Blackwood 424 - 1851.02

[The fires of Smithfield and the massacre of Bartholomew are truly events of little consequence in history, if they fail to convince us of the aggressive and unscrupulous policy of the Roman Catholic Church. The claim of the Pope, which never has undergone or can undergo any modification whatever, is nothing less than one of universal supremacy. That claim is asserted now as broadly and boldly as it was three hundred years ago; when, at the accession of Mary, Cardinal Pole was sent over as legate to England, for the reduction of that realm to the obedience of the See of Rome, and for the extirpation of heresy.

It matters not what may have been the private character of the Cardinal. He has been represented as a man of mild nature, humane disposition, and averse to the infamous cruelties which were then perpetrated, the odium of which has been commonly thrown upon Bishops Gardiner and Bonner. This much at least is plain, that, whatever may have been his opinion as to the methods which were employed for the suppression of Protestantism, he did not deem it expedient to exercise his great power in mitigating the fury or tempering the cruelty of the persecution. He was a passive witness of the enormities, and allowed the mandates of the Church to supersede the dictates of humanity and the merciful teaching of the Saviour.

The records of the reign of Mary ought, especially at the present time, to be studied by those who, in their zeal for toleration, forget that they have to contend with most bitter and uncompromising enemies. Not only the sufferings and fortitude of the martyrs, (among whom were numbered five bishops, and twenty-one clergymen of the Reformed faith of England,) but the charges on which they were condemned, and the noble testimony which they bore, will be found detailed in John Foxe's Acts and Monuments. Next to that of Archbishop Cranmer, the names of Latimer and Ridley can never be forgotten in this land, so long as the voice of Protestantism is heard against Papal superstition and supremacy. Political and ecclesiastical dominion are things inseparable from each other in the eye of Rome; and wherever she has succeeded in planting her foot, she has attempted to enforce spiritual submission, and to extinguish liberty of conscience, by the power of the secular arm. The following extract, from the work already referred to, narrates the close of the terrible tragedy which consigned two English prelates to the flames at Oxford:—

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

X.

XI.

XII.

XIII.

XIV.

XV.

XVI.

XVII.

XVIII.

W. I.

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BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON.

Whatever may be the ultimate success of Miss Jemima Hazeldean's designs upon Dr Riccabocca, the Machiavellian sagacity with which the Italian had counted upon securing the services of Lenny Fairfield was speedily and triumphantly established by the result. No voice of the Parson's, charmed he ever so wisely, could persuade the peasant-boy to go and ask pardon of the young gentleman, to whom, because he had done as he was bid, he owed an agonising defeat and a shameful incarceration. And, to Mrs Dale's vexation, the widow took the boy's part. She was deeply offended at the unjust disgrace Lenny had undergone in being put in the stocks; she shared his pride, and openly approved his spirit. Nor was it without great difficulty that Lenny could be induced to resume his lessons at school—nay, even to set foot beyond the precincts of his mother's holding. The point of the school at last he yielded, though sullenly; and the Parson thought it better to temporise as to the more unpalatable demand. Unluckily Lenny's apprehensions of the mockery that awaited him in the merciless world of his village were realised. Though Stirn at first kept his own counsel, the Tinker blabbed the whole affair. And after the search instituted for Lenny on the fatal night, all attempt to hush up what had passed would have been impossible. So then Stirn told his story, as the Tinker had told his own; both tales were very unfavourable to Leonard Fairfield. The pattern boy had broken the Sabbath, fought with his betters, and been well mauled into the bargain; the village lad had sided with Stirn and the authorities in spying out the misdemeanours of his equals: therefore Leonard Fairfield, in both capacities of degraded pattern boy and baffled spy, could expect no mercy;—he was ridiculed in the one, and hated in the other.

It is true that, in the presence of the schoolmaster, and under the eye of Mr Dale, no one openly gave vent to malignant feelings; but the moment those checks were removed, popular persecution began.

Some pointed and mowed at him; some cursed him for a sneak, and all shunned his society; voices were heard in the hedgerows, as he passed through the village at dusk, "Who was put in the stocks?—baa!" "Who got a bloody nob for playing spy to Nick Stirn?—baa!" To resist this species of aggression would have been a vain attempt for a wiser head and a colder temper than our poor pattern boy's. He took his resolution at once, and his mother approved it; and the second or third day after Dr Riccabocca's return to the Casino, Lenny Fairfield presented himself on the terrace with a little bundle in his hand. "Please, sir," said he to the Doctor, who was sitting cross-legged on the balustrade, with his red silk umbrella over his head; "Please, sir, if you'll be good enough to take me now, and give me any hole to sleep in, I'll work for your honour night and day; and as for the wages, mother says 'just suit yourself, sir.'"

"My child," said the Doctor, taking Lenny by the hand, and looking at him with the sagacious eye of a wizard, "I knew you would come! and Giacomo is already prepared for you! As to wages, we'll talk of them by-and-by."

Lenny being thus settled, his mother looked for some evenings on the vacant chair, where he had so long sate in the place of her beloved Mark; and the chair seemed so comfortless and desolate, thus left all to itself, that she could bear it no longer.

Indeed the village had grown as distasteful to her as to Lenny—perhaps more so; and one morning she hailed the Steward as he was trotting his hog-maned cob beside the door, and bade him tell the Squire that "she would take it very kind if he would let her off the six months' notice for the land and premises she held—there were plenty to step into the place at a much better rent."

"You're a fool," said the good-natured Steward; "and I'm very glad you did not speak to that fellow Stirn instead of to me. You've been doing extremely well here, and have the place, I may say, for nothing."

"Nothin' as to rent, sir, but a great deal as to feeling," said the widow. "And now Lenny has gone to work with the foreign gentleman, I should like to go and live near him."

"Ah yes—I heard Lenny had taken himself off to the Casino—more fool he; but, bless your heart, 'tis no distance—two miles or so. Can't he come home every night after work?"

"No, sir," exclaimed the widow almost fiercely; "he shan't come home here, to be called bad names and jeered at!—he whom my dead goodman was so fond and proud of. No, sir; we poor folks have our feelings, as I said to Mrs Dale, and as I will say to the Squire hisself. Not that I don't thank him for all favours—he be a good gentleman if let alone; but he says he won't come near us till Lenny goes and axes pardin. Pardin for what, I should like to know? Poor lamb! I wish you could ha' seen his nose, sir—as big as your two fists. Ax pardin! If the Squire had had such a nose as that, I don't think it's pardin he'd been ha' axing. But I let's the passion get the better of me—I humbly beg you'll excuse it, sir. I'm no scollard, as poor Mark was, and Lenny would have been, if the Lord had not visited us otherways. Therefore just get the Squire to let me go as soon as may be; and as for the bit o' hay and what's on the grounds and orchard, the new comer will no doubt settle that."

The Steward, finding no eloquence of his could induce the widow to relinquish her resolution, took her message to the Squire. Mr Hazeldean, who was indeed really offended at the boy's obstinate refusal to make the amende honorable to Randal Leslie at first only bestowed a hearty curse or two on the pride and ingratitude both of mother and son. It may be supposed, however, that his second thoughts were more gentle, since that evening, though he did not go himself to the widow, he sent his "Harry." Now, though Harry was sometimes austere and brusque enough on her own account, and in such business as might especially be transacted between herself and the cottagers, yet she never appeared as the delegate of her lord except in the capacity of a herald of peace and mediating angel. It was with good heart, too, that she undertook this mission, since, as we have seen, both mother and son were great favourites of hers. She entered the cottage with the friendliest beam in her bright blue eye, and it was with the softest tone of her frank cordial voice that she accosted the widow. But she was no more successful than the Steward had been. The truth is, that I don't believe the haughtiest duke in the three kingdoms is really so proud as your plain English rural peasant, nor half so hard to propitiate and deal with when his sense of dignity is ruffled. Nor are there many of my own literary brethren (thin-skinned creatures though we are) so sensitively alive to the Public Opinion, wisely despised by Dr Riccabocca, as that same peasant. He can endure a good deal of contumely sometimes, it is true, from his superiors, (though, thank Heaven! that he rarely meets, with unjustly;) but to be looked down upon, and mocked, and pointed at by his own equals—his own little world—cuts him to the soul. And if you can succeed in breaking this pride, and destroying this sensitiveness, then he is a lost being. He can never recover his self-esteem, and you have chucked him half way—a stolid, inert, sullen victim—to the perdition of the prison or the convict-ship.

Of this stuff was the nature both of the widow and her son. Had the honey of Plato flowed from the tongue of Mrs Hazeldean, it could not have turned into sweetness the bitter spirit upon which it descended. But Mrs Hazeldean, though an excellent woman, was rather a bluff plain-spoken one—and, after all, she had some little feeling for the son of a gentleman, and a decayed fallen gentleman, who, even by Lenny's account, had been assailed without any intelligible provocation; nor could she, with her strong common sense, attach all the importance which Mrs Fairfield did to the unmannerly impertinence of a few young cubs, which, she said truly, "would soon die away if no notice was taken of it." The widow's mind was made up, and Mrs Hazeldean departed—with much chagrin and some displeasure.

Mrs Fairfield, however, tacitly understood that the request she had made was granted, and early one morning her door was found locked—the key left at a neighbour's to be given to the Steward; and, on farther inquiry, it was ascertained that her furniture and effects had been removed by the errand-cart in the dead of the night. Lenny had succeeded in finding a cottage, on the road-side, not far from the Casino; and there, with a joyous face, he waited to welcome his mother to breakfast, and show how he had spent the night in arranging her furniture.

"Parson!" cried the Squire, when all this news came upon him, as he was walking arm in arm with Mr Dale to inspect some proposed improvement in the Alms-house, "this is all your fault. Why did not you go and talk to that brute of a boy, and that dolt of a woman? You've got 'soft sawder enough,' as Frank calls it in his new-fashioned slang."

"As if I had not talked myself hoarse to both!" said the Parson in a tone of reproachful surprise at the accusation. "But it was in vain! O Squire, if you had taken my advice about the Stocks—quieta non movere!"

"Bother!" said the Squire. "I suppose I am to be held up as a tyrant, a Nero, a Richard the Third, or a Grand Inquisitor, merely for having things smart and tidy! Stocks indeed!—your friend Rickeybockey said he was never more comfortable in his life—quite enjoyed sitting there. And what did not hurt Rickeybockey's dignity (a very gentlemanlike man he is, when he pleases) ought to be no such great matter to Master Leonard Fairfield. But 'tis no use talking! What's to be done now? The woman must not starve; and I'm sure she can't live out of Rickeybockey's wages to Lenny—(by the way, I hope he don't board him upon his and Jackeymo's leavings: I hear they dine upon newts and sticklebacks—faugh!) I'll tell you what, Parson, now I think of it—at the back of the cottage which she has taken there are some fields of capital land just vacant. Rickeybockey wants to have 'em, and sounded me as to the rent when he was at the Hall. I only half promised him the refusal. And he must give up four or five acres of the best land round the cottage to the widow—just enough for her to manage—and she can keep a dairy. If she want capital, I'll lend her some in your name—only don't tell Stirn; and as for the rent—we'll talk of that when we see how she gets on, thankless obstinate jade that she is! You see," added the Squire, as if he felt there was some apology due for this generosity to an object whom he professed to consider so ungrateful, "her husband was a faithful servant, and so—I wish you would not stand there staring me out of countenance, but go down to the woman at once, or Stirn will have let the land to Rickeybockey, as sure as a gun. And hark-ye, Dale, perhaps you can contrive, if the woman is so cursedly stiff-backed, not to say the land is mine, or that it is any favour I want to do her—or, in short, manage it as you can for the best." Still even this charitable message failed. The widow knew that the land was the Squire's, and worth a good £3 an acre. 'She thanked him humbly for that and all favours; but she could not afford to buy cows, and she did not wish to be beholden to any one for her living. And Lenny was well off at Mr Rickeybockey's, and coming on wonderfully in the garden way—and she did not doubt she could get some washing; at all events, her haystack would bring in a good bit of money, and she should do nicely, thank their honours.'

Nothing farther could be done in the direct way, but the remark about the washing suggested some mode of indirectly benefiting the widow. And a little time afterwards, the sole laundress in that immediate neighbourhood happening to die, a hint from the Squire obtained from the landlady of the inn opposite the Casino such custom as she had to bestow, which at times was not inconsiderable. And what with Lenny's wages, (whatever that mysterious item might be,) the mother and son contrived to live without exhibiting any of those physical signs of fast and abstinence which Riccabocca and his valet gratuitously afforded to the student in animal anatomy.

Of all the wares and commodities in exchange and barter, wherein so mainly consists the civilisation of our modern world, there is not one which is so carefully weighed—so accurately measured—so plumbed and gauged—so doled and scraped—so poured out in minima and balanced with scruples—as that necessary of social commerce called "an apology!" If the chemists were half so careful in vending their poisons, there would be a notable diminution in the yearly average of victims to arsenic and oxalic acid. But, alas, in the matter of apology, it is not from the excess of the dose, but the timid, niggardly, miserly manner in which it is dispensed, that poor Humanity is hurried off to the Styx! How many times does a life depend on the exact proportions of an apology! Is it a hairbreadth too short to cover the scratch for which you want it? Make your will—you are a dead man! A life do I say?—a hecatomb of lives! How many wars would have been prevented, how many thrones would be standing, dynasties flourishing—commonwealths brawling round a bema, or fitting out galleys for corn and cotton—if an inch or two more of apology had been added to the proffered ell! But then that plaguy, jealous, suspicious, old vinegar-faced Honour, and her partner Pride—as penny-wise and pound-foolish a she-skinflint as herself—have the monopoly of the article. And what with the time they lose in adjusting their spectacles, hunting in the precise shelf for the precise quality demanded, then (quality found) the haggling as to quantum—considering whether it should be Apothecary's weight or Avoirdupois, or English measure or Flemish—and, finally, the hullabaloo they make if the customer is not perfectly satisfied with the monstrous little he gets for his money,—I don't wonder, for my part, how one loses temper and patience, and sends Pride, Honour, and Apology, all to the devil. Aristophanes, in his "Comedy of Peace," insinuates a beautiful allegory by only suffering that goddess, though in fact she is his heroine, to appear as a mute. She takes care never to open her lips. The shrewd Greek knew very well that she would cease to be Peace, if she once began to chatter. Wherefore, O reader, if ever you find your pump under the iron heel of another man's boot, heaven grant that you may hold your tongue, and not make things past all endurance and forgiveness by bawling out for an apology!

But the Squire and his son, Frank, were large-hearted generous creatures in the article of apology, as in all things less skimpingly dealt out. And seeing that Leonard Fairfield would offer no plaister to Randal Leslie, they made amends for his stinginess by their own prodigality. The Squire accompanied his son to Rood Hall, and none of the family choosing to be at home, the Squire in his own hand, and from his own head, indited and composed an epistle which might have satisfied all the wounds which the dignity of the Leslies had ever received.

This letter of apology ended with a hearty request that Randal would come and spend a few days with his son. Frank's epistle was to the same purport, only more Etonian and less legible.

It was some days before Randal's replies to these epistles were received. The replies bore the address of a village near London, and stated that the writer was now reading with a tutor preparatory to entrance at Oxford, and could not, therefore, accept the invitation extended to him.

For the rest, Randal expressed himself with good sense, though not with much generosity. He excused his participation in the vulgarity of such a conflict by a bitter but short allusion to the obstinacy and ignorance of the village boor; and did not do what you, my kind reader, certainly would have done under similar circumstances—viz. intercede in behalf of a brave and unfortunate antagonist. Most of us like a foe better after we have fought him—that is, if we are the conquering party; this was not the case with Randal Leslie. There, so far as the Etonian was concerned, the matter rested. And the Squire, irritated that he could not repair whatever wrong that young gentleman had sustained, no longer felt a pang of regret as he passed by Mrs Fairfield's deserted cottage.

Lenny Fairfield continued to give great satisfaction to his new employers, and to profit in many respects by the familiar kindness with which he was treated. Riccabocca, who valued himself on penetrating into character, had from the first seen that much stuff of no common quality and texture was to be found in the disposition and mind of the English village boy. On farther acquaintance, he perceived that, under a child's innocent simplicity, there were the workings of an acuteness that required but development and direction. He ascertained that the pattern boy's progress at the village school proceeded from something more than mechanical docility and readiness of comprehension. Lenny had a keen thirst for knowledge, and through all the disadvantages of birth and circumstance, there were the indications of that natural genius which converts disadvantages themselves into stimulants. Still, with the germs of good qualities lay the embryos of those which, difficult to separate, and hard to destroy, often mar the produce of the soil. With a remarkable and generous pride in self-repute, there was some stubbornness; with great sensibility to kindness, there was also strong reluctance to forgive affront.

This mixed nature in an uncultivated peasant's breast interested Riccabocca, who, though long secluded from the commerce of mankind, still looked upon man as the most various and entertaining volume which philosophical research can explore. He soon accustomed the boy to the tone of a conversation generally subtle and suggestive; and Lenny's language and ideas became insensibly less rustic and more refined. Then Riccabocca selected from his library, small as it was, books that though elementary, were of a higher cast than Lenny could have found within his reach at Hazeldean. Riccabocca knew the English language well, better in grammar, construction, and genius than many a not ill-educated Englishman; for he had studied it with the minuteness with which a scholar studies a dead language, and amidst his collection he had many of the books which had formerly served him for that purpose. These were the first works he had lent to Lenny. Meanwhile Jackeymo imparted to the boy many secrets in practical gardening and minute husbandry, for at that day farming in England (some favoured counties and estates excepted) was far below the nicety to which the art has been immemorially carried in the north of Italy—where, indeed, you may travel for miles and miles as through a series of market-gardens—so that, all these things considered, Leonard Fairfield might be said to have made a change for the better. Yet in truth, and looking below the surface, that might be fair matter of doubt. For the same reason which had induced the boy to fly his native village, he no longer repaired to the church of Hazeldean. The old intimate intercourse between him and the Parson became necessarily suspended, or bounded to an occasional kindly visit from the latter—visits which grew more rare, and less familiar, as he found his former pupil in no want of his services, and wholly deaf to his mild entreaties to forget and forgive the past, and come at least to his old seat in the parish church. Lenny still went to church—a church a long way off in another parish—but the sermons did not do him the same good as Parson Dale's had done; and the clergyman, who had his own flock to attend to, did not condescend, as Parson Dale would have done, to explain what seemed obscure, and enforce what was profitable, in private talk, with that stray lamb from another's fold.

Now I question much if all Dr Riccabocca's sage maxims, though they were often very moral, and generally very wise, served to expand the peasant boy's native good qualities, and correct his bad, half so well as the few simple words, not at all indebted to Machiavelli, which Leonard had once reverently listened to when he stood by his father's chair, yielded up for the moment to the good Parson, worthy to sit in it; for Mr Dale had a heart in which all the fatherless of the parish found their place. Nor was this loss of tender, intimate, spiritual lore so counterbalanced by the greater facilities for purely intellectual instruction, as modern enlightenment might presume. For, without disputing the advantage of knowledge in a general way, knowledge, in itself, is not friendly to content. Its tendency, of course, is to increase the desires, to dissatisfy us with what is, in order to urge progress to what may be; and, in that progress, what unnoticed martyrs among the many must fall, baffled and crushed by the way! To how large a number will be given desires they will never realise, dissatisfaction of the lot from which they will never rise! Allons! one is viewing the dark side of the question. It is all the fault of that confounded Riccabocca, who has already caused Lenny Fairfield to lean gloomily on his spade, and, after looking round and seeing no one near him, groan out querulously—

"And am I born to dig a potato ground?"

Pardieu, my friend Lenny, if you live to be seventy, and ride in your carriage;—and by the help of a dinner-pill digest a spoonful of curry, you may sigh to think what a relish there was in potatoes, roasted in ashes after you had digged them out of that ground with your own stout young hands. Dig on, Lenny Fairfield, dig on! Dr Riccabocca will tell you that there was once an illustrious personage[1] who made experience of two very different occupations—one was ruling men, the other was planting cabbages; he thought planting cabbages much the pleasanter of the two!

Dr Riccabocca had secured Lenny Fairfield, and might therefore be considered to have ridden his hobby in the great whirligig with adroitness and success. But Miss Jemima was still driving round in her car, handling the reins, and flourishing the whip, without apparently having got an inch nearer to the flying form of Dr Riccabocca.

Indeed, that excellent and only too susceptible spinster, with all her experience of the villany of man, had never conceived the wretch to be so thoroughly beyond the reach of redemption as when Dr Riccabocca took his leave, and once more interred himself amidst the solitudes of the Casino, without having made any formal renunciation of his criminal celibacy. For some days she shut herself up in her own chamber, and brooded with more than her usual gloomy satisfaction on the certainty of the approaching crash. Indeed, many signs of that universal calamity which, while the visit of Riccabocca lasted, she had permitted herself to consider ambiguous, now became luminously apparent. Even the newspaper, which during that credulous and happy period had given half a column to Births and Marriages, now bore an ominously long catalogue of Deaths; so that it seemed as if the whole population had lost heart, and had no chance of repairing its daily losses. The leading articles spoke, with the obscurity of a Pythian, of an impending CRISIS. Monstrous turnips sprouted out from the paragraphs devoted to General News. Cows bore calves with two heads, whales were stranded in the Humber, showers of frogs descended in the High Street of Cheltenham.

All these symptoms of the world's decrepitude and consummation, which by the side of the fascinating Riccabocca might admit of some doubt as to their origin and cause, now, conjoined with the worst of all, viz.—the frightfully progressive wickedness of man—left to Miss Jemima, no ray of hope save that afforded by the reflection that she could contemplate the wreck of matter without a single sentiment of regret.

Mrs Dale, however, by no means shared the despondency of her fair friend, and, having gained access to Miss Jemima's chamber, succeeded, though not without difficulty, in her kindly attempts to cheer the drooping spirits of that female misanthropist. Nor, in her benevolent desire to speed the car of Miss Jemima to its hymeneal goal, was Mrs Dale so cruel towards her male friend, Dr Riccabocca, as she seemed to her husband. For Mrs Dale was a woman of shrewdness and penetration, as most quick-tempered women are; and she knew that Miss Jemima was one of those excellent young ladies who are likely to value a husband in proportion to the difficulty of obtaining him. In fact, my readers of both sexes must often have met, in the course of their experience, with that peculiar sort of feminine disposition, which requires the warmth of the conjugal hearth to develop all its native good qualities; nor is it to be blamed overmuch if, innocently aware of this tendency in its nature, it turns towards what is best fitted for its growth and improvement, by laws akin to those which make the sunflower turn to the sun, or the willow to the stream. Ladies of this disposition, permanently thwarted in their affectionate bias, gradually languish away into intellectual inanition, or sprout out into those abnormal eccentricities which are classed under the general name of "oddity" or "character." But, once admitted to their proper soil, it is astonishing what healthful improvement takes place—how the poor heart, before starved and stinted of nourishment, throws out its suckers, and bursts into bloom and fruit. And thus many a belle from whom the beaux have stood aloof, only because the puppies think she could be had for the asking, they see afterwards settled down into true wife and fond mother, with amaze at their former disparagement, and a sigh at their blind hardness of heart.

In all probability, Mrs Dale took this view of the subject; and certainly, in addition to all the hitherto dormant virtues which would be awakened in Miss Jemima when fairly Mrs Riccabocca, she counted somewhat upon the mere worldly advantage which such a match would bestow upon the exile. So respectable a connection with one of the oldest, wealthiest, and most popular families in the shire, would in itself give him a position not to be despised by a poor stranger in the land; and though the interest of Miss Jemima's dowry might not be much, regarded in the light of English pounds, (not Milanese lire,) still it would suffice to prevent that gradual process of dematerialisation which the lengthened diet upon minnows and sticklebacks had already made apparent in the fine and slow-evanishing form of the philosopher.

Like all persons convinced of the expediency of a thing, Mrs Dale saw nothing wanting but opportunities to insure its success. And that these might be forthcoming, she not only renewed with greater frequency, and more urgent instance than ever, her friendly invitations to Riccabocca to drink tea and spend the evening, but she artfully so chafed the Squire on his sore point of hospitality, that the Doctor received weekly a pressing solicitation to dine and sleep at the Hall.

At first the Italian pished and grunted, and said Cospetto, and Per Bacco, and Diavolo, and tried to creep out of so much proffered courtesy. But, like all single gentlemen, he was a little under the tyrannical influence of his faithful servant; and Jackeymo, though he could bear starving as well as his master when necessary, still, when he had the option, preferred roast beef and plum-pudding. Moreover, that vain and incautious confidence of Riccabocca, touching the vast sum at his command, and with no heavier drawback than that of so amiable a lady as Miss Jemima—who had already shown him (Jackeymo) many little delicate attentions—had greatly whetted the cupidity which was in the servant's Italian nature: a cupidity the more keen because, long debarred its legitimate exercise on his own mercenary interests, he carried it all to the account of his master's!

Thus tempted by his enemy, and betrayed by his servant, the unfortunate Riccabocca fell, though with eyes not unblinded, into the hospitable snares extended for the destruction of his—celibacy! He went often to the parsonage, often to the Hall, and by degrees the sweets of the social domestic life, long denied him, began to exercise their enervating charm upon the stoicism of our poor exile. Frank had now returned to Eton. An unexpected invitation had carried off Captain Higginbotham to pass a few weeks at Bath with a distant relation, who had lately returned from India, and who, as rich as Crœsus, felt so estranged and solitary in his native isle that, when the Captain "claimed kindred there," to his own amaze "he had his claims allowed;" while a very protracted sitting of Parliament still delayed in London the Squire's habitual visitors in the later summer; so that—a chasm thus made in his society—Mr Hazeldean welcomed with no hollow cordiality the diversion or distraction he found in the foreigner's companionship. Thus, with pleasure to all parties, and strong hopes to the two female conspirators, the intimacy between the Casino and Hall rapidly thickened; but still not a word resembling a distinct proposal did Dr Riccabocca breathe. And still, if such an idea obtruded itself on his mind, it was chased therefrom with so determined a Diavolo that perhaps, if not the end of the world, at least the end of Miss Jemima's tenure in it, might have approached, and seen her still Miss Jemima, but for a certain letter with a foreign post-mark that reached the Doctor one Tuesday morning.

The servant saw that something had gone wrong, and, under pretence of syringing the orange-trees, he lingered near his master, and peered through the sunny leaves upon Riccabocca's melancholy brows.

The Doctor sighed heavily. Nor did he, as was his wont, after some such sigh, mechanically take up that dear comforter, the pipe. But though the tobacco-pouch lay by his side on the balustrade, and the pipe stood against the wall between his knees, childlike lifting up its lips to the customary caress—he heeded neither the one nor the other, but laid the letter silently on his lap, and fixed his eyes upon the ground.

"It must be bad news indeed!" thought Jackeymo, and desisted from his work. Approaching his master, he took up the pipe and the tobacco-pouch, and filled the bowl slowly, glancing all the while to that dark musing face on which, when abandoned by the expression of intellectual vivacity or the exquisite smile of Italian courtesy, the deep downward lines revealed the characters of sorrow. Jackeymo did not venture to speak; but the continued silence of his master disturbed him much. He laid that peculiar tinder which your smokers use upon the steel, and struck the spark—still not a word, nor did Riccabocca stretch forth his hand.

"I never knew him in this taking before," thought Jackeymo; and delicately he insinuated the neck of the pipe into the nerveless fingers of the hand that lay supine on those quiet knees—the pipe fell to the ground.

Jackeymo crossed himself, and began praying to his sainted namesake with great fervour.

The Doctor rose slowly, and, as if with effort, he walked once or twice to and fro the terrace; and then he halted abruptly, and said—

"Friend!"

"Blessed Monsignore San Giacomo, I knew thou wouldst hear me!" cried the servant; and he raised his master's hand to his lips, then abruptly turned away and wiped his eyes. "Friend," repeated Riccabocca, and this time with a tremulous emphasis, and in the softest tone of a voice never wholly without the music of the sweet South, "I would talk to thee of my child."—

"The letter, then, relates to the Signorina. She is well?"

"Yes, she is well now. She is in our native Italy."

Jackeymo raised his eyes involuntarily towards the orange-trees, and the morning breeze swept by and bore to him the odour of their blossoms.

"Those are sweet even here, with care," said he, pointing to the trees. "I think I have said that before to the Padrone."

But Riccabocca was now looking again at the letter, and did not notice either the gesture or the remark of his servant.

"My aunt is no more!" said he, after a pause.

"We will pray for her soul!" answered Jackeymo solemnly. "But she was very old, and had been a long time ailing. Let it not grieve the Padrone too keenly: at that age, and with those infirmities, death comes as a friend."

"Peace be to her dust!" returned the Italian. "If she had her faults, be they now forgotten for ever; and in the hour of my danger and distress, she sheltered my infant! That shelter is destroyed. This letter is from the priest, her confessor. You know that she had nothing at her own disposal to bequeath my child, and her property passes to the male heir—mine enemy."

"Traitor!" muttered Jackeymo; and his right hand seemed to feel for the weapon which the Italians of lower rank often openly wear in their girdles.

"The priest," resumed Riccabocca calmly, "has rightly judged in removing my child as a guest from the house in which my enemy enters as lord."

"And where is the Signorina?"

"With that poor priest. See, Giacomo—here, here—this is her handwriting at the end of the letter—the first lines she ever yet traced to me."

Jackeymo took off his hat, and looked reverently on the large characters of a child's writing. But large as they were, they seemed indistinct, for the paper was blistered with the child's tears; and on the place where they had not fallen, there was a round fresh moist stain of the tear that had dropped from the lids of the father. Riccabocca renewed,—"The priest recommends a convent."

"To the devil with the priest!" cried the servant; then crossing himself rapidly, he added, "I did not mean that, Monsignore San Giacomo—forgive me! But your Excellency[2] does not think of making a nun of his only child!"

"And yet why not?" said Riccabocca mournfully; "what can I give her in the world? Is the land of the stranger a better refuge than the home of peace in her native clime?"

"In the land of the stranger beats her father's heart!"

"And if that beat were stilled, what then? Ill fares the life that a single death can bereave of all. In a convent at least (and the priest's influence can obtain her that asylum amongst her equals and amidst her sex) she is safe from trial and from penury—to her grave."

"Penury! Just see how rich we shall be when we take those fields at Michaelmas."

"Pazzie!" (follies) said Riccabocca listlessly. "Are these suns more serene than ours, or the soil more fertile? Yet in our own Italy, saith the proverb, 'he who sows land reaps more care than corn.' It were different," continued the father after a pause, and in a more irresolute tone, "if I had some independence, however small, to count on—nay, if among all my tribe of dainty relatives there were but one female who would accompany Violante to the exile's hearth—Ishmael had his Hagar. But how can we two rough-bearded men provide for all the nameless wants and cares of a frail female child? And she has been so delicately reared—the woman-child needs the fostering hand and tender eye of a woman."

"And with a word," said Jackeymo resolutely, "the Padrone might secure to his child all that he needs, to save her from the sepulchre of a convent; and ere the autumn leaves fall, she might be sitting on his knee. Padrone, do not think that you can conceal from me the truth, that you love your child better than all things in the world—now the Patria is as dead to you as the dust of your fathers—and your heart-strings would crack with the effort to tear her from them, and consign her to a convent. Padrone, never again to hear her voice—never again to see her face! Those little arms that twined round your neck that dark night, when we fled fast for life and freedom, and you said, as you felt their clasp, 'Friend, all is not yet lost!'"

"Giacomo!" exclaimed the father reproachfully, and his voice seemed to choke him. Riccabocca turned away, and walked restlessly to and fro the terrace; then, lifting his arms with a wild gesture as he still continued his long irregular strides, he muttered, "Yes, heaven is my witness that I could have borne reverse and banishment without a murmur, had I permitted myself that young partner in exile and privation. Heaven is my witness that, if I hesitate now, it is because I would not listen to my own selfish heart. Yet never, never to see her again—my child! And it was but as the infant that I beheld her! O Friend, friend—" (and, stopping short with a burst of uncontrollable emotion, he bowed his head upon his servant's shoulder;) "thou knowest what I have endured and suffered at my hearth, as in my country; the wrong, the perfidy, the—the—" His voice again failed him; he clung to his servant's breast, and his whole frame shook.

"But your child, the innocent one—think now only of her!" faltered Giacomo, struggling with his own sobs.

"True, only of her," replied the exile, raising his face—"only of her. Put aside thy thoughts for myself, friend—counsel me. If I were to send for Violante, and if, transplanted to these keen airs, she drooped and died—look, look—the priest says that she needs such tender care; or if I myself were summoned from the world, to leave her in it alone, friendless, homeless, breadless perhaps, at the age of woman's sharpest trial against temptation, would she not live to mourn the cruel egotism that closed on her infant innocence the gates of the House of God?"

Giacomo was appalled by this appeal; and indeed Riccabocca had never before thus reverently spoken of the cloister. In his hours of philosophy, he was wont to sneer at monks and nuns, priesthood and superstition. But now, in that hour of emotion, the Old Religion reclaimed her empire; and the sceptical world-wise man, thinking only of his child, spoke and felt with a child's simple faith.

"But again I say," murmured Jackeymo scarce audibly, and after a long silence, "if the Padrone would make up his mind—to marry!"

He expected that his master would start up in his customary indignation at such a suggestion—nay, he might not have been sorry so to have changed the current of feeling; but the poor Italian only winced slightly, and mildly withdrawing himself from his servant's supporting arm, again paced the terrace, but this time quietly and in silence. A quarter of an hour thus passed. "Give me the pipe," said Dr Riccabocca, passing into the Belvidere.

Jackeymo again struck the spark, and, wonderfully relieved at the Padrone's return to his usual adviser, mentally besought his sainted namesake to bestow a double portion of soothing wisdom on the benignant influences of the weed.

Dr Riccabocca had been some little time in the solitude of the Belvidere, when Lenny Fairfield, not knowing that his employer was therein, entered to lay down a book which the Doctor had lent him, with injunctions to leave on a certain table when done with. Riccabocca looked up at the sound of the young peasant's step.

"I beg your honour's pardon—I did not know—"

"Never mind; lay the book there. I wish to speak with you. You look well, my child; this air agrees with you as well as that of Hazeldean?"

"Oh yes, sir."

"Yet it is higher ground, more exposed?"

"That can hardly be, sir," said Lenny; "there are many plants grow here which don't flourish at the Squire's. The hill yonder keeps off the east wind, and the place lays to the south."

"Lies, not lays, Lenny. What are the principal complaints in these parts?"

"Eh, sir?"

"I mean what maladies, what diseases?"

"I never beard tell of any, sir, except the rheumatism."

"No low fevers?—no consumption?"

"Never heard of them, sir."

Riccabocca drew a long breath, as if relieved.

"That seems a very kind family at the Hall."

"I have nothing to say against it," answered Lenny bluntly. "I have not been treated justly. But as that book says, sir, 'It is not every one who comes into the world with a silver spoon in his mouth.'"

Little thought the Doctor that those wise maxims may leave sore thoughts behind them. He was too occupied with the subject most at his own heart to think then of what was in Lenny Fairfield's.

"Yes; a kind, English, domestic family. Did you see much of Miss Hazeldean?"

"Not so much as of the Lady."

"Is she liked in the village, think you?"

"Miss Jemima? Yes. She never did harm. Her little dog bit me once—she did not ask me to beg its pardon, she asked mine! She's a very nice young lady; the girls say she's very affable; and," added Lenny with a smile, "there are always more weddings going on when she's down at the Hall."

"Oh!" said Riccabocca. Then, after a long whiff, "Did you ever see her play with the little children? Is she fond of children, do you think?"

"Lord, sir, you guess everything! She's never so pleased as when she's playing with the babies."

"Humph!" grunted Riccabocca. "Babies—well, that's womanlike. I don't mean exactly babies, but when they're older—little girls."

"Indeed, sir, I daresay; but," said Lenny primly, "I never as yet kept company with the little girls."

"Quite right, Lenny; be equally discreet all your life. Mrs Dale is very intimate with Miss Hazeldean—more than with the Squire's lady. Why is that, think you?"

"Well, sir," said Leonard shrewdly, "Mrs Dale has her little tempers, though she's a very good lady; and Madam Hazeldean is rather high, and has a spirit. But Miss Jemima is so soft: any one could live with Miss Jemima, as Joe and the servants say at the Hall."

"Indeed! Get my hat out of the parlour, and—just bring a clothesbrush, Lenny. A fine sunny day for a walk."

After this most mean and dishonourable inquisition into the character and popular repute of Miss Hazeldean, Signore Riccabocca seemed as much cheered up and elated as if he had committed some very noble action; and he walked forth in the direction of the Hall with a far lighter and livelier step than that with which he had paced the terrace.

"Monsignore San Giacomo, by thy help and the pipe's, the Padrone shall have his child!" muttered the servant, looking up from the garden.

Yet Dr Riccabocca was not rash. The man who wants his wedding-garment to fit him must allow plenty of time for the measure. But, from that day, the Italian notably changed his manner towards Miss Hazeldean. He ceased that profusion of compliment in which he had hitherto carried off in safety all serious meaning. For indeed the Doctor considered that compliments, to a single gentleman, were what the inky liquid it dispenses is to the cuttle-fish, that by obscuring the water sails away from its enemy. Neither did he, as before, avoid prolonged conversations with that young lady, and contrive to escape from all solitary rambles by her side. On the contrary, he now sought every occasion to be in her society; and, entirely dropping the language of gallantry, he assumed something of the earnest tone of friendship. He bent down his intellect to examine and plumb her own. To use a very homely simile, he blew away that froth which there is on the surface of mere acquaintanceships, especially with the opposite sex; and which, while it lasts, scarce allows you to distinguish between small beer and double X. Apparently Dr Riccabocca was satisfied with his scrutiny—at all events, under that froth there was no taste of bitter. The Italian might not find any great strength of intellect in Miss Jemima, but he found that, disentangled from many little whims and foibles—which he had himself the sense to perceive were harmless enough if they lasted, and not so absolutely constitutional but what they might be removed by a tender hand—Miss Hazeldean had quite enough sense to comprehend the plain duties of married life; and if the sense could fail, it found a substitute in good old homely English principles and the instincts of amiable kindly feelings.

I know not how it is, but your very clever man never seems to care so much as your less gifted mortals for cleverness in his helpmate. Your scholars, and poets, and ministers of state, are more often than not found assorted with exceedingly humdrum good sort of women, and apparently like them all the better for their deficiencies. Just see how happily Racine lived with his wife, and what an angel he thought her, and yet she had never read his plays. Certainly Goethe never troubled the lady who called him "Mr Privy Councillor" with whims about 'monads,' and speculations on 'colour,' nor those stiff metaphysical problems on which one breaks one's shins in the Second Part of the Faust. Probably it may be that such great geniuses—knowing that, as compared with themselves, there is little difference between your clever woman and your humdrum woman—merge at once all minor distinctions, relinquish all attempts that could not but prove unsatisfactory, at sympathy in hard intellectual pursuits, and are quite satisfied to establish that tie which, after all, best resists wear and tear—viz. the tough household bond between one human heart and another.

At all events, this, I suspect, was the reasoning of Dr Riccabocca, when one morning, after a long walk with Miss Hazeldean, he muttered to himself—

Which may bear the paraphrase, "Bricks without mortar would make a very bad wall." There was quite enough in Miss Jemima's disposition to make excellent mortar: the Doctor took the bricks to himself.

When his examination was concluded, our philosopher symbolically evinced the result he had arrived at by a very simple proceeding on his part—which would have puzzled you greatly if you had not paused, and meditated thereon, till you saw all that it implied. Dr Riccabocca took off his spectacles! He wiped them carefully, put them into their shagreen case, and locked them in his bureau:—that is to say, he left off wearing his spectacles.

You will observe that there was a wonderful depth of meaning in that critical symptom, whether it be regarded as a sign outward, positive and explicit; or a sign metaphysical, mystical, and esoteric. For, as to the last—it denoted that the task of the spectacles was over; that, when a philosopher has made up his mind to marry, it is better henceforth to be shortsighted—nay, even somewhat purblind—than to be always scrutinising the domestic felicity, to which he is about to resign himself, through a pair of cold unillusory barnacles. And for the things beyond the hearth, if he cannot see without spectacles, is he not about to ally to his own defective vision a good sharp pair of eyes, never at fault where his interests are concerned? On the other hand, regarded positively, categorically, and explicitly, Dr Riccabocca, by laying aside those spectacles, signified that he was about to commence that happy initiation of courtship when every man, be he ever so much a philosopher, wishes to look as young and as handsome as time and nature will allow. Vain task to speed the soft language of the eyes, through the medium of those glassy interpreters! I remember, for my own part, that once, on a visit to Adelaide, I was in great danger of falling in love—with a young lady, too, who would have brought me a very good fortune—when she suddenly produced from her reticule a very neat pair of No. 4, set in tortoise-shell, and, fixing upon me their Gorgon gaze, froze the astonished Cupid into stone! And I hold it a great proof of the wisdom of Riccabocca, and of his vast experience, in mankind, that he was not above the consideration of what your pseudo sages would have regarded as foppish and ridiculous trifles. It argued all the better for that happiness which is our being's end and aim, that, in condescending to play the lover, he put those unbecoming petrifiers under lock and key.

And certainly, now the spectacles were abandoned, it was impossible to deny that the Italian had remarkably handsome eyes. Even through the spectacles, or lifted a little above them, they were always bright and expressive; but without those adjuncts, the blaze was softer and more tempered: they had that look which the French call velouté, or velvety; and he appeared altogether ten years younger. If our Ulysses, thus rejuvenated by his Minerva, has not fully made up his mind to make a Penelope of Miss Jemima, all I can say is, that he is worse than Polyphemus who was only an Anthropophagos;—

He preys upon the weaker sex, and is a—Gynopophagite!

"And you commission me, then, to speak to our dear Jemima?" said Mrs Dale joyfully, and without any bitterness whatever in that "dear."

Dr Riccabocca.—"Nay, before speaking to Miss Hazeldean, it would surely be proper to know how far my addresses would be acceptable to the family."

Mrs Dale.—"Ah!"

Dr Riccabocca.—"The Squire is of course the head of the family."

