightful to my heart. Within six weeksall this had changed. The approbation indeed continued, and the publicexpression of it. Neither would there, in the ordinary course, havebeen any painful reaction from jealousy, or fretful resistance, to thesoundness of my pretensions; since it was sufficiently known to suchof my school-fellows as stood on my own level in the school, that I, who had no male relatives but military men, and those in India, couldnot have benefited by any clandestine aid. But, unhappily, Dr. Morganwas at that time dissatisfied with some points in the progress of hishead class; [2] and, as it soon appeared, was continually throwing intheir teeth the brilliancy of my verses at eleven or twelve, bycomparison with theirs at seventeen, eighteen, and even nineteen. I hadobserved him sometimes pointing to myself, and was perplexed at seeingthis gesture followed by gloomy looks, and what French reporters call"sensation, " in these young men, whom naturally I viewed with awe as myleaders--boys that were called young men, men that were readingSophocles, (a name that carried with it the sound of something seraphicto my ears, ) and who had never vouchsafed to waste a word on such a childas myself. The day was come, however, when all that would be changed. Oneof these leaders strode up to me in the public playground, and, delivering a blow on my shoulder, which was not intended to hurt me, butas a mere formula of introduction, asked me "what the devil I meant bybolting out of the course, and annoying other people in that manner. Were'other people' to have no rest for me and my verses, which, after all, were horribly bad?" There might have been some difficulty in returningan answer to this address, but none was required. I was brieflyadmonished to see that I wrote worse for the future, or else----. Atthis _aposiopesis_ I looked inquiringly at the speaker, and he filledup the chasm by saying that he would "annihilate" me. Could any personfail to be aghast at such a demand? I was to write worse than my ownstandard, which, by his account of my verses, must be difficult; andI was to write worse than himself, which might be impossible. Myfeelings revolted against so arrogant a demand, unless it had been farotherwise expressed; if death on the spot had awaited me, I could nothave controlled myself; and on the next occasion for sending up versesto the head master, so far from attending to the orders issued, Idouble-shotted my guns; double applause descended on myself; but Iremarked with some awe, though not repenting of what I had done, thatdouble confusion seemed to agitate the ranks of my enemies. Amongstthem loomed out in the distance my "annihilating" friend, who shookhis huge fist at me, but with something like a grim smile about hiseyes. He took an early opportunity of paying his respects to me again, saying, "You little devil, do you call this writing your worst?" "No, "I replied; "I call it writing my best. " The annihilator, as it turnedout, was really a good-natured young man; but he was on the wing forCambridge; and with the rest, or some of them, I continued to wagewar for more than a year. And yet, for a word spoken with kindness, how readily I would have resigned (had it been altogether at my ownchoice to do so) the peacock's feather in my cap as the merest ofbawbles. Undoubtedly, praise sounded sweet in _my_ ears also; but thatwas nothing by comparison with what stood on the other side. I detesteddistinctions that were connected with mortification to others; and, even if I could have got over _that_, the eternal feud fretted andtormented my nature. Love, that once in childhood had been so mere anecessity to me, _that_ had long been a reflected ray from a departedsunset. But peace, and freedom from strife, if love were no longerpossible, (as so rarely it is in this world, ) was the clamorousnecessity of my nature. To contend with somebody was still my fate;how to escape the contention I could not see; and yet, for itself, andfor the deadly passions into which it forced me, I hated and loathedit more than death. It added to the distraction and internal feud ofmy mind, that I could not _altogether_ condemn the upper boys. I wasmade a handle of humiliation to them. And, in the mean time, if I hadan undeniable advantage in one solitary accomplishment, which is alla matter of accident, or sometimes of peculiar direction given to thetaste, they, on the other hand, had a great advantage over me in themore elaborate difficulties of Greek and of choral Greek poetry. Icould not altogether wonder at their hatred of myself. Yet still, asthey had chosen to adopt this mode of conflict with me, I did not feelthat I had any choice but to resist. The contest was terminated forme by my removal from the school, in consequence of a very threateningillness affecting my head; but it lasted more than a year, and it didnot close before several among my public enemies had become my privatefriends. They were much older, but they invited me to the houses oftheir friends, and showed me a respect which affected me--this respecthaving more reference, apparently, to the firmness I had exhibited, than to any splendor in my verses. And, indeed, these had rather droopedfrom a natural accident; several persons of my own class had formedthe practice of asking me to write verses for _them_. I could notrefuse. But, as the subjects given out were the same for the entireclass, it was not possible to take so many crops off the ground withoutstarving the quality of all. 

The most interesting public event which, during my stay at this school, at all connected itself with Bath, and indeed with the school itself, was the sudden escape of Sir Sidney Smith from the prison of the Templein Paris. The mode of his escape was as striking as its time wascritical. Having accidently thrown a ball beyond the prison bounds inplaying at tennis, or some such game, Sir Sidney was surprised toobserve that the ball thrown back was not the same. Fortunately, hehad the presence of mind to dissemble his sudden surprise. He retired, examined the ball, found it stuffed with letters; and, in the sameway, he subsequently conducted a long correspondence, and arranged thewhole circumstances of his escape; which, remarkably enough, wasaccomplished exactly eight days before the sailing of Napoleon withthe Egyptian expedition; so that Sir Sidney was just in time toconfront, and utterly to defeat, Napoleon in the breach of Acre. Butfor Sir Sidney, Bonaparte would have overrun Syria, _that_ is certain. What would have followed from that event is a far more obscure problem. 

Sir Sidney Smith, I must explain to readers of this generation, andSir Edward Pellew, (afterwards Lord Exmouth, ) figured as the two[3] Paladins of the first war with revolutionary France. Rarely werethese two names mentioned but in connection with some splendid, prosperous, and unequal contest. Hence the whole nation was saddened bythe account of Sir Sidney's capture; and this must be understood, inorder to make the joy of his sudden return perfectly intelligible. Noteven a rumor of Sir Sidney's escape had or could have run before him;for, at the moment of reaching the coast of England, he had started withpost horses to Bath. It was about dusk when he arrived: the postilionswere directed to the square in which his mother lived: in a few minuteshe was in his mother's arms, and in fifty minutes more the news had flownto the remotest suburb of the city. The agitation of Bath on thisoccasion was indescribable. All the troops of the line then quartered inthat city, and a whole regiment of volunteers, immediately got underarms, and marched to the quarter in which Sir Sidney lived. The smallsquare overflowed with the soldiery; Sir Sidney went out, and wasimmediately lost to us, who were watching for him, in the closing ranksof the troops. Next morning, however, I, my younger brother, and aschool-fellow of my own age, called formally upon the naval hero. _Why_, I know not, unless as _alumni_ of the school at which Sir Sidney Smithhad received his own education, we were admitted without question ordemur; and I may record it as an amiable trait in Sir Sidney, that hereceived us then with great kindness, and took us down with him to thepump room. Considering, however, that we must have been most afflictingbores to Sir Sidney, --a fact which no self-esteem could even thendisguise from us, --it puzzled me at first to understand the principle ofhis conduct. Having already done more than enough in courteousacknowledgment of our fraternal claims as fellow-students at the BathGrammar School, why should he think it necessary to burden himselffurther with our worshipful society? I found out the secret, and willexplain it. A very slight attention to Sir Sidney's deportment in publicrevealed to me that he was morbidly afflicted with nervous sensibilityand with _mauvaise honte_. He that had faced so cheerfully crowds ofhostile and threatening eyes, could not support without trepidation thosegentle eyes, beaming with gracious admiration, of his fair youngcountrywomen. By accident, at that moment Sir Sidney had no acquaintancesin Bath, [4] a fact which is not at all to be wondered at. Livingso much abroad and at sea, an English sailor, of whatever rank, hasfew opportunities for making friends at home. And yet there was anecessity that Sir Sidney should gratify the public interest, so warmlyexpressed, by presenting himself somewhere or other to the public eye. But how trying a service to the most practised and otherwise mostcallous veteran on such an occasion, that he should step forward, saying in effect, "So you are wanting to see me: well, then, here Iam: come and look at me!" Put it into what language you please, sucha summons was written on all faces, and countersigned by his worshipthe mayor, who began to whisper insinuations of riots if Sir Sidneydid not comply. Yet, if he _did_, inevitably his own act of obedienceto the public pleasure took the shape of an ostentatious self-paradingunder the construction of those numerous persons who knew nothing ofthe public importunity, or of Sir Sidney's unaffected and even morbidreluctance to obtrude himself upon the public eye. The thing wasunavoidable; and the sole palliation that it admitted was--to breakthe concentration of the public gaze, by associating Sir Sidney withsome alien group, no matter of what cattle. Such a group would relieveboth parties--gazer and gazee--from too distressing a consciousnessof the little business on which they had met. We, the schoolboys, beingthree, intercepted and absorbed part of the enemy's fire, and, byfurnishing Sir Sidney with real _bona fide_ matter of conversation, we released him from the most distressing part of his sufferings, viz. , the passive and silent acquiescence in his own apotheosis--holding alighted candle, as it were, to the glorification of his own shrine. With our help, he weathered the storm of homage silently ascending. And we, in fact, whilst seeming to ourselves too undeniably a triadof bores, turned out the most serviceable allies that Sir Sidney everhad by land or sea, until several moons later, when he formed theinvaluable acquaintance of the Syrian "butcher, " viz. , Djezzar, thePacha of Acre. I record this little trait of Sir Sidney's constitutionaltemperament, and the little service through which I and my two comradescontributed materially to his relief, as an illustration of thatinfirmity which besieges the nervous system of our nation. It is asensitiveness which sometimes amounts to lunacy, and sometimes eventempts to suicide. It is a mistake, however, to suppose this morbidaffection unknown to Frenchmen, or unknown to men of the world. I havemyself known it to exist in both, and particularly in a man that mightbe said to live in the street, such was the American publicity whichcircumstances threw around his life; and so far were his habits oflife removed from reserve, or from any predisposition to gloom. Andat this moment I recall a remarkable illustration of what I am saying, communicated by Wordsworth's accomplished friend, Sir George Beaumont. To _him_ I had been sketching the distressing sensitiveness of SirSidney pretty much as I have sketched it to the reader; and how he, the man that on the breach at Acre valued not the eye of Jew, Christian, or Turk, shrank back--_me ipso teste_--from the gentle, thougheager--from admiring, yet affectionate--glances of three very youngladies in Gay Street, Bath, the oldest (I should say) not more thanseventeen. Upon which Sir George mentioned, as a parallel experienceof his own, that Mr. Canning, being ceremoniously introduced to himself(Sir George) about the time when he had reached the meridian of hisfame as an orator, and should therefore have become _blasé_ to theextremity of being absolutely seared and case-hardened against allimpressions whatever appealing to his vanity or egotism, did absolutely(_credite posteri!_) blush like any roseate girl of fifteen. And thatthis was no accident growing out of a momentary agitation, no suddenspasmodic pang, anomalous and transitory, appeared from other concurrentanecdotes of Canning, reported by gentlemen from Liverpool, whodescribed to us most graphically and picturesquely the waywardfitfulness (not coquettish, or wilful, but nervously overmastering andmost unaffectedly distressing) which besieged this great artist inoratory, and the time approached--was coming--was going, at which theprivate signal should have been shown for proposing his health. Mr. P. (who had been, I think, the mayor on the particular occasionindicated) described the restlessness of his manner; how he rose, andretired for half a minute into a little parlor behind the chairman'sseat; then came back; then whispered, _Not yet I beseech you; I cannotface them yet;_ then sipped a little water, then moved uneasily onhis chair, saying, _One moment, if you please: stop, stop: don't hurry:one moment, and I shall be up to the mark:_ in short, fighting withthe necessity of taking the final plunge, like one who lingers on thescaffold. 

Sir Sidney was at the time slender and thin; having an appearance ofemaciation, as though he had suffered hardships and ill treatment, which, however, I do not remember to have heard. Meantime, hisappearance, connected with his recent history, made him a veryinteresting person to women; and to this hour it remains a mysterywith me, why and how it came about, that in every distribution ofhonors Sir Sidney Smith was overlooked. In the Mediterranean he mademany enemies, especially amongst those of his own profession, who usedto speak of him as far too fine a gentleman, and above his calling. Certain it is that he liked better to be doing business on shore, asat Acre, although he commanded a fine 80 gun ship, the Tiger. Buthowever that may have been, his services, whether classed as militaryor naval, were memorably splendid. And, at that time, his connection, of whatsoever nature, with the late Queen Caroline had not occurred. So that altogether, to me, his case is inexplicable. 

From the Bath Grammar School I was removed, in consequence of anaccident, by which at first it was supposed that my skull had beenfractured; and the surgeon who attended me at one time talked oftrepanning. This was an awful word; but at present I doubt whether inreality any thing very serious had happened. In fact, I was alwaysunder a nervous panic for my head, and certainly exaggerated my internalfeelings without meaning to do so; and this misled the medicalattendants. During a long illness which succeeded, my mother, amongstother books past all counting, read to me, in Hoole's translation, thewhole of the "Orlando Furioso;" meaning by _the whole_ the entiretwenty-four books into which Hoole had condensed the original forty-sixof Ariosto; and, from my own experience at that time, I am disposedto think that the homeliness of this version is an advantage, from notcalling off the attention at all from the narration to the narrator. At this time also I first read the "Paradise Lost;" but, oddly enough, in the edition of Bentley, that great _paradiorthotaes_, (orpseudo-restorer of the text. ) At the close of my illness, the headmaster called upon my mother, in company with his son-in-law, Mr. Wilkins, as did a certain Irish Colonel Bowes, who had sons at theschool, requesting earnestly, in terms most flattering to myself, thatI might be suffered to remain there. But it illustrates my mother'smoral austerity, that she was shocked at my hearing compliments to myown merits, and was altogether disturbed at what doubtless thesegentlemen expected to see received with maternal pride. She declinedto let me continue at the Bath School; and I went to another, atWinkfield, in the county of Wilts, of which the chief recommendationlay in the religious character of the master. 

FOOTNOTES

[1] "_Grammar School_. "--By the way, as the grammar schools of Englandare amongst her most eminent distinctions, and, with submission to theinnumerable wretches (gentlemen I should say) that hate England "worsethan toad or asp, " have never been rivalled by any correspondinginstitutions in other lands, I may as well take this opportunity ofexplaining the word _grammar_, which most people misapprehend. Mensuppose a grammar school to mean a school where they teach grammar. Butthis is not the true meaning, and tends to calumniate such schools byignoring their highest functions. Limiting by a false limitation theearliest object contemplated by such schools, they obtain a plausiblepretext for representing all beyond grammar as something extraneous andcasual that did not enter into the original or normal conception of thefounders, and that may therefore have been due to alien suggestion. Butnow, when Suetonius writes a little book, bearing this title, "DeIllustribus Grammaticis, " what does he mean? What is it that he promises?A memoir upon the eminent _grammarians_ of Rome? Not at all, but a memoirupon the distinguished literati of Rome. _Grammatica_ does certainly meansometimes grammar; but it is also the best Latin word for literature. A_grammaticus_ is what the French express by the word _litterateur_. Weunfortunately have no corresponding term in English: a _man of letters_is our awkward periphrasis in the singular, (too apt, as our jest booksremind us, to suggest the postman;) whilst in the plural we resort to theLatin word _literati_. The school which professes to teach _grammatica_, professes, therefore, the culture of literature in the widest and mostliberal extent, and is opposed _generically_ to schools for teachingmechanic arts; and, within its own _sub-genus_ of schools dedicated toliberal objects, is opposed to schools for teaching mathematics, or, morewidely, to schools for teaching science. 

[2] "_Class_, " or "_form_. "--One knows not how to make one's selfintelligible, so different are the terms locally. 

[3] To _them_ in the next stage of the ward succeeded Sir MichaelSeymour, and Lord Cochrane, (the present Earl of Dundonald, ) and LordCamelford. The two last were the regular fireeaters of the day. SirHoratio Nelson being already an admiral, was no longer looked to forinsulated exploits of brilliant adventure: his name was now connectedwith larger and combined attacks, less dashing and adventurous, becauseincluding heavier responsibilities. 

[4] Lord Camelford was, I believe, his first cousin; Sir Sidney's motherand Lady Camelford being sisters. But Lord Camelford was then absent fromBath. 

CHAPTER VI. 

I ENTER THE WORLD. 

Yes, at this stage of my life, viz. , in my fifteenth year, and fromthis sequestered school, ankle deep I first stepped into the world. At Winkfield I had staid about a year, or not much more, when I receiveda letter from a young friend of my own age, Lord Westport, [1] the son ofLord Altamont, inviting me to accompany him to Ireland for the ensuingsummer and autumn. This invitation was repeated by his tutor; and mymother, after some consideration, allowed me to accept it. 

In the spring of 1800, accordingly, I went up to Eton, for the purposeof joining my friend. Here I several times visited the gardens of thequeen's villa at Frogmore; and, privileged by my young friend'sintroduction, I had opportunities of seeing and hearing the queen andall the princesses; which at that time was a novelty in my life, naturally a good deal prized. Lord Westport's mother had been, beforeher marriage, Lady Louisa Howe, daughter to the great admiral, EarlHowe, and intimately known to the royal family, who, on her account, took a continual and especial notice of her son. 

On one of these occasions I had the honor of a brief interview withthe king. Madame De Campan mentions, as an amusing incident in herearly life, though terrific at the time, and overwhelming to her senseof shame, that not long after her establishment at Versailles, in theservice of some one amongst the daughters of Louis XV. , having as yetnever seen the king, she was one day suddenly introduced to hisparticular notice, under the following circumstances: The time wasmorning; the young lady was not fifteen; her spirits were as the spiritsof a fawn in May; her _tour_ of duty for the day was either not come, or was gone; and, finding herself alone in a spacious room, what morereasonable thing could she do than amuse herself with _making cheeses?_that is, whirling round, according to a fashion practised by youngladies both in France and England, and pirouetting until the petticoatis inflated like a balloon, and then sinking into a courtesy. Mademoiselle was very solemnly rising from one of these courtesies, in the centre of her collapsing petticoats, when a slight noise alarmedher. Jealous of intruding eyes, yet not dreading more than a servantat worst, she turned, and, O Heavens! whom should she behold but hismost Christian majesty advancing upon her, with a brilliant suite ofgentlemen, young and old, equipped for the chase, who had been allsilent spectators of her performances? From the king to the last ofthe train, all bowed to her, and all laughed without restraint, asthey passed the abashed amateur of cheese making. But she, to speakHomerically, wished in that hour that the earth might gape and coverher confusion. Lord Westport and I were about the age of mademoiselle, and not much more decorously engaged, when a turn brought us full inview of a royal party coming along one of the walks at Frogmore. Wewere, in fact, theorizing and practically commenting on the art ofthrowing stones. Boys have a peculiar contempt for female attempts inthat way. For, besides that girls fling wide of the mark, with acertainty that might have won the applause of Galerius, [2] there is apeculiar sling and rotary motion of the arm in launching a stone, whichno girl ever _can_ attain. From ancient practice, I was somewhat ofa proficient in this art, and was discussing the philosophy of femalefailures, illustrating my doctrines with pebbles, as the case happenedto demand; whilst Lord Westport was practising on the peculiar whirlof the wrist with a shilling; when suddenly he turned the head of thecoin towards me with a significant glance, and in a low voice hemuttered some words, of which I caught "_Grace of God_, " "_France_[3] _and Ireland_, " "_Defender off the Faith, and so forth. _" This solemnrecitation of the legend on the coin was meant as a fanciful way ofapprising me that the king was approaching; for Lord W. Had himself lostsomewhat of the awe natural to a young person in a first situation ofthis nature, through his frequent admissions to the royal presence. Formy own part, I was as yet a stranger even to the king's person. I had, indeed, seen most or all the princesses in the way I have mentionedabove; and occasionally, in the streets of Windsor, the suddendisappearance of all hats from all heads had admonished me that someroyal personage or other was then traversing (or, if not traversing, wascrossing) the street; but either his majesty had never been of the party, or, from distance, I had failed to distinguish him. Now, for the firsttime, I was meeting him nearly face to face; for, though the walk weoccupied was not that in which the royal party were moving, it ran sonear it, and was connected by so many cross walks at short intervals, that it was a matter of necessity for us, as we were now observed, togo and present ourselves. What happened was pretty nearly as follows:The king, having first spoken with great kindness to my companion, inquiring circumstantially about his mother and grandmother, as personsparticularly well known to himself, then turned his eye upon me. Myname, it seems, had been communicated to him; he did not, therefore, inquire about that. Was I of Eton? This was his first question. Ireplied that I was not, but hoped I should be. Had I a father living?I had not: my father had been dead about eight years. "But you havea mother?" I had. "And she thinks of sending you to Eton?" I answered, that she had expressed such an intention in my hearing; but I was notsure whether that might not be in order to waive an argument with theperson to whom she spoke, who happened to have been an Etonian. "O, but all people think highly of Eton; every body praises Eton. Yourmother does right to inquire; there can be no harm in that; but themore she inquires, the more she will be satisfied--that I can answerfor. "

Next came a question which had been suggested by my name. Had my familycome into England with the Huguenots at the revocation of the edictof Nantz? This was a tender point with me: of all things I could notendure to be supposed of French descent; yet it was a vexation I hadconstantly to face, as most people supposed that my name argued aFrench origin; whereas a Norman origin argued pretty certainly anorigin _not_ French. I replied, with some haste, "Please your majesty, the family has been in England since the conquest. " It is probablethat I colored, or showed some mark of discomposure, with which, however, the king was not displeased, for he smiled, and said, "Howdo you know that?" Here I was at a loss for a moment how to answer;for I was sensible that it did not become me to occupy the king'sattention with any long stories or traditions about a subject sounimportant as my own family; and yet it was necessary that I shouldsay something, unless I would be thought to have denied my Huguenotdescent upon no reason or authority. After a moment's hesitation, Isaid, in effect, that the family from which I traced my descent hadcertainly been a great and leading one at the era of the barons' wars, as also in one at least of the crusades; and that I had myself seenmany notices of this family, not only in books of heraldry, &c. , butin the very earliest of all English books. "And what book was that?""Robert of Gloucester's 'Metrical Chronicle, ' which I understood, frominternal evidence, to have been written about 1280. " The king smiledagain, and said, "I know, I know. " But what it was that he knew, longafterwards puzzled me to conjecture. I now imagine, however, that hemeant to claim a knowledge of the book I referred to--a thing whichat that time I thought improbable, supposing the king's acquaintancewith literature not to be very extensive, nor likely to havecomprehended any knowledge at all of the blackletter period. But inthis belief I was greatly mistaken, as I was afterwards fully convincedby the best evidence from various quarters. That library of 120, 000volumes, which George IV. Presented to the nation, and which has sincegone to swell the collection at the British Museum, had been formed(as I was often assured by persons to whom the whole history of thelibrary, and its growth from small rudiments, was familiarly known)under the direct personal superintendence of George III. It was afavorite and pet creation; and his care extended even to the dressingof the books in appropriate bindings, and (as one man told me) to their_health_; explaining himself to mean, that in any case where a bookwas worm-eaten, or touched however slightly with the worm, the kingwas anxious to prevent the injury from extending, or from infectingothers by close neighborhood; for it is supposed by many that suchinjuries spread rapidly in favorable situations. One of my informantswas a German bookbinder of great respectability, settled in London, and for many years employed by the Admiralty as a confidential binderof records or journals containing secrets of office, &c. Through thisconnection he had been recommended to the service of his majesty, whomhe used to see continually in the course of his attendance at BuckinghamHouse, where the books were deposited. This artist had (originally inthe way of his trade) become well acquainted with the money value ofEnglish books; and that knowledge cannot be acquired without someconcurrent knowledge of their subject and their kind of merit. Accordingly, he was tolerably well qualified to estimate any man'sattainments as a reading man; and from him I received suchcircumstantial accounts of many conversations he had held with theking, evidently reported with entire good faith and simplicity, thatI cannot doubt the fact of his majesty's very general acquaintancewith English literature. Not a day passed, whenever the king happenedto be at Buckingham House, without his coming into the binding room, and minutely inspecting the progress of the binder and his allies--the gilders, toolers, &c. From the outside of the book the transitionwas natural to its value in the scale of bibliography; and in that waymy informant had ascertained that the king was well acquainted, notonly with Robert of Gloucester, but with all the other early chronicles, published by Hearne, and, in fact, possessed that entire series whichrose at one period to so enormous a price. From this person I learnedafterwards that the king prided himself especially upon his earlyfolios of Shakspeare; that is to say, not merely upon the excellenceof the individual copies in a bibliographical sense, as "_tall_ copies"and having large margins, &c. , but chiefly from their value in relationto the most authentic basis for the text of the poet. And thus itappears, that at least two of our kings, Charles I. And George III. , have made it their pride to profess a reverential esteem for Shakspeare. This bookbinder added his attestation to the truth (or to the generallyreputed truth) of a story which I had heard from other authority, viz. , that the librarian, or, if not officially the librarian, at least thechief director in every thing relating to the books, was an illegitimateson of Frederic, Prince of Wales, (son to George II. , ) and thereforehalf-brother of the king. His own taste and inclinations, it seemed, concurred with his brother's wishes in keeping him in a subordinaterank and an obscure station; in which, however, he enjoyed affluencewithout anxiety, or trouble, or courtly envy, and the luxury, whichhe most valued, of a superb library. He lived and died, I have heard, as plain Mr. Barnard. At one time I disbelieved the story, (whichpossibly may have been long known to the public, ) on the ground thateven George III. Would not have differed so widely from princes ingeneral as to leave a brother of his own, however unaspiring, whollyundistinguished by public honors. But having since ascertained thata naval officer, well known to my own family, and to a naval brotherof my own in particular, by assistance rendered to him repeatedly whena midshipman in changing his ship, was undoubtedly an illegitimate sonof George III. , and yet that he never rose higher than the rank ofpost captain, though privately acknowledged by his father and othermembers of the royal family, I found the insufficiency of thatobjection. The fact is, and it does honor to the king's memory, hereverenced the moral feelings of his country, which are, in this andin all points of domestic morals, severe and high toned, (I say itin defiance of writers, such as Lord Byron, Mr. Hazlitt, &c. , who hatedalike the just and the unjust pretensions of England, ) in a degreeabsolutely incomprehensible to _Southern_ Europe. He had his frailtieslike other children of Adam; but he did not seek to fix the publicattention upon them, after the fashion of Louis Quatorze, or our CharlesII. , and so many other continental princes. There were living witnesses(more than one) of _his_ aberrations as of theirs; but he, with betterfeelings than they, did not choose, by placing these witnesses upona pedestal of honor, surmounted by heraldic trophies, to emblazon hisown transgressions to coming generations, and to force back the gazeof a remote posterity upon his own infirmities. It was his ambitionto be the _father_ of his people in a sense not quite so literal. Thesewere things, however, of which at that time I had not heard. 

During the whole dialogue, I did not even once remark that hesitationand iteration of words generally attributed to George III. ; indeed, _so_ generally, that it must often have existed; but in this case, Isuppose that the brevity of his sentences operated to deliver him fromany embarrassment of utterance, such as might have attended longer andmore complex sentences, where some anxiety was natural to overtake thethoughts as they arose. When we observed that the king had paused inhis stream of questions, which succeeded rapidly to each other, weunderstood it as a signal of dismissal; and making a profound obeisance, we retired backwards a few steps. His majesty smiled in a very graciousmanner, waved his hand towards us, and said something (I did not knowwhat) in a peculiarly kind accent; he then turned round, and the wholeparty along with him; which set us at liberty without impropriety toturn to the right about ourselves, and make our egress from the gardens. 

This incident, to me at my age, was very naturally one of considerableinterest. One reflection it suggested afterwards, which was this: Couldit be likely that much truth of a general nature, bearing upon man andsocial interests, could ever reach the ear of a king, under the etiquetteof a court, and under that one rule which seemed singly sufficient toforeclose all natural avenues to truth?--the rule, I mean, by which it isforbidden to address a question to the king. I was well aware, before Isaw him, that in the royal presence, like the dead soldier in Lucan, whomthe mighty necromancing witch tortures back into a momentary life, I musthave no voice except for _answers_:--

 "Vox illi linguaque tantum _Responsura_ datur. " [4]

I was to originate nothing myself; and at my age, before so exalteda personage, the mere instincts of reverential demeanor would at anyrate have dictated such a rule. But what becomes of that man's generalcondition of mind in relation to all the great objects moving on thefield of human experience, where it is a law generally for almost allwho approach him, that they shall confine themselves to replies, absolute responses, or, at most, to a prosecution or carrying forwardof a proposition delivered by the _protagonist_, or supreme leader ofthe conversation? For it must be remembered that, generally speaking, the effect of putting no question is to transfer into the other party'shands the entire _originating_ movement of the dialogue; and thus, ina musical metaphor, the great man is the sole modulator and determinerof the key in which the conversation proceeds. It is true, thatsometimes, by travelling a little beyond the question in your answer, you may enlarge the basis, so as to bring up some new train of thoughtwhich you wish to introduce, and may suggest fresh matter as effectuallyas if you had the liberty of more openly guiding the conversation, whether by way of question or by direct origination of a topic; butthis depends on skill to improve an opening, or vigilance to seize itat the instant, and, after all, much upon accident; to say nothing ofthe crime, (a sort of petty treason, perhaps, or, what is it?) if youshould be detected in your "improvements" and "enlargements of basis. "The king might say, "Friend, I must tell my attorney general to speakwith you, for I detect a kind of treason in your replies. They go toofar. They include something which tempts my majesty to a notice; whichis, in fact, for the long and the short of it, that you have beencircumventing me half unconsciously into answering a question whichhas silently been insinuated by _you_. " Freedom of communication, unfettered movement of thought, there can be none under such a ritual, which tends violently to a Byzantine, or even to a Chinese result offreezing, as it were, all natural and healthy play of the facultiesunder the petrific mace of absolute ceremonial and fixed precedent. For it will hardly be objected, that the privileged condition of a fewofficial councillors and state ministers, whose hurry and oppressionof thought from public care will rarely allow them to speak on anyother subject than business, _can_ be a remedy large enough for solarge an evil. True it is, that a peculiarly frank or jovial temperamentin a sovereign may do much for a season to thaw this punctilious reserveand ungenial constraint; but _that_ is an accident, and personal toan individual. And, on the other hand, to balance even this, it maybe remarked, that, in all noble and fashionable society, where therehappens to be a pride in sustaining what is deemed a good _tone_ inconversation, it is peculiarly aimed at, (and even artificiallymanaged, ) that no lingering or loitering upon one theme, no protracteddiscussion, shall be allowed. And, doubtless, as regards merely thetreatment of convivial or purely _social_ communication of ideas, (which also is a great art, ) this practice is right. I admit willinglythat an uncultured brute, who is detected at an elegant table in theatrocity of absolute discussion or disputation, ought to be summarilyremoved by a police officer; and possibly the law will warrant hisbeing held to bail for one or two years, according to the enormity ofhis case. But men are not always enjoying, or seeking to enjoy, socialpleasure; they seek also, and have need to seek continually, boththrough books and men, intellectual growth, fresh power, fresh strength, to keep themselves ahead or abreast of this moving, surging, billowingworld of ours; especially in these modern times, when society revolvesthrough so many new phases, and shifts its aspects with so much morevelocity than in past ages. A king, especially of this country, needs, beyond most other men, to keep himself in a continual state ofcommunication, as it were, by some vital and _organic_ sympathy, withthe most essential of these changes. And yet this punctilio ofetiquette, like some vicious forms of law or technical fictions growntoo narrow for the age, which will not allow of cases coming beforethe court in a shape desired alike by the plaintiff and the defendant, is so framed as to defeat equally the wishes of a prince disposed togather knowledge wherever he can find it, and of those who may be bestfitted to give it. 

For a few minutes on three other occasions, before we finally quittedEton, I again saw the king, and always with renewed interest. He waskind to every body--condescending and affable in a degree which I ambound to remember with personal gratitude; and one thing I _had_ heardof him, which even then, and much more as my mind opened to a widercompass of deeper reflection, won my respect. I have always reverenceda man of whom it could be truly said that he had once, and once only, (for more than once implies another unsoundness in the quality of thepassion, ) been desperately in love; in love, that is to say, in aterrific excess, so as to dally, under suitable circumstances, withthe thoughts of cutting his own throat, or even (as the case might be)the throat of her whom he loved above all this world. It will beunderstood that I am not justifying such enormities; on the contrary, they are wrong, exceedingly wrong; but it is evident that people ingeneral feel pretty much as I do, from the extreme sympathy with whichthe public always pursue the fate of any criminal who has committeda murder of this class, even though tainted (as generally it is) withjealousy, which, in itself, wherever it argues habitual mistrust, isan ignoble passion. [5]

Great passions, (do not understand me, reader, as though I meant greatappetites, ) passions moving in a great orbit, and transcending littleregards, are always arguments of some latent nobility. There are, indeed, but few men and few women capable of great passions, or(properly speaking) of passions at all. Hartley, in his mechanism ofthe human mind, propagates the sensations by means of vibrations, andby miniature vibrations, which, in a Roman form for such miniatures, he terms _vibratiuncles_. Now, of men and women generally, parodyingthat terminology, we ought to say--not that they are governed bypassions, or at all capable of passions, but of _passiuncles_. Andthence it is that few men go, or can go, beyond a little _love-liking_, as it is called; and hence also, that, in a world where so littleconformity takes place between the ideal speculations of men and thegross realities of life, where marriages are governed in so vast aproportion by convenience, prudence, self-interest, --any thing, inshort, rather than deep sympathy between the parties, --and, consequently, where so many men must be crossed in their inclinations, we yet hear of so few tragic catastrophes on that account. The king, however, was certainly among the number of those who are susceptibleof a deep passion, if every thing be true that is reported of him. Allthe world has heard that he was passionately devoted to the beautifulsister of the then Duke of Richmond. That was before his marriage; andI believe it is certain that he not only wished, but sincerelymeditated, to have married her. So much is matter of notoriety. Butother circumstances of the case have been sometimes reported, whichimply great distraction of mind and a truly profound possession of hisheart by that early passion; which, in a prince whose feelings areliable so much to the dispersing and dissipating power of endlessinterruption from new objects and fresh claims on the attention, coupledalso with the fact that he never, but in this one case, professed anything amounting to extravagant or frantic attachment, do seem to arguethat the king was truly and passionately in love with Lady Sarah Lennox. He had a _demon_ upon him, and was under a real _possession_. If so, what a lively expression of the mixed condition of human fortunes, andnot less of another truth equally affecting, viz. , the dread conflictswith the will, the mighty agitations which silently and in darknessare convulsing many a heart, where, to the external eye, all istranquil, --that this king, at the very threshold of his public career, at the very moment when he was binding about his brows the goldencircle of sovereignty, when Europe watched him with interest, and thekings of the earth with envy, not one of the vulgar titles to happinessbeing wanting, --youth, health, a throne the most splendid on thisplanet, general popularity amongst a nation of freemen, and the hopewhich belongs to powers as yet almost untried, --that, even under thesemost flattering auspices, he should be called upon to make a sacrificethe most bitter of all to which human life is liable! He made it; andhe might then have said to his people, "For you, and to my publicduties, I have made a sacrifice which none of you would have made forme. " In years long ago, I have heard a woman of rank recurring to thecircumstances of Lady Sarah's first appearance at court after theking's marriage. If I recollect rightly, it occurred after that lady'sown marriage with Sir Charles Bunbury. Many eyes were upon both partiesat that moment, --female eyes, especially, --and the speaker did notdisguise the excessive interest with which she herself observed them. Lady Sarah was not agitated, but the king _was_. He seemed anxious, sensibly trembled, changed color, and _shivered_, as Lady S. B. Drewnear. But, to quote the one single eloquent sentiment, which I rememberafter a lapse of thirty years, in Monk Lewis's Romantic Tales, "Inthis world all things pass away; blessed be Heaven, and the bitterpangs by which sometimes it is pleased to recall its wanderers, evenour passions pass away!" And thus it happened that this storm also waslaid asleep and forgotten, together with so many others of its kindthat have been, and that shall be again, so long as man is man, andwoman woman. Meantime, in justification of a passion so profound, onewould be glad to think highly of the lady that inspired it; and, therefore, I heartily hope that the insults offered to her memory inthe scandalous "Memoirs of the Duc de Lauzun" are mere calumnies, andrecords rather of his presumptuous wishes than of any actual successes. [6]

However, to leave dissertation behind me, and to resume the thread ofmy narrative, an incident, which about this period impressed me evenmore profoundly than my introduction to a royal presence, was my firstvisit to London. 

FOOTNOTES

[1] My acquaintance with Lord Westport was of some years' standing. Myfather, whose commercial interests led him often to Ireland, had manyfriends there. One of these was a country gentleman connected with thewest; and at his house I first met Lord Westport. 

[2] "Sir, " said the emperor to a soldier who had missed the target insuccession I know not how many times, (suppose we say fifteen, ) "allow meto offer my congratulations on the truly admirable skill you have shownin keeping clear of the mark. Not to have hit once in so many trials, argues the most splendid talents for missing. "

[3] _France_ was at that time among the royal titles, the act foraltering the king's style and title not having then passed. As connectedwith this subject, I may here mention a project (reported to have beencanvassed in council at the time when that alteration _did_ take place)for changing the title from king to emperor. What then occurredstrikingly illustrates the general character of the British policy as toall external demonstrations of pomp and national pretension, and itsstrong opposition to that of France under corresponding circumstances. The principle _of esse quam videri_, and the carelessness about nameswhen the thing is unaffected, generally speaking, must command praise andrespect. Yet, considering how often the reputation of power becomes, forinternational purposes, nothing less than power itself, and that words, in many relations of human life, are emphatically things, and sometimesare so to the exclusion of the most absolute things themselves, men ofall qualities being often governed by names, the policy of France seemsthe wiser, viz. , _se faire valoir_, even at the price of ostentation. But, at all events, no man is entitled to exercised that extrem candor, forbearance, and spirit of ready concession _in re aliena_, and, aboveall, _in re politica_, which, on its own account, might be altogetherhonorable. The council might give away their own honors, but not yoursand mine. On a public (or at least on a foreign) interest, it is the dutyof a good citizen to be lofty, exacting, almost insolent. And, on thisprinciple, when the ancient style and title of the kingdom fell underrevision, if--as I do not deny--it was advisable to retrench all obsoletepretensions as so many memorials of a greatness that in that particularmanifestation was now extinct, and therefore, _pro tanto_, ratherpresumtions of weakness than of strength as being mementoes of ourlosses, yet, on the other hand, all countervailing claims which had sincearisen, and had far more than equiponderated the declension in that onedirection, should have been then adopted into the titular heraldry of thenation. It was neither wise nor just to insult foreign nations withassumptions which no longer stood upon any basis of reality. And on thatground _France_ was, perhaps, rightly omitted. But why, when the crownwas thus remoulded, and its jewelry unset, if this one pearl were to besurrendered as an ornament no longer ours, why, we may ask, were not themany and gorgeous jewels, achieved by the national wisdom and power inlater times, adopted into the recomposed tiara? Upon what principle didthe Romans, the wisest among the children of this world, leave so manyinscriptions, as records of their power or their triumphs, upon columns, arches, temples, _basilicae_, or medals? A national act, a solemn anddeliberate act, delivered to history, is a more imperishable monumentthan any made by hands; and the title, as revised, which ought to haveexpressed a change in the dominion simply as to the mode and form of itsexpansion, now remains as a false, base, abject confession of absolutecontraction: once we had A, B, and C; now we have dwindled into A and B:true, most unfaithful guardian of the national honors, we had lost C, andthat you were careful to remember. But we happend to have gained D, E, F, --and so downwards to Z, --all of which duly you forgot. 