Mrs Dale (absent and distrait.)—"The Squire—yes, very true—quite proper." (Then looking up and with naiveté)—"Can you believe me, I never thought of the Squire. And he is such an odd man, and has so many English prejudices, that really—dear me, how vexatious that it should never once have occurred to me that Mr Hazeldean had a voice in the matter! Indeed, the relationship is so distant—it is not like being her father; and Jemima is of age, and can do as she pleases; and—but, as you say, it is quite proper that he should be consulted as the head of the family."

Dr Riccabocca.—"And you think that the Squire of Hazeldean might reject my alliance! Pshaw! that's a grand word indeed;—I mean, that he might object very reasonably to his cousin's marriage with a foreigner, of whom he can know nothing, except that which in all countries is disreputable, and is said in this to be criminal—poverty."

Mrs Dale, (kindly.)—"You misjudge us poor English people, and you wrong the Squire, heaven bless him! for we were poor enough when he singled out my husband from a hundred for the minister of his parish, for his neighbour and his friend. I will speak to him fearlessly—"

Dr Riccabocca.—"And frankly. And now I have used that word, let me go on with the confession which your kindly readiness, my fair friend, somewhat interrupted. I said that if I might presume to think my addresses would be acceptable to Miss Hazeldean and her family, I was too sensible of her amiable qualities not to—not to—"

Mrs Dale (with demure archness.)—"Not to be the happiest of men—that's the customary English phrase, Doctor."

Riccabocca (gallantly.)—"There cannot be a better. But," continued he seriously, "I wish it first to be understood that I have—been married before."

Mrs Dale (astonished.)—"Married before!"

Riccabocca.—"And that I have an only child, dear to me—inexpressibly dear. That child, a daughter, has hitherto lived abroad; circumstances now render it desirable that she should make her home with me. And I own fairly that nothing has so attached me to Miss Hazeldean, nor so induced my desire for our matrimonial connection, as my belief that she has the heart and the temper to become a kind mother to my little one."

Mrs Dale (with feeling and warmth.)—"You judge her, rightly there."

Riccabocca.—"Now, in pecuniary matters, as you may conjecture from my mode of life, I have nothing to offer to Miss Hazeldean correspondent with her own fortune, whatever that may be!"

Mrs Dale.—"That difficulty is obviated by settling Miss Hazeldean's fortune on herself, which is customary in such cases."

Dr Riccabocca's face lengthened. "And my child, then?" said he feelingly. There was something in that appeal so alien from all sordid and merely personal mercenary motives, that Mrs Dale could not have had the heart to make the very rational suggestion—"But that child is not Jemima's, and you may have children by her."

She was touched, and replied hesitatingly—"But, from what you and Jemima may jointly possess, you can save something annually—you can insure your life for your child. We did so when our poor child whom we lost was born," (the tears rushed into Mrs Dale's eyes;) "and I fear that Charles still insures his life for my sake, though heaven knows that—that—"

The tears burst out. That little heart, quick and petulant though it was, had not a fibre of the elastic muscular tissues which are mercifully bestowed on the hearts of predestined widows. Dr Riccabocca could not pursue the subject of life insurances further. But the idea—which had never occurred to the foreigner before, though so familiar to us English people when only possessed of a life income—pleased him greatly. I will do him the justice to say, that he preferred it to the thought of actually appropriating to himself and to his child a portion of Miss Hazeldean's dower.

Shortly afterwards he took his leave, and Mrs Dale hastened to seek her husband in his study, inform him of the success of her matrimonial scheme, and consult him as to the chance of the Squire's acquiescence therein. "You see," said she hesitatingly, "though the Squire might be glad to see Jemima married to some Englishman, yet, if he asks who and what is this Dr Riccabocca, how am I to answer him?"

"You should have thought of that before," said Mr Dale, with unwonted asperity; "and, indeed, if I had ever believed anything serious could come out of what seemed to me so absurd, I should long since have requested you not to interfere in such matters." "Good heavens!" continued the Parson, changing colour, "if we should have assisted, underhand as it were, to introduce into the family of a man to whom we owe so much, a connexion that he would dislike! how base we should be!—how ungrateful!"

Poor Mrs Dale was frightened by this speech, and still more by her husband's consternation and displeasure. To do Mrs Dale justice, whenever her mild partner was really either grieved or offended, her little temper vanished—she became as meek as a lamb. As soon as she recovered the first shock she experienced, she hastened to dissipate the Parson's apprehensions. She assured him that she was convinced that, if the Squire disapproved of Riccabocca's pretensions, the Italian would withdraw them at once, and Miss Hazeldean would never know of his proposals. Therefore, in that case, no harm would be done.

This assurance coinciding with Mr Dale's convictions as to Riccabocca's scruples on the point of honour, tended much to compose the good man; and if he did not, as my reader of the gentler sex would from him, feel alarm lest Miss Jemima's affections should have been irretrievably engaged, and her happiness thus put in jeopardy by the Squire's refusal, it was not that the Parson wanted tenderness of heart, but experience in womankind; and he believed, very erroneously, that Miss Jemima Hazeldean was not one upon whom a disappointment of that kind would produce a lasting impression. Therefore Mr Dale, after a pause of consideration, said kindly—

"Well, don't vex yourself—and I was to blame quite as much as you. But, indeed, I should have thought it easier for the Squire to have transplanted one of his tall cedars into his kitchen-garden, than for you to inveigle Dr Riccabocca into matrimonial intentions. But a man who could voluntarily put himself into the Parish Stocks for the sake of experiment, must be capable of anything! However, I think it better that I, rather than yourself, should speak to the Squire, and I will go at once."

The Parson put on the shovel hat, which—conjoined with other details in his dress peculiarly clerical, and already, even then, beginning to be out of fashion with churchmen—had served to fix upon him, emphatically, the dignified but antiquated style and cognomen of "Parson"; and took his way towards the Home Farm, at which he expected to find the Squire. But he had scarcely entered upon the village green when he beheld Mr Hazeldean leaning both hands on his stick, and gazing intently upon the Parish Stocks. Now, sorry am I to say that, ever since the Hegira of Lenny and his mother, the Anti-Stockian and Revolutionary spirit in Hazeldean, which the memorable homily of our Parson had awhile averted or suspended, had broken forth afresh. For though, while Lenny was present to be mowed and jeered at, there had been no pity for him, yet no sooner was he removed from the scene of trial, than a universal compassion for the barbarous usage he had received produced what is called "the reaction of public opinion." Not that those who had mowed and jeered repented them of their mockery, or considered themselves in the slightest degree the cause of his expatriation. No; they, with the rest of the villagers, laid all the blame upon the Stocks. It was not to be expected that a lad of such exemplary character could be thrust into that place of ignominy, and not be sensible of the affront. And who, in the whole village, was safe, if such goings-on and puttings-in were to be tolerated in silence, and at the expense of the very best and quietest lad the village had ever known? Thus, a few days after the widow's departure, the Stocks was again the object of midnight desecration: it was bedaubed and be-scratched—it was hacked and hewed—it was scrawled all over with pithy lamentations for Lenny, and laconic execrations on tyrants. Night after night new inscriptions appeared, testifying the sarcastic wit and the vindictive sentiment of the parish. And perhaps the Stocks themselves were only spared from axe and bonfire by the convenience they afforded to the malice of the disaffected: they became the Pasquin of Hazeldean.

As disaffection naturally produces a correspondent vigour in authority, so affairs had been lately administered with greater severity than had been hitherto wont in the easy rule of the Squire and his predecessors. Suspected persons were naturally marked out by Mr Stirn, and reported to his employer, who, too proud or too pained to charge them openly with ingratitude, at first only passed them by in his walks with a silent and stiff inclination of his head; and afterwards gradually yielding to the baleful influence of Stirn, the Squire grumbled forth that "he did not see why he should be always putting himself out of his way to show kindness to those who made such a return. There ought to be a difference between the good and the bad." Encouraged by this admission, Stirn had conducted himself towards the suspected parties, and their whole kith and kin, with the iron-banded justice that belonged to his character. For some, habitual donations of milk from the dairy, and vegetables from the gardens, were surlily suspended; others were informed that their pigs were always trespassing on the woods in search of acorns; or that they were violating the Game Laws in keeping lurchers. A beer-house, popular in the neighbourhood, but of late resorted to overmuch by the grievance-mongers, (and no wonder, since they had become the popular party,) was threatened with an application to the magistrates for the withdrawal of its license. Sundry old women, whose grandsons were notoriously ill-disposed towards the Stocks, were interdicted from gathering dead sticks under the avenues, on pretence that they broke down the live boughs; and, what was more obnoxious to the younger members of the parish than most other retaliatory measures, three chestnut trees, one walnut, and two cherry trees, standing at the bottom of the park, and which had, from time immemorial, been given up to the youth of Hazeldean, were now solemnly placed under the general defence of "private property." And the crier had announced that, henceforth, all depredators on the fruit-trees in Copse Hollow would be punished with the utmost rigour of the law. Stirn, indeed, recommended much more stringent proceedings than all these indications of a change of policy, which, he averred, would soon bring the parish to its senses—such as discontinuing many little jobs of unprofitable work that employed the surplus labour of the village. But there the Squire, falling into the department, and under the benigner influence of his Harry, was as yet not properly hardened. When it came to a question that affected the absolute quantity of loaves to be consumed by the graceless mouths that fed upon him, the milk of human kindness—with which Providence has so bountifully supplied that class of the mammalia called the "Bucolic," and of which our Squire had an extra "yield"—burst forth, and washed away all the indignation of the harsher Adam.

Still your policy of half-measures, which irritates without crushing its victims, which flaps an exasperated wasp-nest with a silk pocket-handkerchief, instead of blowing it up with a match and train, is rarely successful; and, after three or four other and much guiltier victims than Lenny had been incarcerated in the Stocks, the parish of Hazeldean was ripe for any enormity. Pestilent jacobinical tracts, conceived and composed in the sinks of manufacturing towns—found their way into the popular beer-house—heaven knows how, though the Tinker was suspected of being the disseminator by all but Stirn, who still, in a whisper, accused the Papishers. And, finally, there appeared amongst the other graphic embellishments which the poor Stocks had received, the rude gravure of a gentleman in a broad-brimmed hat and top-boots, suspended from a gibbet, with the inscription beneath—"A warnin to hall tirans—mind your hi!—sighnde Captin sTraw."

It was upon this significant and emblematic portraiture that the Squire was gazing when the Parson joined him.

"Well, Parson," said Mr Hazeldean with a smile which he meant to be pleasant and easy, but which was exceedingly bitter and grim, "I wish you joy of your flock—you see they have just hanged me in effigy!"

The Parson stared, and, though greatly shocked, smothered his emotions; and attempted, with the wisdom of the serpent and the mildness of the dove, to find another original for the effigy.

"It is very bad," quoth he, "but not so bad as all that, Squire; that's not the shape of your hat. It is evidently meant for Mr Stirn."

"Do you think so!" said the Squire softened. "Yet the top-boots—Stirn never wears top-boots."

"No more do you—except in hunting. If you look again, those are not tops—they are leggings—Stirn wears leggings. Besides, that flourish, which is meant for a nose, is a kind of a hook like Stirn's; whereas your nose—though by no means a snub—rather turns up than not, as the Apollo's does, according to the plaster cast in Riccabocca's parlour."

"Poor Stirn!" said the Squire, in a tone that evinced complacency, not unmingled with compassion, "that's what a man gets in this world by being a faithful servant, and doing his duty with zeal for his employer. But you see that things have come to a strange pass, and the question now is, what course to pursue. The miscreants hitherto have defied all vigilance, and Stirn recommends the employment of a regular night-watch with a lanthorn and bludgeon."

"That may protect the Stocks certainly; but will it keep those detestable tracts out of the beer-house?"

"We shall shut the beer-house up at the next sessions."

"The tracts will break out elsewhere—the humour's in the blood!"

"I've half a mind to run off to Brighton or Leamington—good hunting at Leamington—for a year, just to let the rogues see how they can get on without me!"

The Squire's lip trembled.

"My dear Mr Hazeldean," said the Parson, taking his friend's hand, "I don't want to parade my superior wisdom; but if you had taken my advice, quieta non movere. Was there ever a parish so peaceable as this, or a country-gentleman so beloved as you were, before you undertook the task which has dethroned kings and ruined states—that of wantonly meddling with antiquity, whether for the purpose of uncalled-for repairs or the revival of obsolete uses."

At this rebuke, the Squire did not manifest his constitutional tendencies to choler; but he replied almost meekly, "If it were to do again, faith, I would leave the parish to the enjoyment of the shabbiest pair of stocks that ever disgraced a village. Certainly I meant it for the best—an ornament to the green; however, now they are rebuilt, the Stocks must be supported. Will Hazeldean is not the man to give way to a set of thankless rapscallions."

"I think," said the Parson, "that you will allow that the House of Tudor, whatever its faults, was a determined resolute dynasty enough—high-hearted and strong-headed. A Tudor would never have fallen into the same calamities as the poor Stuart did!"

"What the plague has the House of Tudor got to do with my Stocks?"

"A great deal. Henry the VIII. found a subsidy so unpopular that he gave it up; and the people, in return, allowed him to cut off as many heads as he pleased, besides those in his own family. Good Queen Bess, who, I know, is your idol in history—"

"To be sure!—she knighted my ancestor at Tilbury Fort."

"Good Queen Bess struggled hard to maintain a certain monopoly; she saw it would not do, and she surrendered it with that frank heartiness which becomes a sovereign, and makes surrender a grace."

"Ha! and you would have me give up the Stocks?"

"I would much rather they had stayed as they were, before you touched them; but, as it is, if you could find a good plausible pretext—and there is an excellent one at hand;—the sternest kings open prisons, and grant favours, upon joyful occasions. Now a marriage in the royal family is of course a joyful occasion!—and so it should be in that of the King of Hazeldean." Admire that artful turn in the Parson's eloquence!—it was worthy of Riccabocca himself. Indeed, Mr Dale had profited much by his companionship with that Machiavellian intellect.

"A marriage—yes; but Frank has only just got into long tails!"

"I did not allude to Frank, but to your cousin Jemima!"

The Squire staggered as if the breath had been knocked out of him, and, for want of a better seat, sate down on the Stocks.

All the female heads in the neighbouring cottages peered, themselves unseen, through the casements. What could the Squire be about?—what new mischief did he meditate? Did he mean to fortify the stocks? Old Gaffer Solomons, who had an indefinite idea of the lawful power of squires, and who had been for the last ten minutes at watch on his threshold, shook his head and said—"Them as a cut out the mon, a-hanging, as a put it in the Squire's head!"

"Put what?" asked his granddaughter.

"The gallus!" answered Solomons—"he be a-goin to have it hung from the great elm-tree. And the Parson, good mon, is a-quoting Scripter agin it—you see he's a taking off his gloves, and a putting his two han's togither, as he do when he pray for the sick, Jeany."

That description of the Parson's mien and manner, which, with his usual niceness of observation, Gaffer Solomons thus sketched off, will convey to you some idea of the earnestness with which the Parson pleaded the cause he had undertaken to advocate. He dwelt much upon the sense of propriety which the foreigner had evinced in requesting that the Squire might be consulted before any formal communication to his cousin; and he repeated Mrs Dale's assurance, that such were Riccabocca's high standard of honour and belief in the sacred rights of hospitality, that, if the Squire withheld his consent to his proposals, the Parson was convinced that the Italian would instantly retract them. Now, considering that Miss Hazeldean was, to say the least, come to years of discretion, and the Squire had long since placed her property entirely at her own disposal, Mr Hazeldean was forced to acquiesce in the Parson's corollary remark, "That this was a delicacy which could not be expected from every English pretender to the lady's hand." Seeing that he had so far cleared ground, the Parson went on to intimate, though with great tact, that, since Miss Jemima would probably marry sooner or later, (and, indeed, that the Squire could not wish to prevent her,) it might be better for all parties concerned that it should be with some one who, though a foreigner, was settled in the neighbourhood, and of whose character what was known was certainly favourable, than run the hazard of her being married for her money by some adventurer or Irish fortune-hunter at the watering-places she yearly visited. Then he touched lightly on Riccabocca's agreeable and companionable qualities; and concluded with a skilful peroration upon the excellent occasion the wedding would afford to reconcile Hall and parish, by making a voluntary holocaust of the Stocks.

As he concluded, the Squire's brow, before thoughtful, though not sullen, cleared up benignly. To say truth, the Squire was dying to get rid of the Stocks, if he could but do so handsomely and with dignity; and if all the stars in the astrological horoscope had conjoined together to give Miss Jemima "assurance of a husband," they could not so have served her with the Squire, as that conjunction between the altar and the Stocks which the Parson had effected!

Accordingly, when Mr Dale had come to an end, the Squire replied with great placidity and good sense, "That Mr Rickeybockey had behaved very much like a gentleman, and that he was very much obliged to him; that he (the Squire) had no right to interfere in the matter, farther than with his advice; that Jemima was old enough to choose for herself, and that, as the Parson had implied, after all she might go farther and fare worse—indeed, the farther she went, (that is, the longer she waited,) the worse she was likely to fare. I own for my part," continued the Squire, "that, though I like Rickeybockey very much, I never suspected that Jemima was caught with his long face; but there's no accounting for tastes. My Harry, indeed, was more shrewd, and gave me many a hint, for which I only laughed at her. Still I ought to have thought it looked queer when Mounseer took to disguising himself by leaving off his glasses, ha—ha! I wonder what Harry will say; let's go and talk to her."

The Parson, rejoiced at this easy way of taking the matter, hooked his arm into the Squire's, and they walked amicably towards the Hall. But on coming first into the gardens they found Mrs Hazeldean herself, clipping dead leaves or fading flowers from her rose-trees. The Squire stole slily behind her, and startled her in her turn by putting his arm round her waist, and saluting her smooth cheek with one of his hearty kisses; which, by the way, from some association of ideas, was a conjugal freedom that he usually indulged whenever a wedding was going on in the village.

"Fie, William!" said Mrs Hazeldean coyly, and blushing as she saw the Parson. "Well, who's going to to be married now?"

"Lord, was there ever such a woman?—she's guessed it!" cried the Squire in great admiration. "Tell her all about it, Parson."

The Parson obeyed.

Mrs Hazeldean, as the reader may suppose, showed much less surprise than her husband had done; but she took the news graciously, and made much the same answer as that which had occurred to the Squire, only with somewhat more qualification and reserve. "Signor Riccabocca had behaved very handsomely; and though a daughter of the Hazeldeans of Hazeldean might expect a much better marriage in a worldly point of view, yet as the lady in question had deferred finding one so long, it would be equally idle and impertinent now to quarrel with her choice—if indeed she should decide on accepting Signor Riccabocca. As for fortune, that was a consideration for the two contracting parties. Still, it ought to be pointed out to Miss Jemima that the interest of her fortune would afford but a very small income. That Dr Riccabocca was a widower was another matter for deliberation; and it seemed rather suspicious that he should have been hitherto so close upon all matters connected with his former life. Certainly his manners were in his favour, and as long as he was merely an acquaintance, and at most a tenant, no one had a right to institute inquiries of a strictly private nature; but that, when he was about to marry a Hazeldean of Hazeldean, it became the Squire at least to know a little more about him—who and what he was. Why did he leave his own country? English people went abroad to save; no foreigner would choose England as a country in which to save money! She supposed that a foreign doctor was no very great things; probably he had been a professor in some Italian university. At all events, if the Squire interfered at all, it was on such points that he should request information."

"My dear madam," said the Parson, "what you say is extremely just. As to the causes which have induced our friend to expatriate himself, I think we need not look far for them. He is evidently one of the many Italian refugees whom political disturbances have driven to our shore, whose boast it is to receive all exiles of whatever party. For his respectability of birth and family he certainly ought to obtain some vouchers. And if that be the only objection, I trust we may soon congratulate Miss Hazeldean on a marriage with a man who, though certainly very poor, has borne privations without a murmur; has preferred all hardship to debt; has scorned to attempt betraying her into any clandestine connection; who, in short, has shown himself so upright and honest, that I hope my dear Mr Hazeldean will forgive him if he is only a doctor—probably of Laws—and not, as most foreigners pretend to be, a marquis, or a baron at least."

"As to that," cried the Squire, "'tis the best thing I know about Rickeybockey, that he don't attempt to humbug us by any such foreign trumpery. Thank heaven, the Hazeldeans of Hazeldean were never tuft-hunters and title-mongers; and if I never ran after an English lord, I should certainly be devilishly ashamed of a brother-in-law whom I was forced to call markee or count! I should feel sure he was a courier, or runaway valley-de-sham. Turn up your nose at a doctor, indeed, Harry!—pshaw, good English style that! Doctor! my aunt married a Doctor of Divinity—excellent man—wore a wig, and was made a dean! So long as Rickeybockey is not a doctor of physic, I don't care a button. If he's that, indeed, it would be suspicious; because, you see, those foreign doctors of physic are quacks, and tell fortunes, and go about on a stage with a Merry-Andrew."

"Lord, Hazeldean! where on earth did you pick up that idea?" said Harry laughing.

"Pick it up!—why I saw a fellow myself at the cattle fair last year—when I was buying short-horns—with a red waistcoat and a cocked hat, a little like the Parson's shovel. He called himself Doctor Phoscophornio—wore a white wig, and sold pills! The Merry-Andrew was the funniest creature—in salmon-coloured tights—turned head over heels, and said he came from Timbuctoo. No, no; if Rickeybockey's a physic Doctor, we shall have Jemima in a pink tinsel dress, tramping about the country in a caravan!"

At this notion, both the Squire and his wife laughed so heartily that the Parson felt the thing was settled, and slipped away, with the intention of making his report to Riccabocca.

It was with a slight disturbance of his ordinary suave and well-bred equanimity that the Italian received the information, that he need apprehend no obstacle to his suit from the insular prejudices or the worldly views of the lady's family. Not that he was mean and cowardly enough to recoil from the near and unclouded prospect of that felicity which he had left off his glasses to behold with unblinking naked eyes:—no, there his mind was made up; but he had met with very little kindness in life, and he was touched not only by the interest in his welfare testified by a heretical priest, but by the generosity with which he was admitted into a well-born and wealthy family, despite his notorious poverty and his foreign descent. He conceded the propriety of the only stipulation, which was conveyed to him by the Parson with all the delicacy that became a man professionally habituated to deal with the subtler susceptibilities of mankind—viz., that, amongst Riccabocca's friends or kindred, some one should be found whose report would confirm the persuasion of his respectability entertained by his neighbours;—he assented, I say, to the propriety of this condition; but it was not with alacrity and eagerness. His brow became clouded. The Parson hastened to assure him that the Squire was not a man qui stupet in titulis, (who was besotted with titles,) that he neither expected nor desired to find an origin and rank for his brother-in-law above that decent mediocrity of condition to which it was evident, from Riccabocca's breeding and accomplishments, he could easily establish his claim. "And though," said he smiling, "the Squire is a warm politician in his own country, and would never see his sister again, I fear, if she married some convicted enemy of our happy constitution, yet for foreign politics he does not care a straw; so that if, as I suspect, your exile arises from some quarrel with your Government—which, being foreign, he takes for granted must be insupportable—he would but consider you as he would a Saxon who fled from the iron hand of William the Conqueror, or a Lancastrian expelled by the Yorkists in our Wars of the Roses."

The Italian smiled. "Mr Hazeldean shall be satisfied," said he simply. "I see, by the Squire's newspaper, that an English gentleman who knew me in my own country has just arrived in London. I will write to him for a testimonial, at least to my probity and character. Probably he may be known to you by name—nay, he must be, for he was a distinguished officer in the late war. I allude to Lord L'Estrange."

The Parson started.

"You know Lord L'Estrange?—a profligate bad man, I fear."

"Profligate!—bad!" exclaimed Riccabocca. "Well, calumnious as the world is, I should never have thought that such expressions would be applied to one who, though I knew him but little—knew him chiefly by the service he once rendered to me—first taught me to love and revere the English name!"

"He may be changed since—" The parson paused.

"Since when?" asked Riccabocca, with evident curiosity.

Mr Dale seemed embarrassed. "Excuse me," said he, "it is many years ago; and, in short, the opinion I then formed of the gentleman in question was based upon circumstances which I cannot communicate."

The punctilious Italian bowed in silence, but he still looked as if he should have liked to prosecute inquiry.

After a pause, he said, "Whatever your impressions respecting Lord L'Estrange, there is nothing, I suppose, which would lead you to doubt his honour, or reject his testimonial in my favour?"

"According to fashionable morality," said Mr Dale, rather precisely, "I know of nothing that could induce me to suppose that Lord L'Estrange would not, in this instance, speak the truth. And he has unquestionably a high reputation as a soldier, and a considerable position in the world." Therewith the Parson took his leave. A few days afterwards, Dr Riccabocca enclosed to the Squire, in a blank envelope, a letter he had received from Harley L'Estrange. It was evidently intended for the Squire's eye, and to serve as a voucher for the Italian's respectability; but this object was fulfilled, not in the coarse form of a direct testimonial, but with a tact and delicacy which seemed to show more than the fine breeding to be expected from one in Lord L'Estrange's station. It argued that most exquisite of all politeness which comes from the heart: a certain tone of affectionate respect (which even the homely sense of the Squire felt, intuitively, proved far more in favour of Riccabocca than the most elaborate certificate of his qualities and antecedents) pervaded the whole, and would have sufficed in itself to remove all scruples from a mind much more suspicious and exacting than that of the Squire of Hazeldean. But, lo and behold! an obstacle now occurred to the Parson, of which he ought to have thought long before—viz., the Papistical religion of the Italian. Dr Riccabocca was professedly a Roman Catholic. He so little obtruded that fact—and, indeed, had assented so readily to any animadversions upon the superstition and priestcraft which, according to Protestants, are the essential characteristics of Papistical communities—that it was not till the hymeneal torch, which brings all faults to light, was fairly illumined for the altar, that the remembrance of a faith so cast into the shade burst upon the conscience of the Parson. The first idea that then occurred to him was the proper and professional one—viz., the conversion of Dr Riccabocca. He hastened to his study, took down from his shelves long neglected volumes of controversial divinity, armed himself with an arsenal of authorities, arguments, and texts; then, seizing the shovel-hat, posted off to the Casino.

The Parson burst upon the philosopher like an avalanche! He was so full of his subject that he could not let it out in prudent driblets. No, he went souse upon the astounded Riccabocca—

The sage—shrinking deeper into his arm-chair, and drawing his dressing-robe more closely round him—suffered the Parson to talk for three quarters of an hour, till indeed he had thoroughly proved his case; and, like Brutus, "paused for a reply."

Then said Riccabocca mildly, "In much of what you have urged so ably, and so suddenly, I am inclined to agree. But base is the man who formally forswears the creed he has inherited from his fathers, and professed since the cradle up to years of maturity, when the change presents itself in the guise of a bribe;—when, for such is human nature, he can hardly distinguish or disentangle the appeal to his reason from the lure to his interests—here a text, and there a dowry!—here Protestantism, there Jemima! Own, my friend, that the soberest casuist would see double under the inebriating effects produced by so mixing his polemical liquors. Appeal, my good Mr Dale, from Philip drunken to Philip sober!—from Riccabocca intoxicated with the assurance of your excellent lady, that he is about to be "the happiest of men," to Riccabocca accustomed to his happiness, and carrying it off with the seasoned equability of one grown familiar with stimulants—in a word, appeal from Riccabocca the wooer to Riccabocca the spouse. I may be convertible, but conversion is a slow process; courtship should be a quick one—ask Miss Jemima. Finalmente, marry me first, and convert me afterwards!"

"You take this too jestingly," began the Parson; "and I don't see why, with your excellent understanding, truths so plain and obvious should not strike you at once."

"Truths," interrupted Riccabocca profoundly, "are the slowest growing things in the world! It took 1500 years from the date of the Christian era to produce your own Luther, and then he flung his Bible at Satan, (I have seen the mark made by the book on the wall of his prison in Germany,) besides running off with a nun, which no Protestant clergyman would think it proper and right to do now-a-days." Then he added, with seriousness, "Look you, my dear sir,—I should lose my own esteem if I were even to listen to you now with becoming attention,—now, I say, when you hint that the creed I have professed may be in the way of my advantage. If so, I must keep the creed and resign the advantage. But if, as I trust—not only as a Christian, but a man of honour—you will defer this discussion, I will promise to listen to you hereafter; and though, to say truth, I believe that you will not convert me, I will promise you faithfully never to interfere with my wife's religion."

"And any children you may have?"

"Children!" said Dr Riccabocca, recoiling—"you are not contented with firing your pocket-pistol right in my face; you must also pepper me all over with small-shot. Children! well, if they are girls, let them follow the faith of their mother; and if boys, while in childhood, let them be contented with learning to be Christians; and when they grow into men, let them choose for themselves which is the best form for the practice of the great principles which all sects have in common."

"But," began Mr Dale again, pulling a large book from his pocket.

Dr Riccabocca flung open the window, and jumped out of it.

It was the rapidest and most dastardly flight you could possibly conceive; but it was a great compliment to the argumentative powers of the Parson, and he felt it as such. Nevertheless, Mr Dale thought it right to have a long conversation, both with the Squire and Miss Jemima herself, upon the subject which his intended convert had so ignominiously escaped.

The Squire, though a great foe to Popery, politically considered, had also quite as great a hatred to turn-coats and apostates. And in his heart he would have despised Riccabocca if he could have thrown off his religion as easily as he had done his spectacles. Therefore he said simply—"Well, it is certainly a great pity that Rickeybockey is not of the Church of England, though, I take it, that would be unreasonable to expect in a man born and bred under the nose of the Inquisition," (the Squire firmly believed that the Inquisition was in full force in all the Italian states, with whips, racks, and thumbscrews; and, indeed, his chief information of Italy was gathered from a perusal he had given in early youth to The One-Handed Monk;) "but I think he speaks very fairly, on the whole, as to his wife and children. And the thing's gone too far now to retract. It is all your fault for not thinking of it before; and I've now just made up my mind as to the course to pursue respecting those—d—d Stocks!"

As for Miss Jemima, the Parson left her with a pious thanksgiving that Riccabocca at least was a Christian, and not a Pagan, Mahometan, or Jew.

There is that in a wedding which appeals to a universal sympathy. No other event in the lives of their superiors in rank creates an equal sensation amongst the humbler classes.

From the moment the news had spread throughout the village that Miss Jemima was to be married, all the old affection for the Squire and his House burst forth the stronger for its temporary suspension. Who could think of the Stocks in such a season? They were swept out of fashion—hunted from remembrance as completely as the question of Repeal or the thought of Rebellion from the warm Irish heart, when the fair young face of the Royal Wife beamed on the sister isle.

Again cordial curtseys were dropped at the thresholds by which the Squire passed to his home farm; again the sun-burnt brows uncovered—no more with sullen ceremony—were smoothed into cheerful gladness at his nod. Nay, the little ones began again to assemble at their ancient rendezvous by the Stocks, as if either familiarised with the Phenomenon, or convinced that, in the general sentiment of good-will, its powers of evil were annulled.

The Squire tasted once more the sweets of the only popularity which is much worth having, and the loss of which a wise man would reasonably deplore; viz., the popularity which arises from a persuasion of our goodness, and a reluctance to recall our faults. Like all blessings, the more sensibly felt from previous interruption, the Squire enjoyed this restored popularity with an exhilarated sense of existence; his stout heart beat more vigorously; his stalwart step trod more lightly; his comely English face looked comelier and more English than ever;—you would have been a merrier man for a week to have come within hearing of his jovial laugh.

He felt grateful to Jemima and to Riccabocca as the special agents of Providence in this general integratio amoris. To have looked at him, you would suppose that it was the Squire who was going to be married a second time to his Harry!

One may well conceive that such would have been an inauspicious moment for Parson Dale's theological scruples. To have stopped that marriage—chilled all the sunshine it diffused over the village—seen himself surrounded again by long sulky visages,—I verily believe, though a better friend of Church and State never stood on a hustings, that, rather than court such a revulsion, the Squire would have found jesuitical excuses for the marriage if Riccabocca had been discovered to be the Pope in disguise! As for the Stocks, their fate was now irrevocably sealed. In short, the marriage was concluded—first privately, according to the bridegroom's creed, by a Roman Catholic clergyman, who lived in a town some miles off, and next publicly in the village church of Hazeldean.

It was the heartiest rural wedding! Village girls strewed flowers on the way;—a booth was placed amidst the prettiest scenery of the Park, on the margin of the lake—for there was to be a dance later in the day;—an ox was roasted whole. Even Mr Stirn—no, Mr Stirn was not present, so much happiness would have been the death of him! And the Papisher too, who had conjured Lenny out of the Stocks; nay, who had himself sate in the Stocks for the very purpose of bringing them into contempt—the Papisher! he had as lief Miss Jemima had married the devil! Indeed he was persuaded that, in point of fact, it was all one and the same. Therefore Mr Stirn had asked leave to go and attend his uncle the pawnbroker, about to undergo a torturing operation for the stone! Frank was there, summoned from Eton for the occasion—having grown two inches taller since he left—for the one inch of which nature was to be thanked, for the other a new pair of resplendent Wellingtons. But the boy's joy was less apparent than that of others. For Jemima was a special favourite with him, as she would have, been with all boys—for she was always kind and gentle, and made many pretty presents whenever she came from the watering-places. And Frank knew that he should miss her sadly, and thought she had made a very queer choice.

Captain Higginbotham had been invited; but, to the astonishment of Jemima, he had replied to the invitation by a letter to herself, marked "private and confidential." 'She must have long known,' said the letter, 'of his devoted attachment to her; motives of delicacy, arising from the narrowness of his income, and the magnanimity of his sentiments, had alone prevented his formal proposals; but now that she was informed (he could scarcely believe his senses, or command his passions) that her relations wished to force her into a BARBAROUS marriage with a foreigner Of MOST FORBIDDING APPEARANCE, and most abject circumstances, he lost not a moment in laying at her feet his own hand and fortune. And he did this the more confidently, inasmuch as he could not but be aware of Miss Jemima's SECRET feelings towards him, while he was proud and happy to say, that his dear and distinguished cousin, Mr Sharpe Currie, had honoured him with a warmth of regard, which justified the most brilliant EXPECTATIONS—likely to be soon realised—as his eminent relative had contracted a very bad liver complaint in the service of his country, and could not last long!'.

In all the years they had known each other, Miss Jemima, strange as it may appear, had never once suspected the Captain of any other feelings to her than those of a brother. To say that she was not gratified by learning her mistake, would be to say that she was more than woman. Indeed, it must have been a source of no ignoble triumph to think that she could prove her disinterested affection to her dear Riccabocca, by a prompt rejection of this more brilliant offer. She couched the rejection, it is true, in the most soothing terms. But the Captain evidently considered himself ill used; he did not reply to the letter, and did not come to the wedding.

To let the reader into a secret, never known to Miss Jemima, Captain Higginbotham was much less influenced by Cupid than by Plutus in the offer he had made. The Captain was one of that class of gentlemen who read their accounts by those corpse-lights, or will-o'-the-wisps, called expectations. Ever since the Squire's grandfather had left him—then in short clothes—a legacy of £500, the Captain had peopled the future with expectations! He talked of his expectations as a man talks of shares in a Tontine; they might fluctuate a little—be now up and now down—but it was morally impossible, if he lived on, but that he should be a millionnaire one of these days. Now, though Miss Jemima was a good fifteen years younger than himself, yet she always stood for a good round sum in the ghostly books of the Captain. She was an expectation to the full amount of her £4000, seeing that Frank was an only child, and it would be carrying coals to Newmarket to leave him anything.

Rather than see so considerable a cipher suddenly spunged out of his visionary ledger—rather than so much money should vanish clean out of the family, Captain Higginbotham had taken what he conceived, if a desperate, at least a certain, step for the preservation of his property. If the golden horn could not be had without the heifer, why, he must take the heifer into the bargain. He had never formed to himself an idea that a heifer so gentle would toss and fling him over. The blow was stunning. But no one compassionates the misfortunes of the covetous, though few perhaps are in greater need of compassion. And leaving poor Captain Higginbotham to retrieve his illusory fortunes as he best may among 'the expectations' which gathered round the form of Mr Sharpe Currie, who was the crossest old tyrant imaginable, and never allowed at his table any dishes not compounded with rice, which played Old Nick with the Captain's constitutional functions,—I return to the wedding at Hazeldean, just in time to see the bridegroom—who looked singularly well on the occasion—hand the bride (who, between sunshiny tears and affectionate smiles, was really a very interesting and even a pretty bride, as brides go) into a carriage which the Squire had presented to them, and depart on the orthodox nuptial excursion amidst the blessings of the assembled crowd.

It may be thought strange by the unreflective that these rural spectators should so have approved and blessed the marriage of a Hazeldean of Hazeldean with a poor, outlandish, long-haired foreigner; but, besides that Riccabocca, after all, had become one of the neighbourhood, and was proverbially "a civil-spoken gentleman," it is generally noticeable that on wedding occasions the bride so monopolises interest, curiosity, and admiration, that the bridegroom himself goes for little or nothing. He is merely the passive agent in the affair—the unregarded cause of the general satisfaction. It was not Riccabocca himself that they approved and blessed—it was the gentleman in the white waistcoat who had made Miss Jemima—Madam Rickeybockey!

Leaning on his wife's arm, (for it was a habit of the Squire to lean on his wife's arm rather than she on his, when he was specially pleased; and there was something touching in the sight of that strong sturdy frame thus insensibly, in hours of happiness, seeking dependence on the frail arm of woman,)—leaning, I say, on his wife's arm, the Squire, about the hour of sunset, walked down to the booth by the lake.

All the parish—young and old, man, woman, and child—were assembled there, and their faces seemed to bear one family likeness, in the common emotion which animated all, as they turned to his frank fatherly smile. Squire Hazeldean stood at the head of the long table: he filled a horn with ale from the brimming tankard beside him. Then he looked round, and lifted his hand to request silence; and, ascending the chair, rose in full view of all. Every one felt that the Squire was about to make a speech, and the earnestness of the attention was proportioned to the rarity of the event; for (though he was not unpractised in the oratory of the hustings) only thrice before had the Squire made what could fairly be called "a speech" to the villagers of Hazeldean—once on a kindred festive occasion, when he had presented to them his bride—once in a contested election for the shire, in which he took more than ordinary interest, and was not quite so sober as he ought to have been—once in a time of great agricultural distress, when, in spite of reduction of rents, the farmers had been compelled to discard a large number of their customary labourers; and when the Squire had said,—"I have given up keeping the hounds, because I want to make a fine piece of water, (that was the origin of the lake,) and to drain all the low lands round the park. Let every man who wants work come to me!" And that sad year the parish rates of Hazeldean were not a penny the more.

Now, for the fourth time, the Squire rose, and thus he spoke. At his right hand, Harry; at his left, Frank. At the bottom of the table, as vice-president, Parson Dale, his little wife behind him, only obscurely seen. She cried readily, and her handkerchief was already before her eyes.

"Friends and neighbours,—I thank you kindly for coming round me this day, and for showing so much interest in me and mine. My cousin was not born amongst you as I was, but you have known her from a child. It is a familiar face, and one that never frowned, which you will miss at your cottage doors, as I and mine will miss it long in the old hall—"

Here there was a sob from some of the women, and nothing was seen of Mrs Dale but the white handkerchief. The Squire himself paused, and brushed away a tear with the back of his hand. Then he resumed, with a sudden change of voice that was electrical—

"For we none of us prize a blessing till we have lost it! Now, friends and neighbours,—a little time ago, it seemed as if some ill-will had crept into the village—ill-will between you and me, neighbours!—why, that is not like Hazeldean!"

The audience hung their heads! You never saw people look so thoroughly ashamed of themselves. The Squire proceeded—

"I don't say it was all your fault; perhaps it was mine."

"Noa—noa—noa," burst forth in a general chorus.

"Nay, friends," continued the Squire humbly, and in one of those illustrative aphorisms which, if less subtle than Riccabocca's, were more within reach of the popular comprehension; "nay—we are all human; and every man has his hobby: sometimes he breaks in the hobby, and sometimes the hobby, if it is very hard in the mouth, breaks in him. One man's hobby has an ill habit of always stopping at the public house! (Laughter.) Another man's hobby refuses to stir a peg beyond the door where some buxom lass patted its neck the week before—a hobby I rode pretty often when I went courting my good wife here! (Much laughter and applause.) Others have a lazy hobby, that there's no getting on;—others, a runaway hobby that there's no stopping: but to cut the matter short, my favourite hobby, as you well know, is always trotted out to any place on my property which seems to want the eye and hand of the master. I hate (cried the Squire warming) to see things neglected and decayed, and going to the dogs! This land we live in is a good mother to us, and we can't do too much for her. It is very true, neighbours, that I owe her a good many acres, and ought to speak well of her; but what then? I live amongst you, and what I take from the rent with one hand, I divide amongst you with the other, (low, but assenting murmurs.) Now the more I improve my property, the more mouths it feeds. My great-grandfather kept a Field-Book, in which were entered, not only the names of all the farmers and the quantity of land they held, but the average number of the labourers each employed. My grandfather and father followed his example: I have done the same. I find, neighbours, that our rents have doubled since my great-grandfather began to make the book. Ay—but there are more than four times the number of labourers employed on the estate, and at much better wages too! Well, my men, that says a great deal in favour of improving property, and not letting it go to the dogs. (Applause.) And therefore, neighbours, you will kindly excuse my hobby: it carries grist to your mill. (Reiterated applause.) Well—but you will say, 'What's the Squire driving at?' Why this, my friends: There was only one worn-out, dilapidated, tumble-down thing in the Parish of Hazeldean, and it became an eyesore to me; so I saddled my hobby, and rode at it. O ho! you know what I mean now! Yes, but neighbours, you need not have taken it so to heart. That was a scurvy trick of some of you to hang me in effigy, as they call it."

"It warn't you," cried a voice in the crowd, "it war Nick Stirn."

The Squire recognised the voice of the tinker; but though he now guessed at the ringleader,—on that day of general amnesty, he had the prudence and magnanimity not to say, "Stand forth, Sprott: thou art the man." Yet his gallant English spirit would not suffer him to come off at the expense of his servant.