On this argument, it was urged at the time, in high quarters, that thenew re-cast of the crown and sceptre should come out of the furnace_equally_ improved; as much for what they were authorized to claim as forwhat they were compelled to disclaim. And, as one mode of effecting this, it was proposed that the king should become an emperor. Some, indeed, alleged that an emperor, but its very idea, as received in the Chanceryof Europe, presupposes a king paramount over vassal or tributary kings. But it is a sufficient answer to say that an emperor is a prince, unitedin his own person the _thrones_ of several distinct kingdoms; and ineffect we adopt that view of the case in giving the title of imperial tothe parliament, or common assembly of the three kingdoms. However, thetitle of the prince was a matter trivial in comparison of the title ofhis _ditio_, or extent of jurisdiction. This point admits of a strikingillustration: in the "Paradise Regained, " Milton has given us, in closesuccession, three matchless pictures of civil grandeur, as exemplified inthree different modes by three different states. Availing himself of thebrief scriptural notice, --"The devil taketh him up into an exceeding highmountain, and showeth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory ofthem, "--he causes to pass, as in a solemn pageant before us, the twomilitary empires then coexisting, of Parthia and Rome, and finally (underanother idea of political greatness) the intellectual glories of Athens. From the picture of the Roman grandeur I extract, and beg the reader toweigh, the following lines:--

 "Thence to the gates cast round thine eye, and see--at What conflux issuing forth or entering in; Pretors, proconsuls, to their provinces Hasting, or on return in robes of state; Lictors and rods, the ensigns of their power; Legions or cohorts, turns of horse and wings; Or embassies from regions far remote, In various habits on the Appian road, Or on the Emilian; some from farthest south, Syene, and where the shadow both way falls, Meroë, Nilotic isle: and, more to west, The realm of Bocchus to the Blackmoor Sea; From India and the Golden Chersonese, And utmost Indian isle, Taprobane, --Dusk faces with white silken turbans wreathed; From Gallia, Gades, and the British, west, Germans, and Scythians, and Sarmatians, north, Beyond Danubius to the Tauric pool. "

With this superb picture, or abstraction of the Roman pomps and power, when ascending to their utmost altitude, confront the followingrepresentative sketch of a great English levee on some high solemnity, suppose the king's birthday: "Amongst the presentations to his majesty, we noticed Lord O. S. , the governor general of India, on his departurefor Bengal; Mr. U. Z. , with an address from the Upper and Lower Canadas;Sir L. V. , on his appointment as commander of the forces in Nova Scotia;General Sir ----, on his return from the Burmese war, ["the GoldenChersonese, "] the commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean fleet; Mr. B. Z. , on his appointment to the chief justiceship at Madras; Sir R. G. , thelate attorney general at the Cape of Good Hope; General Y. X. , on takingleave for the governorship of Ceylon, ["the utmost Indian isle, Taprobane;"] Lord F. M. , the bearer of the last despatches from headquarters in Spain; Col. P. , on going out as captain general of the forcesin New Holland; Commodore St. L. , on his return from a voyage ofdiscovery towards the north pole; the King of Owhyhee, attended bychieftains from the other islands of that cluster; Col. M'P. , on hisreturn from the war in Ashantee, upon which occasion the gallant colonelpresented the treaty and tribute from that country; Admiral ----, on hisappointment to the Baltic fleet; Captain O. N. , with despatches from theRed Sea, advising the destruction of the piratical armament andsettlements in that quarter, as also in the Persian Gulf; Sir T. O'N. , the late resident in Nepaul, to present his report of the war in thatterritory, and in adjacent regions--names as yet unknown in Europe; thegovernor of the Leeward Islands, on departing for the West Indies;various deputations with petitions, addresses, &c. , from islands inremote quarters of the globe, amongst which we distinguished those fromPrince Edward Island, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, from, the Mauritius, from Java, from the British settlement in Terra del Fuego, from theChristian churches in the Society, Friendly, and Sandwich Islands--aswell as other groups less known in the South Seas; Admiral H. A. , onassuming the command of the Channel fleet; Major Gen. X. L. , on resigningthe lieutenant governorship of Gibraltar; Hon. G. F. , on going out assecretary to the governor of Malta, " &c. 

This sketch, too hastily made up, is founded upon a base of a very fewyears; _i. E. _, we have, in one or two instances, placed in juxtaposition, as coexistences, events separated by a few years. But if (like Milton'spicture of the Roman grandeur) the abstraction had been made from a baseof thirty years in extent, and had there been added to the picture(according to his precedent) the many and remote embassies to and fromindependent states, in all quarters of the earth, with how many moregroups might the spectacle have been crowded, and especially of those whofall within that most picturesque delineation--

 "Dusk faces with white silken turbans wreathed"!

As it is, I have noticed hardly any places but such as lie absolutelywithin our jurisdiction. And yet, even under that limitation, how vastlymore comprehensive is the chart of British dominion than of the Roman! Tothis gorgeous empire, some corresponding style and title should have beenadapted at the revision of the old title, and should yet be adapted. 

_Apropos_ of the proposed change in the king's title: Coleridge, on beingassured that the new title of the king was to be Emperor of the BritishIslands and their dependencies, and on the coin _Imperator Britanniarum_, remarked, that, in this remanufactured form, the title might be said tobe _japanned_; alluding to this fact, that amongst _insular_ sovereigns, the only one known to Christian diplomacy by the title of emperor is theSovereign of Japan. 

[4] For the sake of those who are no classical scholars, I explain: Voiceand language are restored to him only to the extent of _replying_. 

[5] Accordingly, Coleridge has contended, and I think with truth, thatthe passion of Othello is _not_ jealousy. So much I know by report, asthe _result_ of a lecture which he read at the Royal Institution. Hisarguments I did not hear. To me it is evident that Othello's state offeeling was not that of a degrading, suspicious rivalship, but the stateof perfect misery, arising out of this dilemma, the most affecting, perhaps, to contemplate of any which _can_ exist, viz. , the direnecessity of loving without limit one whom the heart pronounces to beunworthy of that love. 

[6] That book, I am aware, is generally treated as a forgery; butinternal evidence, drawn from the tone and quality of the revelationsthere made, will not allow me to think it altogether such. There is an_abandon_ and carelessness in parts which mark its sincerity. Itsauthenticity I cannot doubt. But _that_ proves nothing for the truth ofthe particular stories which it contains. A book of scandalous anddefamatory stories, especially where the writer has had the baseness tobetray the confidence reposed in his honor by women, and to boast offavors alleged to have been granted him, it is always fair to consider as_ipso facto_ a tissue of falsehoods: and on the following argument, thatthese are exposures which, even if true, none but the basest of men wouldhave made. Being, therefore, on the hypothesis most favorable to hisveracity, the basest of men, the author is self-denounced as vile enoughto have forged the stories, and cannot complain if he should be roundlyaccused of doing that which he has taken pains to prove himself capableof doing. This way of arguing might be applied with fatal effect to theDuc de Lauzun's "Memoirs, " supposing them written with a view topublication. But, by possibility, that was not the case. The Duc de L. Terminated his profligate life, as is well known, on the scaffold, duringthe storms of the French revolution; and nothing in his whole career wonhim so much credit as the way in which he closed it; for he went to hisdeath with a romantic carelessness, and even gayety of demeanor. His"Memoirs" were not published by himself: the publication was posthumous;and by whom authorized, or for what purpose, is not exactly known. Probably the manuscript fell into mercenary hands, and was publishedmerely on a speculation of pecuniary gain. From some passages, however, Icannot but infer that the writer did not mean to bring it before thepublic, but wrote it rather as a series of private memoranda, to aid hisown recollection of circumstances and dates. The Duc de Lauzun's accountof his intrigue with Lady Sarah goes so far as to allege, that he rodedown in disguise, from London to Sir Charles B. 's country seat, agreeablyto a previous assignation, and that he was admitted, by that lady'sconfidential attendant, through a back staircase, at the time when SirCharles (a fox hunter, but a man of the highest breeding and fashion) washimself at home, and occupied in the duties of hospitality. 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE NATION OF LONDON. 

It was a most heavenly day in May of the year (1800) when I firstbeheld and first entered this mighty wilderness, the city--no, not thecity, but the nation--of London. Often since then, at distances of twoand three hundred miles or more from this colossal emporium of men, wealth, arts, and intellectual power, have I felt the sublime expressionof her enormous magnitude in one simple form of ordinary occurrence, viz. , in the vast droves of cattle, suppose upon the great north roads, all with their heads directed to London, and expounding the size ofthe attracting body, together with the force of its attractive power, by the never-ending succession of these droves, and the remotenessfrom the capital of the lines upon which they were moving. A suctionso powerful, felt along radii so vast, and a consciousness, at thesame time, that upon other radii still more vast, both by land and bysea, the same suction is operating, night and day, summer and winter, and hurrying forever into one centre the infinite means needed for herinfinite purposes, and the endless tributes to the skill or to theluxury of her endless population, crowds the imagination with a pompto which there is nothing corresponding upon this planet, either amongstthe things that have been or the things that are. Or, if any exceptionthere is, it must be sought in ancient Rome. [1] We, upon this occasion, were in an open carriage, and, chiefly (as I imagine) to avoid the dust, we approached London by rural lanes, where any such could be found, or, at least, along by-roads, quiet and shady, collateral to the main roads. In that mode of approach we missed some features of the sublimitybelonging to any of the common approaches upon a main road; we missed thewhirl and the uproar, the tumult and the agitation, which continuallythicken and thicken throughout the last dozen miles before you reach thesuburbs. Already at three stages' distance, (say 40 miles from London, )upon some of the greatest roads, the dim presentment of some vast capitalreaches you obscurely and like a misgiving. This blind sympathy with amighty but unseen object, some vast magnetic range of Alps, in yourneighborhood, continues to increase you know not now. Arrived at the laststation for changing horses, Barnet, suppose, on one of the north roads, or Hounslow on the western, you no longer think (as in all other places)of naming the next stage; nobody says, on pulling up, "Horses on toLondon"--that would sound ludicrous; one mighty idea broods over allminds, making it impossible to suppose any other destination. Launchedupon this final stage, you soon begin to feel yourself entering thestream as it were of a Norwegian _maelstrom_; and the stream at lengthbecomes the rush of a cataract. What is meant by the Latin word_trepidatio_? Not any thing peculiarly connected with panic; it belongsas much to the hurrying to and fro of a coming battle as of a comingflight; to a marriage festival as much as to a massacre; _agitation_ isthe nearest English word. This _trepidation_ increases both audibly andvisibly at every half mile, pretty much as one may suppose the roar ofNiagara and the thrilling of the ground to grow upon the senses in thelast ten miles of approach, with the wind in its favor, until at lengthit would absorb and extinguish all other sounds whatsoever. Finally, formiles before you reach a suburb of London such as Islington, forinstance, a last great sign and augury of the immensity which belongsto the coming metropolis forces itself upon the dullest observer, inthe growing sense of his own utter insignificance. Every where elsein England, you yourself, horses, carriage, attendants, (if you travelwith any, ) are regarded with attention, perhaps even curiosity; at allevents, you are seen. But after passing the final posthouse on everyavenue to London, for the latter ten or twelve miles, you become awarethat you are no longer noticed: nobody sees you; nobody hears you;nobody regards you; you do not even regard yourself. In fact, howshould you, at the moment of first ascertaining your own totalunimportance in the sum of things?--a poor shivering unit in theaggregate of human life. Now, for the first time, whatever manner ofman you were, or seemed to be, at starting, squire or "squireen, " lordor lordling, and however related to that city, hamlet, or solitaryhouse from which yesterday or to-day you slipped your cable, beyonddisguise you find yourself but one wave in a total Atlantic, one plant(and a parasitical plant besides, needing alien props) in a forest ofAmerica. 

These are feelings which do not belong by preference to thoughtfulpeople--far less to people merely sentimental. No man ever was leftto himself for the first time in the streets, as yet unknown, of London, but he must have been saddened and mortified, perhaps terrified, bythe sense of desertion and utter loneliness which belong to hissituation. No loneliness can be like that which weighs upon the heartin the centre of faces never ending, without voice or utterance forhim; eyes innumerable, that have "no speculation" in their orbs which_he_ can understand; and hurrying figures of men and women weaving toand fro, with no apparent purposes intelligible to a stranger, seeminglike a mask of maniacs, or, oftentimes, like a pageant of phantoms. The great length of the streets in many quarters of London; thecontinual opening of transient glimpses into other vistas equally farstretching, going off at right angles to the one which you aretraversing; and the murky atmosphere which, settling upon the remoterend of every long avenue, wraps its termination in gloom anduncertainty, --all these are circumstances aiding that sense of vastnessand illimitable proportions which forever brood over the aspect ofLondon in its interior. Much of the feeling which belongs to the outsideof London, in its approaches for the last few miles, I had lost, inconsequence of the stealthy route of by-roads, lying near Uxbridge andWatford, through which we crept into the suburbs. But for that reason, the more abrupt and startling had been the effect of emerging somewhereinto the Edgeware Road, and soon afterwards into the very streets ofLondon itself; through _what_ streets, or even what quarter of London, is now totally obliterated from my mind, having perhaps never beencomprehended. All that I remember is one monotonous awe and blind senseof mysterious grandeur and Babylonian confusion, which seemed to pursueand to invest the whole equipage of human life, as we moved for nearlytwo [2] hours through streets; sometimes brought to anchor for tenminutes or more by what is technically called a "lock, " that is, a lineof carriages of every description inextricably massed, and obstructingeach other, far as the eye could stretch; and then, as if under anenchanter's rod, the "lock" seemed to thaw; motion spread with thefluent race of light or sound through the whole ice-bound mass, untilthe subtile influence reached _us_ also, who were again absorbed intothe great rush of flying carriages; or, at times, we turned off intosome less tumultuous street, but of the same mile-long character; and, finally, drawing up about noon, we alighted at some place, which isas little within my distinct remembrance as the route by which wereached it. 

For what had we come? To see London. And what were the limits withinwhich we proposed to crowd that little feat? At five o'clock we wereto dine at Porters ----, a seat of Lord Westport's grandfather; and, from the distance, it was necessary that we should leave London athalf past three; so that a little more than three hours were all wehad for London. Our charioteer, my friend's tutor, was summoned awayfrom us on business until that hour; and we were left, therefore, entirely to ourselves and to our own skill in turning the time to thebest account, for contriving (if such a thing were possible) to dosomething or other which, by any fiction of courtesy, or constructively, so as to satisfy a lawyer, or in a sense sufficient to win a wager, might be taken and received for having "seen London. "

What could be done? We sat down, I remember, in a mood of despondency, to consider. The spectacles were too many by thousands; _inopes noscopia fecit_; our very wealth made us poor; and the choice wasdistracted. But which of them all could be thought general orrepresentative enough to stand for the universe of London? We couldnot traverse the whole circumference of this mighty orb; that wasclear; and, therefore, the next best thing was to place ourselves asmuch as possible in some relation to the spectacles of London, whichmight answer to the centre. Yet how? That sounded well and metaphysical;but what did it mean if acted upon? What was the centre of London forany purpose whatever, latitudinarian or longitudinarian, literary, social, or mercantile, geographical, astronomical, or (as Mrs. Malapropkindly suggests) diabolical? Apparently that we should stay at ourinn; for in that way we seemed best to distribute our presence equallyamongst all, viz. , by going to none in particular. 

Three times in my life I have had my taste--that is, my sense ofproportions--memorably outraged. Once was by a painting of Cape Horn, which seemed almost treasonably below its rank and office in thisworld, as the terminal abutment of our mightiest continent, and alsothe hinge, as it were, of our greatest circumnavigations--of all, infact, which can be called _classical_ circumnavigations. To have"doubled Cape Horn"--at one time, what a sound it had! yet how ashamedwe should be if that cape were ever to be seen from the moon! A partyof Englishmen, I have heard, went up Mount Aetna, during the night, tobe ready for sunrise--a common practice with tourists both inSwitzerland, Wales, Cumberland, &c. ; but, as all must see who take thetrouble to reflect, not likely to repay the trouble; seeing that everything which offers a _picture_, when viewed from a station nearlyhorizontal, becomes a mere _map_ to an eye placed at an elevation of3000 feet above it; and so thought, in the sequel, the Aetna party. Thesun, indeed, rose visibly, and not more apparelled in clouds than wasdesirable; yet so disappointed were they, and so disgusted with thesun in particular, that they unanimously _hissed_ him; though, ofcourse, it was useless to cry "Off! off!" Here, however, the fault wasin their own erroneous expectations, and not in the sun, who, doubtless, did his best. For, generally, a sunrise and a sunset ought to be seenfrom the valley, or at most horizontally. [3] But as to Cape Horn, _that_(by comparison with its position and its functions) was really a disgraceto the planet; it is not the spectator that is in fault _here_, but theobject itself, the Birmingham cape. For, consider, it is not only the"specular mount, " keeping watch and ward over a sort of trinity ofoceans, and, by all tradition, the circumnavigator's gate of entrance tothe Pacific, but also it is the temple of the god Terminus for all theAmericas. So that, in relation to such dignities, it seemed to me, in thedrawing, a makeshift, put up by a carpenter, until the true Cape Hornshould be ready; or, perhaps, a drop scene from the opera house. This wasone case of disproportion: the others were--the final and ceremonialvalediction of Garrick, on retiring from his profession; and the PallMall inauguration of George IV. On the day of his accession [4] tothe throne. The utter _ir_relation, in both cases, of the audience tothe scene, (_audience_ I say, as say we must, for the sum of thespectators in the second instance, as well as of the auditors in thefirst, ) threw upon each a ridicule not to be effaced. It is in anycase impossible for an actor to say words of farewell to those forwhom he really designs his farewell. He cannot bring his true objectbefore himself. To whom is it that he would offer his last adieus? Weare told by one--who, if he loved Garrick, certainly did not loveGarrick's profession, nor would even, through _him_, have paid it anyundue compliment--that the retirement of this great artist had "eclipsedthe gayety of nations. " To nations, then, to his own generation, itwas that he owed his farewell; but, of a generation, what organ isthere which can sue or be sued, that can thank or be thanked? Neitherby fiction nor by delegation can you bring their bodies into court. A king's audience, on the other hand, _might_ be had as an authorizedrepresentative body. But, when we consider the composition of a casualand chance auditory, whether in a street or a theatre, --secondly, thesmall size of a modern audience, even in Drury Lane, (4500 at the most, )not by one eightieth part the _complement_ of the Circus Maximus, --mostof all, when we consider the want of symmetry or commensurateness, to anyextended duration of time, in the _acts_ of such an audience, which actslie in the vanishing expressions of its vanishing emotions, --acts soessentially fugitive, even when organized into an art and a tacticalsystem of _imbrices_ and _bombi_, (as they were at Alexandria, andafterwards at the Neapolitan and Roman theatres, ) that they could notprotect themselves from dying in the very moment of their birth, --layingtogether all these considerations, we see the incongruity of anyaudience, so constituted, to any purpose less evanescent than their owntenure of existence. 

Just such in disproportion as these cases had severally been, was ourpresent problem in relation to our time or other means for accomplishingit. In debating the matter, we lost half an hour; but at length wereduced the question to a choice between Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral. I know not that we could have chosen better. Therival edifices, as we understood from the waiter, were about equidistantfrom our own station; but, being too remote from each other to allowof our seeing both, "we tossed up, " to settle the question between theelder lady and the younger. "Heads" came up, which stood for the abbey. But, as neither of us was quite satisfied with this decision, we agreedto make another appeal to the wisdom of chance, second thoughts beingbest. This time the cathedral turned up; and so it came to pass that, with us, the having _seen London_ meant having seen St. Paul's. 

The first view of St. Paul's, it may be supposed, overwhelmed us withawe; and I did not at that time imagine that the sense of magnitudecould be more deeply impressed. One thing interrupted our pleasure. The superb objects of curiosity within the cathedral were shown forseparate fees. There were seven, I think; and any one could be seenindependently of the rest for a few pence. The whole amount was atrifle; fourteen pence, I think; but we were followed by a sort ofpersecution--"Would we not see the bell?" "Would we not see the model?""Surely we would not go away without visiting the whisperinggallery?"--solicitations which troubled the silence and sanctity ofthe place, and must tease others as it then teased us, who wished tocontemplate in quiet this great monument of the national grandeur, which was at that very time [5] beginning to take a station also in theland, as a depository for the dust of her heroes. What struck us most inthe whole _interior_ of the pile was the view taken from the spotimmediately under the dome, being, in fact, the very same which, fiveyears afterwards, received the remains of Lord Nelson. In one of theaisles going off from this centre, we saw the flags of France, Spain, andHolland, the whole trophies of the war, swinging pompously, and expandingtheir massy draperies, slowly and heavily, in the upper gloom, as theywere swept at intervals by currents of air. At this moment we wereprovoked by the showman at our elbow renewing his vile iteration of"Twopence, gentlemen; no more than twopence for each;" and so on, untilwe left the place. The same complaint has been often made as toWestminster Abbey. Where the wrong lies, or where it commences, I knownot. Certainly I nor any man can have a right to expect that the poor menwho attended us should give up their time for nothing, or even to beangry with them for a sort of persecution, on the degree of whichpossibly might depend the comfort of their own families. Thoughts offamishing children at home leave little room for nice regards ofdelicacy abroad. The individuals, therefore, might or might not beblamable. But in any case, the system is palpably wrong. The nationis entitled to a free enjoyment of its own public monuments; not freeonly in the sense of being gratuitous, but free also from themolestation of _showmen_, with their imperfect knowledge and theirvulgar sentiment. 

Yet, after all, what is this system of restriction and annoyance, compared with that which operates on the use of the national libraries?or _that_ again, to the system of exclusion from some of these, wherean absolute interdict lies upon any use at all of that which isconfessedly national property? Books and manuscripts, which wereoriginally collected and formally bequeathed to the public, under thegenerous and noble idea of giving to future generations advantageswhich the collector had himself not enjoyed, and liberating them fromobstacles in the pursuit of knowledge which experience had bitterlyimprinted upon his own mind, are at this day locked up as absolutelyagainst me, you, or any body, as collections confessedly private. Nay, far more so; for most private collectors of eminence, as the late Mr. Heber, for instance, have been distinguished for liberality in lendingthe rarest of their books to those who knew how to use them with effect. But, in the cases I now contemplate, the whole funds for supportingthe proper offices attached to a library, such as librarians, sub-librarians, &c. , which of themselves (and without the expressverbal evidence of the founder's will) presume a _public_ in the dailyuse of the books, else they are superfluous, have been applied to thecreation of lazy sinecures, in behalf of persons expressly chargedwith the care of shutting out the public. Therefore, it is true, theyare _not_ sinecures; for that one care, vigilantly to keep out thepublic, [6] they do take upon themselves; and why? A man loving books, like myself, might suppose that their motive was the ungenerous one ofkeeping the books to themselves. Far from it. In several instances, theywill as little use the books as suffer them to be used. And thus thewhole plans and cares of the good (weighing his motives, I will say ofthe _pious_) founder have terminated in locking up and sequestering alarge collection of books, some being great rarities, in situations wherethey are not accessible. Had he bequeathed them to the catacombs ofParis or of Naples, he could not have better provided for their virtualextinction. I ask, Does no action at common law lie against thepromoters of such enormous abuses? O thou fervent reformer, --whosefatal tread he that puts his ear to the ground may hear at a distancecoming onwards upon _every_ road, --if too surely thou wilt work forme and others irreparable wrong and suffering, work also for us alittle good; this way turn the great hurricanes and levanters of thywrath; winnow me this chaff; and let us enter at last the garners ofpure wheat laid up in elder days for our benefit, and which for twocenturies have been closed against our use!

London we left in haste, to keep an engagement of some standing at theEarl Howe's, my friend's grandfather. This great admiral, who hadfilled so large a station in the public eye, being the earliest amongthe naval heroes of England in the first war of the revolution, andthe only one of noble birth, I should have been delighted to see; St. Paul's, and its naval monuments to Captain Riou and Captain ----, together with its floating pageantries of conquered flags, havingawakened within me, in a form of peculiar solemnity, those patrioticremembrances of past glories, which all boys feel so much more vividlythan men can do, in whom the sensibility to such impressions is blunted. Lord Howe, however, I was not destined to see; he had died about ayear before. Another death there had been, and very recently, in thefamily, and under circumstances peculiarly startling; and the spiritsof the whole house were painfully depressed by that event at the timeof our visit. One of the daughters, a younger sister of my friend'smother, had been engaged for some time to a Scottish nobleman, theEarl of Morton, much esteemed by the royal family. The day was atlength fixed for the marriage; and about a fortnight before that dayarrived, some particular dress or ornament was brought to Porters, inwhich it was designed that the bride should appear at the altar. Thefashion as to this point has often varied; but at that time, I believethe custom was for bridal parties to be in full dress. The lady, whenthe dress arrived, was, to all appearance, in good health; but, by oneof those unaccountable misgivings which are on record in so manywell-attested cases, (as that, for example, of Andrew Marveil's father, )she said, after gazing for a minute or two at the beautiful dress, firmly and pointedly, "So, then, _that_ is my wedding dress; and itis expected that I shall wear it on the 17th; but I shall _not_; Ishall never wear it. On Thursday, the 17th, I shall be dressed in ashroud!" All present were shocked at such a declaration, which thesolemnity of the lady's manner made it impossible to receive as a jest. The countess, her mother, even reproved her with some severity for thewords, as an expression of distrust in the goodness of God. The brideelect made no answer but by sighing heavily. Within a fortnight, allhappened, to the letter, as she had predicted. She was taken suddenlyill; she died about three days before the marriage day, and was finallydressed in her shroud, according to the natural course of the funeralarrangements, on the morning that was to have been the wedding festival. 

Lord Morton, the nobleman thus suddenly and remarkably bereaved ofhis bride, was the only gentleman who appeared at the dinner table. He took a particular interest in literature; and it was, in fact, through _his_ kindness that, for the first time in my life, I foundmyself somewhat in the situation of a "_lion_. " The occasion of LordMorton's flattering notice was a particular copy of verses which hadgained for me a public distinction; not, however, I must own, a verybrilliant one; the prize awarded to me being not the first, nor eventhe second, --what on the continent is called the _accessit_, --it wassimply the third; and that fact, stated nakedly, might have left itdoubtful whether I were to be considered in the light of one honoredor of one stigmatized. However, the judges in this case, with morehonesty, or more self-distrust, than belongs to most adjudications ofthe kind, had printed the first three of the successful essays. Consequently, it was left open to each of the less successful candidatesto benefit by any difference of taste amongst their several friends;and _my_ friends in particular, with the single and singular exceptionof my mother, who always thought her own children inferior to otherpeople's, had generally assigned the palm to myself. Lord Mortonprotested loudly that the case admitted of no doubt; that grossinjustice had been done me; and, as the ladies of the family were muchinfluenced by his opinion, I thus came, not only to wear the laurelin their estimation, but also with the advantageous addition of havingsuffered some injustice. I was not only a victor, but a victor inmisfortune. 

At this moment, looking back from a distance of fifty years upon thosetrifles, it may well be supposed that I do not attach so much importanceto the subject of my fugitive honors as to have any very decided opinionone way or the other upon my own proportion of merit. I do not evenrecollect the major part of the verses: that which I _do_ recollect, inclines me to think that, in the structure of the metre and in thechoice of the expressions, I had some advantage over my competitors, though otherwise, perhaps, my verses were less finished; Lord Mortonmight, therefore, in a partial sense, have been just, as well as kind. But, little as that may seem likely, even then, and at the moment ofreaping some advantage from my honors, which gave me a considerationwith the family I was amongst such as I could not else have had, mostunaffectedly I doubted in my own mind whether I were really entitledto the praises which I received. My own verses had not at all satisfiedmyself; and though I felt elated by the notice they had gained me, andgratified by the generosity of the earl in taking my part so warmly, I was so more in a spirit of sympathy with the kindness thus manifestedin my behalf, and with the consequent kindness which it procured mefrom others, than from any incitement or support which it gave to myintellectual pride. In fact, whatever estimate I might make of thoseintellectual gifts which I believed or which I knew myself to possess, I was inclined, even in those days, to doubt whether my natural vocationlay towards poetry. Well, indeed, I knew, and I know that, had I chosento enlist amongst the _soi disant_ poets of the day, --amongst those, I mean, who, by mere force of _talent_ and mimetic skill, contrive tosustain the part of poet in a scenical sense and with a scenicaleffect, --I also could have won such laurels as are won by such merit;I also could have taken and sustained a place _taliter qualiter_ amongstthe poets of the time. Why _not_ then? Simply because I knew that me, as them, would await the certain destiny in reversion of resigningthat place in the next generation to some younger candidate havingequal or greater skill in appropriating the vague sentiments and oldtraditionary language of passion spread through books, but havingalso the advantage of novelty, and of a closer adaptation to theprevailing taste of the day. Even at that early age, I was keenlyalive, if not so keenly as at this moment, to the fact, that by farthe larger proportion of what is received in every age for poetry, andfor a season usurps that consecrated name, is _not_ the spontaneousoverflow of real unaffected passion, deep, and at the same timeoriginal, and also forced into public manifestation of itself from thenecessity which cleaves to all passion alike of seeking externalsympathy: this it is _not_; but a counterfeit assumption of suchpassion, according to the more or less accurate skill of the writerin distinguishing the key of passion suited to the particular age; anda concurrent assumption of the language of passion, according to hismore or less skill in separating the spurious from the native andlegitimate diction of genuine emotion. Rarely, indeed, are the reputedpoets of any age men who groan, like prophets, under the burden of amessage which they have to deliver, and _must_ deliver, of a missionwhich they _must_ discharge. Generally, nay, with much fewer exceptions, perhaps, than would be readily believed, they are merely simulatorsof the part they sustain; speaking not out of the abundance of theirown hearts, but by skill and artifice assuming or personating emotionsat second hand; and the whole is a business of talent, (sometimes evenof great talent, ) but not of original power, of genius, [7] or authenticinspiration. 

From Porters, after a few days' visit, we returned to Eton. Her majestyabout this time gave some splendid _fêtes_ at Frogmore, to one or twoof which she had directed that we should be invited. The invitationwas, of course, on my friend's account; but her majesty had condescendedto direct that I, as his visitor, should be specially included. LordWestport, young as he was, had become tolerably indifferent about suchthings; but to me such a scene was a novelty; and, on that account, it was settled we should go as early as was permissible. We _did_ go;and I was not sorry to have had the gratification of witnessing (ifit were but for once or twice) the splendors of a royal party. But, after the first edge of expectation was taken off, --after the vagueuncertainties of rustic ignorance had given place to absolute realities, and the eye had become a little familiar with the flashing of thejewelry, --I began to suffer under the constraints incident to a youngperson in such a situation--the situation, namely, of sedentarypassiveness, where one is acted upon, but does not act. The music, infact, was all that continued to delight me; and, but for _that, _ Ibelieve I should have had some difficulty in avoiding so monstrous anindecorum as yawning. I revise this faulty expression, however, on thespot; not the music only it was, but the music combined with thedancing, that so deeply impressed me. The ball room--a temporaryerection, with something of the character of a pavilion about it--worean elegant and festal air; the part allotted to the dancers beingfenced off by a gilded lattice work, and ornamented beautifully fromthe upper part with drooping festoons of flowers. But all the luxurythat spoke to the eye merely faded at once by the side of impassioneddancing, sustained by impassioned music. Of all the scenes which thisworld offers, none is to me so profoundly interesting, none (I say itdeliberately) so affecting, as the spectacle of men and women floatingthrough the mazes of a dance; under these conditions, however, thatthe music shall be rich, resonant, and festal, the execution of thedancers perfect, and the dance itself of a character to admit of free, fluent, and _continuous_ motion. But this last condition will be soughtvainly in the quadrilles, &c. , which have for so many years banishedthe truly beautiful _country dances_ native to England. Those whosetaste and sensibility were so defective as to substitute for the_beautiful_ in dancing the merely _difficult_, were sure, in the end, to transfer the depravations of this art from the opera house to thefloors of private ball rooms. The tendencies even then were in thatdirection; but as yet they had not attained their final stage; and theEnglish country dance [8] was still in estimation at the courts ofprinces. Now, of all dances, this is the only one, as a class, of whichyou can truly describe the motion to be _continuous, _ that is, notinterrupted or fitful, but unfolding its fine mazes with the equabilityof light in its diffusion through free space. And wherever the musichappens to be not of a light, trivial character, but charged with thespirit of festal pleasure, and the performers in the dance so far skilfulas to betray no awkwardness verging on the ludicrous, I believe that manypeople feel as I feel in such circumstances, viz. , derive from thespectacle the very grandest form of passionate sadness which can belongto any spectacle whatsoever. _Sadness_ is not the exact word; nor isthere any word in any language (because none in the finest languages)which exactly expresses the state; since it is not a depressing, but amost elevating state to which I allude. And, certainly, it is easy tounderstand, that many states of pleasure, and in particular the highest, are the most of all removed from merriment. The day on which a Romantriumphed was the most gladsome day of his existence; it was the crownand consummation of his prosperity; yet assuredly it was also to him themost solemn of his days. Festal music, of a rich and passionatecharacter, is the most remote of any from vulgar hilarity. Its verygladness and pomp is impregnated with sadness, but sadness of a grand andaspiring order. Let, for instance, (since without individualillustrations there is the greatest risk of being misunderstood, ) anyperson of musical sensibility listen to the exquisite music composed byBeethoven, as an opening for Burger's "Lenore, " the running idea of whichis the triumphal return of a crusading host, decorated with laurels andwith palms, within the gates of their native city; and then say whetherthe presiding feeling, in the midst of this tumultuous festivity, be not, by infinite degrees, transcendent to any thing so vulgar as hilarity. In fact, laughter itself is of all things the most equivocal; as theorgan of the ludicrous, laughter is allied to the trivial and the mean;as the organ of joy, it is allied to the passionate and the noble. From all which the reader may comprehend, if he should not happenexperimentally to have felt, that a spectacle of young men and women, _flowing_ through the mazes of an intricate dance under a full volumeof music, taken with all the circumstantial adjuncts of such a scenein rich men's halls; the blaze of lights and jewels, the life, themotion, the sea-like undulation of heads, the interweaving of thefigures, the _anachuchlosis_ or self-revolving, both of thedance and the music, "never ending, still beginning, " and the continualregeneration of order from a system of motions which forever touch thevery brink of confusion; that such a spectacle, with such circumstances, may happen to be capable of exciting and sustaining the very grandestemotions of philosophic melancholy to which the human spirit is open. The reason is, in part, that such a scene presents a sort of mask ofhuman life, with its whole equipage of pomps and glories, its luxuryof sight and sound, its hours of golden youth, and the interminablerevolution of ages hurrying after ages, and one generation treadingupon the flying footsteps of another; whilst all the while theoverruling music attempers the mind to the spectacle, the subject tothe object, the beholder to the vision. And, although this is knownto be but one phasis of life, --of life culminating and in ascent, --yetthe other (and repulsive) phasis is concealed upon the hidden or avertedside of the golden arras, known but not felt; or is seen but dimly inthe rear, crowding into indistinct proportions. The effect of the musicis, to place the mind in a state of elective attraction for every thingin harmony with its own prevailing key. 

This pleasure, as always on similar occasions, I had at present; butnaturally in a degree corresponding to the circumstances of _royal_splendor through which the scene revolved; and, if I have spent rathermore words than should reasonably have been requisite in describingany obvious state of emotion, it is not because, in itself, it iseither vague or doubtful, but because it is difficult, without callingupon a reader for a little reflection, to convince him that there isnot something paradoxical in the assertion, that joy and festalpleasure, of the highest kind, are liable to a _natural_ combinationwith solemnity, or even with melancholy the most profound. Yet, tospeak in the mere simplicity of truth, so mysterious is human nature, and so little to be read by him who runs, that almost every weightyaspect of truth upon that theme will be found at first sight to bestartling, or sometimes paradoxical. And so little need is there forchasing or courting paradox, that, on the contrary, he who is faithfulto his own experiences will find all his efforts little enough to keepdown the paradoxical air besieging much of what he _knows_ to be thetruth. No man needs to _search_ for paradox in this world of ours. Lethim simply confine himself to the truth, and he will find paradoxgrowing every where under his hands as rank as weeds. For new truthsof importance are rarely agreeable to any preconceived theories; thatis, cannot be explained by these theories; which are insufficient, therefore, even where they are true. And universally, it must be bornein mind, that not that is paradox which, seeming to be true, is uponexamination false, but that which, seeming to be false, may uponexamination be found true. [9]

The pleasure of which I have been speaking belongs to all such scenes;but on this particular occasion there was also something more. To seepersons in "the body" of whom you have been reading in newspapers fromthe very earliest of your reading days, --those, who have hitherto beengreat _ideas_ in your childish thoughts, to see and to hear moving andtalking as carnal existences amongst other human beings, --had, for thefirst half hour or so, a singular and strange effect. But this naturallywaned rapidly after it had once begun to wane. And when these firststartling impressions of novelty had worn off, it must be confessedthat the peculiar circumstances attaching to a royal ball were notfavorable to its joyousness or genial spirit of enjoyment. I am notgoing to repay her majesty's condescension so ill, or so much to abusethe privileges of a guest, as to draw upon my recollections of whatpassed for the materials of a cynical critique. Every thing was done, I doubt not, which court etiquette permitted, to thaw those ungenialrestraints which gave to the whole too much of a ceremonial andofficial character, and to each actor in the scene gave too much ofthe air belonging to one who is discharging a duty, and to the youngesteven among the principal personages concerned gave an apparent anxietyand jealousy of manner--jealousy, I mean, not of others, but aprudential jealousy of his own possible oversights or trespasses. Infact, a great personage bearing a state character cannot be regarded, nor regard himself, with the perfect freedom which belongs to socialintercourse; no, nor ought to be. It is not rank alone which is hereconcerned; that, as being his own, he might lay aside for an hour ortwo; but he bears a representative character also. He has not his ownrank only, but the rank of others, to protect; he (supposing him thesovereign or a prince near to the succession) embodies and impersonatesthe majesty of a great people; and this character, were you ever somuch encouraged to do so, you, the _idiotaes_, the _lay_ spectator or"assister, " neither could nor ought to dismiss from your thoughts. Besides all which, it must be acknowledged, that to see brothers dancingwith sisters--as too often occurred in those dances to which theprincesses were parties--disturbed the appropriate interest of the scene, being irreconcilable with the allusive meaning of dancing in general, andlaid a weight upon its gayety which no condescensions from the highestquarter could remove. This infelicitous arrangement forced the thoughtsof all present upon the exalted rank of the parties which could dictateand exact so unusual an assortment. And that rank, again, it presented tous under one of its least happy aspects; as insulating a blooming youngwoman amidst the choir of her coevals, and surrounding her with dreadfulsolitude amidst a vast crowd of the young, the brave, the beautiful, andthe accomplished. 

Meantime, as respected myself individually, I had reason to be grateful:every kindness and attention were shown to me. My invitation I wassensible that I owed entirely to my noble friend. But, _having_ beeninvited, I felt assured, from what passed, that it was meant andprovided that I should not, by any possibility, be suffered to thinkmyself overlooked. Lord Westport and I communicated our thoughtsoccasionally by means of a language which we, in those days, founduseful enough at times, and which bore the name of _Ziph_. The languageand the name were both derived (that is, were _immediately_ so derived, for _remotely_ the Ziph language may ascend to Nineveh) from Winchester. Dr. Mapleton, a physician in Bath, who attended me in concert with Mr. Grant, an eminent surgeon, during the nondescript malady of the head, happened to have had three sons at Winchester; and his reason forremoving them is worth mentioning, as it illustrates the well-knownsystem of _fagging_. One or more of them showed to the quick medicaleye of Dr. Mapleton symptoms of declining health; and, upon crossquestioning, he found that, being (as juniors) _fags_ (that is, bondsmenby old prescription) to appointed seniors, they were under the necessityof going out nightly into the town for the purpose of executingcommissions; but this was not easy, as all the regular outlets wereclosed at an early hour. In such a dilemma, any route, that was barelypracticable at whatever risk, must be traversed by the loyal fag; andit so happened that none of any kind remained open or accessible, except one; and this one communication happened to have escapedsuspicion, simply because it lay through a succession of temples andsewers sacred to the goddesses Cloacina and Scavengerina. That ofitself was not so extraordinary a fact: the wonder lay in the number, viz. , seventeen. Such were the actual amount of sacred edifices which, through all their dust, and garbage, and mephitic morasses, thesemiserable vassals had to thread all _but_ every night of the week. Dr. Mapleton, when he had made this discovery, ceased to wonder at themedical symptoms; and, as _faggery_ was an abuse too venerable andsacred to be touched by profane hands, he lodged no idle complaints, but simply removed his sons to a school where the Serbonian bogs ofthe subterraneous goddess might not intersect the nocturnal line ofmarch so _very_ often. One day, during the worst of my illness, whenthe kind-hearted doctor was attempting to amuse me with this anecdote, and asking me whether I thought Hannibal would have attempted his marchover the Little St. Bernard, --supposing that he and the elephant whichhe rode had been summoned to explore a route through seventeen similarnuisances, --he went on to mention the one sole accomplishment whichhis sons had imported from Winchester. This was the _Ziph_ language, communicated at Winchester to any aspirant for a fixed fee of one halfguinea, but which the doctor then communicated to me--as I do now tothe reader--_gratis_. I make a present of this language without fee, or price, or entrance money, to my honored reader; and let himunderstand that it is undoubtedly a bequest of elder times. Perhapsit may be coeval with the pyramids. For in the famous "Essay on aPhilosophical Character, " (I forget whether _that_ is the exact title, )a large folio written by the ingenious Dr. Wilkins, Bishop of Chester, [10] and published early in the reign of Charles II. , a folio which I, inyouthful days, not only read but studied, this language is recorded andaccurately described amongst many other modes of cryptical communication, oral and visual, spoken, written, or symbolic. And, as the bishop doesnot speak of it as at all a _recent_ invention, it may probably at thattime have been regarded as an antique device for conducting aconversation in secrecy amongst bystanders; and this advantage it has, that it is applicable to all languages alike; nor can it possibly bepenetrated by one not initiated in the mystery. The secret is this--(andthe grandeur of simplicity at any rate it has)--repeat the vowel ordiphthong of every syllable, prefixing to the vowel so repeated theletter G. Thus, for example: Shall we go away in an hour? Three hours wehave already staid. This in Ziph becomes: _Shagall wege gogo agawagayigin agan hougour? Threegee hougours wege hagave agalreageadygy stagaid. _[11] It must not be supposed that Ziph proceeds slowly. A very littlepractice gives the greatest fluency; so that even now, though certainly Icannot have practised it for fifty years, my power of speaking the Ziphremains unimpaired. I forget whether in the Bishop of Chester's accountof this cryptical language the consonant intercalated be G or not. Evidently any consonant will answer the purpose. F or L would be softer, and so far better. 

In this learned tongue it was that my friend and I communicated ourfeelings; and, having staid nearly four hours, a time quite sufficientto express a proper sense of the honor, we departed; and, on emerginginto the open high road, we threw up our hats and huzzaed, meaningno sort of disrespect, but from uncontrollable pleasure in recoveredliberty. 

Soon after this we left Eton for Ireland. Our first destination beingDublin, of course we went by Holyhead. The route at that time, fromSouthern England to Dublin, did not (as in elder and in later days)go round by Chester. A few miles after leaving Shrewsbury, somewhereabout Oswestry, it entered North Wales; a stage farther brought us tothe celebrated vale of Llangollen; and, on reaching the approach tothis about sunset on a beautiful evening of June, I first found myselfamongst the mountains--a feature in natural scenery for which, frommy earliest days, it was not extravagant to say that I had hungeredand thirsted. In no one expectation of my life have I been lessdisappointed; and I may add, that no one enjoyment has less decayedor palled upon my continued experience. A mountainous region, with aslender population, and _that_ of a simple pastoral character; beholdmy chief conditions of a pleasant permanent dwelling-place! But, thusfar I have altered, that _now_ I should greatly prefer forest scenery--such as the New Forest, or the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire. Themountains of Wales range at about the same elevation as those of NorthernEngland; three thousand and four to six hundred feet being the extremelimit which they reach. Generally speaking, their forms are lesspicturesque individually, and they are less happily grouped than theirEnglish brethren. I have since also been made sensible by Wordsworth ofone grievous defect in the structure of the Welsh valleys; too generallythey take the _basin_ shape--the level area at their foot does not detachitself with sufficient precision from the declivities that surround them. Of this, however, I was not aware at the time of first seeing Wales;although the striking effect from the _opposite_ form of the Cumberlandand Westmoreland valleys, which almost universally present a flat area atthe base of the surrounding hills, level, to use Wordsworth's expression, "_as the floor of a temple, "_ would, at any rate, have arrested my eye, as a circumstance of impressive beauty, even though the want of such afeature might not, in any case, have affected me as a fault. Assomething that had a positive value, this characteristic of the Cambrianvalleys had fixed my attention, but not as any telling point of contrastagainst the Cambrian valleys. No faults, however, at that early agedisturbed my pleasure, except that, after one whole day's travelling, (for so long it cost us between Llangollen and Holyhead, ) the want ofwater struck me upon review as painfully remarkable. From Conway toBangor (seventeen miles) we were often in sight of the sea; but freshwater we had seen hardly any; no lake, no stream much beyond a brook. This is certainly a conspicuous defect in North Wales, considered asa region of fine scenery. The few lakes I have since become acquaintedwith, as that near Bala, near Beddkelert, and beyond Machynleth, arenot attractive either in their forms or in their accompaniments; theBala Lake being meagre and insipid, the others as it were unfinished, and unaccompanied with their furniture of wood. 

At the _Head_ (to call it by its common colloquial name) we weredetained a few days in those unsteaming times by foul winds. Our time, however, thanks to the hospitality of a certain Captain Skinner onthat station, did not hang heavy on our hands, though we wereimprisoned, as it were, on a dull rock; for Holyhead itself is a littleisland of rock, an insulated dependency of Anglesea; which, again, isa little insulated dependency of North Wales. The packets on thisstation were at that time lucrative commands; and they were given(perhaps _are_ [12] given?) to post captains in the navy. Captain Skinnerwas celebrated for his convivial talents; he did the honors of the placein a hospitable style; daily asked us to dine with him, and seemed asinexhaustible in his wit as in his hospitality. 

This answered one purpose, at least, of special convenience to ourparty at that moment: it kept us from all necessity of meeting eachother during the day, except under circumstances where we escaped thenecessity of any familiar communication. Why that should have becomedesirable, arose upon the following mysterious change of relationsbetween ourselves and the Rev. Mr. Gr----, Lord Westport's tutor. Onthe last day of our journey, Mr. G. , who had accompanied us thus far, but now at Holyhead was to leave us, suddenly took offence (or, atleast, then first _showed_ his offence) at something we had said, done, or omitted, and never spoke one syllable to either of us again. Beingboth of us amiably disposed, and incapable of having seriously meditatedeither word or deed likely to wound any person's feelings, we weremuch hurt at the time, and often retraced the little incidents uponthe road, to discover, if possible, what it was that had laid us opento misconstruction. But it remained to both of us a lasting mystery. This tutor was an Irishman, of Trinity College, Dublin, and, I believe, of considerable pretensions as a scholar; but, being reserved andhaughty, or else presuming in us a knowledge of our offence, which wereally had not, he gave us no opening for any explanation. To the lastmoment, however, he manifested a punctilious regard to the duties ofhis charge. He accompanied us in our boat, on a dark and gusty night, to the packet, which lay a little out at sea. He saw us on board;and then, standing up for one moment, he said, "Is all right on deck?""All right, sir, " sang out the ship's steward. "Have you, Lord Westport, got your boat cloak with you?" "Yes, sir. " "Then, pull away, boatmen. "We listened for a time to the measured beat of his retreating oars, marvelling more and more at the atrocious nature of our crime whichcould thus avail to intercept even his last adieus. I, for my part, never saw him again; nor, as I have reason to think, did Lord Westport. Neither did we ever unravel the mystery. 

As if to irritate our curiosity still more, Lord Westport showed mea torn fragment of paper in his tutor's hand--writing, which, togetherwith others, had been thrown (as he believed) purposely in his way. If he was right in that belief, it appeared that he had missed theparticular fragment which was designed to raise the veil upon ourguilt; for the one he produced contained exactly these words: "Withrespect to your ladyship's anxiety to know how far the acquaintancewith Mr. De Q. Is likely to be of service to your son, I think I maynow venture to say that"--There the sibylline fragment ended; norcould we torture it into any further revelation. However, both of ussaw the propriety of not ourselves practising any mystery, nor givingany advantage to Mr. G. By imperfect communications; and accordingly, on the day after we reached Dublin, we addressed a circumstantialaccount of our journey and our little mystery to Lady Altamont inEngland; for to her it was clear that the tutor had confided hismysterious wrongs. Her ladyship answered with kindness; but did notthrow any light on the problem which exercised at once our memories, our skill in conjectural interpretation, and our sincere regrets. LordWestport and I regretted much that there had not been a wider marginattached to the fragment of Mr. G. 's letter to Lady Altamont; in whichcase, as I could readily have mimicked his style of writing, it wouldhave been easy for me to fill up thus: "With respect to your ladyship'sanxiety, &c. , I think I may now venture to say that, if the solar systemwere searched, there could not be found a companion more serviceable toyour son than Mr. De Q. He speaks the Ziph most beautifully. He writesit, I am told, classically. And if there were a Ziph nation as well as aZiph language, I am satisfied that he would very soon be at the head ofit; as he already is, beyond all competition, at the head of the Ziphliterature. " Lady Altamont, on receiving this, would infallibly havesupposed him mad; she would have written so to all her Irish friends, andwould have commended the poor gentleman to the care of his nearestkinsmen; and thus we should have had some little indemnification for theannoyance he had caused us. I mention this trifle, simply because, trifleas it is, it involved a mystery, and furnishes an occasion for glancingat that topic. Mysteries as deep, with results a little more importantand foundations a little sounder, have many times crossed me in life;one, for instance, I recollect at this moment, known pretty extensivelyto the neighborhood in which it occurred. It was in the county of S----. A lady married, and married well, as was thought. About twelve monthsafterwards, she returned alone in a post chaise to her father's house;paid, and herself dismissed, the postilion at the gate; entered thehouse; ascended to the room in which she had passed her youth, and knownin the family by her name; took possession of it again; intimated bysigns, and by one short letter at her first arrival, what she wouldrequire; lived for nearly twenty years in this state of _La Trappe_seclusion and silence; nor ever, to the hour of her death, explained whatcircumstances had dissolved the supposed happy connection she had formed, or what had become of her husband. Her looks and gestures were of anature to repress all questions in the spirit of mere curiosity; and thespirit of affection naturally respected a secret which was guarded soseverely. This might be supposed a Spanish tale; yet it happened inEngland, and in a pretty populous neighborhood. The romances which occurin real life are too often connected with circumstances of criminality insome one among the parties concerned; on that account, more than anyother, they are often suppressed; else, judging by the number which havefallen within my own knowledge, they must be of more frequent occurrencethan is usually supposed. Among such romances, those cases, perhaps, forman unusual proportion in which young, innocent, and high-minded personshave made a sudden discovery of some great profligacy or deepunworthiness in the person to whom they had surrendered their entireaffections. That shock, more than any other, is capable of blighting, inone hour, the whole after existence, and sometimes of at onceoverthrowing the balance of life or of reason. Instances I have known ofboth; and such afflictions are the less open to any alleviation, thatsometimes they are of a nature so delicate as to preclude allconfidential communication of them to another; and sometimes it would beeven dangerous, in a legal sense, to communicate them. 

A sort of adventure occurred, and not of a kind pleasant to recall, even on this short voyage. The passage to Dublin from the Head is aboutsixty miles, I believe; yet, from baffling winds, it cost us upwardsof thirty hours. On the second day, going upon deck, we found that ouronly fellow-passenger of note was a woman of rank, celebrated for herbeauty; and not undeservedly, for a lovely creature she was. The bodyof her travelling coach had been, as usual, unslung from the "carriage, "(by which is technically meant the wheels and the perch, ) and placedupon deck. This she used as a place of retreat from the sun during theday, and as a resting-place at night. For want of more interestingcompanions, she invited us, during the day, into her coach; and wetaxed our abilities to make ourselves as entertaining as we could, forwe were greatly fascinated by the lady's beauty. The second nightproved very sultry; and Lord Westport and myself, suffering from theoppression of the cabin, left our berths, and lay, wrapped up in cloaks, upon deck. Having talked for some hours, we were both on the point offalling asleep, when a stealthy tread near our heads awoke us. It wasstarlight; and we traced between ourselves and the sky the outline ofa man's figure. Lying upon a mass of tarpaulings, we were ourselvesundistinguishable, and the figure moved in the direction of the coach. Our first thought was to raise an alarm, scarcely doubting that thepurpose of the man was to rob the unprotected lady of her watch orpurse. But, to our astonishment, we saw the coach door silently swingopen under a touch from _within_. All was as silent as a dream; thefigure entered, the door closed, and we were left to interpret thecase as we might. Strange it was that this lady could permit herselfto calculate upon absolute concealment in such circumstances. Werecollected afterwards to have heard some indistinct rumor buzzed aboutthe packet on the day preceding, that a gentleman, and some even spokeof him by name as a Colonel ----, for some unknown purpose, wasconcealed in the steerage of the packet. And other appearances indicatedthat the affair was not entirely a secret even amongst the lady'sservants. To both of _us_ the story proclaimed a moral alreadysufficiently current, viz. , that women of the highest and the verylowest rank are alike thrown too much into situations of danger andtemptation. [13] I might mention some additional circumstances ofcriminal aggravation in this lady's case; but, as they would tend topoint out the real person to those acquainted with her history, I shallforbear. She has since made a noise in the world, and has maintained, Ibelieve, a tolerably fair reputation. Soon after sunrise the nextmorning, a heavenly morning of June, we dropped our anchor in thefamous Bay of Dublin. There was a dead calm; the sea was like a lake;and, as we were some miles from the Pigeon House, a boat was mannedto put us on shore. The lovely lady, unaware that we were parties to herguilty secret, went with us, accompanied by her numerous attendants, and looking as beautiful, and hardly less innocent, than an angel. Longafterwards, Lord Westport and I met her, hanging upon the arm of herhusband, a manly and good-natured man, of polished manners, to whomshe introduced us; for she voluntarily challenged us as her fellow-voyagers, and, I suppose, had no suspicion which pointed in ourdirection. She even joined her husband in cordially pressing us tovisit them at their magnificent _chateau_. Upon us, meantime, whatevermight be _her_ levity, the secret of which accident had put us inpossession pressed with a weight of awe; we shuddered at our owndiscovery; and we both agreed to drop no hint of it in any direction. [14]

Landing about three miles from Dublin, (according to my presentremembrance at Dunleary, ) we were not long in reaching Sackville Street. 

FOOTNOTES

[1] "_Ancient Rome_. "--Vast, however, as the London is of this day, Iincline to think that it is below the Rome of Trajan. It has long been asettled opinion amongst scholars, that the computations of Lipsius, onthis point, were prodigiously overcharged; and formerly I shared in thatbelief. But closer study of the question, and a laborious _collation_ ofthe different data, (for any single record, independently considered, canhere establish nothing, ) have satisfied me that Lipsius was nearer thetruth than his critics; and that the Roman population of every class--slaves, aliens, peoples of the suburbs, included--lay between four andsix millions; in which case the London of 1833, which counts more than amillion and a half, but less than two millions, [_Note_. --Our presentLondon of 1853 counts two millions, plus as many thousands as there aredays in the year, ] may be taken, _chata platos_ as lying between onefourth and one third of Rome. To discuss this question thoroughly wouldrequire a separate memoir, for which, after all, there are not sufficientmaterials: meantime I will make this remark: That the ordinarycomputations of a million, or a million and a quarter, derived from thesurviving accounts of the different "regions, " apply to Rome _within_ thePomaerium, and are, therefore, no more valid for the total Rome ofTrajan's time, stretching so many miles beyond it, than the bills ofmortality for what is technically "London within the walls" can serve atthis day as a base for estimating the population of that total Londonwhich we mean and presume in our daily conversation. _Secondly_, even forthe Rome within these limits the computations are not commensurate, bynot allowing for the prodigious _height_ of the houses in Rome, whichmuch transcended that of modern cities. On this last point I willtranslate a remarkable sentence from the Greek rhetorician Aristides, [_Note_. --Aelius Aristides, Greek by his birth, who flourished in thetime of the Antonines;] to some readers it will be new and interesting:"And, as oftentimes we see that a man who greatly excels others in bulkand strength is not content with any display, however ostentatious, ofhis powers, short of that where he is exhibited surmounting himself with apyramid of other men, one set standing upon the shoulders of another, soalso this city, stretching forth her foundations over areas so vast, isyet not satisfied with those superficial dimensions; _that_ contents hernot; but upon one city rearing another of corresponding proportions, andupon that another, pile resting upon pile, houses overlaying houses, inaerial succession: so, and by similar steps, she achieves a character ofarchitecture justifying, as it were, the very promise of her name; andwith reference to that name, and its Grecian meaning, we may say, thathere nothing meets our eyes in any direction but mere _Rome! Rome!_"[Note. --This word _Romae_, (Romé, ) on which the rhetorician plays, is thecommon Greek term for _strength_. ] "And hence, " says Aristides, "I derivethe following conclusion: that if any one, decomposing this series ofstrata, were disposed to unshell, as it were, this existing Rome from itspresent crowded and towering coacervations, and, thus degrading theseaerial Romes, were to plant them on the ground, side by side, in orderlysuccession, according to all appearance, the whole vacant area of Italywould be filled with these dismantled stories of Rome, and we should bepresented with the spectacle of one continuous city, stretching itslabyrinthine pomp to the shores of the Adriatic. " This is so far frombeing meant as a piece of rhetoric, that, on the very contrary, the wholepurpose is to substitute for a vague and rhetorical expression of theRoman grandeur one of a more definite character--viz. , by presenting itsdimensions in a new form, and supposing the city to be uncrested, as itwere; its upper tiers to be what the sailors call _unshipped_; and thedethroned stories to be all drawn up in rank and file upon the ground;according to which assumption he implies that the city would stretch fromthe _mare Superum_ to the _mare Inferum, i. E. _, from the sea of Tuscanyto the Adriatic. 

The fact is, as Casaubon remarked, upon occasion of a ridiculous blunderin estimating the largesses of a Roman emperor, that the error on mostquestions of Roman policy or institutions tends not, as is usual, in thedirection of excess, but of defect. All things were colossal there; andthe probable, as estimated upon our modern scale, is not unfrequently theimpossible, as regarded Roman habits. Lipsius certainly erredextravagantly at times, and was a rash speculator on many subjects;witness his books on the Roman amphitheatres; but not on the magnitude ofRome, or the amount of its population. I will add, upon this subject, that the whole political economy of the ancients, if we except Boeckh'saccurate investigation, (_Die Staatshaushaltung der Athener_, ) which, properly speaking, cannot be called political economy, is a mine intowhich scarce a single shaft has yet been sunk. But I must also add, thatevery thing will depend upon _collation_ of facts, and the bringing ofindirect notices into immediate juxtaposition, so as to throw light oneach other. _Direct_ and positive information there is little on thesetopics; and that has been gleaned. 

[2] "_Two hours_. "--This slow progress must, however, in part be ascribedto Mr. Gr----'s non-acquaintance with the roads, both town and rural, along the whole line of our progress from Uxbridge. 

[3] Hence it may be said, that nature regulates our position for suchspectacles, without any intermeddling of ours. When, indeed, a mountainstands, like Snowdon or Great Gavel in Cumberland, at the centre of amountainous region, it is not denied that, at some seasons, when theearly beams strike through great vistas in the hills, splendid effects oflight and shade are produced; strange, however, rather than beautiful. But from an insulated mountain, or one upon the outer ring of the hillytract, such as Skiddaw, in Cumberland, the first effect is to translatethe landscape from a _picture_ into a _map_; and the total result, as acelebrated author once said, is the _infinity of littleness_. 

[4] Accession was it, or his proclamation? The case was this: About themiddle of the day, the king came out into the portico of Carlton House;and addressing himself (addressing his gestures, I mean) to theassemblage of people in Pall Mall, he bowed repeatedly to the right andto the left, and then retired. I mean no disrespect to that prince inrecalling those circumstances; no doubt, he acted upon the suggestion ofothers, and perhaps, also, under a sincere emotion on witnessing theenthusiasm of those outside; but _that_ could not cure the originalabsurdity of recognizing as a representative audience, clothed with thenational functions of recognizing _himself_, a chance gathering ofpassengers through a single street, between whom and any mob from his ownstables and kitchens there could be no essential difference which logic, or law, or constitutional principle could recognize. 

[5] Already monuments had been voted by the House of Commons in thiscathedral, and I am not sure but they were nearly completed, to twocaptains who had fallen at the Nile. 

[6] This place suggests the mention of another crying abuse connectedwith this subject. In the year 1811 or 1810 came under parliamentarynotice and revision the law of copyright. In some excellent pamphletsdrawn forth by the occasion, from Mr. Duppa, for instance, and severalothers, the whole subject was well probed, and many aspects, littlenoticed by the public, were exposed of that extreme injustice attached tothe law as it then stood. The several monopolies connected with bookswere noticed a _little_; and _not_ a little notice was taken of theoppressive privilege with which certain public libraries (at that time, Ithink, eleven) were invested, of exacting, severally, a copy of each newbook published. This downright robbery was palliated by some members ofthe House in that day, under the notion of its being a sort of exchange, or _quid pro quo_ in return for the relief obtained by the statute ofQueen Anne--the first which recognized literary property. "For, " arguedthey, "previously to that statute, supposing your book pirated, at commonlaw you could obtain redress only for each copy _proved_ to have beensold by the pirate; and that might not be a thousandth part of the actualloss. Now, the statute of Queen Anne granting you a general redress, uponproof that a piracy had been committed, you, the party relieved, werebound to express your sense of this relief by a return made to thepublic; and the public is here represented by the great endowed librariesof the seven universities, the British Museum, " &c. , &c. But _primafacie_, this was that _selling of justice_ which is expressly renouncedin Magna Charta; and why were proprietors of copyright, more than otherproprietors, to make an "acknowledgment" for their rights? But supposing_that_ just, why, especially, to the given public bodies? Now, for mypart, I think that this admits of an explanation: nine tenths of theauthors in former days lay amongst the class who had received a collegeeducation; and most of these, in their academic life, had benefitedlargely by old endowments. Giving up, therefore, a small tribute fromtheir copyright, there was some color of justice in supposing that theywere making a slight acknowledgment for past benefits received, andexactly for those benefits which enabled them to appear with anyadvantage as authors. So, I am convinced, the "_servitude_" first arose, and under this construction; which, even for those days, was often afiction, but now is generally such. However, be the origin what it may, the ground upon which the public mind in 1811 (that small part of it, atleast, which the question attracted) reconciled itself to the abuse wasthis--for a trivial wrong, they alleged (but it was then shown that thewrong was not always trivial) one great good is achieved, viz. , that allover the kingdom are dispersed eleven great depositories, in which allpersons interested may, at all times, be sure of finding one copy ofevery book published. That _did_ seem a great advantage, and a balance inpoint of utility (if none in point of justice) to the wrong upon which itgrew. But now mark the degree in which this balancing advantage is madeavailable. 1. The eleven bodies are not equally careful to exact theircopies; that can only be done by retaining an agent in London; and thisagent is careless about books of slight money value. 2. Were itotherwise, of what final avail would a perfect set of the year'sproductions prove to a public not admitted freely to the elevenlibraries? 3. But, finally, if they were admitted, to what purpose (asregards this particular advantage) under the following custom, which, insome of these eleven libraries, (possibly in all, ) _was_, I well knew, established: annually the principal librarian _weeded_ the annual crop ofall such books as displeased himself; upon which two questions arise: 1. Upon what principle? 2. With what result? I answer as to the first, thatin this _lustration_ he went upon no principle at all, but his owncaprice, or what he called his own discretion; and accordingly it is afact known to many as well as myself, that a book, which some people (andcertainly not the least meditative of this age) have pronounced the mostoriginal work of modern times, was actually amongst the books thusdegraded; it was one of those, as the phrase is, tossed "into thebasket;" and universally this fate is more likely to befall a work of_original_ merit, which disturbs the previous way of thinking andfeeling, than one of timid compliance with ordinary models. Secondly, with what result? For the present, the degraded books, having beenconsigned to the basket, were forthwith consigned to a damp cellar. There, at any rate, they were in no condition to be consulted by thepublic, being piled up in close bales, and in a place not publiclyaccessible. But there can be no doubt that, sooner or later, theirmouldering condition would be made an argument for selling them. Andsuch, when we trace the operation of this law to its final stage, is theultimate result of an infringement upon private rights almost unexampledin any other part of our civil economy. That sole beneficial result, forthe sake of which some legislators were willing to sanction a wrongotherwise admitted to be indefensible, is so little protected and securedto the public, that it is first of all placed at the mercy of an agent inLondon, whose negligence or indifference may defeat the provisionaltogether, (I know a publisher of a splendid botanical work, who told methat, by forbearing to attract notice to it within the statutable time, he saved his eleven copies;) and placed at the mercy of a librarian, who(or any one of his successors) may, upon a motive of malice to the authoror an impulse of false taste, after all proscribe any part of the booksthus dishonorably acquired. 

[7] The words _genius_ and _talent_ are frequently distinguished fromeach other by those who evidently misconstrue the true distinctionentirely, and sometimes so grossly as to use them by way of expressionsfor a mere difference in _degree_. Thus, "a man of great talent, absolutely a _genius_" occurs in a very well-written tale at this momentbefore me; as if being a man of genius implied only a greater thanordinary degree of talent. 

_Talent_ and _genius_ are in not one point allied to each other, exceptgenerically--that both express modes of intellectual power. But the kindsof power are not merely different; they are in polar opposition to eachother. _Talent_ is intellectual power of every kind, which acts andmanifests itself by and through the _will_ and the _active_ forces. 

_Genius_, as the verbal origin implies, is that much rarer species ofintellectual power which is derived from the _genial_ nature, --from thespirit of suffering and enjoying, --from the spirit of pleasure and pain, as organized more or less perfectly; and this is independent of the will. It is a function of the _passive_ nature. Talent is conversant with theadaptation of means to ends. But genius is conversant only with ends. Talent has no sort of connection, not the most remote or shadowy, withthe _moral_ nature or temperament; genius is steeped and saturated withthis moral nature. 

This was written twenty years ago. Now, (1853, ) when revising it, I amtempted to add three brief annotations:--

1st. It scandalizes me that, in the occasional comments upon thisdistinction which have reached my eye, no attention should have been paidto the profound suggestions as to the radix of what is meant by _genius_latent in the word _genial_. For instance, in an extract made by "TheLeader, " a distinguished literary journal, from a recent work entitled"Poetics, " by Mr. Dallas, there is not the slightest notice taken of thissubtile indication and leading towards the truth. Yet surely _that_ ishardly philosophic. For could Mr. Dallas suppose that the idea involvedin the word _genial_ had no connection, or none but an accidental one, with the idea involved in the word _genius_? It is clear that from theRoman conception (whencesoever emanating) of the natal genius, as thesecret and central representative of what is most characteristic andindividual in the nature of every human being, are derived alike thenotion of the _genial_ and our modern notion of _genius_ ascontradistinguished from _talent_. 

2d. As another broad character of distinction between _genius_ and_talent_, I would observe, that _genius_ differentiates a man from allother men; whereas _talent_ is the same in one man as in another; thatis, where it exists at all, it is the mere echo and reflex of the sametalent, as seen in thousands of other men, differing only by more andless, but not at all in quality. In genius, on the contrary, no two menwere ever duplicates of each other. 

3d. All talent, in whatsoever class, reveals itself as an effort--as acounteraction to an opposing difficulty or hinderance; whereas geniusuniversally moves in headlong sympathy and concurrence with spontaneouspower. Talent works universally by intense resistance to an antagonistforce; whereas genius works under a rapture of necessity and spontaneity. 

[8] This word, I am well aware, grew out of the French word _contredanse_; indicating the regular contraposition of male and female partnersin the first arrangement of the dancers. The word _country dance_ wastherefore originally a corruption; but, having once arisen and taken rootin the language, it is far better to retain it in its colloquial form;better, I mean, on the general, principle concerned in such cases. For itis, in fact, by such corruptions, by offsets upon an old stock, arisingthrough ignorance or mispronunciation originally, that every language isfrequently enriched; and new modifications of thought, unfoldingthemselves in the progress of society, generate for themselvesconcurrently appropriate expressions. Many words in the Latin can bepointed out as having passed through this process. It must not be allowedto weigh against the validity of a word once fairly naturalized by use, that originally it crept in upon an abuse or a corruption. _Prescription_is as strong a ground of legitimation in a case of this nature as it isin law. And the old axiom is applicable--_Fieri non debuit, factumvalet_. Were it otherwise, languages would be robbed of much of theirwealth. And, universally, the class of _purists, _ in matters of language, are liable to grievous suspicion, as almost constantly proceeding on_half_ knowledge and on insufficient principles. For example, if I haveread one, I have read twenty letters, addressed to newspapers, denouncingthe name of a great quarter in London, _Mary-le-bone, _ as ludicrouslyungrammatical. The writers had learned (or were learning) French; andthey had thus become aware, that neither the article nor the adjectivewas right. True, not right for the current age, but perfectly right forthe age in which the name arose; but, for want of elder French, they didnot know that in our Chaucer's time both were right. _Le_ was then thearticle feminine as well as masculine, and _bone_ was then the true formfor the adjective. 

[9] And therefore it was with strict propriety that Boyle, anxious to fixpublic attention upon some truths of hydrostatics, published themavowedly as _paradoxes. _ According to the false popular notion of what itis that constitutes a paradox, Boyle should be taken to mean that thesehydrostatic theorems were fallacies. But far from it. Boyle solicitsattention to these propositions--not as seeming to be true and turningout false, but, reversely, as wearing an air of falsehood and turning outtrue. 

[10] This Dr. Wilkins was related to marriage to Cromwell, and is betterknown to the world, perhaps, by his Essay on the possibility of a passage(or, as the famous author of the "Pursuits of Literature" said, by way ofan episcopal metaphor, the possibility of a _translation_) to the moon. 

[11] One omission occurs to me on reviewing this account of the Ziph, which is--that I should have directed the accent to be placed on theintercalated syllable: thus _ship_ becomes _shigip_, with the emphasis on_gip_; _run_ becomes _rugún_, &c. 

[12] Written twenty years ago. 

[13] But see the note on this point at the end of the volume. 

[14] Lord Westport's age at that time was the same as my own; that is, weboth wanted a few months of being fifteen. But I had the advantage, perhaps, in thoughtfulness and observation of life. Being thoroughlyfree, however, from opinionativeness, Lord Westport readily came over toany views of mine for which I could show sufficient grounds. And on thisoccasion I found no difficulty in convincing him that honor and fidelitydid not form sufficient guaranties for the custody of secrets. Presenceof mind so as to revive one's obligations in time, tenacity ofrecollection, and vigilance over one's own momentary slips of tongue, soas to keep watch over indirect disclosures, are also requisite. And atthat time I had an instance within my own remembrance where a secret hadbeen betrayed, by a person of undoubted honor, but most inadvertentlybetrayed, and in pure oblivion of his engagement to silence. Indeed, unless where the secret is of a nature to affect some person's life, I donot believe that most people would remember beyond a period of two yearsthe most solemn obligations to secrecy. After a lapse of time, varying ofcourse with the person, the substance of the secret will remain upon themind; but how he came by the secret, or under what circumstances, he willvery probably have forgotten. It is unsafe to rely upon the mostreligious or sacramental obligation to secrecy, unless, together with thesecret, you could transfer also a magic ring that should, by a growingpressure or puncture, _sting_ a man into timely alarm and warning. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

DUBLIN. 

In Sackville Street stood the town house of Lord Altamont; and here, in the breakfast room, we found the earl seated. Long and intimatelyas I had known Lord Westport, it so happened that I had never seen hisfather, who had, indeed, of late almost pledged himself to a continuedresidence in Ireland by his own patriotic earnestness as an agriculturalimprover; whilst for his son, under the difficulties and delays atthat time of all travelling, any residence whatever in England seemedpreferable, but especially a residence with his mother amongst therelatives of his distinguished English grandfather, and in such closeneighborhood to Eton. Lord Altamont once told me, that the journeyoutward and inward between Eton and Westport, taking into account allthe unavoidable deviations from the direct route, in compliance withthe claims of kinship, &c. , (a case which in Ireland forced a travelleroften into a perpetual zigzag, ) counted up to something more than athousand miles. That is, in effect, when valued in loss of time, andallowance being made for the want of _continuity_ in those parts ofthe travelling system that did not accurately dovetail into each other, not less than one entire fortnight must be annually sunk upon a laborthat yielded no commensurate fruit. Hence the long three-years' intervalwhich had separated father and son; and hence my own nervousapprehension, as we were racing through the suburbs of Dublin, thatI should unavoidably lay a freezing restraint upon that reunion towhich, after such a separation, both father and son must have lookedforward with anticipation so anxious. Such cases of unintentionalintrusion are at times inevitable; but, even to the least sensitive, they are always distressing; most of all they are so to the intruder, who in fact feels himself in the odd position of a criminal withouta crime. He is in the situation of one who might have happened to bechased by a Bengal tiger (or, say that the tiger were a sheriff'sofficer) into the very centre of the Eleusinian mysteries. Do not teaseme, my reader, by alleging that there were no sheriffs' officers atAthens or Eleusis. Not many, I admit; but perhaps quite as many asthere were of Bengal tigers. In such a case, under whatever compulsion, the man has violated a holy seclusion. He has seen that which he ought_not_ to have seen; and he is viewed with horror by the privilegedspectators. Should he plead that this was his misfortune, and not hisfault, the answer would be, "True; it was your misfortune; we know it;and it is _our_ misfortune to be under the necessity of hating you forit. " But there was no cause for similar fears at present; so uniformlyconsiderate in his kindness was Lord Altamont. It is true, that LordWestport, as an only child, and a child to be proud of, --for he wasat that time rather handsome, and conciliated general good will by hisengaging manners, --was viewed by his father with an anxiety of lovethat sometimes became almost painful to witness. But this naturalself-surrender to a first involuntary emotion Lord Altamont did notsuffer to usurp any such lengthened expression as might too painfullyhave reminded me of being "one too many. " One solitary half minutebeing paid down as a tribute to the sanctities of the case, his nextcare was to withdraw me, the stranger, from any oppressive feeling ofstrangership. And accordingly, so far from realizing the sense of beingan intruder, in one minute under his courteous welcome I had come tofeel that, as the companion of his one darling upon earth, me also hecomprehended within his paternal regards. 

It must have been nine o'clock precisely when we entered the breakfastroom. So much I know by an _a priori_ argument, and could wish, therefore, that it had been scientifically important to know it--asimportant, for instance, as to know the occultation of a star, or thetransit of Venus to a second. For the urn was at that moment placedon the table; and though Ireland, as a whole, is privileged to beirregular, yet such was our Sackville Street regularity, that not somuch nine o'clock announced this periodic event, as inversely thisevent announced nine o'clock. And I used to affirm, however shockingit might sound to poor threadbare metaphysicians incapable oftranscendental truths, that not nine o'clock was the cause of revealingthe breakfast urn, but, on the contrary, that the revelation of thebreakfast urn was the true and secret cause of nine o'clock--aphenomenon which otherwise no candid reader will pretend that he cansatisfactorily account for, often as he has known it to come round. The urn was already throwing up its column of fuming mist; and thebreakfast table was covered with June flowers sent by a lady on thechance of Lord Westport's arrival. It was clear, therefore, that wewere expected; but so we had been for three or four days previously;and it illustrates the enormous uncertainties of travelling at thisclosing era of the eighteenth century, that for three or four daysmore we should have been expected without the least anxiety in caseany thing had occurred to detain us on the road. In fact, thepossibility of a Holyhead packet being lost had no place in thecatalogue of adverse contingencies--not even when calculated by mothers. To come by way of Liverpool or Parkgate, was not without grounds ofreasonable fear; I myself had lost acquaintances (schoolboys) on eachof those lines of transit. Neither Bristol nor Milford Haven wasentirely cloudless in reputation. But from Holyhead only one packethad ever been lost; and that was in the days of Queen Anne, when Ihave good reason to think that a villain was on board, who hated theDuke of Marlborough; so that this one exceptional case, far from beinglooked upon as a public calamity, would, of course, be receivedthankfully as cleansing the nation from a scamp. 

 * * * * *

Ireland was still smoking with the embers of rebellion; and LordCornwallis, who had been sent expressly to extinguish it, and had wonthe reputation of having fulfilled this mission with energy and success, was then the lord lieutenant; and at that moment he was regarded withmore interest than any other public man. Accordingly I was not sorrywhen, two mornings after our arrival, Lord Altamont said to us atbreakfast, "Now, if you wish to see what I call a great man, go withme this morning, and you shall see Lord Cornwallis; for that man whohas given peace both to the east and to the west--taming a tiger inthe Mysore that hated England as much as Hannibal hated Rome, and inIreland pulling up by the roots a French invasion, combined with anIrish insurrection--will always for me rank as a great man. " Wewillingly accompanied the earl to the Phoenix Park, where the lordlieutenant was then residing, and were privately presented to him. Ihad seen an engraving (celebrated, I believe, in its day) of LordCornwallis receiving the young Mysore princes as hostages atSeringapatam; and I knew the outline of his public services. This gaveme an additional interest in seeing him; but I was disappointed tofind no traces in his manner of the energy and activity I presumed himto possess; he seemed, on the contrary, slow or even heavy, butbenevolent and considerate in a degree which won the confidence atonce. Him we saw often; for Lord Altamont took us with him whereverand whenever we wished; and me in particular (to whom the Irish leadersof society were as yet entirely unknown by sight) it gratified highlyto see persons of historical names--names, I mean, historicallyconnected with the great events of Elizabeth's or Cromwell'sera--attending at the Phoenix Park. But the persons whom I remembermost distinctly of all whom I was then in the habit of seeing, wereLord Clare, the chancellor, the late Lord Londonderry, (thenCastlereagh, ) at that time the Irish chancellor of the exchequer, andthe speaker of the House of Commons, (Mr. Foster, since, I believe, created Lord Oriel. ) With the speaker, indeed, Lord Altamont had moreintimate grounds of connection than with any other public man; bothbeing devoted to the encouragement and personal superintendence ofgreat agricultural improvements. Both were bent on introducing throughmodels diffused extensively on their own estates, English husbandry, English improved breeds of cattle, and, where _that_ was possible, English capital and skill, into the rural economy of Ireland. 

Amongst the splendid spectacles which I witnessed, as the _most_ splendidI may mention an installation of the Knights of St. Patrick. There weresix knights installed on this occasion, one of the six being LordAltamont. He had no doubt received his ribbon as a reward for hisparliamentary votes, and especially in the matter of the union; yet, fromall his conversation upon that question, and from the generalconscientiousness of his private life, I am convinced that he acted allalong upon patriotic motives, and in obedience to his real views (whetherright or wrong) of the Irish interests. One chief reason, indeed, whichdetained us in Dublin, was the necessity of staying for this particularinstallation. At one time, Lord Altamont had designed to take his son andmyself for the two esquires who attend the new-made knight, according tothe ritual of this ceremony; but that plan was laid aside, on learningthat the other five knights were to be attended by adults; and thus, frombeing partakers as actors, my friend and I became simple spectators ofthis splendid scene, which took place in the Cathedral of St. Patrick. Soeasily does mere external pomp slip out of the memory, as to all itscircumstantial items, leaving behind nothing beyond the generalimpression, that at this moment I remember no one incident of the wholeceremonial, except that some foolish person laughed aloud as the knightswent up with their offerings to the altar; the object of this unfeelinglaughter being apparently Lord Altamont, who happened to be lame--asingular instance of levity to exhibit within the walls of such abuilding, and at the most solemn part of such a ceremony, which to mymind had a three-fold grandeur: 1st, as _symbolic_ and shadowy; 2d, asrepresenting the interlacings of chivalry with religion in the highestaspirations of both; 3d, as _national_; placing the heraldries andmilitary pomps of a people, so memorably faithful to St. Peter's chair, at the foot of the altar. Lord Westport and I sat with Lord and LadyCastlereagh. They were both young at this time, and both wore animpressive appearance of youthful happiness; neither, happily for theirpeace of mind, able to pierce that cloud of years, not much more thantwenty, which divided them from the day destined in one hour to wreck thehappiness of both. We had met both on other occasions; and theirconversation, through the course of that day's pomps, was the mostinteresting circumstance to me, and the one which I remember with mostdistinctness of all that belonged to the installation. By the way, onemorning, on occasion of some conversation arising about Irish bulls, Imade an agreement with Lord Altamont to note down in a memorandum bookevery thing throughout my stay in Ireland, which, to my feeling as anEnglishman, should seem to be, or should approach to, a bull. And thisday, at dinner, I reported from Lady Castlereagh's conversation whatstruck me as such. Lord Altamont laughed, and said, "My dear child, I amsorry that it should so happen, for it is bad to stumble at thebeginning; your bull is certainly a bull; [1] but as certainly LadyCastlereagh is your countrywoman, and not an Irishwoman at all. " LadyCastlereagh, it seems, was a daughter of Lord Buckinghamshire; and hermaiden name was Lady Emily Hobart. 

One other public scene there was, about this time, in Dublin, to theeye less captivating, but far more so in a moral sense; moresignificant practically, more burdened with hope and with fear. Thiswas the final ratification of the bill which united Ireland to GreatBritain. I do not know that any one public act, or celebration, orsolemnity, in my time, did, or could, so much engage my profoundestsympathies. Wordsworth's fine sonnet on the extinction of the Venetianrepublic had not then been published, else the last two lines wouldhave expressed my feelings. After admitting that changes had takenplace in Venice, which in a manner challenged and presumed this lastand mortal change, the poet goes on to say, that all this longpreparation for the event could not break the shock of it. Venice, itis true, had become a shade; but, after all, --

 "Men are we, and must grieve when even the shade Of that which once was great has passed away. "

But here the previous circumstances were far different from those ofVenice. _There_ we saw a superannuated and paralytic state, sinkingat any rate into the grave, and yielding, to the touch of militaryviolence, that only which a brief lapse of years must otherwise haveyielded to internal decay. _Here_, on the contrary, we saw a youngeagle, rising into power, and robbed prematurely of her natural honors, only because she did not comprehend their value, or because at thisgreat crisis she had no champion. Ireland, in a political sense, wassurely then in her youth, considering the prodigious developments shehas since experienced in population and in resources of all kinds. 