"If it was Nick Stirn you meant," said he gravely, "more shame for you. It showed some pluck to hang the master; but to hang the poor servant, who only thought to do his duty, careless of what ill-will it brought upon him, was a shabby trick—so little like the lads of Hazeldean, that I suspect the man who taught it to them was never born in the parish. But let bygones be bygones. One thing is clear, you don't take kindly to my new Pair of Stocks! They have been a stumbling-block and a grievance, and there's no denying that we went on very pleasantly without them. I may also say that in spite of them we have been coming together again lately. And I can't tell you what good it did me to see your children playing again on the green, and your honest faces, in spite of the Stocks, and those diabolical tracts you've been reading lately, lighted up at the thought that something pleasant was going on at the Hall. Do you know, neighbours, you put me in mind of an old story which, besides applying to the Parish, all who are married, and all who intend to marry, will do well to recollect. A worthy couple, named John and Joan, had lived happily together many a long year, till one unlucky day they bought a new bolster. Joan said the bolster was too hard, and John that it was too soft. So, of course, they quarrelled. After sulking all day, they agreed to put the bolster between them at night." (Roars of laughter amongst the men; the women did not know which way to look, except, indeed, Mrs Hazeldean, who, though she was more than usually rosy, maintained her innocent genial smile, as much as to say, "There is no harm in the Squire's jests.") The orator resumed—"After they had thus lain apart for a little time, very silent and sullen, John sneezed. 'God bless you!' says Joan over the bolster. 'Did you say God bless me?' cries John;—'then here goes the bolster!'"

Prolonged laughter and tumultuous applause.

"Friends and neighbours," said the Squire when silence was restored, and lifting the horn of ale, "I have the pleasure to inform you that I have ordered the Stocks to be taken down, and made into a bench for the chimney nook of our old friend Gaffer Solomons yonder. But mind me, lads, if ever you make the Parish regret the loss of the Stocks, and the overseers come to me with long faces and say, 'the Stocks must be rebuilded,' why—" Here from all the youth of the village rose so deprecating a clamour, that the Squire would have been the most bungling orator in the world if he had said a word further on the subject. He elevated the horn over his head—"Why, that's my old Hazeldean again! Health and long life to you all!"

The Tinker had sneaked out of the assembly, and did not show his face in the village for the next six months. And as to those poisonous tracts, in spite of their salubrious labels, "the Poor Man's Friend," or "the Rights of Labour," you could no more have found one of them lurking in the drawers of the kitchen-dressers in Hazeldean, than you would have found the deadly nightshade on the flower-stands in the drawing-room of the Hall. As for the revolutionary beer-house, there was no need to apply to the magistrates to shut it up; it shut itself up before the week was out.

O young head of the great House of Hapsburg, what a Hazeldean you might have made of Hungary!—What a "Moriamur pro rege nostro" would have rang in your infant reign,—if you had made such a speech as the Squire's!

---

It is now my duty, in a few words, to make you acquainted with the state of Martin's family. Martin, as you know, had acted as chaplain to Squire Bull ever since Peter was sent about his business, with the exception of the short period during which red-nosed Noll the brewer held forcible possession of the Squire's house. Noll had a mortal hatred to Martin, (who, it must be allowed, reciprocated the sentiment with extreme cordiality,) and wanted to dispossess him for ever of his benefice and vicarage, in favour of any drunken serjeant who had a taste for theology and ale. However, when the Squire came back to his own estate, Martin returned with him, and has remained chaplain up to the present day without any hindrance or molestation. At times some of the household have grumbled because Martin has a place at the upper servants' table; but the complaint was never made by any except such pestilent rogues as wished in their hearts to see the Squire deprived of his lawful authority, and the whole of Bullockshatch thrown into a state of anarchy and confusion.

Martin was as excellent a man as ever stepped upon neat's leather. He did his duty to the poor honourably and conscientiously, kept his church in good repair, looked after the parish schools, and was, in short, a comfort and a credit to all who knew him. He was also a married man, a circumstance whereof Peter tried to make the most; abusing him, forsooth, because he did not follow his own example of getting the girls into a corner to tell him about their little indiscretions and secret thoughts—a pastime to which that hoary old sinner was especially addicted;—or of worming himself into some private gentleman's family, and then frightening the lady of the house into fits by threatening to put her into a brick-kiln or red-hot oven, of which Peter pretended to keep the key, if she did not divulge to him the whole of her husband's secrets, and hand over the children in private to be stamped with Peter's mark. Many a once happy household had the old villain brought to misery by those scandalous intrigues; for the truth is, that he stuck at nothing which might tend to his own advancement, however infamous were the means. Had Martin been a reprobate like himself, he might possibly have endured him: as it was, his good character and decent habits were so many arguments for Peter to abuse him wherever he went.

Martin had a son, who in due time was appointed his curate, and had a chapel to himself. This young, man, whose name was Augustine, was by no means so discreet a person as his father. He was of a moping and melancholy habit, very much addicted to the study of architecture, which he carried to such an excess that you could not be five minutes in his company without hearing him discourse about mullions, brackets, architraves, and flying buttresses, in a way that would have bewildered a stone mason. He got his chapel fitted up in such a style that it exactly resembled one of Peter's; and this he did, as he openly avowed, from a regard to the customs of antiquity. When Martin was told of this, he shook his head, caught up his walking cane, and stepped over to the chapel, where he found Augustine superintending the erection of a new oriel window, the design of which was gorgeous enough to eclipse the glories of the most brilliant butterfly of Brazil.

"What's here to do?" quoth Martin, walking up the chancel. "Mighty handsome this, son Augustine, to be sure; but—don't it strike you that the effect is a little too Peterish? Mind, I do not object in the least to your making the chapel neat and tidy. I never thought, as brother Jack used to do, (though he is now becoming more sensible on those points,) that a church ought as nearly as possible to resemble a barn. On the contrary, I like to see everything in its proper place. But what's this?" continued he, tapping with his cane a kind of ornamented basin with a slab. "I don't remember ever having seen any thing of this kind before."

"Indeed, sir!" replied Augustine; "you surprise me very much. I thought everyone must be acquainted with the Piscina and Finistella. Those, I can assure you, are accurate copies from ancient drawings of the church of Saint Ethelred, which was burned by the Danes about the beginning of the tenth century."

"That may be," quoth Martin, "but I can't for the life of me see the use of them now. And what may you call this?"

"That, sir? Why, that's the credence table. There is a splendid specimen of that style of architecture in the cathedral remains of St Ninian."

"And that carved wood-work up there near the gallery?"

"That, sir, is the rood-loft, constructed on mediæval principles, after the designs of Hubert the Confessor."

"I'll tell you what it is, son Augustine," said Martin, "all this is very pretty; and if you and your people wish to have it, there may be no positive reason why I should interfere. Thank heaven, sound doctrine does not depend upon stone and lime; and so long as your principles are firm, it may not matter much that you are a little absurd or so about this architectural hobby of yours. But, mark me well, my dear boy," continued the good gentleman, with tears in his eyes; "no trafficking or colleaguing with Peter! That old miscreant has ever been a bitter enemy of me and mine, and of the Squire to boot; and if it should come to pass that my own flesh and blood were to desert me for that impious rascal, I would be fain to carry my grey hairs in sorrow to the grave! Think well of this, I beseech you, and on no account whatever have anything to say to that arch-deceiver!"

You might reasonably suppose that Augustine was much moved by this remonstrance. Not a whit of it. He was much too conceited to take counsel from any one; and in his secret heart began to look upon his father as no better than an uncharitable bigot.

"Holy Saint Pancras!" he would say, for he had a queer habit of invoking the names of dead people, "what can it matter to any one whether I bow to my uncle Peter or not? People tell me I am rather like him in complexion; and I daresay, after all, there is a strong family resemblance. What have I to do with old family feuds, which had far better be forgotten? As to the nine-and-thirty points of doctrine to which I have set my name, some of them may be good, and others heterodox; but I presume I am not compelled to accept them in the literal sense. Why should they be made a stumbling-block in the way of a proper reconciliation between myself and my uncle, who no doubt has fallen into questionable practices, though in the main he is quite as like to be right as my father Martin?"

Augustine, however, did not venture to hold this kind of talk openly for some time, knowing that, if it came to the ears of Martin, he would inevitably be disinherited on the spot, and turned out of his cure. In the discourses which he delivered from the pulpit, he was wont to express great sorrow and anxiety for the backslidings of his "venerable relative," as he now termed Peter, "towards whom his bowels yearned with an almost unspeakable affection. It would ill become him to forget what Peter had done for the family long ago, and indeed for the whole of Bullockshatch; and although he was now, no doubt, cast out for his sins, he, Augustine, could not prevail upon himself to speak harshly of a gentleman who had such excellent grounds for styling himself the head of the whole house." Then he would go on to insinuate that there were two sides to every question—that his own father Martin might possibly have behaved more roughly to Peter than there was any occasion for—and that Peter had many good points about him for which he did not receive sufficient credit. Having thus talked over his congregation, who were willing enough to go along with him a certain length, he began in public to wear a dress as nearly approaching to that of Peter's retainers as he durst. He turned his back upon people, just as the others did, and dressed up the charity-boys in white gowns, to look, as he said, like acolytes. One, winter's morning, when the parishioners arrived at church, they were petrified at seeing two huge candlesticks placed upon the table, such articles of furniture having been for a long time disused in the churches throughout Bullockshatch. Augustine, however, had discovered from some old musty pamphlet that they were not strictly forbidden; so he got a pair of new ones made, (after the mediæval fashion, of course,) and preached a long sermon for the purpose of demonstrating their advantages and mystical meaning. Three Sundays afterwards, the weather being rather dark and hazy, they were fitted with lighted wax-candles; and Augustine, having once got so far, took care that this pious practice should not be discontinued even in the height of summer. Another Sunday he would put himself at the head of the charity-boys, and walk through the church in procession, bowing and making genuflexions in evident imitation of Peter; and at last the poor young man was so far left to himself, that he would not read the service properly, but twanged it through his nose in a kind of sing-song fashion, which he called intoning, but which had simply this effect, that nobody was able to follow the meaning of the words.

These things were, as you may suppose, very annoying to Martin, who, over and over again, entreated him to take care what he was doing. But, in answer to every remonstrance, Augustine would whip out the musty pamphlet aforesaid, lay it open before his father, and request him to point out any special clause condemnatory of the practices which he followed. "If such a clause exists," quoth he, "I knock under, as in duty bound. If not, I apprehend that I am merely pursuing a course which has been sanctioned from all antiquity." Martin tried to convince him that a great many things might be wrong, or at all events injudicious, which were not actually expressly set down as forbidden; but no argument would avail with Augustine, who said he was determined to stand by the rubric, and, moreover, to interpret that rubric according to his own lights and inspiration.

This was bad enough. However, had it been all, no great mischief might have ensued. But curious stories became current presently regarding Augustine's walk and conversation. It was said that he was in the habit of holding secret colloquies for hours with the Bishop of Timbuctoo and others, notorious emissaries of Peter; that he wore hair cloth under his shirt, kept vigils and fasts, and had an oratory fitted up in his bedroom—with crucifixes and I wot not what, clean contrary to the commands of Martin. This much is certain, that he framed a callendar of his own out of some of the books from Peter's discarded library, and never wrote to his broker to buy him some shares in a railway, or to his grocer for a fresh supply of split-peas, without dating his note "Festival of Saint Balderdash," or "Eve of Saint Rowena, V. and M.," instead of specifying the day of the month, like an ordinary orthodox Christian. Then there were rumours current about private confessions, to which the young ladies, among whom Augustine (being unmarried) was always a favourite, were invited; of pilgrimages to holy wells; and of other similar junketings—which made many people look upon Augustine as no better than an innocent Peter. And they were perfectly right. He was innocent of any bad design, and I really believe as virtuous a creature as ever breathed. He was kind to the poor, and would any day have given half his stipend for their assistance and relief. But he was weak in intellect, puffed up with vanity, obstinate as a team of mules, and credulous to the last degree.

Novelties, as we all know, have a prodigious attraction for many people. In point of plain sense and doctrine, there was no manner of comparison between Martin and his son. If you wished for nothing more than devotional exercise, and an excellent sermon, you might search the world over without finding the equal of Martin. But if your tastes led you to indulge in qualified Peterisms, or to listen to revivals of antiquated notions, Augustine was your man. A great many people, and among others the Juggler, were vastly tickled by Augustine's newfangled methods. They could not enough admire his ingenuity in volunteering to fight Peter with his own weapons; and they were ready, whenever he wished it, to contribute their money towards the expenses of festivals, or anything else which Augustine might choose to recommend. Even the Juggler, though fond of his cash, gave something towards the continuance of these ceremonies—a fact which you will do well to bear in mind when you come to read some of the later passages of this history.

I am sorry, however, to say, that many of Augustine's original congregation pursued a different course. The innuendos against Martin, and the hints which they had received as to the possible comparative innocence of Peter, had taken deep root in their minds. They became, moreover, so used to a ceremonial, which differed little from that patronised by Peter, except in being less gorgeous, that they acquired a secret hankering for the entire undiluted ritual; and their nostrils thirsted for a whiff of frankincense, which even Augustine, refused to allow them. The consequence was that they began, in imitation of their pastor, to hold interviews with Peter's emissaries, who, you may suppose, were ready to meet them half-way; and from little to more, matters grew to such a head, that many of Augustine's most sincere disciples turned their back upon him, and went over bodily to Peter! This was an awful blow and discomfiture to Augustine, who certainly had meditated nothing of the sort; but it had not the effect of curing him. He still went on maundering about his Uncle Peter, as if that venerable individual had been as much sinned against as sinning; and, in spite of all that Martin could say, he would not abate one jot of his observances. Peter's emissaries, in the mean time, were as active as ferrets in a rabbit warren. They never emerged from their holes without fetching out a new victim, whom they paraded to the whole world as a pattern of docility and virtue. They wrote long letters to Peter, glorifying themselves on their success; and stating that the time had now arrived when all Bullockshatch was prepared to throw itself at his feet. But in this they reckoned entirely without their host. They took it for granted that the proceedings in Augustine's chapel were approved of by the whole tenantry on the estate; whereas the fact was, that nine out of ten of them looked to Martin as their spiritual guide and counsellor, and entertained an intense contempt for Augustine, which they only refrained from expressing in broad set terms, by reason of his relationship to their pastor. Peter, however, was very glad to receive news of this kind; and swallowed it, without making too minute an inquiry. Long experience had taught him that it was always best to assume a victory, without being particular as to the details; and, as those who were intrusted with the superintendence of Squire Bull's estate, had latterly shown themselves exceedingly amenable to his jurisdiction, and quite hostile to the pretensions of Martin, and of poor Patrick, whom he longed in the first instance to subjugate, he had some grounds for supposing that the present was by no means a bad opportunity for reviving his old claim of dominion over the whole territory of Bullockshatch. These letters from his emissaries had reached him before his interview with Mat-o'-the-Mint—a circumstance which perhaps may afford a clue to the nature of his conversation with that singularly acute individual.

After Mat-o'-the-Mint's return to Bullockshatch, Protocol found himself very much like a fish out of water. That honest gentleman laboured under a constitutional infirmity, being subject to fits of hypochondria whenever Squire Bull happened to be at peace and amity with his neighbours. At such times it was not very safe to approach him. He was sulky, petulant, and irritable; and in default of any more legitimate occupation, usually took an opportunity of picking a quarrel with some of his fellow-servants. You may therefore easily believe, that he was no great favourite in the household. Gray and others would willingly have got rid of him if they durst, but Protocol had been long in the service, and knew so many of their secret ways and doings, that he had them completely in his power. Therefore, whenever he began to exhibit any of his pestilent humours, the household would gather round him, protesting that he was the cleverest and most adroit fellow in the universe, and indeed the only man alive who could properly manage a lawsuit.

"I have said it a thousand times on my knees," quoth the Juggler on such occasions, "that our revered master, Squire Bull, never had so acute a servant as the excellent Mr Protocol. Show me the man like him for finding out points in which the honour of Bullockshatch is concerned! I declare I am as proud of him as if he were my own father."

And then they would all join in a general chorus of flattery and adulation, and request their esteemed friend and colleague, Protocol, just to step into his closet and look over the county map, lest there should be any case of a doubtful boundary which might be disputed, or at all events to write a few letters to the neighbouring squires, telling them what he, Protocol, thought of their general management. At this, Protocol would begin to look less grim, and finally retire with a wink, as much as to say—"Aha! my masters—wait here for a little, and you shall see somewhat." And in half-an-hour he would return, carrying a map all ruled over with red and blue lines, and a bundle of old surveys, from which he would pledge his credit to establish the fact in any court of Christendom, that Squire Bull had been swindled out of at least three perches of unproductive land, in a division of common lands which was made a hundred years before. The other members of the household were but too happy to see him occupied again, without caring whether he was right or wrong; and to work went Protocol, as merry as a cricket, writing letters without end, docketing notes, and making-believe as though he had the weight of the whole world on his shoulders.

You may easily conceive that this kind of conduct, though it suited the convenience of the Juggler and his friends, was exceedingly odious to the neighbouring squires, who were not allowed to eat their meals in comfort without being disturbed by Protocol. One day he sent a messenger to Esquire Strutt, as if from Squire Bull, calling his attention to certain arrangements in his household, which, he said, ought to be modified; whereupon Strutt, who was proverbially as proud as a peacock, flew into a violent passion, warned the messenger off his estate, and sent back such an answer to Protocol as made his ears tingle for a fortnight. Then, whenever any of the squires happened to have a dispute among themselves, originating from a drinking-bout or a cock-fight, Protocol would instantly write to them, tendering his good offices and mediation, which offer they, warned by experience, were usually wise enough to decline. In fact, these absurd doings of Protocol brought Squire Bull at length into such discredit with his neighbours, that there was nothing on earth which they dreaded so much as his interference.

Protocol was in one of his worst humours when Mat-o'-the-Mint returned. Everything had gone wrong with him in the south. Don Vesuvius had settled his affairs, clean contrary to the wish of Protocol. Don Ferdinando had got all he wanted, simply by acting in a manner directly opposite to his advice. Signor Tureen, whom he favoured, had been worsted in a lawsuit which he recommended, and was saddled with enormous costs. Peter, with whom he was bent on currying favour, had been kicked out of his patrimony, and Protocol had not even the dubious credit of fetching him back, that having been accomplished by young Nap. Altogether he had made a precious mess of it; and many people, both in the upper and under-servants' hall at Bullockshatch, began to insinuate that, after all, Master Protocol was no better than a bungler. All this tended to exasperate him to the utmost.

"It is a devilish hard thing," he remarked to himself one day, as he sat in the midst of his maps and correspondence—"It is a devilish hard thing that I can't find any men of talent to carry my designs into execution! There is scarcely a messenger in my whole department who can bamboozle a toll-keeper, much less throw dust in the eyes of a ground-steward. The Squire will no doubt make an hideous outcry about this unconscionable bill of expenses which Mat-o'-the-Mint has run up; and heaven only knows how far he may have compromised my credit. Catch me allowing him to go out again on any errand of the kind! Never, since I first nibbed a pen, were matters in such a mess! I really must do something for the sake of my own character. But then the puzzle is with whom to begin. I won't have anything more to do with Jonathan, that's flat. I dare not meddle further in anything which concerns Esquire North, for he is beginning to growl already, like a bear as he is, and Copenhagen is under his protection. It would be a dangerous game to have anything to say at present either to Colonel Martinet or Don Ferdinando; and, as for the South, why, I have been already checkmated there. Ha! an idea strikes me! Didn't I get several letters lately from a relation of Moses, complaining that he had suffered some damage in a street-row after dining with young Squire Otho? And, now I think of it, Squire Otho owes us some five or six pounds of interest on a bond which he granted to Bull, and he is behindhand with the arrears. And, as I live, here's another letter, which I threw aside at the time, telling me that Cheeks the marine, who is in John's pay, was taken up one night to the watch-house by a constable of Otho's, on a charge of being drunk and disorderly! Altogether, it is a capital case; and as those barges which I sent along the canal to frighten Don Vesuvius are still lying thereabouts, I'll even desire them to stop in front of Otho's house, and demand immediate satisfaction."

This Otho was a young lad, who had been put in possession of his property with the full consent and assistance of Squire Bull. It was a little, rocky, dilapidated place, with more ruins upon it than cottages, and for many years had been entirely overrun by gipsies. Long ago, before the other estates in the country were brought into proper cultivation, it was reckoned of some importance; and its proprietors were said to have held their heads as high as O'Donoghue of the Lakes, or Malachi of the golden collar. But all that was matter of tradition. It was difficult to understand why Squire Bull should have troubled himself about it, except it was for this reason, that he had taken possession of one or two small islands in a lake adjoining the property, which were well adapted for the culture of currants; and which, when he broke them up, were understood to belong to nobody. However, wishing to see the gipsies, who were a troublesome race, expelled, he agreed to settle Otho in this unprofitable estate, and lent the poor lad a trifle, just by way of keeping his head above water at starting.

The villagers—for tenantry Otho had almost none—were, on the whole, an inoffensive race. They were said to be infernal cheats and liars; but as they only lied and cheated amongst themselves, that did not much signify. They had a great respect for Bull, were very civil and obsequious to any of his people who passed that way, and would as soon have encountered a goblin in the churchyard, as have picked a quarrel with any of them. Otho was, I suppose, by much the poorest squire in all the country round. His rental, nominally small, was in reality next to nothing; and it was supposed that he had a hard struggle to make ends meet. Such was the victim whom Protocol selected, in order to enhance his individual glory and renown.

Down came the barges across the lake in front of Otho's house, each of them crammed full of watchmen, marines, and bargees, wearing Squire Bull's livery. Upon this, Otho, supposing that the visit was made in compliment to himself, and little dreaming that he had provoked the enmity of so powerful a personage as Protocol, put on his best coat and hat, and was just stepping down to the quay, when, to his amazement, a writ was served upon him at the instance of Squire Bull.

"What's this?" he said, unfolding the document,—"'Account of loss sustained by Mr Shylock, naturalised servant of Squire Bull.—Magnificent furniture, L.90, 6s. 8d. Do. China, L.49, 3s. 8-1/4d. Inestimable jewellery, L.505. Disturbance of mind, L.70, 10s. Medical attendance for subsequent dysentery, L.13, 13s.' Good heavens! is Esquire Bull mad? Shylock? Why, that's the fellow who has been bothering me for a year past about some broken crockery, and a fractured camp-stool! And what may this other paper be? 'Compensation to Mr William Cheeks, marine, for unlawful detention of his person, and injury to his character, he having been apprehended as drunk and disorderly, L.300! Why, the man was discharged next morning with a simple reprimand from the magistrate! But here's a third—'Amercement for injury done to Dimitri Palikaros, and Odysseus Cosmokapeleion, inhabitants of the currant islands, under the protection of John Bull, Esquire, they having been disturbed in their indefeasible right of sleeping in the open air, and forcibly conducted to the watch-house, L.50.' Oh, it must be a joke! Squire Bull cannot be in earnest!"

But poor Otho was very soon made to understand that it was no joke at all, but a devilish serious matter. He received a peremptory intimation from Protocol's messenger, who was on board one of the barges, that he must pay the whole of the demands made without demurring, within four-and-twenty hours, otherwise he should be under the disagreeable necessity of laying an execution on his house; and moreover, that, until this was done, all the boats at the quay would be laid under embargo. In vain did Otho remonstrate against this flagrant injustice, and offer to submit the case to any squire in Christendom. Protocol's man had special orders, and would not abate a jot. Not a soul was allowed to go out and fish on the lake, though the livelihood of many depended on it. Nay, he had the inhumanity to seize some cargoes of fresh beef, vegetables, and other perishable articles which were intended for the supply of the villagers, and to keep them rotting in the sun, until Otho should pay the whole amount of the demand.

A more flagrant case was probably never known. In all human probability, twenty shillings would have covered the whole extent of the losses sustained by Shylock; and as for Bill Cheeks, and the two other fellows with unpronounceable names, it was clear that the police magistrate had only let them off too cheap. But there was more than this. Otho was also told that the time had come for the settlement of his arrears, and that he must, moreover, cede to Squire Bull two islets, or rather rocks, in the lake, on which his fishermen were used to dry their nets, these not being expressly marked as his in a map in the possession of Protocol! You may easily conceive that the poor lad was driven to his wit's end by these tyrannical proceedings.

"I never would have believed this of Squire Bull!" cried he. "I always thought him to be a generous, frank, open-minded gentleman, with a soul above pettifogging; and one who would not be hard upon a debtor. Esquire North would not have behaved to me in this way—no, nor would any other of my neighbours. And I won't believe, even yet, that it is the wish of the Squire to deal so hardly with a poor lad, who has not had time to set himself right with the world. It must be Protocol's, doing; though why he should use me so, since I never gave him any offence that I know of, passes my understanding. However, I'll write to the Baboonery, and learn what young Nap thinks of the matter."

He could not have done a wiser thing. Nap thought, as every one else did, that the proceedings of Protocol were not only shabby and un-neighbour-like, but clearly Jewish and unprincipled. Accordingly, he took up the cudgels for Otho, declaring that he could not see a poor young fellow, who was rather out at the elbows, though from no fault of his, treated in this abominable fashion; and the clerk to whom he gave the charge of the correspondence, being a plain, straightforward, knock-me-down sort of character, who had no patience for diplomatic palaver, very soon convinced Protocol that he was like to have the worst of it. After a good deal of correspondence, conducted in a way which was the reverse of creditable to Squire Bull's establishment, a compromise was effected; and Protocol seemed to think that he had at last achieved a triumph. But the contrary was the case: for the people of Bullockshatch, and the Squire himself, were mightily ashamed of the use which had been made of his name in this disreputable transaction. The upper servants, at a general meeting, voted it a dirty and undignified transaction, and declared that they washed their hands, henceforward, of all participation in the tricks and pantalooneries of Protocol. This necessitated a call of the under-servants; when the Juggler arose, and with real tears in his eyes, (for his wages depended upon the issue of the vote,) declared that he believed from the bottom of his heart, that a nobler or more disinterested individual than his honourable friend Protocol never broke bread, &c. &c., and that he, the Juggler, was ready to lay down the last drop of his blood for the honour of Esquire Bull, &c.;—a sacrifice which was the more creditable, as nobody thought of demanding it. By dint of promise of advancement in the household, he persuaded divers of the servants, especially one Caustic, to speak strongly in favour of Protocol; but the odds are, that he never would have carried the vote but for the dexterity of Protocol himself. That veteran sinner was worth, in point of ability, the whole of his colleagues put together. He had a tongue that could wile a bird off a tree; and the most extraordinary thing about him, next to his fondness for getting into scrapes, was the facility with which he got out of them. He favoured his audience with a sketch of the services which he had rendered to Squire Bull, showing that in everything he had done, he had the honour of Bullockshatch at heart; and by cantering over some portions of his story where the ground was rather dubious, sliding over others, and making a prodigious prancing where his footing was tolerably firm, he managed to persuade the majority of the servants that he really was a well-meaning individual, and that they were bound at all events to overlook this last escapade about Otho, which no one who had an atom of conscience could pretend absolutely to justify.

Protocol was in high feather in consequence of this whitewashing; the more so, that at one time it appeared very doubtful if even the under servants could be induced to support him. He and some of his chums had a dinner and drink afterwards at a servants' club to which they belonged, where Proto. made another speech, boasting that so long as he lived, no man born on Squire Bull's estate should be insulted by any neighbouring proprietor, or be laid in the stocks, or be hustled in a village, without receiving ample damages. All this sounded very well, though it certainly looked like holding out a premium to poaching; but it so happened, that a short time afterwards an old gentleman of the name of Marshall, who was in Don Ferdinando's service, and who had been mainly instrumental in reinstating him in his house, after it was broken into by the rabble as I have already told you, came over to Bullockshatch on a holiday jaunt. Marshall's policy through life had always been to return a buffet for a blow; and, as the fellows who created the uproar on Ferdinando's estate were no more to be reasoned with than so many wild Indians, whom indeed they resembled in their devilish practices of stabbing, tomahawking, ravishing, and roasting alive, he was by no means scrupulous in his method of putting them down. Some of the insurgents, who had fled to Bullockshatch, had succeeded, by dint of unmitigated lying, in getting up a strong feeling among the villagers against Marshall, whom they represented as a man-eating tiger, with so debauched a digestion, that he could not sleep at night unless he had previously supped upon a child. The people of Bullockshatch were exceedingly credulous upon such points, for it is on record that about a hundred years before, when poor Donald, as kindly a creature as ever fasted on oatmeal, came down from the hills, the children were sent into the coal-cellar, lest haply the sight of a plump one might whet his uncivilised appetite. Be that as it may, a general impression had gone abroad that Marshall was no better than a cannibal; and during the short while he remained in Bullockshatch, not a nursery-maid was allowed to take the usual airing in the streets.

But he did not remain long. Spies were set upon him; and one day when he took a fancy to look into a brewery, just by way of seeing how the beer was made, he was assailed by a whole gang of ragamuffins, who cursed, kicked, cuffed, and spat upon him, tore off his moustaches, damned him for a persecuting foreigneering scoundrel, and would probably have murdered him, had he not, by great good luck, escaped into a pot-house hard by. Even then he was hardly safe, for the mob tried to gut the premises. You may be sure that, after experiencing this treatment, Marshall did not remain long in Bullockshatch; in fact, he took himself off next morning, protesting that he would rather sojourn among the Hottentots, than be exposed to such treatment at the hands of a civilised community. So far as he was concerned, he wished to take no farther notice of the matter; but the household of Don Ferdinando, considering this a direct insult to themselves and their master, desired the head-steward to write to Protocol, demanding immediate satisfaction. This was an awkward thrust; for, if Protocol was entitled to insist on compensation from Otho, for the injuries done by his people to Bill Cheeks, Shylock, and Cosmokapeleion, it was evident that, on the same principle, Ferdinando's steward had a right to sue Squire Bull for the injury and damages inflicted upon Marshall. Proto., however, refused pointblank to give any satisfaction, or to do anything at all in the matter; whereupon Ferdinando's steward gave him due notice, that in all time coming he should consider himself and his master relieved from all responsibility, if any of Squire Bull's people should happen to be tarred and feathered when straying beyond bounds. What was even more unpleasant, Esquire North sent him notice to the same effect; and North was not a man likely to be worse than his word.

I have thought it right to tell ye these things just now, in order that you may understand Protocol's usual method of doing business. I must now relate to you a circumstance which threw the whole of Bullockshatch into a most awful quandary.

One morning after breakfast, Squire Bull, who was then mightily taken up with a glass warehouse, which some people had persuaded him to erect in his park, for the purpose of showing off his neighbours' wares in opposition to his own, called as usual for his newspaper.

"I half begin to think," quoth he, settling himself in his easy chair, and airing the broadsheet at the fire, "that I have been bubbled in this matter. What good this puffing and vaunting of other folk's commodities is to do to my villagers, I do not exactly see; and, as for the tenantry, they appear to be against it to a man. Besides, I have a strong suspicion that in the long run I shall have to pay the piper. However, let us see if anything is stirring abroad.—Eh! what's this? A letter from that miscreant Peter! Am I in my right senses?"

And, sure enough, in the most conspicuous part of the newspaper there appeared the following document:—

Language is inadequate to express the paroxysm of wrath into which Squire Bull was thrown by the perusal of this insolent document! He foamed at the mouth, kicked over the breakfast table, dashed the newspaper on the carpet, and tore down the bell-rope.

"He the Lord Paramount of Bullockshatch, the lying old villain that he is! He pretend to jurisdiction within my estate! But I'll trounce him! Ho, there! Who's without? Fetch me here the Juggler instantly! Body of me, that it should ever have come to this! These are the thanks I get from the ungrateful old he-goat for having taken some of his people into my service, and persuaded my tenantry, sorely against their will, to make an annual allowance for that school of his, which is no better than a nest of Jesuits! If I don't make the viper feel—So, so! Master Juggler, you are there, are you? Things have come to a pretty pass, when I can't take up a newspaper, without finding myself openly insulted, and my rights of property denied!"

Now, be it known to you that the Juggler was anything but comfortable in his mind. He was fully conscious that he had been imposed on by Peter; and, further, that he and his associates had done everything in their power to back up Peter's pretensions. This they did less out of hatred to Martin (though they bore him no great love) than from a desire to ingratiate themselves with some of the under servants who came from the farm over the pond, and were known adherents of Peter. But from one thing to another, they had gone so far, as we have already seen, relaxing and abolishing all the old regulations of the estate against the interference of Peter, that it really seemed as though he had only to step in and take possession. Further, the Juggler was somewhat at a loss to know how he could satisfactorily explain the nature of the mission upon which his relative, Mat-o'-the-Mint, had been despatched; besides some other little circumstances which looked confoundedly suspicious. For example, about a year before, one Dicky Squeal, a notorious Peterite, had been detected tampering with the dies from which Squire Bull's tokens were struck, and cutting out certain letters which were understood to signify that Mr Bull held possession of his estate altogether independent of Peter. Instead of punishing him for this, the Juggler had just announced his intention of sending Dicky Squeal on a second mission to Signor Macaroni's estate, where he might be within earshot of Peter. Altogether, it is no wonder if the Juggler felt the reverse of happy when summoned to appear before his master. However, he was resolved to brazen it out as he best could.

"Insulted, did you say, sir; and your rights of property denied? The thing is clean impossible! Nobody dares insult my noble master—the most excellent, kind, hospitable, beneficent landlord that ever kept open house! O sir, if you but knew the depth of my affection—the almost overwhelming load, as I may say, of love and regard—"

"Come, come, Master Juggler! quoth the Squire sharply, "I've heard all that palaver before, and mayhap once too often. You ask who has insulted me—I'll tell you in four words—that unmitigated rascal, Peter!

"Peter! alackaday!" replied the Juggler, with an affected whine of consternation. "Is it possible that he can have been left so far to his own devices! Surely, surely, my dear master, there must be some mistake in this."

"No mistake at all!" roared the Squire; "and, what is more, there shall be no mistake about it. Look here—" continued he, pointing out the paragraph. "Have you read that?"

The Juggler had done so, every word of it, that blessed morning; but as he wished to gain time, he adjusted his glasses, and began to con it over with an appearance of intense interest. Meanwhile the Squire occupied himself in tying knots on a new lash for his hunting-whip.

"Well, what do you say to that now?" quoth he, when the Juggler had concluded the perusal.

"I think—that is—I am strongly of opinion," faltered the other, "that the whole thing is a mere misconception."

"A what?" roared the Squire.

"A misconception," quavered the Juggler. "As I read this document, which I confess is not so well worded as it might have been, I conclude that Peter merely wishes to provide for the spiritual wants of his own people, not that he in the least degree intends to question your lawful authority. And further—"

"Hark-ye!" interrupted the Squire, his eye kindling like a coal, "I am not going to stand any of your nonsense. I, John Bull, stand here as the sole proprietor of Bullockshatch, and no man alive shall presume to question my title with impunity. Look to it, Master Juggler, for I know you better than you think. I may be at times too easy and careless, but I have an eye in my head notwithstanding, and I know what your friends Gray and Claretson have been doing. Mind this—you as head-steward are responsible to me, and if I find you playing false in this matter, by the Lord Harry you shall answer for it!"

"Me!" cried the Juggler, in the shrill tones of injured innocence. "How could such an idea enter into your blessed brain? I protest that never man served master with more entire devotion. May my next tragedy be worse than my first, if it does not bring tears into my eyes, to hear you talking in this way of your affectionate Juggling Johnny!" Here he went through a little bit of pantomime similar to that performed by Mr T. P. Cooke when bidding farewell to Shewsan, immediately before his execution. "As for Gray and Claretson, or any other of them, if they have been doing anything contrary to the rules of the household, it is wholly unbeknownst to me. O! if your honour only knew the trouble they give me sometimes, and the watch I am obliged to keep over them to see that they do their duty! I really think that the labour is telling upon my precious health. If it be your pleasure that they should be packed about their business, I'll do it—only don't break my heart by doubting my devotion in your service."

"Well, well!" quoth the Squire, who was always easily mollified, "let's say no more about that at present. The main thing is to put down that insolent varlet, Peter. And, as you say you are determined to uphold my authority, it will be just as well that you should tell that to the household. So just step into my closet—you will find paper and ink on the table—and write me a handsome letter to Martin, expressive of your indignation at Peter, and your determination to give him a ribroasting at the earliest opportunity."

At this the Juggler hemmed and coughed, said something about a whitlow in his finger, and would fain have postponed writing for the present. But the Squire was peremptory, and would listen to no excuse; so nolens volens, Johnny was obliged to walk into the closet and do his master's bidding.

Having secured the door, he first of all took out of his waistcoat pocket a thimble and peas, and began trying to cheat himself, as was his wont whenever he found himself in a scrape. After his ideas were clarified by that ingenious process, he broke out into the following soliloquy:—

"Am I done for, or am I not? Gadzooks! I must say that it looks extremely like it. That old blockhead Bull is in a thorough passion, and I need never expect to talk him round. What an ass that fellow Peter is! If he had only waited a little, we could have managed the whole matter quite easily, but now he has put his foot in it, and must even take the consequences. But how am I to manage with Gray and Claretson? They are both committed as deeply as can be to Peter, and I suspect that he can prove it by their own letters. I wonder if I could persuade them to quit the Squire's service without making any noise about it! No—that they won't do; and the mischief is that they know a thing or two more than is convenient. Then what am I to write to that old pantaloon Martin, whom I have not spoken to for many a day? If I commit myself against Peter, Gray and Claretson will be down upon me to a dead certainty, and I shall have to account for all Mat-o'-the Mint's blunders, which would puzzle any conjurer living. If I don't, the whole household will suppose that I have been in regular league with Peter, and then I lose my place. They suspect me already; for no later than yesterday that stupid errand-boy of mine, Hips, came down with a tester towards buying a new hat for Hippopotamus; and, to say the truth, I have a letter from that same individual at this moment in my pocket. Couldn't I manage to temporise about Peter, and throw the blame on somebody else? Not a bad idea! There's that noodle Augustine with a back providentially fitted for the burden! If I can make him the scapegoat, I may still contrive to throw dust in the eyes of the Squire!"

So saying, Johnny pocketed his thimble and peas, and straightway indited this doughty epistle to Martin.

"If that letter does not succeed," quoth the Juggler after he had read it over for the second time, "I surrender all faith in human gullibility. It shall appear to-morrow morning in the newspapers; and as to what may follow after, why—we shall just leave that to the chapter of accidents."

Next morning, the letter appeared in print, and was circulated all over Bullockshatch. You have no idea what a commotion it created. Some people who knew the Juggler well from old experience, pronounced it at once to be a mere tub thrown out to catch a whale, and argued that in reality it meant nothing. But others, who detested Peter from the bottom of their hearts, and yet felt a sort of sneaking kindness for the Juggler, were loud in their commendation and praise of his spirited, straightforward conduct; and declared their firm conviction that he would go on, and give Peter such a trouncing for his insolence, as he had not received for many a day. Those who were of the Gray and Claretson faction, looked exceedingly glum; swore that they had always considered the Juggler as little better than a time-serving fellow; and that, notwithstanding his braggadocio, he durst not take a single step against Peter. "If we are in for it," said they, "so is he. Let him clear up those doings of Mat-o'-the-Mint as he best can." Peter's friends, of course, were furious; at least the majority of them, who did not comprehend the truth of the axiom, that the main use of language is to conceal ideas. Others, who were more learned in Jesuitry, winked and hinted at a dispensation.

But the man, of all others, who was the most astounded—and no wonder—was poor Augustine. You must know that, for several years, the Juggler had been on extremely cool terms with Dr Martin, and seldom, if ever, set foot within his church. But, as it had always been considered a point of etiquette that the Squire's head-steward should attend some place of worship, the Juggler, who could do nothing like other people, compromised the matter by joining two congregations at once. Of a Sunday forenoon he was a regular attendant on the ministrations of Augustine; in the afternoon, he went to a meeting-house where the minister was a relative of Jack's. He had helped Augustine to set up his nick-nackeries; assisted at the most suspicious of his ceremonies; and never made the slightest objection to the practices, which he now thought fit to denounce to Martin! Augustine, at the first sight of the letter, doubted the evidence of his eyesight.

"Bones of Saint Thomas-à-Beckett!" said he, "is it possible that he can have written this? Supposing that I was to blame—which I am not—is it for him to turn against me at the last hour, after all that he has said and done, and throw the whole blame of Peter's delinquencies at my door? But I won't stand it—that's flat. I'll write him a tickler that shall touch him to the quick, if he has any spark of conscience remaining; and, now that I think on't, I'll just step over to the vestry, where I shall be less disturbed."

I don't know what kind of disturbance Augustine contemplated at home, but it must have been slight indeed compared with that which he was doomed to meet at the chapel. All the ragamuffins in the neighbourhood, who took their cue from the Juggler, were congregated around the door; and no sooner did Augustine appear, than he was saluted with yells of "No candles! no sham Peters! down with the humbug!" and so forth; so that the poor gentleman had much difficulty in elbowing his way to the vestry, where he locked himself in, not altogether, as you may easily believe, in a comfortable frame of mind. When he attempted to perform service, matters grew worse and worse. There was shouting, braying, and hissing, both inside and outside the door, so that a large posse of constables was required to keep the mob in order; and, at last, the chapel was shut up.

Augustine, however, wrote his letter, which was a stinger, though rather too long, and published it. It is just possible that he may have received an answer; but if so, I have not seen it, nor can I therefore undertake to clear up the mystery which envelopes this remarkable episode. This much is certain, that if Augustine's statement was true, the Juggler gave ample proof, if proof was necessary, that he was still eminently qualified to exhibit feats of dexterity at any booth in Bartholomew Fair, and could turn his back upon himself with any man in the kingdom.

It is my opinion that the Juggler, after having written his famous letter to Martin, would very willingly have held his tongue, until he was compelled to address the household. But it is not easy, when a fire is once kindled, to put it out. Not that the kindling was the work of Johnny, for Peter's insolent proclamation was of itself enough to raise a conflagration in Bullockshatch; but now that the head-steward had declared himself—or was supposed to have done so—it was necessary that he should go through with it. It so happened, that a day or two afterwards he was engaged, along with others of the Squire's servants, to eat custard with one of the village magistrates; and the good man, in proposing his health, could not help alluding to the very noble, magnificent, and satisfactory letter which had been written by the honourable head-steward on the subject of Peter's unwarrantable attack on the liberties of the Squire. At this the whole company rose and cheered, so that the Juggler could not very well forbear touching on the topic, though he handled it with as much caution as he would have used towards a heated poker. He talked about his determination to uphold the just rights of Esquire Bull, and so forth; but what those rights were, he did not specify, neither did he drop any hint as to the nature of the steps which he proposed to adopt. But you may conceive his disgust, when he heard two of the servants whom he had brought along with him, fall foul of Peter in the most unqualified terms! The first of these, one Kewpaw, so named after his habitual pronunciation of his birthplace in the North farm, had the exquisite taste to say that he, being a Justice of the Peace, would be but too happy and proud to preside at the trial either of Peter, or of his delegate Hippopotamus, for the insult offered to Squire Bull, and would give them a practical insight into the nature of a mittimus; while the other, who had been wild in his youth, but now sat at the head of the upper servants' table, declared his intention of dancing a fandango on the hat of Hippopotamus on the first convenient opportunity. These dignified speeches were of course enthusiastically cheered, though they were as bitter as wormwood to the Juggler, who felt himself every hour more and more compromised before he had made up his mind to any definite course of action.

Meanwhile Martin, who knew from old experience how little dependence could be placed in the Juggler at any time, bestirred himself to take the sense of the people of Bullockshatch as to Peter's arrogant pretensions. He was fully conscious that a general demonstration on their part would not only be highly gratifying to the Squire, but extremely useful in influencing the views of the servants. Meetings were accordingly held in every corner of the estate, at which both tenantry and villagers signified their readiness to stand by Squire Bull to the last, and voted him addresses to that effect. It was true that Obadiah, though he durst not declare openly for Peter, took every occasion of carping at the proceedings of Martin—insinuating, in his sneaking way, that this access of zeal might be traced to a wholesome regard to the maintenance of his tithes, "wherein," quoth Obadiah, "I, though a humble labourer in the vineyard, have neither part nor portion." But Martin, who knew the man, and valued his remarks accordingly, proceeded in the performance of his duty; being well aware that even an angel of light would have been subjected to the malignant criticisms of Obadiah.

A day was presently fixed when Squire Bull was to receive the addresses of the tenantry at the manor-house. Nobody doubted that the answers would have been bluff, hearty, and decided, as was the Squire's usual manner; and that Peter would receive more than a hint of the probable reward of his impertinence. And, most assuredly, had the matter depended alone upon the disposition of the Squire, they would have been abundantly gratified. But there was an old rule of the estate, that, on such occasions, the answer to the addresses should be written by the head-steward, not by the Squire, who was seldom allowed to look at the paper before he was required to read it. When the day came, there was an immense concourse of deputations, from all parts of the estate, gathered in the lobbies, and each was successively ushered into the drawing-room, where the Squire was seated, with the Juggler standing at his elbow. When the first address was finished, the Juggler slipped a sheet of paper into the hand of the Squire, who forthwith began to read it as follows:—

"Gentlemen, I feel very much obliged to you for the trouble you have taken in this matter, which, let me observe, is personal to myself. You may rely upon it, I can maintain my own position, and will try to do so, provided that position is tenable. I am resolved to maintain Martin in his rights whenever these rights are ascertained; and to do to Peter exactly what shall seem most proper under the present perplexing circumstances. In the mean time, you had better return to your families, and look after their education; and I have the honour to wish you a good morning."

This, with a little variation, was the answer given to all the addresses; and I wish you had seen the faces of the deputations when they found themselves thus soused over, as it were, with a bucket of cold water! The most extraordinary circumstance of all was, that the Juggler seemed to think that he had done a very clever thing, and produced a masterpiece; for he stood the whole while the answer was being read with his finger at his mouth, and a leer upon his face, prying into the countenances of the honest people, like a magpie scrutinising a marrow-bone. This was all the satisfaction which the men of Bullockshatch received at that time in return for their trouble; and had they not known perfectly well who was at the bottom of the answers, it is highly probable that few more addresses would have found their way to the mansion-house. Indeed, many folks are of opinion that the Juggler would have liked nothing better than a total stoppage of these addresses, and that the answers were purposely framed to put an end to them. In the midst of all this commotion, who should appear in Bullockshatch but our old friend Hippopotamus, whom Peter had appointed arch-superintendent of Smithfield. Little he cared for the Squire, or for any one else in the world, except his master Peter; and as to the Juggler, he considered that he had him entirely under his thumb, on account of certain transactions which had previously taken place between them. So he too set himself down to write and publish a letter, which was exceedingly humble and vain-glorious, (the two qualities being more nearly allied than many people suppose,) but withal sarcastical; and you may be sure that he did not spare either the Juggler or Mat-o'-the-Mint, whom he flatly accused of being privy to the designs of Peter. By this time a perfect mania for writing letters had seized the whole population of Bullockshatch. The newspapers contained nothing else but long columns of epistles; and even Mat-o'-the-Mint could not resist trying his hand at composition. It seems that some gentleman had thought it worth his while to inquire whether there was really any truth in the reports which were currently circulated, and Matthew replied as follows:—

And this was absolutely published in the papers as an entire vindication of Matthew!

Hippopotamus, however, did not care a rush either for addresses or epistles. He was perfectly convinced in his mind that so long as the Squire's household remained without change, he had nothing earthly to fear; and, accordingly, he snapped his fingers and laughed at the whole opposition. He had brought over with him from foreign parts such a collection of tapestry, brocades, images, pyxes, censers, and gilded sheep-hooks, as utterly eclipsed the glory of poor Augustine's paraphernalia, and these he took occasion to display with all the pride and satisfaction possible. Then he issued addresses to the people of Bullockshatch, congratulating them on their emancipation from the thraldom of Martin, and comparing them to a brood of goslings shadowed by the infallible pinions of Peter. He kept altogether out of sight hair-shirts, flagellations, incremations, holocausts, and such other spiritual stimulants; but promised them any amount of pardons, indulgences, and whitewashing. Some of his friends and followers went even further. Among these was a certain Father Ignition, who had taken a fancy to dress himself in serge with a rope round his waist, and to walk barefooted about the streets. This cleanly creature devised and promulgated a plan, by means of which he engaged, under the penalty of washing himself in the case of failure, to bring round every mother's son in Bullockshatch to Peter's fold and obedience. He proposed that a stout strapping country wench, of approved principles, from the farm on the other side of the pond, should be smuggled into each family on the Squire's estate, as laundry maid, scullion, or to take charge of the nursery. These hussies were to act as general spies, reporting all that passed in the household to him, Father Ignition; and were, moreover, to pervert the children, conveying them secretly to Peter's schools, and stuffing them with Roman toffy; and to get as intimate as possible with the young gentlemen, especially such as might have been inclined to Augustine's persuasion. In this way, the morality of which he held to be unquestionable, Father Ignition volunteered to raise a large crop of converts, to be ready, like asparagus, in the spring.

In this position stood matters in Bullockshatch towards the expiry of the holidays, during which no business was ever transacted in the household. You shall learn anon what took place after the servants were re-assembled; and I promise you, that you will hear something fit to make your hair stand on end. But these things are too important to be narrated at the end of a chapter.

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One of the greatest enjoyments which are likely to fall to the lot of a man in middle life, is to spend a week or so with the old school-and-college companion whom he has not seen since the graver page of life has turned over for both parties. It is as unlike any ordinary visit-making as possible. It is one of the very few instances in which the complimentary dialogue between the guest and his entertainer comes to have a real force and meaning. One has to unlearn, for this special occasion, the art so necessary in ordinary society, of interpreting terms by their contraries. And in fact it is difficult, at first, for one who has been used for some years to a social atmosphere, whose warmth is mainly artificial, to breathe freely in the natural sunshine of an old friend's company; just as a native Londoner is said sometimes to pine away, when removed into the fresh air of the country. We are so used to consider the shake of the hand, and the "Very glad to see you," of the hundred and one people who ask us to dinner, as merely a polite and poetical form of expressing, "You certainly are a bore; but as you are here, I must make the best of you"—that it costs us an effort to comprehend that "How are you, old fellow?" does, in the present case, imply a bonâ fide hope that we are as sound in health and heart, if not as young, as formerly. And especially when a man's pursuits have led him a good deal into the world, and many of his warmer feelings have been, insensibly perhaps, chilled by the contact, the heartiness of his reception by some old college friend who has led a simple life, the squire of his paternal acres, or the occupant of a country parsonage, and has gained and lost less by the polishing process of society, will come upon him with a strangeness almost reproachful. But once fairly fixed within the hospitable walls, the natural tone is recognised, and proves contagious; the formal incrustations of years melt in the first hour of after-dinner chat, and the heart is opened to feelings and language which it had persuaded itself were long forgotten. And when the end of your three weeks' holiday arrives at last, which you cannot persuade yourself has been more than three days, (though you seem to have lived over again the best half of your life in the time,) you have so far forgotten the conventional rules of good-breeding, that when your friend says to you on the last evening, "Must you really go? Can't you stay till Monday?" you actually take him at his word, and begin to cast about in your mind for some possible excuse for stealing another couple of days or so, though you have heard the same expression from the master of every house where you have happened to visit, and never dreamt of understanding it in any other than its civilised (i. e., non-natural) sense—as a hint to fix a day for going, and stick to it, that your entertainer may "know the worst."

I was heartily glad, therefore, when at last I found that there was nothing to prevent me from paying a visit (long promised, and long looked forward to, but against which, I began to think, gods and men had conspired) to my old and true friend Lumley. I dare say he has a Christian name; indeed, I have no reason to doubt it, and, on the strength of an initial not very decipherable, prefixed to the L in his signature, I have never hesitated to address him, "J. Lumley, Esq.;" but I know him as Long Lumley, and so does every man who, like myself, remembers him at Oxford; and as Long Lumley do all his cotemporaries know him best, and esteem him accordingly; and he must excuse me if I immortalise him to the public, in spite of godfathers and godmothers, by that more familiar appellation. A cousin was with him at college, a miserable, sneaking fellow, who was known as "Little Lumley;" and if, as I suspect, they were both Johns or Jameses, it is quite desirable to distinguish them unmistakably; for though the other has the best shooting in the country, I would not be suspected of spending even the first week of September inside such a fellow's gates.

But Long Lumley was and is of a very different stamp; six feet three, and every inch a gentleman. I wish he was not, of late years, quite so fond of farming: a man who can shoot, ride, and translate an ode of Horace as he can, ought to have a soul above turnips. It is almost the only point on which we are diametrically opposed in tastes and habits. We nearly fell out about it the very first morning after my arrival.

Breakfast was over—a somewhat late one in honour of the supposed fatigues of yesterday's journey, and it became necessary to arrange proceedings for the day. What a false politeness it is, which makes a host responsible for his guests' amusement! and how often, in consequence, are they compelled to do, with grimaces of forced satisfaction, the very thing they would not! However, Lumley and myself were too old friends to have any scruples of delicacy on that point. I had been eyeing him for some minutes while he was fastening on a pair of formidable high-lows, and was not taken by surprise when the proposal came out, "Now, old fellow, will you come and have a look at my farm?"

"Can't I see it from the window?"

"Stuff! come, I must show you my sheep: I assure you they are considered about the best in this neighbourhood."

"Well, then, I'll taste the mutton any day you like, and give you my honest opinion."

"Don't be an ass now, but get your hat and come along; it's going to be a lovely day; and we'll just take a turn over the farm—there's a new thrashing machine I want to show you, too, and then back here to lunch."

"Seriously then, Lumley, I won't do anything of the kind. I do you the justice to believe, that you asked me here to enjoy myself; and that I am quite ready to do in any fairly rational manner; and I flatter myself I am in nowise particular; but as to going bogging myself among turnips, or staring into the faces and poking the ribs of short-horns and south-downs—why, as an old friend, you'll excuse me."

"Hem! there's no accounting for tastes," said Lumley, in a half-disappointed tone.

"No," said I, "there certainly is not."

"Well, then," said he—he never lost his good humour—"what shall we do? I'll tell you—you remember Harry Bolton? rather your junior, but you must have known him well, because he was quite in our set from the first—to be sure, didn't you spill him out of a tandem at Abingdon corner? Well, he is living now about nine miles from here, and we'll drive over and see him. I meant to write to ask him to dine here, and this will save the trouble."

"With all my heart," said I; "I never saw him since I left Oxford. I fancied I heard of his getting into some mess—involved in some way, was he not?"

"Not involved exactly; but he certainly did make himself scarce from a very nice house and curacy which he had when he first left Oxford, and buried himself alive for I don't know how long, and all for the very queerest reason, or rather without any reason at all. Did you never hear of it?"

"No; only some vague rumour, as I said just now."

"You never heard, then, how he came into this neighbourhood? Have the dog-cart round in ten minutes, Sam, and we dine at seven. Now, get yourself in marching order, and I'll tell you the whole story as we go along."

He did so, but it was so interrupted by continual expostulations with his horse, and remarks upon the country through which we were driving, that it will be at least as intelligible if I tell it in my own words; especially as I had many of the most graphic passages from Bolton's own lips afterwards.

It was before he left Oxford, I think, that Bolton lost his father, and was thrown pretty much upon his own resources. A physician with a large family, however good his practice, seldom leaves much behind him; and poor Harry found himself, after spending a handsome allowance and something more, left to begin life on his own account, with a degree, a good many bills, and a few hundreds, quite insufficient to pay them. However, he was not the sort of man to look upon the dark side of things; and no heir, long expectant, and just stepping into his thousands per annum, carried away from the university a lighter heart and a merrier face than Harry Bolton. He got ordained in due course; and though not exactly the material out of which one would prefer to cut a country curate, still he threw off, with his sporting coats and many-coloured waistcoats, most of the habits thereto belonging, and less suited to his profession. To live upon a curate's stipend he found more difficult; and being a fair scholar, and having plenty of friends and connections, he announced his intention of "driving," as he called it, a pair of pupils, whom he might train up in so much Latin and Greek, and other elements of general knowledge, (including, perhaps, a little shooting and gig-driving,) as they might require for their matriculations. The desired youths were soon found; and Harry entered upon this new employment with considerable ardour, and a very honest intention of doing his best. How the Latin and Greek prospered is a point in some degree obscure to present historians; but all the pupils were unanimous in declaring the wine to be unexceptionable, and their preceptor's dogs and shooting first-rate; in fact, he sustained, with them, as with the public generally, the reputation of being one of the heartiest and best fellows in the world. From the poorest among his parishioners, to whom he was charitable above his means, but who felt almost more than his gifts the manner of his giving, to the squire ten miles off, who met his pleasant face and smile once a-year at a dinner party, all spoke well of Harry Bolton. No wonder that his pupils looked upon him as the very paragon of tutors, and found their path of learning strewed with unexpected flowers. How many scholars he made is still unknown; but he made many friends: with the uncalculating gratitude of youth, all remembered the pleasant companion when they might have forgotten the hard-working instructor: and frequent were the tokens of such remembrance, varying with the tastes of the senders, which reached the little parsonage by the Oxford coach, from those who successively assumed the toga virilis, and became (university) men. Collars of brawn and cases of claret were indeed but perishable memorials; but there came also whips extravagantly mounted, and tomes of orthodox divinity in the soberest bindings, all bearing inscriptions more or less classical, from his "quondam alumni." The first named delicacies were duly passed on, with Harry's compliments, to grace more fittingly the tables of some of his hospitable entertainers; and, in an equally unselfish spirit, he seldom sat down alone to any of his literary dainties, but kept them in honourable state on his most conspicuous bookshelf, for the use and behoof of any friend who might wish to enjoy them.

But here I am anticipating. For some time the pupilising went on pretty smoothly. Two or three couple of youths were fairly launched upon the university, and nothing particularly untoward had occurred to ruffle the curate's good-humour or injure his reputation. There had been no attempt at elopement with the cook or housemaid—(Bolton's precaution had secured ugly ones;) no poaching on Sir Thomas's favourite preserve, though close at hand, and sportsmen of eighteen are not overnice in their distinctions: a tall Irishman had been with him, summer vacations and all, for nearly two years, and had not made love to either of the squire's undeniably pretty daughters. In short, the pupils were less of a bore than Harry had supposed it possible, and, in some cases, very agreeable companions to enliven the occasional dulness of a country parish.

But somehow or other, in one chief point which he had aimed at, he found himself disappointed. In counting so many additional hundreds to his scanty income, Harry Bolton had fancied he was going to make himself a rich man. He was not avaricious, or even selfish—far from it; but he wanted to be independent; there were visions, perhaps, flitting indistinctly before him, of a time when he might tire of a solitary home, and resign into some fair and gentle hand the reins of the liberty he was so fond of boasting as a bachelor. He did not grudge his time or labour; he had cast off much of his old habit of idleness, and took a real interest in his pupils; still he had expected some of the results to himself would take the tangible shape of pounds shillings and pence. But though the cheques came duly in at midsummer and Christmas, the balance at his banker's increased but very slowly; in short, he found that the additional expenses, necessary and unnecessary, entailed upon him by the change in his establishment, nearly counterbalanced the additional income. Not to speak of such ordinary matters as butchers' and bakers' and wine-merchants' bills—for his table was always most liberal, now that he had to entertain others, as it had been simple and economical while alone—indeed the hospitality of the neighbourhood had then made his housekeeping almost a sinecure; but independently of this, Harry had been led to extend his expenses—he said unavoidably—in other directions. A rough pony had hitherto contented him to gallop into the neighbouring town for letters, and to carry him and his valise to the dinner-parties even of his most aristocratic entertainers. But now, inasmuch as sometimes an hospitable invitation extended itself to "the young men," he had felt in duty bound, for his and their joint accommodation, to replace the pony by a showy-looking mare, and to invest the legal sum of nineteen pounds nineteen shillings and sixpence in the purchase of a dog-cart. As an almost necessary consequence, the boy "Jim" gave way to a grown-up groom, who did, rather less work for considerably more wages, hissing and whistling over the said mare and dog-cart in the most knowing manner, and condescending, though with some scruples of conscience, to clean boots and knives. Harry's reminiscences of his more sporting days were yet fresh enough for him to make a point of seeing his turn-out "look as it ought to do." Jim and the pony, and all their accoutrements, were rough, and useful, and cheap, and made no pretensions to be otherwise. Now, things were changed, and saddlery and harness of the best (there was no economy, as Harry observed, in buying a poor article) found their place among the bills at Christmas. In short, he was led into a maze of new wants, individually trifling, but collectively sufficient to tell upon his yearly expenditure; and he was beginning gravely to attempt to solve that universal problem—the asses' bridge, which the wisest domestic economists stick fast at year after year—"where the deuce all the money goes to?"—when circumstances occurred which put all such useless inquiries out of his head, and indeed put his debtor and creditor transactions on a much more primitive footing.

In the final settlement of the accounts of one of his pupils, who was leaving him for the university, some misunderstanding arose between himself and the father. The sum in question was but a few pounds; but the objection was put forward in a manner which Bolton considered as reflecting upon his own straightforward and liberal dealing; and it so happened that the young man had, from circumstances, been indebted in an unusual degree to his kindness. He therefore, I have no doubt, took the matter up warmly; for those who remember him as I do, can well imagine how his blood would boil at anything he considered mean or unhandsome. It ended in his insisting on the whole amount—a hundred or so—respecting which the difference had arisen, being paid in to the treasurer of the county hospital instead of to himself; and he vowed silently, but determinedly, to renounce pupilising thenceforth for ever. In vain did some of his best friends persuade him to change his resolution; he kept two who were with him at the time for a few months, when they also were to enter college; but he steadily refused any other offers: he sold off at once all his superfluous luxuries, and, as soon as practicable, gave up his curacy, and quitted the neighbourhood, to the general regret of all who knew him, and to the astonishment of all but the very few who were in the secret.

When Bolton's friends next heard of him, he was living in a remote district of H—— shire, on an income necessarily very small; for it could have been scarcely more than the proceeds of his curacy; and curacies in that part of the country were then but a wretched provision for any man—especially for one accustomed as he had been to good living and good society. However, he was not much troubled with the latter in his present position; not to speak of the fact that his nearest conversible neighbour lived seven miles off. Wherever parsons are mostly poor, and many of them ill-educated, they are not thought much of, either by farmers or gentlemen. And as it did not suit Harry's tastes to enjoy his pipe and pot in the society of the first, as his predecessor had done with much contentment, nor yet to wait for the arrival of the one landed proprietor in the parish before he commenced the morning service, he was voted by the overseers and churchwardens to be "mighty set up," and by the squire to be "a d—— d unmannerly fellow." Both indeed soon found out that they were wrong; and the farmers had the grace to confess it, and came, in course of time, to believe it possible for a curate to be a gentleman without being proud, and that it was at least as well for him to be visiting the sick and poor, and overlooking the parish school, and able to give a little good advice to themselves in matters of difficulty, as to be boozing in their company at the Crown and Thistle. And, in course of time, those rough but honest people came to respect him almost as much perhaps, in their way, as his more enlightened neighbours had done in his former position. It must have been a great change, however, to a man like Bolton, used to good society, fond of it, and readily welcomed in it, as he had always been. No doubt he felt it; yet he declared that, after the first few weeks, he never was happier in his life. His gun was given up, as an indulgence too expensive, but there was excellent trout fishing for miles on both sides of his cottage; and, though a sport to which he had no great liking in his earlier days, he now took to it vigorously as the only amusement at hand, and became no unworthy disciple of honest Isaac. The worst effect of this new life of isolation was, that he became somewhat negligent in his habits; took to smoking a great deal, and made his tobacconist's account a good deal longer than his tailor's. He had still many old friends and connections at a distance, with whom he might have spent half the year if he had pleased; but, in his first pique with the world in general, he had fixed himself purposely as far out of their reach as possible; travelling was expensive (railways as yet were not); assistance in his clerical duties was not easily obtained; and so, partly from choice, and partly from necessity, his new life became one of almost utter isolation.

Of course there were occasions when he found it necessary to visit the neighbouring market-town—if it could be called neighbouring when it was twelve miles off. The main road lay about a mile from Harry's little cottage, and a coach, passing daily, would usually deposit him safely in the High Street in the course of the forenoon—allowing an hour for waiting for it at the crossing, (it was always after its time,) and about two more, if the roads were not unusually heavy, for getting over the distance. It was not a very luxurious style of travelling; and Harry often preferred to walk in one day, and return the next. It was on one of these rare visits that a soaking rain discouraged him from setting out for home on foot, and gave the Regulator the unusually full complement of one inside and one outside passenger. On the box was our friend Harry, inside a rather precise-looking personage, whose costume, as far as a large cloak allowed it to be seen, looked somewhat more clerical than the Curate's, the latter being clad in a smart upper benjamin of the landlord's of the Swan, finished round the throat with a very gay shawl of his daughter's, both forced upon him in consideration of the weather; for Harry, though by no means a frequent, was a highly favoured guest, and they would sooner have kept him in No. 1 for a week gratis, than have allowed him to turn out in the rain without due protection.

Slower than usual that day was the Regulator's progress through the mud and against the wind, and briefer than usual its driver's replies to Harry's good-humoured attempts at conversation.

"Who have we inside, do you know, Haines?"

"Well, I reckon it's what you'd call a hopposition coach like," grunted out Joe Haines.

"Eh? I don't exactly understand."

"Why, I mean a Methodist bishop, or summat o' that sort. You see there was a great opening of the Independent College here o' Tuesday, and there was a lot o' them gentry about the town, looking too good to live. I druv' five on 'em down yesterday, and they gev' me a shilling and a fourpenny amongst the whole lot. Oh! I loves them sort, don't I just?" and Joe gave his near wheeler a cut, illustrative of his affection. It was a longer speech than he had made all the way, and he relapsed into a gloomy silence.

The wind was driving right into their teeth, and the evening closing fast, and they were passing the last mile-stone to the turning without any farther attempt at conversation, when there came first an ominous crack from under their feet, then a jolt, an unsteady wavering motion for a few seconds, when, with scarcely time for an exclamation, the coach toppled over on one side, and Bolton found himself reclining on the portly person of Mr Joseph Haines, who, in his turn, was saved from contusions by a friendly heap of mud by the road-side. Beyond a broken axle, however, no damage was done. The horses were glad of any opportunity to stand still. Bolton got up, shook himself, and laughed. Joe Haines was proceeding to philosophise rather strongly on the accident, not exactly after the manner of Job or Seneca, when the inside passenger, putting his head out of the only practicable window, begged him to spare his oaths, and help him out of his prison.

The stranger was soon extricated, and the horses taken out; and the driver, requesting his passengers to await his return, set off to seek assistance at the nearest cottage. As to the coach itself proceeding farther until partially repaired, that was evidently out of the question; and so Harry observed to his companion, who did not appear very knowing in such matters.

"And how far may we be from S——, sir?" inquired he, upon receiving this not very agreeable intelligence.

"Fifteen miles at least," replied Bolton.

"Indeed, so far! and is there no place near where I could procure a conveyance of any kind? I have an engagement there I particularly wished to keep to-morrow."

"Really, I fear not; this is quite an out-of-the-way place: the driver can tell you better than I can, but I know the neighbourhood pretty well, and think you would have to send back to the Swan at B—— for horses."

"It is very unfortunate, and it is past nine already; what is the nearest place, sir, where I could get decent accommodation for the night?"

"Why, the nearest place," said Harry, hesitatingly, "is the 'Crown and Thistle,' about three miles off, but I can't say much for the accommodation. Wo-ho,"—one of the horses, tired at last of standing in the drizzling rain, was showing symptoms of an immediate return to his stable. The stranger merely gave vent to a dissatisfied "Humph!" and they stood silently awaiting the approach of a light along the road, which betokened Joe's return with assistance. The coach was soon righted, and set up against the side of a bank; and Mr Haines, having given charge to one of his aids-extraordinary to keep watch by it till dawn with a light, both to prevent accidents and abstraction of the luggage, announced his intention of returning with the horses to B——, offering to his inside passenger the choice of a ride back, or taking a nap in the coach till morning. "You won't be long getting home, Mr Bolton, anyhow,"—and the pronoun was emphasised, to show that even this sympathy was little extended to his fellow-traveller.

"No, Joe, I must say you have been pretty considerate: as you were to break down, you could hardly have arranged it more handily for me. Just look me out my little carpet-bag, and I suppose you'll expect an extra shilling for your performance to-night, eh?"

Joe gave a hoarse laugh, and proceeded to rummage the boot; and Harry took advantage of the opportunity to whisper a few inquiries about his fellow-passenger.

"Well, I be pretty sure, sir, it's a Dr Bates, as preached at the opening on Tuesday. There was two or three black coats came with him to the yard afore we started; he's quite a top-sawyer among 'em, and can hold on for two hours good, best pace, they tell me. He's giv' out to preach over at S—— to-morrow morning. I see'd the printed bills stuck all over town to-day."

To-morrow was Sunday; and Bolton thought of a certain manuscript, not quite finished, lying on his desk at home. He glanced again at the stranger, and possibly, in the orthodoxy of his heart, did not feel particularly grieved at the disappointment probably in store for the itching ears of the S—— non-conformists.

"Well, good night, Haines," said he. But seeing his late companion still standing in the road, looking rather helpless, and hesitating to leave him altogether to the tender mercies of the coachmen, "I am walking in the direction of the village inn," he continued, "and if I can show you the way, I shall be very glad to do so. I dare say I can also find some one to fetch your luggage."

"Thank you, sir," said the other, "I cannot do better than follow your example;" and he at once selected and shouldered, with some activity for a man obviously on the wrong side of forty, a carpet-bag of more cumbersome dimensions than Bolton's; and they strode down the road together, nearly in darkness, and with the rain still falling.

They had nearly reached the curate's humble cottage, without much further conversation, when the stranger repeated his inquiries as to the distance to the inn, and the probability of his obtaining there any tolerable accommodation. "A clean bed," he said, "would content him; was he likely to find one?"

A struggle had been going on, from the time they left the coach, between Harry Bolton's good-nature, and what he thought his due dignity. Every word his fellow-passenger had uttered had convinced him, more and more, that he was a man of education and good sense, to say the least; a totally different being from the class of whom Jabez Green, who expounded at Mount Pisgah in his own parish on Sundays, and did a little shoemaking and poaching on week-days, formed a specimen ever before his eyes; and if it had not seemed a ludicrous misapplication of hospitality to have entertained the great gun of schism within the lares of the "persona ecclesia," he would long ago have offered the very respectable and mild-mannered gentleman, dropped by an unlucky accident almost at his door, at least a good fire, and a pair of clean sheets for the night. Sleep at the Crown and Thistle! why, on consideration, it was scarcely creditable to himself to send him there. The landlord was one of the most disreputable fellows in the parish, and, by ten o'clock on a Saturday night, was usually so drunk as to be more likely to refuse a guest any accommodation at all, than to take any extra pains for him. And the dirt, and the noise, and the etceteras! No, Dr Bates had better have stuck to the inside of the coach than have tried the Crown and Thistle. But where else was he to go? There was a good spare bedroom, no doubt, at Barby farm, within half-a-mile; but it had not been occupied since Harry had slept in it himself on his first arrival in the parish, and then it took a week's notice to move the piles of wool and cheese, and have it duly aired. The stranger coughed. Harry grew desperate, and spoke out.

"We are close to my little place now, sir. I think I can offer you what you will hardly find at the inn—a clean room and a well-aired bed; and it seems a mere act of common civility to beg you to accept it."

With many thanks, but with the natural politeness and ease with which a gentleman receives from another the courtesy which he is always ready to offer himself, the hospitable invitation was at once freely accepted; and in five minutes they had passed the little gate, and were awaiting the opening of the door.

This service was performed by the whole available force of Harry's establishment. One active little elderly woman, who was there on resident and permanent duty, in all capacities, assisted on this occasion by Samuel Shears, parish clerk, sexton, barber, bird-fancier, fishing-tackle maker, &c. &c. &c.; and acting gardener, valet, butler, and footman, when required, to the reverend the curate. Loud was the welcome he received from both. "Had he walked through all the rain, surely! The coach was very late then; they'd 'most given him up: no, Sam hadn't, 'cause of service to-morrow;" when their volubility was somewhat checked by the sight of his companion; and the old lady's face underwent no very favourable change when informed she must prepare a second bed.

"Walk in, pray, and warm yourself—that room—Sam, take these bags;" and Harry stepped aside into the kitchen, to negotiate with his housekeeper for the stranger's accommodation; a matter not to be effected but by some little tact: for Molly, like servants of higher pretensions, did not like being put out of her way, by people "coming tramping in," as she said, at all hours of the night; and if Bolton had replied to her close inquiries, as to who and whence the new guest was, with the statement that he was a stray Methodist preacher, it is probable that Molly, who had lived with clergymen since she was a child, and would sooner have missed her dinner than "her church," would have resigned her keys of office at once in high disgust.

"The gentleman will sleep in my room, of course, Molly, and I shall have my things put into the other;—anything will do for supper—bread and cheese, Molly, quite well—toast a little, will you? Poor man, he seems to have a cough."

"Toasted cheese a'n't good for a cough."

"No; to be sure not. Well, you can fry a little bacon, and a few eggs, you know."

"There a'n't no eggs. I don't know what's come to the 'ens: they behaves 'orrid, they does."

"Well, anything, anything, Molly. I'm very tired, and I don't care what it is: we shall both be very glad to get to bed."

"Lor, I dare say you be tired, sir," said Molly, somewhat pacified. "You've had a very wet ride, to be sure; lawk-a-me, why this coat might be a-wringed out." And she hastened to relieve her master of some of his outer wrappings, and supply him with a warm dressing-gown and slippers, in which he soon joined his guest in the little parlour; and having introduced him to the room he was to occupy for the night, left him also to make himself comfortable.

If Harry Bolton did not repent of his hospitality, which would have been very unlike him, yet, upon consideration, he certainly felt he was acting the good Samaritan somewhat more literally than he had ever expected to do.

"What on earth shall I do with him to-morrow, I should like to know?" was the first question that suggested itself—much more readily than did the answer. He could not be expected to go to church, perhaps; but would he stay quietly at home? or walk off to assist the very reverend Jabez at Mount Pisgah? As to his keeping his appointment at S——, that at least was out of the question; and, after all, there seemed so much good sense and feeling of propriety about the traveller, that it was most probable—at least Harry thought so—that he would not in any way offend against the rules of the household which he had entered under such circumstances.

So the curate brushed the clinging rain from his hair, and the cloud from his brow, with one and the same motion, and relapsed into his usual state of good-humour. Supper came in, and he and his guest sat down opposite to each other, and prepared to discuss old Molly's simple cookery. Really, now that one could look at him well, the man was very presentable in person as well as in manner. Harry said grace in a very few words, and the other's "Amen" was audible and unexceptionable; reverent, and not nasal. He had a capital appetite: it was said to be characteristic of his calling, but in that point Harry fully kept pace with him; and the conversation was not, for the present, a very lively one. Sam came in at last to take away.

"Sam," said the curate in a half-aside, "is there a bottle of port?—here's the key."

"La! sir, you bid me take it down to old Nan, you know; and it wor the last bottle, I tell'd you then."

"Ha! so I did, so I did. Did she like it, Sam?"

"Like it?" said Sam, opening his eyes, "I warrant her!"

"Well, Sam, I hope it did her good;—never mind. You must fare as I do, I am afraid," said he to the other. "Bring out the whisky-jar, Sam."

Bolton mixed himself a glass without further preface or apology; and his neighbour, with the remark that it could not be much amiss after a wetting, very moderately followed his example.

"And now," said Bolton, rummaging in a little cupboard behind him, "I hope you don't dislike the smell of tobacco. I'm rather too fond of it myself. My weakness is a pipe: I could find you a cigar, perhaps, if you are ever—"

"Thank you, I never do smoke; but pray do not mind me: I was at a German university for a year and a half, and that is a pretty fair apprenticeship to cloud-raising."

Took a doctor's degree there, no doubt, thought Harry; but it served excellently as an opening for general conversation; and two pipes had been consumed, and Molly had twice informed the gentlemen that the beds were all ready, and that Sam was waiting to know if there were any orders for to-morrow, before Harry remembered that he had a sermon still to finish, and that it was verging upon Sunday morning—so intelligent and agreeable had been the discourse of the stranger.

"If you please, sir," said the clerk, putting his head in at the door, "the rain is a-coming down like nothing, and that great hole over the pulpit ben't mended yet. Master Brooks promised me it should be done afore to-night; but he's never seen to it."

"That Brooks is the very—but, there, it can't be helped to-night, Sam, at all events," said Bolton, rather ashamed that the defects of his parochial administration should be exposed, as it were, to the enemy. "I must speak to him about it myself."

"I clapped a couple of sods over it as well as I could, sir," said the persevering Sam; "and I don't think much wet can come in to hurt, like. Will this gentleman 'ficiate to-morrow?—(this was in a loud confidential whisper)—'cause the t'other surplice a'n't"—

"Don't bother now—there's a good fellow," said Harry, considerably annoyed, as he shut the door in the face of his astonished subordinate, who was generally privileged to gossip as much as he pleased. He covered his embarrassment by showing his visitor at once to his room, and then sat down to complete his own preparations for the next day's duties.

The rain was as busily falling in the morning as if it had only just begun, instead of having been at it all night. Harry had been more than usually scrupulous in his dress; but when they met at the breakfast table, his guest's clerical tout-ensemble beat him hollow. After a rather silent meal, in which both, as if by tacit consent, avoided all allusion to subjects connected with the day and its duties, Bolton mustered his courage, as they rose from table, to say—"My service is at eleven, and I shall have rather a wet walk; you, perhaps, are not disposed to accompany me?"

"By all means," said the stranger, bowing; "I am quite ready;—is it time to set out?" And in a few minutes they were picking their way, side by side, down the little miry lane.

The church, it must be confessed, was not a comely edifice. Its architectural pretensions must originally have been of the humblest order; and now, damp and dilapidated, it was one of the many which, in those days, were a disgrace to any Christian community. There was the hole in the roof, immediately over the curate's head, imperfectly stopped by Sam's extempore repairs; and very wretched and comfortless did the few who composed the congregation look, as they came dripping in, and dispersed themselves among the crumbling pews. The service proceeded, and none showed such reverent attention as the stranger; and being placed in the rectorial pew, immediately opposite the clerk, the distinct though subdued tone of his responses was so audible, and so disturbed that functionary, (who had that part of the service usually pretty much to himself, and had come to consider it as in some sort his exclusive privilege,) that he made some terrible blunders in the hard verses in the Psalms, and occasionally looked round upon his rival, on these latter occasions especially, with unmistakeable indignation.

The service concluded, Bolton found his guest awaiting him in the porch; and some ten minutes' sharp walking, with few remarks, except in admiration of the pertinacity of the rain, brought them home again to the cottage. A plain early dinner was discussed: there was no afternoon service; and the curate had just stepped into his kitchen to listen to some petition from a parishioner, when the stranger took the opportunity of retiring to his own apartment, and did not reappear until summoned to tea.

Bolton's visit to the kitchen had interrupted a most animated debate. In that lower house of his little commonwealth, the new arrival had been a fruitful topic of discussion. The speakers were three; Molly, Sam, and Binns the wheelwright, who had looked in, as he said, on a little business with the parson. Molly, as has been said, was a rigid churchwoman. Her notions of her duty in that capacity might not have been unexceptionable, but they were, so far as the Sunday went, as follows:—Church in the morning and afternoon, if practicable, as much reading as her eyes—not quite what they used to be—could comfortably manage; pudding for dinner, and tea and gossip in the evening. If fine, a walk would have come among the day's arrangements; but with the rain coming down as it did, and after having rather puzzled herself with a sermon upon the origin of evil, the sudden, and in a degree mysterious, visit of a strange gentleman—where visitors of any kind were so rare—became invaluable as a topic of interesting—for aught we know, of profitable—discourse. Sam Shears dined with her always on this day; and was allowed, not without scruples, to have his pipe in the chimney-corner; in consideration of which indulgence, he felt it his duty to make himself as agreeable as possible; and inasmuch as his stock-stories respecting enormous perch caught, or gifted starlings educated by him, Samuel Shears, had long ceased to interest—indeed had never much interested—his fair listener here, though they still went down, with variations, at the Crown and Thistle, he was reduced very often, in the absence of anything of modern interest stirring in the neighbouring town of S——, to keep up his credit as a "rare good companion," by entering into politics—for which study, next to divinity, Molly had a decided taste—talking about reforms and revolutions in a manner that Molly declared made her "creep," and varying this pleasurable excitement by gloomy forebodings with regard to "Rooshia and Prooshia."

On this particular evening, however, the subject of debate was of a domestic nature, and Molly and the clerk had taken opposite sides: Binns arriving opportunely to be appealed to by both, and being a man of few words, who shook his head with great gravity, and usually gave a nod of encouragement to the last speaker. Molly, after her first indignation at the intrusion of a wet stranger, without notice, at ten o'clock of a Saturday night, had been so softened by the courteous address and bearing of the enemy, that she had gradually admitted him at least to a neutrality; and when Sam Shears had in confidence hinted that he "hadn't quite made up his mind about 'un"—her woman's kindness of heart, or her spirit of contradiction, rushed forth as to the rescue of a friend.

"I wonder at you, Sam," said she; "you've had heddication enough to know a gentleman when you see's him; and you'd ought to have more respect for cloth."

"Cloth! There now," replied Sam, "that's just it; I an't so sure about his cloth, as you call it."

"Why, what ever do you mean, Sam Shears?"

"I mean," rejoined Sam boldly, though he felt that Molly's fiercest glance was upon him, and almost choked himself in the endeavour to hide himself in a cloud of his own creating—"I mean, I don't think as he's a regular parson. If he had been, you see, he'd have took some of the duty. Besides," continued the official, reassured by Binns' respectful attention, "we had a little talk while we was a-waiting for master after church—I offered him a humbereller, you see—and I just asked whereabouts his church was, and he looked queerish at me, and said he hadn't no church, not exactly; and then I begged his pardon, and said I thought he was a clergyman; and he said, so he was, but somehow he seemed to put me off, as it might be." Binns nodded.

"To be sure," said Molly, "and 'twas like your manners, Sam, to go questioning of him in that way."

"Bless you, I was as civil as could be; however, I say again, I 'as my doubts: he'd a quakerish-looking coat too, such as I never see'd on a regular college parson. He's the very moral of a new Irvingite preacher."

"And what's their doctrines, Sam?" asked Molly, whose theological curiosity was irresistibly excited.

"Why," said the clerk after a puff or two to collect his thoughts, "they believes in transmigration."

Binns made a gesture of awe and abjuration.

"Stuff!" said Molly, "that's popery: nor you don't suppose, Sam, that master would have anybody of that sort in his house—eh, Mr Binns?"

The benefit of that gentleman's opinion was lost to both parties, for it was at that juncture "master" himself entered, and having discussed his communication, which related to a sick wife, bid him call again in the morning, and the wheelwright took his leave.

"And now Shears," said the curate, "(don't put your pipe behind you, man; do you suppose I have not smelt it this half hour—I wish you would buy better tobacco)—you must be off to S—— to-morrow at daylight, and order a chaise to be here, for this gentleman, by nine o'clock at the latest. Do you understand, now?"

"Yes, sir, yes. I'll be sure to go. And what name shall I say, sir?"

"Name, eh! oh, it doesn't matter. Say for me, of course. And look here: there will be five shillings for you if the chaise is here in time. Ay, you may well make a bow; I told the gentleman it was too much for you."

"I'm very much obliged to you both," said Sam slyly, "I'm sure, sir; I'll be off at cock-crow."

"There, Sam Shears," said Molly, as soon as they had the kitchen to themselves again, "did you ever hear of one of your new what-d'ye-call-ums ordering a chaise to go ranting about in, I should like to know? What have you got to say now?"

"I say," said Sam, "as he's a gentleman, and no mistake."

The evening passed away very quietly in the little parlour. The favourable impression made upon Bolton by his guest's manners and conversation was certainly deepened by their further intercourse: but the position seemed felt by both parties to be an awkward one; and when his departure early on the following morning was proposed, Bolton of course made no effort to detain him. Both employed most of the evening in reading; and one or two remarks made by the stranger, as he made his selection from the curate's library, proved at least his acquaintance with the works which it contained, though nothing escaped him, as he wiped the dust from some of Harry's presentation volumes, which could indicate either his agreement or disagreement with the sound divines he was handling, and his clever criticisms were rather those of the bibliographer than the theologian. At last he seemed to bury himself in a volume of old South, and carried it off with him early to his chamber.

The morning came, and eight o'clock brought breakfast, and half-past eight the chaise, with Sam Shears fast asleep inside of it. The curate and his guest parted with mutual good-will, and with a short but warm acknowledgment, on the part of the latter, of the hospitality he had received. Sam was not forgotten; he received the promised gratuity with many bows, and did not put his hat on again until the chaise had fairly turned the corner.