This great day of UNION had been long looked forward to by me; with somemixed feelings also by my young friend, for he had an Irish heart, andwas jealous of whatever appeared to touch the banner of Ireland. But itwas not for him to say any thing which should seem to impeach hisfather's patriotism in voting for the union, and promoting it through hisborough influence. Yet oftentimes it seemed to me, when I introduced thesubject, and sought to learn from Lord Altamont the main grounds whichhad reconciled him and other men, anxious for the welfare of Ireland, toa measure which at least robbed her of some splendor, and, above all, robbed her of a name and place amongst the independent states of Europe, that neither father nor son was likely to be displeased, should somegreat popular violence put force upon the recorded will of Parliament, and compel the two Houses to perpetuate themselves. Dolorous they must ofcourse have looked, in mere consistency; but I fancied that internallythey would have laughed. Lord Altamont, I am certain, believed (asmultitudes believed) that Ireland would be bettered by the commercialadvantages conceded to her as an integral province of the empire, andwould have benefits which, as an independent kingdom, she had not. It isnotorious that this expectation was partially realized. But let us ask, Could not a large part of these benefits have been secured to Irelandremaining as she was? Were they, in any sense, dependent on the sacrificeof her separate parliament? For my part, I believe that Mr. Pitt's motivefor insisting on a legislative union was, in a small proportion, perhaps, the somewhat elevated desire to connect his own name with the historicalchanges of the empire; to have it stamped, not on events so fugitive asthose of war and peace, liable to oblivion or eclipse, but on thepermanent relations of its integral parts. In a still larger proportion Ibelieve his motive to have been one of pure convenience, the wish toexonerate himself from the intolerable vexation of a double parliament. In a government such as ours, so care-laden at any rate, it is certainlymost harassing to have the task of soliciting a measure by management andinfluence twice over--two trials to organize, two storms of anxiety toface, and two refractory gangs to discipline, instead of one. It mustalso be conceded that no treasury influence could _always_ avail toprevent injurious collisions between acts of the Irish and the BritishParliaments. In Dublin, as in London, the government must lay its accountwith being occasionally outvoted; this would be likely to happenpeculiarly upon Irish questions. And acts of favor or protection would attimes pass on behalf of Irish interests, not only clashing with moregeneral ones of the central government, but indirectly also (through thevirtual consolidation of the two islands since the era of steam) openingendless means for evading British acts, even within their own separatesphere of operation. On these considerations, even an Irishman must grantthat public convenience called for the absorption of all local orprovincial supremacies into the central supremacy. And there were twobrief arguments which gave weight to those considerations: First, thatthe evils likely to arise (and which in France _have_ arisen) from whatis termed, in modern politics, the principle of _centralization_, havebeen for us either evaded or neutralized. The provinces, to the veryfarthest nook of these "nook-shotten" islands, react upon London aspowerfully as London acts upon _them_; so that no counterpoise isrequired with us, as in France it is, to any inordinate influence at thecentre. Secondly, the very pride and jealousy which could avail todictate the retention of an independent parliament would effectuallypreclude any modern "Poyning's Act, " having for its object to prevent thecollision of the local with the central government. Each would be supremewithin its own sphere, and those spheres could not but clash. Theseparate Irish Parliament was originally no badge of honor orindependence: it began in motives of convenience, or perhaps necessity, at a period when the communication was difficult, slow, and interrupted. Any parliament, which arose on that footing, it was possible to guard bya Poyning's Act, making, in effect, all laws null which should happen tocontradict the supreme or central will. But what law, in a correspondingtemper, could avail to limit the jurisdiction of a parliament whichconfessedly had been retained on a principle of national honor? Uponevery consideration, therefore, of convenience, and were it only for thenecessities of public business, the absorption of the local into thecentral parliament had now come to speak a language that perhaps could nolonger be evaded; and _that_ Irishman only could consistently oppose themeasure who should take his stand upon principles transcendingconvenience; looking, in fact, singly to the honor and dignity of acountry which it was annually becoming less absurd to suppose capable ofan independent existence. 

Meantime, in those days, Ireland had no adequate champion; the Hoodsand the Grattans were not up to the mark. Refractory as they were, they moved within the paling of order and decorum; they were not theTitans for a war against the heavens. When the public feeling beckonedand loudly supported them, they could follow a lead which they appearedto head; but they could not create such a body of public feeling, nor, when created, could they throw it into a suitable organization. Whatthey could do, was simply as ministerial agents and rhetoricians toprosecute any general movement, when the national arm had cloven achannel and opened the road before them. Consequently, that greatopening for a turbulent son of thunder passed unimproved; and the greatday drew near without symptoms of tempest. At last it arrived; and Iremember nothing which indicated as much ill temper in the public mindas I have seen on many hundreds of occasions, trivial by comparison, in London. Lord Westport and I were determined to lose no part of thescene, and we went down with Lord Altamont to the house. It was aboutthe middle of the day, and a great mob filled the whole space aboutthe two houses. As Lord Altamont's coach drew up to the steps of thatsplendid edifice, we heard a prodigious hissing and hooting; and I wasreally agitated to think that Lord Altamont, whom I loved and respected, would probably have to make his way through a tempest of public wrath--asituation more terrific to him than to others, from his embarrassedwalking. I found, however, that I might have spared my anxiety; thesubject of commotion was, simply, that Major Sirr, or Major Swan, Iforget which, (both being celebrated in those days for their energy, as leaders of the police, ) had detected a person in the act of mistakingsome other man's pocket handkerchief for his own--a most naturalmistake, I should fancy, where people stood crowded together so thickly. No storm of any kind awaited us, and yet at that moment there was noother arrival to divide the public attention; for, in order that wemight see every thing from first to last, we were amongst the veryearliest parties. Neither did our party escape under any mistake ofthe crowd: silence had succeeded to the uproar caused by the tendermeeting between the thief and the major; and a man, who stood in aconspicuous situation, proclaimed aloud to those below him, the nameor title of members as they drove up. "That, " said he, "is the Earlof Altamont; the lame gentleman, I mean. " Perhaps, however, hisknowledge did not extend so far as to the politics of a nobleman whohad taken no violent or factious part in public affairs. At. Least, the dreaded insults did not follow, or only in the very feeblestmanifestations. We entered; and, by way of seeing every thing, we wenteven to the robing room. The man who presented his robes to LordAltamont seemed to me, of all whom I saw on that day, the one whowore the face of deepest depression. But whether this indicated theloss of a lucrative situation, or was really disinterested sorrow, growing out of a patriotic trouble, at the knowledge that he was nowofficiating for the last time, I could not guess. The House of Lords, decorated (if I remember) with hangings, representing the battle ofthe Boyne, was nearly empty when we entered--an accident which furnishedto Lord Altamont the opportunity required for explaining to us thewhole course and ceremonial of public business on ordinary occasions. 

Gradually the house filled; beautiful women sat intermingled amongstthe peers; and, in one party of these, surrounded by a bevy of admirers, we saw our fair but frail enchantress of the packet. She, on her part, saw and recognized us by an affable nod; no stain upon her cheek, indicating that she suspected to what extent she was indebted to ourdiscretion; for it is a proof of the unaffected sorrow and the solemnawe which oppressed us both, that we had not mentioned even to LordAltamont, nor ever _did_ mention, the scene which chance had revealedto us. Next came a stir within the house, and an uproar resoundingfrom without, which announced the arrival of his excellency. Enteringthe house, he also, like the other peers, wheeled round to the throne, and made to that mysterious seat a profound homage. Then commenced thepublic business, in which, if I recollect, the chancellor played themost conspicuous part--that chancellor (Lord Clare) of whom it wasaffirmed in those days, by a political opponent, that he might swimin the innocent blood which he had caused to be shed. But nauticalmen, I suspect, would have demurred to that estimate. Then were summonedto the bar--summoned for the last time--the gentlemen of the House ofCommons; in the van of whom, and drawing all eyes upon himself, stoodLord Castlereagh. Then came the recitation of many acts passed duringthe session, and the sounding ratification, the Jovian

 "Annuit, et nutu totum tremefecit Olympum, "

contained in the _Soit fait comme il est desiré_, or the more peremptory_Le roi le veut_. At which point in the order of succession came theroyal assent to the union bill, I cannot distinctly recollect. But onething I _do_ recollect--that no audible expression, no buzz, nor murmur, nor _susurrus_ even, testified the feelings which, doubtless, layrankling in many bosoms. Setting apart all public or patrioticconsiderations, even then I said to myself, as I surveyed the wholeassemblage of ermined peers, "How is it, and by what unaccountable magic, that William Pitt can have prevailed on all these hereditary legislatorsand heads of patrician houses to renounce so easily, with nothing worththe name of a struggle, and no reward worth the name of anindemnification, the very brightest jewel in their coronets? This morningthey all rose from their couches peers of Parliament, individual pillarsof the realm, indispensable parties to every law that could pass. Tomorrow they will be nobody--men of straw--_terrae filii_. What madnesshas persuaded them to part with their birthright, and to cashierthemselves and their children forever into mere titular lords? As to thecommoners at the bar, _their_ case was different: they had no life estateat all events in their honors; and they might have the same chance forentering the imperial Parliament amongst the hundred Irish members as forreentering a native parliament. Neither, again, amongst the peers was thecase always equal. Several of the higher had English titles, which would, at any rate, open the central Parliament to their ambition. Thatprivilege, in particular, attached to Lord Altamont. [2] And he, in anycase, from his large property, was tolerably sure of finding his waythither (as in fact for the rest of his life he _did_) amongst thetwenty-eight representative peers. The wonder was in the case of pettyand obscure lords, who had no weight personally, and none in right oftheir estates. Of these men, as they were notoriously not enriched by Mr. Pitt, as the distribution of honors was not very large, and as no honorcould countervail the one they lost, I could not, and cannot, fathom thepolicy. Thus much I am sure of--that, had such a measure been proposed bya political speculator previously to Queen Anne's reign, he would havebeen scouted as a dreamer and a visionary, who calculated upon men beinggenerally somewhat worse than Esau, viz. , giving up their birthrights, and _without_ the mess of pottage. " However, on this memorable day, thusit was the union was ratified; the bill received the royal assent withouta muttering, or a whispering, or the protesting echo of a sigh. Perhapsthere might be a little pause--a silence like that which follows anearthquake; but there was no plain-spoken Lord Belhaven, as on thecorresponding occasion in Edinburgh, to fill up the silence with "So, there's an end of an auld sang!" All was, or looked courtly, and freefrom vulgar emotion. One person only I remarked whose features weresuddenly illuminated by a smile, a sarcastic smile, as I read it; which, however, might be all a fancy. It was Lord Castlereagh, who, at themoment when the irrevocable words were pronounced, looked with apenetrating glance amongst a party of ladies. His own wife was one ofthat party; but I did not discover the particular object on whom hissmile had settled. After this I had no leisure to be interested in anything which followed. "You are all, " thought I to myself, "a pack ofvagabonds henceforward, and interlopers, with actually no more right tobe here than myself. I am an intruder; so are you. " Apparently theythought so themselves; for, soon after this solemn _fiat_ of Jove hadgone forth, their lordships, having no further title to their robes, (forwhich I could not help wishing that a party of Jewish old clothes menwould at this moment have appeared, and made a loud bidding, ) made whathaste they could to lay them aside forever. The house dispersed much morerapidly than it had assembled. Major Sirr was found outside, just wherewe left him, laying down the law (as before) about pocket handkerchiefsto old and young practitioners; and all parties adjourned to find whatconsolation they might in the great evening event of dinner. 

Thus we were set at liberty from Dublin. Parliaments, and installations, and masked balls, with all other secondary splendors in celebrationof primary splendors, reflex glories that reverberated original glories, at length had ceased to shine upon the Irish metropolis. The "season, "as it is called in great cities, was over; unfortunately the lastseason that was ever destined to illuminate the society or to stimulatethe domestic trade of Dublin. It began to be thought scandalous to befound in town; _nobody_, in fact, remained, except some two hundredthousand people, who never did, nor ever would, wear ermine; and inall Ireland there remained nothing at all to attract, except that whichno king, and no two houses, can by any conspiracy abolish, viz. , thebeauty of her most verdant scenery. I speak of that part which chieflyit is that I know, --the scenery of the west, --Connaught beyond otherprovinces, and in Connaught, Mayo beyond other counties. There it was, and in the county next adjoining, that Lord Altamont's large estateswere situated, the family mansion and beautiful park being in Mayo. Thither, as nothing else now remained to divert us from what, in fact, we had thirsted for throughout the heats of summer, and throughout themagnificences of the capital, at length we set off by movements asslow and circuitous as those of any royal _progress_ in the reign ofElizabeth. Making but short journeys on each day, and resting alwaysat the house of some private friend, I thus obtained an opportunityof seeing the old Irish nobility and gentry more extensively, and ona more intimate footing, than I had hoped for. No experience of thiskind, throughout my whole life, so much interested me. In a littlework, not much known, of Suetonius, the most interesting record whichsurvives of the early Roman literature, it comes out incidentally thatmany books, many idioms, and verbal peculiarities belonging to theprimitive ages of Roman culture were to be found still lingering inthe old Roman settlements, both Gaulish and Spanish, long after theyhad become obsolete (and sometimes unintelligible) in Rome. From thetardiness and the difficulty of communication, the want of newspapers, &c. , it followed, naturally enough, that the distant provincial towns, though not without their own separate literature and their own literaryprofessors, were always two or three generations in the rear of themetropolis; and thus it happened, that, about the time of Augustus, there were some grammatici in Rome, answering to our black-lettercritics, who sought the material of their researches in Boulogne, (_Gessoriacum, _) in Arles, (_Arelata_, ) or in Marseilles, (_Massilia_. )Now, the old Irish nobility--that part, I mean, which might be calledthe rural nobility--stood in the same relation to English manners andcustoms. Here might be found old rambling houses in the style of antiqueEnglish manorial chateaus, ill planned, perhaps, as regardedconvenience and economy, with long rambling galleries, and windowsinnumerable, that evidently had never looked for that severe audit towhich they were afterwards summoned by William Pitt; but displaying, in the dwelling rooms, a comfort and "cosiness, " combined withmagnificence, not always so effectually attained in modern times. Herewere old libraries, old butlers, and old customs, that seemed all aliketo belong to the era of Cromwell, or even an earlier era than his;whilst the ancient names, to one who had some acquaintance with thegreat events of Irish history, often strengthened the illusion. Notthat I could pretend to be familiar with Irish history _as_ Irish; butas a conspicuous chapter in the difficult policy of Queen Elizabeth, of Charles I. , and of Cromwell, nobody who had read the English historycould be a stranger to the O'Neils, the O'Donnells, the Ormonds, (_i. E. _, the Butlers, ) the Inchiquins, or the De Burghs, and many scoresbeside. I soon found, in fact, that the aristocracy of Ireland mightbe divided into two great sections: the native Irish--territorialfixtures, so powerfully described by Maturin; and those, on the otherhand, who spent so much of their time and revenues at Bath, Cheltenham, Weymouth, London, &c. , as to have become almost entirely English. Itwas the former whom we chiefly visited; and I remarked that, in themidst of hospitality the most unbounded, and the amplest comfort, someof these were conspicuously in the rear of the English commercialgentry, as to modern refinements of luxury. There was at the same timean apparent strength of character, as if formed amidst turbulent scenes, and a raciness of manner, which were fitted to interest a strangerprofoundly, and to impress themselves on his recollection. 

FOOTNOTES

[1] The idea of a _bull_ is even yet undefined; which is mostextraordinary, considering that Miss Edgeworth has applied all her tactand illustrative power to furnish the _matter_ for such a definition, andColeridge all his philosophic subtlety (but in this instance, I think, with a most infelicitous result) to furnish its _form_. But both havebeen too fastidious in their admission of bulls. Thus, for example, MissEdgeworth rejects, as no true bull, the common Joe Miller story, that, upon two Irishmen reaching Barnet, and being told that it was stilltwelve miles to London, one of them remarked, "Ah! just six miles apace. "This, says Miss E. , is no bull, but a sentimental remark on the maxim, that friendship divides our pains. Nothing of the kind: Miss Edgeworthcannot have understood it. The bull is a true representative andexemplary specimen of the _genus_. 

[2] According to my remembrance, he was Baron Monteagle in the Englishpeerage. 

CHAPTER IX. 

FIRST REBELLION. 

In our road to Mayo, we were often upon ground rendered memorable, not only by historical events, but more recently by the disastrousscenes of the rebellion, by its horrors or its calamities. On reachingWestport House, we found ourselves in situations and a neighborhoodwhich had become the very centre of the final military operations, those which succeeded to the main rebellion; and which, to the peopleof England, and still more to the people of the continent, had offereda character of interest wanting to the inartificial movements of FatherRoche and Bagenal Harvey. 

In the year 1798, there were two great popular insurrections in Ireland. It is usual to talk of the Irish rebellion, as though there had beenone rebellion and no more; but it must satisfy the reader of theinaccuracy pervading the common reports of this period, when he hearsthat there were two separate rebellions, separate in time, separatein space, separate by the character of their events, and separate evenas regarded their proximate causes. The first of these arose in thevernal part of summer, and wasted its fury upon the county of Wexford, in the _centre_ of the kingdom. The second arose in the autumn, andwas confined entirely to the _western_ province of Connaught. Each, resting (it is true) upon causes ultimately the same, had yet its ownseparate occasions and excitements; for the first arose upon a prematureexplosion from a secret society of most subtle organization; and thesecond upon the encouragement of a French invasion. And each of theseinsurrections had its own separate leaders and its own local agents. The first, though precipitated into action by fortunate discoverieson the part of the government, had been anxiously preconcerted forthree years. The second was an unpremeditated effort, called forth bya most ill-timed, and also ill-concerted, foreign invasion. The generalpredisposing causes to rebellion were doubtless the same in both cases;but the exciting causes of the moment were different in each. And, finally, they were divided by a complete interval of two months. 

One very remarkable feature there was, however, in which these twoseparate rebellions of 1798 coincided; and _that_ was, the narrowrange, as to time, within which each ran its course. Neither of themoutran the limits of one _lunar_ month. It is a fact, however startling, that each, though a perfect civil war in all its proportions, frequentin warlike incident, and the former rich in tragedy, passed throughall the stages of growth, maturity, and final extinction within onesingle revolution of the moon. For all the rebel movements, subsequentto the morning of Vinegar Hill, are to be viewed not at all in thelight of manoeuvres made in the spirit of military hope, but in thelight of final struggles for self-preservation made in the spirit ofabsolute despair, as regarded the original purposes of the war, or, indeed, as regarded any purposes whatever beyond that of instant safety. The solitary object contemplated was, to reach some district lonelyenough, and with elbow room enough, for quiet, unmolested dispersion. 

A few pages will recapitulate these two civil wars. I begin with thefirst. The war of American separation touched and quickened the drybones that lay waiting as it were for life through the west ofChristendom. The year 1782 brought that war to its winding up; and thesame year it was that called forth Grattan and the Irish volunteers. These _volunteers_ came forward as allies of England against Frenchand Spanish invasion; but once embattled, what should hinder them fromdetecting a flaw in their commission, and reading it as valid againstEngland herself? In that sense they _did_ read it. That Ireland hadseen her own case dimly reflected in that of America, and that sucha reference was stirring through the national mind, appears from aremarkable fact in the history of the year which followed. In 1783, a haughty petition was addressed to the throne, on behalf of the RomanCatholics, by an association that arrogated to itself the style andtitle of a _congress_. No man could suppose that a designation soominously significant had been chosen by accident; and by the Englishgovernment it was received, as it was meant, for an insult and a menace. What came next? The French revolution. All flesh moved under thatinspiration. Fast and rank now began to germinate the seed sown forthe ten years preceding in Ireland; too fast and too rankly for thepolicy that suited her situation. Concealment or delay, compromise ortemporizing, would not have been brooked, at this moment, by the fierytemperament of Ireland, had it not been through the extraordinarycomposition of that secret society into which the management of heraffairs now began to devolve. In the year 1792, as we are told, commenced, and in 1795 was finished, the famous association of _UnitedIrishmen_. By these terms, _commenced_ and _finished_, we are tounderstand, not the purposes or the arrangements of their conspiracyagainst the existing government, but that network of organization, delicate as lace for ladies, and strong as the harness of artilleryhorses, which now enmeshed almost every province of Ireland, knittingthe strength of her peasantry into unity and disposable divisions. This, it seems, was completed in 1795. In a complete history of thesetimes, no one chapter would deserve so ample an investigation as thissubtile web of association, rising upon a large base, expanding inproportion to the extent of the particular county, and by intermediatelinks ascending to some unknown apex; all so graduated, and in suchnice interdependency, as to secure the instantaneous propagation upwardsand downwards, laterally or obliquely, of any impulse whatever; andyet so effectually shrouded, that nobody knew more than the two orthree individual agents in immediate juxtaposition with himself, bywhom he communicated with those above his head or below his feet. Thisorganization, in fact, of the United Irishmen, combined the bestfeatures, as to skill, of the two most elaborate and most successfulof all secret societies recorded in history; one of which went beforethe Irish Society by centuries, and one followed it after an intervalof five-and-twenty years. These two are the _Fehm-Gericht_, or courtof ban and extermination, which, having taken its rise in Westphalia, is usually called the secret Tribunal of Westphalia, and which reachedits full development in the fourteenth century. The other is theHellenistic Hetaeria, (_Aetairia_)--a society which, passing forone of pure literacy _dilettanti_, under the secret countenance of thelate Capo d'Istria, (then a confidential minister of the czar, ) didactually succeed so far in hoaxing the cabinets of Europe, that onethird of European kings put down their names, and gave their aid, asconspirators against the Sultan of Turkey, whilst credulously supposingthemselves honorary correspondents of a learned body for reviving thearts and literature of Athens. These two I call the most successfulof all secret societies, because both were arrayed against the existingadministrations throughout the entire lands upon which they sought tooperate. The German society disowned the legal authorities as too weakfor the ends of justice, and succeeded in bringing the cognizance ofcrimes within its own secret yet consecrated usurpation. The Greciansociety made the existing powers the final object of its hostility;lived unarmed amongst the very oppressors whose throats it had dedicatedto the sabre; and, in a very few years, saw its purpose accomplished. 

The society of United Irishmen combined the best parts in theorganization of both these secret fraternities, and obtained _their_advantages. The society prospered in defiance of the government; norwould the government, though armed with all the powers of the Dublinpolice and of state thunder, have succeeded in mastering this society, but, on the contrary, the society would assuredly have surprised andmastered the government, had it not been undermined by the perfidy ofa confidential brother. One instrument for dispersing knowledge, employed by the United Irishmen, is worth mentioning, as it isapplicable to any cause, and may be used with much greater effect inan age when every body is taught to read. They printed newspapers ona single side of the sheet, which were thus fitted for being placardedagainst the walls. This expedient had probably been suggested by Paris, where such newspapers were often placarded, and generally for thebloodiest purposes. But Louvet, in his "Memoirs, " mentions one conductedby himself on better principles: it was printed at the public expense;and sometimes more than twenty thousand copies of a single number wereattached to the corners of streets. This was called the "Centinel;"and those who are acquainted with the "Memoirs of Madame Roland" willremember that she cites Louvet's paper as a model for all of its class. The "Union Star" was the paper which the United Irishmen publishedupon this plan; previous papers, on the ordinary plan, viz. , the"Northern Star" and the "Press, " having been violently put down by thegovernment. The "Union Star, " however, it must be acknowledged, didnot seek much to elevate the people by addressing them through theirunderstandings; it was merely a violent appeal to their passions, anddirected against all who had incurred the displeasure of the society. Newspapers, meantime, of every kind, it was easy for the governmentto suppress. But the secret society annoyed and crippled the governmentin other modes, which it was not easy to parry; and all blows dealtin return were dealt in the dark, and aimed at a shadow. The societycalled upon Irishmen to abstain generally from ardent spirits, as ameans of destroying the excise; and it is certain that the society wasobeyed, in a degree which astonished neutral observers, all overIreland. The same society, by a printed proclamation, called upon thepeople not to purchase the quitrents of the crown, which were then onsale; and not to receive bank notes in payment, because (as theproclamation told them) a "burst" was coming, when such paper, and thesecurities for such purchases, would fall to a ruinous discount. Inthis ease, after much distress to the public service, governmentobtained a partial triumph by the law which cancelled the debt on arefusal to receive the state paper, and which quartered soldiers uponall tradesmen who demurred to such a tender. But, upon the whole, itwas becoming pain fully evident, that in Ireland there were twocoordinate governments coming into collision at every step, and thatthe one which more generally had the upper hand in the struggle wasthe secret society of United Irishmen; whose members individually, andwhose local head quarters, were alike screened from the attacks of itsrival, viz. , the state government at the Castle, by a cloud ofimpenetrable darkness. 

That cloud was at last pierced. A treacherous or weak brother, highin the ranks of the society, and deep in their confidence, happened, when travelling up to Dublin in company with a royalist, to speak halfmysteriously, half ostentatiously, upon the delicate position whichhe held in the councils of his dangerous party. This weak man, ThomasReynolds, a Roman Catholic gentleman, of Kilkea Castle, in Kildare, colonel of a regiment of United Irish, treasurer for Kildare, and inother offices of trust for the secret society, was prevailed on by Mr. William Cope, a rich merchant of Dublin, who alarmed his mind bypictures of the horrors attending a revolution under the circumstancesof Ireland, to betray all he knew to the government. His treachery wasfirst meditated in the last week of February, 1798; and, in consequenceof his depositions, on March 12, at the house of Oliver Bond, in Dublin, the government succeeded in arresting a large body of the leadingconspirators. The whole committee of Leinster, amounting to thirteenmembers, was captured on this occasion; but a still more valuable prizewas made in the persons of those who presided over the Irish Directory, viz. , Emmet, M'Niven, Arthur O'Connor, and Oliver Bond. As far as nameswent, their places were immediately filled up; and a hand-bill wasissued, on the same day, with the purpose of intercepting the effects ofdespondency amongst the great body of the conspirators. But Emmet andO'Connor were not men to be effectually replaced: government had struck afatal blow, without being fully aware at first of their own good luck. Onthe 19th of May following, in consequence of a proclamation (May 11)offering a thousand pounds for his capture, Lord Edward Fitzgerald wasapprehended at the house of Mr. Nicholas Murphy, a merchant in Dublin, but after a very desperate resistance. The leader of the arresting party, Major Swan, a Dublin magistrate, distinguished for his energy, waswounded by Lord Edward; and Ryan, one of the officers, so desperately, that he died within a fortnight. Lord Edward himself languished for sometime, and died in great agony on the 3d of June, from a pistol shot whichtook effect on his shoulder. Lord Edward Fitzgerald might be regarded asan injured man. From the exuberant generosity of his temper, he hadpowerfully sympathized with the French republicans at an early stage oftheir revolution; and having, with great indiscretion, but anindiscretion that admitted of some palliation in so young a man and of soardent a temperament, publicly avowed his sympathy, he was ignominiouslydismissed from the army. That act made an enemy of one who, on severalgrounds, was not a man to be despised; for, though weak as respected hispowers of self-control, Lord Edward was well qualified to make himselfbeloved; he had considerable talents; his very name, as a sone of theonly [1] ducal house in Ireland, was a spell and a rallying word for aday of battle to the Irish peasantry; and, finally, by his marriage witha natural daughter of the then Duke of Orleans, he had founded someimportant connections and openings to secret influence in France. Theyoung lady whom he had married was generally known by the name of_Pamela;_ and it has been usually supposed that she is the persondescribed by Miss Edgeworth, under the name of Virginia, in the latterpart of her "Belinda. " How that may be, I cannot pretend to say: Pamelawas certainly led into some indiscretions; in particular, she was said tohave gone to a ball without shoes or stockings, which seems to argue thesame sort of ignorance, and the same docility to any chance impressions, which characterize the Virginia of Miss Edgeworth. She was a reputeddaughter (as I have said) of Philippe Egalité; and her putative motherwas Madame de Genlis, who had been settled in that prince's family, asgoverness to his children, more especially to the sister of the present[2] French king. Lord Edward's whole course had been marked by generosityand noble feeling. Far better to have pardoned [3] such a man, and (ifthat were possible) to have conciliated his support; but, says acontemporary Irishman, "those were not times of conciliation. "

Some days after this event were arrested the two brothers named Shearer, men of talent, who eventually suffered for treason. These discoverieswere due to treachery of a peculiar sort; not to the treachery of anapostate brother breaking his faith, but of a counterfeit brothersimulating the character of conspirator, and by that fraud obtaininga key to the fatal secrets of the United Irishmen. His perfidy, therefore, consisted, not in any betrayal of secrets, but in the fraudby which he obtained them. Government, without having yet penetratedto the very heart of the mystery, had now discovered enough to guidethem in their most energetic precautions; and the result was, that theconspirators, whose policy had hitherto been to wait for the cooperationof a French army, now suddenly began to distrust that policy: theirfear was, that the ground would be cut from beneath their feet if theywaited any longer. More was evidently risked by delay than by dispensingaltogether with foreign aid. To forego this aid was perilous; to waitfor it was ruin. It was resolved, therefore, to commence theinsurrection on the 23d of May; and, in order to distract thegovernment, to commence it by simultaneous assaults upon all themilitary posts in the neighborhood of Dublin. This plan was discovered, but scarcely in time to prevent the effects of a surprise. On the 21st, late in the evening, the conspiracy had been announced by the lordlieutenant's secretary to the lord mayor; and, on the following day, by a message from his excellency to both Houses of Parliament. 

The insurrection, however, in spite of this official warning, beganat the appointed hour. The skirmishes were many, and in many places;but, generally speaking, they were not favorable in their results tothe insurgents. The mail coaches, agreeably to the preconcerted plan, had all been intercepted; their non-arrival being every where understoodby the conspirators as a silent signal that the war had commenced. Yetthis summons to the more distant provinces, though truly interpreted, had not been truly answered. The communication between the capital andthe interior, almost completely interrupted at first, had been atlength fully restored; and a few days saw the main strength (as itwas supposed) of the insurrection suppressed without much bloodshed. But hush! what is _that_ in the rear?

Just at this moment, when all the world was disposed to think the wholeaffair quietly composed, the flame burst out with tenfold fury in apart of the country from which government, with some reason, had turnedaway their anxieties and their preparations. This was the county ofWexford, which the Earl of Mountnorris had described to the governmentas so entirely well affected to the loyal cause, that he had personallypledged himself for its good conduct. On the night before Whitsunday, however, May 27, the standard of revolt was _there_ raised by JohnMurphy, a Catholic priest, well know henceforwards under the title ofFather Murphy. 

The campaign opened inauspiciously for the royalists. The rebels hadposted themselves on two eminences--Kilthomas, about ten miles to thewestward of Gorey; and the Hill of Oulart, half way (_i. E. _, abouta dozen miles) between Gorey and Wexford. They were attacked at eachpoint on Whitsunday. From the first point they were driven easily, andwith considerable loss; but at Oulart the issue was very different. Father Murphy commanded here in person; and, finding that his men gaveway in great confusion before a picked body of the North Cork militia, under the command of Colonel Foote, he contrived to persuade themthat their flight was leading them right upon a body of royal cavalryposted to intercept their retreat. This fear effectually halted them. The insurgents, through a prejudice natural to inexperience, had anunreasonable dread of cavalry. A second time, therefore, facing aboutto retreat from this imaginary body of horse, they came of necessity, and without design, full upon their pursuers, whom unhappily theintoxication of victory had by this time brought into the most carelessdisarray. These, almost to a man, the rebels annihilated: universalconsternation followed amongst the royalists; Father Murphy led themto Ferns, and thence to the attack of Enniscorthy. 

Has the reader witnessed, or has he heard described, the suddenburst--the explosion, one might say--by which a Swedish winter passesinto spring, and spring simultaneously into summer? The icy sceptreof winter does not there thaw and melt away by just gradations; it isbroken, it is shattered, in a day, in an hour, and with a violencebrought home to _every_ sense. No second type of resurrection, somighty or so affecting, is manifested by nature in southern climates. Such is the headlong tumult, such "the torrent rapture, " by which lifeis let loose amongst the air, the earth, and the waters under theearth. Exactly what this vernal resurrection is in manifestations ofpower and life, by comparison with climates that have no winter, such, and marked with features as distinct, was this Irish insurrection, when suddenly surrendered to the whole contagion of politico-religiousfanaticism, by comparison with vulgar _martinet_ strategics and thepedantry of technical warfare. What a picture must Enniscorthy havepresented on the 27th of May! Fugitives, crowding in from Ferns, announced the rapid advance of the rebels, now, at least, 7000 strong, drunk with victory, and maddened with vindictive fury. Not long aftermidday, their advanced guard, well armed with muskets, (pillaged, beH observed, from royal magazines hastily deserted, ) commenced atumultuous assault. Less than 300 militia and yeomanry formed thegarrison of the place, which had no sort of defences except the naturalone of the River Slaney. This, however, was fordable, and _that_ theassailants knew. The slaughter amongst the rebels, meantime, from thelittle caution they exhibited, and their total defect of militaryskill, was murderous. Spite of their immense numerical advantages, itis probable they would have been defeated. But in Enniscorthy, (aswhere not?) treason from within was emboldened to raise its crest atthe very crisis of suspense; incendiaries were at work; and flamesbegan to issue from many houses at once. Retreat itself became suddenlydoubtful, depending, as it did, altogether upon the state of the wind. At the right hand of every royalist stood a traitor; in his own houseoftentimes lurked other traitors, waiting for the signal to begin; inthe front was the enemy; in the rear was a line of blazing streets. Three hours the battle had raged; it was now four, P. M. , and at thismoment the garrison hastily gave way, and fled to Wexford. 

Now came a scene, which swallowed up all distinct or separate featuresin its frantic confluence of horrors. All the loyalists of Enniscorthy, all the gentry for miles around, who had congregated in that town, asa centre of security, were summoned at that moment, not to an orderlyretreat, but to instant flight. At one end of the street were seen therebel pikes, and bayonets, and fierce faces, already gleaming throughthe smoke; at the other end, volumes of fire, surging and billowingfrom the thatched roofs and blazing rafters, beginning to block up theavenues of escape. Then began the agony and uttermost conflict of whatis worst and what is best in human nature. Then was to be seen thevery delirium of fear, and the very delirium of vindictive malice;private and ignoble hatred, of ancient origin, shrouding itself in themask of patriotic wrath; the tiger glare of just vengeance, fresh fromintolerable wrongs and the never-to-be-forgotten ignominy of stripesand personal degradation; panic, self-palsied by its own excess; flight, eager or stealthy, according to the temper and the means; volleyingpursuit; the very frenzy of agitation, under every mode of excitement;and here and there, towering aloft, the desperation of maternal love, victorious and supreme above all lower passions. I recapitulate andgather under general abstractions many an individual anecdote, reportedby those who were on that day present in Enniscorthy; for at Ferns, not far off, and deeply interested in all those transactions, I hadprivate friends, intimate participators in the trials of that fiercehurricane, and joint sufferers with those who suffered most. Ladieswere then seen in crowds, hurrying on foot to Wexford, the nearestasylum, though fourteen miles distant, many in slippers, bareheaded, and without any supporting arm; for the flight of their defenders, having been determined by a sudden angular movement of the assailants, coinciding with the failure of their own ammunition, had left no timefor warning; and fortunate it was for the unhappy fugitives, that theconfusion of burning streets, concurring with the seductions of pillage, drew aside so many of the victors as to break the unity of a pursuitelse hellishly unrelenting. 

Wexford, meantime, was in no condition to promise more than a momentaryshelter. Orders had been already issued to extinguish all domesticfires throughout the town, and to unroof all the thatched houses; sogreat was the jealousy of internal treason. From without, also, thealarm was every hour increasing. On Tuesday, the 29th of May, the rebelarmy advanced from Enniscorthy to a post called Three Rocks, not muchabove two miles from Wexford. Their strength was now increased to atleast 15, 000 men. Never was there a case requiring more energy in thedisposers of the royal forces; never one which met with less, even inthe most responsible quarters. The nearest military station was thefort at Duncannon, twenty-three miles distant. Thither, on the 29th, an express had been despatched by the mayor of Wexford, reporting theirsituation, and calling immediate aid. General Fawcet replied, that hewould himself march that same evening with the 13th regiment, part ofthe Meath militia, and sufficient artillery. Relying upon theseassurances, the small parties of militia and yeomanry then in Wexfordgallantly threw themselves upon the most trying services in advance. Some companies of the Donegal militia, not mustering above 200 men, marched immediately to a position between the rebel camp and Wexford;whilst others of the North Cork militia and the local yeomanry, withequal cheerfulness, undertook the defence of that town. Meantime, General Fawcet had consulted his personal comfort by _halting for thenight_, though aware of the dreadful emergency, at a station sixteenmiles short of Wexford. A small detachment, however, with part of hisartillery, he sent forward; these were the next morning interceptedby the rebels at Three Rocks, and massacred almost to a man. Twoofficers, who escaped the slaughter, carried the intelligence to theadvanced post of the Donegals; but they, so far from being disheartened, marched immediately against the rebel army, enormous as was thedisproportion, with the purpose of recapturing the artillery. A singularcontrast this to the conduct of General Fawcet, who retreated hastilyto Duncannon upon the first intelligence of this disaster. Such aregressive movement was so little anticipated by the gallant Donegals, that they continued to advance against the enemy, until the precisionwith which the captured artillery was served against themselves, andthe non-appearance of the promised aid, warned them to retire. AtWexford, they found all in confusion and the hurry of retreat. Theflight, as it may be called, of General Fawcet was now confirmed; and, as the local position of Wexford made it indefensible against artillery, the whole body of loyalists, except those whom insufficient warninghad thrown into the rear, now fled from the wrath of the rebels toDuncannon. It is a shocking illustration (_if truly reported_) of thethoughtless ferocity which characterized too many of the Orange troops, that, along the whole line of this retreat, they continued to burn thecabins of Roman Catholics, and often to massacre, in cold blood, theunoffending inhabitants; totally forgetful of the many hostages whomthe insurgents now held in their power, and careless of the dreadfulprovocations which they were thus throwing out to the bloodiestreprisals. 

Thus it was, and through mismanagement thus mischievously alert, orthrough torpor thus unaccountably base, that actually, on the 30th ofMay, not having raised their standard before the 26th, the rebels hadalready been permitted to possess themselves of the county of Wexfordin its whole southern division--Ross and Duncannon only excepted; ofwhich the latter was not liable to capture by _coup de main_, and theother was saved by the procrastination of the rebels. The northerndivision of the county was overrun pretty much in the same hasty style, and through the same desperate neglect in previous concert of plans. Upon first turning their views to the north, the rebels had taken upa position on the Hill of Corrigrua, as a station from which they couldmarch with advantage upon the town of Gorey, lying seven miles to thenorthward. On the 1st of June, a truly brilliant affair had taken placebetween a mere handful of militia and yeomanry from this town of Goreyand a strong detachment from the rebel camp. Many persons at the timeregarded this as the best fought action in the whole war. The twoparties had met about two miles from Gorey; and it is pretty certainthat, if the yeoman cavalry could have been prevailed on to charge atthe critical moment, the defeat would have been a most murderous oneto the rebels. As it was, they escaped, though with considerable lossof honor. Yet even this they were allowed to retrieve within a fewdays, in a remarkable way, and with circumstances of still greaterscandal to the military discretion in high quarters than had attendedthe movements of General Fawcet in the south. 

On the 4th of June, a little army of 1500 men, under the command ofMajor General Loftus, had assembled at Gorey. The plan was, to marchby two different roads upon the rebel encampment at Corrigrua; andthis plan was adopted. Meantime, on that same night, the rebel armyhad put themselves in motion for Gorey; and of this counter movementfull and timely information had been given by a farmer at the royalheadquarters; but such was the obstinate infatuation, that no officerof rank would condescent to give him a hearing. The consequences maybe imagined. Colonel Walpole, an Englishman, full of courage, butpresumptuously disdainful of the enemy, led a division upon one of thetwo roads, having no scouts, nor taking any sort of precaution. Suddenlyhe found his line of march crossed by the enemy in great strength: herefused to halt or to retire; was shot through the head; and a greatpart of the advanced detachment was slaughtered on the spot, and hisartillery captured. General Loftus, advancing on the parallel road, heard the firing, and detached the grenadier company of the Antrimmilitia to the aid of Walpole. These, to the amount of seventy men, were cut off almost to a man; and when the general, who could notcross over to the other road, through the enclosures, from theencumbrance of his artillery, had at length reached the scene of actionby a long circuit, he found himself in the following truly ludicrousposition: The rebels had pursued Colonel Walpole's division to Gorey, and possessed themselves of that place; the general had thus lost hishead quarters, without having seen the army whom he had suffered toslip past him in the dark. He marched back disconsolately to Gorey, took a look at the rebel posts which now occupied the town in strength, was saluted with a few rounds from his own cannon, and finally retreatedout of the county. 