"Uncommon nice gentleman that, sir, to be sure," said he to his master, with whom be seldom missed the chance of a little conversation, if he could help it—and Bolton was generally good-natured enough to indulge him—"uncommon nice gentleman; what a thousand pities it is he should be a Methody!"

"A what?" inquired the curate, turning round upon him in ludicrous dismay.

"A Methody preacher, sir," said Sam boldly; for Harry's countenance quite confirmed his suspicions. "Oh! I know all about it, sir; but it ain't of no account with me, sir, you know, not none whatever,"—and he redoubled his negatives with a confidential mysteriousness which made Harry inclined to kick him. "I met Joe Haines, as drives the Regulator, this morning, and he asked me very particular about you, you see, sir, and how you got home o' Saturday night; and then I told him as how this gentleman came with you; and when he heard as he'd been staying here all day yesterday, how he did laugh, to be sure; and then he told me"—

"I'll tell you something, Sam, too. You had much better mind your own business, and not trouble yourself to talk to Joe Haines, or anybody else, about what goes on in my house."

There was no mistaking the fact that his master was angry: and as such a thing had very seldom happened within Sam's experience, it was a result of which he stood considerably in awe; and he hastened, with some confusion, to apologise, and to resume his praises of the "very nice gentleman, whatever he was,"—"And as you say, sir, that's no business of mine: I'm sure I should be most happy to wait upon him at any time, sir"—

But Bolton had retired, and shut the door of his little sitting-room in an unmistakeable manner. So Sam was obliged to soliloquise the rest of his apologies, which began to be very sincere, as he consoled himself by gazing at the two half-crowns which had come into his possession so easily. "Of course; if so be as he's a gentleman, what matters? That's what I say: that's what I said to master: that's what I said to Molly:—hallo! hey?—If this here half-crown ain't a smasher!"

'Twas too true: it rung upon the flag-stone like an unadulterated piece of lead.

"What's the matter now, Sam?" said Mrs Molly, who heard the sound, and met his blank face in the passage.

"I told you what he was," said Sam—"look here!" Molly examined the unfortunate coin with, every wish to give it the benefit of a doubt, but was obliged finally to pronounce against it. She had to listen, also, to the story which Sam had heard from Joe Haines; and though she clung pertinaciously to her previously-formed conclusions in the stranger's favour, Sam had now decidedly the best of the argument, which he clinched at last with what he considered an unanswerable proposition—"If you says as he's a parson and a gentleman, will you give me two-and-sixpence for this here half-crown?"

Weeks passed on, and other events wore out the interest of the stranger's visit, even in those dull localities. Binns' wife had a baby; and another piece of the church roof fell in, and nearly carried Brooks the churchwarden with it, as he was mounted on a ladder estimating its repairs—for there was an archdeacon's visitation coming on, and not even the vulcanised conscience of a parish functionary could be brought to pronounce, on oath, its present state of repair to be good and sufficient. And Harry received an invitation to dine with the said archdeacon, who was a good kind of man on the whole—that is, his good qualities would not very well bear taking to pieces—but he rather patronised the younger clergy in his neighbourhood, provided that they were young men of tolerable family, and good address, and not, as he expressed it, ultra in any way. It so happened, that he was almost the only acquaintance that Harry had made in the neighbourhood. He had written to request his interference in enforcing the repair of the church; and as that was a compliment seldom paid to his official dignity, the archdeacon had actually driven over thirteen miles to inspect the place personally: and, arriving quite unexpectedly, had caught the curate just sallying forth equipped for fishing—an art to which he himself occasionally condescended—for even archdeacons do unbend. And very soon ascertaining that there was no tendency to an objectionable ultra, of any kind, in our hero, and that he was in fact rather an eligible rear-rank man for a dinner-table, had made a mental memorandum of the fact, and, in consequence, had twice favoured him with an invitation, which Harry, according to his present humour, had declined. On this occasion, however—as a third refusal would have seemed ungracious—he had determined to go; and, with some compunction at the expense (he had thought nothing at Oxford of a hunter, and a "team" to cover, at about five guineas for the day,) he, found himself in a hired gig at the archdeacon's door, a little before the dinner hour on the day appointed. None of the guests were as yet assembled. His host, however, met him in the drawing-room, and presented him, with considerable cordiality, to his lady and her daughters.

"It was very good indeed of Mr Bolton to come so far to see us," said the archdeacon. "Indeed, I am particularly glad you came to-day," continued he with a sort of pompous kindness, "for I have the bishop staying here, and I wished you to meet him."

Harry was interrupted in his acknowledgments by the entrance of two men of the expected party: the Honourable and Reverend Mr Luttridge, a young man, who eyed his brother curate, on his introduction, with what he intended for a critical and interrogative glance, but which had by no means the effect upon that party which he intended; and another archdeacon, or dean, or some such dignitary, who made Bolton a very low bow indeed; and, turning his back upon him forthwith, began to discourse with the other two upon the business of the last Petit Sessions. A discussion upon some point of magisterial law was interrupted by a burst of shrill and hearty laughter from the younger of Misses Archdeacons—a fat merry girl, with whom Harry had struck up an acquaintance instantly—that was a point he never failed in; and although the other two gentlemen looked rather astonished, and turned round again to resume their argument, the father—she was his favourite daughter, and ludicrously like him—was delighted to see her amused, and insisted upon knowing what the fun was between them. Some absurd remark of Harry's was repeated, as well as her continued merriment would allow her; and the archdeacon, after a preparatory shaking of his sides, had just burst into a stentorian "ha-ha," when the drawing-room door again opened, and the Bishop of F—— was most audibly announced.

Every one tried to look deferential, of course; and the two gentlemen in front of Harry separated, and took open order to receive his lordship. Everybody recovered their propriety, in fact, in an instant, except Miss Harriet, to whom a bishop was no treat at all—not to be compared with an amusing young curate. She kept her eyes fixed upon Harry Bolton—she thought he was going to faint. Could it be possible?—oh! there was no doubt about it. Schismatic Doctor Bates, or Bishop of F——, there he was!—there was the man he had walked home in the rain with!

Harry's quondam guest walked forward with an easy grace, which contrasted strikingly with the stiff dignity of his subordinates. He shook hands politely with Mr Luttridge, and returned the greeting of his companion somewhat more warmly. The archdeacon was preparing to introduce Bolton, without noticing his embarrassment, when the bishop anticipated the introductory speech by saying, as he held out his hand, "Mr Bolton and I are old friends—may I not say so?"

A man of less self-possession than our friend the curate might have been put quite at his ease by the kind tone and manner, and warm grasp of the hand. "Certainly," was his reply, "your lordship and myself have met, under rather different circumstances."

The archdeacon's respectable face expressed considerable astonishment, as well it might; and the other two gentlemen began to eye his lordship's "old friend" with interested and inquisitive glances.

"My dear archdeacon," said the bishop, laughing, "pardon my mystification; this is the friend with whom I spent a day or two on my last visit to this neighbourhood, when you really thought you had lost me altogether; though, if you had told me I was to have the pleasure of meeting him at your table to-day, I might, perhaps, have let you into the secret."

"But, my dear Bolton," said the host—he had dropped the Mr at once, and for ever—" why did you not tell me that you knew his lordship?—eh?"

Harry laughed, and got a little confused again; but the bishop answered the question for him, before he had time to frame an intelligible reply.

"Oh, that's a long story; but it was no mystery of Mr Bolton's, be assured. I am afraid, indeed, it will tell rather better for him than, for me; but I promise you the explanation, someday," continued the bishop, good-humouredly, "when we have nothing better to talk about." The archdeacon took the hint, and turned the conversation. Another guest or two joined the party; dinner succeeded, and passed off much as such affairs usually do. The bishop, although he did not address much of his conversation directly to Bolton, took care to make him feel at his ease; and Mr Luttridge, who sat next to him, became remarkably friendly—was quite surprised that he had not heard of him before, being, in fact, quite a near neighbour—only nine miles—nothing at all in that part of the country—should ride over to call on him one of the first days he could spare—and, in fact, said what became him to say to the bishop's friend and protégé.

Whatever curiosity might have been felt on the subject by the rest of the company, it was not until they had taken their departure that the bishop thought proper to explain to Bolton and the archdeacon the circumstances which had led to his paying an incognito visit to the former. He had only lately been appointed to the diocese, and was therefore personally known to but few of his clergy. The archdeacon and himself, however, were old college acquaintances, and he had accepted an invitation to spend a few days with him, at the time of his casual meeting with Harry Bolton. Being averse at all times to any kind of ceremony or etiquette, which he could reasonably dispense with, it had been arranged that the archdeacon's carriage should meet him at B——, to which place his own had conveyed him. Upon his arrival in the town somewhat before the hour appointed, he had, according to his custom, walked out quietly to make himself acquainted with the localities, and had unconsciously passed some hours in exploring some ruins at a little distance. Meanwhile, the archdeacon, not so punctual as his diocesan, drove up to the hotel door in hot haste, considerably too late for his appointment, and was saluted with the unpleasant information that his lordship had been there, and was gone on these two hours,—for his previous orders had been duly obeyed, and the episcopal equipage, with a portly gentleman inside, who sustained the dignity of his position as chaplain very carefully, had really rolled away on its road homeward. The archdeacon doubted, but mine host was positive; and strengthened his position by the assertion that his lordship had said he was going to Bircham rectory, a piece of intelligence picked up from the servants, with exactly enough truth in it to do mischief. Off went the archdeacon again, annoyed at his own dilatoriness; and great was his consternation on reaching home to find no bishop; and great was the bishop's surprise, on returning at last to the hotel, to find no archdeacon; and great the confusion throughout the Kings Arms; the landlord throwing the blame upon the waiters, and the waiters upon each other. Post-horses to S——, which was within a short three miles of the archdeacon's rectory, were ordered at once. But, alas! after many delays and apologies, none were to be had; almost every quadruped in the town was engaged in taking parties home from the opening of the Independent College. The bishop was not a man to make difficulties; so, leaving his only remaining servant to await any remedial measures which the archdeacon might take when he discovered his error, and to give an intelligible account of his movements, he himself, without mentioning his intention to any other person, walked down to the coach-office at the Swan, paid his fare, and became an inside passenger by the Regulator.

Of course, when the archdeacon discovered his mistake, no time was lost in procuring fresh horses, and sending back the carriage to B——, in the hope that his lordship might still be forthcoming; but it brought back to the anxious expectants at the rectory only a servant and, a portmanteau; and as they did not pass the spot where the accident occurred, and all inquiries made at S—— only resulted in the intelligence that "there had been an upset, that no one was hurt, and that the passengers had walked home," they made up their minds to await some accurate information as to his lordship's whereabouts from himself, when he relieved his friends from their uncomfortable suspense by making his appearance personally at breakfast on the Monday morning; though, to punish, as he jokingly said, the archdeacon, for leaving him in such a predicament, he would tell them nothing more than that he had spent the Sunday very pleasantly with a friend.

Much amusement ensued at the bishop's details of his visit, though he good-naturedly avoided any allusions that could possibly be embarrassing to his late host. Bolton had accepted the offer of a bed, and it was late before they separated for the night. Before he took his leave on the following morning, the bishop, to his surprise, announced his intention of paying him a second visit. "I think, Mr Bolton," said he, "that, having intruded upon you once in disguise, as I may say, I am bound to come and preach for you some Sunday, if it be only to clear my own character in the eyes of your parishioners," (for Harry had confessed, to the exceeding amusement of all parties, his own and his clerk's suspicions.) "So, if you please, and if my good friend here will accompany me, we will drive over to you next Sunday morning; and I'll try," continued the bishop slyly, "if I cannot get Mr Churchwarden Brooks to put your church a little to rights for you."

The morning arrived, and the archdeacon and the bishop. A proud woman had Molly been from the moment the announcement was made to her of the intended honour; and the luncheon which she had prepared was, considering her limited resources, something extraordinary. But when his lordship alighted, and, catching a sight of her eager face in the passage, called to her by name, and addressed her kindly—and she recognised the features of the unknown guest, whom Sam had so irreverently slandered—the good old woman, between shame and gratification, was quite overcome, and was wholly unable to recover her self-possession throughout the day. During the whole of the service, she looked at the bishop instead of the prayer-book, made responses at random, and was only saved by the good-natured interference of his lordship's own man from totally ruining the luncheon. Of course, the church was crowded; the sermon was plain and impressive: and when, after service, the whole of the rustic congregation, collected in the churchyard to see as much as they could of a personage few of them had ever seen before, formed a lane respectfully, with their hats off, for him to pass to the gate, the bishop, taking off his hat and claiming their attention for a few moments, spoke a few words, homely and audible, approving their behaviour during the service, and representing to them the advantages they might derive from the residence among them of an exemplary minister, such as he believed they had at present, and such as he would endeavour to provide them with in the possible event of his removal. And when afterwards he begged to be introduced to the churchwarden, and, taking him familiarly by the arm, walked with him round the building, pointed out indispensable repairs, and, without any word of reproof, explained to him the harm done by injudicious patching, and put into his hands a liberal contribution towards the expenses—it might have seemed quite wonderful to those who either overrate or underrate poor human nature, how much more popular a notion, and how much better understood a bishop was in that remote village from that time forth. The landlord of the Crown and Thistle was quite surprised at the change that had come over Mr Brooks. He used to be rather a popular orator on club nights and other convivial occasions, taking that economical view of church dignitaries and their salaries which, by an amusing euphemism, is called "liberal" in politics; but subsequently to this occasion he seldom joined in these discussions, was seen less frequently by degrees in the taproom of the Crown and Thistle, and more regularly at church; and once, when hard pressed for an opinion by some of his former supporters, was asserted to have told them that the Crown and Thistle took more money out of people's pockets than ever the bishops did.

Harry had anticipated much amusement from Sam Shears' confusion, when he should encounter, in his full canonicals, the, bishop of the diocese in the person of the apocryphal Dr Bates; but whatever that worthy's secret discomfiture might have been, he carried it off wonderfully well, and met his lordship in the vestry with a lurking smile in his humble obeisance, as if he had all along penetrated the mystery of his incognito. With Molly in the kitchen, indeed, he had for some evenings a hard time of it; but a threat of absenting himself altogether, which he ventured in some fear of being taken at his word, had the effect of moderating her tone of triumph. Before the bishop left, he called Sam aside, and presented him with a substantial token of remembrance; when Sam took the opportunity of producing, with many prefaces of apology, the condemned half-crown, which had fretted in his pocket ever since.

"Please your lordship's worship and reverence," said Sam, "this here ain't a very good half-crown; at least, I can't pass it noways down here. I dare say as your lordship's worship might pass it away easy enough among your friends, but—"

"Here, here," said the bishop, laughing heartily, "here's another for you, by all means, my man; but pray excuse my having anything more to do with the bad one."

Again the bishop parted from his entertainer with many expressions of regard, and an invitation to spend some time with him at his palace, which Bolton did much to his satisfaction; and received from him so much valuable advice and paternal kindness, that he always considered the snug living with which, some months afterwards, he was presented, one of the least of his obligations.

---

"And that's how Harry Bolton came to be a neighbour of mine," concluded Long Lumley; "and a nice place he has here, and a capital neighbour he is."

We discussed the whole story over Lumley's wine after dinner the next day, when the Hon. and Rev. Mr Luttridge, who had since married the bishop's niece, and was said to have been a disappointed expectant of the living given to Bolton, made one of our party.

"A very odd man, certainly, the bishop is," was that gentleman's remark; "very strange, you know, to go poking about the country in that kind of way. Scarcely the thing, in fact, I must say."

"Upon my honour," said Lumley, "you parsons ought to be better judges of what is or is not 'the thing' for a bishop, than I can be; but if the Bishop of F—— is an odd man, I know, if I had the making of bishops, I'd look out for a match for him."

---

Among the many remarkable circumstances which a comparison of former with present times never fails to present to an attentive observer, it is perhaps the most remarkable with how much accuracy the effects of great changes in public policy are predicted by one portion of the community, and with what entire insensibility they are regarded by another. The results of all the chief alterations in the system of government which has taken place in our times—the Contraction of the Currency, Roman Catholic Emancipation, the Reform Bill, Negro Emancipation, Free Trade, the Repeal of the Navigation Laws—were all foretold by their opponents at the time they were under discussion, with such accuracy that their predictions might pass, after the events had taken place, for a concise history of their effects. And yet the whole body of their supporters, embracing at each period the numerical majority at least of the most influential part of the nation, were absolutely deaf to these warnings; they ridiculed the authors of them, disputed their reasonings, impugned their motives, and were only the more confirmed in the headlong course they were pursuing, by the demonstration which daily experience was affording of the enormity of their own error on previous occasions. It is evident, from these examples, that Plato's observation is well founded, and that general ignorance is neither the greatest social evil, nor the one most to be dreaded. Prejudice, passion, a thirst for selfish aggrandisement, are the real evils which affect society; and their sway, unhappily, is only rendered the more powerful with the extension of knowledge and the progress of civilisation. They do worse than conceal the truth: they render men insensible to it. So obstinately do the majority of men, when their interests are supposed to be at stake, or their passions are inflamed, resist the light of truth; so resolutely do they disregard the clearest procession of demonstration; so prone are they to be led away by the arts of ambitious men or the efforts of class interest,—that it may be safely concluded that the greatest national disasters cannot long be averted when affairs are under the immediate direction of a numerical majority; and that their own folly or infatuation become the instruments of the Divine judgments upon mankind.

A memorable example of the truth of these observations, and of their vast importance to a society constructed as it now is in this country, is to be found in the recent instance of the Papal Aggression. For above half a century past, the whole efforts of the Liberal party in England were directed to the abolition of religious distinctions, and, in particular, to the introduction of the Roman Catholics into an entire and equal participation in the power, privileges, and influence of Protestants. In vain was it urged by a small but determined band, headed by Lord Eldon in one house of Parliament, and Mr Perceval in another, that however well-founded the principles of toleration were in the general case, and however desirable it might be, if consistent with security, to abolish all distinctions founded on differences of religious belief, yet the opinion of the great apostle of toleration, Mr Locke, was well founded, that these principles could not be safely applied to the Roman Catholics, because they formed part of a great foreign religious power, which formerly boasted of Great Britain as the brightest jewel in its crown, which openly aspired to universal dominion, and would never cease striving to reunite that splendid appanage to the Papal dominions.

These observations were generally disregarded: the names of bigots, tyrants, illiberals, were constantly applied to the resolute patriots who still continued to utter them; concession after concession to the Roman Catholics went on; they were admitted without reserve into the British Parliament; the titles of their Bishops were recognised by Ministers in Ireland and the colonies; the entire government and patronage of Ireland were surrendered into their hands; until at length, in return for so many acts of condescension, the Pope deemed it safe to throw off the mask, and send, for the first time during three hundred years, a Cardinal to London, in order to superintend the partition of England into ecclesiastical divisions, and the re-establishment of the Romish worship in every parish of the realm! Then, and not till then, the eyes of the nation were opened: the bubble, which the Liberals had kept up for half a century, suddenly burst, and the dormant strength of the Protestant principle was awakened to an extent which outstripped all calculation, and almost alarmed the most decided opponents throughout of Papal ambition! Then, and not till then, the warning voice of the bigots and illiberals of former days was recollected: their oft-derided predictions were searched out: the streets were placarded with Lord Eldon's vaticinations; and the journals which most openly shaped their course according to popular feeling, were the first to insert in capital letters the now fulfilled prophecies of former Illiberalism.[3]

Another, and not less memorable, instance of the way in which public delusions, all but universal, which have withstood the utmost force of reason, argument, and experience for a long course of years, have been suddenly dispelled by some great fact which struck the senses of all, and could no longer be denied, has occurred in the recent vast and important change which the discovery of the gold in California has made on the currency of this country, and of the world. For thirty years past it has been the uniform policy of the British Government, directed by the pressure of the money power, and the influence of realised capital, to augment the value of realised wealth, by enhancing its price and cheapening everything else. To effect this, gold was first selected as the standard, because it was the most valuable of the precious metals; and as its price had for a long course of years been slowly but steadily advancing, it was thought, with reason, that the assumption of it as the standard could not fail to enhance the value of realised capital of every kind, by cheapening the money-price of all the articles in which every one else dealt. Next, small notes were extinguished, because they formed a currency commensurate to the wants of the nation; and consequently their abundance tended to raise prices. Then the issue of notes beyond £32,000,000 in the whole empire was made to depend on an amount of gold coin corresponding to the notes issued being in the coffers of the banks issuing: in other words, the currency beyond that limited amount, not half of what the nation required, was made entirely metallic. Free Trade was next introduced, in order still further to augment the value of realised wealth, by taking a fourth from the price of every commodity which it might purchase, and consequently depressing to a similar extent the remuneration of productive industry. All this was rested on the plausible plea of maintaining a fixed and unchangeable standard of value, and preventing monetary crises, by having no circulation except what was based on the most precious of the precious metals.

This system was adhered to through a series of disasters directly owing to its adoption, which would have destroyed any other nation, and levelled with the dust any other people. In vain was it represented that gold itself was a commodity, liable to change in price like any other article of commerce, according as the supply was or was not equal to the demand; that to fix a standard price for it was to cast anchor in the clouds, and that to make the circulation of the country depend entirely on the retention of an article of commerce, which could not always be retained, was necessarily to expose it to the recurrence of the most disastrous shock to credit. These warnings were systematically disregarded; the bullion system was adhered to amidst the most frightful calamities; and the nation, as the price of its adoption, underwent a series of monetary convulsions beyond anything recorded in history, and which entailed losses greatly exceeding in amount the confiscation and destruction of property which resulted from the French Revolution.

Where are these dogmas about the immutability and indestructible value of the gold standard now? "Efflavit Deus, et dissipantur." The beneficence of Providence has come to the aid of a benighted and suffering world. As reason had proved inadequate to withstand the pressure of interest, the reserves of nature were let in: the floodgates were opened: the beneficent stream overspread the world. A few grains of gold are discovered in digging a mill-course in California, and the whole bullion system is blown into the air. The labour of a lifetime is undone in a moment: the citadel of the money power is blown up by a spark falling in its own magazine: the island on which the Bullionists had cast anchor itself begins to drift along. Farewell to all their dreams of cheapening everything: farewell to the boast of their able and principal organ, that they had made the sovereign worth two sovereigns! The sovereign is in process of becoming only worth half a sovereign. The ominous intelligence has been received from Paris that the English sovereign had declined fourteen sous in value; Holland has openly abandoned the gold standard; France is preparing measures to meet the altered value of the precious metals. The Bullionists are struck in the very heart of their power. True to their motives, though not to their principles, they are already in their journals decrying gold as a standard, and proposing silver in its stead. Everything has for a year past been rising in price in England except agricultural produce and sugar, still kept down by the unrestrained importation of foreign states. For long it was tried to write down California; but the gold-dust at length became too strong for them. The fatal truth could no longer be concealed, that the value of money had declined, was declining, and, as they thought, ought to be enhanced. But how to do that was the difficulty, amidst ceaseless arrivals of gold from California, and an overflowing treasure in the Bank of England. They discovered that some other idea could be formed of a pound sterling, "than a certain determinate weight of gold metal." They would fain have it something of less fleeting value. The truth is at length apparent to the nation—which had been so long denied and so studiously concealed by those who were profiting by the opposite delusion—that gold, like every other metal, is a commodity liable to change in value according to its plenty or scarcity, and that it is hopeless to make a fixed standard of an article which is itself liable to greater vicissitudes of price than perhaps any other.

It is hard to say whether examples of this sort are most fitted to inspire confidence in the final triumph of the cause of truth, or despondency as to the fate of a nation in which error has been widespread and long continued, and powerful classes of society are interested in its being perpetuated. It is evident that the enormity of error, the clearness of the demonstration of its falsehood, the perilous and even fatal consequences which may be anticipated from its continuance, afford no sort of security against its sway being continued, if an influential class is interested in its duration. It is equally clear that the extension of education, the boasted march of intellect, the spread of journals, the number of persons interested in the termination of a pernicious policy, the awful consequences which may be anticipated from its continuance, are often wholly impotent to rescue a nation from disaster, it may be ruin, if the effects of the disastrous system are not so plain and palpable as to be obvious to the senses of the whole of mankind. But while all this is perfectly clear on the one hand—and there is obviously no limit to this long continuance of the most ruinous error in the opinions and policy of a particular nation—it is equally evident, on the other, that there is a bar imposed by Providence to the eternity of error in the world in general. The laws of nature at length come to the aid of truth: some great and decisive event occurs which renders its effects palpable to all the people; the whole fabric of error so studiously upheld, so anxiously defended, is overturned in an instant; and mankind, awakening from the slumbers of half a century, are astonished only how a thing so very evident had never before struck them. They then find, to their infinite surprise, that all which has occurred had been clearly foreseen and distinctly predicted by the few among them who judged of the future by the past, and cast their eyes beyond the interests or passions of the moment; and that it was not because truth had not been told to them, but because they would not listen to it, that all the calamities they deplore had been brought upon them.

The circumstances which mainly contribute to produce this extraordinary tenacity of error and insensibility to truth, in the majority of mankind at all times and under all circumstances, are their general indifference to distant effects, and their acute sense of present burdens. If the danger is obvious and visible to the senses of all, and, above all, if it threatens immediate evil to all, the mass of men will often make incredible, almost superhuman efforts to avert it. But if it is distant and contingent only, and the remedies proposed to guard against it are attended with present burdens, however slight, it will in general be found that it is wholly impossible to make them do anything to guard against the impending evils. In the words of one who knew them well,[4] "they prefer any load of infamy, however great, to any burden of taxation, however light." They never will incur present expense to guard against future danger. It is for this reason that states in which the popular voice is all-powerful so often rush into foreign wars with scarcely any preparations, and are so often defeated by nations possessing far less vigour and fewer resources, but in whom the wisdom of a monarchical or aristocratic government has made an adequate provision in peace for the contingency of future hostilities. All the eloquence of Demosthenes, we know, failed to make the Athenian people take any steps to augment the national armaments, and they got the battle of Chæronea and subjugation by Philip in consequence. The English, in 1778, commenced the contest with their revolted American colonies with a regular army of 20,000 men, and they lost the colonies in consequence: they began the war with France in 1793 with 40,000 regular soldiers in the British empire, when their enemy had 1,200,000 men under arms; and it cost them a struggle of twenty years, and six hundred millions of debt incurred, to get the better of the necessary consequences of their infatuation. They starved down the establishment in India, and forbade all hostile preparations, even though it was a dominion won, and which could only be upheld, by the sword, till it was brought to the verge of destruction on the banks of the Sutlej; and the empire which disposed of the resources of 80,000,000 of subjects, owed its extrication from what seemed unavoidable ruin, only to a strange and unaccountable retreat of the enemy, resting on a population of 6,000,000 only, when victory was within their grasp. The Americans rushed into a contest with England in 1812 with a fleet of six frigates and an army of 8000 men; and the consequence was, that in two years their commerce was totally destroyed, their capital taken by a British division of 3500 men, and the general suffering would in six months have made the Northern States break of from the Union, had not England, weary of fighting and satiated with glory, sheathed her sword when the dissolution of the Union was within her power.

But in addition to this general cause of delusion and error, which pervades all states really regulated by the popular voice, there is another and a still more powerful one which occasions and perpetuates the most ruinous public delusions in an advanced and complicated state of society. This arises from the strength and influence of the classes who become interested in the perpetuating of error because they profit by it, and the impossibility of getting the great bulk of men to see, among the numerous causes which are then acting upon their fortunes, the real ones to which their sufferings are owing. They know perfectly when they are prosperous, and when unfortunate; but they do not know, and cannot be brought to see, to what either the prosperity or adversity is to be ascribed. If the consequences of a particular line of policy could be brought before them by a clear and short process of demonstration—if they could see from whence their suffering in truth comes, and the arrow, known to have been discharged from the quivers of Free Trade and a metallic currency, could be seen festering in the breast of every industrious man in the country, one universal burst of indignation would arise from one end of the kingdom to the other. This system, so profitable to the moneyed rich, so ruinous to the industrious poor, would be abolished, amidst shouts of congratulation from one end of the country to the other, in a month. But they cannot be brought to see this; and the vast riches which the continuance of this system is daily bringing to the moneyed classes, enables them to perpetuate the darkness.

The press in such circumstances becomes—what it was in Napoleon's time in France, from the overwhelming weight of military power—what Madame de Stael feared it would one day become in all aged communities—the most powerful engine for the diffusion and continuance of error. The most ruinous systems of public policy are then pursued with the cordial support of the millionnaires who profit by them, with the loud applause and able assistance of the public press, who are guided by the requirements of their subscribers, or directed by the dictates of their shareholders, and amidst the supine indifference or sullen despair of the industrious classes, who are steeped in misery by their effects. They see they are ruined, but they know not how or by whom; and a large part of the public press are careful to direct their attention to any but the right quarter for redress. In despair at such an accumulation of distresses, the great bulk of mankind follow the usual instinct of the multitude in such cases—they fasten upon the seen in preference to searching for the unseen, and lend a willing ear to any demagogue of the day who lays before them plans for a great reduction of public burdens, by abandoning nearly the whole means of the public defence. Thus a perpetual reduction of our military and naval armaments, and means of maintaining our independence or even existence as a nation, is forced upon successive Governments, without the slightest regard to the obvious peril with which such reductions, with increasing armaments on the part of our neighbours, and increasing points of attack upon the part of ourselves, must be attended; and the policy which has impoverished the greater part of the nation terminates in its natural result, the destruction of the nation itself. Such is the most common process of national ruin.

There can be no doubt that the day will one day come when all these illusions will be dispelled. If a Russian fleet of twenty-five ships of the line anchors off the Nore, and demands the surrender of the arsenal of Woolwich, and of our ships of war at Portsmouth and Plymouth, as the condition of their raising the blockade of the capital or saving it from pillage—or if a French squadron of fifteen ships of the line takes a second look into Torbay, and we have only three or four half-manned seventy-fours to oppose to them—or if an invading army of 80,000 men lands on the coast of Sussex, and we can only muster 30,000 regular troops to stop their progress—if Woolwich is taken, and Hyde Park is the scene of an enemy's camp, and London, like Paris, capitulates to the conqueror—or if Russia and America unite together and demand the surrender of the half of our fleet and the whole of our arsenals as the price at which they will allow their grain-laden vessels to come to Great Britain and restore bread to the 7,000,000 of our population whom we have in four years rendered dependent on supplies from those countries for their daily food, or if wheat rises to 150s the quarter, and the quartern loaf to 2s. in consequence of our refusal—if the Thames, the Mersey, and the Clyde are blockaded by hostile fleets, and 700,000 or 800,000 manufacturers with their families, for the sake of the riches produced by whom we have sacrificed everything, are suddenly thrown out of employment—or if the seamen of the Baltic and other maritime powers of Europe have come to outnumber our own in the carrying on of our trade, and threaten to disable our commerce, and bring us to death's door, by simply recalling their crews—or if the Bank stops payment in the midst of these calamities, and public and private credit are at once destroyed at the very time when their assistance is most needed—then, and not till then, will England speak out in a voice of thunder.

How rapidly will the scales then fall from the eyes which have so long been blinded; how bitter will be the regret at the inexplicable insensibility now to solemn warnings; how intense the indignation at the delusions which, for the sake of present profit to the deluders, has so long been practised upon them! The burst of indignation with which the appointment of the Lord Cardinal was received throughout England, the more suppressed apprehensions with which the opening of the Californian treasures was viewed by our moneyed oligarchy, can afford but a faint image of the feelings of agony which will then wring the British heart—the frightful cry of distress which will then rise up from famishing millions, the universal horror at past neglect which will send the iron into the soul of our whole people. Their efforts to redeem the past will probably be great, their struggles will be those of a giant. But it may be too late. They will be in the condition of the Athenian people when Lysander cast anchor off the Piræus, after the burning of their fleet at Aigos Potamos; or of the Carthaginians, when the legions of Scipio, in the last Punic war, drew round their walls; or of the Parisians, when "Europe in arms before their gates" demanded the surrender of all their conquests. They will be profoundly mortified—they will be cut to the heart; they would give half they possess for a deliverance, but they will be forced to submit; and to the annalist of these mournful times will only remain the task of drawing the appropriate moral from the melancholy tale, and recording the fall and ruin of England for the instruction of, and as a beacon to be avoided by, future times.

The Free Trade and Bullionist orators will exclaim that this statement is overcharged—that these apprehensions are entirely chimerical—that neither France nor Russia have the slightest intention of going to war with us—that the days of hostility between nations are at an end—that, even if we were attacked, our resources are greater than ever—and that the insular situation of Great Britain gives her a security which renders the maintenance of costly armaments for the national defence wholly unnecessary. This is what they will say; and we tell them what they will not say.—They will never allude to the arguments which follow, which will demonstrate the reality of all this peril as clearly as any proposition in Euclid; if they do allude to them, it will only be to ridicule and misrepresent—the usual resource of detected error in presence of irresistible arguments. They will never allude to the facts or arguments adduced on the other side; but, treating the whole persons who adduce them—and ourselves among the rest—as utter fanatics and monomaniacs, continue to inculcate on their numerous readers—who never look at any papers on the other side—the entire security of the nation, the evident advent of a time when all wars are to cease, our secure and unassailable position, and the utter folly of incurring the certain evil of present expense for the purpose of warding off such contingent, remote, and chimerical dangers. We are well aware of the ability with which this method of upholding delusions is carried on, and of the readiness with which it is listened to both by the opulent and powerful class whose means of amassing fortunes would be diminished, and the numerous class whose burdens would in a slight degree be increased by a change of system.

The argument, that the era of wars has ceased, that Peace Congresses are henceforth to supersede the logic of cannon, and that the sooner we disband our troops, and sell our ships of the line, as a costly relic of a preadamite age, the better—would be an extremely strong one, and deserving of the most serious consideration, if it had any foundation in fact. But if this is not the case—if, on the contrary, the facts are all of an opposite character—then the argument, based on such a fallacious foundation, becomes the strongest which can be urged on the other side. Now, without going back to former times and the annals of history, let us attend only to our own days, and what we see around us, to ascertain whether there is any likelihood of war becoming unknown among men, and a real millennium causing all swords to be turned into pruning-hooks.

Everybody knows that the tendency of the present times is to become democratic; and it is chiefly in the increased weight of the people—the greatest sufferers from the ravages of war—in the direction of public affairs, that the advocates of universal peace rest their predictions of the immediate advent of a pacific millennium. What countenance do the facts of recent times—even if all previous history were set aside—afford to the assertion that democratic influence is essentially of a pacific character, and that with the increase in all civilised states of popular power, the disuse and, at length, extinction of war may be anticipated?

So far from affording any countenance to such an idea, all recent, as well as former experience, leads to conclusions directly the reverse, and induces the melancholy prognostication that, with the general increase of democratic influence, not only will the sphere of future hostility be augmented, but its fierceness and devastations will be fearfully enhanced. Who commenced the dreadful wars of the French Revolution, which for twenty long years deluged Europe with blood, and brought the tricolor standards—the emblem of Republicanism—into every capital of continental Europe?—Democratic ascendency in Paris; the crimes and ambition of the Girondists; the bloodthirsty passions of the Jacobins, which, not content with ravaging and drenching with gore their own country, could not find vent but in the sacking and plundering of all Europe. What afterwards gave rise to the terrible struggle in Poland in 1831, and induced the multiplied sufferings of that gallant but inconsiderate and infatuated democracy?—The French Revolution of 1830, which, but for the firmness of Louis Philippe, and his determination to risk all rather than gratify the passion for war in the Republicans who had elevated him to power, would have involved Europe in universal conflagration. What brought on the horrid civil war in Spain, which for five years overwhelmed the Peninsula with horrors and cold-blooded atrocities, which throw even those consequent on the invasion of Napoleon into the shade?—A democratic triumph in Madrid; the placing of a revolutionary queen on the throne of Spain; the determination and armed intervention of England and France to uphold the cause of popular aggression in both kingdoms of the Peninsula.

What overturned the throne and pacific policy of Louis Philippe?—His determination to keep at peace; his resolution to coerce, at any hazard, the ambitious designs of the Parisian democrats. He tried to be a "Napoleon of Peace," and he lost his throne and died in exile in consequence. What immediately followed the triumph of the Republicans in Paris in February 1848? Was it the reign of universal tranquillity—the advent of peace and good-will among men? Was it not, on the contrary, an outbreak of general hostility—the universal arming of nation against nation, of people against people, of race against race? Did not Republican Piedmont invade Lombardy; and Republican Prussia, Holstein; and Republican France besiege Rome? Did not the Magyar rise up, against the Sclave, and the Bohemian against the Austrian, and the Lombard against both; and was not the frightful scene of almost universal hostility appeased—and that for the time only—by the appalling appearance of a hundred thousand Muscovites on the Hungarian plains? Have not Austria and Prussia for the last six months been on the verge of a dreadful contest? Have not the burghers and ploughmen of all Germany been called from their peaceful avocations, to man the ranks of the landwehr? Have not eight hundred thousand men been arrayed on the opposite sides, and the banks of the Saale crowded with armies paralleled only by those which in 1813 stood on those of the Elbe? And what stopped this dreadful war, and sent back those multitudes of armed citizens unscathed to their peaceful homes? Was it republican France, or popular England? No; it was despotic Russia. It was the presence of a hundred and fifty thousand armed and disciplined Muscovites on the banks of the Vistula, which like a thundercloud overcast the east of Europe, and at last cooled down the ardent ambition of democratic Prussia into something like a just estimate of the chances of the conflict, and a temporary respect for the rights of other nations.

Turn to distant parts of the world, and is the prospect more indicative of the advent of a pacific millennium? Is it to be found among the English colonists in India, or the energetic republicans of America? Have not the English, for the last twenty years, been engaged in almost ceaseless hostilities in Hindostan or China, during which ultimately our victorious standards have been advanced to Cabul and Nankin; and we have seen our empire shaken to its very foundation by the disasters of the Coord Cabul Pass, and the frightful contest on the banks of the Sutlej? Is America more peaceful, and is the advent of the reign of peace foreshadowed by the entire abstinence from ambitious and angry passions in the republicans of its southern or northern hemisphere? Has not the former, since the disastrous era when its revolution began, been the theatre of convulsions so frequent, and bloodshed so incessant, that history, in despair, has ceased to record the names of these conflicts, and points with horror only to their woeful consequences? And has not Northern America, during the last twenty years, exhibited the most unequivocal evidence of the lust of conquest having gained possession of the most influential portions of her inhabitants? Were they not actually at war with us in 1837 to support the Canadian revolutionists; did they not cheat us out of three-fourths of Maine, and bully us out of half of Oregon; and have they not squatted down, without the vestige of a title, on Texas; and when the Mexicans resented the aggression, invaded their territory and wrested from them the half of it, including the whole auriferous region of California? In short, war surrounds us on all sides; its passions are raging throughout the world; an era of such hostile prognostications is scarcely to be found in the annals of mankind. And yet Mr Cobden and Mr Bright declare, to admiring and assenting audiences in Manchester, that the era of war is past, and that we should disband our troops and sell our ships of the line! They are like an insane patient in a distant wing of a building which is wrapped in flames, who positively refuses to do anything to save himself, saying, "They will never reach me."

Has the conduct of the English Government for twenty years past evinced the reality of the alleged disinclination to hostilities which is said to be creeping over all established governments, and to which popular ones in particular are in so remarkable a manner averse? Has not our conduct, on the contrary, even in Europe, been aggressive and provocatory to war in the very highest degree? Did we not unite with France to force a revolutionary government on Spain and Portugal, and to prevent a legitimate one in Belgium from recovering its lawful possessions? Did we not, along with Russia, Prussia, and Austria, throw down the gauntlet, at the time of the bombardment of Beyrout and the siege of Acre, to France; and did not the firmness of Louis Philippe and the accession of Guizot, whom he called to his councils at the critical moment, alone prevent a general and frightful war in Europe? It is well known, to all persons acquainted with the subject, that we were still nearer a war with France some years afterwards, when the affair of Otaheite and Queen Pomare revived the ancient and undying jealousy of the two countries. We know it for a fact, that at that period the French were prepared for, and fully expected instant hostilities; and that for several nights six thousand choice light troops slept armed and accoutred on board the huge war-steamers at Cherbourg, ready to start at daybreak for a descent on the southern shores of Britain, and on some of its undefended dockyards, where not a vestige of preparation had been made to repel them.

But why recur to periods comparatively remote for proofs of a state of things which recur under our present foreign administration as periodically as commercial catastrophes do under our monetary system? In November 1849 we sent Admiral Parker, with the whole Mediterranean fleet, to the mouth of the Dardanelles, and took the Czar by the beard to rescue from his grasp some thousand Hungarian insurgents; and not content with this demonstration—which was as hostile as the anchoring of a Russian fleet off the Nore would have been to this country—he was directed to cast anchor, on his return, off the Piræus, and bid defiance to France and Russia, the guarantees with ourselves of the independence of Greece. On this occasion we were so near a rupture that the French ambassador actually left London, and the Russian one was preparing to follow his example, when an immediate war with the two largest powers of Europe—thus, by unparalleled rashness on our part, brought, for the first time for half a century, to act cordially together—was only prevented by our succumbing and referring the matter to arbitration, as they had all along proposed, instead of exacting it at the cannon's mouth, as we had at first endeavoured to do. And for what mighty national interest was this enormous peril incurred, when, as usual, we were wholly unprepared to meet it? Was it to save Hindostan from invasion, or raise the blockade of the Nore, or extricate our fleet from the grasp of the Czar? No! It was to enforce private claims of M. Pacifico and Mr Finlay on the Greek Government, to the amount of a few thousand pounds—a proceeding which afforded the Continental powers, if they had been as hostilely disposed as our Government, a fair precedent for sending a Russian fleet of thirty ships of the line to the Nore, to demand satisfaction from our Government for the brutal attack on Marshal Haynau! And yet, such is the infatuation produced by party spirit, that not only was this aggressive act approved by a majority of the House of Commons, even after we had been obliged to recede from it, but it was approved by the very men who are constantly preaching up the immediate advent of a pacific millennium, and the necessity of disbanding our troops and selling our ships of the line.

Surrounded then, as we undeniably are, with the flames and the passions of war on every side; slumbering on the edge of a volcano, the fires of which are smouldering under our feet and gathering strength for a fresh and still more terrific explosion; actuated as we are by unbounded national haughtiness, and a most aggressive system of foreign policy, have we done anything to support our pretensions, or avert those ravages from our own shores which we have so liberally scattered on all the adjacent coasts? Have we 100,000 regular troops and 200,000 landwehr, in the British Islands, ready to repel insult; and a fleet of 30 ships of the line and 20 armed steamers, ready afloat and manned, on the German Ocean and in the Channel, to secure our harbours from attack, and raise a blockade of our coasts? Have we—since we are so set upon a foreign war, and have done so much to spread the passions which necessarily lead to it, and made so many hostile demonstrations calculated instantly to induce it—made preparations in our Exchequer and our granaries for its expenses and its privations? Have we, like Frederick the Great when he invaded Silesia, a fund of £7,000,000 in the Treasury, to meet his war expenses; or Napoleon, when he plunged into Russia, a reserve of £14,000,000 in the vaults of the Tuileries? Have we fortified Woolwich, the general arsenal of the empire, and Chatham, and our other naval depots, hitherto undefended? Have we cleared out the glacis of Portsmouth and Plymouth, so as to give free range to the guns of the works, and established a great central fortification at Weedon, or some other central point in England, whither our troops might retire, if obliged to evacuate London, and where the new levies, raised in haste, might receive the elements of discipline, without the risk of being assailed, while yet in the awkward squad state, by the enemies' cuirassiers?

Alas! we have done none of these things. Woolwich is still an open depot, liable to be taken by a single regiment; there is not a bastion at Weedon; there is not a defensible post in the environs of London; Chatham, Sheerness, and Deptford are entirely open on the land side; and although Portsmouth and Plymouth are fortified, and may be pronounced impregnable against a naval assault, they are far from being so against a land force. The enemy would not require to run a sap up to the counter-scarp: we have saved him the trouble, by allowing houses to be built almost everywhere so near the ditch, that the besiegers would effect a lodgment there the first day, and be able to batter in the breach in two days more. Landwehr we have none, unless 30,000 pensioners—most valuable veterans, of great use against mobs, or for garrison service, but little qualified for the field—deserve the name: our yeomanry, though admirably mounted and full of spirit, are wholly unacquainted with the duties, and unaccustomed to the fatigues, of actual warfare. We have not more than seven or eight ships of the line, and these but imperfectly manned, ready for sea in our harbours; and the regular troops in Great Britain, though second to none in the world in discipline and courage, can only muster 37,000 sabres and bayonets, and in the two islands amount only to 61,000!! In proportion to the eagerness with which we have spread abroad the passions and lighted the flames of war in all the adjoining states, is the assiduity with which we have neglected or abandoned our own defences; and the promptitude we have evinced, on every possible occasion, to provoke the hostility or rouse the jealousy of the most powerful states in our neighbourhood can be paralleled only by the simultaneous reductions we have effected in our own armaments, and the utterly defenceless state in which we have exposed ourselves to their attacks. Judging from our internal reductions, one would suppose we were never again to go to war: judging from our foreign policy, one would suppose we were never again to be at peace.

To illustrate these remarks, and demonstrate the utter insanity of our simultaneous adoption of the most aggressive foreign policy and the most pacific internal preparation, we subjoin from Sir Francis Head's late most admirable and interesting work a vidimus of the military force of the principal European powers, as compared with that of Great Britain, and subjoin to it a statement of our naval force, accompanied with that of France, Russia, and the United States—the principal maritime powers of the Continent and America:—

I. France.
Regular troops—
Infantry,		301,224
Cavalry,		58,932
Artillery,		30,166
Engineers, &c.,		18,298
		408,630
National Guards,		2,630,800
II. Russia.
Regular troops—
Infantry,		468,000
Cavalry,		85,000
Cossacks,		20,000
Regulars,		573,000
Guns,		1,020
Garrisons and reserves,		150,000
Cossacks,		10,000
		160,000
III. Austria (in war.)
Infantry,		484,240
Cavalry,		54,560
Artillery,		26,104
Engineers, &c.,		56,549
		626,453
In peace reduced to,		378,552
Landwehr,		200,000
IV. Prussia.
Regulars and Landwehr—
Infantry,		265,530
Cavalry,		49,662
Artillery,		23,400
Engineers, &c.,		40,800
		379,392
Guns,		1,163
Landsturm,		222,416
V. Great Britain.
Regulars, infantry, cavalry, and artillery—
In Great Britain,		37,845
"  Ireland,		24,005
"  European colonies,		7,915
"  Asia, (English,)		30,467
"  America, &c.		19,835
"  Africa,		3,703
		123,768
Pensioners,	30,000
Dockyards-men,	8,000
Yeomanry,	13,441
Militia in Channel Islands,	4,700
		56,141
		179,909

—Sir F. Head, p. 5-36.

This is the entire force, so far as European troops are concerned, which is on foot to protect the immense British dominions in the four quarters of the globe! And as the entire regular force in Great Britain and Ireland is only 61,848 men, with 40 guns equipped for the field—and at least a fifth of every military force must always be deducted for sick, absent, and deserters—it follows that 50,000 men, with 40 guns, is the very utmost of regular troops that could be relied on in both islands to meet an enemy. Of this at least 20,000 would require to be left in Ireland; so that 30,000 men alone could be assembled in the last extremity for the defence of Great Britain! As to the pensioners and yeomanry, they would be entirely absorbed in forming garrisons, keeping up the communications, and preserving tranquillity in the manufacturing towns in the interior.

Formidable as this state of matters is, it becomes doubly serious when the state of our naval force is considered.

In 1792, before the war broke out, and when our population was not a half, nor our commerce and colonial dominions a fourth of what they now are, the naval force of Great Britain was—

Ships of the line, of which 115 were effective,	156
Frigates,	97[5]

At this moment our naval force stands as follows:—

Ships of the line, and building, of which 65 are serviceable,	93
50 to 70 gun ships,	39
Frigates,	110
War-steamers,	56

The forces of the principal maritime powers of the globe, Spain being effete, stand thus:—

FRANCE.
Line,	46
Frigates,	50
Steamers of war,	102
RUSSIA.
Line,	45
Frigates,	30
AMERICA.
Line,	11
Frigates,	14
War-steamers,	14[6]

Thus Russia and France could produce 85 ships of the line, 80 frigates, and 102 war-steamers, against our 65 or 70 of the line, 147 frigates, and 56 war-steamers. A disproportion sufficiently great for a country which boasts of being mistress of the waves: the more especially when it is recollected that both these hostile nations are actuated by the greatest jealousy of our naval power, and envy of our commercial greatness, and that we have so managed our foreign policy that, not six months ago, we were within a hairsbreadth of a war with both united. We are aware of the resources which, if the contest were prolonged for any considerable period, would arise to this country from the steam-packets to America and the West Indies, which their owners are taken bound, on an emergency, to place at the disposal of the Admiralty. But this provision, though a most wise and judicious one, and of very great moment in a lengthened conflict, would obviously be of little or no avail if war surprised us, as to all appearance it will do, in our usual state of fancied security and entire want of preparation, and a Russian fleet of twenty-five ships of the line from the Baltic anchors off the Nore, simultaneously with a French one of ten off Portsmouth, with as little warning or intimation as Admiral Parker gave to the Russians when he appeared at the mouth of the Dardanelles, or to the Greek Government when he cast anchor off the harbour of the Piræus.

But the danger becomes incomparably greater, and assumes the most portentous aspect, when two other circumstances connected with our naval situation are taken into consideration, of vital importance in this question, but which the advocates for reduction studiously keep out of view in its discussion.

The first is, the immense extent of the colonial empire we have to defend, and the consequent unavoidable dispersion of our naval force, such as it is, over the whole globe. This appears in the most decisive manner from the table quoted below, taken from the United Service Gazette for December 1850, showing the distribution of our ships of the line in commission up to 25th November last.

GREAT BRITAIN: ON COMMISSION, AND GUARDSHIPS.		MEDITERRANEAN.		COLONIES, AND EXPERIMENTAL SQUADRON.
	Guns.		Guns.		Guns.
Bellerophon,	78	Albion,	90	Asia,	84
Britannia,	120	Caledonia,	120	Hastings,	72
Cumberland,	72	Ganges,	84	Imaum,	72
Hogue,	60	Powerful,	84	Indefatigable,	50
Impregnable,	104	Superb,	80	Leander,	50
Monarch,	84	Queen,	110	Phæton,	50
Ocean,	80			Portland,	50
Saturn,	72			Prince Regent,	92
St George,	120			Southampton,	50
Trafalgar,	120			Wellesley,	72
Vengeance,	84
Victory,	101
Blenheim,	56
Line and Guardships,	13		6		10

This shows that out of twenty-eight line-of-battle ships and fifties in commission at that period, only thirteen were in the British harbours, and even including the Experimental Squadron, only fifteen. Of these, at least a half are mere guardships—such as the Victory at Portsmouth—of little real use but to furnish a mast for the Admiral on the station to hoist his flag. Of the six or seven that really are fit for sea, not more than one half are fully manned. Accordingly, it is universally known among naval men, that there are not more than three or four ships of the line that could on a sudden emergency be got ready for sea in the British harbours: being not half the force which the Danes had when they were suddenly attacked by Nelson in 1801, and by Lord Cathcart in 1807. On the first occasion, they had nine ships of the line and floating batteries moored off Copenhagen: on the last, eighteen ships of the line were taken by the victors, and brought to the British shores.

We are often told of the immense force which England now has in her steam-vessels—more numerous, it is said, and unquestionably better manned and navigated than any in Europe; and the "Excellent," at Portsmouth, is referred to as able at a moment's warning to furnish the requisite amount of experienced gunners. Fully admitting the high discipline and training of the gunners on board the Excellent, of whose merits we are well aware, they cannot do impossibilities. They amount only to five hundred men; and what are they to the forces requisite to defend the British shores against a combined French and Russian fleet, such as we all but brought upon us last April, when the French ambassador left London? What could four or five hundred trained gunners do when scattered over fifteen or twenty sail of the line, and as many steamers, the crews of which were suddenly huddled together—supposing them got at all—from the merchant service, where they had received no sort of training in naval warfare? What could the peace steam-boats, not pierced for a single gun, do against the broadsides of the Russian line-of-battle ships, or the huge war-steamers which excited such astonishment among our naval men, when exhibited at the late review at Cherbourg? The thing is quite ridiculous. They would furnish, in Napoleon's words, ample chair au cannon, and nothing more.

Contrast this now with the state of preparation in which the French and Russian navies are kept, in consequence of their having both a regular force raised by conscription, and constantly paid and under arms like their land forces, wherewith to commence the conflict. The Czar has always twenty ships of the line and ten frigates in the Baltic, completely equipped and ready for sea, with 30,000 soldiers ready to step on board of them; and it would be surprising if, in passing the Sound, they were not reinforced by the six ships of the line and steam-frigates at the disposal of Denmark,[7] who would desire nothing better than to return, in a manner equally unexpected, the sudden visits we paid her in 1801 and 1807. France, in addition to sixteen ships of the line in commission, and double that number of war-steamers, has no less than 55,000 seamen ready to be called on, like the national guard, at a moment's warning, perfectly trained to gunnery and warlike duties, who could man double that number of line-of-battle ships and war-steamers.

It is no exaggeration, therefore, but the simple truth, to say, that France and Russia could, in ten days from the time that their respective ambassadors left London, appear with a fleet of thirty ships of the line and forty frigates or war-steamers in the Channel, with which they could with ease blockade the Thames, Portsmouth, and Plymouth, where not more, at the very utmost, than eight or ten line-of-battle ships, and ten or twelve war-steamers, most of them only half manned, could be collected to oppose them. We have no doubt the crews of this diminutive fleet would do their duty as nobly as they did at the Nile and Trafalgar; but we shudder at the thought of the national blindness and infatuation which would expose them, and with them the existence of England as an independent nation, to such fearful odds.

In any such conflict, it is by the forces which can suddenly be rendered available that everything will be determined. It may be quite true that England possesses resources in the vast extent of her mercantile navy and steam-vessels, and the undaunted character of her seamen, which, in any prolonged contest, would give her the same superiority which she maintained throughout the last war; but it is not the less true, that this contingent ultimate superiority would be of no avail to avert disaster—it may be conquest—if the enemy, by having their forces better in hand, and available in the outset, were in a situation to gain an advantage which could never be recovered from in the commencement. It is impossible to overestimate the shock to credit, and ruin to the best interests of the empire, which would arise from a blockade of our harbours even for a single fortnight. Of what would it avail us that we had six noble sail of the line, and double that number of war-steamers in the Mediterranean, and as many scattered through the world, from China to California, if the Thames, the Mersey, and the Clyde, were blockaded by hostile fleets, and Portsmouth and Plymouth could only furnish five or six half-manned line-of-battle ships to raise the blockade? Russia has no colonies; France, next to none: thus the whole naval forces of both these Powers could be brought to bear, without deduction or defalcation of any sort, on Great Britain, more than half of whose navy is necessarily scattered over the globe. Our distant fleets would, in such a crisis, avail us as little as an army of pawns, with bishops and knights, would a chess-player who had received checkmate.

In the next place, these considerations become doubly powerful when it is recollected how very peculiar and tardy is the mode of collecting men, which alone is now thought of in the British navy. It is not generally known by landsmen—though hereafter they may come to know it to their cost—that in England at present there is neither any standing royal naval force, nor any compulsory means of levying it. By our great naval establishment and right of impressing seamen, we had, practically speaking, both during the war: but these days are past. The navy sailors are changed as ships come into harbour, and the right of impressment has virtually become obsolete. When a ship, after two or three years' service, comes into port, she is immediately paid off, and a new set of sailors, wholly ignorant of war, are slowly got together by the next captain who gets that or a corresponding ship; who in their turn, when they begin to become expert at their new duties, are displaced to make way for a third body of untrained men! What should we say to a manufacturer, a merchant, or a general, who should conduct things in this manner? Yet, such as it is, it is the system of the British navy. This subject, of vital importance, has been so well illustrated by two gallant naval officers, that we cannot do better than quote their admirable observations on it.

Captain Plunkett adds his valuable testimony to the same effect:—

We add not a word of comment on these admirable passages. Further illustration were worse than useless, after such words coming from such quarters.

It is often said that all fears of invasion are ridiculous, after the failure of Napoleon, who had 130,000 of the finest troops in the world to effect it. The Times, with its usual ability, makes the most of this argument. We accept the challenge: and, if we are not much mistaken, that able journal will have no reason to congratulate itself on having referred to that period for support of its argument:—

1. The regular land forces of France at that period were 450,000 men: about the same as they are now. But now that Power has, in addition, 2,000,000 well-trained National Guards in arms, which, by rendering her territory wellnigh unassailable, leaves her whole regular force available for foreign expedition.

2. England had then 160,000 regular troops on foot, including 30,000 of the army of reserve, raised in the preceding years, of whom about 100,000 were in the British Islands. In 1808, the Duke of York reported to Government that, without detriment to any necessary home service, 60,000 regulars could be spared for the Peninsula; and in 1809 she had 80,000 in active warfare—viz., 40,000 at Walcheren, 30,000 in Spain, and 10,000 in Sicily.

3. In addition to this, she had 80,000 militia, quite equal to troops of the line, in Great Britain and Ireland, besides 300,000 volunteers in arms, tolerably drilled and full of spirit.

4. She had 83 ships of the line in commission, and 230 in all the royal dockyards, and 508 vessels of war bore the royal flag.

5. She had a system of impressment in active operation, which in effect gave the Admiralty the command, on an emergency, of the whole sailors in the mercantile navy of Great Britain, as they successively came into harbour: and the magnitude of the royal navy was such, and its attractions—especially the hopes of prize-money and glory—so powerful, that the sailors of the fleet were as much a standing force as Napoleon's grenadiers.

6. Austria and Russia were then in close alliance, offensive and defensive, with Great Britain, and 80,000 Muscovites, under Kutusoff, were hastening through Poland and Moravia to join 90,000 Austrians, who were on the Inn, threatening to invade Bavaria.

7. So instant was the danger, and so pressing the approach of a contest with the two greatest military powers on the Continent, that Napoleon was obliged to count not only by weeks but by days; and he had only just time enough to close the war, as he himself said, by "a clap of thunder on the Thames, before he would be called on to combat for his existence on the Danube."

Such were the circumstances under which Napoleon then undertook his long meditated and deeply laid project for the invasion and conquest of Great Britain. His plan was to decoy Lord Nelson away to the West Indies by a feigned expedition of the combined Toulon and Cadiz fleets, and for them suddenly to return, join the Ferrol squadron, pick up those of Rochefort and l'Orient, unite with that of Brest, and with the united force, which would be sixty sail of the line, proceed into the Channel, where it was calculated there would only be twenty or twenty-five to oppose them; and, with this overwhelming force, cover the embarkation of the 130,000 men whom he had collected on the coast of the Channel. The plan was not original on the part of Napoleon, though he had the whole merit of the organisation of the stupendous armament which was to carry it into execution. The design was originally submitted, in 1782, by M. de Bouillé to Louis XVI., and Rodney's victory alone prevented it from being attempted at that time. France's designs in this respect are fixed and unalterable: they were the same under the mild and pacific Louis as the implacable Napoleon, and suggested as ably by the chivalrous and loyal-hearted de Bouillé, the author of the flight of the Royal family to Varennes, as by the regicide Talleyrand, or the republican Décrès.[9]

Such was Napoleon's plan, formed on that of M. de Bouillé; and, vast and complicated as it was, it all but succeeded. Indeed, its failure was owing to a combination of circumstances so extraordinary that they can never be expected to recur again; and even these are to be ascribed rather to the good providence of God, than to anything done by man to counteract it.

Nelson's fleet of ten line-of-battle ships pursued the combined fleet of twenty from Cadiz to the West Indies; but they had four weeks the start of him: and upon arriving there in the beginning of June, he received intelligence that they had set sail ten days before for Europe. Instantly divining their plan, he—without losing an hour—despatched several fast-sailing brigs to warn the Admiralty of their approach. One of these, the Curieux, which bore the fortunes of England on its sails, outstripped all its competitors, and even outsailed the combined fleet, so as to arrive at Portsmouth on the 9th July. Without losing an hour, the Admiralty sent orders by telegraph to Admiral Calder to join the Rochefort blockading squadron, and stand out to sea, in order to intercept the enemy on his return to the European seas. He did so; and with fifteen sail of the line met the combined fleet of twenty, on the 15th July: engaged them, took two ships of the line, and drove the fleet back into Ferrol; where, however, he was too weak to blockade them, as their junction with the squadron there raised their force to thirty ships of the line.

Though this was a severe check, it did not altogether disconcert Napoleon. He sent orders to Villeneuve to set sail from Ferrol, and join the Rochefort and Brest squadrons which were ready to receive him, and which would have raised the combined fleet to fifty-five line-of-battle ships, then to make straight for the Channel, where Napoleon, with one hundred and thirty thousand men, and fifteen hundred gun-boats and lesser craft, lay ready to embark. On the 21st August, the Brest squadron, consisting of twenty-one sail of the line, under Gantheaume, stood out to sea. Every eye was strained looking to the south, where Villeneuve with thirty-five line-of-battle ships, was expected to appear. What prevented the junction, and defeated this admirably laid plan, which had thus obtained complete success so far as it had gone—for Nelson was still a long way off, his fleet having been wholly worn-out by their long voyage, and obliged to go into Gibraltar to refit? It was this: Villeneuve set sail from Ferrol with 29 sail of the line, on the 11th August, but instead of proceeding to the north—in conformity with his orders—to join Gantheaume off Brest, he steered for Cadiz, which he reached in safety on the 21st of August, the very day on which he had been expected at Brest, without meeting with Sir Robert Calder, who had fallen back into the Bay of Biscay. For this disobedience of orders, Napoleon afterwards brought Villeneuve to a court-martial, by which he was condemned.

This unaccountable disobedience of orders entirely defeated Napoleon's scheme, for Austria was now on, the verge of invading Bavaria. He accordingly at once changed his plan; and, as he could no longer hope for a naval superiority in the Channel, before the Austrian invasion took place, directed all his forces to repel the combined Austrian and Russian forces in Bavaria and Italy. On September 1, his whole army received orders to march from the heights of Boulogne to the banks of the Danube. On the 20th October, Mack defiled, with thirty thousand men as prisoners before him, on the heights of Ulm; and on the day after—October 21—Nelson defeated Villeneuve at Trafalgar, took nineteen ships of the line, and ruined seven more. Between that battle and the subsequent one of Sir R. Strachan, thirty ships of the line were taken or destroyed; all hope of invasion for the remainder of the war was at an end; and "ships, colonies, and commerce" had irrevocably passed to Napoleon's enemies.

Such was the extraordinary and apparently providential combination of circumstances which defeated this great plan of Napoleon for the invasion of this country—a plan which, he repeatedly said, was the best combined and most deeply laid of any he had ever formed in his life. Its failure was owing to accident, or some overruling cause which cannot be again relied on. Had the Curieux not made the shortest passage ever then known, from Antigua—twenty-four days; had Villeneuve reached the Channel unexpectedly on the 20th or 21st July, as he would have done but for its arrival—had he even sailed for Brest on the 11th August, as ordered, instead of to Cadiz, the invasion would in all human probability have taken place. What its result would have been is a very different question. With a hundred and eighty thousand regular troops and militia in arms in the British Islands, besides three hundred thousand volunteers, the conflict must at least have been a very desperate one. But what would it be now, when the French and Russians have greater land forces to invade us; when their naval superiority, at least in the outset of the contest, would be much more decisive; and, with a much more divided and discontented population at home, we could only—at the very utmost—oppose them with fifty thousand effective men in both islands, in the field.

It is often said by persons who know nothing of war, either by study or experience, that "if the French invaded us, we would all rise up and crush them." Setting aside what need not be said to any man who knows anything of the subject—the utter inadequacy of an unarmed, untrained, and undisciplined body of men, however individually brave, to repel the attack of a powerful regular army—we shall by one word settle this matter of the nation rising up. It would rise up, and we know what it would do. The most influential part of it, at least in the towns, who now rule the state, would run away. We do not mean run away from the field; for, truly, very few of those who now raise the cry for economy and disarming would be found there. We mean they would counsel, and, in fact, insist on submission. Many brave men would doubtless be found in the towns, and multitudes in the country, who would be eager at the posts of danger; but the great bulk of the wealthy and influential classes, at least in the great cities, would loudly call out for an accommodation on any terms. They would surrender the fleets, dismantle Portsmouth and Plymouth, cede Gibraltar and Malta—anything to stop the crisis. They would do so for the same reason that they now so earnestly counsel disbanding the troops and selling the ships of the line, and under the influence of a much more cogent necessity—in order to be able to continue without interruption the making of money. Peace, peace! would be the universal cry, at least among the rich in the towns, as it was in Paris in 1814. There would be no thought of imitating the burning of Moscow, or renewing the sacrifice of Numantia. The feeling among the vast majority of the manufacturing and mercantile classes would be—"What is the use of fighting and prolonging so terrible a crisis? Our workmen are starving, our harbours are blockaded, our trade is gone, we are evidently overmatched; let us on any terms get out of the contest, and sit quietly on our cotton bags, to make money by weaving cloth for our conquerors."

We have said enough, we think, to make every thoughtful and impartial mind contemplate with the most serious disquietude the prospect which is before us, under our present system of cheapening everything, and, as a necessary consequence, reducing the national armaments to a pitiable degree of weakness in the midst of general hostility, and the greatest possible increase of available forces on the part of all our neighbours, rivals, and enemies. But let us suppose that we are entirely wrong in all we have hitherto advanced—that there is not the slightest danger of an invasion or blockade from foreign powers, or that our home forces are so considerable as to render any such attempt on their part utterly hopeless. There are three other circumstances, the direct effects of our present Free Trade policy, any one of which is fully adequate in no distant period to destroy our independence, and from the combined operation of which nothing but national subjugation and ultimate ruin can be anticipated.

The first is the extraordinary and appalling increase which, since Free Trade was introduced, has taken place in the proportion of the daily food of our population which is furnished by foreign states. Before the great change in our policy began, the nation had been rendered, practically speaking, self-supporting. The importation of wheat, for the five years from 1830 to 1835, was only 398,000 quarters; and even during the five bad years in succession, from 1836 to 1841, the average importation was only 1,700,000 quarters. From 1830 to 1840, the average importation of wheat and flour was only 907,000 quarters.[10] But since the great change of 1846, the state of matters has been so completely changed that it is now notorious that, in ordinary years, the importations cannot be expected to be ever less than 9,000,000 or 10,000,000 quarters of grain, about 5,000,000 quarters of which consists of wheat.[11] The importation in the single month of July last, in the face of prices about 42s. the quarter, was no less than 1,700,000 quarters of all sorts of grain;[12] and in the month ending November 5, with prices about 39s. 9d. the quarter of wheat, the importation was:—

	Quarters.
Wheat,	309,162
Other grain,	181,753
Indian corn,	36,412
Flour and meal,	194,700
	721,657

—Price, 39s. 9d. quarter of wheat.

The average of prices for the last twelve weeks has been 39s. 9d. the quarter; but the importation goes on without the least diminution, and accordingly the Mark Lane Express of December 28, 1850, observes,—

Accordingly, so notorious has this fact become, and so familiar have the public become with it, that it has become a common-place remark, which is making the round of all the newspapers without exciting any attention, that the food of 7,000,000 of our people has come to depend on supplies from foreign countries. In fact a much larger proportion than this, of the wheaten food of the country, comes from abroad; for the total wheat consumed in Great Britain and Ireland is under 15,000,000 quarters, and the importation of wheat is from 4,000,000 to 5,000,000 quarters, which is about a third. And of the corresponding decrease in our own production of grain, a decisive proof has been afforded by the decline since 1846 in wheat grown in Ireland, the only part of the empire where such returns are made, which has stood thus:—

	Acres.
1848,	1,084,000
1849,	511,000
1850,	674,000[13]

Now, assuming—as experience warrants us in doing—this state of matters to be permanent, and the growth of wheat in the British Islands to be progressively superseded by importations from abroad, how is the national independence to be maintained, when a fourth of our people have come to depend on foreign supplies for their daily food? Nearly all this grain, be it recollected, comes from two countries only—Russia, or Poland which it governs, and America. If these two powers are desirous of beating down the naval superiority, or ruining the commerce and manufactures of Great Britain, they need not fit out a ship of the line, or embark a battalion to effect their purpose; they have only to pass a Non-Intercourse Act, as they both did in 1811, and wheat will at once rise to 120s. the quarter in this country; and in three months we must haul down our colours, and submit to any terms they may choose to dictate.

In another respect our state of dependence is still greater, for we rest almost entirely on the supplies obtained from a single state. No one need be told that five-sixths, often nine-tenths, of the supply of cotton consumed in our manufactures come from America, and that seven or eight hundred thousand persons are directly or indirectly employed in the operations which take place upon it. Suppose America wishes to bully us, to make us abandon Canada or Jamaica for example, she has no need to go to war. She has only to stop the export of cotton for six months, and the whole of our manufacturing counties are starving or in rebellion; while a temporary cessation of profit is the only inconvenience they experience on the other side of the Atlantic. Can we call ourselves independent in such circumstances? We might have been independent: Jamaica, Demerara, and India, might have furnished cotton enough for all our wants. Why, then, do they not do so? The mania of cheapening everything has done it all. We have ruined the West Indies by emancipating the negroes, and then admitting foreign sugar all but on the same terms as our own, and therefore cotton cannot be raised to a profit in those rich islands—for continuous labour, of which the emancipated negroes are incapable, is indispensable to its production. In the East Indies, the cultivation of cotton has not been able to make any material progress, because the mania of Free Trade lets in American cotton, grown at half the expense, without protection. We have sold our independence, not like Esau, for a mess of pottage, but for a bale of cotton.

In the next place, the progressive and rapid decrease in our shipping, and increase of the foreign employed in carrying on our trade, since the Navigation Laws were repealed, is so great that from that quarter also the utmost danger to our independence may be anticipated. We need not remind our readers how often and earnestly we have predicted that this effect must take place; and we shall now proceed to show how completely, to the very letter, these prognostics have been verified:—

The shipping returns of the Board of Trade, for the month ending the 5th of November, present the following results:—

Tonnage for the month ending Nov. 5.

Entered inwards—
	1849.	1850.
British vessels,	370,393	326,058
United States vessels,	30,677	54,164
Other countries,	67,733	140,397
	468,803	520,619

—Times, Dec. 7, 1850.

The general results for the ten months, from January 1, 1850, when the repeal of the Navigation Laws took effect, to October 31, are as follows, and have been thus admirably stated by Mr Young:—

In the single harbour of Liverpool, the decrease of British shipping, in the year 1850, has been no less than 100,000 tons; while the foreign has swelled from 56,400 to 126,700.[14] If such has been the result in less than one year, what may be anticipated if the system continues three or four years longer? It is quite evident that the foreign tonnage employed in conducting our trade will come to exceed the British, and then, of course, our independence and maritime superiority are alike at an end.

The Free-Traders, in answer to this appalling statement, say that the entries outward exhibit a different and less unfavourable result. Without referring to the authority of Mr Huskisson, who stated what is well-known to all men practically engaged with the subject, that the outward entries afford no correct data for judging of trade returns, it may be sufficient to remark that the difference is mainly owing, in the present instance, to the prodigious multitude of our emigrants to America, the shipping employed in conveying whom is estimated at 240,000 tons. The Free-Traders first, by their final measures, drive some 300,000 of our industrious inhabitants out of the country annually, in quest of the employment which they have lost at home, and then they rest on the tonnage required to convey them away, in order to conceal the effect of Free Trade in shipping on our mercantile marine! They are welcome to the whole benefit which they can derive from the double effect of Free Trade, first on our people, and then on our shipping.

These considerations become the more forcible when it is considered, in the third place, what immediate and imminent risk there is that either our principal colonies will ere long declare themselves independent, or that they will be abandoned without a struggle by our Free-Trade rulers. Now, the tonnage between Great Britain and Canada is about 1,200,000 tons, and to the West Indies somewhat above 170,000. Fourteen hundred thousand British tons are taken up with our trade to these two colonies alone; and if they become independent states, that tonnage will, to the extent of more than a half, slip from our grasp—as they have the materials of shipbuilding at their door, which we have not. Eight or nine hundred thousand tons will by that change at once be severed from the British Empire and added to the foreign tonnage employed in carrying on our trade, which is now about 2,200,000 tons. That will raise it to above 3,000,000 tons, or fully a half of our whole tonnage, foreign and British—which is, in round numbers, about 6,000,000 tons. The intention of Government to abandon our colonies to themselves has been now openly announced. Earl Grey's declaration of his resolution to withdraw all our troops, except a mere handful, from Australia, is obviously the first step in the general abandonment of the colonies to their own resources, and, of course, their speedy disjunction from the British Empire. As the separation of Canada and the West Indies is an event which may ere long be looked for—not less from the universal discontents of the colonies, who have lost by Free Trade their only interest in upholding the connection with the British Empire, than from the growing disinclination of our Free Trade rulers to continue much longer the burdens and expense consequent on their government—it is evident that, the moment it happens, the foreign ships employed in carrying on our trade will outnumber the British. From that moment the nursery for our seamen, and with it the means of maintaining our maritime superiority and national independence, are at an end. And as this separation will, to all human appearance, take place the moment that we are involved in a European war—which, with the aggressive policy of our Foreign Minister, may any day be looked for—this is perhaps the most immediate and threatening danger which menaces the British Empire.

When the magnitude and variety of the perils which Free Trade and the cheapening system have brought upon the British empire are taken into consideration, it may appear extraordinary that the foreign powers, who are perfectly aware of it all, do not at once step forward and secure for themselves the rich prize which we so invitingly tender to their grasp. But the reason is not difficult to be discerned. They know what England once was, and they see whither, under the new system, she is tending. They anticipate our subjugation, or at least our abrogation of the rank and pretensions of an independent power, at no distant period, from our own acts, without their interfering in the matter at all. They are fearful, if they move too soon, of committing the same fault which the Pope has recently done, on the suggestion of Cardinal Wiseman. They are afraid of opening the eyes of the nation, by any overt act, to the dangers accumulating around them, before it is so thoroughly debilitated by the new system that any resistance would be hopeless, and therefore will never be attempted. They hope, and with reason, to see us ruined and cast down by our own acts, without their firing a shot. Their feeling is analogous to Napoleon's on the morning of the battle of Austerlitz, when the Allies were making their fatal cross-march in front of the heads of his columns, and exposing their flank to his attack. When urged by his generals to give the signal for an immediate advance, he replied—"Wait! when the enemy is making a false movement, which will prove fatal if continued, it is not our part to interrupt him in it."

What, then, is the advantage which the Free-Traders have to set off against these obvious and appalling dangers, past, present, and to come, with which their policy is attended? It is this, and this only—that the manufacturing towns are prosperous, and that our exports are increasing. They point with exultation to the following statement:—

Now, let it be supposed that this increase, which will amount to less than L.7,000,000 in our exports in the whole year, is all to be set down to the credit of Free Trade. Let us suppose that Californian gold, which has given so unparalleled a stimulus to America, and the lowering the discounts of the Bank of England to 2½ per cent—which has done so much, as it always does, to vivify industry and raise prices at home—and the pacification of Germany by Muscovite influences or bayonets, which have again, after the lapse of two years, opened the Continental markets to our produce, have had nothing at all to do with this increase in our exports,—what, after all, does it amount to, and what, on striking the balance of profit and loss of Free Trade, has the nation lost or gained by its adoption?

It has increased our exports by L.7,000,000 at the very utmost; and as the total produce of our manufactures is about L.180,000,000, this is an addition of a twenty-fifth part. It has made four or five hundred thousand persons employed in the export manufactures prosperous for the time, and increased, by five or six hundred thousand pounds in the last year, the incomes of some eighty or a hundred mill-owners or millionnaires.

Per contra. 1. It has lowered the value of agricultural produce of every kind fully twenty-five per cent, and that in the face of a harvest very deficient in the south of England. As the value of that produce, prior to the Free-Trade changes, was about L.300,000,000 a-year, it has cut L.75,000,000 off the remuneration for agricultural industry over the two islands.

2. It has cut as much off the funds available to the purchase of articles of our manufacture in the home market; for if the land, which pays above half the income tax, is impoverished, how are the purchasers at home to find funds to buy goods?

3. It has totally destroyed the West Indies—colonies which, before the new system began, raised produce to the value of L.22,000,000, and remitted at least L.5,000,000 annually, in the shape of rent, profits, and taxes, to this country.

4. It has induced such ruin in Ireland, that the annual emigration, which chiefly comes from that agricultural country, last year (1849) reached 300,000 souls, and this year, it is understood, will be still greater.[15] This is as great a chasm in our population as the Moscow retreat, or the Leipsic campaign, made in that of France; but it excites no sort of attention, or rather the pressure of unemployed labour is felt to be so excessive, that it is looked on rather as a blessing. The Times observes, on January 1, 1851:—

5. It has totally ruined the West Highlands of Scotland, which depend on two staples—kelp and black cattle—the first of which has been destroyed by free trade in barilla, and the second ruined by free trade in cattle, for the benefit of our manufacturing towns, and sent their cottars in starving bands to Glasgow, already overwhelmed by above L.100,000 a-year of poor-rates.

6. It has so seriously affected the internal resources of the country, that, with a foreign trade prosperous beyond what has been seen since 1845, the revenue is only L.165,000 more than it was in the preceding year, which was one of great depression; and the last quarter has produced L.110,000 less than the corresponding quarter of 1849.

7. It has so lowered the incomes of people in the country, that although the number of travellers by railways has greatly increased, and the total receipts of the lines have been swelled by L.1,700,000 since last year, the mileage has decreased-proving, that the general traffic of the country bears no adequate proportion to its railway lines. It stands thus,—

	1849.	1850.
Mileage on 6257 miles,	L.2302	L.2247

—Times.

which is a fall of L.55 a mile in the midst of our boasted prosperous export trade.

Such are the advantages, in consideration of which the nation has embarked on a course of policy which so evidently, and in so many ways, threatens our independence. It is class government which has done it all—the determination to make the sovereign worth two sovereigns, and a day's labour to the poor man worth one shilling to him instead of two, which has induced dangers in every quarter, which threaten the existence of Great Britain. Why is it that we are constrained—though Government are perfectly aware of the danger, and the Duke of Wellington has repeatedly pointed it out—to have a military and naval force evidently incommensurate to the wants of our vast empire, and unable to defend it from the hostility which our foreign policy does so much to provoke? Simply because we have surrendered the government of the country to a moneyed oligarchy, who are resolved, coute qui coute, to cheapen everything, because it enhances the value of their realised wealth, and because the measures of that oligarchy have cut down Queen Victoria's income from £100,000,000—as it might have been, and is now, in real weight upon the country[16]—to £50,000,000; just as they have reduced the income of the poor needlewomen from 9d. a-day to 4-1/2d. Why is it that we are constrained, openly and avowedly, to abandon our colonies to their own resources? Only because the cheapening system and Free Trade have so paralysed and weakened our resources, that, like the Romans, if we would protect at all the heart of the empire, we must forthwith abandon its extremities.

Why are we evidently and undeniably losing the empire of the seas, by the rapid and portentous increase of the foreign and decline of the English shipping, in carrying on our own trade? Only because freights must, it is thought, be cheapened as well as everything else; and the independence of the country is a trifling consideration to a fall of a farthing in the pound, in the transport of some articles, for the benefit of the Manchester trader. Why are the West Indies utterly ruined, and the annual importation of slaves into Cuba and Brazil doubled,[17] and discontent so universally spread through our colonies, that beyond all doubt, in the first reverse, they will break off from the mother country, if not previously thrown off by it? Merely to carry out the dogma of Free Trade, and lower sugar, watered by the blood of the slaves, a penny or twopence a pound to the British consumer. Why have we brought 7,000,000 of our people, in three years, to depend for their daily food on foreign supplies, and put ourselves entirely at the mercy of the two states from which nearly all that food comes? Only to enrich the Manchester manufacturers, and appease the cry for cheap bread, by enabling them to beat down the wages of labour from 1s. 6d. to 1s. a-day. Why are poor-rates—measured in the true way, by quarters of grain—heavier in this year of boasted prosperity than they were in any former year of admitted adversity? Because, in every department of industry, we have beat down native by letting in a flood of foreign industry. Why are 300,000 industrious citizens annually driven into exile, and Ireland threatened with a depopulation the most rapid and extraordinary which has been witnessed in the world since the declining days of the Roman empire? Because we would lower wheat from 56s. to 39s. a quarter; and thereby we have extinguished the profits of cultivation in a portion of our empire containing 8,000,000 of inhabitants, but so exclusively agricultural that its exports of manufactures are only £230,000 a-year. It is one principle—the cheapening system—devised by the moneyed and manufacturing oligarchy, and calculated for their exclusive benefit, which has done the whole.

Is there, then, no remedy for these various, accumulating, and most threatening evils? Must we sit down with our hands across, supinely witnessing the progressive dangers and certain ultimate destruction of the empire, merely because the measures inducing all these perils are supported by the moneyed and manufacturing oligarchy who have got the command of the House of Commons? We are far from thinking that this is the case; but if we would avert, or even mitigate our dangers, we must set ourselves first to remedy the most pressing. Of these, the most serious, beyond all question, are to be found in our unprotected state,—for they may destroy us as a nation in a month, after some fresh freak of Lord Palmerston's has embroiled us with some of the great European powers. In regard to other matters, and the general commercial policy, the danger, though not the less real, is not so immediate, and experience may perhaps enlighten the country before it is too late. But it is otherwise with our external dangers: they are instant and terrible. The means of resisting them are perfectly simple—they will be felt as a burden by none; on the contrary, they are calculated, at the same time that they provide for our national defence, to mitigate the greater part of the domestic evils under which the people labour.

Government tell us that they have a surplus of L.3,000,000 this year in their hands. We hope it is so, and that it will not prove, like other surpluses, greater on paper than in reality. But let it be assumed that it is as large as is represented. That surplus, judiciously applied, would save the country! It would raise our armaments to such a point as, with the advantages of our insular situation, and long-established warlike fame, would prevent all thoughts of invasion on the part of our enemies. It would give us 100,000 regular troops, with those we already have—100,000 militia, occasionally called out—and 25 ships of the line, with those already in commission, to defend the British shores. It is true, the continuance of the Income Tax cannot be relied on—nor should the country submit to it any longer; for a tax which is paid exclusively by 147,000 persons out of 28,000,000, is so obviously unjust, that its further retention is probably impossible. Additional direct taxation upon the affluent classes is obviously out of the question, for the chasms made in the incomes of those depending on land, who pay three-fourths of it, are such that it would prove totally unproductive. What, then, is to be done to uphold the public revenue at its present amount, or even prevent its sinking so as to increase instead of diminishing our helpless and unprotected state? An obvious expedient remains. Imitate the conduct of America and Prussia, France and Russia, and all countries who have any regard either to their national independence, or the social welfare of their inhabitants. Lay a moderate duty upon all importations, whether of rude or manufactured articles. In America it is 30 per cent, and constitutes nearly their sole source of revenue: in Prussia it is practically 40 or 50 per cent. By this means nearly half the tax is paid by foreigners—for competition forces them to sell the articles taxed cheaper than their ordinary price, with the addition of the tax. It is spread over so vast a surface among consumers, that its weight is not felt; being mixed up with the price of the article sold, its weight is not perceived. We pay in this way half the taxes of America, Germany, and all the countries to whom we chiefly export our manufactures. Let us return them the compliment, and adopt a system which will make them pay the half of ours. The whole, or nearly the whole, of the Income Tax, which now produces L.5,400,000 a-year, would by this change be spent in increased purchases in the home market, and sensibly relieve its sinking state. This change would at once obviate our external dangers—for it would enable Government, without sensibly burdening the country, to maintain the national armaments on such a scale as to bid defiance to foreign attack. We shall see in our succeeding paper whether it would not, at the same time, be an effectual remedy, and the only one that would be practicable, to the most serious part of our domestic evils.

---

A noble land lies in desolation. Years pass over it, leaving its aspect only more desolate; the barbarian takes possession of the soil, or the outcast makes it his place of refuge. Its palaces are in ruins, its chieftains are in the dust; its past triumphs are regarded as the exaggerations of romance, or the fond fantasies of fable. At length a man of intelligence and vigour comes, delves into the heart of the soil, breaks up the mound, throws aside the wrecks of neglect and time, opens to us the foundations of palaces, the treasure-chambers of kings, the trophies of warriors, and gives the world the memorials of a great people in the grave.