This movement of General Loftus, and the previous one of General Fawcet, circumstantially illustrate the puerile imbecility with which the royalcause was then conducted. Both movements foundered in an hour, throughsurprises, against which each had been amply forewarned. Fortunatelyfor the government, the affairs of the rebels were managed even worse. Two sole enterprises were undertaken by them after this, previouslyto the closing battle of Vinegar Hill; both being of the very utmostimportance to their interests, and both sure of success if they hadbeen pushed forward in time. The first was the attack upon Ross, undertaken on the 29th of May, the day after the capture of Enniscorthy. Had that attack been pressed forward without delay, there never weretwo opinions as to the certainty of its success; and, _having_succeeded, it would have laid open to the rebels the important countiesof Waterford and Kilkenny. Being delayed until the 5th of June, theassault was repulsed with prodigious slaughter, The other was theattack upon Arklow, in the north. On the capture of Gorey, on the nightof June 4, as the immediate consequence of Colonel Walpole's defeat, had the rebels advanced upon Arklow, they would have found it forsome days totally undefended; the whole garrison having retreated inpanic, early on June 5, to Wicklow. The capture of this important placewould have laid open the whole road to the capital; would probablyhave caused a rising in that great city; and, in any event, would haveindefinitely prolonged the war, and multiplied the distractions ofgovernment. Merely from sloth and the spirit of procrastination, however, the rebel army halted at Gorey until the 9th, and then advancedwith what seemed the overpowering force of 27, 000 men. It is a strikinglesson upon the subject of procrastination, that, precisely on thatmorning of June 9, the attempt had first become hopeless. Until then, the place had been positively emptied of all inhabitants whatsoever. Exactly on the 9th, the old garrison had been ordered back from Wicklow, and reënforced by a crack English regiment, (the Durham Fencibles, )on whom chiefly at this critical hour had devolved the defence, whichwas peculiarly trying, from the vast numbers of the assailants, butbrilliant, masterly, and perfectly successful. 

This obstinate and fiercely-contested battle of Arklow was indeed, bygeneral consent, the hinge on which the rebellion turned. Nearly 30, 000men, armed every man of them with pikes, and 5000 with muskets, supported also by some artillery, sufficiently well served to doconsiderable execution at a most important point in the line of defence, could not be defeated without a very trying struggle. And here, again, it is worthy of record, that General Needham, who commanded on thisday, would have followed the example of Generals Fawcet and Loftus, and have ordered a retreat, had he not been determinately opposed byColonel Skerret, of the Durham regiment. Such was the imbecility, andthe want of moral courage, on the part of the military leaders; forit would be unjust to impute any defect in animal courage to thefeeblest of these leaders. General Needham, for example, exposed hisperson, without reserve, throughout the whole of this difficult day. Any amount of cannon shot he could face cheerfully, but not a tryingresponsibility. 

From the defeat of Arklow, the rebels gradually retired, between the 9thand the 20th of June, to their main military position of Vinegar Hill, which lies immediately above the town of Enniscorthy, and had fallen intotheir hands, concurrently with that place, on the 28th of May. Here theirwhole forces, with the exception of perhaps 6000, who attacked GeneralMoore (ten and a half years later, the Moore of Corunna) when marching onthe 26th towards Wexford, had been concentrated; and to this point, therefore, as a focus, had the royal army, 13, 000 strong, with arespectable artillery, under the supreme command of General Lake, converged in four separate divisions, about the 19th and 20th of June. The great blow was to be struck on the 21st; and the plan was, that theroyal forces, moving to the assault of the rebel position upon four linesat right angles to each other, (as if, for instance, from the fourcardinal points to the same centre, ) should surround their encampment, and shut up every avenue to escape. On this plan, the field of battlewould have been one vast slaughter house; for quarter was not granted oneither side. [4] But the quadrille, if it were ever seriously concerted, was entirely defeated by the failure of General Needham, who did notpresent himself with _his_ division until nine o'clock, a full half hourafter the battle was over, and thus earned the, _sobriquet of the late_[5] _General Needham. _ Whether the failure were really in this officer, or (as was alleged by his apologists) had been already preconcerted inthe inconsistent orders issued to him by General Lake, with the covertintention, as many believe, of mercifully counteracting his own scheme ofwholesale butchery, to this day remains obscure. The effect of thatdelay, in whatever way caused, was for once such as must win every body'sapplause. The action had commenced at seven o'clock in the morning; byhalf past eight, the whole rebel army was in flight; and, naturallymaking for the only point left unguarded, it escaped with no greatslaughter (but leaving behind all its artillery, and a good deal ofvaluable plunder) through what was facetiously called ever afterwards_Needham's Gap_. After this capital rout of Vinegar Hill, the rebel armyday by day mouldered away. A large body, however, of the fiercest andmost desperate continued for some time to make flying marches in alldirections, according to the positions of the king's forces and themomentary favor of accidents. Once or twice they were brought to actionby Sir James Duff and Sir Charles Asgill; and, ludicrously enough, oncemore they were suffered to escape by the eternal delays of the "lateNeedham. " At length, however, after many skirmishes, and all varieties oflocal success, they finally dispersed upon a bog in the county of Dublin. Many desperadoes, however, took up their quarters for a long time in thedwarf woods of Killaughrim, near Enniscorthy, assuming the trade ofmarauders, but ludicrously designating themselves the Babes in the Wood. It is an inexplicable fact, that many deserters from the militiaregiments, who had behaved well throughout the campaign, and adheredfaithfully to their colors, now resorted to this confederation of thewoods; from which it cost some trouble to dislodge them. Another party, in the woods and mountains of Wicklow, were found still more formidable, and continued to infest the adjacent country through the ensuing winter. These were not finally ejected from their lairs until after one of theirchiefs had been killed in a night skirmish by a young man defending hishouse, and the other chief, weary of his savage life, had surrenderedhimself to transportation. 

It diffused general satisfaction throughout Ireland, that, on the veryday before the final engagement of Vinegar Hill, Lord Cornwallis madehis entry into Dublin as the new lord lieutenant. A proclamation, issued early in July, of general amnesty to all who had shed no bloodexcept on the field of battle, notified to the country the new spiritof policy which now distinguished the government; and, doubtless, thatone merciful change worked marvels in healing the agitations of theland. Still it was thought necessary that severe justice should takeits course amongst the most conspicuous leaders or agents in theinsurrection. Martial law still prevailed; and under that law we know, through a speech of the Duke of Wellington's, how entirely the veryelements of justice are dependent upon individual folly or caprice. Many of those who had shown the greatest generosity, and with no slightrisk to themselves, were now selected to suffer. Bagenal Harvey, aProtestant gentleman, who had held the supreme command of the rebelarmy for some time with infinite vexation to himself, and taxed withno one instance of cruelty or excess, was one of those doomed toexecution. He had possessed an estate of nearly three thousand perannum; and at the same time with him was executed another gentleman, of more than three times that estate, Cornelius Grogan. Singular itwas, that men of this condition and property, men of feeling andrefinement, should have staked the happiness of their families upona contest so forlorn. Some there were, however, and possibly thesegentlemen, who could have explained their motives intelligibly enough:they had been forced by persecution, and actually baited into the ranksof the rebels. One picturesque difference in the deaths of these twogentlemen was remarkable, as contrasted with their previous habits. Grogan was constitutionally timid; and yet he faced the scaffold andthe trying preparations of the executioner with fortitude. On the otherhand, Bagenal Harvey, who had fought several duels with coolness, exhibited considerable trepidation in his last moments. Perhaps, inboth, the difference might be due entirely to some physical accidentof health or momentary nervous derangement. [6]

Among the crowd, however, of persons who suffered death at thisdisastrous era, there were two that merit a special commemoration fortheir virtuous resistance, in disregard of all personal risk, to ahorrid fanaticism of cruelty. One was a butcher, the other a seafaringman--both rebels. But they must have been truly generous, brave, andnoble-minded men. During the occupation of Wexford by the rebel army, they were repeatedly the sole opponents, at great personal risk, tothe general massacre then meditated by some few Popish bigots. And, finally, when all resistance seemed likely to be unavailing, they bothdemanded resolutely from the chief patron of this atrocious policythat he should fight themselves, armed in whatever way he might prefer, and, as they expressed it, "prove himself a man, " before he should beat liberty to sport in this wholesale way with innocent blood. 

One painful fact I will state in taking leave of this subject; and_that_, I believe, will be quite sufficient to sustain any thing I havesaid in disparagement of the government; by which, however, I mean, injustice, the local administration of Ireland. For, as to the supremegovernment in England, that body must be supposed, at the utmost, to havepassively acquiesced in the recommendations of the Irish cabinet, evenwhen it interfered so far. In particular, the scourgings andflagellations resorted to in Wexford and Kildare, &c. , must have beenoriginally suggested by minds familiar with the habits of the Irisharistocracy in the treatment of dependants. Candid Irishmen will admitthat the habit of kicking, or threatening to kick, waiters in coffeehouses or other menial dependants, --a habit which, in England, would bemet instantly by defiance and menaces of action for assault and battery, --is not yet altogether obsolete in Ireland. [7] Thirty years ago it wasstill more prevalent, and presupposed that spirit and temper in thetreatment of menial dependants, out of which, doubtless, arose thepractice of judicial (_i. E. _, tentative) flagellations. Meantime, thatfact with which I proposed to close my recollections of this greattumult, and which seems to be a sufficient guaranty for the very severestreflections on the spirit of the government, is expressed significantlyin the terms, used habitually by Roman Catholic gentlemen, in prudentialexculpation of themselves, when threatened with inquiry for their conductduring these times of agitation: "I thank my God that no man can chargeme justly with having saved the life of any Protestant, or his house frompillage, by my intercession with the rebel chiefs. " How! Did men boast ofcollusion with violence and the spirit of massacre! What did _that_ mean?It meant this: Some Roman Catholics had pleaded, and pleaded truly, as areason for special indulgence to themselves, that any influence whichmight belong to them, on the score of religion or of private friendship, with the rebel authorities, had been used by them on behalf of persecutedProtestants, either in delivering them altogether, or in softening theirdoom. But, to the surprise of every body, this plea was so far from beingentertained favorably by the courts of inquiry, that, on the contrary, anargument was built upon it, dangerous in the last degree to the pleader. "You admit, then, " it was retorted, "having had this very considerableinfluence upon the rebel councils; your influence extended to the savingof lives; in that case we must suppose you to have been known privatelyas their friend and supporter. " Thus to have delivered an innocent manfrom murder, argued that the deliverer must have been an accomplice ofthe murderous party. Readily it may be supposed that few would bedisposed to urge such a vindication, when it became known in what way itwas likely to operate. The government itself had made it perilous toprofess humanity; and every man henceforward gloried publicly in hiscallousness and insensibility, as the one best safeguard to himself on apath so closely beset with rocks. 

FOOTNOTES

[1] "_The only ducal house_. "--That is, the only one not royal. There arefour provinces in Ireland--_Ulster, Connaught, Munster, _ which three giveold traditional titles to three personages of the blood royal. Remainsonly _Leinster_, which gives the title of duke to the Fitzgeralds. 

[2] "_Present French king_. "--Viz. , in the year 1833. 

[3] "_To have pardoned_, " &c. --This was written under circumstances ofgreat hurry; and, were it not for that palliation, would be inexcusablythoughtless. For, in a double sense, it is doubtful how far thegovernment _could_ have pardoned Lord Edward. First, in a prudentialsense, was it possible (except in the spirit of a German sentimentalizingdrama) to pardon a conspicuous, and within certain limits a veryinfluential, officer for publicly avowing opinions tending to treason, and at war with the constitutional system of the land which fed him andwhich claimed his allegiance? Was it possible, in point of prudence or inpoint of dignity, to overlook such anti-national sentiments, whilstneither disavowed nor ever likely to be disavowed? Was this possible, regard being had to the inevitable effect of such _unearned_ forgivenessupon the army at large? But secondly, in a merely logical sense ofpractical self-consistency, would it have been rational or evenintelligible to pardon a man who probably _would_ not be pardoned; thatis, who must (consenting or not consenting) benefit by the concessions ofthe pardon, whilst disowning all reciprocal obligations?

[4] "_For quarter was not granted on either side_. "--I repeat, as allalong and necessarily I have repeated, that which orally I was told atthe time, or which subsequently I have read in published accounts. Butthe reader is aware by this time of my steadfast conviction, that moreeasily might a camel go through the eye of a needle, than a reporter, fresh from a campaign blazing with partisanship, and that partisanshiprepresenting ancient and hereditary feuds, could by possibility cleansehimself from the _virus_ of such a prejudice. 

[5] The same jest was applied to Mr. Pitt's brother. When first lord ofthe Admiralty, people calling on him as late as even 10 or 11, P. M. , weretold that his lordship was riding in the park. On this account, partly, but more pointedly with a malicious reference to the contrast between hislanguor and the fiery activity of his father, the first earl, he wasjocularly called, _the late Lord Chatham_. 

[6] Perhaps also _not_. Possibly enough there may be no call for any such_exceptional_ solution; for, after all, there may be nothing to solve--no_dignus vindice nodus_. As regards the sudden interchange of characterson the scaffold, --the constitutionally brave man all at once becomingtimid, and the timid man becoming brave, --it must be remembered, that theparticular sort of courage applicable to duelling, when the danger ismuch more of a fugitive and momentary order than that which invests abattle lasting for hours, depends almost entirely upon a man's_confidence in his own luck_--a peculiarity of mind which existsaltogether apart from native resources of courage, whether moral orphysical: usually this mode of courage is but a transformed expressionfor a sanguine temperament. A man who is habitually depressed by aconstitutional taint of despondency may carry into a duel a sublimeprinciple of calm, self-sacrificing courage, as being possibly utterlywithout hope--a courage, therefore, which has to fight with internalresistance, to which there may be nothing corresponding in a cheerfultemperament. 

But there is another and separate agency through which the fear of deathmay happen to act as a disturbing force, and most irregularly as viewedin relation to moral courage and strength of mind. This anomalous forceis the imaginative and shadowy terror with which different minds recoilfrom death--not considered as an agony or torment, but considered as amystery, and, next after God, as the most infinite of mysteries. In abrave man this terror may happen to be strong; in a pusillanimous man, simply through inertness and original feebleness of imagination, mayhappen to be scarcely developed. This oscillation of horror, alternatingbetween death as an agony and death as a mystery, not only exists with acorresponding set of consequences accordingly as one or other prevails, but is sometimes consciously contemplated and put into the scales ofcomparison and counter valuation. For instance, one of the early Csesarsreviewed the case thus: "_Emori nolo; me esse mortuum nihil cestumo_:From death as the act and process of dying, I revolt; but as to death, viewed as a permanent state or condition, I don't value it at a straw. "What this particular Caesar detested, and viewed with burning malice, wasdeath the agony--death the physical torment. As to death the mystery, want of sensibility to the infinite and the shadowy had disarmed _that_of its terrors for him. Yet, on the contrary, how many are there who facethe mere physical anguish of dying with stern indifference! But death themystery, --death that, not satisfied with changing our objective, mayattack even the roots of our subjective, --_there_ lies the mute, ineffable, voiceless horror before which all human courage is abashed, even as all human resistance becomes childish when measuring itselfagainst gravitation. 

[7] "_Not yet altogether obsolete_. "--Written in 1833. 

CHAPTER X. 

FRENCH INVASION OF IRELAND, AND SECOND REBELLION. 

The decisive battle of Vinegar Hill took place at midsummer; and withthat battle terminated the First Rebellion. Two months later, a Frenchforce, not making fully a thousand men, under the command of GeneralHumbert, landed on the west coast of Ireland, and again roused theIrish peasantry to insurrection. This latter insurrection, and theinvasion which aroused it, naturally had a peculiar interest for LordWestport and myself, who, in our present abode of Westport House, wereliving in its local centre. 

I, in particular, was led, by hearing on every side the conversationreverting to the dangers and tragic incidents of the era, separatedfrom us by not quite two years, to make inquiries of every body whohad personally participated in the commotions. Records there were onevery side, and memorials even in our bed rooms, of this French visit;for, at one time, they had occupied Westport House in some strength. The largest town in our neighborhood was Castlebar, distant abouteleven Irish miles. To this it was that the French addressed theirvery earliest efforts. Advancing rapidly, and with their usual styleof theatrical confidence, they had obtained at first a degree of successwhich was almost surprising to their own insolent vanity, and which, long afterwards, became a subject of bitter mortification to our ownarmy. Had there been at this point any energy at all corresponding tothat of the enemy, or commensurate to the intrinsic superiority of ourown troops in steadiness, the French would have been compelled to laydown their arms. The experience of those days, however, showed howdeficient is the finest composition of an army, unless where its martialqualities have been developed by practice; and how liable is allcourage, when utterly inexperienced to sudden panics. This gasconadingadvance, which would have foundered utterly against a single battalionof the troops which fought in 1812-13 amongst the Pyrenees, was herefor the moment successful. 

The bishop of this see, Dr. Stock, with his whole household, and, indeed, his whole pastoral charge, became, on this occasion, prisonersto the enemy. The republican head quarters were fixed for a time inthe episcopal palace; and there it was that General Humbert and hisstaff lived in familiar intercourse with the bishop, who thus becamewell qualified to record (which he soon afterwards did in an anonymouspamphlet) the leading circumstances of the French incursion, and theconsequent insurrection in Connaught, as well as the most strikingfeatures in the character and deportment of the republican officers. Riding over the scene of these transactions daily for some months, incompany with Dr. Peter Browne, the Dean of Ferns, (an illegitimate sonof the late Lord Altamont, and, therefore, half brother to the present, )whose sacred character had not prevented him from taking that militarypart which seemed, in those difficult moments, a duty of elementarypatriotism laid upon all alike, I enjoyed many opportunities forchecking the statements of the bishop. The small body of French troopswhich undertook this remote service had been detached in one halffrom the army of the Rhine; the other half had served under Napoleonin his first foreign campaign, viz. , the Italian campaign of 1796, which accomplished the conquest of Northern Italy. Those from Germanyshowed, by their looks and their meagre condition, how much they hadsuffered; and some of them, in describing their hardships, told theirIrish acquaintance that, during the seige of Metz, which had occurred inthe previous winter of 1797, they had slept in holes made four feet belowthe surface of the snow. One officer declared solemnly that he had notonce undressed, further than by taking off his coat, for a period oftwelve months. The private soldiers had all the essential qualitiesfitting them for a difficult and trying service: "intelligence, activity, temperance, patience to a surprising degree, together with the exactestdiscipline. " This is the statement of their candid and upright enemy. "Yet, " says the bishop, "with all these martial qualities, if you exceptthe grenadiers, they had nothing to catch the eye. Their stature, for themost part, was low, their complexion pale and yellow, their clothes muchthe worse for wear: to a superficial observer, they would have appearedincapable of enduring any hardship. These were the men, however, of whomit was presently observed, that they could be well content to live onbread or potatoes, to drink water, to make the stones of the street theirbed, and to sleep in their clothes, with no covering but the canopy ofheaven. " "How vast, " says Cicero, "is the revenue of Parsimony!" and, bya thousand degrees more striking, how celestial is the strength thatdescends upon the feeble through Temperance!

It may well be imagined in what terror the families of Killala heardof a French invasion, and the necessity of immediately receiving arepublican army. As _sans culottes_, these men, all over Europe, hadthe reputation of pursuing a ferocious marauding policy; in fact, theywere held little better than sanguinary brigands. In candor, it mustbe admitted that their conduct at Killala belied these reports; though, on the other hand, an obvious interest obliged them to a more pacificdemeanor in a land which they saluted as friendly, and designed toraise into extensive insurrection. The French army, so much dreaded, at length arrived. The general and his staff entered the palace; andthe first act of one officer, on coming into the dining room, was toadvance to the sideboard, sweep all the plate into a basket, and deliverit to the bishop's butler, with a charge to carry it off to a placeof security. [1]

The French officers, with the detachment left under their orders bythe commander-in-chief, staid about one month at Killala. This periodallowed opportunities enough for observing individual differences ofcharacter and the general tone of their manners. These opportunitieswere not thrown away upon the bishop; he noticed with a critical eye, and he recorded on the spot, whatever fell within his own experience. Had he, however, happened to be a political or courtier bishop, hisrecord would, perhaps, have been suppressed; and, at any rate, it wouldhave been colored by prejudice. As it was, I believe it to have beenthe honest testimony of an honest man; and, considering the minutecircumstantiality of its delineations, I do not believe that, throughoutthe revolutionary war, any one document was made public which throwsso much light on the quality and composition of the French republicanarmies. On this consideration I shall extract a few passages from thebishop's personal sketches. 

The commander-in-chief of the French armament is thus delineated bythe bishop:--

"Humbert, the leader of this singular body of men, was himself asextraordinary a personage as any in his army. Of a good height andshape, in the full vigor of life, prompt to decide, quick in execution, apparently master of his art, you could not refuse him the praise ofa good officer, while his physiognomy forbade you to like him as aman. His eye, which was small and sleepy, cast a sidelong glance ofinsidiousness and even of cruelty; it was the eye of a cat preparingto spring upon her prey. His education and manners were indicative ofa person sprung from the lower orders of society; though he knew howto assume, when it was convenient, the deportment of a gentleman. Forlearning, he had scarcely enough to enable him to write his name. Hispassions were furious; and all his behavior seemed marked with thecharacter of roughness and insolence. A narrower observation of him, however, seemed to discover that much of this roughness was the resultof art, being assumed with the view of extorting by terror a readycompliance with his commands. Of this truth the bishop himself was oneof the first who had occasion to be made sensible. "

The particular occasion here alluded to by the bishop arose out of thefirst attempts to effect the disembarkation of the military stores andequipments from the French shipping, as also to forward them whenlanded. The case was one of extreme urgency; and proportionateallowance must be made for the French general. Every moment might bringthe British cruisers in sight, --two important expeditions had alreadybeen baffled in that way, --and the absolute certainty, known to allparties alike, that delay, under these circumstances, was tantamountto ruin; that upon a difference of ten or fifteen minutes, this wayor that, might happen to hinge the whole issue of the expedition: sucha consciousness gave unavoidably to every demur at this critical momentthe color of treachery. Neither boats, nor carts, nor horses could beobtained; the owners most imprudently and selfishly retiring from thatservice. Such being the extremity, the French general made the bishopresponsible for the execution of his orders; but the bishop had reallyno means to enforce this commission, and failed. Upon that, GeneralHumbert threatened to send his lordship, together with his whole family, prisoners of war to France, and assumed the air of a man violentlyprovoked. Here came the crisis for determining the bishop's weightamongst his immediate flock, and his hold upon their affections. Onegreat bishop, not far off, would, on such a trial, have been exultinglyconsigned to his fate: that I well know; for Lord Westport and I, merely as his visitors, were attacked in the dusk so fiercely withstones, that we were obliged to forbear going out unless in broaddaylight. Luckily the Bishop of Killala had shown himself a Christianpastor, and now he reaped the fruits of his goodness. The publicselfishness gave way when the danger of the bishop was made known. Theboats, the carts, the horses were now liberally brought in from theirlurking-places; the artillery and stores were landed; and the driversof the carts, &c. , were paid in drafts upon the Irish Directory, which(if it were an aerial coin) served at least to mark an unwillingnessin the enemy to adopt violent modes of hostility, and ultimatelybecame available in the very character assigned to them by the Frenchgeneral; not, indeed, as drafts upon the rebel, but as claims upon theequity of the English government. 

The officer left in command at Killala, when the presence of thecommander-in-chief was required elsewhere, bore the name of Charost. He was a lieutenant colonel, aged forty-five years, the son of aParisian watchmaker. Having been sent over at an early age to theunhappy Island of St. Domingo, with a view to some connections thereby which he hoped to profit, he had been fortunate enough to marry ayoung woman who brought him a plantation for her dowry, which wasreputed to have yielded him a revenue of £2000 sterling per annum. Butthis, of course, all went to wreck in one day, upon that mad decreeof the French convention which proclaimed liberty, without distinction, without restrictions, and without gradations, to the unprepared andferocious negroes. [2] Even his wife and daughter would have perishedsimultaneously with his property but for English protection, whichdelivered them from the black sabre, and transferred them to Jamaica. There, however, though safe, they were, as respected Colonel Charost, unavoidably captives; and "his eyes would fill, " says the bishop, "when he told the family that he had not seen these dear relatives forsix years past, nor even had tidings of them for the last three years. "On his return to France, finding that to have been a watchmaker's sonwas no longer a bar to the honors of the military profession, he hadentered the army, and had risen by merit to the rank which he nowheld. "He had a plain, good understanding. He seemed careless ordoubtful of revealed religion, but said that he believed in God; wasinclined to think that there must be a future state; and was very surethat, while he lived in this world, it was his duty to do all the goodto his fellow-creatures that he could. Yet what he did not exhibit inhis own conduct he appeared to respect in others; for he took carethat no noise or disturbance should be made in the castle (_i. E. _, the bishop's palace) on Sundays, while the family, and many Protestantsfrom the town, were assembled in the library at their devotions. 

"Boudet, the next in command, was a captain of foot, twenty-eight yearsold. His father, he said, was still living, though sixty-seven yearsold when he was born. His height was six feet two inches. In person, complexion, and gravity, he was no inadequate representation of theKnight of La Mancha, whose example he followed in a recital of his ownprowess and wonderful exploits, delivered in measured language and animposing seriousness of aspect. " The bishop represents him as vain andirritable, but distinguished by good feeling and principle. Anotherofficer was Ponson, described as five feet six inches high, lively andanimated in excess, volatile, noisy, and chattering _à l'outrance_. "He was hardy, " says the bishop, "and patient to admiration of laborand want of rest. " And of this last quality the following wonderfulillustration is given: "A continued watching of _five days and nightstogether_, when the rebels were growing desperate for prey and mischief, _did not appear to sink his spirits in the smallest degree_. "

Contrasting with the known rapacity of the French republican army in_all_ its ranks the severest honesty of these particular officers, wemust come to the conclusion, either that they had been _selected_ fortheir tried qualities of abstinence and self-control, or else thatthe perilous tenure of their footing in Ireland had coerced them intoforbearance. Of this same Ponson, the last described, the bishopdeclares that "he was strictly honest, and could not bear the absenceof this quality in others; so that his patience was pretty well triedby his Irish allies. "At the same time, he expressed his contempt forreligion in a way which the bishop saw reason for ascribing tovanity--"the miserable affectation of appearing worse than he reallywas. " One officer there was, named _Truc_, whose brutality recalledthe impression, so disadvantageous to French republicanism, which elsehad been partially effaced by the manners and conduct of his comrades. To him the bishop (and not the bishop only, but many of my owninformants, to whom Truc had been familiarly known) ascribes "a frontof brass, an incessant fraudful smile, manners altogether vulgar, andin his dress and person a neglect of cleanliness, even beyond theaffected negligence of republicans. "

Truc, however, happily, was not leader; and the principles or thepolicy of his superiors prevailed. To them, not merely in their ownconduct, but also in their way of applying that influence which theyheld over their most bigoted allies, the Protestants of Connaught wereunder deep obligations. Speaking merely as to property, the honestbishop renders the following justice to the enemy: "And here it wouldbe an act of great injustice to the excellent discipline constantlymaintained by these invaders while they remained in our town, not toremark, that, with every temptation to plunder, which the time and thenumber of valuable articles within their reach presented to them inthe bishop's palace, from a sideboard of plate and glasses, a hallfilled with hats, whips, and greatcoats, as well of the guests as ofthe family, not a single particular of private property was found tohave been carried away, when the owners, after the first fright, cameto look for their effects, which was not for a day or two after thelanding. " Even in matters of delicacy the same forbearance was exhibited:"Beside the entire use of other apartments, during the stay of theFrench in Killala, the attic story, containing a library and three bedchambers, continued sacred to the bishop and his family. And soscrupulous was the delicacy of the French not to disturb the femalepart of the house, that not one of them was ever seen to go higherthan the middle floor, except on the evening of the success atCastlebar, when two officers begged leave to carry to the family thenews of the battle; and seemed a little mortified that the news wasreceived with an air of dissatisfaction. " These, however, were not theweightiest instances of that eminent service which the French had itin their power to render on this occasion. The royal army behaved illin every sense. Liable to continual panics in the field, --panicswhich, but for the overwhelming force accumulated, and the discretionof Lord Cornwallis, would have been fatal to the good cause, --the royalforces erred as unthinkingly, in the abuse of any momentary triumph. Forgetting that the rebels held many hostages in their hands, theyonce recommenced the old system practised in Wexford and Kildare--ofhanging and shooting without trial, and without a thought of thehorrible reprisals that might be adopted. These reprisals, but for thefortunate influence of the French commanders, and but for their greatenergy in applying that influence according to the exigencies of timeand place, would have been made: it cost the whole weight of the Frenchpower, their influence was stretched almost to breaking, before theycould accomplish their purpose of neutralizing the senseless crueltyof the royalists, and of saving the trembling Protestants. Dreadfulwere the anxieties of these moments; and I myself heard persons, ata distance of nearly two years, declare that their lives hung at thattime by a thread; and that, but for the hasty approach of the lordlieutenant by forced marches, that thread would have snapped. "We heardwith panic, " said they, "of the madness which characterized theproceedings of our _soi-disant_ friends; and, for any chance of safety, unavoidably we looked only to our nominal enemies--the staff of theFrench army. "

One story was still current, and very frequently repeated, at the timeof my own residence upon the scene of these transactions. It would notbe fair to mention it, without saying, at the same time, that thebishop, whose discretion was so much impeached by the affair, had thecandor to blame himself most heavily, and always applauded the rebelfor the lesson he had given him. The case was this: Day after day theroyal forces had been accumulating upon military posts in theneighborhood of Killala, and could be descried from elevated stationsin that town. Stories travelled simultaneously to Killala, every hour, of the atrocities which marked their advance; many, doubtless, beingfictions, either of blind hatred, or of that ferocious policy whichsought to make the rebels desperate, by tempting them into the lastextremities of guilt, but, unhappily, too much countenanced as to theirgeneral outline, by excesses on the royal part, already proved, andundeniable. The ferment and the anxiety increased every hour amongstthe rebel occupants of Killala. The French had no power to protect, beyond the moral one of their influence as allies; and, in the verycrisis of this alarming situation, a rebel came to the bishop with thenews that the royal cavalry was at that moment advancing from Sligo, and could be traced along the country by the line of blazing houseswhich accompanied their march. The bishop doubted this, and expressedhis doubt. "Come with me, " said the rebel. It was a matter of policyto yield, and his lordship went. They ascended together the NeedleTower Hill, from the summit of which the bishop now discovered thatthe fierce rebel had spoken but too truly. A line of smoke and fireran over the country in the rear of a strong patrol detached from theking's forces. The moment was critical; the rebel's eye expressed theunsettled state of his feelings; and, at that instant, the imprudentbishop utterred a sentiment which, to his dying day, he could notforget. "They, " said he, meaning the ruined houses, "are only wretchedcabins. " The rebel mused, and for a few moments seemed inself-conflict--a dreadful interval to the bishop, who became sensibleof his own extreme imprudence the very moment after the words hadescaped him. However, the man contented himself with saying, after apause, "A poor man's cabin is to him as dear as a palace. " It isprobable that this retort was far from expressing the deep moralindignation at his heart, though his readiness of mind failed to furnishhim with any other more stinging; and, in such cases, all depends uponthe first movement of vindictive feeling being broken. The bishop, however, did not forget the lesson he had received; nor did he failto blame himself most heavily, not so much for his imprudence as forhis thoughtless adoption of a language expressing an aristocratichauteur that did not belong to his real character. There was, indeed, at that moment no need that fresh fuel should be applied to theirritation of the rebels; they had already declared their intentionof plundering the town; and, as they added, "in spite of the French, "whom they now regarded, and openly denounced, as "abetters of theProtestants, " much more than as their own allies. 

Justice, however, must be done to the rebels as well as to theirmilitary associates. If they were disposed to plunder, they were foundgenerally to shrink from bloodshed and cruelty, and yet from no wantof energy or determination. "The peasantry never appeared to wantanimal courage, " says the bishop, "for they flocked together to meetdanger whenever it was expected. Had it pleased Heaven to be as liberalto them of brains as of hands, it is not easy to say to what lengthof mischief they might have proceeded; but they were all alongunprovided with leaders of any ability. " This, I believe, was true;and yet it would be doing poor justice to the Connaught rebels, norwould it be drawing the moral truly as respects this aspect of therebellion, if their abstinence from mischief, in its worst form, wereto be explained out of this defect in their leaders. Nor is it possibleto suppose _that_ the bishop's meaning, though his words seem to tendthat way. For he himself elsewhere notices the absence of all wantonbloodshed as a feature of this Connaught rebellion most honorable initself to the poor misguided rebels, and as distinguishing it veryremarkably from the greater insurrection so recently crushed in thecentre and the east. "It is a circumstance, " says he, "worthy ofparticular notice, that, during the whole time of this civil commotion, not a single drop of blood was shed by the Connaught rebels, exceptin the field of war. It is true, the example and influence of theFrench went a great way to prevent sanguinary excesses. But it willnot be deemed fair to ascribe to this cause alone the forbearance ofwhich we were witnesses, when it is considered what a range of countrylay at the mercy of the rebels for several days after the French powerwas known to be at an end. "

To what, then, _are_ we to ascribe the forbearance of the Connaughtmen, so singularly contrasted with the hideous excesses of theirbrethren in the east? Solely to the different complexion (so, at least, I was told) of the policy pursued by government. In Wexford, Kildare, Meath, Dublin, &c. , it had been judged advisable to adopt, as a sortof precautionary policy, not for the punishment, but for the discoveryof rebellious purposes, measures of the direst severity; not merelyfree quarterings of the soldiery, with liberty (or even an expresscommission) to commit outrages and insults upon all who were suspected, upon all who refused to countenance such measures, upon all who presumedto question their justice, but even, under color of martial law, toinflict croppings, and pitch cappings, half hangings, and the tortureof "picketings;" to say nothing of houses burned, and farms laidwaste--things which were done daily, and under military orders; thepurpose avowed being either vengeance for some known act ofinsurrection, or the determination to extort confessions. Too often, however, as may well be supposed, in such utter disorganization ofsociety, private malice, either personal or on account of old familyfeuds, was the true principle at work. And many were thus driven, bymere frenzy of just indignation, or, perhaps, by mere desperation, into acts of rebellion which else they had not meditated. Now, inConnaught, at this time, the same barbarous policy was no longerpursued; and then it was seen, that, unless maddened by ill usage, thepeasantry were capable of great self-control. There was no repetitionof the Enniscorthy massacres; and it was impossible to explain honestly_why_ there was none, without, at the same time, reflecting back uponthat atrocity some color of palliation. 

These things considered, it must be granted that there was a spiritof unjustifiable violence in the royal army on achieving their triumph. It is shocking, however, to observe the effect of panic to irritatethe instincts of cruelty and sanguinary violence, even in the gentlestminds. I remember well, on occasion of the memorable tumults in Bristol, (autumn of 1831, ) that I, for my part, could not read, without horrorand indignation, one statement, (made, I believe, officially at thattime, ) which yet won the cordial approbation of some ladies who hadparticipated in the panic. I allude to that part of the report whichrepresents several of the dragoons as having dismounted, resigned thecare of their horses to persons in the street, and pursued the unhappyfugitives, criminals, undoubtedly, but no longer dangerous, up stairsand down stairs, to the last nook of their retreat. The worst criminalscould not be known and identified as such; and even in a case wherethey could, vengeance so hellish and so unrelenting was not justifiedby houses burned or by momentary panics raised. Scenes of the samedescription were beheld upon the first triumph of the royal cause inConnaught; and but for Lord Cornwallis, equally firm before his successand moderate in its exercise, they would have prevailed moreextensively. The poor rebels were pursued with a needless ferocity onthe recapture of Killala. So hotly, indeed, did some of the conquerorshang upon the footsteps of the fugitives, that both rushed almostsimultaneously--pursuers and pursued--into the terror-stricken housesof Killala; and, in some instances, the ball meant for a rebel toldwith mortal effect upon a royalist. Here, indeed, as in other casesof this rebellion, in candor it should be mentioned, that the royalarmy was composed chiefly of militia regiments. Not that militia, orregiments composed chiefly of men who had but just before volunteeredfor the line, have not often made unexceptionable soldiers; but inthis case there was no reasonable proportion of veterans, or men whohad seen any service. The Bishop of Killala was assured by anintelligent officer of the king's army that the victors were withina trifle of being beaten. I was myself told by a gentlemen who rodeas a volunteer on that day, that, to the best of his belief, it wasmerely a mistaken order of the rebel chiefs causing a false applicationof a select reserve at a very critical moment, which had saved hisown party from a ruinous defeat. It may be added, upon almost universaltestimony, that the recapture of Killala was abused, not only asrespected the defeated rebels, but also as respected the royalists ofthat town. "The regiments that came to their assistance, being allmilitia, seemed to think that they had a right to take the propertythey had been the means of preserving, and to use it as their ownwhenever they stood in need of it. Their rapacity differed in no respectfrom that of the rebels, except that they seized upon things with lessof ceremony and excuse, and that his majesty's soldiers wereincomparably superior to the Irish traitors in dexterity at stealing. In consequence, the town grew very weary of their guests, and wereglad to see them march off to other quarters. "

The military operations in this brief campaign were discreditable, inthe last degree, to the energy, to the vigilance, and to the steadinessof the Orange army. Humbert had been a leader against the royalistsof La Vendée, as well as on the Rhine; consequently he was anambidextrous enemy--fitted equally for partisan warfare, and for thetactics of regular armies. Keenly alive to the necessity, under _his_circumstances, of vigor and despatch, after occupying Killala on theevening of the 22d August, (the day of his disembarkation, ) where thesmall garrison of 50 men (yeomen and fencibles) had made a tolerableresistance, and after other trifling affairs, he had, on the 26th, marched against Castlebar with about 800 of his own men, and perhaps1200 to 1500 of the rebels. Here was the advanced post of the royalarmy. General Lake (the Lord Lake of India) and Major General Hutchinson(the Lord Hutchinson of Egypt) had assembled upon this point arespectable force; some say upwards of 4000, others not more than 1100. The disgraceful result is well known: the French, marching all nightover mountain roads, and through one pass which was thought impregnable, if it had been occupied by a battalion instead of a captain's guard, surprised Castlebar on the morning of the 27th. _Surprised_, I say, for no word short of that can express the circumstances of the case. About two o'clock in the morning, a courier had brought intelligenceof the French advance; but from some unaccountable obstinacy, at headquarters, such as had proved fatal more than either once or twice inthe Wexford campaign, his news was disbelieved; yet, if disbelieved, why therefore neglected? Neglected, however, it was; and at seven, when the news proved to be true, the royal army was drawn out in hurryand confusion to meet the enemy. The French, on their part, seeing ourstrength, looked for no better result to themselves than summarysurrender; more especially as our artillery was well served, and soonbegan to tell upon their ranks. Better hopes first arose, as theyafterwards declared, upon observing that many of the troops fired ina disorderly way, without waiting for the word of command; upon thisthey took new measures: in a few minutes a panic arose; General Lakeordered a retreat; and then, in spite of all that could be done by theindignant officers, the flight became irretrievable. The troops reachedTuam, thirty miles distant, on that same day; and one small party ofmounted men actually pushed on to Athlone, which is above sixty milesfrom the field of battle. Fourteen pieces of artillery were lost onthis occasion. However, it ought to be mentioned that some seriousgrounds appeared afterwards for suspecting treachery; most of thosewho had been reported "missing" having been afterwards observed in theranks of the enemy, where it is remarkable enough (or perhaps not soremarkable, as simply implying how little they were trusted by theirnew allies, and for that reason how naturally they were put forwardon the most dangerous services) that these deserters perished to aman. Meantime, the new lord lieutenant, having his foot constantly inthe stirrup, marched from Dublin without a moment's delay. By meansof the grand canal, he made a forced march of fifty-six English milesin two days; which brought him to Kilbeggan on the 27th. Very earlyon the following morning, he received the unpleasant news fromCastlebar. Upon this he advanced to Athlone, meeting every indicationof a routed and panic-struck army. Lord Lake was retreating upon thattown, and thought himself _(it is said)_ so little secure, even atthis distance from the enemy, that the road from Tuam was covered withstrong patrols. On the other hand, in ludicrous contrast to thesedemonstrations of alarm, (_supposing them to be related withoutexaggeration, _) the French had never stirred from Castlebar. On the4th of September, Lord Cornwallis was within fourteen miles of thatplace. Humbert, however, had previously dislodged towards the countyof Longford. His motive for this movement was to cooperate with aninsurrection in that quarter, which had just then broken out instrength. He was now, however, hemmed in by a large army of perhaps25, 000 men, advancing from all points; and a few moves were all thatremained of the game, played with whatever skill. Colonel Vereker, with about 300 of the Limerick militia, first came up with him, andskirmished very creditably (September 6) with part, or (as the colonelalways maintained) with the whole of the French army. Other affairsof trivial importance followed; and at length, on the 8th of September, General Humbert surrendered with his whole army, now reduced to 844men, of whom 96 were officers; having lost since their landing atKillala exactly 288 men. The rebels were not admitted to any terms;they were pursued and cut down without mercy. However, it is pleasantto know, that, from their agility in escaping, this cruel policy wasdefeated: not much above 500 perished; and thus were secured to theroyal party the worst results of vengeance the fiercest, and of clemencythe most undistinguishing, without any one advantage of either. Somedistricts, as Laggan and Eris, were treated with martial rigor; thecabins being burned, and their unhappy tenants driven out into themountains for the winter. Rigor, therefore, there was; for the mosthumane politicians, erroneously, as one must believe, fancied itnecessary for the army to leave behind some impressions of terroramongst the insurgents. It is certain, however, that, under the counselsof Lord Cornwallis, the standards of public severity were very muchlowered, as compared with the previous examples in Wexford. 

The tardiness and slovenly execution of the whole service, meantime, was well illustrated in what follows:--

Killala was not delivered from rebel hands until the 23rd of September, notwithstanding the general surrender had occurred on the 8th; andthen only in consequence of an express from the bishop to GeneralTrench, hastening his march. The situation of the Protestants wasindeed critical. Humbert had left three French officers to protect theplace, but their influence gradually had sunk to a shadow. And plansof pillage, with all its attendant horrors, were daily debated. Underthese circumstances, the French officers behaved honorably andcourageously. "Yet, " says the bishop, "the poor commandant had noreason to be pleased with the treatment he had received immediatelyafter the action. He had returned to the castle for his sabre, andadvanced with it to the gate, in order to deliver it up to some Englishofficer, when it was seized and forced from his hand by a common soldierof Fraser's. He came in, got another sword, which he surrendered toan officer, and turned to reenter the hall. At this moment a secondHighlander burst through the gate, in spite of the sentinel placedthere by the general, and fired at the commandant with an aim that wasnear proving fatal, for the ball passed under his arm, piercing a verythick door entirely through, and lodging in the jamb. Had we lost theworthy man by such an accident, his death would have spoiled the wholerelish of our present enjoyment. He complained, and received an apologyfor the soldier's behavior from his officer. Leave was immediatelygranted to the three French officers (left behind by Humbert at Killala)to keep their swords, their effects, and even their bed chambers inthe house. "

 * * * * *

_Note applying generally to this chapter on the Second IrishRebellion. _--Already in 1833, when writing this 10th chapter, I felta secret jealously (intermittingly recurring) that possibly I mighthave fallen under a false bias at this point of my youthful memorials. I myself had seen reason to believe--indeed, sometimes I knew forcertain--that, in the _personalities_ of Irish politics from Grattandownwards, a spirit of fiery misrepresentation prevailed, which madeit hopeless to seek for any thing resembling truth. If in any quarteryou found candor and liberality, _that_ was because no interest existedin any thing Irish, and consequently no real information. Find out anyman that could furnish you with information such as presupposed aninterest in Ireland, and inevitably he turned out a bigoted partisan. There cannot be a stronger proof of this than the ridiculous libelsand literary caricatures current even in England, through one wholegeneration, against the late Lord Londonderry--a most able and faithfulmanager of our English foreign interests in times of unparalleleddifficulty. Already in the closing years of the last century, his Irishpolicy had been inextricably falsified: subsequently, when he came toassume a leading part in the English Parliament, the efforts tocalumniate him became even more intense; and it is only within thelast five years that a reaction of public opinion on this subject hasbeen strong enough to reach even those among his enemies who wereenlightened men. Liberal journals (such, _e. G. _, as the "North BritishReview") now recognize his merits. Naturally it was impossible thatthe civil war of 1798 in Ireland, and the persons conspicuouslyconnected with it, should escape this general destiny of Irish politics. I wrote, therefore, originally under a jealousy that partially I mighthave been duped. At present, in reviewing what I had written twentyyears ago, I feel this jealousy much more keenly. I shrink from thebishop's malicious portraitures of our soldiers, sometimes of theirofficers, as composing a licentious army, without discipline, withouthumanity, without even steady courage. Has any man a right to ask ourtoleration for pictures so romantic as these? Duped perhaps I wasmyself: and it was natural that I should be so under the overwhelminginfluences oppressing any right that I _could_ have at my early ageto a free, independent judgment. But I will not any longer assist induping the reader; and I will therefore suggest to him two grounds ofvehement suspicion against all the insidious colorings given to hisstatements by the bishop:--

1st. I beg to remind the reader that this army of Mayo, in 1798, sounsteady and so undisciplined, if we believe the bishop, was in partthe army of Egypt in the year 1801: how would the bishop have answered_that_?

2dly. The bishop allows great weight in treating any allegationswhatever against the English army or the English government, to themoderation, equity, and self-control claimed for the Irish peasantryas notorious elements in their character. Meantime he forgets thisdoctrine most conspicuously at times; and represents the safety of theProtestants against pillage, or even against a spirit of massacre, asentirely dependent on the influence of the French. Whether for propertyor life, it was to the French that the Irish Protestants looked forprotection: not I it is, but the bishop, on whom that representationwill be found to rest. 

FOOTNOTES

[1] As this happened to be the truth, the bishop did right to report it. Otherwise, his lordship does not seem to have had much acquaintance withthe French scenical mode of arranging their public acts for purposes ofeffect. Cynical people (like myself, when looking back to this anecdotefrom the year 1833) were too apt to remark that this plate and thatbasket were carefully numbered; that the episcopal butler (likePharaoh's) was liable, alas! to be hanged in case the plate were notforthcoming on a summons from head quarters; and that the Killala "placeof security" was kindly strengthened, under the maternal anxiety of theFrench republic, by doubling the French sentries. 

[2] I leave this passage as it was written originally under an impressionthen universally current. But, from what I have since read on thissubject, I beg to be considered as speaking very doubtfully on the truecauses of the St. Domingo disasters. 

CHAPTER XI. 

TRAVELLING. 

It was late in October, or early in November, that I quitted Connaughtwith Lord Westport; and very slowly, making many leisurely deviationsfrom the direct route, travelled back to Dublin. Thence, after somelittle stay, we recrossed St. George's Channel, landed at Holyhead, and then, by exactly the same route as we had pursued in early June, we posted through Bangor, Conway, Llanrwst, Llangollen, until onceagain we found ourselves in England, and, as a matter of course, makingfor Birmingham. But why making for Birmingham? Simply becauseBirmingham, under the old dynasty of stage coaches and post chaises, was the centre of our travelling system, and held in England somethingof that rank which the golden milestone of Rome held in the Italianpeninsula. 

At Birmingham it was (which I, like myriads beside, had traversed ascore of times without ever yet having visited it as a _terminus adquem_) that I parted with my friend Lord Westport. His route lay throughOxford; and stopping, therefore, no longer than was necessary to harnessfresh horses, --an operation, however, which was seldom accomplishedin less than half an hour at that era, --he went on directly toStratford. My own destination was yet doubtful. I had been directed, in Dublin, to inquire at the Birmingham post office for a letter whichwould guide my motions. There, accordingly, upon sending for it, laythe expected letter from my mother; from which I learned that my sisterwas visiting at Laxton, in Northamptonshire, the seat of an old friend, to which I also had an invitation. My route to this lay throughStamford. Thither I could not go by a stage coach until the followingday; and of necessity I prepared to make the most of my present dayin gloomy, noisy, and, at that time, dirty Birmingham. 

Be not offended, compatriot of Birmingham, that I salute your nataltown with these disparaging epithets. It is not my habit to indulgerash impulses of contempt towards any man or body of men, wheresoevercollected, far less towards a race of high-minded and most intelligentcitizens, such as Birmingham has exhibited to the admiration of allEurope. But as to the noise and the gloom which I ascribe to you, thosefeatures of your town will illustrate what the Germans mean by a_one-sided_ [1] (ein-seitiger) judgment. There are, I can wellbelieve, thousands to whom Birmingham is another name for domesticpeace, and for a reasonable share of sunshine. But in my case, whohave passed through Birmingham a hundred times, it always happened torain, except once; and that once the Shrewsbury mail carried me sorapidly away, that I had not time to examine the sunshine, or seewhether it might not be some gilt Birmingham counterfeit; for you know, men of Birmingham, that you _can_ counterfeit--such is yourcleverness--all things in heaven and earth, from Jove's thunderboltsdown to a tailor's bodkin. Therefore, the gloom is to be charged tomy bad luck. Then, as to the noise, never did I sleep at that enormous_Hen and Chickens_ [2] to which usually my destiny brought me, but I hadreason to complain that the discreet hen did not gather her vagrant flockto roost at less variable hours. Till two or three, I was kept waking bythose who were retiring; and about three commenced the morning functionsof the porter, or of "boots, " or of "underboots, " who began their roundsfor collecting the several freights for the Highflyer, or the Tally-ho, or the Bang-up, to all points of the compass, and too often (as musthappen in such immense establishments) blundered into my room with thatappalling, "Now, sir, the horses are coming out. " So that rarely, indeed, have I happened to _sleep_ in Birmingham. But the dirt!--_that_ sticks alittle with you, friend of Birmingham. How do I explain away _that_?Know, then, reader, that at the time I speak of, and in the way I speakof, viz. , in streets and inns, all England was dirty. 

 * * * * *

Being left therefore alone for the whole of a rainy day in Birmingham, and Birmingham being as yet the centre of our travelling system, Icannot do better than spend my Birmingham day in reviewing the mostlively of its reminiscences. 

The revolution in the whole apparatus, means, machinery, anddependences of that system--a revolution begun, carried through, andperfected within the period of my own personal experience--merits aword or two of illustration in the most cursory memoirs that professany attention at all to the shifting scenery and moving forces of theage, whether manifested in great effects or in little. And theseparticular effects, though little, when regarded in their separatedetails, are _not_ little in their final amount. On the contrary, Ihave always maintained, that under a representative government, wherethe great cities of the empire must naturally have the power, each inits proportion, of reacting upon the capital and the councils of thenation in so conspicious a way, there is a result waiting on the finalimprovements of the arts of travelling, and of transmitting intelligencewith velocity, such as cannot be properly appreciated in the absenceof all historical experience. Conceive a state of communication betweenthe centre and the extremities of a great people, kept up with auniformity of reciprocation so exquisite as to imitate the flowing andebbing of the sea, or the systole and diastole of the human heart; dayand night, waking and sleeping, not succeeding to each other with moreabsolute certainty than the acts of the metropolis and the controllingnotice of the provinces, whether in the way of support or of resistance. Action and reaction from every point of the compass being thus perfectand instantaneous, we should then first begin to understand, in apractical sense, what is meant by the unity of a political body, andwe should approach to a more adequate appreciation of the powers whichare latent in organization. For it must be considered that hitherto, under the most complex organization, and that which has best attainedits purposes, the national will has never been able to express itselfupon one in a thousand of the public acts, simply because the nationalvoice was lost in the distance, and could not collect itself throughthe time and the space rapidly enough to connect itself immediatelywith the evanescent measure of the moment. But, as the system ofintercourse is gradually expanding, these bars of space and time arein the same degree contracting, until finally we may expect themaltogether to vanish; and then every part of the empire will reactupon the whole with the power, life, and effect of immediate conferenceamongst parties brought face to face. Then first will be seen apolitical system truly _organic_--_i. E. _, in which each acts upon all, and all react upon each; and a new earth will arise from the indirectagency of this merely physical revolution. Already, in this paragraph, written twenty years ago, a prefiguring instinct spoke within me ofsome great secret yet to come in the art of distant communication. Atpresent I am content to regard the electric telegraph as the oracularresponse to that prefiguration. But I still look for some higher andtranscendent response. 

The reader whose birth attaches him to this present generation, havingknown only macadamized roads, cannot easily bring before his imaginationthe antique and almost aboriginal state of things which marked ourtravelling system down to the end of the eighteenth century, and nearlythrough the first decennium of the present. A very few lines willsuffice for some broad notices of our condition, in this respect, through the last two centuries. In the Parliament war, (1642-6, ) it isan interesting fact, but at the same time calculated to mislead theincautious reader, that some officers of distinction, on both sides, brought close carriages to head quarters; and sometimes they went evenupon the field of battle in these carriages, not mounting on horsebackuntil the preparations were beginning for some important manoeuvre, orfor a general movement. The same thing had been done throughout theThirty Years' war, both by the Bavarian, imperial, and afterwards by theSwedish officers of rank. And it marks the great diffusion of theseluxuries about this era, that on occasion of the reinstalment of twoprinces of Mecklenburg, who had been violently dispossessed byWallenstein, upwards of eighty coaches mustered at a short notice, partlyfrom the territorial nobility, partly from the camp. Precisely, however, at military head quarters, and on the route of an army, carriages of thisdescription were an available and a most useful means of transport. Cumbrous and unweildy they were, as we know by pictures; and they couldnot have been otherwise, for they were built to meet the roads. Carriages of our present light and _reedy_ (almost, one might say, _corky_) construction would, on the roads of Germany or of England, in that age, have foundered within the first two hours. To ourancestors, such carriages would have seemed playthings for children. Cumbrous as the carriages of that day were, they could not be more sothan artillery or baggage wagons: where these could go, coaches couldgo. So that, in the march of an army, there was a perpetual guarantyto those who had coaches for the possibility of their transit. Andhence, and not because the roads were at at all better than they havebeen generally described in those days, we are to explain the fact, that both in the royal camp, in Lord Manchester's, and afterwards inGeneral Fairfax's and Cromwell's, coaches were an ordinary part of thecamp equipage. The roads, meantime, were as they have been described, viz. , ditches, morasses, and sometimes channels for the course of smallbrooks. Nor did they improve, except for short reaches, and underpeculiar local advantages, throughout that century. Spite of the roads, however, publick carriages began to pierce England, in various lines, from the era of 1660. Circumstantial notices of these may be found inLord Auckland's (Sir Frederic Eden's) large work on the poor laws. That to York, for example, (two hundred miles, ) took a fortnight inthe journey, or about fourteen miles a day. But Chamberlayne, who hada personal knowledge of these public carriages, says enough to showthat, if slow, they were cheap; half a crown being the usual rate forfifteen miles, (_i. E. _, 2_d. _ a mile. ) Public conveyances, multiplyingrapidly, could not but diffuse a general call for improved roads;improved both in dimensions and also in the art of construction. Forit is observable, that, so early as Queen Elizabeth's days, England, the most equestrian of nations, already presented to its inhabitantsa general system of decent bridle roads. Even at this day, it isdoubtful whether any man, taking all hinderances into account, andhaving laid no previous relays of horses, could much exceed the exploitof Carey, (afterwards Lord Monmouth, ) a younger son of the first LordHunsden, a cousin of Queen Elizabeth. Yet we must not forget that theparticular road concerned in this exploit was the Great North Road, (as it is still called by way of distinction, ) lying through Doncasterand York, between the northern and southern capitals of the island. But roads less frequented were tolerable as bridle roads; whilst allalike, having been originally laid down with no view to the broad andample coaches, from 1570 to 1700, scratched the panels on each sideas they crept along. Even in the nineteenth century, I have known acase in the sequestered district of Egremont, in Cumberland, where apost chaise, of the common narrow dimensions, was obliged to retraceits route of fourteen miles, on coming to a bridge built in some remoteage, when as yet post chaises were neither known nor anticipated, and, unfortunately, too narrow by three or four inches. In all the provincesof England, when the soil was deep and adhesive, a worse evil besetthe stately equipage. An Italian of rank, who has left a record ofhis perilous adventure, visited, or attempted to visit, Petworth, nearLondon, (then a seat of the Percys, now of Lord Egremont, ) about theyear 1685. I forget how many times he was overturned within oneparticular stretch of five miles; but I remember that it was a subjectof gratitude (and, upon meditating a return by the same route a subjectof pleasing hope) to dwell upon the softlying which was to be foundin that good-natured morass. Yet this was, doubtless, a pet road, (sinful punister! dream not that I glance at _Pet_worth, ) and animproved road. Such as this, I have good reason to think, were mostof the roads in England, unless upon the rocky strata which stretchnorthwards from Derbyshire to Cumberland and Northumberland. The publiccarriages were the first harbingers of a change for the better; asthese grew and prospered, slender lines of improvement began to veinand streak the map. And Parliament began to show their zeal, thoughnot always a corresponding knowledge, by legislating backwards andforwards on the breadth of wagon wheel tires, &c. But not until ourcotton system began to put forth blossoms, not until our trade and oursteam engines began to stimulate the coal mines, which in _their_ turnstimulated _them_, did any great energy apply itself to our roads. Inmy childhood, standing with one or two of my brothers and sisters atthe front windows of my mother's carriage, I remember one unvaryingset of images before us. The postilion (for so were all carriages thendriven) was employed, not by fits and starts, but always and eternally, in _quartering_ [3] _i. E. _, in crossing from side to side--according tothe casualties of the ground. Before you stretched a wintry length oflane, with ruts deep enough to fracture the leg of a horse, filled tothe brim with standing pools of rain water; and the collateral chambersof these ruts kept from becoming confluent by thin ridges, such as theRomans called _lirae_, to maintain the footing upon which _lirae_, soas not to swerve, (or, as the Romans would say, _delirare_, ) was atrial of some skill both for the horses and their postilion. It was, indeed, next to impossible for any horse, on such a narrow crust ofseparation, not to grow _delirious_ in the Roman metaphor; and thenervous anxiety, which haunted me when a child, was much fed by thisvery image so often before my eye, and the sympathy with which Ifollowed the motion of the docile creature's legs. Go to sleep at thebeginning of a stage, and the last thing you saw--wake up, and thefirst thing you saw--was the line of wintry pools, the poor off-horseplanting his steps with care, and the cautious postilion gently applyinghis spur, whilst manoeuvring across this system of grooves with somesort of science that looked like a gypsy's palmistry; so equallyunintelligible to me were his motions, in what he sought and in whathe avoided. 

I may add, by way of illustration, and at the risk of gossiping, which, after all, is not the worst of things, a brief notice of my very firstjourney. I might be then seven years old. A young gentleman, the sonof a wealthy banker, had to return home for the Christmas holidays toa town in Lincolnshire, distant from the public school where he waspursuing his education about a hundred miles. The school was in theneighborhood of Greenhay, my father's house. There were at that timeno coaches in that direction; now (1833) there are many every day. Theyoung gentleman advertised for a person to share the expense of a postchaise. By accident, I had an invitation of some standing to the sametown, where I happened to have some female relatives of mature age, besides some youthful cousins. The two travellers elect soon heard ofeach other, and the arrangement was easily completed. It was my earliestmigration from the paternal roof; and the anxieties of pleasure, tootumultuous, with some slight sense of undefined fears, combined toagitate my childish feelings. I had a vague, slight apprehension ofmy fellow-traveller, whom I had never seen, and whom my nursery maid, when dressing me, had described in no very amiable colors. But a gooddeal more I thought of Sherwood Forest, (the forest of Robin Hood, )which, as I had been told, we should cross after the night set in. Atsix o'clock I descended, and not, as usual, to the children's room, but, on this special morning of my life, to a room called the breakfastroom: where I found a blazing fire, candles lighted, and the wholebreakfast equipage, as if for my mother, set out, to my astonishment, for no greater personage than myself. The scene being in England, andon a December morning, I need scarcely say that it rained: the rainbeat violently against the windows, the wind raved; and an aged servant, who did the honors of the breakfast table, pressed me urgently to eat. I need not say that I had no appetite: the fulness of my heart, bothfrom busy anticipation, and from the parting which was at hand, hadmade me incapable of any other thought or attention but such as pointedto the coming journey. All circumstances in travelling, all scenes andsituations of a representative and recurring character, areindescribably affecting, connected, as they have been, in so manymyriads of minds, more especially in a land which is sending off foreverits flowers and blossoms to a clime so remote as that of India, withheart-rending separations, and with farewells never to be repeated. But, amongst them all, none cleaves to my own feelings more indelibly, from having repeatedly been concerned, either as witness or as aprincipal party in its little drama, than the early breakfast on awintry morning long before the darkness has given way, when the goldenblaze of the hearth, and the bright glitter of candles, with femaleministrations of gentleness more touching than on common occasions, all conspire to rekindle, as it were for a farewell gleam, the holymemorials of household affections. And many have, doubtless, had myfeelings; for, I believe, few readers will ever forget the beautifulmanner in which Mrs. Inchbald has treated such a scene in winding upthe first part of her "Simple Story, " and the power with which she hasinvested it. 

Years, that seem innumerable, have passed since that December morningin my own life to which I am now recurring; and yet, even to thismoment, I recollect the audible throbbing of heart, the leap and rushingof blood, which suddenly surprised me during a deep lull of the wind, when the aged attendant said, without hurry or agitation, but withsomething of a solemn tone, "That is the sound of wheels. I hear thechaise. Mr. H---- will be here directly. " The road ran, for somedistance, by a course pretty nearly equidistant from the house, sothat the groaning of the wheels continued to catch the ear, as itswelled upon the wind, for some time without much alteration. At lengtha right-angled turn brought the road continually and rapidly nearerto the gates of the grounds, which had purposely been thrown open. Atthis point, however, a long career of raving arose; all other soundswere lost; and, for some time, I began to think we had been mistaken, when suddenly the loud trampling of horses' feet, as they whirled upthe sweep below the windows, followed by a peal long and loud upon thebell, announced, beyond question, the summons for my departure. Thedoor being thrown open, steps were heard loud and fast; and in thenext moment, ushered by a servant, stalked forward, booted and fullyequipped, my travelling companion--if such a word can at all expressthe relation between the arrogant young blood, just fresh from assumingthe _toga virilis, _ and a modest child of profound sensibilities, butshy and reserved beyond even English reserve. The aged servant, withapparently constrained civility, presented my mother's compliments tohim, with a request that he would take breakfast. This he hastily andrather peremptorily declined. Me, however, he condescended to noticewith an approving nod, slightly inquiring if I were the young gentlemanwho shared his post chaise. But, without allowing time for an answer, and striking his boot impatiently with a riding whip, he hoped I wasready. "Not until he has gone up to my mistress, " replied my oldprotectress, in a tone of some asperity. Thither I ascended. Whatcounsels and directions I might happen to receive at the maternaltoilet, naturally I have forgotten. The most memorable circumstanceto me was, that I, who had never till that time possessed the leastor most contemptible coin, received, in a network purse, six glitteringguineas, with instructions to put three immediately into Mr. H----'shands, and the others when he should call for them. 

The rest of my mother's counsels, If deep, were not long; she, who hadalways something of a Roman firmness, shed more milk of roses, Ibelieve, upon my cheeks than tears; and why not? What should there beto _her_ corresponding to an ignorant child's sense of pathos, in alittle journey of about a hundred miles? Outside her door, however, there awaited me some silly creatures, women of course, old and young, from the nursery and the kitchen, who gave, and who received, thosefervent kisses which wait only upon love without awe and withoutdisguise. Heavens! what rosaries might be strung for the memory ofsweet female kisses, given without check or art, before one is of anage to value them! And again, how sweet is the touch of female handsas they array one for a journey! If any thing needs fastening, whetherby pinning, tying, or any other contrivance, how perfect is one'sconfidence in female skill; as if, by mere virtue of her sex andfeminine instinct, a woman could not possibly fail to know the bestand readiest way of adjusting every case that could arise in dress. Mine was hastily completed amongst them: each had a pin to draw fromher bosom, in order to put something to rights about my throat orhands; and a chorus of "God bless hims!" was arising, when, from below, young Mephistopheles murmured an impatient groan, and perhaps thehorses snorted. I found myself lifted into the chaise; counsels aboutthe night and the cold flowing in upon me, to which Mephistopheleslistened with derision or astonishment. I and he had each our separatecorner; and, except to request that I would draw up one of the glasses, I do not think he condescended to address one word to me until dusk, when we found ourselves rattling into Chesterfield, having barelyaccomplished four stages, or forty or forty-two miles, in about ninehours. This, except on the Bath or great north roads, may be taken asa standard amount of performance, in 1794, (the year I am recording, )and even ten years later. [4] In these present hurrying and tumultuousdays, whether time is really of more value, I cannot say; but all peopleon the establishment of inns are required to suppose it of the most awfulvalue. Nowadays, (1833, ) no sooner have the horses stopped at the gatewayof a posting house than a summons is passed down to the stables; and inless than one minute, upon a great road, the horses next in rotation, always ready harnessed when expecting to come on duty, are heard trottingdown the yard. "Putting to" and transferring the luggage, (supposing yourconveyance a common post chaise, ) once a work of at least thirty minutes, is now easily accomplished in three. And scarcely have you paid the ex-postilion before his successor is mounted; the hostler is standing readywith the steps in his hands to receive his invariable sixpence; the dooris closed; the representative waiter bows his acknowledgment for thehouse, and you are off at a pace never less than ten miles an hour; thetotal detention at each stage not averaging above four minutes. Then, (_i. E. _, at the latter end of the eighteenth and beginning of thenineteenth century, ) half an hour was the minimum of time spent at eachchange of horses. Your arrival produced a great bustle of unloading andunharnessing; as a matter of course, you alighted and went into the inn;if you sallied out to report progress, after waiting twenty minutes, nosigns appeared of any stir about the stables. The most choleric personcould not much expedite preparations, which loitered not so much from anyindolence in the attendants, as from faulty arrangements and total defectof forecasting. The pace was such as the roads of that day allowed; neverso much as six miles an hour, except upon a very great road, and thenonly by extra payment to the driver. Yet, even under this comparativelymiserable system, how superior was England, as a land for the traveller, to all the rest of the world, Sweden only excepted! Bad as were theroads, and defective as were all the arrangements, still you had theseadvantages: no town so insignificant, no posting house so solitary, butthat at all seasons, except a contested election, it could furnish horseswithout delay, and without license to distress the neighboring farmers. On the worst road, and on a winter's day, with no more than a single pairof horses, you generally made out sixty miles; even if it were necessaryto travel through the night, you could continue to make way, althoughmore slowly; and finally, if you were of a temper to brook delay, and didnot exact from all persons the haste or energy of Hotspurs, the wholesystem in those days was full of respectability and luxurious ease, andwell fitted to renew the image of the home you had left, if not in itselegances, yet in all its substantial comforts. What cosy old parlors inthose days! low roofed, glowing with ample fires, and fenced from theblasts of doors by screens, whose foldings were, or seemed to be, infinite. What motherly landladies! won, how readily, to kindness themost lavish, by the mere attractions of simplicity and youthfulinnocence, and finding so much interest in the bare circumstance of beinga traveller at a childish age. Then what blooming young handmaidens! howdifferent from the knowing and worldly demireps of modern high roads! Andsometimes gray-headed, faithful waiters, how sincere and how attentive, by comparison with their flippant successors, the eternal "coming, sir, coming, " of our improved generation!

Such an honest, old, butler-looking servant waited on us during dinnerat Chesterfield, carving for me, and urging me to eat. EvenMephistopheles found his pride relax under the influence of wine; andwhen loosened from this restraint, his kindness was not deficient. Tome he showed it in pressing wine upon me, without stint or measure. The elegances which he had observed in such parts of my mother'sestablishment as could be supposed to meet his eye on so hasty a visit, had impressed him perhaps favorably towards myself; and could I havea little altered my age, or dismissed my excessive reserve, I doubtnot that he would have admitted me, in default of a more suitablecomrade, to his entire confidence for the rest of the road. Dinnerfinished, and myself at least, for the first time in my childish life, somewhat perhaps overcharged with wine, the bill was called for, thewaiter paid in the lavish style of antique England, and we heard ourchaise drawing up under the gateway, --the invariable custom of thosedays, --by which you were spared the trouble of going into the street;stepping from the hall of the inn right into your carriage. I had beenkept back for a minute or so by the landlady and her attendant nymphs, to be dressed and kissed; and, on seating myself in the chaise, whichwas well lighted with lamps, I found my lordly young principal inconversation with the landlord, first upon the price of oats, --whichyouthful horsemen always affect to inquire after with interest, --but, secondly, upon a topic more immediately at his heart--viz. , thereputation of the road. At that time of day, when gold had not yetdisappeared from the circulation, no traveller carried any other sortof money about him; and there was consequently a rich encouragementto highwaymen, which vanished almost entirely with Mr. Pitt's act of1797 for restricting cash payments. Property which could be identifiedand traced was a perilous sort of plunder; and from that time the freetrade of the road almost perished as a regular occupation. At thisperiod it did certainly maintain a languishing existence; here andthere it might have a casual run of success; and, as these local ebbsand flows were continually shifting, perhaps, after all, the trademight lie amongst a small number of hands. Universally, however, thelandlords showed some shrewdness, or even sagacity, in qualifying, according to the circumstances of the inquirer, the sort of creditwhich they allowed to the exaggerated ill fame of the roads. Returningon this very road, some months after, with a timid female relative, who put her questions with undisguised and distressing alarm, the verysame people, one and all, assured her that the danger was next tonothing. Not so at present: rightly presuming that a haughty cavalierof eighteen, flushed with wine and youthful blood, would listen withdisgust to a picture too amiable and pacific of the roads before him, Mr. Spread Eagle replied with the air of one who knew more than healtogether liked to tell; and looking suspiciously amongst the strangefaces lit up by the light of the carriage lamps--"Why, sir, there havebeen ugly stories afloat; I cannot deny it; and sometimes, you know, sir, "--winking sagaciously, to which a knowing nod of assent wasreturned, --"it may not be quite safe to tell all one knows. But youcan understand me. The forest, you are well aware, sir, _is_ the forest:it never was much to be trusted, by all accounts, in my father's time, and I suppose will not be better in mine. But you must keep a sharplookout; and, Tom, " speaking to the postilion, "mind, when you passthe third gate, to go pretty smartly by the thicket. " Tom replied ina tone of importance to this professional appeal. General valedictionswere exchanged, the landlord bowed, and we moved off for the forest. Mephistopheles had his travelling case of pistols. These he began nowto examine; for sometimes, said he, I have known such a trick as drawingthe charge whilst one happened to be taking a glass of wine. Wine hadunlocked his heart, --the prospect of the forest and the advancing nightexcited him, --and even of such a child as myself he was now disposedto make a confidant. "Did you observe, " said he, "that ill-lookingfellow, as big as a camel, who stood on the landlord's left hand? "Wasit the man, I asked timidly, who seemed by his dress to be a farmer?"Farmer, you call him! Ah! my young friend, that shows your littleknowledge of the world. He is a scoundrel, the bloodiest of scoundrels. And so I trust to convince him before many hours are gone over ourheads. " Whilst saying this, he employed himself in priming his pistols;then, after a pause, he went on thus: "No, my young friend, this aloneshows his base purposes--his calling himself a farmer. Farmer he isnot, but a desperate highwayman, of which I have full proof. I watchedhis malicious glances whilst the landlord was talking; and I couldswear to his traitorous intentions. " So speaking, he threw anxiousglances on each side as we continued to advance: we were both somewhatexcited; he by the spirit of adventure, I by sympathy with him--andboth by wine. The wine, however, soon applied a remedy to its owndelusions; six miles from the town we had left, both of us were in abad condition for resisting highwaymen with effect--being fast asleep. Suddenly a most abrupt halt awoke us, --Mephistopheles felt for hispistols, --the door flew open, and the lights of the assembled groupannounced to us that we had reached Mansfield. That night we went onto Newark, at which place about forty miles of our journey remailed. This distance we performed, of course, on the following day, betweenbreakfast and dinner. But it serves strikingly to illustrate the stateof roads in England, whenever your affairs led you into districts alittle retired from the capital routes of the public travelling, that, for one twenty-mile stage, --viz. From Newark to Sleaford, --they refusedto take us forward with less than four horses. This was neither afraud, as our eyes soon convinced us, (for even four horses couldscarcely extricate the chaise from the deep sloughs which occasionallyseamed the road through tracts of two or three miles in succession, )nor was it an accident of the weather. In all seasons the same demandwas enforced, as my female protectress found in conducting me back ata fine season of the year, and had always found in traversing thesame route. The England of that date (1794) exhibited many similarcases. At present I know of but one stage in all England where atraveller, without regard to weight, is called upon to take four horses;and that is at Ambleside, in going by the direct road to Carlisle. Thefirst stage to Patterdale lies over the mountain of Kirkstone, and theascent is not only toilsome, (continuing for above three miles, withoccasional intermissions, ) but at times is carried over summits toosteep for a road by all the rules of engineering, and yet too littlefrequented to offer any means of repaying the cost of smoothing thedifficulties. 

It was not until after the year 1715 that the main improvement tookplace in the English travelling system, so far as regarded speed. Itis, in reality, to Mr. Macadam that we owe it. All the roads in England, within a few years, were remodelled, and upon principles of Romanscience. From mere beds of torrents and systems of ruts, they wereraised universally to the condition and appearance of gravel walks inprivate parks or shrubberies. The average rate of velocity was, inconsequence, exactly doubled--ten miles an hour being now generallyaccomplished, instead of five. And at the moment when all furtherimprovement upon this system had become hopeless, a new prospect wassuddenly opened to us by railroads; which again, considering how muchthey have already exceeded the _maximum_ of possibility, as laid downby all engineers during the progress of the Manchester and Liverpoolline, may soon give way to new modes of locomotion still moreastonishing to our preconceptions. 

One point of refinement, as regards the comfort of travellers, remainsto be mentioned, in which the improvement began a good deal earlier, perhaps by ten years, than in the construction of the roads. Luxuriousas was the system of English travelling at all periods, after thegeneral establishment of post chaises, it must be granted that, in thecircumstance of cleanliness, there was far from being that attention, or that provision for the traveller's comfort, which might have beenanticipated from the general habits of the country. I, at all periodsof my life a great traveller, was witness, to the first steps and thewhole struggle of this revolution. Maréchal Saxe professed always tolook under his bed, applying his caution chiefly to the attempts ofrobbers. Now, if at the greatest inns of England you had, in the daysI speak of, adopted this marshal's policy of reconnoitring, what wouldyou have seen? Beyond a doubt, you would have seen what, upon allprinciples of seniority, was entitled to your veneration, viz. , a denseaccumulation of dust far older than yourself. A foreign author madesome experiments upon the deposition of dust, and the rate of itsaccumulation, in a room left wholly undisturbed. If I recollect, acentury would produce a stratum about half an inch in depth. Upon thisprinciple, I conjecture that much dust which I have seen in inns, during the first four or five years of the present century, must havebelonged to the reign of George II. It was, however, upon travellersby coaches that the full oppression of the old vicious system operated. The elder Scaliger mentions, as a characteristic of the English in hisday, (about 1530, ) a horror of cold water; in which, however, theremust have been some mistake. [5] Nowhere could he and his foreigncompanions obtain the luxury of cold water for washing their handseither before or after dinner. One day he and his party dined with thelord chancellor; and now, thought he, for very shame they will allowus some means of purification. Not at all; the chancellor viewed thisoutlandish novelty with the same jealousy as others. However, on theearnest petition of Scaliger, he made an order that a basin or othervessel of cold water should be produced. His household bowed to thisjudgment, and a slop basin was cautiously introduced. "What!" saidScaliger, "only one, and we so many?" Even that one contained but ateacup full of water: but the great scholar soon found that he mustbe thankful for what he had got. It had cost the whole strength of theEnglish chancery to produce that single cup of water; and, for thatday, no man in his senses could look for a second. Pretty much thesame struggle, and for the same cheap reform, commenced about the year1805-6. Post-chaise travellers could, of course, have what they liked;and generally they asked for a bed room. It is of coach travellers Ispeak. And the particular innovation in question commenced, as wasnatural, with the mail coach, which, from the much higher scale of itsfares, commanded a much more select class of company. I was a partyto the very earliest attempts at breaking ground in this alarmingrevolution. Well do I remember the astonishment of some waiters, theindignation of others, the sympathetic uproars which spread to thebar, to the kitchen, and even to the stables, at the first opening ofour extravagant demands. Sometimes even the landlady thought the caseworthy of her interference, and came forward to remonstrate with usupon our unheard-of conduct. But gradually we made way. Like Scaliger, at first we got but one basin amongst us, and that one was broughtinto the breakfast room; but scarcely had two years revolved beforewe began to see four, and all appurtenances, arranged duly incorrespondence to the number of inside passengers by the mail; and, as outside travelling was continually gaining ground amongst thewealthier classes, more comprehensive arrangements were often made;though, even to this day, so much influence survives, from the originalaristocratic principle upon which public carriages were constructed, that on the mail coaches there still prevails the most scandalousinattention to the comfort, and even to the security, of the outsidepassengers: a slippery glazed roof frequently makes the sitting amatter of effort and anxiety, whilst the little iron side rail of fourinches in height serves no one purpose but that of bruising the thigh. Concurrently with these reforms in the system of personal cleanliness, others were silently making way through all departments of the householdeconomy. Dust, from the reign of George II. , became scarcer; graduallyit came to bear an antiquarian value: basins lost their grim appearance, and looked as clean as in gentlemen's houses. And at length the wholesystem was so thoroughly ventilated and purified, that all good inns, nay, generally speaking, even second-rate inns, at this day, reflectthe best features, as to cleanliness and neatness, of well-managedprivate establishments. 

FOOTNOTES

[1] It marks the rapidity with which new phrases float themselves intocurrency under our present omnipresence of the press, that this word, _now_ (viz. , in 1853) familiarly used in every newspaper, _then_ (viz. , in 1833) required a sort of apology to warrant its introduction. 

[2] A well-known hotel, and also a coach inn, which we English in thosedays thought colossal. It was in fact, according to the spirit of Dr. Johnson's itty reply to Miss Knight, big enough for an island. But ourtransatlantic brothers, dwelling upon so mighty a continent, havegradually enlarged their scale of inns as of other objects into a size ofcommensurate grandeur. In two separate New York journals, which, by thekindness of American friends, are at this moment (April 26) lying beforeme, I read astounding illustrations of this. For instance: (1. ) In"Putnam's Monthly" for April, 1853, the opening article, a very amusingone, entitled "New York daguerreotyped, " estimates the hotel populationof that vast city as "not much short of ten thousand;" and one individualhotel, apparently far from being the most conspicuous, viz. , the_Metropolitan_, reputed to have "more than twelve miles of water and gaspipe, and two hundred and fifty servants, " offers "accommodations for onethousand guests. " (2. ) Yet even this Titanic structure dwindles bycomparison with _The Mount Vernon Hotel_ at Cape May, N. J. , (meant, Isuppose, for New Jersey, ) which advertises itself in the "New YorkHerald, " of April 12, 1853, under the authority of Mr. J. Taber, itsaspiring landlord, as offering accommodations, from the 20th of nextJune, to the romantic number of _three thousand five hundred_ guests. TheBirmingham Hen and Chickens undoubtedly had slight pretensions by theside of these behemoths and mammoths. And yet, as a street in a verylittle town may happen to be quite as noisy as a street in London, I cantestify that any single gallery in this Birmingham hotel, if measured inimportance by the elements of discomfort which it could develop, wasentitled to an American rating. But alas! _Fuit Ilium_; I have not seenthe ruins of this ancient hotel; but an instinct tells me that therailroad has run right through it; that the hen has ceased to lay goldeneggs, and that her chickens are dispersed. (3. ) As another illustration, I may mention that, in the middle of March, 1853, I received, as apresent from New York, the following newspaper. Each page containedeleven columns, whereas our London "Times" contains only six. It wasentitled "The New York Journal of Commerce, " and was able to proclaimitself with truth the largest journal in the world. For 25-1/2 years ithad existed in a smaller size, but even in this infant stage had so faroutrun all other journals in size (measuring, from the first, 816 squareinches) as to have earned the name of "_the blanket sheet:_" but thisthriving baby had continued to grow, until at last, on March 1, 1853, itcame out in a sheet "comprising an area of 2057-1/4 square inches, or 16-2/3 square feet. " This was the monster sent over the Atlantic to myself;and I really felt it as some relief to my terror, when I found the editorprotesting that the monster should not be allowed to grow any more. Ipresume that it was meant to keep the hotels in countenance; for ajournal on the old scale could not expect to make itself visible in anedifice that offered accommodations to an army. 

[3] Elsewhere I have suggested, as the origin of this term, the Frenchword _cartayer_, to manoeuvre so as to evade the ruts. 

[4] It appears, however, from the Life of Hume, by my distinguishedfriend Mr. Hill Burton, that already, in the middle of the last century, the historian accomplished without difficulty six miles an hour with onlya pair of horses. But this, it should be observed, was on the great NorthRoad. 

[5] "_Some mistake_. "--The mistake was possibly this: what little waterfor ablution, and what little rags called towels, a foreigner ever seesat home will at least be always within reach, from the continentalpractice of using the bed room for the sitting room. But in England ourplentiful means of ablution are kept in the background. Scaliger shouldhave asked for a bed room: the surprise was, possibly, not at his wantingwater, but at his wanting it in a dining room. 

CHAPTER XII. 

MY BROTHER. 

The reader who may have accompanied me in these wandering memorialsof my own life and casual experiences, will be aware, that in manycases the neglect of chronological order is not merely permitted, butis in fact to some degree inevitable: there are cases, for instance, which, as a whole, connect themselves with my own life at so manydifferent eras, that, upon any chronological principle of position, it would have been difficult to assign them a proper place; backwardsor forwards they must have leaped, in whatever place they had beenintroduced; and in their entire compass, from first to last, nevercould have been represented as properly belonging to any one _present_time, whensoever that had been selected: belonging to every placealike, they would belong, according to the proverb, to no place atall; or, (reversing that proverb, ) belonging to no place by preferableright, they would, in fact, belong to every place, and therefore tothis place. 

The incidents I am now going to relate come under this rule; for theyform part of a story which fell in with my own life at many differentpoints. It is a story taken from the life of my own brother; and Idwell on it with the more willingness, because it furnishes an indirectlesson upon a great principle of social life, now and for many yearsback struggling for its just supremacy--the principle that all corporalpunishments whatsoever, and upon whomsoever inflicted, are hateful, and an indignity to our common nature, which (with or without ourconsent) is enshrined in the person of the sufferer. Degrading _him_, they degrade _us_. I will not here add one word upon the general thesis, but go on to the facts of this case; which, if all its incidents couldnow be recovered, was perhaps as romantic as any that ever yet hastried the spirit of fortitude and patience in a child. But its moralinterest depends upon this--that, simply out of one brutal chastisement, arose naturally the entire series of events which so very nearly madeshipwreck of all hope for one individual, and did in fact poison thetranquility of a whole family for seven years. 

My next brother, younger by about four years than myself, (he, in fact, that caused so much affliction to the Sultan Amurath, ) was a boy ofexquisite and delicate beauty--delicate, that is, in respect to itsfeminine elegance and bloom; for else (as regards constitution) heturned out remarkably robust. In such excess did his beauty flourishduring childhood, that those who remember him and myself at the publicschool at Bath will also remember the ludicrous molestation in thestreets (for to him it _was_ molestation) which it entailed uponhim--ladies stopping constantly to kiss him. On first coming up toBath from Greenhay, my mother occupied the very appartments on theNorth Parade just quitted by Edmund Burke, then in a decaying condition, though he did not die (I believe) till 1797. That state of Burkes'shealth, connected with the expectation of finding him still there, brought for some weeks crowds of inquirers, many of whom saw thechildish Adonis, then scarcely seven years old, and inflicted upon himwhat he viewed as the martyrdom of their caresses. Thus began apersecution which continued as long as his years allowed it. Themost brilliant complexion that could be imagined, the features of anAntinous, and perfect symmetry of figure at that period of his life, (afterwards he lost it, ) made him the subject of never-ending admirationto the whole female population, gentle and simple, who passed him inthe streets. In after days, he had the grace to regret his own perverseand scornful coyness. But, at that time, so foolishly insensible washe to the honor, that he used to kick and struggle with all his mightto liberate himself from the gentle violence which was continuallyoffered; and he renewed the scene (so elaborately painted by Shakspeare)of the conflicts between Venus and Adonis. For two years this continueda subject of irritation the keenest on the one side, and of laughteron the other, between my brother and his plainer school-fellows. Notthat we had the slightest jealousy on the subject--far from it; itstruck us all (as it generally does strike boys) in the light of anattaint upon the dignity of a male, that he should be subjected to thecaresses of women, without leave asked; this was felt to be a badgeof childhood, and a proof that the object of such caressing tenderness, so public and avowed, must be regarded in the light of a baby--not tomention that the very foundation of all this distinction, a beautifulface, is as a male distinction regarded in a very questionable lightby multitudes, and often by those most who are the possessors of thatdistinction. Certainly that was the fact in my brother's case. Not oneof us could feel so pointedly as himself the ridicule of his situation;nor did he cease, when increasing years had liberated him from thatfemale expression of delight in his beauty, to regard the beauty itselfas a degradation; nor could he bear to be flattered upon it; though, in reality, it did him service in after distresses, when no otherendowment whatsoever would have been availing. Often, in fact, domen's natures sternly contradict the promise of their features; forno person would have believed that, under the blooming loveliness ofa Narcissus, lay shrouded a most heroic nature; not merely anadventurous courage, but with a capacity of patient submission tohardship, and of wrestling with calamity, such as is rarely foundamongst the endowments of youth. I have reason, also, to think thatthe state of degradation in which he believed himself to have passedhis childish years, from the sort of public petting which I havedescribed, and his strong recoil from it as an insult, went much deeperthan was supposed, and had much to do in his subsequent conduct, andin nerving him to the strong resolutions he adopted. He seemed toresent, as an original insult of nature, the having given him a falseindex of character in his feminine beauty, and to take a pleasure incontradicting it. Had it been in his power, he would have spoiled it. Certain it is, that, from the time he reached his eleventh birthday, he had begun already to withdraw himself from the society of all otherboys, --to fall into long fits of abstraction, --and to throw himselfupon his own resources in a way neither usual nor necessary. Schoolfellows of his own age and standing--those, even, who were themost amiable--he shunned; and, many years after his disappearance, I found, in his handwriting, a collection of fragments, couched in asort of wild lyrical verses, presenting, unquestionably, the mostextraordinary evidences of a proud, self-sustained mind, consciouslyconcentrating his own hopes in himself, and abjuring the rest of theworld, that can ever have emanated from so young a person; since, uponthe largest allowance, and supposing them to have been written on theeve of his quitting England, they must have been written at the ageof twelve. I have often speculated on the subject of these mysteriouscompositions; they were of a nature to have proceeded rather from somemystical quietist, such as Madame Guyon, if with this rapt devotionone can suppose the union of a rebellious and murmuring ambition. Passionate apostrophes there were to nature and the powers of nature;and what seemed strangest of all was, that, in style, not only werethey free from all tumor and inflation which might have been lookedfor in so young a writer, but were even wilfully childish and colloquialin a pathetic degree--in fact, in point of tone, allowing for thedifference between a narrative poem and a lyrical, they somewhatresemble that beautiful poem [1] of George Herbert, entitled LOVEUNKNOWN, in which he describes symbolically to a friend, under the formof treacherous ill usage he had experienced, the religious processes bywhich his soul had been weaned from the world. The most obvious solutionof the mystery would be, to suppose these fragments to have been copiedfrom some obscure author; but, besides that no author could have remainedobscure in this age of elaborate research, who had been capable of sighs(for such I may call them) drawn up from such well-like depths offeeling, and expressed with such fervor and simplicity of language, therewas another testimony to their being the productions of him who owned thepenmanship; which was, that some of the papers exhibited the wholeprocess of creation and growth, such as erasures, substitutions, doubtsexpressed as to this and that form of expression, together withreferences backwards and forwards. Now, that the handwriting was mybrother's, admitted of no doubt whatsoever. I go on with his story. In1800, my visit to Ireland, and visits to other places subsequently, separated me from him for above a year. In 1801, we were at verydifferent schools--I in the highest class of a great public school, he ata very sequestered parsonage on a wild moor (Horwich Moor) in Lancashire. This situation, probably, fed and cherished his melancholy habits; for hehad no society except-that of a younger brother, who would give him nodisturbance at all. The development of our national resources had not yetgone so far as absolutely to exterminate from the map of Englandeverything like a heath, a breezy down, (such as gave so peculiar acharacter to the counties of Wilts, Somerset, Dorset, &c. , ) or even avillage common. Heaths were yet to be found in England, not so spacious, indeed, as the _landes_ of France, but equally wild and romantic. In sucha situation my brother lived, and under the tuition of a clergyman, retired in his habits, and even ascetic, but gentle in his manners. Tothat I can speak myself; for in the winter of 1801 I dined with him, andfound that his yoke was, indeed, a mild one; since, even to my youngestbrother H. , a headstrong child of seven, he used no strongerremonstrance, in urging him to some essential point of duty, than "_Do bepersuaded, sir. _" On another occasion I, accompanied by a friend, sleptat Mr. J. 's: we were accidentally detained there through the greater partof the following day by snow; and, to the inexpressible surprise of mycompanion, a mercantile man from Manchester, for a considerable timeafter breakfast the reverend gentleman persisted in pursuing my brotherfrom room to room, and at last from the ground floor up to the attics, holding a book open, (which turned out to be a Latin grammar;) each ofthem (pursuer and pursued) moving at a tolerably slow pace, my brother H. Silent; but Mr. J. , with a voice of adjuration, solemn and even sad, yetkind and conciliatory, singing out at intervals, "Do be persuaded, sir!""It is _your_ welfare I seek!" "Let your own interest, sir, plead in thismatter between us!" And so the chase continued, ascending and descending, up to the very garrets, down to the very cellars, then steadily revolvingfrom front to rear of the house; but finally with no result at all. Thespectacle reminded me of a groom attempting to catch a coy pony byholding out a sieve containing, or pretending to contain, a bribe ofoats. Mrs. J. , the reverend gentleman's wife, assured us that the sameprocess went on at intervals throughout the week; and in any case it wasclearly good as a mode of exercise. Now, such a master, though littleadapted for the headstrong H. , was the very person for the thoughtful andtoo sensitive R. Search the island through, there could not have beenfound another situation so suitable to my brother's wayward and haughtynature. The clergyman was learned, quiet, absorbed in his studies; humbleand modest beyond the proprieties of his situation, and treating mybrother in all points as a companion; whilst, on the other hand, mybrother was not the person to forget the respect due, by a triple title, to a clergyman, a scholar, and his own preceptor--one, besides, who solittle thought of exacting it. How happy might all parties have been--what suffering, what danger, what years of miserable anxiety might havebeen spared to all who were interested--had the guardians and executorsof my father's will thought fit to "let _well_ alone"! But, "_per starmeglio_" [2] they chose to remove my brother from this gentle recluse toan active, bustling man of the world, the very anti-pole in character. What might be the pretensions of this gentleman to scholarship, I neverhad any means of judging; and, considering that he must now, (if livingat all, ) at a distance of thirty-six years, be gray headed, I shallrespect his age so far as to suppress his name. He was of a class nowannually declining (and I hope rapidly) to extinction. Thanks be to God, in this point at least, for the dignity of human nature, that, amongstthe many, many cases of reform destined eventually to turn outchimerical, this one, at least, never can be defeated, injured, oreclipsed. As man grows more intellectual, the power of managing him byhis intellect and his moral nature, in utter contempt of all appeals tohis mere animal instincts of pain, must go on _pari passu_. And, if a"_Te Deum_, " or an "_O, Jubilate!_" were to be celebrated by all nationsand languages for any one advance and absolute conquest over wrong anderror won by human nature in our times, --yes, not excepting

 "The bloody writing by all nations torn"--

the abolition of the commerce in slaves, --to my thinking, that festivalshould be for the mighty progress made towards the suppression ofbrutal, bestial modes of punishment. Nay, I may call them worse thanbestial; for a man of any goodness of nature does not willingly orneedlessly resort to the spur or the lash with his horse or with hishound. But, with respect to man, if he will not be moved or won overby conciliatory means, --by means that presuppose him a reasonablecreature, --then let him die, confounded in his own vileness; but letnot me, let not the man (that is to say) who has him in his power, dishonor himself by inflicting punishments, violating that grandeurof human nature which, not in any vague rhetorical sense, but upon areligious principle of duty, (viz. , the scriptural doctrine that thehuman person is "the temple of the Holy Ghost, ") ought to be aconsecrated thing in the eyes of all good men; and of this we may beassured, --this is more sure than day or night, --that, in proportionas man is honored, exalted, trusted, in that proportion will he becomemore worthy of honor, of exaltation, of trust. 

This schoolmaster had very different views of man and his nature. Henot only thought that physical coercion was the one sole engine bywhich man could be managed, but--on the principle of that common maximwhich declares that, when two schoolboys meet, with powers at all nearto a balance, no peace can be expected between them until it is fairlysettled _which_ is the master--on that same principle he fancied thatno pupil could adequately or proportionably reverence his master untilhe had settled the precise proportion of superiority in animal powersby which his master was in advance of himself. Strength of blows onlycould ascertain _that_; and, as he was not very nice about creatinghis opportunities, as he plunged at once "_in medias res_, " and moreespecially when he saw or suspected my rebellious tendencies, he soonpicked a quarrel with my unfortunate brother. Not, be it observed, that he much cared for a well-looking or respectable quarrel. No. Ihave been assured that, even when the most fawning obsequiousness adappealed to his clemency, in the person of some timorous new-comer, appalled by the reports he had heard, even in such cases, (deeming itwise to impress, from the beginning, a salutary awe of his Jovianthunders) he made a practice of doing thus: He would speak loud, uttersome order, not very clearly, perhaps, as respected the sound, butwith _perfect_ perplexity as regarded the sense, to the timid, sensitiveboy upon whom he intended to fix a charge of disobedience. "Sir, ifyou please, what was it that you said?" "What was it that I said? What!playing upon my words? Chopping logic? Strip, sir; strip this instant. "Thenceforward this timid boy became a serviceable instrument in hisequipage. Not only was he a proof, even without coöperation on themaster's part, that extreme cases of submission could not insuremercy, but also he, this boy, in his own person, breathed forth, atintervals, a dim sense of awe and worship--the religion of fear--towardsthe grim Moloch of the scene. Hence, as by electrical conductors, wasconveyed throughout every region of the establishment a tremuloussensibility that vibrated towards the centre. Different, O RowlandHill! are the laws of thy establishment; far other are the echoes heardamid the ancient halls of Bruce. [3] There it is possible for the timidchild to be happy--for the child destined to an early grave to reap hisbrief harvest in peace. Wherefore were there no such asylums in thosedays? Man flourished then, as now, in beauty and in power. Wherefore didhe not put forth his power upon establishments that might cultivatehappiness as well as knowledge? Wherefore did no man cry aloud, in thespirit of Wordsworth, --

 "Ah, what avails heroic deed? What liberty? if no defence Be won for feeble innocence. Father of all! though wilful manhood read His punishment in soul distress Grant to the _morn_ of life its natural blessedness"?

Meantime, my brother R. , in an evil hour, having been removed fromthat most quiet of human sanctuaries, having forfeited that peace whichpossibly he was never to retrieve, fell (as I have said) into the powerof this Moloch. And this Moloch upon him illustrated the laws of hisestablishment; him also, the gentle, the beautiful, but, also theproud, the haughty, the beat, kicked, trampled on!

In two hours from that time, my brother was on the road to Liverpool. Painfully he made out his way, having not much money, and with a senseof total abandonment which made him feel that all he might have wouldprove little enough for his purposes. 

My brother went to an inn, after his long, long journey to Liverpool, footsore--(for he had walked through four days, and, from ignoranceof the world, combined with excessive shyness, --O, how shy do peoplebecome from pride!--had not profited by those well-known incidentsupon English high roads--return post chaises, stage coaches, led horses, or wagons)--footsore, and eager for sleep. Sleep, supper, breakfastin the morning, --all these he had; so far his slender finances reached;and for these he paid the treacherous landlord; who then proposed tohim that they should take a walk out together, by way of looking atthe public buildings and the docks. It seems the man had noticed mybrother's beauty, some circumstances about his dress inconsistent withhis mode of travelling, and also his style of conversation. Accordingly, he wiled him along from street to street, until they reached the TownHall. "Here _seems_ to be a fine building, " said this Jesuiticalguide, --as if it had been some new Pompeii, some Luxor or Palmyra, that he had unexpectedly lit upon amongst the undiscovered parts ofLiverpool, --"here seems to be a fine building; shall we go in and askleave to look at it?" My brother, thinking less of the spectacle thanthe spectator, whom, in a wilderness of man, naturally he wished tomake his friend, consented readily. In they went; and, by the merestaccident, Mr. Mayor and the town council were then sitting. To themthe insidious landlord communicated privately an account of hissuspicions. He himself conducted my brother, under pretence ofdiscovering the best station for picturesque purposes, to the particularbox for prisoners at the bar. This was not suspected by the poor boy, not even when Mr. Mayor began to question him. He still thought it anaccident, though doubtless he blushed excessively on being questioned, and questioned so impertinently, in public. The object of the mayorand of other Liverpool gentlemen then present was, to ascertain mybrother's real rank and family; for he persisted in representing himselfas a poor wandering boy. Various means were vainly tried to elicitthis information; until at length--like the wily Ulysses, who mixedwith his peddler's budget of female ornaments and attire a few arms, by way of tempting Achilles to a self-detection in the court ofLycomedes--one gentleman counselled the mayor to send for a GreekTestament. This was done; the Testament was presented open at St. John's Gospel to my brother, and he was requested to say whether heknew in what language that book was written; or whether, perhaps, hecould furnish them with a translation from the page before him. R. , in his confusion, did not read the meaning of this appeal, and fellinto the snare; construed a few verses; and immediately was consignedto the care of a gentleman, who won from him by kindness what he hadrefused to importunities or menaces. His family he confessed at once, but not his school. An express was therefore forwarded from Liverpoolto our nearest male relative--a military man, then by accident on leaveof absence from India. He came over, took my brother back, (lookingupon the whole as a boyish frolic of no permanent importance, ) madesome stipulations in his behalf for indemnity from punishment, andimmediately returned home. Left to himself, the grim tyrant of theschool easily evaded the stipulations, and repeated his brutalitiesmore fiercely than before--now acting in the double spirit of tyrannyand revenge. 

In a few hours, my brother was again on the road to Liverpool. But noton this occasion did he resort to any inn, or visit any treacheroushunter of the picturesque. He offered himself to no temptations now, nor to any risks. Right onwards he went to the docks, addressed himselfto a grave, elderly master of a trading vessel, bound upon a distantvoyage, and instantly procured an engagement. The skipper was a goodand sensible man, and (as it turned out) a sailor accomplished in allparts of his profession. The ship which he commanded was a South Seawhaler, belonging to Lord Grenville--whether lying at Liverpool or inthe Thames at that moment, I am not sure. However, they soon afterwardssailed. 

For somewhat less than three years my brother continued under the careof this good man, who was interested by his appearance, and by someresemblance which he fancied in his features to a son whom he had lost. Fortunate, indeed, for the poor boy was this interval of fatherlysuperintendence; for, under this captain, he was not only preservedfrom the perils which afterwards beseiged him, until his years hadmade him more capable of confronting them, but also he had thus anopportunity, which he improved to the utmost, of making himselfacquainted with the two separate branches of his profession--navigationand seamanship, qualifications which are not very often united. 

After the death of his captain, my brother ran through many wildadventures; until at length, after a severe action, fought off thecoast of Peru, the armed merchant-man in which he then served wascaptured by pirates. Most of the crew were massacred. My brother, onaccount of the important services he could render, was spared; andwith these pirates, cruising under a black flag, and perpetratingunnumbered atrocities, he was obliged to sail for the next two years;nor could he, in all that period, find any opportunity for effectinghis escape. 

During this long expatriation, let any thoughtful reader imagine theperils of every sort which beseiged one so young, so inexperienced, so sensitive, and so haughty; perils to his life; (but these it wasthe very expression of his unhappy situation, were the perils leastto be mourned for;) perils to his good name, going the length ofabsolute infamy--since, if the piratical ship had been captured by aBritish man-of-war, he might have found it impossible to clear himselfof a voluntary participation in the bloody actions of his shipmates;and, on the other hand, (a case equally probable in the regions whichthey frequented, ) supposing him to have been captured by a Spanish_guarda costa_, he would scarcely have been able, from his ignoranceof the Spanish language, to draw even a momentary attention to thespecial circumstances of his own situation; he would have been involvedin the general presumptions of the case, and would have been executedin a summary way, upon the _prima facie_ evidence against him, thathe did not appear to be in the condition of a prisoner; and, if hisname had ever again reached his country, it would have been in somesad list of ruffians, murderers, traitors to their country; and eventhese titles, as if not enough in themselves, aggravated by the nameof pirate, which at once includes them all, and surpasses them all. These were perils sufficiently distressing at any rate; but last ofall came others even more appalling--the perils of moral contamination, in that excess which might be looked for from such associates; not, be it recollected, a few wild notions or lawless principles adoptedinto his creed of practical ethics, but that brutal transfigurationof the entire character, which occurs, for instance, in the case ofthe young gypsy son of Effie Deans; a change making it impossible torely upon the very holiest instincts of the moral nature, and consigningits victim to hopeless reprobation. Murder itself might have lost itshorrors to one who must have been but too familiar with the spectacleof massacre by wholesale upon unresisting crews, upon passengersenfeebled by sickness, or upon sequestered villagers, roused from theirslumbers by the glare of conflagration, reflected from gleamingcutlasses and from the faces of demons. This fear it was--a fear likethis, as I have often thought--which must, amidst her other woes, havebeen the Aaron woe that swallowed up all the rest to the unhappy MarieAntoinette. This must have been the sting of death to her maternalheart, the grief paramount, the "crowning" grief--the prospect, namely, that her royal boy would not be dismissed from the horrors of royaltyto peace and humble innocence; but that his fair cheek would be ravagedby vice as well as sorrow; that he would be tempted into brutal orgies, and every mode of moral pollution; until, like poor Constance with heryoung Arthur, but for a sadder reason, even if it were possible thatthe royal mother should see her son in "the courts of heaven, " shewould not know again one so fearfully transfigured. This prospect forthe royal Constance of revolutionary France was but too painfullyfulfilled, as we are taught to guess even from the faithful recordsof the Duchesse d'Angoulême. The young dauphin, (_it has been said_, 1837, ) to the infamy of his keepers, was so trained as to becomeloathsome for coarse brutality, as well as for habits of uncleanliness, to all who approached him--one purpose of his guilty tutors being torender royalty and august descent contemptible in his person. And, infact, they were so far likely to succeed in this purpose, for themoment, and to the extent of an individual case, that, upon that accountalone, but still more for the sake of the poor child, the most welcomenews with respect to _him_--him whose birth [4] had drawn anthems ofexultation from twenty-five millions of men--was the news of his death. And what else can well be expected for children suddenly withdrawn fromparental tenderness, and thrown upon their own guardianship at such anage as nine or ten, and under the wilful misleading of perfidious guides?But, in my brother's case, all the adverse chances, overwhelming as theyseemed, were turned aside by some good angel; all had failed to harm him;and from the fiery furnace he came out unsinged. 

I have said that he would not have appeared to any capturing ship asstanding in the situation of prisoner amongst the pirates, nor was hesuch in the sense of being confined. He moved about, when on boardship, in freedom; but he was watched, never trusted on shore, unlessunder very peculiar circumstances; and tolerated at all only becauseone accomplishment made him indispensable to the prosperity of theship. Amongst the various parts of nautical skill communicated to mybrother by his first fatherly captain, was the management ofchronometers. Several had been captured, some of the highest value, in the many prizes, European or American. My brother happened to beperfect in the skill of managing them; and, fortunately for him, noother person amongst them had that skill, even in its lowest degree. To this one qualification, therefore, (and ultimately to this only, )he was indebted for, both safety and freedom; since, though he mighthave been spared in the first moments of carnage from otherconsiderations, there is little doubt that, in some one of theinnumerable brawls which followed through the years of his captivity, he would have fallen a sacrifice to hasty impulses of anger orwantonness, had not his safety been made an object of interest andvigilance to those in command, and to all who assumed any care for thegeneral welfare. Much, therefore, it was that he owed to thisaccomplishment. Still, there is no good thing without its alloy; andthis great blessing brought along with it something worse than a dullduty--the necessity, in fact, of facing fears and trials to which thesailor's heart is preeminently sensible. All sailors, it is notorious, are superstitious; partly, I suppose, from looking out so much uponthe wilderness of waves, empty of all human life; for mighty solitudesare generally fear-haunted and fear-peopled; such, for instance, asthe solitudes of forests, where, in the absence of human forms andordinary human sounds, are discerned forms more dusky and vague, notreferred by the eye to any known type, and sounds imperfectlyintelligible. And, therefore, are all German coal burners, woodcutters, &c. , superstitious. Now, the sea is often peopled, amidst its ravings, with what seem innumerable human voices--such voices, or as ominous, as what were heard by Kubla Khan--"ancestral voices prophesying war;"oftentimes laughter mixes, from a distance, (seeming to come also fromdistant times, as well as distant places, ) with the uproar of waters;and doubtless shapes of fear, or shapes of beauty not less awful, areat times seen upon the waves by the diseased eye of the sailor, inother cases besides the somewhat rare one of calenture. This vastsolitude of the sea being taken, therefore, as one condition of thesuperstitious fear found so commonly among sailors, a second may bethe perilous insecurity of their own lives, or (if the lives of sailors, after all, by means of large immunities from danger in other shapesare _not_ so insecure as is supposed, though, by the way, it is enoughfor this result that to themselves they seem so) yet, at all events, the insecurity of the ships in which they sail. In such a case, in thecase of battle, and in others where the empire of chance seems absolute, there the temptation is greatest to dally with supernatural oraclesand supernatural means of consulting them. Finally, the interruptionhabitually of all ordinary avenues to information about the fate oftheir dearest relatives; the consequent agitation which must oftenpossess those who are reëntering upon home waters; and the suddenburst, upon stepping ashore, of heart-shaking news in long accumulatedarrears, --these are circumstances which dispose the mind to look outfor relief towards signs and omens as one way of breaking the shockby dim anticipations. Rats leaving a vessel destined to sink, althoughthe political application of it as a name of reproach is purely modern, must be ranked among the oldest of omens; and perhaps the mostsober-minded of men might have leave to be moved with any augury ofan ancient traditional order, such as had won faith for centuries, applied to a fate so interesting as that of the ship to which he wason the point of committing himself. Other causes might be assigned, causative of nautical superstition, and tending to feed it. But enough. It is well known that the whole family of sailors _is_ superstitious. My brother, poor Pink, (this was an old household name which he retainedamongst us from an incident of his childhood, ) was so in an immoderatedegree. Being a great reader, (in fact, he had read every thing in hismother tongue that was of general interest, ) he was pretty well awarehow general was the ridicule attached in our times to the subject ofghosts. But this--nor the reverence he yielded otherwise to some ofthose writers who had joined in that ridicule--any more had unsettledhis faith in their existence than the submission of a sailor in areligious sense to his spiritual counsellor upon the false andfraudulent pleasures of luxury can ever disturb his remembrance of thevirtues lodged in rum or tobacco. His own unconquerable, unanswerableexperience, the blank realities of pleasure and pain, put to flightall arguments whatsoever that anchor only in his understanding. Pinkused, in arguing the case with me, to admit that ghosts might bequestionable realities in our hemisphere; but "it's a different thingto the _suthard_ of the line. " And then he would go on to tell me ofhis own fearful experience; in particular of one many times renewed, and investigated to no purpose by parties of men communicating froma distance upon a system of concerted signals, in one of the GallapagosIslands. These islands, which were visited, and I think described, byDampier, and therefore must have been an asylum to the buccaneers andflibustiers [5] in the latter part of the seventeenth century, were sostill to their more desperate successors, the pirates, at the beginningof the nineteenth; and for the same reason--the facilities they offer(rare in those seas) for procuring wood and water. Hither, then, theblack flag often resorted; and here, amidst these romantic solitudes, --islands untenanted by man, --oftentimes it lay furled up for weekstogether; rapine and murder had rest for a season, and the bloody cutlassslept within its scabbard. When this happened, and when it became knownbeforehand that it _would_ happen, a tent was pitched on shore for mybrother, and the chronometers were transported thither for the period oftheir stay. 

The island selected for this purpose, amongst the many equally opento their choice, might, according to circumstances, be that whichoffered the best anchorage, or that from which the reëmbarkation waseasiest, or that which allowed the readiest access to wood and water. But for some, or all these advantages, the particular island mostgenerally honored by the piratical custom and "good will" was one knownto American navigators as "The Woodcutter's Island. " There was someold tradition--and I know not but it was a tradition dating from thetimes of Dampier--that a Spaniard or an Indian settler in this island(relying, perhaps, too entirely upon the protection of perfect solitude)had been murdered in pure wantonness by some of the lawless rovers whofrequented this solitary archipelago. Whether it were from some peculiaratrocity of bad faith in the act, or from the sanctity of the man, orthe deep solitude of the island, or with a view to the peculiaredification of mariners in these semi-Christian seas, so, however, itwas, and attested by generations of sea vagabonds, (for most of thearmed roamers in these ocean Zaaras at one time were of a suspiciousorder, ) that every night, duly as the sun went down and the twilightbegan to prevail, a sound arose--audible to other islands, and to everyship lying quietly at anchor in that neighborhood--of a woodcutter'saxe. Sturdy were the blows, and steady the succession in which theyfollowed: some even fancied they could hear that sort of groaningrespiration which is made by men who use an axe, or by those who intowns ply the "three-man beetle" of Falstaff, as paviers; echoes theycertainly heard of every blow, from the profound woods and the sylvanprecipices on the margin of the shores; which, however, should ratherindicate that the sounds were _not_ supernatural, since, if a visualobject, falling under hyper-physical or cata-physical laws, loses itsshadow, by parity of argument, an audible object, in the samecircumstances, should lose its echo. But this was the story; and amongstsailors there is as little variety of versions in telling any true seastory as there is in a log book, or in "The Flying Dutchman:"_literatim_ fidelity is, with a sailor, a point at once of religiousfaith and worldly honor. The close of the story was--that after, suppose, ten or twelve minutes of hacking and hewing, a horrid crashwas heard, announcing that the tree, if tree it were, that never yetwas made visible to daylight search, had yielded to the old woodman'spersecution. It was exactly the crash, so familiar to many ears onboard the neighboring vessels, which expresses the harsh tearing asunderof the fibres, caused by the weight of the trunk in falling; beginningslowly, increasing rapidly, and terminating in one rush of rending. This over, --one tree felled "towards his winter store, "--there was aninterval; man must have rest; and the old woodman, after working formore than a century, must want repose. Time enough to begin again aftera quarter of an hour's relaxation. Sure enough, in that space of time, again began, in the words of Comus, "the wonted roar amid the woods. "Again the blows became quicker, as the catastrophe drew nearer; againthe final crash resounded; and again the mighty echoes travelled throughthe solitary forests, and were taken up by all the islands near andfar, like Joanna's laugh amongst the Westmoreland hills, to theastonishment of the silent ocean. Yet, wherefore should the ocean beastonished?--he that had heard this nightly tumult, by all accounts, for more than a century. My brother, however, poor Pink, _was_astonished, in good earnest, being, in that respect, of the _genusattonitorum_; and as often as the gentlemen pirates steered theircourse for the Gallapagos, he would sink in spirit before the trialshe might be summoned to face. No second person was ever put on shorewith Pink, lest poor Pink and he might become jovial over the liquor, and the chronometers be broken or neglected; for a considerable quantityof spirits was necessarily landed, as well as of provisions, becausesometimes a sudden change of weather, or the sudden appearance of asuspicious sail, might draw the ship off the island for a fortnight. My brother could have pleaded his fears without shame; but he had acharacter to maintain with the sailors: he was respected equally forhis seamanship and his shipmanship. [6] By the way, when it isconsidered that one half of a sailor's professional science refers himto the stars, (though it is true the other half refers him to the sailsand shrouds of a ship, ) just as, in geodesical operations, one partis referred to heaven and one to earth, when this is considered, anotherargument arises for the superstition of sailors, so far as it isastrological. They who know (but know the _oti_ without knowingthe _dia ti_) that the stars have much to do in guiding theirown movements, which are yet so far from the stars, and, to allappearance, so little connected with them, may be excused for supposingthat the stars are connected astrologically with human destinies. Butthis by the way. The sailors, looking to Pink's double skill, and tohis experience on shore, (more astonishing than all beside, beingexperience gathered amongst ghosts, ) expressed an admiration which, to one who was also a sailor, had too genial a sound to be sacrificed, if it could be maintained at any price. Therefore it was that Pinkstill clung, in spite of his terrors, to his shore appointment. Buthard was his trial; and many a time has he described to me one effectof it, when too long continued, or combined with darkness too intense. The woodcutter would begin his operations soon after the sun had set;but uniformly, at that time, his noise was less. Three hours aftersunset it had increased; and generally at midnight it was greatest, but not always. Sometimes the case varied thus far: that it greatlyincreased towards three or four o'clock in the morning; and, as thesound grew louder, and thereby seemed to draw nearer, poor Pink'sghostly panic grew insupportable; and he absolutely crept from hispavilion, and its luxurious comforts, to a point of rock--apromontory--about half a mile off, from which he could see the ship. The mere sight of a human abode, though an abode of ruffians, comfortedhis panic. With the approach of daylight, the mysterious sounds ceased. Cockcrow there happened to be none, in those islands of the Gallapagos, or none in that particular island; though many cocks are heard crowingin the woods of America, and these, perhaps, might be caught byspiritual senses; or the woodcutter may be supposed, upon Hamlet'sprinciple, either scenting the morning air, or catching the sounds ofChristian matin bells, from some dim convent, in the depth of Americanforests. However, so it was; the woodcutter's axe began to intermitabout the earliest approach of dawn; and, as light strengthened, itceased entirely. At nine, ten, or eleven o'clock in the forenoon thewhole appeared to have been a delusion; but towards sunset it revivedin credit; during twilight it strengthened; and, very soon afterwards, superstitious panic was again seated on her throne. Such were thefluctuations of the case. Meantime, Pink, sitting on his promontoryin early dawn, and consoling his terrors by looking away from themighty woods to the tranquil ship, on board of which (in spite of hersecret black flag) the whole crew, murderers and all, were sleepingpeacefully--he, a beautiful English boy, chased away to the antipodesfrom one early home by his sense of wounded honor, and from hisimmediate home by superstitious fear, recalled to my mind an image anda situation that had been beautifully sketched by Miss Bannerman in"Basil, " one of the striking (though, to rapid readers, somewhatunintelligible) metrical tales published early in this century, entitled"Tales of Superstition and Chivalry. " Basil is a "rude sea boy, "desolate and neglected from infancy, but with feelings profound fromnature, and fed by solitude. He dwells alone in a rocky cave; but, inconsequence of some supernatural terrors connected with a murder, arising in some way (not very clearly made out) to trouble the reposeof his home, he leaves it in horror, and rushes in the gray dawn tothe seaside rocks; seated on which, he draws a sort of consolation forhis terrors, or of sympathy with his wounded heart, from that mimicryof life which goes on forever amongst the raving waves. 

From the Gallapagos, Pink went often to Juan (or, as he chose to callit, after Dampier and others, _John_) Fernandez. Very lately, (December, 1837, ) the newspapers of America informed us, and the story was currentfor full nine days, that this fair island had been swallowed up by anearthquake; or, at least, that in some way or other it had disappeared. Had that story proved true, one pleasant bower would have perished, raised by Pink as a memorial expression of his youthful feelings eithertowards De Foe, or his visionary creature, Robinson Crusoe--but rather, perhaps, towards the substantial Alexander Selkirk; for it was raisedon some spot known or reputed by tradition to have been one of thosemost occupied as a home by Selkirk. I say, "rather towards AlexanderSelkirk;" for there is a difficulty to the judgment in associatingRobinson Crusoe with this lovely island of the Pacific, and a difficultyeven to the fancy. _Why_, it is hard to guess, or through what perversecontradiction to the facts, De Foe chose to place the shipwreck ofRobinson Crusoe upon the _eastern_ side of the American continent. Now, not only was this in direct opposition to the realities of thecase upon which he built, as first reported (I believe) by WoodesRogers, from the log book of the Duke and Duchess, --(a privateer fittedout, to the best of my remembrance, by the Bristol merchants, two orthree years before the peace of Utrecht, ) and so far the mind of anyman acquainted with these circumstances was staggered, in attemptingto associate this eastern wreck of Crusoe with this western island, --buta worse obstacle than that, because a moral one, is this, that, bythus perversely transferring the scene from the Pacific to the Atlantic, De Foe has transferred it from a quiet and sequestered to a populousand troubled sea, --the Fleet Street or Cheapside of the navigatingworld, the great throughfare of nations, --and thus has prejudiced themoral sense and the fancy against his fiction still more inevitablythan his judgment, and in a way that was perfectly needless; for thechange brought along with it no shadow of compensation. 

My brother's wild adventures amongst these desperate sea rovers wereafterwards communicated in long letters to a female relative; and, even as letters, apart from the fearful burden of their contents, Ican bear witness that they had very extraordinary merit. This, in fact, was the happy result of writing from his heart; feeling profoundlywhat he communicated, and anticipating the profoundest sympathy withall that he uttered from her whom he addressed. A man of business, whoopened some of these letters, in his character of agent for my brother'sfive guardians, and who had not any special interest in the affair, assured me that, throughout the whole course of his life, he had neverread any thing so affecting, from the facts they contained, and fromthe sentiments which they expressed; above all, the yearning for thatEngland which he remembered as the land of his youthful pleasures, butalso of his youthful degradations. Three of the guardians were presentat the reading of these letters, and were all affected to tears, not-withstanding they had been irritated to the uttermost by the coursewhich both myself and my brother had pursued--a course which seemedto argue some defect of judgment, or of reasonable kindness, inthemselves. These letters, I hope, are still preserved, though theyhave been long removed from my control. Thinking of them, and theirextraordinary merit, I have often been led to believe that every posttown (and many times in the course of a month) carries out numbers ofbeautifully-written letters, and more from women than from men; notthat men are to be supposed less capable of writing good letters, --and, in fact, amongst all the celebrated letter writers of past or presenttimes, a large overbalance happens to have been men, --but that morefrequently women write from their hearts; and the very same causeoperates to make female letters good which operated at one period tomake the diction of Roman ladies more pure than that of orators orprofessional cultivators of the Roman language--and which, at anotherperiod, in the Byzantine court, operated to preserve the purity of themother idiom within the nurseries and the female drawing rooms of thepalace, whilst it was corrupted in the forensic standards and theacademic--in the standards of the pulpit and the throne. 

With respect to Pink's yearning for England, that had been partiallygratified in some part of his long exile: twice, as we learned longafterwards, he had landed in England; but such was his haughty adherenceto his purpose, and such his consequent terror of being discoveredand reclaimed by his guardians, that he never attempted to communicatewith any of his brothers or sisters. There he was wrong; me they shouldhave cut to pieces before I would have betrayed him. I, like him, hadbeen an obstinate recusant to what I viewed as unjust pretensions ofauthority; and, having been the first to raise the standard of revolt, had been taxed by my guardians with having seduced Pink by my example. But that was untrue; Pink acted for himself. However, he could knowlittle of all this; and he traversed England twice, without making anoverture towards any communication with his friends. Two circumstancesof these journeys he used to mention; both were from the port of London(for he never contemplated London but as a port) to Liverpool; or, thus far I may be wrong, that one of the two might be (in the returnorder) from Liverpool to London. On the first of these journeys, hisroute lay through Coventry; on the other, through Oxford and Birmingham. In neither case had he started with much money; and he was going tohave retired from the coach at the place of supping on the first night, (the journey then occupying two entire days and two entire nights, )when the passengers insisted on paying for him: that was a tribute tohis beauty--not yet extinct. He mentioned this part of his adventuressomewhat shyly, whilst going over them with a sailor's literal accuracy;though, as a record belonging to what he viewed as childish years, hehad ceased to care about it. On the other journey his experience wasdifferent, but equally testified to the spirit of kindness that isevery where abroad. He had no money, on this occasion, that couldpurchase even a momentary lift by a stage coach: as a pedestrian, hehad travelled down to Oxford, occupying two days in the fifty-four orfifty-six miles which then measured the road from London, and sleepingin a farmer's barn, without leave asked. Wearied and depressed inspirits, he had reached Oxford, hopeless of any aid, and with a deadlyshame at the thought of asking it. But, somewhere in the HighStreet, --and, according to his very accurate sailor's description ofthat noble street, it must have been about the entrance of All Souls'College, --he met a gentleman, a gownsman, who (at the very moment ofturning into the college gate) looked at Pink earnestly, and then gavehim a guinea, saying at the time, "I know what it is to be in yoursituation. You are a schoolboy, and you have run away from your school. Well, I was once in your situation, and I pity you. " The kind gownsman, who wore a velvet cap with a silk gown, and must, therefore, have beenwhat in Oxford is called a gentleman commoner, gave him an address atsome college or other, (Magdalen, he fancied, in after years, ) wherehe instructed him to call before he quitted Oxford. Had Pink done this, and had he frankly communicated his whole story, very probably he wouldhave received, not assistance merely, but the best advice for guidinghis future motions. His reason for not keeping the appointment wassimply that he was nervously shy, and, above all things, jealous ofbeing entrapped by insidious kindness into revelations that might provedangerously circumstantial. Oxford had a mayor; Oxford had acorporation; Oxford had Greek Testaments past all counting; and so, remembering past experiences, Pink held it to be the wisest counselthat he should pursue his route on foot to Liverpool. That guinea, however, he used to say, saved him from despair. 

One circumstance affected me in this part of Pink's story. I was astudent in Oxford at that time. By comparing dates, there was no doubtwhatever that I, who held my guardians in abhorrence, and, above allthings, admired my brother for his conduct, might have rescued him atthis point of his youthful trials, four years before the fortunatecatastrophe of his case, from the calamities which awaited him. Thisis felt generally to be the most distressing form of humanblindness--the case when accident brings two fraternal hearts, yearningfor reunion, into almost touching neighborhood, and then, in a momentafter, by the difference, perhaps, of three inches in space, or threeseconds in time, will separate them again, unconscious of their briefneighborhood, perhaps forever. In the present case, however, it maybe doubted whether this unconscious rencontre and unconscious partingin Oxford ought to be viewed as a misfortune. Pink, it is true, enduredyears of suffering, four, at least, that might have been saved by thisseasonable rencontre; but, on the other hand, by travelling throughhis misfortunes with unabated spirit, and to their natural end, he wonexperience and distinctions that else he would have missed. His furtherhistory was briefly this:--

Somewhere in the River of Plate he had effected his escape from thepirates; and a long time after, in 1807, I believe, (I write withoutbooks to consult, ) he joined the storming party of the English at MonteVideo. Here he happened fortunately to fall under the eye of Sir HomePopham; and Sir Home forthwith rated my brother as a midshipman onboard his own ship, which was at that time, I think, a fifty-gunship--the Diadem. Thus, by merits of the most appropriate kind, andwithout one particle of interest, my brother passed into the royalnavy. His nautical accomplishments were now of the utmost importanceto him; and, as often as he shifted his ship, which (to say the truth)was far too often, --for his temper was fickle and delighting inchange, --so often these accomplishments were made the basis of veryearnest eulogy. I have read a vast heap of certificates vouching forPink's qualifications as a sailor in the highest terms, and fromseveral of the most distinguished officers in the service. Early inhis career as a midshipman, he suffered a mortifying interruption ofthe active life which had long since become essential to his comfort. He had contrived to get appointed on board a fire ship, the Prometheus, (chiefly with a wish to enlarge his experience by this variety of navalwarfare, ) at the time of the last Copenhagen expedition, and he obtainedhis wish; for the Prometheus had a very distinguished station assignedher on the great night of bombardment, and from her decks, I believe, was made almost the first effectual trial of the Congreve rockets. Soon after the Danish capital had fallen, and whilst the Prometheuswas still cruising in the Baltic, Pink, in company with the purser ofhis ship, landed on the coast of Jutland, for the purpose of a morning'ssporting. It seems strange that this should have been allowed upon ahostile shore; and perhaps it was _not_ allowed, but might have beena thoughtless abuse of some other mission shorewards. So it was, unfortunately; and one at least of the two sailors had reason to ruethe sporting of that day for eighteen long months of captivity. Theywere perfectly unacquainted with the localities, but conceivedthemselves able at any time to make good their retreat to the boat, by means of fleet heels, and arms sufficient to deal with any oppositionof the sort they apprehended. Venturing, however, too far into thecountry, they became suddenly aware of certain sentinels, postedexpressly for the benefit of chance English visitors. These men didnot pursue, but they did worse, for they fired signal shots; and, bythe time our two thoughtless Jack tars had reached the shore, they sawa detachment of Danish cavalry trotting their horses pretty coollydown in a direction for the boat. Feeling confident of their power tokeep ahead of the pursuit, the sailors amused themselves with varioussallies of nautical wit; and Pink, in particular, was just tellingthem to present his dutiful respects to the crown prince, and assurehim that, but for this lubberly interruption, he trusted to haveimproved his royal dinner by a brace of birds, when--O sight of blankconfusion!--all at once they became aware that between themselves andtheir boat lay a perfect network of streams, deep watery holes, requiring both time and local knowledge to unravel. The purser hitupon a course which enabled him to regain the boat; but I am not surewhether he also was not captured. Poor Pink _was_, at all events; and, through seventeen or eighteen months, bewailed this boyish imprudence. At the end of that time there was an exchange of prisoners, and hewas again serving on board various and splendid frigates. Wyborg, inJutland, was the seat of his Danish captivity; and such was theamiableness of the Danish character, that, except for the loss of histime, to one who was aspiring to distinction and professional honor, none of the prisoners who were on parole could have had much reasonfor complaint. The street mob, excusably irritated with England atthat time, (for, without entering on the question of right or ofexpedience as regarded that war, it is notorious that such argumentsas we had for our unannounced hostilities could not be pleaded openlyby the English cabinet, for fear of compromising our private friendand informant, the King of Sweden, ) the mob, therefore, were rough intheir treatment of the British prisoners: at night, they would peltthem with stones; and here and there some honest burgher, who mighthave suffered grievously in his property, or in the person of hisnearest friends, by the ruin inflicted upon the Danish commercialshipping, or by the dreadful havoc made in Zealand, would show somethingof the same bitter spirit. But the great body of the richer and moreeducated inhabitants showed the most hospitable attention to all whojustified that sort of notice by their conduct. And their remembranceof these English friendships was not fugitive; for, through long yearsafter my brother's death, I used to receive letters, written in theDanish, (a language which I had attained in the course of my studies, and which I have since endeavored to turn to account in a publicjournal, for some useful purposes of research, ) from young men as wellas women in Jutland--letters couched in the most friendly terms, andrecalling to his remembrance scenes and incidents which sufficientlyproved the terms of fraternal affection upon which he had lived amongstthese public enemies; and some of them I have preserved to this day, as memorials that do honor, on different considerations, to both partiesalike. [7]

FOOTNOTES

[1] This poem, from great admiration of its mother English, and toillustrate some ideas upon style, Mr. Coleridge republished in his"Biographia Literaria. "

[2] From the well-known Italian epitaph--"_Stava bene; ma per starmeglio, sto qui_"--I was well; but, because I would be better than well, I am--where you see. 

[3] This was not meant assuredly as any advertisement of anestablishment, which could not by all reports need any man's praise, butwas written under a very natural impulse derived from a recent visit tothe place, and under an unaffected sympathy with the spirit of freedomand enjoyment that seemed to reign amongst the young people. 

[4] To those who are open to the impression of omens, there is a moststriking one on record with respect to the birth of this ill-fatedprince, not less so than the falling off of the head from the cane ofCharles I. At his trial, or the same king's striking a medal, bearing anoak tress, (prefiguring the oak of _Boscobel_, ) with this propheticinscription, "_Seris nepotibus umbram_. " At the very moment when(according to immemorial usage) the birth of a child was in the act ofannunciation to the great officers of state assembled in the queen's bedchamber, and when a private signal from a lady had made known the gladtidings that it was a dauphin, (the first child having been a princess, to the signal disappointment of the nation; and the second, who was aboy, having died, ) the whole frame of carved woodwork at the back of thequeen's bed, representing the crown and other regalia of France, with theBourbon lilies, came rattling down in ruins. There is another and moredirect ill omen connected, apparently, with the birth of this prince; infact, a distinct prophecy of his ruin, --a prophecy that he should survivehis father, and yet no reign, --which is so obscurely told, that one knowsnot in what light to view it; and especially since Louis XVIII. , who isthe original authority for it, obviously confounds the first dauphin, whodied before the calamities of his family commenced, with the second. Asto this second, who is of course the prince concerned in the referencesof the text, a new and most extraordinary interest has begun to investhis tragical story in this very month of April, 1853; at least, it is nowfirst brought before universal Christendom. In the monthly journal ofPutnam, (published in New York, ) the No. For April contains a mostinteresting memoir upon the subject, signed T. H. Hanson. Naturally, itindisposed most readers to put faith in any fresh pretensions of thisnature, that at least one false dauphin had been pronounced such by soundeniable a judge of the Duchesse d'Angoulême. Meantime, it is madeprobably enough by Mr Hanson that the true dauphin did not die in theyear 1795 at the Temple, but was personated by a boy unknown; that twoseparate parties had an equal interest in sustaining the fraud, and _did_sustain it; but one would hesitate to believe whether at the price ofmurdering a celebrated physician; that they had the prince conveyedsecretly to an Indian settlement in Lower Canada, as a situation in whichFrench, being the prevailing language, would attract no attention, as itmust have done in most other parts of North America; that the boy waseducated and trained as a missionary clergyman; and finally, that he isnow acting in that capacity under the name of Eleazar Williams--perfectly aware of the royal pretensions put forward on his behalf, butequally, through age (being about 69) and through absorption in spiritualviews, indifferent to these pretensions. It is admitted on all hands thatthe Prince de Joinville had an interview with Eleazar Williams a dozenyears since--the prince alleges through mere accident; but this seemsimprobable; and Mr Hanson is likely to be right in supposing this visitto have been a pre-concerted one, growing out of some anxiety to test thereports current, so far as they were grounded upon resemblances in Mr. Williams's features to those of the Bourbon and Austrian families. Themost pathetic fact is that of the idiocy common to the dauphin and Mr. Eleazar Williams. It is clear from all the most authentic accounts of theyoung prince that idiocy was in reality stealing over him--due, doubtless, to the stunning nature of the calamities that overwhelmed hisfamily; to the removal from him by tragical deaths, in so rapid asuccession, of the Princesse de Lamballe, of his aunt, of his father, ofhis mother, and others whom most he had loved; to his cruel separationfrom his sister; and to the astounding (for him naturallyincomprehensible) change that had come over the demeanor and the languageof nearly all the people placed about the persons of himself and hisfamily. An idiocy resulting from what must have seemed a causeless anddemoniac conspiracy would be more likely to melt away under the suddentransfer to kindness and the gayety of forest life than any idiocybelonging to original organic imbecility. Mr. Williams describes his ownconfusion of mind as continuing up to his fourteenth year, and all thingswhich had happened in earlier years as gleaming through clouds ofoblivion, and as painfully perplexing; but otherwise he shows no desireto strengthen the pretensions made for himself by any reminiscencespiercing these clouds that could point specially to France or to royalexperiences. 

[5] "_Flibustiers_. "--This word, which is just now revolving upon us inconnection with the attempts on Cuba, &c. , is constantly spelt by our ownand the American journals as _fillibustiers_ and fillibusteros. But thetrue word of nearly two centuries back amongst the old original race ofsea robbers (French and English) that made irregular war upon the Spanishshipping and maritime towns was that which I have here retained. 

[6] "_Seamanship and shipmanship_"--These are two functions of a sailorseldom, separated in the mind of a landsman. The conducting a ship(causing her to _choose_ a right path) through the ocean; that is onething. Then there is the management of the ship within herself, thetrimming of her sails, &c. , (causing her to _keep_ the line chosen;) thatis another thing. The first is called seamanship; the second might becalled shipmanship, but is, I believe, called navigation. They areperfectly distinct; one man rarely has both in perfection. Both may beillustrated from the rudder. The question is, suppose at the Cape of GoodHope, to steer for India: trust the rudder to him, as a seaman, who knowsthe passage whether within or without Madagascar. The question is toavoid a sunk rock: trust the rudder to him, as a navigator, whounderstands the art of steering to a nicety. 

[7] For this little parenthetical record of my brother's early historythe exact chronology of the several items in the case may possible be nowirrecoverable; but any error must be of trivial importance. His twopedestrian journeys between London and Liverpool occurred, I believe, inthe same year--viz. , after the death of the friendly captain, and duringthe last visit of his ship to England. The capture of Pink by the piratestook place after the ship's return to the Pacific. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

PREMATURE MANHOOD. 

My last two chapters, very slenderly connected with Birmingham, areyet made to rise out of it; the one out of Birmingham's own relationto the topic concerned, (viz. , _Travelling_, ) and the other (viz. , _MyBrother_) out of its relation to all possible times in my earlier life, and, therefore, why not to all possible places? _Any where_ introduced, the chapter was partially out of its place; as well then to introduceit in Birmingham as elsewhere. Somewhat arbitrary episodes, therefore, are these two last chapters; yet still endurable as occurring in awork confessedly rambling, and whose very duty lies in the pleasantpaths of vagrancy. Pretending only to amuse my reader, or pretendingchiefly to _that_, however much I may have sought, or _shall_ seek, to interest him occasionally through his profounder affections, I enjoya privilege of neglecting harsher logic, and connecting the separatesections of these sketches, not by ropes and cables, but by threadsof aerial gossamer. 

This present chapter, it may seem, promises something of the sameepisodical or parenthetic character. But in reality it does not. I amnow returning into the main current of my narrative, although I mayneed to linger for a moment upon a past anecdote. I have mentionedalready, that, on inquiring at the Birmingham post office for a letteraddressed to myself, I found one directing me to join my sister Maryat Laxton, a seat of Lord Carbery's in Northamptonshire, and givingme to understand, that, during my residence at this place, some fixedresolution would be taken and announced to me in regard to the futuredisposal of my time, during the two or three years before I should beold enough on the English system for matriculating at Oxford orCambridge. In the poor countries of Europe, where they cannot afforddouble sets of scholastic establishments, --having, therefore, nosplendid schools, such as are, in fact, peculiar to England, --they arecompelled to throw the duties of such schools upon their universities;and consequently you see boys of thirteen and fourteen, or even younger, crowding such institutions, which, in fact, they ruin for all higherfunctions. But England, whose regal establishments of both classesemancipate her from this dependency, sends her young men to collegenot until they have ceased to be boys--not earlier, therefore, thaneighteen. 

But when, by what test, by what indication, does manhood commence?Physically by one criterion, legally by another, morally by a third, intellectually by a fourth--and all indefinite. Equator, absoluteequator, there is none. Between the two spheres of youth and age, perfect and imperfect manhood, as in all analogous cases, there is nostrict line of bisection. The change is a large process, accomplishedwithin a large and corresponding space; having, perhaps, some centralor equatorial line, but lying, like that of our earth, between certaintropics, or limits widely separated. This _intertropical_ region may, and generally does, cover a number of years; and, therefore, it ishard to say, even for an assigned case, by any tolerable approximation, at what precise era it would be reasonable to describe the individualas having ceased to be a boy, and as having attained his inaugurationas a man. Physically, we know that there is a very large latitude ofdifferences, in the periods of human maturity, not merely betweenindividual and individual, but also between nation and nation;differences so great, that, in some southern regions of Asia, we hearof matrons at the age of twelve. And though, as Mr. Sadler rightlyinsists, a romance of exaggeration has been built upon the facts, enough remains behind of real marvel to irritate the curiosity of thephysiologist as to its efficient, and, perhaps, of the philosopher asto its final cause. Legally and politically, that is, conventionally, the differences are even greater on a comparison of nations and eras. In England we have seen senators of mark and authority, nay, even aprime minister, the haughtiest, [1] the most despotic, and the mostirresponsible of his times, at an age which, in many states, bothancient and modern, would have operated as a ground of absolutechallenge to the candidate for offices the meanest. Intellectuallyspeaking, again, a very large proportion of men _never_ attain maturity. Nonage is their final destiny; and manhood, in this respect, is forthem a pure idea. Finally, as regards the moral development, --by whichI mean the whole system and economy of their love and hatred, of theiradmirations and contempts, the total organization of their pleasuresand their pains, --hardly any of our species ever attain manhood. Itwould be unphilosophic to say that intellects of the _highest_ orderwere, or could be, developed fully without a corresponding developmentof the whole nature. But of such intellects there do not appear abovetwo or three in a thousand years. It is a fact, forced upon one by thewhole experience of life, that almost all men are children, more orless, in their tastes and admirations. Were it not for man's latenttendencies, --were it not for that imperishable grandeur which existsby way of germ and ultimate possibility in his nature, hidden thoughit is, and often all but effaced, --how unlimited would be the contemptamongst all the wise for his species! and misanthropy would, but forthe angelic ideal buried and imbruted in man's sordid race, becomeamongst the noble fixed, absolute, and deliberately cherished. 

But, to resume my question, how, under so variable a standard, bothnatural and conventional, of every thing almost that can be receivedfor a test or a presumption of manhood, shall we seize upon anycharacteristic feature, sufficiently universal to serve a _practical_use, as a criterion of the transition from the childish mind to thedignity (relative dignity at least) of that mind which belongs toconscious maturity? One such criterion, and one only, as I believe, there is--all others are variable and uncertain. It lies in thereverential feeling, sometimes suddenly developed, towards woman, andthe idea of woman. From that moment when women cease to be regardedwith carelessness, and when the ideal of womanhood, in its total pompof loveliness and purity, dawns like some vast aurora upon the mind, boyhood has ended; childish thoughts and inclinations have passed awayforever; and the gravity of manhood, with the self-respecting viewsof manhood, have commenced. 

 "Mentemque priorem Expulit, atque hominem toto sibi cedere jussit Pectore. "--_Lucan_. 

These feelings, no doubt, depend for their development in part uponphysical causes; but they are also determined by the many retarding oraccelerating forces enveloped in circumstances of position, and sometimesin pure accident. For myself, I remember most distinctly the very day--the scene and its accidents--when that mysterious awe fell upon me whichbelongs to woman in her ideal portrait; and from that hour a profoundergravity colored all my thoughts, and a "beauty still more beauteous" waslit up for me in this agitating world. Lord Westport and myself had beenon a visit to a noble family about fifty miles from Dublin; and we werereturning from Tullamore by a public passage boat, on the splendid canalwhich connects that place with the metropolis. To avoid attracting anunpleasant attention to ourselves in public situations, I observed a ruleof never addressing Lord Westport by his title: but it so happened thatthe canal carried us along the margin of an estate belonging to the Earl(now Marquis) of Westmeath; and, on turning an angle, we came suddenly inview of this nobleman taking his morning lounge in the sun. Somewhatloftily he reconnoitred the miscellaneous party of clean and uncleanbeasts, crowded on the deck of our ark, ourselves amongst the number, whom he challenged gayly as young acquaintances from Dublin; and myfriend he saluted more than once as "My lord. " This accident made knownto the assembled mob of our fellow-travellers Lord Westport's rank, andled to a scene rather too broadly exposing the spirit of this world. Herded together on the deck (or roof of that den denominated the "_state_cabin") stood a party of young ladies, headed by their governess. In thecabin below was mamma, who as yet had not condescended to illuminate ourcircle, for she was an awful personage--a wit, a bluestocking, (I callher by the name then current, ) and a leader of _ton_ in Dublin andBelfast. The fact, however, that a young lord, and one of greatexpectations, was on board, brought her up. A short cross examination ofLord Westport's French valet had confirmed the flying report, and at thesame time (I suppose) put her in possession of my defect in all thoseadvantages of title, fortune, and expectation which so brilliantlydistinguished my friend. Her admiration of him, and her contempt formyself, were equally undisguised. And in the ring which she soon clearedout for public exhibition, she made us both fully sensible of the veryequitable stations which she assigned to us in her regard. She wasneither very brilliant, nor altogether a pretender, but might bedescribed as a showy woman, of slight but popular accomplishments. Anywoman, however has the advantage of possessing the ear of any company;and a woman of forty, with such tact and experience as she will naturallyhave gathered in a talking practice of such duration, can find littledifficulty in mortifying a boy, or sometimes, perhaps, in tempting him tounfortunate sallies of irritation. Me it was clear that she viewed in thelight of a humble friend, or what is known in fashionable life by thehumiliating name of a "toad-eater. " Lord Westport, full of generosity inwhat regarded his own pretensions, and who never had violated the perfectequality which reigned in our deportment to each other, colored with asmuch confusion as myself at her coarse insinuations. And, in reality, ourages scarcely allowed of that relation which she supposed to existbetween us. Possibly she did _not_ suppose it; but it is essential to thewit and the display of some people that it should have a foundation inmalice. A victim and a sacrifice are indispensable conditions in everyexhibition. In such a case, my natural sense of justice would generallyhave armed me a hundred fold for retaliation; but at present, chiefly, perhaps, because I had no effectual ally, and could count upon nosympathy in my audience, I was mortified beyond the power of retort, andbecame a passive butt to the lady's stinging contumely and the arrowysleet of her gay rhetoric. The narrow bounds of our deck made it not easyto get beyond talking range; and thus it happened, that for two hours Istood the worst of this bright lady's feud. At length the tables turned. Two ladies appeared slowly ascending from the cabin, both in deepestmourning, but else as different in aspect as summer and winter. The elderwas the Countess of Errol, then mourning an affliction which had laid herlife desolate, and admitted of no human consolation. Heavier grief--griefmore self-occupied and deaf to all voice of sympathy--I have not happenedto witness. She seemed scarcely aware of our presence, except it were byplacing herself as far as was possible from the annoyance of our odiousconversation. The circumstances of her loss are now forgotten; at thattime they were known to a large circle in Bath and London, and I violateno confidence in reviewing them. Lord Errol had been privately intrustedby Mr. Pitt with an official secret, viz. , the outline and principaldetails of a foreign expedition; in which, according to Mr. Pitt'soriginal purpose, his lordship was to have held a high command. In amoment of intoxication, the earl confided this secret to some falsefriend, who published the communication and its author. Upon this, theunhappy nobleman, under too keen a sense of wounded honor, and perhapswith an exaggerated notion of the evils attached to his indiscretion, destroyed himself. Months had passed since that calamity when we met hiswidow; but time appeared to have done nothing in mitigating her sorrow. The younger lady, on the other hand, who was Lady Errol's sister, --Heavens! what a spirit of joy and festal pleasure radiated from her eyes, her step, her voice, her manner! She was Irish, and the veryimpersonation of innocent gayety, such as we find oftener, perhaps, amongst Irish women than those of any other country. Mourning, I havesaid, she wore; from sisterly consideration, the deepest mourning; thatsole expression there was about her of gloom or solemn feeling, --

 "But all things else about her drawn From May time and the cheerful dawn. "

Odious bluestocking [2] of Belfast and Dublin! as some would call you, how I hated you up to that moment! half an hour after, how grateful Ifelt for the hostility which had procured me such an alliance! One minutesufficed to put the quick-witted young Irish woman in possession of ourlittle drama and the several parts we were playing. To look was tounderstand, to wish was to execute, with this ardent child of nature. Like Spenser's Bradamant, with martial scorn she couched her lance on theside of the party suffering wrong. Her rank, as sister-in-law to theconstable of Scotland, gave her some advantage for winning a favorableaudience; and throwing her aegis over me, she extended that benefit tomyself. Road was now made perforce for me also; my replies were no longerstifled in noise and laughter. Personalities were banished; literaturewas extensively discussed; and that is a subject which, offering littleroom to argument, offers the widest to eloquent display. I had immensereading; vast command of words, which somewhat diminished as ideas anddoubts multiplied; and, speaking no longer to a deaf audience, but to agenerous and indulgent protectress, I threw out, as from a cornucopia, myillustrative details and recollections; trivial enough, perhaps, as Imight now think, but the more intelligible to my present circle. It mightseem too much the case of a storm in a slop basin, if I were to spend anywords upon the revolution which ensued. Suffice it, that I remained thelion of that company which had previously been most insultingly facetiousat my expense; and the intellectual lady finally declared the air of thedeck unpleasant. 

Never, until this hour, had I thought of women as objects of a possibleinterest or of a reverential love. I had known them either in theirinfirmities and their unamiable aspects, or else in those sternerrelations which made them objects of ungenial and uncompanionablefeelings. Now first it struck me that life might owe half itsattractions and all its graces to female companionship. Gazing, perhaps, with too earnest an admiration at this generous and spirited youngdaughter of Ireland, and in that way making her those acknowledgmentsfor her goodness which I could not properly clothe in words, I wasaroused to a sense of my indecorum by seeing her suddenly blush. Ibelieve that Miss Bl---- interpreted my admiration rightly; for shewas not offended, but, on the contrary, for the rest of the day, whennot attending to her sister, conversed almost exclusively, and in aconfidential way, with Lord Westport and myself. The whole, in fact, of this conversation must have convinced her that I, mere boy as Iwas, (viz. , about fifteen, ) could not have presumed to direct myadmiration to _her_, a fine young woman of twenty, in any othercharacter than that of a generous champion, and a very adroit mistressin the dazzling fence of colloquial skirmish. My admiration had, inreality, been addressed to her moral qualities, her enthusiasm, herspirit, and her generosity. Yet that blush, evanescent as it was, --themere possibility that I, so very a child, should have called up themost transitory sense of bashfulness or confusion upon any femalecheek, first, --and suddenly, as with a flash of lightning, penetratingsome utter darkness, illuminated to my own startled consciousness, never again to be obscured, the pure and powerful ideal of womanhoodand womanly excellence. This was, in a proper sense, a _revelation_;it fixed a great era of change in my life; and this new-born idea, being agreeable to the uniform tendencies of my own nature, --that is, lofty and aspiring, --it governed my life with great power, and withmost salutary effects. Ever after, throughout the period of youth, Iwas jealous of my own demeanor, reserved and awe-struck, in the presenceof women; reverencing, often, not so much _them_ as my own ideal ofwoman latent in them. For I carried about with me the idea, to whichoften I seemed to see an approximation, of

 "A perfect woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, to command. "

And from this day I was an altered creature, never again relapsinginto the careless, irreflective mind of childhood. 

At the same time I do not wish, in paying my homage to the other sex, and in glorifying its possible power over ours, to be confounded withthose thoughtless and trivial rhetoricians who flatter woman with afalse lip worship; and, like Lord Byron's buccaneers, hold out to thema picture of their own empire, built only upon sensual or upon shadowyexcellences. We find continually a false enthusiasm, a mere bacchanalianinebriation, on behalf of woman, put forth by modern verse writers, expressly at the expense of the other sex, as though woman could beof porcelain, whilst man was of common earthern ware. Even thetestimonies of Ledyard and Park are partly false (though amiable)tributes to female excellence; at least they are merely one-sidedtruths--aspects of one phasis, and under a peculiar angle. For, thoughthe sexes differ characteristically, yet they never fail to reflecteach other; nor can they differ as to the general amount of development;never yet was woman in one stage of elevation, and man (of the samecommunity) in another. Thou, therefore, daughter of God and man, all-potent woman! reverence thy own ideal; and in the wildest of thehomage which is paid to thee, as also in the most real aspects of thywide dominion, read no trophy of idle vanity, but a silent indicationof the possible grandeur enshrined in thy nature; which realize to theextent of thy power, --

 "And show us how divine a thing A woman may become. "

For what purpose have I repeated this story? The reader may, perhaps, suppose it introductory to some tale of boyish romantic passion forsome female idol clothed with imaginary perfections. But in that casehe will be mistaken. Nothing of the kind was possible to me. I waspreoccupied by other passions. Under the disease--for disease itwas--which at that time mastered me, one solitary desire, one frenzy, one demoniac fascination, stronger than the fascinations of calenture, brooded over me as the moon over the tides--forcing me day and nightinto speculations upon great intellectual problems, many times beyondmy strength, as indeed often beyond all human strength, but not theless provoking me to pursue them. As a prophet in days of old had nopower to resist the voice which, from hidden worlds, called him to amission, sometimes, perhaps, revolting to his human sensibilities, ashe must deliver, was under a coercion to deliver the burning word thatspoke within his heart, --or as a ship on the Indian Ocean cannot seekrest by anchoring, but _must_ run before the wrath of the monsoon, --suchin its fury, such in its unrelentingness, was the persecution thatovermastered me. School tasks under these circumstances, it may wellbe supposed, had become a torment to me. For a long time they had losteven that slight power of stimulation which belongs to the irritationof difficulty. Easy and simple they had now become as the elementarylessons of childhood. Not that it is possible for Greek studies, ifpursued with unflinching sincerity, ever to fall so far into the rearas a _palaestra_ for exercising both strength and skill; but, in aschool where the exercises are pursued, in common by large classes, the burden must be adapted to the powers of the weakest, and not ofthe strongest. And, apart from that objection, at this period, thehasty unfolding of far different intellectual interests than such asbelong to mere literature had, for a time, dimmed in my eyes the lustreof classical studies, pursued at whatsoever depth and on whatsoeverscale. For more than a year, every thing connected with schools andthe business of schools had been growing more and more hateful to me. At first, however, my disgust had been merely the disgust of wearinessand pride. But now, at this crisis, (for crisis it was virtually tome, ) when a premature development of my whole mind was rushing in likea cataract, forcing channels for itself and for the new tastes whichit introduced, my disgust was no longer simply intellectual, but haddeepened into a _moral_ sense as of some inner dignity continuallyviolated. Once the petty round of school tasks had been felt as amolestation; but now, at last, as a degradation. Constant conversationwith grown-up men for the last half year, and upon topics oftentimesof the gravest order, --the responsibility that had always in someslight degree settled upon myself since I had become the eldestsurviving son of my family, but of late much more so when circumstanceshad thrown me as an English stranger upon the society of distinguishedIrishmen, --more, however, than all beside, the inevitable rebound andcounter-growth of internal dignity from the everlasting commerce withlofty speculations, these agencies in constant operation had imbitteredmy school disgust, until it was travelling fast into a mania. Preciselyat this culminating point of my self-conflict did that scene occurwhich I have described with Miss Bl----. In that hour another element, which assuredly was not wanted, fell into the seething caldron ofnew-born impulses, that, like the magic caldron of Medea, was nowtransforming me into a new creature. Then first and suddenly I broughtpowerfully before myself the change which was worked in the aspectsof society by the presence of woman--woman, pure, thoughtful, noble, coming before me as a Pandora crowned with perfections. Right overagainst this ennobling spectacle, with equal suddenness, I placed theodious spectacle of schoolboy society--no matter in what region of theearth; schoolboy society, so frivolous in the matter of its disputes, often so brutal in the manner; so foolishly careless, and yet sorevoltingly selfish; dedicated ostensibly to learning, and yet beyondany section of human beings so conspicuously ignorant. Was it indeed_that_ heavenly which I was soon to exchange for _this_ earthly? Itseemed to me, when contemplating the possibility that I could yet havenearly three years to pass in such society as this, that I heard someirresistible voice saying, Lay aside thy fleshly robes of humanity, and enter for a season into some brutal incarnation. But whatconnection had this painful prospect with Laxton? Why should it pressupon my anxieties in approaching that mansion, more than it had doneat Westport? Naturally enough, in part, because every day brought menearer to the horror from which I recoiled: my return to England wouldrecall the attention of my guardians to the question, which as yet hadslumbered; and the knowledge that I had reached Northamptonshire wouldprecipitate their decision. Obscurely, besides, through a hint whichhad reached me, I guessed what this decision was likely to be, and ittook the very worst shape it could have taken. All this increased myagitation from hour to hour. But all this was quickened and barbed bythe certainty of so immediately meeting Lady Carbery. To her it was, and to her only, that I could look for any useful advice or anyeffectual aid. She over my mother, as in turn my mother over _her_, exercised considerable influence; whilst my mother's power was veryseldom disturbed by the other guardians. The mistress of Laxton itwas, therefore, whose opinion upon the case would virtually be decisive;since, if _she_ saw no reasonable encouragement to any contest withmy guardians, I felt too surely that my own uncountenanced and unaidedenergies drooped too much for such an effort. Who Lady Carbery was, I will explain in my next chapter, entitled _Laxton_. Meantime, to me, individually, she was the one sole friend that ever I could regard asentirely fulfilling the offices of an honorable friendship. She hadknown me from infancy: when I was in my first year of life, she, anorphan and a great heiress, was in her tenth or eleventh; and on heroccasional visits to "the Farm, " (a rustic old house then occupied bymy father, ) I, a household pet, suffering under an ague, which lastedfrom my first year to my third, naturally fell into her hands as asort of superior toy, a toy that could breathe and talk. Every yearour intimacy had been renewed, until her marriage interrupted it. But, after no very long interval, when my mother had transferred herhousehold to Bath, in that city we frequently met again; Lord Carberyliking Bath for itself, as well as for its easy connection with London, whilst Lady Carbery's health was supposed to benefit by the waters. Her understanding was justly reputed a fine one; but, in general, itwas calculated to win respect rather than love, for it was masculineand austere, with very little toleration for sentiment or romance. Butto myself she had always been indulgently kind; I was protected in herregard, beyond any body's power to dislodge me, by her childishremembrances; and of late years she had begun to entertain the highestopinion of my intellectual promises. Whatever could be done to assistmy views, I most certainly might count upon her doing; that is to say, within the limits of her conscientious judgment upon the propriety ofmy own plans. Having, besides, so much more knowledge of the worldthan myself, she might see cause to dissent widely from my own viewof what was expedient as well as what was right; in which case I waswell assured that, in the midst of kindness and unaffected sympathy, she would firmly adhere to the views of my guardians. In anycircumstances she would have done so. But at present a new element hadbegun to mix with the ordinary influences which governed her estimatesof things: she had, as I knew from my sister's report, become religious;and her new opinions were of a gloomy cast, Calvinistic, in fact, andtending to what is _now_ technically known in England as "Low Church, "or "Evangelical Christianity. " These views, being adopted in a greatmeasure from my mother, were naturally the same as my mother's; sothat I could form some guess as to the general spirit, if not the exactdirection, in which her counsels would flow. It is singular that, until this time, I had never regarded Lady Carbery under any relationwhatever to female intellectual society. My early childish knowledgeof her had shut out that mode of viewing her. But now, suddenly, underthe new-born sympathies awakened by the scene with Miss Bl----, Ibecame aware of the distinguished place she was qualified to fill insuch society. In that Eden--for such it had now consciously become tome--I had no necessity to cultivate an interest or solicit an admission;already, through Lady Carbery's too flattering estimate of my ownpretensions, and through old, childish memories, I held the mostdistinguished place. This Eden, she it was that lighted up suddenlyto my new-born powers of appreciation in all its dreadful points ofcontrast with the killing society of schoolboys. She it was, fittedto be the glory of such an Eden, who probably would assist in banishingme for the present to the wilderness outside. My distress of mind wasinexpressible. And, in the midst of glittering saloons, at times alsoin the midst of society the most fascinating, I--contemplating theidea of that gloomy academic dungeon to which for three long years Ianticipated too certainly a sentence of exile--felt very much as inthe middle ages must have felt some victim of evil destiny, inheritorof a false, fleeting prosperity, that suddenly, in a moment of time, by signs blazing out past all concealment on his forehead, was detectedas a leper; and in that character, as a public nuisance and universalhorror, was summoned instantly to withdraw from society; prince orpeasant, was indulged with no time for preparation or evasion; and, from the midst of any society, the sweetest or the most dazzling, wasdriven violently to take up his abode amid the sorrow-haunted chambersof a lazar house. 

FOOTNOTES

[1] "_The haughtiest_. "--Which, however, is very doubtful. Such, certainly, was the popular impression. But people who knew Mr. Pittintimately have always ascribed to him a nature the most amiable andsocial, under an unfortunate reserve of manner. Whilst, on the contrary, Mr. Fox, ultra democratic in his principles and frank in his address, wasrepulsively aristocratic in his temper and sympathies. 

[2] I have sometimes had occasion to remark, as a noticeable phenomenonof our present times, that the order of ladies called _bluestockings, _ byway of reproach, has become totally extinct amongst us, except only hereand there with superannuated clingers to obsolete remembrances. Thereason of this change is interesting; and I do not scruple to call ithonorable to our intellectual progress. In the last (but still more inthe penultimate) generation, any tincture of literature, of liberalcuriosity about science, or of ennobling interest in books, carried withit an air of something unsexual, mannish, and (as it was treated by thesycophantish satirists that for ever humor the prevailing folly) ofsomething ludicrous. This mode of treatment was possible so long as theliterary class of ladies formed a feeble minority. But now, when two vastpeoples, English and American, counting between them forty-nine millions, when the leaders of transcendent civilization (to say nothing of Germanyand France) behold their entire educated class, male and female alike, calling out, not for _Panem et circenses_, (Give us this day our dailybread and our games of the circus, ) but for _Panem et literas_, (Give usthis day our daily bread and literature, ) the universality of the callhas swept away the very name of _bluestocking_; the very possibility ofthe ridicule has been undermined by stern realities; and the verbalexpression of the reproach is fast becoming, not simply obsolete, buteven unintelligible to our juniors. By the way, the origin of this term_bluestocking_ has never been satisfactorily accounted for, unless thereader should incline to think _my_ account satisfactory. I incline tothat opinion myself. Dr. Bisset (in his Life of Burke) traces it idly toa _sobriquet_ imposed by Mrs. Montagu, and the literary ladies of hercircle, upon a certain obscure Dr. Stillingfleet, who was the solemasculine assistant at their literary sittings in Portman Square, andchose, upon some inexplicable craze, to wear blue stockings. Thetranslation, however, of this name from the doctor's legs to the ladies'legs is still unsolved. That great _hiatus _needs filling up. I, therefore, whether erroneously or not, in reviewing a German historicalwork of some pretensions, where this problem emerges, rejected thePortman Square doctor altogether, and traced the term to an old Oxfordstatute--one of the many which meddle with dress, and which charges it asa point of conscience upon loyal scholastic students that they shall wearcerulean socks. Such socks, therefore, indicated scholasticism: worn byfemales, they would indicate a self-dedication to what for them would beregarded as pedantic studies. But, says an objector, no rational _female_would wear cerulean socks. Perhaps not, female taste being too good. Butas such socks would symbolize such a profession of pedantry, so, inversely, any profession of pedantry, by whatever signs expressed, wouldbe symbolized reproachfully by the imputation of wearing cerulean socks. It classed a woman, in effect, as a scholastic pedant. Now, however, whenthe vast diffusion of literature as a sort of daily bread has made allridicule of female literary culture not less ridiculous than would be theattempt to ridicule that same daily bread, the whole phenomenon, thingand word, substance and shadow, is melting away from amongst us. Something of the same kind has happened in the history of silver forks. Forks of any kind, as is well known, were first introduced into Italy;thence by a fantastic (but, in this instance, judicious) Englishtraveller _immediately _(and not _mediately through France_) wereintroduced into England. This elegant revolution occurred about 240 yearsago; and never since that day have there been wanting English protestersagainst the infamy of eating without forks; and for the last 160 years, at least, against the paganism of using _steel _forks; or, 2dly, two-pronged forks; or, 3dly, of putting the knife into the mouth. At least120 years ago, the Duchess of Queensberry, (Gay's duchess, ) that leoninewoman, used to shriek out, on seeing a hyperborean squire conveying peasto his abominable mouth on the point of a knife. "O, stop him, stop him!that man's going to commit suicide. " This anecdote argues silver forks asexisting much more than a century back, else the squire had a gooddefence. Since then, in fact, about the time of the French revolution, silver forks have been recognized as not less indispensable appendages toany elegant dinner table than silver spoons; and, along with silverforks, came in the explosion of that anti-Queensberry brutalism whichforks first superseded--viz. , the fiendish practice of introducing theknife between the lips. But, in defiance of all these facts, certainselect hacks of the daily press, who never had an opportunity of seeing acivilized dinner, and fancying that their own obscene modes of feedingprevailed every where, got up the name of the _Silver-fork_ School, (which should have indicated the school of decency, ) as representing someideal school of fantastic or ultra refinement. At length, however, whencheap counterfeits of silver have made the decent four-pronged forkcheaper than the two-pronged steel barbarism, what has followed? Why, this--that the universality of the diffusion has made it hopeless anylonger to banter it. There is, therefore, this strict analogy between"the silver fork" reproach and "the bluestocking" reproach--that in bothcases alike a recognition, gradually becoming universal, of the thingitself, as a social necessity, has put down forever all idle attempts tothrow ridicule upon it--upon literature, in the one case, as a mostappropriate female ornament; and upon silver forks, on the other, as anelement of social decorum. 

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The author has exerted himself every where to keep the text accurate;and he is disposed to believe that his own care, combined with thegeneral accuracy of the press, must have enabled him to succeed inthat object. But if it should appear that any errors have after allescaped him, he must request his readers to excuse them, afterexplaining that he suffers under the oppression of a nervousdistraction, which renders all labors exacting any energy of attentioninexpressibly painful.