All analogy must be imperfect in detail; and we have no desire to insist on the perfection of our analogy between the Golden Head of the East, and the little kingdom whose fallen honours are recorded in the volume before us. But, if Ireland is even now neither the nominis umbra which the Assyrian empire has been for so many ages, nor the Irish legislature the heir of the fierce and falcon-eyed council which sleeps in the sepulchres of Nineveh, there is something of a curious relationship in the adventurous industry which has so lately exhumed the monuments of Eastern grandeur, and the patriotic reminiscence which has retrieved the true glories of the sister country, the examples of her genius, from an oblivion alike resulting from the misfortunes of the Land and the lapse of Time.

Nor are we altogether inclined to admit the inferiority of the moral catastrophe of the Island to the physical fall of the Empire. If there be an inferiority, we should place it on the side of the Oriental throne. To us, all that belongs to mind assumes the higher rank; the soil trodden by the philosopher and the patriot, the birthplace of the poet and the orator, bears a prouder aspect, is entitled to a more reverent homage, and creates richer recollections in the coming periods of mankind, than all the pomp of unintellectual power. There would be to us a stronger claim in the fragments of an Athenian tomb, or in the thicket-covered wall of a temple in the Ægean, than in all the grandeurs of Babylon.

It is now fifty years since the parliament of Ireland fell; and, in that period, there has not been a more disturbed, helpless, and hopeless country than Ireland, on the face of the earth. Nor has this calamity been confined to the lower orders; every order has been similarly convulsed. The higher professions have languished and lost their lustre; the Church has been exposed to a struggle for life; the nobility have given up the useless resistance to difficulties increasing round them from hour to hour; the landed interest is supplicating the Court of Encumbered Estates to relieve it from its burthens; the farmers are hurrying, in huge streams of fugitives, from a land in which they can no longer live; and the tillers of the ground, the serfs of the spade, are left to the dangerous teaching of an angry priesthood, or to the death of mingled famine and pestilence. A cloud, which seems to stoop lower day by day, and through which no ray can pierce, at once chills and darkens Ireland.

The author of this important and interesting volume, in a brief preface, states his object as being that of giving personal sketches of the leading Irish characters of his time, exactly as they appeared on the scenes of professional and public life—most of them being his acquaintance, some his intimates. He concludes by gracefully expressing his "hope, that the reader will rejoice in a more intimate acquaintance with them; and that, in endeavouring to elevate the land of his birth, he may make some return for the kindness bestowed on him by that of his adoption."

Here two objects are announced; and, whether the first was the elevation of his country by the characters of its eminent men; or, whether the country was the background for the figures of the national history-piece, he has given us a work which brings the patriots and orators of Ireland with singular force before the eye.

His introduction to Curran was sufficiently characteristic. When at the Temple, he had written a poem on the honours of his country, in which the great orator of her Bar was named with due admiration. The popularity of the verses excited the attention of their object, and the young barrister received an invitation to dine with Curran, then Master of the Rolls, at the Priory, his villa, a few miles from Dublin. The appointed hour was five, and it was a matter of importance to be punctual; for beyond that hour dinner was to wait for no man. His first view of his host is graphically described. He found him in his avenue.

However, it appears that the ominous hour had not struck, and they dined.

If this description could be doubted, on the authority of the volume, it would be amply confirmed by the authority of his time. Curran was confessedly the wit of the day, and his witticisms were the more popular from their being, in general, harmless. No man could sting more keenly where he had a public culprit of his own class to sting, or a political adversary to combat; but no man was seldomer personal.

Curran's nature was playful. His taste was also dramatic, and he was fond of playing harmless tricks upon his friends. Of this taste Mr Phillips had a specimen, even on the day of his introduction:—

All this is very well told, and very amusing in description, and was very innocent—when all was over. But it was exposed to the chance of being differently taken, and had but one advantage—that it could not be repeated on the individual.

Curran was born in 1760 at Newmarket, a village in the county of Cork. His parentage was humble, his father being only the seneschal of the manor. His mother seems to have been a woman of superior faculties, and her celebrated son always spoke of her with remarkable deference.

As it was a custom, among the oddities of Ireland, to teach Greek and Latin to boys who probably were to spend the rest of their lives at the spade, Curran had what in Ireland was called a classical education, but which his natural talent turned to better account than one in a million of those half-naked classicists. It enriched his metaphors in after life, and enabled him to talk of the raptures of antiquity. In the Irish University, he shared the fate of other celebrated men. Swift, Burke, and Goldsmith made no figure in their academic course. We certainly do not mention this failure to their praise, nor would they themselves have ever so mentioned it. We can easily conceive, that in their palmiest days they regretted their waste of time, or want of industry. Still, they may have found their palliative in the ungenial nature of the collegiate studies in their day. We should observe, that those studies have since been more advantageously adapted to the national necessity, and are of a much more general and popular description.

But in the last century, the whole bent of the collegiate education was mathematical: the only road to distinction was Euclid. The value of mathematics is unquestionable. As a science, it holds its head among the highest; but as a national education, it is among the most useless. The mind made for mathematical distinction is as rare as the mind made for poetic pre-eminence. One might as well make poetry a requisite, in a national education, as the mastery of mathematics. The plea that they invigorate the reason is contradicted by perpetual experience. Some of the feeblest, and even the most fanciful, and of course the silliest, managers of great principles, have been mathematicians of celebrity. Napoleon said of Laplace, the first mathematician of his day, to whom he gave a title and a seat in his Council of State, on the strength of his scientific renown, that "he could do nothing with him,—that as a public man he was useless—that his mind was full of his infinite littles." And this is the history of nearly all mathematical minds: beyond their diagrams, they are among the dullest, most circumscribed, and most incapable of mankind. The mind of a Newton is not to be ranged in this class of elaborate mediocrity: he was not the mole, whose merit consists in seeing his way in the dark by an organ which is blind in the broad light of nature; he was an eagle, and could dare the full effulgence of the sun. But this meagre and inapplicable acquirement was the chosen prize for the whole young mind of educated Ireland; her mathematical crutch was the only instrument of progress for all the salient spirits of a nation abounding in the most aspiring faculties of man, and the quiet drudge who burrowed his way through Cubics and Surds, or could keep himself awake over the reveries of the Meditationes Analyticæ, was the Coryphæus of the College; while men passed along unnoted, who were in future years to embody the national renown.

As Curran's determination was the Irish Bar, he of course made the customary visit to the English Inns of Court. Here, though his finances compelled him to live in solitude, he contrived to amuse himself by that study of which in life he was so great a master—the study of character. Some of his letters from London are curious indications of this early tendency of his mind. Curran was by nature a Tory. All men of genius are Tories, until they get angry with the world, or get corrupt, and sell themselves to Whiggism; or get disgusted, and think that both parties are equally worthless.

This feeling was too true ever to have been changed. The language was changed, and no tongue could pour out more showy declamation on the multitude; but, when loosed from the handcuffs of party, no man laughed more loudly, or sneered more contemptuously, at the squalid idol to which he had so long bowed the knee.

Another fragment has its value in the illustration of his kindness of heart:—

Whether the author of Tristram Shandy would have been a great orator, if he had begun his career at the Bar, may be a question; but that Curran could have written admirable Shandian chapters can scarcely be doubted by those who have observed the exquisite turns of his speeches from grave to gay; or perhaps even those who now read the few words which conclude the story of Dr du Gavreau. This man was one of his casual acquaintances, a French fugitive, who ran away with a Parisian woman of a different faith. Whether they married or not is dexterously veiled. The woman died, leaving a daughter; but, whether married or not, their child would have been illegitimate by the existing laws of France. The widower had often been pressed by his friends to return to France, but he determined never to return, where his child would be stigmatised.

In all these breaks of the story, and touches of feeling, who but must recognise the spirit of Sterne?

The volume is a grave volume, and treats of high things with equal grace and gravity; but Curran was an eccentric being, and his true history must always be mingled with the comic.

Then, as to his relaxations—

He visited Hampton Court, and though he seems to have passed through its solemn halls and stately galleries without peculiar remark, he seized on his game of living character.

Curran's observation on this official, or, as he would probably have called it, ministerial blunder, exhibits, even in these early days of his mind, something of the reflective spirit which afterwards gave such an interest to his eloquence.

All this is showy if not new; yet, in defiance even of Curran's authority, its argument is practically denied by all human nature. What man ever acts for the praise of posterity alone? Present impulses, excited by present rewards, are the law of the living; and Alexander charging through the Granicus, and sweeping the royal Persian cavalry before him, had probably a heart as full of the most powerful impulses, as if he could have assured himself of the inheritance for ten thousand years of the plaudits of the globe. We are also to remember, that he has inherited the great legacy of fame, to this hour—that, to the minds of all the intelligent, he is still the hero of heroes; that clowns are not the clients of memory, or the distributors of renown; and that the man whose history has already survived his throne two thousand years, has exhibited in himself all the distinction between the perishableness of power and the immortality of fame.

In 1775 Curran returned to Ireland, and after anxiously pondering on the chances of abandoning Europe, and seeking fortune in America, as other eminent men—Edmund Burke among the number—had done before him, he fixed his fates at home.

This portion of the subject begins with a high panegyric on the difficult but attractive profession into which Curran now threw himself, without income, connection, or friend:—

That the Bar was the first body in the country was incontestible, and that it often exhibited remarkable instances of ability is equally known. But those facts must not be understood as giving the author's opinion, that perfection lies in the populace. All the remarkable persons of their time in Ireland were men of education, many of birth, and many of hereditary fortune. Grattan was the son of a judge; Flood a man of old family and estate; Clare, the Chancellor, was the son of the leader of the Bar, and began the world with £4000 a-year—a sum probably now equal to twice the amount. The Ponsonbys, the leading family of Whiggism in Ireland, were among the first blood and fortune of the land. Hussey Burgh was a man of old family and fortune. The Beresfords were closely allied to nobility. Plunket and Curran were, perhaps, those among the leaders the least indebted to the Heralds' College; but Plunket was the son of a Presbyterian minister, and both had received the best education which Ireland could give—both were graduates of the University.

Of course, nature is impartial in the distribution of talents, but the true distinction is in their training. The Radicalism which fills public life with vulgarity and faction is wholly the work of that absence of all early training, which must be the fate of men suddenly gathered from the manual labours of life. We know the necessity of those labours, but intellectual superiority must be the work of another school. The men of eminence in Ireland were also men of accomplished general knowledge, and of classical acquirement, to an amount seldom found even in the English Legislature. There was not an assembly in the world where a happy classical quotation, or dexterous reference to antiquity, would be received with a quicker sense, or a louder plaudit than in the Irish Parliament.

When the well-known antagonist of the Romish claims, Dr Duigenan, a stern-looking and singularly dark-featured old man, had one night made a long and learned speech on the subject, Sir John Doyle wholly extinguished its effect, by the Horatian line,—

The House shook with applause, and the universal laugh drove the doctor from the field.

On another evening, when the prince of jesters, Toler, then a chief supporter of Government, contemptuously observed, on seeing a smile on some of the Opposition faces—

an Opposition member started up and retorted the quotation, by saying, "That it was much more applicable to the conduct and position of the honourable member and his friends, and that the true translation was, 'It is mighty pleasant to play the fool in a place.'"

The novelty and happiness of the translation disturbed the gravity of debate for a considerable time.

But those were the gay days of Ireland. Times of keen anxiety, of daring change, and of social convulsion, were already shaping themselves to the eye of the patriot, and the true debates on which the fate of the nation hung were transferred from parliament to the peasantry, from the council-room to the cabin, from the accomplished intelligence and polished brilliancy of the legislature to the rude resentment, fierce recollections, and sullen prejudices of the multitude. It was on the heath, that Revolution, like Macbeth, met the disturbing spirits of the land, and heard the "All hail, hereafter."

Curran's rapid professional distinctions were the more remarkable, that the Irish Bar was aristocratic, to a degree wholly unknown in England. If it is true, that this great profession often leads to the Peerage, in Ireland the course was reversed, and the Peerage often derived its chief honours from its connection with the Bar. The sons of the first families wore the gown, and the cedant arma togæ was more fully realised in Ireland than it ever was in Rome.

But few men of condition ever entered the Army; and in a nation of habitual passion for publicity, and proverbial love of enterprise, perhaps fewer officers were added to the British service than from the Channel Islands. This has since been largely changed, and Ireland, which in the last century but filled up the rank and file, has since nobly contributed her share to the names which register themselves in the memory of nations. To Ireland, glorious England and rescued Europe owe a Wellington!

The Church, the usual province of high families in England, was poor, feeble, and unpopular in Ireland. With a few positions of great wealth, all below was barren: livings of vast extent, with a meagre population, and still more meagre income; Romanism was hourly spreading with a population, itself spreading until it had nothing to eat, and embittered against Protestantism until conversion became more than a hopeless toil—an actual terror. Law was the only instrument of collecting the clerical income, and the collector and the clergyman were involved in one common obloquy, and often in one common danger—a condition of things which must have largely repelled all those who had the power of choice.

The mitres were chiefly bestowed on the Fellows of English colleges, and tutors of English noblemen. Every new Viceroy imported a succession of chaplains, and quartered them all upon the Irish Church. The majority of those men looked upon their position with the nervous alarm of settlers in the wilderness, thought only of the common-room of the colleges from which they had been torn, or of the noble houses in which they had been installed; and reproached the ill luck which had given them dignities which only excited popular disgust; and wealth, from which they could derive no pleasure, but in its accumulation. We can scarcely wonder that, through almost the whole of the eighteenth century, the Irish Church lay in a state of humiliation, repulsive to the public feelings. This, too, has changed; and the Church now possesses many able men.

Commerce, which plays so vigorous a part in the world, was then a swathed infant in Ireland, and swathed so tightly by provincial regulations, that there was scarcely a prospect of its ever stepping beyond the cradle. Manufactures—that gold-mine worth all the treasures of the Western World—were limited to the looms of the north; and the only manufacture of three-fourths of this fine country consisted in the fatal fabrication of forty-shilling voters.

The Squiredom of Ireland was the favourite profession of busy idleness, worthless activity, and festive folly. But this profession must have an estate to dilapidate, or a country to ride over, and English mortgagees to pamper its prodigality and accelerate its ruin. Gout, the pistol, broken necks, and hereditary disease, rapidly thinned this class. Perpetual litigation stood before their rent-rolls, in the shape of a devouring dragon; and, with a peasantry starving but cheerful, and with a proprietary pauperised, but laughing to the last, they were determined, though hourly sinking into bankruptcy, to be ruined like a gentleman.

All those circumstances coming together, made the Bar almost the sole assemblage of the ability of Ireland. But they also made it the most daring, dashing, and belligerent body of gentlemen that Europe has seen. It was Lord Norbury's remark, in his old age, when he reposed on the cushions of the peerage, had realised immense wealth, and obtained two peerages for his two sons—that all this came out of fifty pounds, and a case of pistols, his father's sole present as he launched him in life. The list of duels fought by the leading members of the Bar might figure in the returns of a Continental campaign; and no man was regarded as above answering for a sarcasm dropped in court, by his appearance in the field.

But we must not, from this unfortunate and guilty habit, conceive that the spirit of the higher orders of Ireland was deficient in the courtesies of life. There was a melancholy cause in the convulsions of the country. The war of William III., which had broken down the throne of James II., had left many a bitter feeling among the Popish families of Ireland. Many of the soldiers of James had retired into village obscurity, or were suffered to retain the fragments of their estates, and live in that most embittering of all conditions—a sense of birth, with all the struggles of diminished means. These men indulged their irritable feelings, or avenged their ruin, by the continual appeal to the pistol. Always nurturing the idea that the victory had been lost to them solely by the cowardice of James, they were ready to quarrel with any man who doubted their opinion; and as their Protestant conquerors were brave bold men, equally disposed to maintain their right, and unhesitating in their claim to possess what they had won by their swords, their quarrels became feuds. Law, which reprobated the principle, by its laxity established the practice; and when lawyers led the way, the community followed. Still, there can be no doubt that duelling is a custom alike contrary to the order of society, and the command of heaven; and, the first judge who hangs a duellist as a murderer, and sends all the parties engaged in the transaction to the penal colonies for life, will have rendered a signal service to his country.

While every part of this volume is valuable, for the display of vigorous writing and manly conception, the more interesting fragments, to us, are the characters of the parliamentary leaders; because such men are the creators of national character, the standards of national intellect, and the memorials to which their nation justly points as the trophies of national honour.

The Parliament of Ireland is in the grave; but, while the statues of her public orators stand round the tomb, it must be felt to be more than a sepulchre. Whatever homage for genius may be left in the distractions of an unhappy country, must come to kneel beside that tomb; and if the time shall ever arrive for the national enfranchisement from faction, the first accents of national wisdom must be dictated from that sacred depository of departed virtue.

Grattan, the first man in the brightest day of the Irish Parliament, was descended of an honourable lineage. His father was a barrister, member of parliament for Dublin, and also its Recorder. He himself was a graduate of the Irish University, where he was distinguished. Entering the Middle Temple, he was called to the Irish Bar in 1772.

But his mind was parliamentary; his study in England had been parliament; and his spirit was kindled by the great orators of the time. He who had beard Burke and Chatham, had heard the full power of imaginative oratory—of all oratory the noblest. Grattan had the materials of a great speaker in him by nature—keen sensibility, strong passion, daring sincerity, and an imagination furnished with all the essential knowledge for debate—not overwhelmed by it, but refreshing the original force of his mind, like the eagle's wing refreshed by dipping into the fountain, but dipping only to soar. Yet, though almost rapturously admiring those distinguished men, he was no imitator. He struck out for himself a line between both, and, in some of its happier moments, superior to either; combining the rich exuberance of Burke's imagination with Chatham's condensed dignity of thought. Possessed of an extraordinary power of reasoning, Grattan had the not less extraordinary power of working it into an intensity which made it glow; and some of the most elaborate arguments ever uttered in Parliament have all the brilliancy of eloquence. He continually reasoned, though the most metaphorical of speakers; and this combination of logic and lustre, though so unusual in others, in him was characteristic. He poured out arguments like a shower of arrows, but they were all arrows tipped with fire.

Mr Phillips' sketch of him brings Grattan before us to the life:—

It is then stated that, even while at the Temple, he exercised himself in parliamentary studies, and made speeches in his walks in Windsor Forest, near which he had taken lodgings, and in his chamber. Of course, he was supposed to be a little mad:—

We refer to this remark, chiefly to correct a misconception generally adopted. It has been supposed that Burke, to heighten the effect of his speech on the discontents then engendering against the State, actually purchased a dagger, to throw on the floor of Parliament. This, of course, would have been ridiculous; and it is to do the common duty of rescuing the fame of a great man from the slightest touch of ridicule that this explanation is given. One of his friends (we believe, a member of Parliament) had received, in the course of the day, from Birmingham, a newly-invented dagger, of a desperate kind, of which some thousands had been ordered, evidently for the purpose of assassination. Burke, naturally shocked at this proof of the sanguinary designs spreading among the lower population, took the weapon with him, to convince those who constantly scoffed at him as an alarmist that his alarms were true. The whole was a matter of accident; nothing could be less premeditated; and every hearer of the true statement will agree that, so far from being a theatrical exhibition, it was the very act which any rational and manly man would have done. The time was terrible: revolution threatened every hour. Jacobinism was hourly boasting that it had the Church and Throne in its grasp; and, at such a period, the positive statement of a man like Burke, that thousands (we believe five thousand) of weapons, evidently made for private murder, were actually ordered in one of our manufacturing towns, and the sight of one of those horrid instruments itself, was an important call on the vigilance of Government, and a salutary caution to the country. It is not at all improbable that this act crushed the conspiracy.

Mr Phillips observes, that when Burke wrote "that madman Grattan, the madman was contemplating the glorious future; his ardent mind beheld the vision of the country he so loved rising erect from the servitude of centuries, 'redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled' by his exertions. Nor was that vision baseless—he made of it a proud and grand reality: her chains fell off, as at the bidding, of an enchanter."

Grattan's influence in Parliament was felt from his first entrance. But he earned it in the only way in which even genius can be permanently successful.

His first entrance into the British House of Commons is described with the same graphic effect:—

Grattan was sincere, and this sincerity gave at once substance to his popularity, and power to his eloquence. But, as a politician, he was rash; and as a prophet, he had to see the failure of all his predictions. He wielded a torch of exceeding brightness, it is true; but the torch at once blinded himself and inflamed the nation. His patriotism was pure, but it wanted practicability. He left no great measure of public utility behind him. His liberation, as he called it, of Ireland in 1782, was a showy fiction, to end in the disgrace of a painful discovery. It was the liberation of a fever to end in exhaustion; of a dream of opulence and independence, to finish in an awaking of poverty and despair. Its closest resemblance was to the late festival at the Hanwell Asylum—an assemblage of lunatics dressed for the night in feathers and flowers, dancing and feasting, until the morning light sent them back to their cells, and the drudgery of their melancholy discipline.

The whole policy of the Whig party in Ireland was the counterpart of their policy in England, only on a smaller scale. It was, to the performances of Fox and Opposition here, what the little stage-play in Hamlet is to the tragedy itself—the same characters and the same crime performed in imitation of the larger guilt that gazes on it. The wretched shortsightedness of supporting any demand of the populace whom they at once deluded and despised; the perpetual agitation to give the franchise to classes who must use it without the power of discrimination, and who must be careless of it but for the purposes of corruption; the reckless clientship of the Popish claims, ending in the sale of Irish independence by the Papists; the universal conspiracy, and the sanguinary civil war, followed by the political suicide of the Parliament—all the direct and rapid results of the Whig policy in Ireland—show either the headlong ignorance or the scandalous hypocrisy of Irish faction.

Yet, in all this blaze of fraud and falsehood, the name of Grattan was never degraded by public suspicion. He was an enthusiast; and his robe of enthusiasm, like one of the fire-resisting robes of antiquity, came out only brighter for its passing through the flame. But the Legislature (all impurities) was left in ashes.

Mr Phillips seems to regret Grattan's transfer to England, as an injury to his oratorical distinctions. He tells us "that it is in the Irish Parliament, and in his younger day, that his finest efforts are to be found!" Reluctant as we are to differ from such an authority, yet, judging from his published speeches, it appears to us that his powers never found their right position until they were within the walls of the British Parliament. These walls shut out the roar of the populace, which disturbed him, but to which he once must listen. These walls sheltered him from that perpetual clinging of Popery, which dragged down his fine tastes to its own level. Within these walls, he was relieved from the petty interests of partisanship, and raised from the feuds of an island to the policy of an empire. In Ireland, popularity required perpetual submission to the caprices of the multitude, and no man had more fully felt than Grattan the impossibility of taking a stand on his own principles—he must be either on the shoulders of the mob, or under their heels. In England, no longer wearied with the responsibility of leading parties who refused to be guided, or the disgust of following his inferiors through the dust of their hurried "road to ruin," he had before him, and embraced with the gallantry of his nature, the great Cause for which England was fighting—the cause of human kind. In Ireland, Grattan, with all his intrepidity, would not have dared to make his magnificent speech on the war with Napoleon, or, if he had, would have been denounced by the roar of the million. In England, he was in the midst of the noblest associations; he was surrounded by all the living ability of the empire; and if genius itself is to be inspired by the memories of the mighty, every stone of the walls round him teemed with inspiration.

Thus, if his language was more chastened, it was loftier; if his metaphors were more disciplined, they were more majestic;—the orb which, rising through the mists of faction, had shone with broadened disc and fiery hue, now, in its meridian, assumed its perfect form, and beamed with its stainless glory.

In recording the remarkable names of this period in Ireland, Mr Phillips alludes to the celebrated preacher, Dean Kirwan:—

We see in this striking portrait the writer con amore, and we must give him due credit for his vivid tribute to Irish ability. But there are few miracles in this world, and the fact that Kirwan's printed sermons are wholly inferior to his reputation reduces our wonder within more restricted bounds. If it is true, that much emotion is lost by the loss of the actual speaking; that the full power of the oratory is somewhat diminished by its being calmly read, instead of being ardently heard; still we have but few instances, perhaps none, where true oratory altogether loses its power in publication.

For example, Curran's published speeches give the general reader a very sufficient specimen of the richness of his language, the fertility of imagination, and even the subtlety of his humour. Grattan's speeches, most of them mere fragments, and probably few published with his revision, give the full impression of his boldness of thought, depth of argument, and exquisite pungency of expression. Burke's printed speeches are even said to give a higher sense of his wonderful ability than when they were delivered in the House of Commons. There is an anecdote that, when Pitt had read one of those earlier speeches in the form of a pamphlet, he expressed his astonishment. "Is it possible," he exclaimed, "that this fine oration can be what we heard the other night?"

That Kirwan's preaching was attended by immense congregations is unquestionable; and that his collections were very large is equally true. But there were circumstances remarkably in favour of both. He preached but three or four times in the year, and he never preached but for charities patronised by the highest personages of the land. The Lord-lieutenant and the principal nobility were generally the patrons of those especial charities. There was this additional advantage, that then poor-laws in Ireland were unknown, and public liberality was thus the more urgently required, and the more willingly exercised. The day of his preaching was in general an anniversary; for which the whole preceding year was a preparation; and the collection was thus, in a certain degree, the payment of a rent.

The magnitude of his collections has been the subject of some erroneous conjectures. On the occasion of his preaching for the families of the yeomanry who fell in the rebellion of 1798—a memorable and melancholy occasion, which naturally called forth the national liberality—the collection was said to have amounted to a thousand pounds. A very large sum, but it was a national contribution.

Kirwan's style of delivery, too, had some share in his popular effect—he recited his sermons in the manner of the French preachers; and the novelty formed a striking contrast to the dreary reading of the ordinary preachers. He was also fond of lashing public transgressions, and the vices of high life were constantly the subject of sharp remarks, which even stooped to the dresses of the women. The nobility, accordingly, came to hear themselves attacked; and, as all personality was avoided, they came to be amused.

Still, Kirwan was a remarkable man, and worthy of mention in any volume which treats of the memorable personages of Ireland.

We wish that we could avoid speaking of his treatment by the Church dignitaries of his time. While they ought to have received such a convert with honour, they seem to have made a point of neglecting him. He was not merely a man of talent in the pulpit, but alike accomplished in science and elegant literature; for he had been successively Professor of Rhetoric, and of Natural Philosophy, in (if we recollect rightly) the College of Louvain, at a time when French Mathematics were the pride of the Continent.

Yet he never obtained preferment or countenance, and scarcely even civility, except the extorted civility of fear, from any of the ecclesiastical heads of Ireland. The dull and common-place men, with whom it was then customary to fill the Irish Sees, shrank from one who might have been a most willing, as he must have been a most able, instrument in reconciling his Papist countrymen to the Church of England. And, without any other cause than their own somnolent stupidity, they rendered wholly useless—as far as was in their power—a man who, in a position corresponding to his ability, might have headed a New Reformation in Ireland.

Kirwan's only dignity was given to him by the Lord-lieutenant, Cornwallis, after nearly fifteen years of thankless labour; and it consisted only of the poor Deanery of Killala, a nook on the savage shore of Western Ireland. He died soon after, of a coup-de-soleil—as it was observed the natural death of a man of his genius!

But we must break off from this captivating volume. We recollect no political work in which politics are treated with more manly propriety, or personal character delineated with more vigorous truth; in which happier anecdotes abound, or in which the writer gives his own opinion with more firmness, yet with less offence to public feelings. From its evident knowledge of Ireland, it could be written by none but an Irishman; but its sentiments are cosmopolite. If the author sails under his national flag, still, his bark must be recognised as a noble vessel, and welcome in any Port of the World.

---

There is no pleasanter kind of reading than a good personal memoir. Works of this description serve a double purpose; for they not only convey to us most lively impressions of society, illustrated with portraits of the most eminent and remarkable men of the time, but, taken in the aggregate, they furnish the best and most authentic store of materials available to the future historian. Ponderous or brilliant, gossiping or grave, according to the peculiar style and idiosyncrasy of their writers, they have all claims to our notice; and more than one posthumous reputation has been achieved through compositions such as these, by men whose other labours have failed to attract the slightest share of the public notice or approbation.

But even in this light walk of literature, there are certain conditions which must be observed, in order to excite interest and to insure success. We expect from the compiler of memoirs a narrative, however desultory, of what passed before his own observation. He must not be altogether a reporter at second-hand—a mere relater of stories or scandals which he has chanced to pick up from others—a dilator, through simple hearsay, of closet or antechamber gossip. The substance at least of his tale must be derived from his personal knowledge, else we have no voucher at all for the authenticity of what he is pleased to relate. The memoirs, in short, must be his own, not fragments from those of other people.

The announcement of the publication of a volume of Memoirs or Reminiscences from the pen of the late Lord Holland could hardly have failed to stimulate the public curiosity. His known intimacy with many of the leading characters of the last generation, his near relationship to the most conspicuous of modern Whig statesmen, his inclination towards letters—which made him appear the centre of a certain literary coterie—were all so many distinct pledges for the value of his literary legacy. True, Byron in his early satire had irreverently scoffed at the reunions of Holland House, and thrown no slight degree of ridicule on the fame of that rising academy; but the satire served at the same time to commemorate the hospitality of the noble Mæcenas. We observe that a critic in the last number of the Edinburgh Review is still magniloquent on this theme. With the savour of past banquets still lingering in his nostrils, he manfully declares his intention of being impartial, nay stern, in the execution of his censorial duty; and attempts to persuade us, as he is persuaded himself, "that the very prepossessions which we feel, and have endeavoured to describe, have been disadvantageous rather than favourable to the author." If so, the inevitable conclusion must be, that the critic is a monster of ingratitude. Had he contented himself with simply stating that no amount of dinners, no extent of hospitalities received, should influence his judgment one whit in favour of the book, the declaration, with some due allowance of course for the frailties of human nature, might have been accepted. But when he tells us that, because he was a guest at the table of the late Lord Holland, and admitted, as he insinuates, to his intimacy, his prepossessions are disadvantageous to the author, he is either writing egregious nonsense, or conveying the reverse of a compliment.

The majority of the reading public, however, are by no means in the exalted position of the critic, who, by the way, was under no obligation whatever to review the book, if, on perusal, he found its contents fall greatly short of his expectations. What he means by talking about publications issuing "from the Palais Royal or the quays of Paris" we cannot exactly divine, unless he wishes us to understand that the Foreign Reminiscences intrinsically belong to the same class of writings—an opinion in which we thoroughly agree. Such twaddle as this is altogether superfluous. The public generally has no prepossession either the one way or the other. The name of Lord Holland is known to them as that of a man who moved in a distinguished sphere of society, and who must, in his own day, have seen much which was worth narrating. They have no means of weighing his conversation against his writings; they accept the latter when laid before them, and will judge of them strictly according to their actual value.

It appears that the present volume constitutes but a small part of Lord Holland's written Memoirs. The reason why it is given to us at the present time is set forth in the Preface, which, being short, we transcribe entire.

We must fairly confess that this preface stimulated our curiosity still further. From it we understood that the Reminiscences were to have some practical bearing upon the events which have taken place on the Continent during the last three years—that they would throw some additional light upon the causes which have led to so many dynastic convulsions. Our disappointment therefore was proportionably great, when, on perusing the work, we discovered that not a single page of it was calculated to assist us in any such researches, and that even the observations on passing events were of the most meagre and unsatisfactory description. What especial purpose the publication of this volume, apart from the remainder of the Memoirs, could serve at the present, or indeed at any other time, we are wholly at a loss to conceive. It treats of no topic which has not been long ago exhausted, contains hardly any personal narrative, and affords us not one single atom of novel information. As a repertory of anecdotes it is singularly worthless. We allude to such anecdotes as may be considered authentic, or at least tolerably so—anecdotes, for example, communicated to the author by Talleyrand, and one or two other foreign statesmen with whom, in later years, he was acquainted. But there is another class of anecdotes, or pseudo-anecdotes, which we cannot pass over even with so slight a censure. We allude to the revelations of private intrigue, on which the author dwells with a zest which to us seems peculiarly offensive. Until we saw this volume, we could not have believed that one British peer would have penned, and another have published, such a tissue of scandals, emanating from discarded serving-women and court menials, and reflecting directly on the honour of some of the first houses of Europe. We are at no loss to discover where the omissions mentioned in the preface are made, or what was the nature of the passages expunged. It would perhaps have been better, where the inuendo is retained, to have preserved the details, in order that they might have been strictly tested. It is, we think, no proper concession to delicacy to find lines of asterisks following a direct charge against the virtue of Marie Antoinette, or the legitimacy of the Duchess of York; or to have a page of such mysterious symbols inserted immediately after the notice of the marriage of Ferdinand VII. of Spain. Lord Holland should have been allowed to tell his own story, if not in justice to the memory of the ladies whose chastity is called in question, at least that we know the true bent of the imagination of the noble author, and appreciate "that humorous pleasantry, guided by good sense and wisdom, and raised above vulgar irony or personality," which his eulogist in the Edinburgh Review is pleased to claim as his attributes. It is difficult to understand why, in one case, there should be an evident suppression, whilst, in another, anecdotes of an offensive nature, reflecting upon the conduct of a queen, are printed without the slightest reserve, introduced in the following highly satisfactory manner:—"A story was current at Madrid, which, if true, would at once prove that the Prince of the Peace was aware of her infidelities," &c., and followed by this commentary—"the anecdote is, perhaps, too dramatic to deserve implicit credit." If so, why was it written down, and why is it now published? The appetite for prurient details which is a main feature of this book, is perhaps intelligible when it relates to intrigues notorious to all the world. No man of a really refined or fastidious mind would have committed these details to paper, more especially when they bore reference to the family of an individual with whom he was on something like intimate terms. But the case is far worse, and can admit of no palliation, when we find the most infamous charges, which have never been supported by even a shadow of proof, deliberately revived and repeated against that heroic and unfortunate lady, Queen Marie Antoinette of France. If the lament of Burke for the wane of chivalry was felt, not as a brilliant diatribe, but as a cutting sarcasm at the time when it was first enunciated, how much more appropriate is it now, when we find that a member of the British peerage—a man thought to be distinguished for high sentiment and generous sympathy—did not hesitate to adopt in the solitude of his closet the shameless inventions of the French revolutionary rabble; and that these are now given as facts which will not admit of questioning or denial to the world!

We are extremely glad to observe that the writer in the Edinburgh Review has had the proper spirit to refute—and he does it most satisfactorily—this wretched and scandalous attack upon the memory of a royal lady. It was not perhaps to be expected that he should do more; but what sort of imputation does his vindication of the Queen leave upon the character of her assailant? This is not a matter which should be passed over lightly; and for our part we feel bound to say that we can conceive no spectacle more pitiable or humiliating, than that of an old man committing with a palsied hand to paper the prurient rumours of the past. Had the evidence against Marie Antoinette been ten times stronger than it was, honour and the feelings of a gentleman should have deterred any one even from repeating the accusation. But the late Lord Holland entertained no such scruples. His witness, at second-hand, is the very woman who wrote Mémoires sur la Vie Privée de Marie Antoinette, Reine de France; and in these memoirs of hers there is not even an inuendo against the honour of the unfortunate Queen. But Madame Campan cannot so escape. Lord Holland was determined that she should, in some way or other, assist in blackening the reputation of her royal mistress; and accordingly we are treated to the following ingenuous note:—

And this is evidence upon which we are to condemn Marie Antoinette! I had it—says this distinct and confident accuser—from other people, who had it from the waiting-woman, although the waiting-woman knew better than to write it down! And who were the people "who acknowledged it to me"—what was their character and station—what was their repute for credibility? Lord Holland durst not in his lifetime have said as much of the father or mother of any man of his acquaintance upon such a pretext for authority. It is altogether the very worst instance of a wanton attack which we ever remember to have met with: it has but one parallel in history—the famous warming-pan legend, by means of which Lord Holland's political predecessors sought to bastardise the son of James II. But the motive which dictated the earlier fiction is wanting in the case of the later one.

Let us not be misunderstood. The case stands thus: Lord Holland has made a grievous charge against the honour of the murdered Queen of France. He says that he believes that charge to be true, and he states the grounds of his belief. They are these: A lady, who wrote the memoirs of her mistress's private life, in which no hint of criminal conduct appears, told other persons (who are nameless) who told him, Lord Holland, that the Queen had been guilty of adultery. Far be it from us to doubt the honour of a British peer. But, rather than doubt the honour of Marie Antoinette, we should doubt the fact of Lord Holland having received any such statement from any human being. Who were the indiscreet friends of Madame Campan that conveyed to his ear the hitherto undivulged secret? Were they old menials of the French court—retired waiting-women—confidential lacqueys—or persons who had the entrée to Holland House? Surely, when the honour of a Queen is impeached, we are entitled to know the authority. No authority of any kind is given. On the ipse dixit of Lord Holland rests the entire substantiation of the charge, and on his memory must lie the stigma of having revived the gross and unmanly calumny.

We have felt ourselves bound to say this much, because, if stories of this sort are to be accepted as authentic contributions to history, there is no imaginable kind of falsehood which may not be promulgated as truth. Apply the rule to private life, and the malignity of a discarded butler would be sufficient to taint the best blood in England. What would we think of memoirs, compiled by some man of considerable standing and celebrity, and published under the editorship of his son, which should tell us that the present inheritor of any noble title was a bastard and an intruder, on such authority as this—that somebody had told the writer, that somebody else had told him or her, that she was cognisant of a certain intrigue? Yet the two cases are much the same. If they differ at all, it is in this particular, that the original testimony of the "somebody," who in the instance of the Queen of France was Madame Campan, happens to be written and published, and to contain no insinuation whatever; whereas, in the case we have supposed, that negative vindication would almost certainly be wanting. Who, we ask, would dare, on such authority, to set down such accusations against any private family? and, if we are right in thinking that public indignation would most certainly overwhelm the retailer of such miserable calumny, why should any other rule be applied when royalty is the subject of the attack?

We suspect that Lord Holland's political friends will hardly thank his successor for the publication of this volume. It exhibits the late peer in what we must suppose to be his true colours, not as a constitutional Whig, nor as in any way attached to the recognised forms of the British Constitution, but as an admirer of principles which would necessarily tend to its overthrow. We have searched the work in vain for a single expression of anything which we can venture to designate as patriotic feeling. Kings and courts are condemned by him—what sympathy he has is bestowed on the agents of revolution—and he appears a eulogist, or at least apologist, of the very man whom Whig and Tory alike have agreed in branding with reprobation. The conduct of "Egalité," in voting for the death of his cousin, Louis XVI., appears to him not unnatural. He takes great pains to convince us that the infamous duke was an exceedingly maligned person; and, with characteristic judgment as to the nature of his evidence, cites "a short narrative written by Mrs Elliott, who had, I believe, lived with him," as an apology for an act which, even in the French Revolutionary Convention, called forth an exclamation of horror.

Lord Holland's personal experiences—we should rather call them reminiscences—connected with the French Revolution, were very meagre. He was then, (in 1791,) as he tells us, a mere boy, and not likely to have much cognisance of the state of political affairs. In consequence, we gain absolutely nothing from his observation. Neither was his sojourn in Prussia, during the ensuing year, more fruitful save in the article of scandal, of which we have said enough. The same remark will apply to his Spanish tour; from the records of which, if we abstract the personal and indecent details, not one word of interest remains. This strikes us as very singular. A young and well-educated man, traversing those countries at a time when they widely differed in their aspect and forms of society from those which they afterwards assumed, ought surely to have preserved some "Reminiscences" of their condition, which would have been more acceptable to posterity than stories of court adultery, which he hardly could have derived from any creditable source; and we fairly confess that the total omission of anything like practical details, goes far to convince us that Byron's early judgment was right, and that the fame of Holland House rested far more upon the Amphytrionic, than the natural or acquired accomplishments of the distinguished host. In fact, were it not remarkable for such disgraceful scandal as would lower the character of a theatrical green-room, the first half of this volume is entirely beneath contempt. It has nothing whatever to do with the present crisis of affairs—it refers in no way to national or dynastical interests—it is simply a collection of such trash as, thirty years ago, might have been published under the auspices of a noble name, and then have descended to the hands of the trunk-maker, without the slightest chance of a second resurrection.

But the other half of the volume remains yet to be noticed. It is devoted exclusively to the Emperor Napoleon Buonaparte, whom Lord Holland appears to have regarded with the most profound admiration. We approached this part of the book with sharpened curiosity, hoping to find recorded some additional traits of that remarkable character; but again we were doomed to disappointment. Lord Holland's personal recollections of the Emperor are contained in the following passage:—

Interchanges of civilities, however, continued to take place. Lady Holland transmitted to the Emperor, when at Elba, "one or two packets of English newspapers," and these little acts of attention were acknowledged by "some small but curious specimens of the iron ore of that island." Her Ladyship's subsequent solicitude for the comforts of Napoleon, when exiled at St Helena, and her generous attention to his wants, are well known, and exhibit, in a most pleasing manner, the kindliness of the female heart. The mention of these things leads to an account of the Longwood squabbles, the interest of which has now entirely passed away. Sir Hudson Lowe may not have been the most courteous or debonnaire of wardens, but, on the other hand, it is clear that Napoleon would have made a point of quarreling with an angel of light if appointed as his custos; and that the last passages of his life by no means exhibit him in a dignified or magnanimous point of view. As, however, the narrative to which we refer is one of the few in this volume which are based upon Lord Holland's own experience, we may as well insert it here as a specimen of the author's style.

No; in mercy to the compositors, we shall not go on with this! The pen drops from the fingers, and a drowsy sense of numbness steals upon the brain in the mere act of transcribing these ponderous and most prosy sentences. Skip we a couple of pages still occupied by the recital of such unutterable woes, and let us arrive at the period of better treatment—"the effect, I flatter myself, of my motion in the House of Lords."

Our readers will probably agree with us in thinking that there is "something too much of this." It is rather a novelty to us to be informed that Napoleon was a persecuted man. Most people throughout Europe have maintained the opinion that the persecution lay the other way. But perhaps Lord Holland meant to insinuate that the persecution lay in his banishment of St Helena. He calls it an "ungenerous decision;" and elsewhere says:—

We observe that the writer in the Edinburgh Review denies the statement of Lord Holland, that the removal of Napoleon from Elba was mooted at the Congress of Vienna. We, on the contrary, have always understood that the proposition was seriously considered, though not, as Lord Holland would insinuate, without sufficient cause and provocation. The intrigues, of which Elba was the centre, to pave the way for another attempt at the dethronement of the Bourbons, had for some time been in active progress, and were well known to Fouché and others, and by them communicated to the Congress. Also, the attitude of Murat in Italy was such as to excite very serious apprehensions. Mr Alison, in his History of Europe,[20] thus notices the intrigues of Elba:—

Accordingly, we find that Murat, only ten days before Napoleon quitted Elba, made a formal demand for the passage of eighty thousand men through the Austrian territories in Italy—an act, doubtless, of insane folly, but one which can be attributed to no other motive than his perfect knowledge that the designs of Napoleon were nearly ripe for execution. This demand, of course, could not fail to alarm the Congress, to whom, almost immediately afterwards, information as to the character of the projected enterprise was conveyed. Mr Alison says:—

On the 7th of March, intelligence reached Vienna that Napoleon had secretly left Elba. Such we believe to be the true statement of the case. That the Allies should have wished, without any adequate cause, to disturb the recent settlement of Napoleon in the Island of Elba, appears to us a proposition too preposterous to be maintained. But that such a measure should have been discussed, after they became aware of the nature of his designs and preparations, and had thus received warning that the peace of Europe was again in imminent danger from his uncontrollable ambition, need not excite any wonder, and cannot surely be wrested into a charge of persecution against Napoleon. Lord Holland entirely fails to make out—nay, he does not even assert—that any such proposal was made in Congress before the intrigues of Elba were divulged, or the negotiation with Murat completed. It does not even appear that Napoleon, previous to his landing in France, was aware that the Allies had received any intimation of his design; and when we consider the shortness of time which elapsed between the receipt of Murat's formal demand and the departure from Porto Ferrajo, it is next to impossible that any tidings of a discussion following thereon could have reached him while in Elba. In short, this attempt to justify the evasion of Napoleon, and his deliberate breach of treaty, is a signal failure, and will certainly add nothing to Lord Holland's posthumous renown for historical accuracy or acumen.

But Lord Holland also considers Napoleon as entitled to deep sympathy on the ground of his being ill-treated. That is a matter entirely of private opinion. That Lord Bathurst should not have purchased Lady Holland's machine for making ice may appear, in the eyes of the frequenters of Holland House, a most barbarous act of cruelty. That a special vessel should not have been despatched for St Helena, so often as a letter was addressed to the illustrious captive, may shock the sensitive mind. The liberal soul may be thrilled with anguish and pity at the perusal of the following miseries inflicted on the devastator of Europe towards the close of his career:—

But we have really dwelt too long upon this tedious exhibition of spurious sympathy, which, after all, is but a flimsy veil intended to cover the self-glorification of the peer. The remaining passages regarding Napoleon contain nothing of the slightest interest, and are, moreover, especially heavy. A few commentaries upon various remarkable incidents in the life of the Emperor are interspersed, from which we learn that Lord Holland condemned the murder of the Duc d'Enghien, but did not consider the abandonment of Josephine as any heinous act of moral dereliction. We doubt whether the majority of mankind will concur in the latter opinion. To us it appears that Napoleon's treatment of his first wife shows him to have been as destitute of heart as insensible to the obligations of honour.

It is not a little amusing to observe the estimate formed by Lord Holland of some of his remarkable contemporaries. Occasionally he assumes a tranquil air of superiority, which, when we remember the even obscurity of his own life, in respect to the discharge of public duties, is comical in the extreme. Mark how he disposes of Prince Metternich:—

What will the crême de la crême of Vienna say to this? Here is a decided thrust at the midriff of the enemy! Not only is Prince Metternich set down as an exceedingly overrated person in point of ability, but his very manners and demeanour have been criticised in the polite circles of Holland House, and found wanting. We cannot sufficiently applaud the sagacity with which the true source of the Metternichian polish is detected. Truth will out at last! During the later years of his life, the Prince has been studying French vivacity in the classical academies of Pigault le Brun and Paul de Kock! And yet, perhaps, we may be wrong. Louvet was the earlier master, and may have had a hand in forming the vivacity of this distinguished pupil. But the Prince has this consolation, at least, that he suffers in good company. Tried by the unerring standard of Lord Holland, "the address of Alexander himself, the Emperor of Russia, was, perhaps, liable to similar criticism." The inference is, that the Czar also had been studying vivacity in French novels, and was obviously not a person accustomed to very refined and enlightened society! As for the Emperor Francis II., he is dismissed in a still more summary manner:—

Perhaps the reader would take a glimpse at the royal family of Portugal, as seen through the critical glasses of Lord Holland:—

What a sensation of awe steals across the mind as we peruse these wholesale sentences of condemnation! What a sublime idea we imbibe of the dignity and intellect of the judge! We need not add further to this portrait gallery, although ample materials are afforded us. The above specimens, we think, will be sufficient to satiate the curiosity of the reader.

Lord Holland, however, had his favourites. Napoleon, as we have seen, was one; and Talleyrand was another. It is rather odd that Lord Holland should have discerned in the latter one pre-eminent and distinguishing quality, for which no one else ever gave him the slightest credit—we mean a high regard for truth.

And again, in a note:—

It is a pity that an ordinary acquaintance with the significance of terms was not among the accomplishments of Lord Holland. Here we have the two leading elements of falsehood—the suppressio veri, and the suggestio falsi—plainly admitted; and yet we are told in the same breath, that the man who recoiled from neither practice was a person of great veracity! One or two hackneyed and rather poor bon-mots of Talleyrand are quoted in the text, as instances of his remarkable wit;—had he never enunciated anything better, he certainly would not have achieved his great renown as a conversationalist. He appears, however, to have enchanted Lord Holland, who cites his authority on all occasions with an implicit trustfulness which we cannot sufficiently admire.

We must be allowed to remark that, in this instance also, Lord Holland has chosen an odd method of testifying his respect for the memory of a friend. In whatever liberties of speech a famous wit may choose to indulge with reference to his own domestic relations, we are yet sure that he by no means intends these to form part of the common currency of conversation, and that he will not feel peculiarly obliged to any one who gratuitously undertakes to circulate them. The sarcasm of Talleyrand with regard to the intellectual deficiencies of the lady who afterwards became his wife, was not, we presume, intended for repetition, though Lord Holland carefully preserves it. Good taste, we think, would have suggested its omission; but if our scruples upon that point should be thought to savour too much of Puritanism, of this at least we are certain, that no living relative of M. de Talleyrand will feel indebted to Lord Holland for the manner in which the secret history of his marriage is related:—

Pleasant reading this! It may be said that the facts were long ago notorious, and that they are to be found in more than one scandalous chronicle. That may possibly be the case; but surely it can afford no apology for this elaborate repetition on the part of a friend. Is history served by such contributions? Does society benefit by their preservation?

The passion of the past generation for collecting and retailing bon-mots was carried to an extravagant length. Such a man as Talleyrand was a perfect treasure to any coterie, for his established reputation gave to every sentence which he uttered more than its intrinsic value. But we often find that sayings which appear most brilliant in conversation, lose their lustre when committed to writing, after the occasion which called them forth has passed away. Therefore we do not attach any very exorbitant value to their collection, especially when they are flavoured, as it is too often the case, with coarseness and personality. The writer in the Edinburgh Review expresses a wish "that Lord Holland, who possessed more opportunities than any other man for collecting and stringing these conversational pearls, had been more diligent in so agreeable a vocation." Judging from the specimens which are given, we do not think that the world has sustained any great loss from the negligence of the noble peer; for some of those which have escaped oblivion, bear unmistakable symptoms of the decomposition of the heap from which they were originally culled.

In short, we feel ourselves compelled to say that we cannot consider this volume as an important or even creditable contribution to the historical literature of the country. Those portions of it which do not directly offend, are so uninteresting and destitute of the charms of style, that they act as a positive soporific; and, but for the indignation excited by the more objectionable passages, we doubt very much whether we could have had patience enough to peruse it from the title-page to the close. We are not sure whether we even understand the meaning of several sentences, or whether they really were intended to convey any meaning at all. Possibly the fault lies with us. We may be either too dull, or too unversed in the occult innuendos of diplomatic society, to perceive what is clear and perspicuous to those who have enjoyed superior advantages. Nevertheless, we would give a trifle to any one who should enlighten us upon the point of relationship suggested by the following paragraph. Lord Holland is recounting a conversation held in 1838 with his friend Godoy, the Prince of the Peace, in the course of which they appear to have discussed family matters with that charming ease which excludes considerations of propriety.

We have certainly no overstrained impression of the moral purity of the European courts as they existed fifty years ago. We have no doubt of the existence of intrigues of a very shameful nature, and even less of a widespread system of venality and corruption; but we totally demur to the opinion which Lord Holland seems to have entertained, that such topics constitute the most interesting and most important points of history. A man who is collecting notes relative to the leading features of the age in which he has lived, with the deliberate intention that these shall, at some future period, be given to the public, might surely be better occupied—more creditably to himself, and more usefully to his species—in directing his attention to the great subjects of social progress, intellectual development, and high unselfish patriotism, than in gleaning at second-hand the malicious reports of the antechamber, or in chronicling the whispers of the waiting-room. Lord Holland either would not, or could not, avail himself of the opportunities which were evidently within his reach. He has preferred giving us some sketches, not conceived in the best or most delicate taste, to the composition of a manly picture; and therefore we cannot be expected to feel any exuberant degree of gratitude on the receipt of the legacy, or to entertain any very exalted notion of the artistical acquirements of the painter.

Perhaps it may be thought that we have attached more importance to this work than it deserves; and certainly, seeing that we have been compelled to pronounce so unfavourable a judgment on its merits, there may appear room for the allegation. But it must be remembered that a book always acquires a certain degree of factitious importance from the position of its writer. Humble and nameless men may scribble their Reminiscences by the ream, rush boldly into print, and yet find scarce a single reader. If their works are indeed destitute of merit, they can hardly be said to fall into oblivion, for they never take hold of the memory. They have neither the advantage of a name to introduce, nor the greater advantage of genius to recommend them. But the case is different when men of station and title come forward in the character of authors. They are sure to find an audience, even though that audience should be deeply disappointed; and if, besides these other advantages, they are fortunate enough to have any sort of literary connection, they never want heralds who are ready and able to proclaim their advent to the world. We regret exceedingly that we have been compelled to use the language of condemnation rather than of praise—for the literature of the present century has been greatly enriched in almost every department by the contributions of the nobility of England, and we never feel greater pleasure than when able to bear testimony to such instances of talent and industry. It becomes, therefore, of more importance that the critical function should be duly and justly performed; and that no work, which does not possess a certain degree of intrinsic merit, should be allowed to pass under shelter of the author's name. Had the merit been there, we should most gladly have followed the example of our critical brother in the Edinburgh Review; and, adopting his magnificent, sonorous, but not very intelligible phraseology, have taken care that "the last chords of our opera should be accompanied by double drums, and the burst of a brass band, and that our curtain should drop before the gold and tissue, the waving wings, and the flowing garlands of a modern opera!"

---

The constant custom of the advocates of Popery is to represent their religion as a work of the primitive age. With them it is a Patriarchal figure, beginning its pilgrimage by a Divine summons, and protected by Divine influence; perhaps occasionally touched by the stains, or sinking under the struggles belonging to all human history, but still suddenly purifying its robes into more than their original brightness, and turning its difficulties into the weapons of that warfare which is to end in the sovereignty of the world.

The learned investigation of Protestantism, however, wholly strips this Patriarchal figure of its antique habiliments, declares that every fragment of its ceremonial has been the work of ages when Christianity had fallen into oblivion; that its belief is credulity, its system an accumulation of error, and its spirit an antagonism to the gospel.

On the other hand, the Popish stigma on Protestantism is, that it is a new name, unknown before the sixteenth century. But to this charge the natural answer has been, that a name is nothing; that Christianity was once a new name, and that Heathenism was older than Popery.

The true question is of principle, and then the decision is clear. Popery appeals for its authority to councils and fathers; Protestantism, to apostles and prophets. The doctrines of Rome are to be looked for only in the annals of the Popedom; the doctrines of Protestantism appeal only to the New Testament. "The Bible, and the Bible alone, is the religion of Protestants," was the maxim of the celebrated Chillingworth. Nothing commanded by the New Testament can be rejected by Protestantism, nothing contradictory of the New Testament can be received by Protestantism. The appeal of Rome is to tradition; the appeal of Protestantism is to inspiration.

We shall now give the dates, at which the peculiar errors of Popery were engrafted on the worship of the Roman world.

The claim of the Headship of Christianity was the first of the Romish errors, and the fount from which they all flowed. But this claim was first formally made in the sixth century, (A.D., 533,) and was established by the Emperor Justinian. But no mortal power had the right to give, or to assume, this title. The headship of the universal church belongs to Christ alone, who has been made "Head over all things to His church." No human being could be competent to the high duty of governing a church spreading, and to be ultimately spread, through all nations. The government is also spiritual, of which no human being of this earth can have a comprehension. Its seizure by the Bishop of Rome was an enormous usurpation. In about sixty years after, the title was disclaimed by the Bishop of Rome, in indignation at its seizure by the Bishop of Constantinople; but it was solicited again, in the reign of the Emperor Phocas, (A.D., 606,) and has been ever since retained.

It is not to be presumed, that this usurpation was universally allowed. God has not left Himself without witnesses in any age. Successive opponents of Rome, preachers of the gospel, the true Protestants, arose during the dark ages; and a continued resistance to superstition was sustained for the thousand years of the Popish assumption; until, in the sixteenth century, the recovery of learning, the renewed intelligence of the human mind, the translation of the Bible, and, above all, and acting through all, the mercy of God, restored Christianity to the world in the glorious German Reformation, (A.D. 1517.)

The most visible practice of Popery is Mass-worship. This practice commenced early; but we have no direct record of its reception until the Second Council of Nice, (A.D. 787.)

Infallibility was too monstrous a conception to be adopted, but in the utter prostration of the general mind. It was, accordingly, first made an article of faith in the very centre of the Dark Ages, (A.D. 1076.)

But this claim is so repugnant to reason, so contradictory to the common sense of man, and so palpably overthrown by the vicious conduct of Popes, and the contemptible quarrels of Councils, that, even among the Papists, it has been the most dubious of all doctrines—some of the Popish parties placing infallibility in a General Council, some in a General Council united with the Pope, some in the Universal Church. But those disputes, which no human understanding could ever decide, show only the repugnancy of the doctrine itself to the human intellect. Infallibility was, at length, by the mere ignorance of knowing where to place it, quietly delivered into the possession of the Pope. He now presumed to be the acting infallibility of the Romish world.

Yet, immeasurably absurd as this doctrine is, it is the especial and favourite one on which the Tractarians insist, and by which the apostates attempt to justify their guilty desertion to Rome. Infatuated as they are, they have fixed on the very point where infatuation is most infatuated, where perversion most degrades the character of the understanding.

The Celibacy of the Clergy.—After several attempts by ambitious Popes, this doctrine, or ordinance, was established by the tyrannical Hildebrand, Gregory the Seventh, in the eleventh century. The parochial clergy had generally married, and they protested long and strongly against abandoning their wives. But the advantage of having the ecclesiastics, in all countries, wholly separated from all connexion with their native soil and native interests, and the fixture of large bodies of men in every kingdom, wholly devoted to the objects of the Popedom, overpowered the voice alike of nature, justice, and scripture. "Those whom God had joined together" were put asunder by man.

No act, even of the Papacy, ever produced more suffering or more crime. No act could be politically more injurious, for it withdrew from the increase of the population—in times when population was the great want of Europe, and when half the land was desert—300,000 parochial priests, 300,000 monks and friars, and probably upwards of 300,000 nuns; thus giving to a life of idleness, and almost total uselessness in a national view, an enormous multitude of human beings annually, down to this hour, through nearly nine centuries!

But, to give the true character of this presumptuous contempt of the Divine will, and of the primal blessing of "Increase and multiply, and replenish the earth," and of the universal custom of the Jewish covenant, in which the priesthood descended by families; we should know the solitary miseries entailed by monastic and conventual life, the thousands of hearts broken by remorse for those rash bonds, the thousands sunk into idiotism and frenzy by the monotony, the toilsome trifling, the useless severities, and the habitual tyrannies of the cloister. Even to those we must add the still darker page of that grossness of vice which, in the ages previous to the Reformation, produced frequent remonstrances even from the Popes, and perpetual disgust among the people.

The Invocation of Saints.—This doctrine first assumed an acknowledged form in the seventh century. It had been gradually making its way, since the dangerous homage paid to the tombs of the martyrs in the third and fourth centuries. But this invocation made them, in the estimate of their worshippers, gods. For the supposition that they heard and answered prayer in every part of the world at once, necessarily implied Omnipresence—an attribute exclusively belonging to Deity.

Transubstantiation.—This doctrine declares that, when the words of consecration have been pronounced over the Eucharist, the bread and wine are actually transformed into the body and blood, the soul and divinity of Christ. This monstrous notion was wholly unknown to the Christians of the first four centuries. In the eleventh century, it was held that the body of Christ was actually present, without directly affirming in what manner. It was not until the thirteenth century (A.D. 1215) that the change of the bread and wine became an acknowledged doctrine, by the Fourth Lateran Council.

This doctrine contradicts the conception of a miracle, which consists in a visible supernatural change. It contradicts the physical conception of body, which is, that body is local, and of course cannot be in two places at once; but the body of Christ is in Heaven. It also contradicts Scripture, which pronounces that the taking of the bread and wine would be wholly profitless, but by the accompanying operation of the Holy Spirit acting on the faithful partaker of the Sacrament; the language of Christ being—"The flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I speak to you, they are spirit." The whole efficacy is spiritual.

The Mass.—Popery declares that in the Mass is offered continually the actual sacrifice of Christ. This conception arises from Transubstantiation, by which the Host is Christ; and the priest thus continually offering the Host is presumed to sacrifice our Lord, in every instance of the offering!

This doctrine is threefold—that the priest can make God, that flour and water can be God, and that the wafer, which is still but flour and water to the senses, is the Christ of whom it is declared in Scripture that, "having suffered once for all for the sins of men, he sat down for ever at the right hand of God." This monstrous doctrine was long disputed, and, though practically adopted, was not confirmed before the Council of Trent, (A.D. 1563.)

The Half-communion.—This doctrine originated also in Transubstantiation. From pronouncing the Eucharist to be actually Christ, scruples arose as to its chances of pollution; and as the wine might be spilt, it became the custom to give only the bread to the laity, in whose mouths it is placed by the priest. But a mutilated sacrament is none. The consequence of this doctrine is, that no Popish layman ever receives the Eucharist, or has received it during the last four hundred years!—most awful and terrible result of human presumption!

Auricular Confession.—By this doctrine, the forgiveness of sin must be preceded by confession to a priest. In contradiction to the whole tenor of Scripture, which declares the forgiveness of sin to depend on sincere prayer for forgiveness, through the atonement of Christ, and on the determination to sin no more: "Come to me all ye that are heavy laden, and I will refresh you."—"Repent ye, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out."

But Auricular Confession, with its subsequent Absolution, actually increases crime, by disburthening the mind of remorse, and by substituting absolution for repentance. This practice was established, as a portion of the acknowledged system of Rome, scarcely before the thirteenth century.

Purgatory.—This doctrine was unheard of in the first four centuries. It crept in about the seventh century, the period of the chief corruptions of worship. It was not sanctioned by any council until the fifteenth century, (A.D. 1438.) Its first establishment was by the Council of Trent.

This doctrine, which is wholly contradictory to the redemption declared in the Gospel, as resulting from the sufferings of Christ alone; declares that every sinner must be qualified for redemption in part, by undergoing sufferings of his own; that he must be personally punished in Purgatory for his temporal sins, to be purified for Heaven. The doctrine is evidently borrowed from the Heathen ideas of Tartarus. It has not the slightest ground in Scripture, and is totally opposed to the whole spirit and bearing of Christianity.

Indulgences.—This doctrine originated in the combination of Purgatory and Saintship. It held, that the merits of the dead might be applied to the wants of the living; and that these merits, not being required for the redemption of the saints, were preserved in the hands of the Church, to be distributed as remissions from Penance, in the first instance, and in the next, from the terms of suffering in Purgatory. These remissions were sold by Rome under the name of Indulgences, and were given for any and every period. These Indulgences extended from a year to ten thousand years. Instances are recorded of their being extended to thirty thousand years! This was the most lucrative portion of the traffic of Rome. It brought in prodigious sums to the Roman Treasury.

Masses for the Dead.—This doctrine was connected with those of Purgatory and Indulgences. By it a succession of solitary masses might be continually carried on, either to relieve the Purgatorial torments, or shorten their duration. But these masses must be paid for either in money or land. They formed the vast funds which endowed the great Romish establishments—the monasteries, &c. Operating on the fears of the dying, the Popish priesthood rapidly possessed themselves of enormous wealth, and, in England, they were calculated to be masters of one-third of the land! The statute of mortmain alone preserved the rest. This prodigious grasp was loosened at the Reformation, and the monkish institutions were deprived of the wealth gained only by superstition.

It is obvious how fatally a doctrine of this order must operate on society. If man could clear himself from the punishment of a life of profligacy by a bequest on his deathbed, his whole responsibility would be removed at once. The fear of judgment would be extinguished throughout his life; he could have no restraint but the arm of society. Masses would be his substitute for morals; and his conscience would be cleared by the acts of others, for years after he was laid in the grave. If Masses could avail, there would be no use in living virtue, to any man who was able to pay for them.

This doctrine, intolerable in the view of common sense, unjust in placing an insurmountable distinction between the rich and the poor, and wholly contradictory to the spirit of the gospel—which commands that "every man shall work out his own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in him, both to will and to do"—was created and continued for its vast profits to the priesthood of Rome.

The celebrated Council of Trent, which, under various forms, sat from 1542 till 1563, collected all these doctrines into a system, and the subsequent act of Pius IV. gave them in the shape of a creed to the Popish world.

We are glad to find that the "Papal Aggression" has awakened the intelligent and important authority of the English bar. On all great questions of the liberties and rights of the empire, that authority is of the most decisive order; and in this spirit we welcome with peculiar gratification a pamphlet from the well-known and eloquent pen of Mr Warren.[23] He commences by this bold and manly denunciation of the Papal interference with the rights of the Church and the privileges of the crown:—

Mr Warren, in taking a lawyer's general view of the subject, strikingly adverts to the impudence of the Papist assertions. It is true that these assertions have now shrunk into a very small compass; that the bravado of "my Lord Cardinal" has dwindled down into a sort of supplication to be suffered to remain here on any terms; and that the "prince" has stooped into the pilgrim, gliding through the filth, vice, and poverty of the Irish colony in Westminster, or, as he terms it, the slums—an expression of extreme vulgarity, which, Mr Warren justly observes, does not belong to the English language, and which, we may as justly observe, belongs only to the meanest of the rabble.

But the organs of Popery abroad have not submitted to circumstances so demurely, and they let out the Popish objects with all the easy insolence of the foreigner. Thus Count le Maistre, in a work translated and published in London, says, "What shall we say of Protestantism, and of those who defend it, when it will no longer exist? Let them rather aid us in making it disappear. In order to re-establish a religion and a morality in Europe, in order to give to truth the strength which it requires for the conquest it meditates, it is an indispensable preliminary to efface from the European dictionary that fatal word, Protestantism." L'Univers, the journal of Popery in France, has no hesitation in pronouncing the Protestant faith in England to be totally undone, and that Popery is only taking its time to make the operation complete.

The Popish organ here has been equally plain-spoken, and pronounced, in the most dashing style, the triumph of Rome, and the return of all Protestants under its yoke, on pain of damnation! Who but must be indignant at this language! But who can henceforth be deceived?

Mr Warren, in reverting to the character and pretensions of the Papacy, lays it down as a fundamental proposition, that "the Pope's avowed spiritual power is pregnant with disavowed political power." He, tells us further, "that we have to tolerate a rival, who condescends to equality only as an advance to ascendency." He then gives the memorable Florentine canon of 1439, which the Romish lawyers regard as containing "the true doctrine of their church," and for the consequences deducible from which all Papists are answerable. These are its words:—

"Moreover, we define that the Holy Apostolic See, and the Roman Pontiff, have a primacy over the whole world!—and that the Roman Pontiff is the successor of St Peter, the chief of the apostles, and true Vicar of Christ!—and that he is 'head of the whole church,' and the father and teacher of all Christians!—and to him, in St Peter, was delegated by our Lord Jesus Christ full power to feed, rule, and govern the universal church, as also is contained in the Acts of General Councils, and in the holy canons!" In this daring proclamation of power, we have the assumption of an authority obviously incompatible with the peace of any nation under heaven, and equally incompatible with the common liberties of mankind—for there can be no liberty where the arbitrary will of a stranger is the fountain of the law, and most especially contradictory to that Scripture which declares that Christ's kingdom is not a kingdom after the fashion of this world. When the question was contemptuously put by Pilate to our Lord himself, "Art thou a king?" the answer was, that he was not a king in the sense of the Roman; that, if he were such, "his servants would fight"—in other words, that he would have the troops and attendance of an earthly king, that he would have resisted and made war. "But now is my kingdom not of this world."

But what is the Papacy, with its princes and pageantries, its armies and intrigues, its cabinets and alliances? In what does all this complicated and systematic mixture in the affairs of the world differ from the kingdoms of this world? except perhaps in its deeper intrigue, in its more perpetual artifice, in its more insatiable craving for power, and in its more habitual gratification of every daring and dangerous passion of man.

And it has felt the consequences. Of all the kingdoms of this world, since the fall of Rome, the Popedom has been the most marked by calamity. There has been no nation whose sovereign has been so often flung from his throne; whose throne has been so often contested with bloody dissension, whose sovereign has been so often a prisoner in foreign lands, whose capital has been so often sacked, whose provinces have been so often in foreign possession, whose population is so miserable, and whose vassalage has been so palpable, so humiliating, and so wretched.

But need we look to the past, when we see the Papacy at this hour? Need we dig up ancient fields of battle, to see how often its armies have been buried; or dive into its dungeons, to see how many centuries of fetters are recorded there against its presumption? Need we break up its tombs to see its shattered crosiers and tarnished tiaras, when we see the living figure that sits in mock majesty in the Vatican, with a French garrison in the Castle of St Angelo?

But the Papist demands religious liberty. The words, in Papist lips, are jargon. He has never had it in any country on earth. Has he it in Rome? Can the man have the absurdity to call himself a freeman, when the priest may tear the Bible out of his hand; when, without a license, he cannot look into the Book of Life?—when, with or without a license, he cannot exercise his own understanding upon its sacred truths, but must refuse even to think, except as the priest commands?—when, for daring to have an opinion on the most essential of all things—his own salvation—he is branded as a heretic; and when, for uttering that opinion, he is cast into the dungeon?—when the priest, with the Index Expurgatorius in his hand, may walk into his house, and strip it of every book displeasing to the caprices, insolence, and ignorance of a coterie of monks in the Vatican?

If the legitimate and noble boast of the Englishman is, that his house is his castle, what is the house of the Italian Papist, but his dungeon? If the Irish or the English Papist demands "Religious Liberty," let him demand it of his master the Pope. If the Papist desires it, let him break the Popish fetter, and emancipate himself. Till then, we must look upon his claim as lawlessness instead of liberty, and hypocrisy instead of religion.

But, before the Papist requires more than toleration, must he not show that at least he tolerates? If, in the Popish kingdoms of the Continent, fear or policy has produced some degree of Protestant toleration, what is the condition of Protestantism in the capital of Popery; and, in its most important point, freedom of worship? To this day, no English Protestant is suffered to worship within the walls of Rome.

The Americans, with a sense of national right, of which it is a scandal to England not to have adopted the example, have insisted on having a chapel—a solitary chapel!—in Rome; while the English have been forced to run from one lodging to another, to hide in holes and corners, and to exhibit to the Roman rabble the sight of Protestants sneaking to a worship indebted only to connivance for its being suffered to exist at all! From 1815, the year in which we gave liberty to the Pope, their worship was held only in private rooms for the ten following years, even to which the English were prohibited from going in carriages. They must go on foot! From 1826, the condition of their worship is thus stated on the authority of the chaplain:—

"In that year, the English congregation migrated to a granary outside the Flaminian Gate. In the upper part of this huge building, a space, large enough for a congregation, was hired. It was reduced into shape by lath and plaster; it had a ceiling of canvass to hide the rafters and cobwebs, and carpets laid over straw, for covering the mud floor. The rats and mice ran races over the canvass above the heads of the worshippers; the pigs, in great numbers, squealed in concert in the story below; and sometimes the donkeys, laden with sacks of corn, disputed the common staircase with the congregation. On one occasion, the competition was more serious. The first story of the building was hired for a menagerie, and on a Sunday morning we found the wild beasts in previous possession."

Can any vulgar display of intolerance exceed this humiliation? There is not a beggar in Rome who does not stand on tiptoe, at the sight of the English going to their barn. There is not a saucy priest, who does not turn up his nostrils at the sight. And yet the population live on the English expenditure. If the English were to leave Rome for a twelvemonth, half their population—a population of lodging-letters and valets—would starve. We certainly can feel no compassion for any degree of contempt which can be heaped on the English residents, who desert their own noble country for the coffee-house life of the Continent. The men who can abandon their duties to England (and what man is not without his duty?) for cheap wine, gossip, and grimace—the race of sullen selfishness and perpetual vacuity—are justly punished by foreign ill-usage. But still, the insult is to the religion of England, and it teaches us the real feeling of Popery in power. Let the Protestant ever suffer the predominance of Rome in England, and he will then only know what Popish power is in its nature, its fierce recollections, and its grasping ambition. In the mean time, let him look at the Protestants creeping through the "Flaminian Gate" to their Barn, outside the walls of Rome!

What right can those have, who so loudly proclaim themselves the spiritual subjects of the Papacy, to demand here what they refuse there? Are they to insist on privileges, where their condescension only amounts to pigsties? What would become of their levees and lectures here, if we laid them under the Roman rule, which sends "controversialists to jail?" Is it not the fact, that no Protestant can be buried within the walls of Rome; and that no inscription can be placed on a Protestant grave, without being subjected to the Roman Censor; who scratches his pen over every syllable referring to the hope of a Resurrection?

Those statements have been repeated in every public journal of the empire. Who has contradicted them? Have we not, then, a right to demand the liberty which we give? or, if refused by the dwarfed and beggarly sovereignty of Rome, ought we not to act with the insulted dignity of the first kingdom and truest religion of the world?

The great error of Protestants, in their legislation on Popish questions, is, to believe that the same rules of morality exist in the Church of England and in Popery. The pamphlet applies itself with full effect to the facts of the case, by giving the Papist oath, and contrasting it with the Papist performance.

"The essential items of the Papist oath of 1829 were—'I do not believe that the Pope of Rome hath, or ought to have, any temporal or civil jurisdiction, power, superiority, or pre-eminence, directly or indirectly, within this realm. I disclaim, disavow, and solemnly abjure any intention to subvert the present Church Establishment, as settled by law within this realm; and I solemnly swear, that I never will exercise any privilege, to which I am or may be entitled, to disturb or weaken the Protestant religion or Protestant government in the United Kingdom.'"

What must be the contempt felt for all Popish promises, when we see this oath, and see the conduct of the Popish body ever since it was taken! "With what feelings," says Mr Warren, "any one who has taken this oath, can peruse and approve of the Bull of Pius IX. and the Pastoral of his pseudo-cardinal archbishop, and contemplate with satisfaction what has been recently done by him and others in professed conformity with that Bull, I am perfectly at a loss to conceive."

And in this honest difficulty of conception every true Protestant will coincide with him. But let us look to the natural result of this palpable callousness of conscience.

The sacredness of oaths is essential to the existence of society: the man who is not to be believed on his oath is self-banished, self-disfranchised, self-excluded from all the rights of society; for the obvious reason, that, if all men were equally false, society must dissolve. Such a man is no longer entitled to the protection of law. And the same rule is inevitably applicable to any institution which thus sets itself at war with society. Popery is anti-social. This sentiment is the substance of a letter by the late Bishop Watson; a man of a rough and almost republican spirit—a bold advocate for liberality, almost to the verge of Liberalism—and, though a vigorous arguer against Paine and his infidelity, yet as sturdy a disclaimer of all submission to prejudice as any radical orator of our day. We quote the pamphlet.

In a letter to the Duke of Rutland, in 1784, the Bishop says—"I particularly agree with you in relation to the (Roman) Catholics. No man on earth, I trust, can have more enlarged sentiments of toleration than I have. But the Church of Rome is a persecuting Church; and it is our interest and our duty, on every principle of religion and common sense, to guard ourselves against her machinations." He then gives the expression of the great Lord Clarendon—"It is the duty of Catholic subjects in a Protestant country, of priests as well as the laity, to abjure the Pope's supremacy, ecclesiastical as well as temporal."

The Popish advocates lay great weight on the patronage afforded to their parliamentary demands by the Cabinet of Pitt; who evidently made the grand mistake of supposing that spiritual dominion could be disunited from temporal—a mistake as great as supposing that the command of the limbs could be disunited from the power of the mind. But the views of the Minister were founded merely on political objects, while the true question was one of religion. The argument is thus summarily answered:—

"Let me remind you that an illustrious statesman, William Pitt, in the very last speech which he delivered in Parliament, expressed himself on the subject of Roman Catholic emancipation in the following remarkable language:—'I never thought that it would have been wise to throw down rudely the guards and fences of the Constitution. But I did think, that if the system I alluded to had been adopted, it ought to have been accompanied by those checks and guards, and with every regulation which could have given respect and influence to the Established Church, to the support and protection of the Protestant interest, and to the encouragement of every measure which could tend to propagate the example of the Protestant religion.'

"His splendid pupil, Canning, the most ardent friend of Roman Catholic emancipation, also thus expressed himself: 'Go as far as you can, with safety to the Establishment. Do not exact from them terms that are unnecessary, but be rigorous in imposing such conditions as shall free you from all real, I had almost said all imaginary, danger.'"

These are important opinions, which should teach us how to act. We have seen those guards and fences broken down; we have seen every protective condition accepted, and finally scoffed at, and we are at this moment at once insulted and injured by the cool and contemptuous violation of every promise which was required for the safety of the Church—of Protestantism.

But the whole system of concession was founded on ignorance, carried on by faction, and suffered by infatuation. That unhappy concession is the only blot on the tomb of Pitt, who made it in ignorance: it is the chief among the many blots on the tomb of Canning, who made faction his auxiliary, by first sacrificing his Toryism; and it covers with the indelible contempt, due to the traffic of principle, the whole paltry and perfidious generation who, subsequently, under different garbs, but with the same physiognomy of worldliness, have droned and drivelled and died off in the shadow of the Treasury. What the majority of those men thought, is a subject too low for memory; what they did, is to be seen in the scars of the Constitution.

But when the mighty orb of Pitt undergoes an eclipse, it must be by a body of no slight magnitude. His wisdom was actually thwarted by his magnanimity. Himself the soul of honour, he evidently imagined that Popery was capable of honour.

"What would William Pitt, what would George Canning, say?" exclaims Mr Warren, "were they still alive to read the Bull of Pius IX. and Dr Wiseman's Pastoral? and what would they do?"

We think that we can answer the question. If Pitt denounced the grasping ambition of French republicanism, if Canning lashed the low absurdities of Radicalism, with what indignant justice would they not have stript and scourged an aggression which unites more than the ambition of the one, with more than the absurdity of the other! With what lofty vengeance would Pitt have trampled down the haughty usurpation which dared to degrade England into a province! and with what sarcastic ridicule would Canning have stung the bloated arrogance with which, from a palace almost a prison, an impudent monk dared to control the liberties of England!

But what would the Papal assumptions be, if uttered by any other sovereign? Let us suppose that Austria ventured to send a dozen of her monks here to carve the land into dioceses. What would be the universal exclamation, but that Austria was mad; and that the first monk who made the attempt should find his only diocese within the walls of Newgate. What if France declared England a province? Can we doubt that our answer would be a declaration of war? And is a beggarly Italian—a fugitive from his own territory, a priest flying for his life in the livery of a footman—to offer this insult with impunity? But if we are told that Pius IX. is a different personage from his predecessors, a Liberal, a man of the new school—tempted, by misrepresentations from his emissary monks here, to make a usurpation against his nature—let us hear the pamphlet:—

"Let us go to the fountain-head. Pope Pius IX., who, on his elevation to the supreme Episcopate, addressed an elaborate Encyclical Letter to 'all patriarchs, primates, archbishops, and bishops,' dated 9th of November 1846, and which, to the eyes of any person in whom exists a single spark of true protestant Christianity, appears surcharged with blasphemous presumption, falsehood, and bigotry."

In this document, the Pope solemnly and formally asserts his claim to be the Vicar of Christ on earth! declares that God has constituted the Pope a living authority to teach the true sense of his Heavenly revelations, and to judge infallibly (infallibili judicia) in all controversies on faith and morals, and that "out of the Catholic Church there is no salvation;" and he bitterly denounces our "most crafty Bible societies," (a denunciation simply against the Bible itself, for there are no notes of any kind in the Bibles thus published.)

In this letter, "the Pope will be found, in the year 1846, to use the essential terms of the Florentine Canon, which has been in force for four hundred and eleven years, and under whose sanction, consequently, have been perpetrated, by the Papal authority, all the enormous crimes and offences which history records against it during that long period."

Mr Warren then quotes, as illustrative of the Pope's assumed supremacy in temporals over the Papist everywhere, a conversation detailed in evidence before a Committee of the House of Commons.—'I said to him, (a respectable Roman Catholic,) suppose the Pope and his Council announced that the King of England was a person who should be deposed—would you feel in conscience bound, as a Roman Catholic, to obey?' He answered, 'Certainly not, because it would be contrary to Scripture.' I asked whether he or his church was to judge of Scripture? He replied, 'His church.' I then asked, 'If the decree was so worded, that the Pope and Council affirmed it to be not contrary, but according to Scripture, that a heretical monarch should be deposed, how would you act?' He admitted, 'that he should feel himself bound by the decree, because it was for the Pope to judge of Scripture, and that, as a Roman Catholic, he should obey him.'

In this conversation we have a perfect specimen of Popish casuistry. The man is suffered to believe that he has a conscience, and that he is ever obedient to Scripture. But Popery still holds him fast, and if regicide should suit its purposes, he can give the blow with a safe conscience. What must be the religion when such is the morality?

And this view leads us to the true question on which the whole subject turns. In the eyes of the Tractarians, the controversy is simply between an old church and a new. In the apologies of the apostates, it is simply between Papal infallibility and private judgment. Thus, the whole is diluted into a mere metaphysical inquiry, while both suppress the entire practical reality of this tremendous superstition. In those tranquil subtleties and meek submissions they both labour to conceal the fact, that if they are to be Papists, they must be worshippers of the Virgin Mary; they must be worshippers of imaginary saints; they must be worshippers of stocks and stones, as the images of those imaginary saints; and they must be prepared to do the bidding of the Papacy, even though that should amount to the dissolution of society; for to this they must come. This is their yoke. To this every man who apostatises is bound for life: he must drag the whole length of the chain.

Strong curiosity is now excited by the approach of Parliament; and the inquiry into the measures contemplated by the Cabinet is intense. In the midst of the numberless conjectures hazarded at the moment, a letter from the Bishop of Durham to a body of his clergy has appeared; which, when we remember that the memorable letter of the Premier was addressed to the Bishop, and that a correspondence on the subject may have been continued, seems to throw a light on the Ministerial intentions, and probably has been written for the express purpose.

The Bishop, after observing that the question of religious liberty to the Roman Catholics could not possibly require "that a foreign potentate should be permitted to insult a great nation, trample on the rights of a sovereign secured by law, and disturb the peace and good order of the Established Church," proceeds to state his conception of the necessary measures of protection.

"In order to prevent such evils, it may be necessary to provide—

"Some restrictions upon the introduction and circulation of Papal Bulls in this island.

"To prohibit the assumption of Episcopal titles conferred by Rome, and deriving the name from any place in this country.

"It may also be desirable to forbid the existence of monastic institutions, strictly so called.

"Nor can the residence of any Jesuits appear otherwise than injurious among Scotch and English Protestants. This Order is well known to have shown itself so dangerous, that it was suppressed by Clement XIV., 1773, with the approbation of all wise and good men. What species or amount of merit may have brought them again into favour with Rome, I profess myself unable to determine. But I am sure you will agree with me that a body of men, whose principles and conduct have been so justly reprobated in (Roman) Catholic countries, cannot be looked upon as desirable neighbours among Protestants like ourselves.

"To some such measures as I have thus pointed out, it may in all probability be found necessary to resort; and they may not improperly be referred to in petitions presented to Parliament in the ensuing Session."

Of course it would be essential that, in the exclusion of Bulls, all documents asserting any similar authority over the Popish subjects of the realm, as "Apostolical Letters," "Rescript Ordinances," and, in short, every paper claiming a public right by the Pope to govern the Papists in England or Ireland, and in any portion of the British empire, should be distinctly comprehended. We must not suffer ourselves to be cheated by names. Similarly, it will not be enough to put down convents and monasteries, so called, but every institution in which Popish vows are taken, binding the rash and unfortunate people who take them, for life. Here, too, we must not be cheated by names. Similarly, we must put down not merely Jesuits, so called, but every Order of foreign monk-ism, let it hide itself under what name it will. Rome is all artifice, and we may be well assured that, whether under the name of Oratorians, or Preachers, or Brethren of the Spirit, the craft of Jesuitry will be exercised to make its way into England, and keep its footing here.

The Bishop's letter makes no direct reference to Ireland. But in Ireland there are two millions of Protestants; and if Protestantism is to be triumphant in England, it must be protected in Ireland. As to the right, the justice, and the necessity of those measures, and many more of the same kind, there can be no doubt on the mind of any rational being. Lords Beaumont, Norfolk, and Camoys, Roman Catholics, have openly stated that the operation of the Papal Bull, is incompatible with temporal allegiance to the Queen. The pamphlet from which we have quoted so largely, from a sense of its merits, disposes of the question in reference to the British Constitution; and the united feeling of the nation, which has already, in the purest spirit of Christian men, exclaimed "No Popery," must now, in the most determined spirit of Freemen, exclaim, "No Surrender!"

Printed by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh.