Blackwood 568 - 1863.02

LADY MORGAN’S MEMOIRS. [4]

In a small house furnished in the tawdry-brilliant style, in a small street adjoining Lowndes Square, there dwelt, between the years 1828 and 1859, a small woman, who, though very old, persisted in believing herself to be young, and dressed and spoke and acted as if she were the observed of all observers. She was not handsome; she never could have been, for there were defects both in face and form at variance with beauty; but she was bright, or rather brisk, in the expression of her countenance, and her air was jaunty, though neither graceful nor elegant. The career of this little woman had been a remarkably busy, and, on the whole, a successful one. She was a voluminous writer, and had made a good deal of money out of her publishers. By a process which is perhaps better understood on the other side of St George’s Channel than here, she succeeded in making her way into what is called “society,” and she never loosened her hold, having once made it fast, upon man or woman, whom, for any reason of rank, worth, or talent, she considered it worth while to cultivate. It is curious to observe likewise the skill with which she makes it appear that the balance of advantage in the matter of acquaintance was always on the side of her friends, especially when they happened to be gentlemen; for she laboured under the happy delusion of believing that she was not only the cleverest, but the most beautiful woman of the age, and that no man, young or old, married or single, ever approached except to fall in love with her.

Time, however, overtook her, as he overtakes other people, and beat her in the race. Latterly she went out little in search of society, either because invitations came sparsely in, or that the fatigue was too great for her, or that she grudged the fly-hire. But she had weekly receptions in her own little drawing-room, and moved heaven and earth, and a variety of penny-post men, to get them attended. A few old Whigs, including the Marquess of Lansdowne and good-natured Lord Carlisle, when he happened to be in town, looked in occasionally at her soirées. Now and then a Tory man of genius—Sir E. B. Lytton, for example—would make his appearance; and it has even been whispered, though we doubt the truth of the story, that a learned divine, sometimes two, might occasionally be seen in the throng. But the bulk of her guests consisted of fashionables of a second or third order, with a few small celebrities, literary, musical, and artistic. The little woman was very great on these occasions. She dispensed her weak tea and weaker conversation with equal fluency; she flattered and received flattery to any conceivable amount. Every man his own trumpeter, and every woman too, was with her an article of religious belief; and she did what religious professors are suspected of not always doing—she carried her faith into practice. A judicious application of rouge to the cheeks, the frocks and furbelows of a girl, a mincing gait, and a perpetual smile, set her forth to the best advantage. At eighty-three years of age she was still a butterfly; and if she could not flit, she floundered from flower to flower.

One day it became known, through a paragraph in the ‘Morning Post,’ that Lady Morgan was dead. London was not thrown into a state of consternation by the announcement, neither did any of its leading habitués array themselves in mourning: on the contrary, we are afraid that, having read the brief sketch which accompanied the notification, and commented upon it, most people forgot within five minutes or less that such a person as Lady Morgan had ever existed. But this was a consummation which, though common enough where others were concerned, her ladyship had made up her mind should not occur in her case. Having engrossed, as she believed, a large share of public attention while living, she determined that she should not cease to be talked about when dead. Accordingly, she conceived the brilliant idea of immortalising herself in a posthumous work, and occupied herself, early and late, in preparing the materials. She availed herself of the assistance of kindhearted Miss Jewsbury in this work, and appointed by will that Mr Hepworth Dixon should be the guardian of her literary reputation. We never heard whether in her lifetime she made Mr Dixon aware of the honour which was intended for him: we think it probable that she did not; because Mr Dixon is reputed to be a man of sense; and it strikes us that, knowing his woman, he would have got out of the scrape had the chance of doing so been afforded him. But it is one thing to object to a proposed arrangement before it is completed, and quite another to refuse carrying into effect the last wish of a relative or dear friend. The struggle was doubtless severe; but sentiment prevailed with Mr Dixon over the remonstrances of good taste and good feeling. He took home the box which contained the precious documents; and now, at an interval of three years from the old lady’s death, the results are before us.

But Mr Dixon, though a pious executor, is not the less a wise man. He seems to have read her ladyship’s papers through, and arrived at a just appreciation of their merits. They would not bear handling in any shape; they must come before the public exactly as they came before him, or he at least could have nothing to say to them. Here is his preface:—

“Lady Morgan bequeathed her papers and journals to me, with a view to their publication. The collection was large, as she had preserved nearly every line written to her from the letters of princes and statesmen, the compliments of poets, of exiles, and heroes, down to the petitions of weavers, chimney-sweeps, and servant-girls—even the invitations sent her to dinner, and the address cards left at her door. Many of these trifles of the day have no value now; a hundred years hence, if kept together, they may serve to illustrate with singular brightness and detail the domestic life of a woman of society in the reign of Victoria. My duty in the matter of their publication was clear enough. Lady Morgan had not only proposed to write her own memoirs, but had made a considerable progress in her task. A good part of a volume had been prepared under her own eyes for the press. Much of the correspondence to be used had been marked, and the copious diaries, in which she had noted the events of her life and the course of her thoughts, supplied nearly all the additions which could be desired. Under these circumstances, it appeared to me that Lady Morgan could be judiciously left to tell her own story in her own way.”

If Mr Dixon had followed any other course, he would have done great injustice both to himself and to Lady Morgan. Her ladyship’s story, as told by herself, is indeed a literary curiosity: had it been told by him, or by anybody else, we doubt whether it would have found a dozen readers. It is probable, for example, that Mr Dixon would have endeavoured to settle the dates of events as they occurred. Possibly, too, he might have narrated these events exactly as they befell: we are pretty sure that he would have done his best to draw a faithful portraiture of his heroine—coloured, perhaps, with the tints which biographers are apt to shed over the objects of their laudation, but not absolutely blazing. Lady Morgan knew a great deal better than this. She starts with the frank avowal, “that she never means to be trammelled by attending to dates.... What has a woman to do with dates?—cold, false, erroneous, chronological dates! New style, old style, procession of the equinox; ill-timed calculation of comets long since due at their stations, yet never come.” Don’t let the reader suppose that this is a mere empty flourish of trumpets. Lady Morgan was never more earnest in her life than when she wrote these sentences. It formed part of her plan to be considered as enjoying a perpetual youth, and she took the readiest, and, as she believed, the surest means of effecting that purpose. In like manner, Lady Morgan had resolved that from beginning to end, her career, as the world was to follow it, should be a romance. She throws an air of mystery, therefore, not only over the date of her birth, but over all the incidents of place and condition into which she fell; till circumstances, as wonderful as they are fortunate, combined to plant her in the foremost ranks of literature and fashion. This gives her an immense advantage over autobiographers in general. She is free to say what she pleases, and to say it as she pleases; and if the public be perverse enough to discredit her statements wholly or in part, what is that to her? The public will read her book and talk about it, and the subject of it; and her manes, if she have any manes, will for a while be gladdened.

There are two ways of telling the story of Lady Morgan’s infancy and girlhood. The first, or poetical, which is her own, describes her as descended from an old Irish family—as the daughter of a man of brilliant genius and the highest sense of honour—as coming into the world at a moment when this great and good man’s affairs happened, unfortunately, to be in confusion; and as thus forced, without any fault of his or her own, to make a too early acquaintance with poverty and its attendant evils. The other, or prosaic, which has no foundation to rest upon except vulgar fact, says that Sydney Owenson was the daughter of a strolling player, who could never clearly distinguish between meum and tuum—who was always rollicking, light-hearted, and merry—who spent every farthing which he earned faster than it came in, was often in prison, and perpetually in debt. The poetic, or Lady Morgan’s reading, further shows that the Owensons or M‘Owens came from one of the great houses of Connaught, which at some remote period, date unknown, had lost or forfeited their enormous estates; that her grandfather, a handsome young yeoman, ran away with her grandmother, and that, though very poor, they lived, upon the whole, comfortably and respectably together. The other, or prosaic version, seems to say that it was Miss Owenson’s grandmother who ran away with her grandfather; that she fell in love with his illigant Hibernian proportions on the occasion of a great curling-match, and never let him alone till he had made her his wife. It is not, however, so easy, as we advance in this interesting history, to follow the line which separates the ideal from the real; but this much at least is certain, that before the end of a year the ci-devant Miss Crofton became the mother of Robert M‘Owen, and that Robert M‘Owen became in due course of time the father of Sydney Lady Morgan.

There is nothing to show very clearly under what circumstances the patronymic M‘Owen made way for the more euphonious Owenson. We are inclined to believe that the change must have occurred at the time when young M‘Owen became a dependant upon the Blakes, and hereby hangs a tale. Mrs M‘Owen, it appears, was a sweet singer, and played skilfully on the Irish harp. She possessed likewise a large share of that inventive faculty which descended to her granddaughter, for she managed to get up such a story, and to tell it so effectively, as to induce a rich neighbour to become the patron of her son. A Mr Blake, a man of enormous wealth, had purchased the property on which M‘Owen’s cabin stood. He called one day on the inmates, and was struck, of course, with the ladylike manners of one of them, who soon made him aware of the gentility of her own descent, and got up a pedigree still more startling for her husband and son. Mr Blake was assured, with great solemnity and perfect effect, that at some period indefinitely remote a Blake had diddled a M‘Owen out of his estate. The millionaire’s sympathies were awakened, either by the tale, or by the manner of telling it; and as he had previously been struck by the boy’s exquisite voice (for young M‘Owen sang like a thrush, and formed one of the choir in the morning at the chapel, and in the afternoon at the church), Mr Blake forthwith proposed to take him into his family and do for him. It was too good an offer to be refused. Young M‘Owen, henceforth to be spoken of as Owenson, left the cabin for the hall, and received just such an education as a horribly selfish bachelor with some fine tastes considered would suffice to render the boy useful to himself, and amusing to other people.

We hear nothing after this of Grandfather M‘Owen, and not much of Grandmother. They probably continued to live, the rest of their days, the cat-and-dog life which usually falls to the lot of persons circumstanced as they were; but the son goes with his patron to Dublin, where for the first time he is present at a play. By-and-by, after exchanging his frieze for broadcloth, he removes to London. There wits and beauties flock about him. He is very clever—he sings divinely. Oliver Goldsmith is his first cousin, five times removed, and Madame Weichsel takes a fancy to him. This is too much, and the lad’s head gets turned. Mr Blake has occasion to visit Ireland, or says that he has, and goes away, after charging young Owenson to keep at home and look after his property. In particular, he charges the lad not to go to the theatre in his absence, or to any other place of public amusement; but no sooner is the patron’s back turned, than the protégé hurries off to Vauxhall, and is easily persuaded to take part in the duet of ‘Fair Aurora’ with his friend Madame Weichsel, who has an engagement there. He little knows what eyes are upon him all the while. Mr Blake has not gone to Ireland; he has come to Vauxhall to be amused, and after listening to the duet, and probably applauding it, he goes straight back to his house in Russell Street. We are not prepared to say what might have happened had young Owenson returned home to sleep. But he did nothing of the sort; he was out on a spree for three days and three nights, and found, when the fun was over, that his trunk stood ready roped in the hall, and that a letter from Mr Blake, containing a bank post-bill for £300, requested him to go about his business.

On the whole, we are inclined to believe that this is a not incorrect statement of the case. Some allowances must of course be made for over-colouring. Probably Owenson was not quite the accomplished gentleman whom his daughter represents him to have been, nor Mr Blake the sybarite and the brute she describes. At all events, we think he did perfectly right in getting rid of a scapegrace whom he could not trust out of his own sight. Such, however, were not young Owenson’s views of the matter. He indignantly re-enclosed the bank-note to Mr Blake (we have some doubts about that fact), and marched off, proud and penniless, to Oliver Goldsmith. The upshot was that he took to the stage, and sang and acted with moderate success. He accepted an engagement in Shrewsbury, and there persuaded the mayor’s daughter to marry him privately. It was a decided mésalliance on both sides, for the good blood of old Ireland got contaminated by intermixture with that of a provincial magnate; while the magnate took so little to the honour conferred upon him, that he refused to make any settlement on the young couple, or even to see them.

Miss Hill, now Mrs Owenson, was a follower of Lady Huntingdon, and hated the stage. She prevailed upon her husband, great as he was in such characters as Sir Lucius O’Trigger and Major O’Flaherty, to abandon it, and he confined himself to singing at oratorios. This continued for a while, very much to the singer’s discontent; but by-and-by Richard Daley, Esq. of Castle Daley (let us not withhold the title), persuaded the facile Owenson to violate his pledge, and to connect himself with the Theatre-Royal, Crow Street, Dublin, of which he of Castle Daley was the patentee. There followed upon this a removal to Drumcondra, where the deputy-manager—for such was Mr Owenson’s rank—took a “pretty villa,” and Mrs Owenson bore as she best might her banishment to the land of Papists and potatoes. And here, in passing, we would venture to point out, that when Lady Morgan speaks of “pretty villas,” “elegant cottages,” “lovely villages,” and suchlike, she does not always intend that we should believe her au pied de la lettre. The “pretty villa” in the “lovely village” was, we suspect, in the present instance, a tumbledown, half-ruinous house on the outskirts of a dirty lane, much frequented by long-legged swine and half-naked children. And we arrive at this conclusion from recollecting a little incident in her ladyship’s after-history, which may be worth recording. She went out of town, on one occasion, to write, as she said, “in quiet,” a book on which she was engaged. Her correspondence with her fashionable friends was not, however, intermitted; and in a letter to Lady Charleville, not given in this collection, she describes herself as “sitting beside a glass door, which opens upon a velvet lawn, and commands a lovely view over one of the fairest landscapes that ever delighted the eye of a painter.” Lady Charleville, happening not long after to be near the place of “Glorvina’s” retreat, had the curiosity to go and see the spot which had been thus delineated, and found it to be a small and rather dirty room in a cottage, with a single window looking out upon a cabbage-garden, beyond which, at about ten yards’ distance, uprose a stiff quickset hedge, impervious to the vision!

We must pass lightly over what remains to be told of the family history of the Owensons. It is rather confusedly narrated, and seems to imply that the circumstances of the household were generally straitened, and that they either shifted their habitat very frequently, or were often in two places at the same time. We have just ascertained, for example, that on the arrival of Mrs Owenson in Ireland, “my father took a pretty villa for her at Drumcondra.” Yet the authority for this fact relates: “I was born on Christmas Day, in that land where all holy days are religiously celebrated, as testimonials to faith, and are excuses for festivity in ancient ould Dublin.” And here again there is a blank, which we are left to fill up as we please. On the Christmas Day of what year might this memorable event occur? Taking collateral circumstances into account, it might not unfairly be assumed that some Christmas Day about the middle of the last century witnessed the remarkable occurrence. But the inference, we suspect, would be erroneous. Having taken a good deal of pains to settle the matter, we are glad that it is in our power to save Lady Morgan from the reproach of having lived many years beyond eighty. She was born in 1776. “Bells tolled, carols were intoned—the streets resounded with joyous sounds; an uproarious party sat about the board of as fine a type of the Irish gentleman as Ireland ever set forth, when another birth” (another than what?) “was announced by a joyous gossip to the happy father, who instantly disappeared.” We cannot too much commend the taste, not to say the piety, of this whole sentence. No wonder that the guests, waiting, “not with empty glasses,” till the happy father’s return, should have considered the event a “reason fair to fill their glass again,” or that they were with difficulty dispersed on the assurance “that they should all meet again that day month, to be present at the christening of the young heathen.”

The christening of the “young heathen” took place in due time. The ceremony is well described, and the style eminently characteristic, for it is light, airy, graceful, and considerably profane. Then comes a pause, extending, as it would appear, over some years—and after that a graphic account of the lumbering of a post-coach, “on the evening of a dreary winter’s day, up the ill-paved hill of an old street in the oldest part of Dublin, called Fish Shambles Street.” Where the coach came from we are not told, but it conveyed Mrs Owenson and her two daughters (for by this time Olivia likewise had been born, and both she and Sydney were able to take their share in conversation) to the new home which Mr Owenson had prepared for them. And here comes another mystery. The house is evidently a ruin—but why a ruin, and how, if ever, repaired, we never learn. It is enough for us to know that Mr Owenson, in breach of his engagement with Mr Daley of Castle Daley, had taken the National Theatre Music Hall, and that it was opened with the representation of three pieces,—“‘The Carmelite,’ ‘The Brave Irishman,’ and ‘The Poor Soldier.’ A medley of Irish airs made up the overture, which ended with the Volunteers’ March, and my father wrote and spoke the prologue in his own character of an Irish Volunteer.” Now, if we recollect aright, the Irish Volunteers were in their glory about 1782, and as we learn that Miss Sydney, when the “post-coach” set down its burden, had held an interesting conversation with her mother about Handel, it appears to us that on this eventful night she could not have been less than six years old at the least.

Mr Owenson’s theatrical adventure was not a fortunate one. The Government went against him, by granting to Mr Daley a patent for the exclusive performance of the regular drama; and the Dublin gentry, though they took plenty of boxes at the Music Hall, objected or forgot to pay for them. Neither was he more successful in trade. His cousins, the Ffrenches, an old family, of course, exiled on account of their religion, or for some other cause, made him their agent for the sale of wines which they grew at Bordeaux; and though he certainly managed to get rid of large quantities, he was never able to remit to them negotiable bills for the same. He went, in short, to the dogs, his course thither being a good deal accelerated by the death of his amiable but gloomy and Calvinistic wife. And now began in earnest the education of the two Misses Owenson. They were placed under a French emigrée, a Mme. Terson, who kept school first at Portarlington, and afterwards at Clontarf, and learned from her imperfectly a good deal, living at the same time with “many girls of rank, and some of distinguished talent.” How Mme. Terson got paid we are left to conjecture. Probably she never got paid at all; but being a benevolent person, and a sort of sister of mercy, she allowed the player’s daughters to remain with her for four years, and then handed them over to a Mrs Anderson in order to be finished. Mrs Anderson, however, was a different sort of person from Mme. Terson. Her pupils “were the daughters of wealthy mediocrities; their manners were coarse and familiar;” and Mrs Anderson herself had a vulgar desire to receive quid pro quo. The young ladies could not, under such circumstances, remain long with her. Yet “the school in Earl Street had its advantages too, for it brought us constantly in contact with our dear father, who walked out with us every Sunday on the Mall in Sackville Street, where the fashionables of Dublin most did congregate, who seldom passed us without the observation, ‘There goes Owenson and his two dear little girls.’”

Having thus early established for herself an interest in the esteem and admiration of “the fashionables,” it is not to be wondered at that Sydney Owenson’s after-career should have been brilliant. She went with her father to Kilkenny, where he built “a beautiful little theatre,” and mortgaged it, before it was roofed in, “to a wealthy and fashionable attorney.” The usual results followed—Mr Welch, the wealthy and fashionable attorney, “foreclosed his mortgage suddenly” (we have heard that he never could get a farthing of interest), “and bills to an enormous amount were presented.” They were accepted as a notice to quit. Mr Owenson carried his daughters back to Dublin, where he placed them in lodgings under the care of their faithful maid Molly, and then bolted. The truth seems to be, that everybody came down upon him. The players were clamorous for their salaries; the workpeople insisted upon having their accounts settled; the attorney claimed the amount of his mortgage; and the Ffrenches required that some portion at least of the value of the wine which Mr Owenson had undertaken to sell for them should be accounted for. What could the poor manager do under such circumstances? He hid himself till a commission of bankruptcy could be taken out, and then, like many a wiser if not better man, walked at large again, as if nothing particular had happened.

From this date, about 1794, Mr Owenson ceases to be the prominent figure in the family tableau. His daughter Sydney assumes her proper place. Though barely eighteen, she has already had lovers without end at her feet. The first is a poor scholar called Dermody (a thorough scamp, by the by, who abused everybody’s patience, and died at last of delirium tremens in the purlieus of Westminster), to whom her father had been kind. It is by no means certain that he ever seriously proposed, but he wrote many letters full of nonsense, most of which are printed in this collection. Then came the officers of the garrison of Kilkenny, two of whom at least fairly died because beautiful Sydney was cruel.

“Captain White Benson and Captain Earl” (says Miss Jewsbury, writing from Lady Morgan’s memoranda) “were two young officers quartered in Kilkenny during the period when Mr Owenson had his daughters with him, while his theatre was being built. She refers to the young men in one of her Dublin letters to her father, telling him that they had called....

“Molly was a very dragon of discretion, and the two girls might have had a worse guardian. Lady Clark often told of the Kilkenny days, when she, an unformed lump of a girl, whose greatest delight was to go rambling about the fields, armed with a big stick and followed by a dog, once returned from her rambles covered with mud, and her frock torn from scrambling over hedges and ditches, her hair all blown over her face (she had the loveliest long golden hair that ever was seen), and found her sister Sydney and these two young officers sitting in the parlour, talking high sentiment, and all three shedding tears. Molly came in at the same moment to lay the cloth for dinner, and thinking they had stayed quite long enough, said, in her most unceremonious manner, ‘Come, be off wid yez! an’ the master will be coming in to his dinner, and what will he say to find you here fandangoing with Miss Sydney?’ Sydney, who the moment before had been enjoying her sorrows, burst out laughing at this sally, and, shaking her black curly head, danced away like a fairy.”

What an exquisite piece of word-painting! What a charming scene! Who can wonder that the results should have been so serious? Of Captain Earl, to be sure, we hear nothing more, but Captain Benson wrote two letters at least to his lady-love, both of which, dated in 1798, are given in extenso. Miss Jewsbury’s remarks concerning them are edifying:—

“These two letters,” she says, “are much worn and torn, as though from frequent reading and handling. On the back of the latest of them is written, ‘This elegant-minded and highly-gifted young man drowned himself near York a few months after I received this letter.’”

Tender as her heart was, Miss Owenson had something else to do than to indulge its weaknesses. She determined, as soon as she became acquainted with the real state of her father’s affairs, to earn her own livelihood; and however ridiculous her vanity may be, however gross her many breaches of truth and common propriety, we are bound to acknowledge, and we do it with hearty goodwill, that she went gallantly through with that purpose. Her first impulse was to turn authoress; her next and wiser, to go out as a governess or companion, if any lady, young or old, would have her. She was now about twenty-one, but looked considerably younger. There was difficulty, therefore, in finding a place for her, though her old music-master, M. Fontaine, did his best to make her merits known, and the Countess O’Haggerty, an emigrée and a distinguished harpist, took her up. Accident, however, introduced her at one of Fontaine’s parties to Mrs Lefanu, a sister of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who behaved to her then and ever afterwards with marked kindness. The result was, that a Mrs Featherstone sought her out, and, after a little preliminary negotiation, it was settled that she should proceed on a visit to Bracklin, near Castletown, in the county of Westmeath, and, if approved and approving, that she should undertake the education of two young ladies, the daughters of her new friend. If we are to believe Lady Morgan, she seems to have won the hearts and clouded the judgments of all whom she approached.

Her account of her journey to Bracklin, and of the manner of her reception there, is of course too good to be quite true, but it is very characteristic. She was to travel by the night-mail, but, being invited to a petit bal d’adieu at M. Fontaine’s, she was startled in the middle of a country-dance by hearing the guard’s horn sounding at the end of the street. “Then all that could be done was for Molly to throw a warm cloak over me, with my own bonnet, and my little bundle of things, so that I might dress when I got to Kinigad. One of the young gentlemen snatched up my portmanteau, and so we all flew along the flags, which were frosted over, and got to the mail just as the guard lost patience and was mounting. So I was poked in and the door banged to, and ‘my carriage’ drove off like lightning down College Green, along the quays, and then into some gloomy street I did not remember.”

A smart young officer is taken up at one of the barrack-gates, but being told by the guard that there was an old lady inside, he declines to enter, and jumps up beside the coachman. Imagine his chagrin on discovering, when the coach stops at Kinigad, how grossly he had been deceived. “What!” he exclaims, as Miss Owenson is about to step out; “‘let such a foot as that sink in the snow?—never!’ ... and he actually carried me in his arms into the kitchen, and placed me in an old arm-chair before a roaring turf-fire.” Of course he did, and of course he was overawed and subdued when he heard that Mr Featherstone’s carriage and horses were waiting to carry the young lady to Bracklin. But what must the astonishment of the quiet country family have been when the future governess of their children walked in, “pinched, cold, confused, and miserable, in a balldress and pink silk shoes and stockings, without an article wherewith to change, her luggage having gone forward with the mail?” All, however, comes right in the end. The old gentleman looks grave, the young ladies laugh; mamma puts the stranger in charge of her future pupils, who dress her up in suits of their own. There is a capital dinner—she sings ‘Emunch ach Nuic’ (‘Ned of the Hills’), and ‘Barbara Allen’ (we presume, at the dinner-table), and after tea the whole entertainment is wound up with a dance, in which Miss Owenson comes off with flying colours. Why could not the old lady stop there?

“Public for public,” she continues, in her imbecility. “It may be worth while here to contrast my last jig in public with this my first out of the schoolroom. During the Viceroyalty of the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland, by whose attentions I was much distinguished, as indeed were all my family, it happened that Lord George Hill came on a little embassy from Her Excellency to beg that I would dance an Irish jig with him, as she had heard of my performance with Lady Glengall in a preceding reign. He said if I would consent I should choose either the Castle or the Viceregal Lodge for the exhibition, and that his brother, Lord Downshire, would write to Hillsboro’ for his own piper, who was then reckoned the best in Ireland. As it was to be a private and not a court exhibition, my husband permitted me to accept the challenge from the two best jig-dancers in the country, Lord George himself and Sir Philip Crampton. I had the triumph of flooring my two rivals. Lord George soon gave in, and the Surgeon-General felt a twinge of gout, he said, which obliged him to retire from the lists.”

The ball is now at Miss Owenson’s foot, and she keeps it going. Her life at Bracklin is a sort of heaven upon earth. Everybody takes to her. Mr Featherstone himself, though reserved at the outset, becomes one of her thousand lovers, and carries her with him into all the society which the county can afford. So it is when the family goes to Dublin for the season. How the education of the Misses Featherstone got on at all, we don’t pretend to understand, for the teacher seems to have plunged into the very vortex of fashionable life. Among other acquaintances which she formed were Sir John Stevenson and Tom Moore, the latter of whom she did her best to captivate, with, as it would appear, only indifferent success. But if she failed to bring the poet to her feet, she caught from him the furor of authorship. She had already completed her first novel, and needed only a publisher to bring it out. Her account of the manner in which that want was supplied is too rich not to be given in detail:—

“The Featherstone family were shortly to leave town, and I resolved on the desperate step of publishing my novel, though I did not know the difference between a bookseller and a publisher; and I intended to take my chance of finding one in the streets of Dublin. I had observed that the Domenich Street cook, a relic of the Dowager Steele regime, was in the habit of hanging up her bonnet and cloak in the back hall. I slipped down quietly one morning early, put on the cloak and bonnet, and with the MS. tidily put up under my arm, passed through the open hall-door, at which a milkman was standing, and started on my first literary adventure. I wandered down into Britain Street, past the noble edifices of the Lying-in Hospital and the Rotunda, quickened my steps down the aristocratic pavement of Sackville Street, then occupied by the principal nobility of Ireland. When I got to the bottom, with Carlisle Bridge and the whole world of commerce ‘all before me where to choose,’ I was puzzled; but as chance directed, I turned to the right into Henry Street, proceeding along, frightened and uncertain. To the left rose the Church of St. Peter, where I had gone to be confirmed; opposite to it were Stella’s lodgings, where she and Mrs Dingley held their bureau d’esprit. At the other end of the carrefoure, and on a line with the church, and on the same side with it, my eyes were dazzled by an inscription over a door,—‘T. Smith, printer and bookseller.’ As I ascended the steps a dirty-faced boy was sweeping the shop, and, either purposely or accidentally, swept all the dust into my face. He then flung down the brush, and, springing over the counter, leaned his elbows on the counter, and his chubby face on his hands, and said, ‘What do you please to want, Miss?’ I was stunned, but after a moment’s hesitation replied, the gentleman of the house. ‘Which of them—young or ould?’ Before I could make any selection, a glass door at the back of the shop opened, and a flashy young yeoman in full uniform, his musket on his shoulder, and whistling the ‘Irish Volunteers,’ marched straight up to me. The impudent boy, winking his eye, said, ‘Here’s a young Miss wants to see yez, Master James.’ Master James marched up to me, chucked me under the chin, ‘and filled me from the top to the toe choke-full of direst cruelty.’ I could have murdered them both. All that was dignified in girlhood and authorship beat at my heart, when a voice from the parlour behind the shop came to my rescue by exclaiming, ‘What are you doing there, Jim—why ain’t you off, sir, for the Phœnix?—and the lawyers’ corps marched an hour ago.’ The next moment, a good-looking, middle-aged man, but in a great passion, with his face half shaved, and a razor and shaving-cloth in his hand, came forth and said, ‘Off wid ye now, sir, like a sky-rocket.’ Jim accordingly shouldered his musket ‘like a sky-rocket,’ and Scrub, leaping over the counter, seized his broom and began to sweep diligently to make up for lost time. The old gentleman gave me a good-humoured glance, and saying, ‘Sit down, honey, and I’ll be with you in a jiffy,’ returned in a few minutes with the other half of his face shaved, and, wiping his hands with a towel, took his place behind the counter, saying, ‘Now, honey, what can I do for you?’ This was altogether so unlike my ideas of the Tonsons, the Dodsleys, and the great Miss Burney, that I was equally inclined to laugh and cry; so the old gentleman repeated his question, ‘Well, what do you want, my dear?’ I hesitated, and at last said, ‘I want to sell a book, please.’ ‘To sell a book, dear,—an ould one, for I sell new ones myself? And what is the name of it, and what’s it about?’ I was now occupied in taking off the rose-coloured ribbon with which I had tied up my MS. ‘What!’ he said; ‘it is a MS., is it!’ ‘The same, sir,’ I said: ‘St Clair.’ ‘Well, now, my dear, I’ve nothing to do with Church books, neither sermons nor tracts, do you see. I take it for granted it is a Papist book by the title.’ ‘No, sir, it is one of sentiment, after the manner of Werter.’ He passed his hand over his face, which left the humorous smile on his face unconcealed. ‘Well, my dear, I never heard of Werter, and am not a publisher of novels at all.’ At this announcement, hot, hurried, flurried, and mortified, I began to tie up my MS. In spite of myself the tears came into my eyes, and poor good-natured Mr Smith said, ‘Don’t cry, my dear; there’s money bid for you yet. But you’re very young to turn author; and what’s your name, dear?’ ‘Owenson, sir,’ I said. ‘Owenson!’ he repeated; ‘are you anything to Mr Owenson of the Theatre-Royal?’ ‘Yes, sir; I am his daughter.’ ‘His daughter—you amaze me!’”

And so on, and so on; for such, in fact, is the point up to which the whole twaddle is leading. The illustrious Owenson of the Theatre-Royal has friends and admirers everywhere. His name is a talisman which opens all doors, and softens all hearts. Mr Smith introduces Miss Owenson to Mr Brown, Mr Brown allows her to leave her MS. behind, and, without a word of agreement, spoken or written, on either side, he brings it out to his own great satisfaction. Miss Owenson thus becomes famous before she is aware of it.

Though very happy at Bracklin, Miss Owenson is not sorry to leave it. She returns to the bosom of her own family, and thus speaketh:—

“We” (that is to say, her sister Olivia and herself) “are seated at our little work-table, beside a cheerful turf-fire and a pair of lights. Livy is amusing herself at work, and I have been reading out a work of Schiller’s to her; whilst Molly is washing up the tea-things in the background, and Peter is laying the cloth for his master’s supper. That dear master! In a few minutes we shall hear his rap at the door, and his whistle under the window; and then we shall circle round the fire, and chat and laugh over the circumstances of the day. These are the scenes in which my heart expands, and which I love to sketch on the spot. Ah! I must soon leave them.”

To be sure she must; the simple truth being this, that she quarrelled with both father and sister, and had an insuperable objection to all their domestic arrangements. “In spite of her romantic love for her father,” observes Miss Jewsbury, “and her sincere attachment to her sister, the beautiful illusion of living a domestic life with them soon wore off. Accustomed as she had been so long to the plentiful comfort and regularity of Mrs Featherstone’s well-ordered household, she felt the difference between that and the scrambling poverty and discomfort of life in an Irish lodging.” So she levanted, and is next heard of in the family of Mr and Mrs Crawford, at Fort-William, in the north of Ireland. Her letters from that place are all in the old style. One of them indeed, addressed to her sister, begins by confessing that while surrounded “by that happy circle to which her heart was accustomed to expand,” “her spirits sank beneath the least appearance of discord, and she was too conscious that she was not so fortunate as to please every member of her own dear family.” The case is quite different at Fort-William. “Here I am almost an object of idolatry among the servants, and am caressed by all ranks of people.” She not only goes wherever the family are invited, but receives separate invitations for herself. To be sure, Mrs Crawford now and then runs rusty, and the self-love of the little governess receives a wound. “We had a very pressing invitation sent us for a ball at Clough-Jordan, given by a club there. Mine was, as usual, separate, but Mrs Crawford would not go. It is the third she has refused. Is it not provoking? Be content with your situation; you are young, you are beautiful, you are admired, and foolish women do not torment you!” Provoking! it was intolerable. Happily, however, crosses of this kind were rare—at all events, we don’t find many allusions to them in Miss Owenson’s correspondence with her old friend Mrs Featherstone.

“The other day we had upwards of forty people to dinner, among others Lord Dunally, Lord and Lady Clanbrock, Hon. Mrs Dillon, the Vaughans of Golden Grove, &c. We sang and played a good deal, and the night finished most pleasantly with my Irish jig, in which I put down my men completely. This has produced an ode to a jig, which I will send, when I can get a frank, to your papa, for I know it will please him.... Well, the other night we were at an immense row at Lady Clanbrock’s, to whom I owe so many obligations for her marked attention to me since my residence here, that I am at a loss how to mention them. It was quite a musical party, and—give me joy—on the decision of Lord Norbury, who was of the party, I bore away the palm from all their Italian music by the old Irish airs of ‘Ned of the Hill’ and ‘Cooleen,’ to which I had adapted words, and I was interrupted three times by plaudits in the ‘Soldier tired.’”

Having thus got into the good graces of a few lords and ladies, it is scarcely to be wondered at that Miss Owenson should become disgusted with Mrs Crawford and her pruderies. “As I found that these good people” (the Crawfords) “were determined on going for life to Castle Tumbledown” (Fort-William), “and as I never had any strong propensity for the society of crows who have established a very flourishing colony in the battlements, I gave in my resignation last week.” It was time that she should, for her mind was so completely divided between authorship and gaiety, that it could scarcely be expected to stoop to the trivialities of teaching. ‘St Clair,’ brought out, as we have stated, surreptitiously, had made some stir. Miss Jewsbury says it was translated into German; but we doubt whether it was much read at home beyond the circle of the authoress’s acquaintances. The complimentary notes which it drew from her friends, however, induced her to begin another, which was to be completed in six volumes, and to which she gave the name of the ‘Novice of St Domenich.’ Part of the ‘Novice’ she seems to have written in her father’s lodgings at Enniskillen, whither, after her breach with Mrs Crawford, she appears to have retired; part in the house of a family called Crossley, to whom she paid a visit. There were several sons in that family, one of whom, as a matter of course, fell in love with her. His letters—for he wrote many—are all carefully preserved; and on the back of the envelope in which they were wrapped up Miss Jewsbury found the following inscription:—“Francis Crossley, aged eighteen, chose to fall in love with me, Sydney Owenson, aged eighteen. He was then intended for a merchant, but the ‘Novice of St Domenich,’ which he copied out, as regularly as it was written, in six huge volumes, and its author, turned his head. He fled from his country-house, went to India, and became a great man.” With exceeding naïveté Miss Jewsbury observes on this—“Lady Morgan, when she endorsed these papers, had of course forgotten her own age. It is so sweet to be eighteen.” Forgotten her own age! We should think that she had, just as she forgot everything which did not minister to her vanity or jump with the humour of the moment. But Lady Morgan could remember as well as forget, when it suited her purpose. “Among her memoranda of 1822 and 1824,” says Miss Jewsbury, “are two or three entries on the subject of Captain Crossley, which may be given in this place:” “Francis Crossley, my fast friend of the other sex, met me at my sister’s house at dinner after an absence of eighteen years. It was a singular interview. What was most singular in it is, that he remains unchanged. He insists upon it that, in person, so am I.” “August 24th: Received this day a letter from Captain Crossley, acquainting me with his intention of marrying. I have written him an answer à mourir de rire, and so ends our romance of so many years!” “August 26th: Captain and Mrs Crossley dined this day here, and I never saw such a triste-looking couple. My poor Francis silent and sad.” How could he be otherwise, poor man! under the circumstances—with the new and old love both before him, and cut off, by his own rash act, from choosing between?

We take leave from this date of Miss Owenson the governess, that we may follow the fortunes of Miss Owenson the authoress. Her pen is never idle. She writes, with equal facility and speed, songs, which are set to music or arranged by her father, odes, and novels. She has learned, likewise, how to attend to her own interests in disposing of her copyrights. The Dublin publisher seems to have rendered her no account, so she opens a correspondence with Sir Richard Phillips of London. The story which she tells, and her manner of telling it, take with the bibliopole, and she packs up the ‘Novice,’ and sets off alone, personally to negotiate with him. With all her foibles (for, indeed, Lady Morgan’s worst faults scarcely deserve to be described by a harsher title), there was something about her which made friends wherever she went. Mr Quintin Dick, for example, a chance fellow-passenger in the coach from Holyhead, never lost his interest in her to the day of his death. Phillips could not resist her insinuating manners. He bought her MS. (she does not say what he gave for it); and, though married and of middle age, made love to her in his own way. Gruff, stern, old Mrs Inchbald, alone of the Londoners to whom she recommended herself, repulsed her. But the repulse made no lasting impression. She returned to Ireland gratified and hopeful, and extended day by day her reputation, and the circle, already not limited, of her correspondence and acquaintances.

Lady Morgan’s novels have long since passed into the oblivion which is their rightful portion. They are all cast in the same mould. Whether we look into ‘St Clair,’ ‘The Novice,’ ‘The Wild Irish Girl,’ ‘The O’Briens and the O’Flahartys,’ or any other of the multitudinous brood which made their appearance at intervals from 1801 to 1826, each resembles the other as closely as pea resembles pea. We have in all of them the same characters, almost the same incidents, certainly the same opinions, and the same style of conversation throughout. Miss Owenson herself is the universal heroine; Mr Owenson figures in most of them, sometimes as a prince, otherwise as a nobleman. The officers with whom she associated in Kilkenny—the friends who sheltered her in her hour of need—her lovers, real or imaginary—her lord and lady acquaintances—an interesting priest, and a griping parson,—all come upon the stage. The love-passages are warm, the learning is ludicrous; the delineation of national manners and national modes of thinking one-sided; and the style lively and incorrect, or else turgid and pompous. They attained to a degree of popularity for which it seems difficult in this age to account. The truth, however, is, that Miss Owenson caught the top of the wave. By writing up Liberalism just as it began to struggle into fashion, she became to the Whigs, as a novelist, pretty much what Moore was as a poet; and she reaped her reward. For the Tories, as is their wont, while they abused her principles, followed the lead set them by their rivals, and spoke of the authoress as a woman of genius, whom it would be generous to praise and entertaining to cultivate. Hence both parties were as ready to receive her advances as she was willing to make them. Moreover, when she attained to the height of her popularity, at the date of the publication of ‘The Wild Irish Girl,’ public taste was wretched in the extreme. The Waverley Novels had not yet begun to purify the atmosphere which the Minerva Press had long darkened, and Miss Edgeworth and Miss Austin stood wellnigh alone among lady-novelists. Now, Miss Owenson, though neither an Edgeworth nor an Austin, was far superior to your ‘Anna Marias’ and ‘Girls of the Mountain.’ She had a good deal of intuitive perception into the realities of woman’s nature, though not, perhaps, into the best parts of it; and hence, in spite of frequent outrages to good manners, and sometimes to decency, she commanded attention.

“I read ‘Ida,’” writes Lady Charleville, “before it was all issued from the press, a volume being sent me as soon as sewed; and I read it with the same conviction of the existence of excellent talent, great descriptive powers; and in this work I find particular ingenuity in the novel attempt to interest us for a woman who loved two. And for each of the lovers the episode was happily contrived on this plan, and executed with great taste and spirit. I could have wished the situations had been less critical in point of delicacy, as the English gentleman has incurred great blame on all sides for having suffered her to escape; and the poor Turk too. The politics of Athens are ingenious; but, alas! one poor Emmet, hanging so recently in our streets, does not suffer us to enjoy our miseries in any fiction for some years to come. I have not read the ‘Monthly Review,’ where it is criticised. I choose to be pleased with what you write now, though I do heartily reprobate your putting off the period of polishing and purifying your language, for pique to those censors, who, after all, may be the best of friends, if they point out a path so attainable to fame. Assuredly, to those to whom God has given fancy, and a touch of the ethereal spark, it is doubly a duty to write pure language, under the penalty of else rendering the best gift of Heaven valueless. Where little is to be done, it is inexcusable to neglect that; and assuredly you promised me that ‘Ida’ should be more correct than your former publications, even, as you imagined, at the expense of fancy. Now, we found as much imagination as ever, and not more of the square and compass than hitherto.”

If it was thus that ladies of taste and delicacy, however awkwardly they might express themselves, thought and wrote of Miss Owenson’s manner of handling the tender passion, and if ladies of taste and delicacy could dispense their criticisms with so gentle a hand, it is little to be wondered at if the mass of subscribers to circulating libraries devoured such books as ‘Ida,’ and pronounced them divine.

Miss Owenson was now the fashion, and Lord and Lady Abercorn invited her to pay them a visit at Baronscourt. They had read ‘The Novice of St Domenich’ and ‘The Wild Irish Girl,’ and, being bored with each other’s society, yet equally taking a fancy to the authoress, they urged her to come and live with them, and amuse them over their dull fireside. Miss Jewsbury, writing, we presume, from her friend’s notes, thus describes the pair:—

“He” (the Marquess) “was extremely handsome, noble, and courtly in his manner; witty, sarcastic, a roué as regarded his principles towards women, a Tory in politics, fastidious, luxurious, refined in his habits, fascinating in his address, blasé upon pleasure and prosperity, yet capable of being amused by wit, and interested by a new voice and face. Altogether, he was as dangerous a man for a brilliant young woman to be brought near, as could easily be found. Miss Owenson had, however, the virtue for herself which she bestowed upon her heroines. Her own sentiments and romances found their outlet and exercise in her novels; and she had, for all practical purposes, the strong hard common sense which called things by their right names, and never gave bewildering epithets to matters of plain right and wrong. She had no exaggerated generosity, nor sentiments of delicacy about other people’s feelings. The Marchioness of Abercorn was as genuine a fine lady as the Marquess was a fine gentleman. In after years Lady Morgan drew her portrait in ‘O’Donnel’ as Lady Llamberis. She was good-natured and inconsequent; she took up people warmly, and dropped them easily; she was incapable of permanent attachment, except to those belonging to herself.”

With this amiable couple Miss Owenson lived rather more than two years. She does not appear to have been altogether pleased with her position, and no wonder. Lady Abercorn was the Marquess’s third wife, who

“Lived with him on terms of excessive politeness, and poor Miss Owenson was expected to bear their tempers and attentions, to sit in the cross-fire of their humours, and to find good spirits and sprightly conversation when they were dull. Add to this, that heavy pressure of anxiety about family matters, which was laid upon her before her nerves and sinews were braced to meet it, and before she had any worldly knowledge, produced a feeling of exhaustion. In the material prosperity of her life at Baronscourt the tension relaxed, and the fatigue of past exertion asserted itself. Her own ambition had never allowed her to rest—she had been wonderfully successful; but at Baronscourt and Stanmore Priory all she had attained looked dwarfed and small when measured by the hereditary power and consequence of the family in which she was for the time an inmate. She did not become discontented, but she was disenchanted for the time with all that belonged to herself, and saw her own position on its true comparative scale. Sydney Owenson, from earliest childhood, had depended on herself alone for counsel and support. There is no sign that she ever felt those moments of religious aspiration, when a human being, sensible of its own weakness and ignorance, cries for help to Him who made us. There are no ejaculations of prayer or of thanksgiving; she proudly took up her own burden, and bore it as well as she could; finding her own way, and shaping her own life, according to her own idea of what ought to form her being’s end and aim. She was a courageous indomitable spirit; but the constant dependence on herself, the steady concentration of purpose with which she followed out her own career without letting herself be turned aside, gave a hardness to her nature, which, though it did not destroy her kindness and honesty of heart, petrified the tender grace which makes the charm of goodness.”

Lord and Lady Abercorn were very fond of Miss Owenson in their own way. They had formed a plan for her happiness, which, in spite of the opposition in the outset of the two parties most interested, they ultimately succeeded in carrying into effect. Lord Abercorn had for his family physician Dr Morgan, a dull, priggish, and most conceited individual, between whom and the authoress of ‘The Wild Irish Girl’ he and the Marchioness determined to make a match. How the affair went on from its dawn to its consummation; how Miss Owenson compelled the reluctant doctor to fall in love with her in spite of himself; how, frightened at the results of the frolic, she would have drawn back at last, had not the lord and lady proved too clever for her,—Lady Morgan, with her usual taste, has described in detail. All the doctor’s letters, with some of her own, are printed in this collection; the latter of which, by the by, rather contradict the text of the narrative. According to her ladyship’s version, placed on record after the event, things ran thus:—There had been a great deal of love-making on his side, with something very like it on hers; but in the end—

“Any romance she had felt about Sir Charles was frightened out of her for the time being; and she said she would have given anything to be able to run away again. Neither was much delay accorded to her. On a cold morning in January she was sitting in the library by the fire in her morning wrapper, when Lady Abercorn opened the door and said, ‘Glorvina, come up-stairs directly and be married; there must be no more trifling.’ Her ladyship took Miss Owenson’s arm and led her up-stairs into her dressing-room, where a table was arranged for the ceremony; the family chaplain standing in full canonicals with his book open, and Sir Charles ready to receive her. There was no escape left—the ceremony proceeded, and the Wild Irish Girl was married past redemption.”

All this took place, it will be observed, in January 1812, possibly upon the third day of the month. On the 29th of the previous December, Miss Owenson, being in Dublin on some mysterious millinery business, wrote thus to the Doctor—“Oh, Morgan! give me all your love, tenderness, comfort, and support, for in five short days I am yours for ever.” Thus, whether by accident or through design, Miss Owenson, at the age of thirty-six, gave her hand to a man six or seven years her junior, on whom the noble Marquess had persuaded the Lord-Lieutenant to confer the honour of knighthood, for no other ostensible purpose than that he might have the satisfaction of filling his glass after dinner, and drinking to the health of Sir Charles and Lady Morgan.

Little more remains to be told of the personal history of our heroine—not much of her future efforts as an authoress and a politician. Sir Charles and Lady Morgan soon discovered that the stately restraint of Baronscourt and the Priory were too much for a newly-married couple. They parted from the Abercorns, therefore, apparently on decent terms, and took possession of a house of their own in Kildare Street. Sir Charles then endeavoured to get into practice as a physician, but failed. Nobody called him in, so the gifted couple devoted themselves conjointly and severally to literature. We say conjointly and severally, because the lady, with her usual prudence, had stipulated in the marriage-contract that her earnings should belong exclusively to herself; while the gentleman, who was a widower, settled his private patrimony on a daughter whom his first wife had brought him. Lady Morgan had by far the best of this bargain. Her novel of ‘O’Donnel,’ which Colburn brought out in 1813, she sold for £500; and as the book went through not fewer than three editions, we are of opinion that, looking at the matter in a mercantile point of view, she was not paid too much for it.

This was clearly Lady Morgan’s opinion likewise, and she determined that Mr Colburn should not for the future purchase her favours so cheaply. As to her husband, he had utterly failed. He put forth a volume, which he called ‘Outlines of the Physiology of Life,’ and his publisher never sold copies enough to cover the cost of the paper. No wonder. It was a dull, impudent, most unphilosophical piece of materialism, which disgusted even the believers in that wretched creed by the boldness with which it asserted as facts points which they had never ventured to treat except as open to speculative discussion. But the failure of Sir Charles in nowise daunted his wife. The battle of Waterloo having restored peace to Europe, and re-established, as was assumed, the throne of the Bourbons in France, Sir Charles and Lady Morgan went forth to spy the land; and after remaining, chiefly in Paris, about six weeks, came back and entered into negotiation with Mr Colburn for the publication of a volume of their travels. A very diplomatic correspondence ensued. Colburn offered £750 for the copyright, and spoke of the great things which he was in a condition to do, for what he called his books and his authors, through the instrumentality of his ‘New Monthly Magazine and Literary Gazette.’ Her ladyship stood out stiffly for £1000, and she carried her point. “To conclude at once,” wrote Colburn, “though at a really great risk, I will consent to undertake to pay the £1000, and, on my honour, if it succeed better than expected, I will consider myself accordingly your debtor, besides making up to you the other £50 on ‘O’Donnel,’ that you may no longer regret the third edition.”

Nobody reads Lady Morgan’s ‘France’ now any more than he reads ‘O’Donnel.’ It is full of the most ridiculous blunders, and abounds in misstatements which could have hardly been accidental at the time. Yet it sold well. The ‘Quarterly’ fell upon it mercilessly, doubtless promoting the sale by the virulence of its criticisms. This attack Lady Morgan ingeniously met by assuring her friends that Croker was one of her rejected lovers, and that he had taken this opportunity of avenging himself for the sufferings he had undergone! On the other hand, all who delighted in scandal were charmed with the book, and Mme. Paterson Buonaparte wrote from Paris to assure the authoress that her manner of detailing it was quite as agreeable to French people as to English.

“Public expectation is as high as possible,” she says, “and if you had kept it a little longer, they would have purchased it” (the book) “at your own price. How happy you must be at filling the world with your name as you do! Madame de Staël and Madame de Genlis are forgotten; and if the love of fame be of any weight with you, your excursion to Paris was attended with brilliant success. I assure you—and you know I am sincere—that you are more spoken of than any other person at the present day. Mr Moore seldom sees me; I did not take with him at all. He called to show me the article of your letter which mentions the report of the Duke of Wellington’s loves. I am not the Mrs —— the great man gives as a successor to Grassini. You would be surprised if you knew how great a fool she is, at the power she exercises over the Duke; but I believe that he has no taste pour les femmes d’esprit, which is, however, no reason for going into extremes, as in this case.”

The prince of puffers was Henry Colburn. He spent a fortune in advertising his own books, and succeeded, till the trick was found out, in cramming many a trashy production down the throat of a gullible public. It is certain, also, that he believed in his own power, and made a boast of it. He was so well pleased with the success of ‘France,’ that, besides purchasing ‘Florence Macarthy,’ with some dead weight, from Sir Charles for £1200, he suggested that the Morgans should visit Italy, and promised £2000 for the copyright of the book of travels to be written. The terms were accepted, and in due time appeared ‘Italy,’ by Lady Morgan. “Her ladyship’s criticisms on the public buildings and pictures,” observes Miss Jewsbury, “may be open to question, but the spirit of the book (being ultra-liberal) is noble, and its fascination undeniable.” Agreeing with the former clause of this sentence, we may let the latter pass unnoticed; for the bubble of Lady Morgan’s reputation was on the eve of bursting. She and Mr Colburn fell out. She never could believe but that the monarch of Marlborough Street was growing rich at her expense; so, having visited France a second time, and written a second book about it, she determined to bring him to reason. While the work was yet in progress, she wrote to Colburn, who did not immediately answer the letter. She wrote again, but no reply came; whereupon she opened a correspondence about terms with Messrs Saunders and Otley. Colburn no sooner heard of this, than he remonstrated against it in no very becoming terms. “I can now only say,” he wrote to Sir Charles, “that if Lady Morgan does not break off the negotiation, which is simply done on the plea of misunderstanding, it will be no less detrimental to her literary than to her pecuniary interest. As to myself, it is a very different feeling, and not merely pecuniary interest, that makes me urge this matter; as I can prove, if necessary, I have lost considerably by the last two or three works.” Could bibliopolic insolence go beyond this? He lost by her ladyship’s works! He threaten to injure her literary reputation! Let him do his worst. A bargain was concluded with Messrs Saunders and Otley, and under their auspices ‘France Revisited’ came out. The day after its appearance men read with astonishment in all the newspapers an advertisement headed in large letters, “Lady Morgan at half-price.” The base-born miscreant had the audacity to declare “That in consequence of the great losses which he had sustained by Lady Morgan’s former works, Mr Colburn had declined this present book on France, and that all the copies of her ladyship’s works might be had at half-price.” The cruel announcement had the desired effect. Messrs Saunders and Otley found themselves losers by a good deal more than the thousand pounds which they had given for the copyright, and Lady Morgan’s popularity as a writer collapsed.

We must not devote more of our space to the poor dead old lady. She had pretty well feathered her nest by this time, and though she could not sell her books as she had heretofore done, she did what was far better. She got the Government to settle upon her a pension of £300 a year, the very highest reward which Imperial generosity ever bestows in this rich country on literary eminence. This enabled her to keep house in William Street, and to maintain such social intercourse with the gay world as we have elsewhere indicated. She had always been a ready correspondent, and she continued the practice of letter-writing to the last. Generally speaking, that portion of her correspondence which has found its way into these volumes is harmless enough. It contains little else, when her ladyship writes, than descriptions of the fine people whom she meets, and the pleasant things which they say to her. When fine ladies and gentlemen address her, it is always in a strain of exaggerated flattery. But poor Lady Caroline Lamb might, we think, have been permitted to lie still in her grave. Not that her letters to Lady Morgan tell anything which we did not know already; for Lady Caroline never made a secret of her weaknesses, and was evidently incapable of understanding that other people might call them by a harsher name. But for the sake of Lady Morgan herself, and the reputation of good-heartedness, which was really not undeserved in her case, it is a pity that she should be made the means of recalling to the world’s recollection so pitiable a story. We suspect, however, that Miss Jewsbury and Mr Dixon had no choice in the matter. They must print all or nothing; and so, having spared very few of the old lady’s male friends, they could find no good reason for being more tender towards her friends of the other sex. In the name, however, of the women of society living under the reign of Victoria, we must protest against these volumes being accepted, either now or a hundred years hence, as illustrative of the sort of domestic life to which they are accustomed.

A SKETCH FROM BABYLON. — CONCLUSION.—CHAPTER X. — CHAPTER XI. — CHAPTER XII. — CHAPTER XIII. — CHAPTER XIV. — CHAPTER XV.

Madame Mélanie was a milliner much affected in aristocratic and financial circles.

Finance sympathises with Hungary, Poland, and oppressed nationalities, and Mélanie appertained to this section of mortality. Moreover, she made dresses beautifully, and the employment of her gratified the double sentiments of charity and vanity.

Mélanie was the daughter of a French maid-servant, in the service of a Hungarian lady. Brought up in her maternal profession—for her sire was not known—she lived under the roof of her Hungarian mistress till what she was pleased to call the “Hongarian Strockle.” Of this event she narrated striking scenes. Assuming to herself the name of her mistress, whom she had betrayed, she told how Haynau had threatened her with chastisement, and how, barefooted, she had reached a place of safety. More than once she had been invited to publish her adventures, but she was far too wise. Her ancient nobility obtained for her much greater consideration as a seamstress, and a better livelihood than Kossuth himself could procure; and in the humility of her station she was more free from detection than in a more elevated sphere.

She had begun poorly enough—working away gradually, and accumulating capital by labour and saving, by gifts from her patronesses, and also by occasionally abstracting small pieces of jewellery and money from the aristocratic dressing-rooms to which, in her capacity as a distressed noblewoman, she obtained freer access than others of her equals. True, she soon gave up the latter pursuit. Not only was it dangerous, but increasing business, by removing her from want, enabled her to resist temptation. Still she derived considerable emolument from what Italian servants term “incerti.” She did not object, for a consideration, to usurp the office of the Postmaster-General, nor did she refuse the shelter of her roof when business or charity required an interview between opulent monades of opposite sexes. On the whole, Madame Mélanie is a deserving creature. The sums she spends in alms astound the more credulous of her customers. She has sent more than one packet of linen to the lying-in hospital of the parish, and the initial “M., through a friend,” for Garibaldi’s muskets, has been traced to the same benefic source. She will not marry again, for she never can forget the Count of her early days, when they lived and loved in Hungary; but a French courier, about three years younger than herself, dwells in her house under the designation of adopted son, keeps her accounts, and transacts business with her solicitor.

Such was the person let loose in her respectable household by that careful mother, Lady Coxe. ’Ungary has done much for many disreputable foreigners. The respectability of a few has floated the depravity of the many.

On the credit of a lying assumption, Madame Mélanie had access to the homes and toilet-tables of England which would be denied to any respectable Englishwoman of the same class, however deserving.

“Good morning, Mélanie,” said Lady Coxe, as she lay back in her chaise longue.

“Good morning, miladi—always so charmante and gracieuse.”

“Git along, Mélanie,” replied miladi, playfully: when away from her daughters she laid aside that staidness of demeanour maintained before them towards her inferiors.

“Mélanie, we are going to Lady Ilminster’s dejooner.”

“Miladi go everywhere fashionable.”

“Oh yes, Mélanie, and I don’t know ’ow ever I shall be able to bear up against it. I feel so exhausted.”

“Oh, miladi does not care herself.”

“What can I do, Mélanie?—I feel so weak!”

“Miladi look very pale.”

“I think I must send for Dr Leadbitter.”

“If miladi would take a little drop of port-wine once or twice in the day.”

“You really think so, Mélanie?”

“Yes truly, miladi.”

“Just like a good creature open that cupboard. I always keep a bottle there in case Sir Jehoshaphat should drop in; you will find a glass. Per’aps there are two. Bring them, Mélanie, and take a glass yourself.”

The seamstress did as she was bid, and, placing the decanter and glasses respectfully on the table and in the manner of a skilled practician, she sat herself down in the same deferential attitude near her employer.

Lady Coxe took a bumper; then she took another, and declared herself better.

Madame Mélanie’s first glass was not half emptied.

“Well, Mélanie, what would you advise about my dress for this party? You know it is to be very shwosi.”

“Miladi shall be the best dressed and the youngest-looking miladi in the house.”

“Git along, Mélanie,” retorted miladi, stealthily filling herself another bumper.

A flush pervaded the cheek of the matron. Perhaps it was of pride.

“Miladi, I recommend moire antique—magenta, with quilled ribbons—chapeau of blonde with magenta trimmings—parasol to match.”

“Your taste is so good, Mélanie.”

“Magenta so well become miladi. Bootiful complexion—she young as Miss Constance.”

“Oh, you flattering thing! but what will you give my daughters—the Miss Coxes.”

“Oh, I talk to them myself. They not be Miss Coxe long, I think. Miss Florence make a very nice bride, and Miss Constance bootiful Comtesse.”

“Git along; but what do you mean? Fill your glass.” Lady Coxe as a fugleman showed the way.

“They tell me such a ’andsome man want to marry her—noble and rich.”

“English or furrin, Mélanie?”

“Not English.”

“You know ’im to be rich?”

“Oh yes, I know him rich. Miladi know poor woman like me obliged to make affair with all sort of people. One of my customers, Mademoiselle Dulaugier of Opera Comique. I send all her bill to Comte Rabelais, and he pay, what you call, on the nail.”

“Very satisfactory,” responded Lady Coxe. “Let me ’ope Constance may be the means of leading ’im to better things.”

“Indeed, let us hope so,” said Mélanie, and this time she held her glass to her lips for some seconds, though the liquid within was not much diminished.

“Nothing is settled, believe me, Mélanie. But then the world is talking of it.”

“Of nothing else. Who occupy London so much as your family, miladi? The Duchesse of Wiltshire, when I go to her, say to me, ‘Mélanie, tell me all about that bootiful Miladi Coques and her bootiful family. None so bootiful as the mother.’”

At this moment the door admitted Florence and Constance.

Mélanie rose in admiration.

“What bootiful colour! What roses in cheeks.”

The girls acknowledged her salute, and the rose left the cheek of Constance.

Mélanie whispered Lady Coxe, “I will make for Mademoiselle Constance bootiful dress like used to wear La Dulaugier—the Comte’s own choice.”

“Mélanie is come to take orders for Lady Ilminster’s dejooner.”

“I shall have a very simple dress,” said Florence.

“And so shall I,” chimed in Constance, in a voice low and tremulous.

“Impossible!” broke in the seamstress—“impossible!”

“Nonsense!” said Lady Coxe.

“You will ruin Constance, Mélanie,” retorted Florence.

“Mademoiselle Constance will marry a rich man, and think nothing of the trifles she spends now,” responded Mélanie, somewhat tartly.

“You know what to make,” said Lady Coxe, in a voice that admitted of no reply.

With an obsequious courtesy Mélanie left the room, and Constance, retiring to her own chamber, threw herself on her bed and wept bitterly.

It was dusk when Mélanie left the house—that dangerous summer dusk, when that is seen which you wish concealed, but when you can with difficulty perceive what you wish to discover.

Mélanie wended her way towards Grosvenor Street, where she resided. As she reached the corner of the Square, however, she stopped at the corner of Charles Street, under a gas-lamp.

She did not wait many minutes when a Clarence stopped at the crossing.

A man jumped out. It was Count Rabelais.

Holding open the door of the carriage, he admitted the dressmaker, who took her seat next a woman already inside. Jumping in again with a bow, the Count gave an order to the coachman, who dashed off under the gas-lamp.

Augustus Bromley, who was passing at the moment, saw the whole transaction, as well as the face of the third occupant. It was that of Madame Carron. For the first time an idea entered his mind, how much like the face of the Count was to that of the actress.

Hurrying homeward to write a line of excuse to a friend with whom he was engaged to dine, he seated himself not many minutes later in a stall of the St James’s Theatre.

The first play, a short one, was over, and in the next Madame Carron was to appear. Her part that night involved one or two songs, and a piano was wheeled into the orchestra.

Bromley, who was sitting at one end, could see Madame Carron in the wings with Angelo Magens, a pianist and composer of some celebrity. They were together engaged earnestly over a sheet of music paper, beating time and giving or demanding explanation.

At length Bromley perceived that the play was about to begin, from Madame Carron plucking at her skirts, and from Mr Magens’s appearance in the orchestra. The musician turned round, and, at a signal from Bromley, came to the neighbourhood of his stall, and leaned over to speak to him.

“How d’ye do, Angelo?” asked Bromley. “Ages since I’ve seen you. How are Mrs Angelo and Adelaide?”

“Quite well, thank you, Mr Bromley. How well you’re looking!”

“Rather hard at work, that’s all.”

“I can understand that, in your important avocations.”

“By the way, Angelo, do you know the Carron well?”

“Well, Mr Bromley, she’s been very kind to a poor man like me.”

“Do you think we’ve time to go round and have a glass of sherry?”

“Not now; at the end of the next act;” and the bell rang for the curtain to rise. As it rose, Bromley perceived behind Madame Carron the figure of Rabelais.

The act was soon over, and Magens came for his glass of sherry. Bromley led him to the public-house adjoining, and the liquor was poured out.

As they both sipped it, Bromley again began, “How well she did that last scene!”

“Admirably; she is a wonderful woman!”

“Indeed she is, Magens. By the way, where is Monsieur Carron?”

“Oh! he is dead, I believe.”

“Then is that story true about her?”

“If you have heard anything against her reputation, I can undertake to declare it false.”

Little Magens, when under the united influence of sentiment and sherry, could be very fiery.

He was a grateful homuncule.

“Of course not,” rejoined his interrogator. “I mean that other story.”

“Are you trying to pump me, Mr Bromley?”

“It would take a cleverer man than me to do that, Angelo—another glass—there’s lots of time. We’ve only been five minutes, and the entr’acte at a French play is never less than a quarter of an hour. (Glasses filled.) You were saying—”

“Well, the only story I have ever heard is about her family. They say, with I do not know what foundation, that she is of a good family, and is devoting all her profits to the support of it. She certainly does not live in the style of a person earning the immense salaries she receives.”

“Rabelais, I suppose, knows all about it.”

Magens shook his head, swallowed the remainder of his glass, and silently led the way back to the theatre.

“By the way, do you know anything of Madame Mélanie, the seamstress? She is much employed by actresses, I believe? A young lady was asking me, whether she made Mademoiselle Dulaugier’s ballet-dresses.”

“I know her very little myself. Mrs Magens knows her.”

“Well, Magens, good evening. Can you come and dine with me to-morrow at the Garrick?”

“To-morrow, I am engaged here all the evening, and I suppose your hours are fashionable.”

“Well, another day.”

When he resumed his stall, Bromley perceived that a box near the stage was newly filled.

He looked up, and there was Lady Coxe and her three daughters.

Near Constance sat the Count. Her eye caught his, and she blushed deeply.

Bromley went revolving in his mind many things. At length he made up his mind, and sauntered into the box.

The Count greeted him with unusual civility. Lady Coxe invited him to a chair next her.

“Mr Bromley,” she whispered, “do me a favour. The Congte is most anxious to go to Lady Ilminster’s. Can you, do you think—can you manage this?”

“Impossible, my dear Lady Coxe. I have already exceeded my powers.”

A wink, supposed to be imperceptible, announced to the Count the result of the negotiation. A dead silence ensued. When Bromley left the box, no effort was made to detain him.

It was early the following afternoon when Bromley took a light dinner at his club. The waiters, as they brought him portions of soup and fish, speculated on the causes which induced Mr Bromley to dine at four o’clock. In the hall he had left a carpet-bag containing six bottles of sherry and two of whisky, one of Curaçoa, and one of pale brandy.

He was not long at his dinner. Having finished, he sent for a cab, and, placing in it his carpet-bag, desired the driver to take him to the Strand to a celebrated fish-shop. Here he bought two lobsters, two bundles of dried sprats, a pork-pie, a Bologna sausage, two loaves of brown bread, and a pound of butter. The civil shopman, at Bromley’s request, sent out for some fine Spanish onions, which were added to the packet. With these provisions Bromley ordered himself to Kennington.

The driver at length drew up as directed at a nursery garden. Here Bromley alighted, paid his fare, and, shouldering his baggage, walked up the garden path.

“Is Mrs Magens at home?” he asked a maid-servant.

“Yes, sir, she’s up-stairs.”

“Will you tell her I’m here? How are you, my dear?”

“Very well, thank you, sir. It’s some time since we saw you.”

“Yes, my dear, and I think you’ve grown. Will you take some of these parcels, while I take the others, and put them in the drawing-room?”

“It looks as if it held good things, sir.”

“You’re a knowing young creature, my dear. Just go and tell your mistress I am here.”

Bromley knew it would be a long time before mistress would make her appearance. As he sat in the little sitting-room, 12 feet by 8, he heard cries for warm water. “Jane, where’s the soap?—My brush, Jane, quick!—Where are them pins?” which told how the lady was occupied.

Half an hour at least must elapse before the appearance of Mrs Magens, and this period Bromley divided between reading the ‘Era,’ which lay on the table, and drumming thereon.

Mr Angelo Magens was the natural son of a rackety Irish peer; at least so report said, and there was circumstantial evidence in support of the theory. Angelo had brothers, but they were not a bit like himself. Lord Rattlecormick had never taken any notice of them as he had of Angelo. The cast of Angelo’s face was decidedly Rattlecormick, and so was his character—quiet in manner, but reckless and thoughtless, a mixture of good nature, common sense, loose principle, and imprudence. From his childhood Angelo had lived exclusively with Lord Rattlecormick, with the exception of a short interval, during which his patron had managed to thrust him into the Navy. The life did not suit young Angelo, accustomed as he was to the rough luxury of Castle Rattlecormick, the good-natured and reckless liberality of the peer, who acted in loco parentis, and boon companions, who enlivened that patrician hearth.

So young Magens one morning left H.M.S. Bruiser in Cork Roads without leave, and betook himself without invitation to the House of Rattlecormick, to pass his time in warbling songs to the crowd of guests, to perform odd jobs on the premises, and to unfit himself for doing his duty in that state of life to which it might please Providence to call him.

Thus days and years passed, till Angelo was about twenty. He had picked up a certain knowledge of music. The village priest, skilled in thorough bass, had taught him the mysteries of counterpoint. Nature had blessed him with an agreeable tenor voice, and a rather agreeable manner, and a very decided taste for alcohol. Just at this particular juncture, Lord Rattlecormick died. As might have been expected, no will was found. Angelo was thrown on his own resources—viz., one hundred pounds, the remnant of divers tips from his patron, a suit of clothes or two, and such expectations as might be warranted by the extensive acquaintance and clientela of his late father or patron.

He set up as a music-master. He composed pretty little songs, popular from their melodies. He even aspired to an opera, and was not wholly unsuccessful. Once he hired a theatre for himself, and was wholly unsuccessful. At one time he was poor, at another time he was not rich; but one day he would have nothing, the next a considerable sum of money. He was like those figures one sees in a bottle, which go dancing up and down according to the pressure on the cover. The accidents of his fortune were abrupt and immoderate. Now at the bottom of the bottle with a sudden fall—now at the top with as unexpected a rebound—seldom in the centre, but when there wriggling and twisting and curveting,—discontented for mediocrity, and burning to risk great success or great disaster on the turn of the nearest die. But with increasing years the taste of Angelo for alcohol increased, specially with reference to sherry. He had a mania for that particular beverage, and he passed but few hours of the day without appealing to that cherished friend. He was well known at the public-houses of the metropolis,—at some of them, I fear, too well known to insure the gratification of his tastes. He was always convivial, however; always hospitable, always willing to accept hospitality. When in funds he would volunteer a glass of sherry at his own expense; when not in the best plight, he would volunteer it at yours. In early days Augustus’s friends often declared that Angelo had led him into expenses and extravagance. It may be so; but in justice to his memory, Augustus often declared his belief that not a sixpence more was spent for Angelo than Angelo ever spent for him.

His wife was a very different kind of person. The daughter of a chemist at Worcester, and possessed of a good voice, the musical festivals, and the love of Church dignitaries for the ars musica, had indicated music as her profession. As a little girl, her talents in this respect had made her a favourite in the cathedral town, and she could with veracity boast acquaintance with bishops, deans, and canons, whose names sounded oddly enough when coming from her lips. Nevertheless these worthy and guileless men had contributed to her education, proudly looking forward to the time when her rich contralto should resound through their own cathedral, and they should share in the plaudits showered on their pupil and protégée. So they sent her to study in London,—and she did study in London. She came out in London; sang in an oratorio, and created a sensation. But Kate Robins was a peculiar person. She was the daughter of a chemist, and in her physical composition there was much oxygen of a certain quality—not enough, however, to feed the vestal flame. Moreover, she was very pretty, with an arch smile. She sang little songs with ineffable grace. So no wonder she studied the doctrine of affinities. A cathedral town presented but few attractions. Deans were atoms of a nature not sufficiently volatile. She found the obstacles in the way of Platonism so numerous as to be absolutely insurmountable. So she assumed the toga affected by her equivalents in Babylon. She drove in little carriages, and radiated in fine linen. She accepted engagements at theatres, took parts where a good leg, an arch smile, and a rich voice were everything requisite; earned a good livelihood from her art, and a considerable amount of pocket-money from her artlessness.

Hers was a pleasant Bohemian life till she was five-and-thirty. The bishops and the deans, the friends of her youth, were replaced—in another fashion, be it understood—by the young nobles, the friends of her womanhood. As the spiritual peerage had contributed to the formation, so did the temporal assist in the completion of her education. This went on very well for some time. But at length the contralto rather deteriorated; the arch smile partook rather of the stereotype. Managers were no longer so eager. Dukes began to cease their visits to her greenroom. Scarlet and fine linen are expensive in the absence of means to purchase them. Kate Robins found her assets running low; while several tradesmen, heretofore satisfied by the dukes, were not so civil as formerly. So, taking a judicious resolution, she determined on a provincial tour, relying for rural successes on her fading reputation. She planned with a friendly author an attractive entertainment. She engaged Magens, who had then just culminated, as her accompanyist, and she sallied forth with Angelo from Babylon to fresh fields and pastures new. For economy’s sake they occupied the same apartments, till, for propriety’s sake, they assumed the same name. They went the round of England and Ireland earning a livelihood and realising a good round sum, not sufficient, however, to meet their joint liabilities. Therefore, as assets would go farther when legally united than when filtered by division, as union in fact is force, Angelo obtained from the Church a benediction on the marriage already practically solemnised, turned his wife’s brevet rank into substantive rank; and having thus consolidated their names and their liabilities, went through the Insolvent Court like a man, and, in purging himself, whitewashed his wife’s account-book simultaneously with her reputation. From that moment Mrs Magens collapsed into private life. A long and severe illness deprived her of all that remained of looks, voice, and attraction. She became a good wife, a prudent housekeeper, endeavoured to remedy by self-denial the dilapidations inflicted by sherry on their small means, incited her husband to exertion, made his house as pleasant as possible, and retained nothing of her former life but an unattractive girl she designated her niece, and a dramatic phraseology.

In his early youth, Bromley had nursed thoughts of studying music, and hence his first acquaintance with Magens. Through his agency the young man had made the acquaintance of gentlemen and ladies acquainted with the theatrical profession, not all of them of the highest caste. One whole winter he had spent in their exclusive society. He had learnt their ways, their tastes, their virtues, and their weaknesses. Lobsters were amongst the tastes of Mrs Magens. She cultivated them with a sauce which was a virtue; while her devotion to sprats, or to boiled onions, may be classed among the more venial weaknesses of that estimable matron.

At length the door creaked up-stairs, and a rustling overhead betokened that such preparations were completed as she had undertaken for Bromley’s reception. A note in G was heard quavering—as though in innocence of heart.

“Bravo, my songstress,” murmured, or rather soliloquised, Bromley. “Now for the roulade;” and there sure enough it came. “And now for Floreski as she comes down-stairs.”

The thoughts of no medium could have been more rapid. The voice, or rather the remnant of a voice, descended the stairs slowly and musingly, warbling that well-known and beautiful romance,

The last notes floated in the air as the door opened, and in rushed Mrs Magens nicely got up in a drab silk dress.

“How d’ye do, Mr Bromley, my kyind friend?” She held out both hands, and emphasised the “do,” after the manner of genteel comedy.

“Charming as ever, or may I be freckled,” responded Bromley, in the same tone.

“’Tis ages since we met. Let me look at ye.” She drew him towards the window, and scanned his features anxiously.

“A shade of care has fallen across that brow since last we met. Let’s see how long ago is it? A year—no—can it be? Time spares us not, Mr Bromley.”

“It spares the beautiful Magens.”

“Flatterer—the same as ever—the same gay-hearted, kyind——”

“A truce, I beseech ye,” broke in Bromley. “In yonder basket I have brought an offering I fain would make your household deities—some few articles, little luxuries, sent me from the country.”

The country always served as a veil in which to envelope Bromley’s presents to Mrs Magens. Had he avowed the purchase, she would have been offended or feigned offence.

But the country saved her pride.

“From the country, Mr Bromley—from some kyind old aunt, I warrant me, or, mayhap, a grandmother. Jane!”

“Women are ever thoughtful, lady,” responded Bromley.

Jane entered the room.

“Open the basket, maiden.”

“I knowed as it was full of good things.”

“Pity the poor vulgarian!”

“Ingins, I do declare!” cried the maiden. “My, what fine ingins!”

“The produce of your land, doubtless, Mr Bromley.”

“And sprats—oh my!”

The mouth of Mrs Magens was watering beyond concealment.

“And lobsters—oh my, what lobsters!”

Mrs Magens could stand it no longer.

“The cares of a household do not degrade a woman, Mr Bromley. B’ your leave, I’ll go and see them lobsters properly served up.”

“Perhaps you will allow me to partake your meal?”

“Of course,” screeched Mrs Magens from the adjacent kitchen, where, had Bromley seen her, he would have discovered the skirts of her garment already pinned round the waist of the neat-handed Phyllis.

It was not very long before the repast was ready, and Bromley sat, opposite his hostess, at a little table spread with a clean cloth, decorated with some spoons rescued from Mr Commissioner, a nickel cruet-stand, and two carnations.

“I do love this new Russian fashion,” observed Mrs Magens, as a species of grace.

Half a lobster fell before her.

“In that carpet-bag, I have ventured to bring, for Angelo, a few bottles of sherry, of a particular quality, lately sent me by some friends from the country.”

“How very thoughtful! Don’t trouble yourself—allow me.” The phraseology was less flowery, and the bottle was soon uncorked.

At length the meal was over. The onions had been discussed—a portion of the feast had been reserved for Angelo—another portion allotted to Jane—candles were introduced—Bromley was allowed to light a cigar, and to mix a glass of whisky and water—even Mrs Magens sipped a glass of toddy, and the room was soon as redolent as a tap.

“Now, Mr Bromley, I daresay, when in that brilliant world which your position throws open to you—in that world of beauties and nobles, you often long for the repose of an evening like this, passed equably in gentle converse, and with a frugal but wholesome meal to which fatigue has lent an appetite and friendship a relish.”

“Very true, Mrs Magens. And your society is especially delightful. Angelo, poor man, is deprived of it. He is very busy.”

“Very much so. The Fates are propitious.”

“I hope he is making a pot of money.”

“Fie, what a word! Heaven ever befriends the just.”

“Money is wanted at present, Mrs Magens. In these days, a man with a good income is not a rich man.”

“Indeed, it is true—too true. The extravagance of the age is hawful.”

Sometimes Mrs Magens was off her guard, and as uncertain about her aspirates as a beginner in the Greek tongue.

“It is indeed,” answered Bromley, “awful——”

“Awful,” repeated Mrs Magens, correcting herself.

“Dress is ruinous for ladies.”

“Yet gaudy attire is no evidence of a sound heart.”

The h was inserted this time with a slam.

“Very true, often the reverse; but it is no less ruinous.”

“The sums lavished on it are enormous, Mr Bromley.”

“I daresay many ladies in your profession spend large sums on their toilettes.”

“Enormous; why, there’s Miss Sepop of the Bower has a new dress every night. Mrs Macvey of the Blackfriars is never satisfied without embroidery all round.”

“Whom do you consider the best dressmaker, Mrs Magens? your taste is so good.”

“Why, for myself, I should say, Madame Mélanie Mickiewicz. She is generally known as Madame Mélanie. Poor thing! She is a Hungarian princess. Her story is harrowing—harrowing—Ha’nau——”

“I think I have heard it—poor thing! Do you know her?”

“Intimately—a charming person—quite the lady.”

“I suppose she has lots of stories—of experience.”

“Delightful creature. She was telling me the other day of the awful effects this extravagance produces on the high-born and wealthy. Many young ladies run up bills of enormous amounts, trusting to their marriage for the means of payment. But gentlemen do not marry.”

“And their bills run on.”

“Exactly—you have hit my very thought. There is one family, she tells me, where mother and daughters are deeply in debt to her, none of them daring to confide in the others for fear that the father and husband—a very strict man—should discover their embarrassments.”

“Did she tell you who they were, Mrs Magens?”

“No; but she would if I asked her, in a moment.”

“I daresay, Mrs Magens, your own dresses amount to no small sum.”

“Oh, I am so very ’umble.”

“But have you no little bill with your friend, no little sum Angelo ignores?”

“How cunning you are, Mr Bromley! However, it don’t amount to a very large figure.”

“By the way, is not Madame Mélanie a friend of Madame Carron’s? I see them driving together.”

“Yes; I believe they knew each other in Hungary. There, again, Madame Carron is deeply in debt to her.”

“But I thought she made such enormous sums. Does she owe more than you, Mrs Magens?”

“Oh, my liability is not more than what you would call a ‘pony,’ Mr Bromley.”

“But how does Madame Carron manage to contract debts?”

“She is obliged to dress expensively for her parts, and she is very charitable, especially to some worthless relative who absorbs all her income.”

“A husband?”

“No, a brother, I believe; although Mélanie is so charming a person it is horrible to be under an obligation to her.”

“Well, Mrs Magens, I daresay we can find some way of relieving you from yours.”

“I could never think of such a thing, Mr Bromley.”

“Well, do me a little favour; we are old friends, Mrs Magens. Find out the name of the family who are so much indebted, and of Madame Carron’s brother. Write to me.”

“Certainly, I will. There’s a knock. Won’t you stay to see Angelo?”

The door opened, and Mélanie entered the room.

Lady Ilminster was a very charming woman—kind, gracious, and good-natured. Very rich herself, the wife of a rich man, she delighted in throwing about her the pleasures which wealth confers, and in inviting others to share them.

She was sensuous; that is to say, she loved good things. She loved to gaze on pretty and happy faces, and the harmony of colours. She loved the sound of music, the smell of flowers, the gliding sensation of a boat; nay, she was not averse to a good dinner, and quaffed iced champagne, not to excess, but à discrétion. She had no children herself, and so surrounded herself with those who loved her. These were not toadies, but men of equal rank, whose tastes chimed in with her own. At first she was accused of flirting; but the scandal soon subsided, for it was pure scandal. Even had there been any foundation, a hostess so bountiful would soon have overcome the charge; but with Lady Ilminster there were no thoughts of evil. She did a thousand things others could not do. She rode, she drove, she even smoked, as fancy prompted her; but she was faithful to her lord, though, perhaps, her example stimulated in others freedoms of which she disapproved. Like many women whose conduct is pure, her conversation was not the reflex of her conduct.

The party Lady Ilminster gave was to be, as Lady Coxe had declared, very “shwosi.” Her recovery from indisposition was the pretext assigned—one of those excuses the hospitable find when, for the sake of pleasure to others, or for the maintenance of their social renown, they think fit to display their leading quality.

Preparations had been made, astounding in their extravagance and beauty. The grounds, which sloped down to the river were covered with flowers, tents, and temporary palaces. Lady Ilminster had taste enough to draw that delicate line which separates fairy-land from a tea-garden.

In one of these temporary structures a large party of young ladies and gentlemen were assembled eating ices and drinking tea. Lady Coxe was presiding in her magenta dress, nodding from the heat, and fanning with magenta fan her magenta countenance. Florence was talking merrily with a young guardsman; but the conversation generally assumed that tone which, as Mr Whiting describes it, smacks less of the lady than of the reduplicate Φ.

“Let us take up our position here,” said one young lady to her partner; “I hate being with the swells.”

Lady Coxe heard this; her face more magenta than ever. She ranked herself with the nobility.

“Did you see Croquet in the park yesterday,” asked another, “with the prettiest pony?”

“Yes; but not such a habit as Julia Fitzwiggins,” burst in a third. “What a waist she has!”

“Quite like an hour-glass,” illustrates a guardsman, aloud.

“I doubt if it be all real,” interposed another young lady.

“What are you talking of?” asked the guardsman.

“Of course the rest must be filled with sand,” retorts the first.

“A sand-glass in every respect,” murmured Whiting.

Lady Coxe nods, puffs, fans, and smiles, not quite understanding what Mr Whiting meant.

“Toole, who makes her habits, declares she pads them with brown paper,” resumed the guardsman.

“I’m sure I wouldn’t purchase a waist at that price,” rejoined the partner.

“You’ve a very pretty little one of your own, Lady Janet.”

Oh, young ladies, young ladies, why are you in such haste for the freedom and abundance of married life? Why compete for magenta dresses with I won’t say what? Why adopt the language of I won’t say whom? You may attract young men from the society of the first by using the phraseology of the second, but will you retain them with you? They may in time give up Richmond dinners and midnight orgies with Thaïs, for a quiet meal, loving looks, and worthy sentiments with Lucretia. If this will not attract them, so much the worse for them and so much the better for Lucretia. But Lucretia will never win them by the arts of Thaïs. Thaïs, on her own ground, will always beat Lucretia. She knows her weapons better. However far Lucretia may go, she can never come up to Thaïs. Thaïs has a grammar of her own, a syntax, and a prosody—winged words and winged actions. Lucretia may study the accidence, she can never master the rhetoric. Lucretia may unveil her ankle, Thaïs blushes not if her garter be exposed. Think you Lord Tom Noddy will marry Lucretia if she shows him her garter? Thaïs dresses expensively. Thousands will not pay her milliner’s bills. But at the end of six months or a year Lord Tom Noddy leaves her, and she retrenches.

But if Lucretia rivals Thaïs in her dress, Lord Tom Noddy knows that, if he marries her, six months will not see the end of it. Sir Cresswell Cresswell even cannot untie the knots of ribbon and the tangles of lace which figure on that long lithographed linear document, and the lands of Noddy will soon melt in the basilisk smiles of furbelowed Lucretia.

Thaïs is a dashing river, which receives a thousand tributaries, the drainings of the country and the sewers of the town, till it is lost in a morass or absorbed in the ocean. But Lucretia should be a gentle brook, pure from its source, content to murmur innocently and calmly onward, reflecting the light of heaven in its pellucid waters, till it mingles with and strengthens a stronger current than itself. To such as these, tranquil and tranquillising, will man return for happiness and peace, when, jaded with the roar of cities and the struggle of life, he seeks to reconcile his existence with his Creator, to pursue and accomplish his allotted task before the night cometh.

“’Ow de do?” said Lady Coxe, blandly, as Bromley appeared for the first time.

Drawing a chair near the table, he took his seat near Constance.

“You are very late,” she began.

“I have had so much to do to-day; some one ought to write a Song of the Shirt for me. Scratch, scratch, scratch—in lieu of stitch, stitch, stitch.”

“But recollect all the good you are doing,” answered Constance.

“Yes, that is a reflection which conveys great comfort to me.”

Augustus smiled somewhat in his answer.

“Why are you always sarcastic?”

“I feel I am very sincere.”

“You are never in earnest.”

“You think so; you will find I am in earnest in some things.”

“’Ow de do?” said Lady Coxe.

The couple looked up at the new-comer—it was the Count.

“Oh, Congte, I did not know you were asked.”

“I go to St James’s Club to read papers and meet Gorillian Minister. He great friend Lady Ilminster—bring me and present me.”

“You dance this waltz with me,” said Bromley hurriedly to Constance.

She was pale and red by turns, and heard not what he said.

Touching her hand slightly, he repeated his observation.

With an effort she answered—

“Oh yes; of course, I remember.”

The music struck up in the distance, and the whole party left for a distant lawn dedicated to dancing.

A circle was formed. A band was stationed in a kiosk, and the first strains had just begun, when Lady Ilminster beckoned to Augustus.

“Do you know that Count Rabelais?”

“A little.”

“He is not a friend of yours?”

“No, I cannot say he is.”

“The Gorillian Minister brought him. I have asked Madame Carron to come and superintend some charades. She told me that an acquaintance of hers, Count Rabelais, was a capital actor, and I asked Don Marmosetto Uran y Babon to bring him. Now the Bushman Minister, who hates Don Marmosetto, tells me this Count is very disreputable.”

“Well, it can’t be helped now he’s here. You had better set him at charades.”

Augustus returned for his partner. There she was, twirling in the arms of the Count.

“He has asked her to take a turn, but no. There they are stopping opposite, as though to avoid me. Shall I go and take her away, and kick the Count? No good.”

The waltz was over, and Bromley, with entire self-possession, walked over to Constance.

“You have disappointed me this time, Miss Coxe,” he said, good-naturedly. “Will you dance the next quadrille?”

“Mademoiselle is already engaged to me,” grinned the Count.

“Then perhaps the waltz after that.”

Bromley looked steadily at the Count, in a manner the latter did not seem to admire.

“Oh yes, yes,” almost screamed Constance, whose countenance during this scene had betrayed the emotion she underwent.

Bromley, with a slight bow, turned away. He cannot, this time, deny his knowledge of her being engaged to me.

He directed his steps to the room used as a theatre, which abutted on the garden. A verandah outside was covered in for a greenroom. The large oriel window was to serve as a stage. Entering the house by the ordinary doorway, he proceeded to the body of the theatre. He arranged a few of the ornaments, and then sat down to muse.

There is certainly nothing so discreditable as eavesdropping. Nothing can justify it, and no possible excuse can be alleged in palliation of such an offence; but in this life the best of us occasionally commit an unjustifiable action. We have all of us said foolish things which, in the retirement of our bed-clothes, flash across us, and make us burn with shame. We have all put up from friends with affronts which we should have resented; for, alas! in this age we are as afraid of being called tetchy as of being considered dishonourable.

We have all of us, except myself and you, kind reader—we have all of us, at least once in our lives, been the authors of some little act which Paley would not have approved, and Butler would have refused to ratify.

So, on this occasion, Bromley was guilty of a great moral offence. He heard voices—voices not unknown to him—and he listened.

“Not dancing, Achille?” spoke a voice in French.

“The dancing is suspended for a tombola, and I come to pay my homage to my sister.”

“Hush, Achille, for Heaven’s sake! We may be overheard.”

“And if so?”

“The object of my life would be at an end. Yes, Achille, my pride is foolish, ridiculous. To it I have sacrificed my life, my position, nay, my love. When my mother commended you to me as the heir—the ruined heir of our house—it was my resolve that you should once again resume the place my father had forfeited. It might have been done sooner, Achille, in time even for me to enjoy the sweets of life. Already had my pen achieved more than success, when that fatal passion which has destroyed us before, displayed itself in you. For you I have slaved and worn out my life. For you have I polluted my existence by publicity. For you, or rather, for our name, I have sacrificed the hopes and joys of a household. Even now, ruined as we are, my daily labour supplies your extravagance. If once the stage could be connected with your name, Achille, my heart would break.”

“This is all very well, belle dame—very pretty and very dramatic. The charades have not yet commenced. I meant to say that, if overheard calling you my sister, all would perceive the joke.”

“It must end some day, Achille. Heaven make you kinder to that lovely girl than to me. When once you are married I shall retire to beautiful Italy.”

“The dream of actresses.”

“Thank you, Achille. The actress will not sully your name by her presence.”

“Ah, bah! cousine. Once married to the little Cogues, and, actress or no actress, you share the booty.”

“Achille, the pride that has enabled me to support you in affluence will not admit of your affluence to support me. It is you who have chosen the way to riches by marriage. Opposed to it at first, I yielded to your wishes, though I had offered to you many a more honourable career. I presented to you that detestable woman Mélanie to inform you of the girl’s movements and her friends. I disliked, I loathed the intrigue, but it was undertaken, and it must be accomplished, for my strength is giving way.”

“Mélanie is a cleverer woman than you, Adelgonde. She has shown me a way to success that you would never have dreamt of.”

“Indeed! I hope it is honourable.”

“Honourable, inasmuch as it profits her as well as myself.”

“What is it?”

Bromley bent forward to listen, but the Count spoke in too low a tone.

“Good heaven! Achille! Have you stooped to this?” cried the actress.

“Come, no heroics, belle dame. I hear the music of the dance, and I go to pulverise my rival.”

“Have we fallen as low as this?” murmured the actress. Bromley heard a window open, the retreating steps of the Count, and the chords of the distant music. Noiselessly he left the theatre, and hurried to the lawn.

The Count had reached Constance about a minute before him. She was standing with her mother apart from the dance. No one was near the group as Bromley approached.

“This is my dance, Miss Constance,” he observed, offering his arm.

“Forgive me, Monsieur Bromley. It is mine.”

“You must be mistaken, Count. You yourself heard the engagement.”

“One word apart, Monsieur Bromley.”

“Certainly.” The two retired to a grove adjacent.

“You recollect the compact we made, my friend, the night of the ball at Conisbro’ House.”

“I recollect the compact you proposed.”

“My part of it is complete, I dare say, with your assistance. Rely on me as regards la petite belle-sœur la Florence. Mademoiselle Constance, with the consent of Miladi Cogues and her own, is my affianced bride.”

“Indeed, Monsieur le Comte! till this moment I believed she was mine. You will pardon me in your turn, but for such a statement I must, under the circumstances, demand a little corroboration—especially as the waltz is already begun.”

Taking the Count’s arm, he forced rather than persuaded him to the spot where Lady Coxe and her daughter were still standing. Constance was pale as death—Lady Coxe a deep magenta.

“Lady Coxe, the Count tells me I may congratulate you on having secured him as a son-in-law. May I do so?”

“’E ’as my full consent.”

“And, Miss Constance, may I offer you my felicitations?”

“Y—y——” The word was never completed, for Constance fell to the ground.

As the Count hurried with the crowd to assist the swooning girl, a strong arm took his, and a firm voice whispered in her ear. “Your place is not here; it is with your sister in the theatre.”

Rabelais turned towards the young man with the eyes of a frightened ape, and slunk away.

In a few minutes Bromley had lifted Constance into her carriage, and, with Florence and Lady Coxe, was driving towards London.

The skirts had much contracted for the occasion.

“Did ’e tell any one but you?” asked Lady Coxe, in an anxious whisper.

“No one.”

“Then, for ’eaven’s sake, don’t breathe it to Sir Joshphat, and take the carriage on for Dr Leadbitter.”

Bromley bowed reassuringly, and hurried on, in the family coach, to Bedford Square.

Dr Leadbitter was at home, and Constance was raving in a fever.

There is a wonderful inclination to practical paradox in the human mind. If a man be dull, the world charitably sets him down as sound. If he be clever, the world, with equal charity, sets him down as unscrupulous. If a man be courteous, he is instantly condemned as designing; if brutal, lauded as straightforward.

But if this natural impulse to moral compensation be the general bias of the human intellect, it assumes twofold force in the special case of medical men. Perhaps with such men personal characteristics are more prominently displayed; perhaps the confidence of the patient reposing in the individuality of his advisers gives a factitious importance to minor peculiarities.

Be it how it may, you have never yet seen an Asclepiad whose manners were not, in some respect, different from those of his fellow-creatures.

Great or small, clever or stupid, he has managed to inspire confidence, or to impose successfully on some circle of patients, however contracted.

Amongst these he is an authority. His individual influence is so great, that but little trust is reposed in his art when practised by another.

If in large practice, his patients consider him deserving of it; if in small practice, they esteem him an ill-used man. He is their guide and their friend as well as their philosopher; godfather to their children, trustee to their settlements, legatee to their wills. He is present at their births and deaths, generally at their weddings. He knows their pecuniary difficulties, their family quarrels; the husband’s distrust, or the wife’s jealousy; the son’s folly, and the daughter’s infatuation. He can go down the street and schedule out each house as to its specific non-observance of the decalogue. He can tell you who steals, who commits murder, or who commits any other sin of the first magnitude.

There are thousands of little secrets confided to the diary of a physician; thousands of fees to his pocket, for little occurrences which, like the fees, go no further than himself.

By the highest he is treated almost as an equal; by the wisest he is respected as a man of science and of power. If not profoundly versed in our constitution, he knows us in our moments of weakness, and that knowledge alone makes him the master of most of us.

But before we admit him to this position, we minutely examine his qualities, or accept the judgment of them passed by the universal suffrage of mortal men.

Science of anatomy is sufficient for the surgeon; but science of the world is the best passport for the medical man.

We require him to cure our bodies—most doctors can do that.

But we occasionally require from him medicaments for our minds. This requires the skill of a man of the world.

From such premises we conclude that perfection in art is not the keystone of medical fame. The serpent was dedicated to Æsculapius, the emblem of his foresight as well as of his craft. Nor would the symbol misrepresent the physicians of Babylon.

Sir Erasistratus will be enabled to discover that Duke Antiochus is fearfully in love with Countess Stratonice. Sir Paulus will gain favour with the patrons of art by the number of statues decorating his country-place at Ægina. Sir Democritus exposes somnambulism, mesmerism, homœopathy, and spirit-rapping. Dr Andrew Machaon displays administrative qualities in the army medical department; while Sir Podalirius, K.C.B., after exhibiting geniality at the mess-table and intrepidity in the field, marries the daughter of King Damætas, and sets up in Grosvenor Square. Dr Chrysippus, who has not yet attained the purple, manages to oppose the dogmatists, and to soar into practice by his agreeable conversation and sparkling jests. Heraclitus is the man-hater, declines to visit sovereigns, and frightens poor women into new diseases by a savage laugh and peremptory brutality. Sir Oribasius, who ushers young peers into the world, endears himself to the mothers by affectionate epithets and profuse gossip; and Sir Sextus Empiricus drives a flourishing trade and a chariot by periodic journeys to the equator, and the administration of stimulants to statesmen. All have some quality independent of their art. Few rely on their craft, and their craft alone, for practice or popularity, competency or knighthood. Writers require an ars celare artem; physicians an art to thrust their skill into prominence. In France this is considered charlatanerie; in England it is styled humbug. Yet what great man is, consciously or unconsciously, free from this vice?

Has Bumcombe no place in our social, political, scientific, or ecclesiastical system?

Some few have tried the narrow, narrow path. They labour in their youth, they labour in their manhood. “They live forgotten—they die forlorn.” An hospital is the scene of their triumphs, a parish-rate forms their emolument. The parson and the overseer compose their society, and the blessings of the poor their fame.

Yet there are first-rate men amidst the great physicians of Babylon.

Heaven bless them! How would the young Babylonians be born without them, or how could the Babylonian ladies take their strong waters innocuously?

But Dr Leadbitter was an exception to every rule.

He was devoted to the science of medicine. It absorbed his whole mind; and, indeed, together with dinners and the price-list, formed the staple of his conversation.

He lived near an hospital; and spent a useful life, pleasantly to himself, in constant attention to revolting diseases.

The hospital had been endowed chiefly from his own purse—an expenditure owning a double origin in his charity and his love of science.

Hitherto he had never been permitted to sate himself sufficiently in the least agreeable works of his profession. His universal popularity had induced his colleagues in other hospitals to take from him this portion of his duties. To Dr Leadbitter this indulgence was purgatory. The dirtier the patient, the more complicated his disorder, the more grateful was the treatment to this worthy man. Pity and love of science formed a curious combination in his phrenology. His professional skill, therefore, had reached a height where envy had ceased to criticise or malice to detract. Yet, unknowingly to himself, he possessed other than technical qualities; and these caused him to be sought after by those whose search is considered honourable.

In his career Leadbitter had studied deeply and variously. In his ideas every knowledge tended to enhance the value of his heart.

So intimate is the connection of our moral and physical structure, that to the eye of the accomplished physician few disorders of our frame can be disconnected from some indirect and intellectual cause. As mental emotions form the features of manhood, so is the innermost thought of man betrayed by some external indication.

Those best practised to command expression can ill disguise their feelings from the true physiologist. The smile is forced that dissembles anger, the gravity overcharged that suppresses mirth.

However perfect the acting, there are some, even among mortals, to whose far-seeing eye acting can never compete with nature. Such a one was Dr Leadbitter, fat, foolish, as he looked. In him intuitive perception was refined by rare and delicate study. To know the diseases of a singer he would hear her song, of an orator his speech. He would examine the portrait of a statesman, and study his biography, then tell you his organic disorders. Nor was his rare skill unknown or unappreciated. To him would the singer and statesman repair, as a last resource, glad to stand in his anteroom and vie with a pauper for an audience.

Yet Leadbitter, though astute, was simple. He made more by speculation than by his profession.

His kindness of heart and his passion for disagreeable affections gave to the pauper, in his eyes, a higher value than the statesman. He might have been a baronet, but he had no wife to urge him thereunto. A comfortable dinner was his sole vice, a few good cases his only desire.

He wore the traditional black clothes and white neckcloth, the capacious watch in the capacious fob. He carried the rattan with the gold knob, and, at times, even buckles in his shoes.

A little flower or sprig bedecked his upper button-hole. His walk was a trot, and a smile ever on his lips.

Moreover, nothing could be more commonplace than his ordinary conversation. A few truisms, parliamentary interjections, many technical references. His action was as that of one feeling a pulse, and he was always in a hurry to turn away and leave the room.

“Won’t you have a glass of wine, Mr Bromley?” asked the doctor, hospitably.

“Thanks, I am going to dine later.”

“Commodeque, Erasistratus dixit, sæpe, interiore parte humorem non requirente, os et fauces requirere.”

Dr Leadbitter lost no time in getting into the carriage.

The doctor overcame the gourmet, and, though at dinner, the voice of duty and of friendship prevailed.

“My dear doctor,” said Bromley, “Miss Constance has fallen very ill. She fell to the ground at Lady Ilminster’s breakfast. She was insensible all the way home. I suppose they have put her to bed, for I drove off at once for you.”

“Hear, hear!” responded the doctor.

“Now, doctor, between ourselves, I think Miss Constance has something on her mind.”

“Hear, hear! Eros, I suppose. Soon cured.”

“Something more than that.”

“Nothing cryptogamic, I hope?”

“I have a moral certainty of the cause, but no legal evidence yet. If you will accept my assurance without seeking any corroboration, I will tell you my surmises—to me certainties—which, perhaps, may guide you in your treatment.”

“Hear, hear!”

“My impression is that Lady Coxe and Miss Constance Coxe are deeply in debt to Madame Mélanie the dressmaker. They are afraid to own it to Sir Jehoshaphat. Count Rabelais has got possession of the secret, and holds it in terrorem over Constance.

“He has conciliated the friendship and advocacy of Lady Coxe—perhaps by the same means; and he has extorted from Constance a promise of marriage. Now, what would you advise?

“The whole thing should be told to Sir Jehoshaphat. Yet, I think, he would never forgive Lady Coxe, whatever treatment he might pursue towards his daughter. I have known him from boyhood. His temperament is bilious and nervous. About money matters, though more than liberal, he is obdurate.”

“At any rate, it would be better avoided, for the present at least.”

“Hear, hear!”

“I should think the woman Mélanie might be frightened for having inveigled a girl under age.”

“Hear, hear! But suppose Lady Coxe knew of her daughter’s debts?”

“But perhaps she does not. As soon as I can get my surmises into shape, I will, with your permission, consult you.”

“Hear, hear! Come to me directly you have any news—day or night. Meanwhile, I will pursue the soothing system—calming draughts. I shall tell Lady Coxe at once that I know the whole story. That will keep her quiet.”

By this time the carriage had again arrived in Grosvenor Square.

“How is Miss Constance?”

“Very bad, sir.”

“Hear, hear!” murmured the doctor, mournfully.

Constance was in a high fever. Bromley found a letter on his table. He opened it. It was but a few lines.

“My dear Friend,—The family is that of Sir J. Coxe, Bart., M.P., the banker. Her ladyship owes about £2000; her daughter Constance about £900. The rest of the news I hope to obtain in a day or two.—Yours very sincerely,

A paper fluttered forth and fell to the ground. Bromley picked it up. It was folded, flimsy as a bank-note. He opened it. It was headed with the image and superscription of Madame Mélanie. Below were items representing a total of £27, 4s. 8d.

“Hear, hear! Well, you’ve not lost much time, Mr Bromley,” said the doctor, as Bromley entered the room where he was resuming his interrupted meal.

“How have you found Miss Constance?”

“I can say nothing till to-morrow. However, I do not think there is much to fear. Lady Coxe will do all I tell her. I gave her a quietus, by informing her I knew of all her difficulties. It rather relieved her, I think. Experimentum periculosum. It succeeded, however.”

“One glass of wine? Lætificat cor hominis.”

“Thank you, I have not yet dined.”

“Well, I’ll ask you again—the third time of asking, and you’ll take one. Three scruples make one dram! Ho, ho! Hear, hear!”

He poured out a bumper of burgundy, and motioned his young friend to proceed.

“Since leaving you, my suspicions have been confirmed.” Bromley showed the letter, and told Dr Leadbitter the whole story.

“Hear, hear, young man,” said the doctor, as his young friend finished. “The disease is plainer than the remedy.”

“The sum is very large, or I could manage it.”

“I should not allow Constance to pay her—at least for some time. I am an old man. You are a young one. I should not wonder if there were some few figures in my favour at Coutts’s. Sir Jehoshaphat is an old friend of mine—as honourable a man as ever lived. Good digestion, though bilious. I should like to break the force of the blow.”

Sir Jehoshaphat Coxe sallied forth the next morning with a heavy heart and a glowing brow.

He marched down Grosvenor Street slowly. At length he reached the house of Madame Mélanie.

With stately steps, and firm determination, he walked up the stairs, and entered the room of the dressmaker. She received him with a curtsy and a smile.

“Woman!” he burst out, “I hear you have profited by the folly of an old woman and the imprudence of a young one. Give me the bills of my wife and daughter that I may pay them.”

“They owe me nothing, Monsieur.”

“What, woman! do you still carry on the farce? They themselves have told me of this.”

“They owe me nothing, Sir Jehoshaphat. Their bills were paid an hour since.”

“By whom?”

“By Mr Augustus Bromley.”

The sequel is well known to my readers. Mr Bromley espoused Miss Constance. He has been standing for a county, and the result of the poll is expected by telegraph this evening.

Madame Mélanie having, in a moment of forgetfulness, returned to her old habits, and abstracted a small casket from the house of one of her customers, is expiating her crimes in a spot set aside for such purposes. Count Rabelais has disappeared from the social horizon, and is supposed to be gaining an honest livelihood as a courier.

Madame Carron, under the advice of Dr Leadbitter, laid aside her family pride, and married a very respectable impresario, who turns her talents to advantage, and lays by her earnings for that rainy day to which managers more than ordinary mortals are liable. Lady Coxe will not contract any more debts, though she still nourishes a partiality for port. Florence married on the same day as her sister, and Letitia seems likely to justify the surmise of Count Rabelais, by blessing the hearth of Mr Whiting.

OUR NEW DOCTOR.

There was great excitement at Mudford when it was ascertained beyond a doubt that we were really going to have a New Doctor. Poor old Mole, who was bidding fair to shortly attain the proud position of “Oldest Inhabitant,” had at length found it useless to struggle longer with his infirmities, and had advertised his practice for sale to the best bidder. I don’t think he would ever have given in; but his old pony, which had carried him well and faithfully for more than twenty years, was gone at last, and he felt that he could never mount another. His hands were so crippled that he could not drive; and, besides, he had no horse and gig—nor would his practice pay for keeping one; and as for walking, the state of his poor old feet and legs rendered that quite out of the question. So he did the best thing he could do—sold his practice; and, in spite of the teetotallers, I verily believe that, if he had stopped at Mudford and spent the whole of his time, as he had previously spent nine-tenths of it, with his gin-and-water and pipe, in his own special corner at the White Hart, he would be there, as well as ever, at the present moment, and would be able to enjoy many a good growl, and tell many a prosy tale, for years to come yet. But, alas! he did not stop here. He left the old place altogether, and retired to his native village, to be killed with care and fidgets by three old maiden sisters. Poor old Mole! He had come into Mudford I don’t know how many years ago—for it was before even my time—a smart, buckish, good-looking young fellow, in top-boots and spotless white neckcloth; telling a good story, singing a good song, fond of the ladies, fond of his glass, fond of sport, and up to any hounds. But, dear me! it was all changed, except the neckcloth and the glass, which endured to the end; and he left the place a poor, testy, prosy, gouty old bachelor, with no one to care for or regard him, except the few who remembered what he had been, or who took the trouble to look for the genuine good qualities which lay beneath the prickly outer rind. But enough of Mole: for what have we to do with old friends in this world? When they go away or die, there’s an end of ’em. And our business is, to turn our attention to the new-comers, and try what we can get out of them in the way of money, custom, amusement, or whatever else they may be able to give us to our advantage. So farewell to poor old Mole, my dear old brother fogy; and attention for his successor!

As intimated, I am an old fogy. I have no business to attend to, no wife nor family to bother me, and but few means of passing away my time. In the mornings I wade through the papers at the Reading-room, and afterwards discuss their contents with others of my own stamp. I confess that the tradesmen and business people who run in for half an hour to glance at the news, get pretty considerably annoyed at being interrupted while reading, by our loud, and—as far as Rooks is concerned, the most wrong-headed fellow I ever knew—often stupid and illogical arguments: and they not unfrequently dare to tell us, without scruple, that the room is for reading in, and not for talking in. But I, for my part, take no notice of them; for is not my subscription as good as theirs? And is not the passing of my time of far more consequence to me than the getting through theirs is to them, who have a hundred other things to do, and who ought to be attending to their business instead of reading the papers in the mornings? Right or wrong, I do it; and I intend to keep doing it: and if Broad and Brown don’t like it, they may leave it—and a good thing for them, too; for I happen to know that Brown’s business is falling off considerably; and the new shop at the corner is certain to injure Broad: it is time for them to put their shoulders to the wheel, I can tell them! Well, so I get on until dinner, and then a glass of port and a snooze pass the time until tea. After that, there is my pipe and glass of grog at the White Hart, in the chair opposite to old Mole’s—now, alas! no longer sacred to his use, but occupied by any chance customer who may happen to drop in. Disagreeable to me the company is sometimes—noisy, uncongenial, disrespectful. Things in this world change for the worse every day. Heigho!

These are my principal employments, with an occasional whist-party of an evening. Bright oases in the desert of my life are these evenings when they do come; but, to my sorrow, they are few and far between. People sit so late and drink so much grog at these parties, that wives don’t like ’em. And, besides, there are really not above four people in the place who can play a rubber. As for taking a hand, with such a person as Jones or Johnson for a partner, I vow I would rather never touch a card again! And the worst of it is, the wretches actually think they know the game! I had Jones for a partner once, and lost 17s. 6d. by his confounded stupidity. Catch me placing myself twice in such a position! If I were absolute monarch of this country, I would make a law that any man who takes the money out of another’s pocket by such gross ignorance and stupidity, should be considered guilty of felony—just as the poor, overworked engine-driver, who once in his life makes a blunder by which somebody is killed, is found guilty of manslaughter!

Mudford is not a large nor a gay place; on the contrary, it is a particularly small and dull one: so that, with such a limited round of amusements as is available to me, it is no wonder, and not at all a thing to be ashamed of, that I should have been considerably interested in the question, what the New Doctor would be like. Of course, it was a matter of some importance to me whether he would talk like a reasonable man at the Reading-room in the mornings; and whether he would have the nous to listen to and appreciate my stories, when I am in the humour for telling them in the evenings. The people here, in this little out-of-the-way place, are so confoundedly narrow in their views and ideas, that they take no interest in anything outside their own little, paltry, peddling sphere of action; and I have really not had a listener for a very long time, except a chance commercial traveller now and then—not even poor old Mole, who was always for spinning his own prosy old yarns, that I was sick and tired of years and years ago. He could never see, poor old fellow, how people laughed at him about them! Then I was anxious as to whether the New Doctor would understand the treatment of my complaint, which I have suffered from for so many years, and which nobody knew anything about except old Mole: for, as for putting myself into the hands of that ignorant fellow Green, who can neither spell correctly nor write grammatically, or of that methodistical quack Higgins, I might as well go and order my coffin at once. Then, of course, it was a matter of importance to me whether he would be able to take a hand at whist like a Christian; and, above all, whether he would give a nice little snug card-party himself now and then; for, as I have already said, parties of that sort had become very scarce, owing to the late hours and the expense. I do not much wonder at it; for Stevens, and Jones, and Johnson, and Briggs, and one or two more I could mention, will never go home till morning, if they are winning; and when they are losing, they are never satisfied without their revenge: and the amount they do guzzle of an evening, at the expense of other people, is certainly most extraordinary. I gave a whist-party myself once; but I shan’t do it again in a hurry, for I know what it is. They drank enough to last me for a twelvemonth: and I was so annoyed about one thing and the other, that I could not play; or, I should rather say, I never held a hand for the evening; and I positively heard the scoundrels laughing at me as they left my door, and went down the street! No, I shan’t give another party in a hurry: men of my means, who have barely enough for their own little comforts and indulgences, can’t be expected to do it.

Altogether, then, it is evident that I had good reasons for feeling interested as to what sort of person the New Doctor would be; but I was not the only one to whom it was a subject of speculation. Curiosity is the mark of vulgar people, and vulgar enough they are in Mudford, in all conscience. And there were some, too, besides myself, who really had reasons for feeling interested in the subject. There was Simpkins, the indefatigable Secretary of the Rifle Corps, who was all alive at the idea of getting an effective member and annual subscriber; and Timmins, the equally indefatigable Secretary of the Literary Institution, who was sanguine that the New Doctor would give a lecture during the ensuing season, and who was actually holding back the syllabus from the press until he had seen him on the subject. Then there was Rooks, the only chess-player in the place, who, not having anybody to play with him, is always bragging of the game, and his skill thereat, and depreciating whist in an equal degree. He always seizes the ‘Illustrated London News’ directly it comes into the Reading-room, turns to the chess problems first of all, and stays half an hour poring over them, before he will look at the pictures himself or allow anybody else to do so. He pretended to be very anxious that the new-comer should be a chess-player; but I verily believe that his anxiety was all the other way, and that he most devoutly hoped to the contrary: for I don’t believe Rooks can play the game any more than I can. At all events, nobody ever heard of his playing; and when old Harding, the Collector of Excise, spent an evening here—a good player he is, as everybody knows—and, at my instigation, sent a very polite note to Rooks, inviting him to play a game at the White Hart, he never came near the place; and Boots brought back word that Mr Rooks was exceedingly sorry, but he was gone to bed very bad with a headache. I don’t believe he ever had a headache in his life!

Then there was Rowe, who had been fool enough to buy a boat that was the worry and torment of his life, and that cost him just as much as a horse or a wife. It was always getting into scrapes and difficulties somehow: the oars would get lost; and the rudder would get broken; and the painter—whatever that may be—would get cut; and the boat would get capsized; and the boys were always taking her away, and making her in a mess, and never bringing her back again. Poor Rowe was always in trouble with her some way or other, and positively got no peace of his life for her. The fact is that Mudford is no place for a boat, and no one but a donkey would have brought one here; for I verily believe that we have only got the tide for one hour out of the twenty-four, and that only once a fortnight or so; and then it is always running up when you want to go down the river, and down when you want to go up; and it is always leaving you stuck upon banks and shoals, so that you have to wade out through the mud, which takes you up to your middle. At least, I judge so from what I see and hear; for catch me going out boating in this place, if you can! Well, Rowe thought that perhaps the New Doctor would go halves in his precious hobby, and would join him in rubbing all the skin off his hands in pulling that tub of his up and down against the tide. Then there was Driver, who is for ever boring one about subscriptions for the Cricket Club, which, as far as I can see, has no existence, except at the annual supper, at the close of what they are pleased to call their season; when members who have never handled a bat since they were schoolboys—if they did then—come and handle a knife and fork to perfection, and drink punch, and make speeches about the “fine manly English game,” until you would think that the glory and prosperity of the country depended entirely upon the prowess of the members of the Mudford Club; who talk most inexorably of the fines that shall be enforced, and most undauntedly of the matches that shall be played, in the next season; but who, of course, only talk more and do less with each succeeding year. Driver, then, was full of hopes that the new-comer would be a cricketer; that he would help him to worry all the people in the place for subscriptions, and would play single-wicket matches with him on the cricket evenings, when nobody else came near the ground.

And Grindley, again, was just as bad; indeed, I don’t know whether he wasn’t worse than any of them. He has got his house full of musical instruments of every sort and description, and can’t play as much as ‘God Save the Queen’ on any one of them. He is always talking of “staccatoes,” and “fugues,” and “musical intervals,” and “thorough bass,” and I don’t know what all, though his voice is like a cracked penny-trumpet, and he has no more idea of joining in a chorus than a jackass. He went about the town boring everybody by squeaking out with his voice that was enough to set your teeth on edge, “I say, won’t it be nice if the New Doctor should be musical?”

I suppose though, that after all nobody was so much interested about the new-comer as the young unmarried ladies,—except the middle-aged unmarried ladies, who were more interested still. I don’t blame them, poor creatures! for really it is very little chance they have of getting husbands at Mudford, except when strangers or visitors come to the place. There are some half-dozen families or so certainly, whose pure ichor is so superior to the vulgar blood that runs, or stagnates, in the veins of the common inhabitants of Mudford, who do occasionally intermarry, once in ten or fifteen years or so, like the royal families of Europe, when a prince and princess of their illustrious houses happen to be of a marriageable age at the same time. The coincidence is of rare occurrence, but it does happen occasionally. And the boys and girls of the utterly plebeian class, of course, here as elsewhere, walk out together in the evenings, and on Sunday afternoons; and the young farmer lads in the neighbourhood, and the young masons, and all those, go courting to the servant-maids in the evenings, at the back-doors and in the back-kitchens; and they get married before they know what they are about. But with the middle classes it is different; and I don’t see that the poor girls have got a chance, except when some friend or relative at a distance will have them on a visit, or when a stranger happens to come into the town;—rare chances these. As for the young men of the place, who have been flirting with ’em, and kissing ’em, and seeing ’em flirted with and kissed by brother Jack and cousin Tom, and all the rest, ever since they were children, why, they would as soon think of seeing anything a fellow could fall in love with in their own sisters. (I speak, as every one will understand, of those who have no money; the few that have, of course, nobody can help loving, and they go off fast enough.) And so it happens that any fresh young man, coming into the town, is to these poor creatures quite a god-send: and though we know nothing else of the New Doctor, it had been ascertained, beyond a doubt, through old Mole, that he was young and unmarried.

Of course the young ladies did not make an old fellow like me a confidant of their hopes; but as I hobbled up or down the street, I could perceive that wherever two or three bonnets, or turban-hats, as I believe the vile things are called, were met together, there was a more than usually vivacious giggle, which showed me plainly enough what was the subject of conversation. On the days, too, when the Doctor began to be expected, about the time that the omnibus arrives in the afternoons, there were always several very neat boots and white stockings to be seen in the street; and those girls of Johnson’s—who never seem to have anything to do in their own house, though I know they keep but one servant, or rather slavey, and their mother is always up to her elbows in kitchen-work, so that she can find no time to read, or do anything else but talk, and is the most uninformed woman of my acquaintance—those girls took care to have some business with Mrs Cook, of the White Hart, about the forthcoming Rifle Corps Bazaar, and so have an excuse for being in her little private sitting-room, that looks out upon the street, at the time when the omnibus arrives. Poor old Mole! he could neither march nor lecture, row, nor play at chess or cricket: he had no more idea of music than a cow; his day for courting or getting married had long passed by; and he was fit for nothing but to make up gout pills, smoke his pipe, drink his gin-and-water, and tell his prosy old stories in his corner at the White Hart; and so all these people thought of course that they would be sure to have a change for the better in the New Doctor.

At length came the day which was definitely fixed for the Doctor’s coming. It had been put off several times for some reasons of his own, but now he was to come without fail. We knew it from Mole, who had received a letter from the New Doctor, whose name, I may as well mention here, was Smith,—if that can be called a name at all—saying that he should positively arrive on that day, and expressing a hope that Mole would wait, and introduce him to his patients. But Mole would not wait any longer, for he had given up his house, and was living at expenses at the hotel; so he went away to his sisters, the three old maids, and left Mr Smith to introduce himself in the best way he could.

It so happened that, on the day when the New Doctor was to arrive, I could not compose myself exactly to my usual after-dinner nap, all owing to that fool of a servant, who will never learn to send up a dinner properly; and so I took my stick, and clopped away down to the White Hart, to try whether a glass of gin-and-water would do me good; and it so happened, oddly enough, that I got down there just exactly at the time the omnibus usually arrives. For you must know that the old respectable coach, which lingered with us after it had disappeared from the rest of the world, is gone at length, and its place is usurped by one of those vile innovations, an omnibus—or ’bus, as it is called in the wretched jargon of the present day. I hate those sneaking low-lifed things more than I do the very railways themselves, which they are employed to attend on. And so, instead of the handsome stylish coach, that a gentleman might ride on without shame, with its dashing four-in-hand, we have got this dirty, shabby, yellow thing, with its unicorn team of skin and bone, a driver that old Jack Simons, the coachman, would not have had for a stable-helper, and an urchin for guard, who would be a disgrace to a dung-cart!

As I made my way down the street, it was easy to see, by the unusual number of people out, that something strange was expected. Peters, of course, was at the hotel door; but then he always is there when the ’bus arrives, for he fancies that he is great upon the subject of horses; and every day, like a fool, throws away threepence or fourpence, which I know he can ill afford, in drink for the driver, who knows nearly as little about horse-flesh as he does himself, in order that he may talk to him about the leader’s mouth, and the off wheeler’s shoulder, and Hobb’s colt, and that young mare of Timmins’s. He was there as a matter of course, and so was Paul, who is just as regular an attendant, and waits about every day to see who comes and who goes, and what parcels there are, and whom they are for, and how much there is to pay on them. These two never miss; but that old woman, Gabriel Mullins, was there also, waiting to see the “New Doctor,” that he might go gabble-gabble about him all over the place. And Muggins, whom no man ever saw, except on Sundays, with his coat or without his apron, was standing outside his shop-door, with his hands in his pockets, and that perpetual smirk upon his countenance, looking out for the ’bus. While Cox, the bookseller and stationer, who must, I am sure, live upon the smell of his wares, for nobody in Mudford, as far as I can see, ever reads or writes, was peering out between those eternal prints in his window, making belief that he was too busy, or too much above vulgar curiosity, to come and look out openly and honestly like Muggins. It takes me some time to get down to the White Hart, so that I had leisure to look about me; and I saw the two Miss MacClinkers, the Surveyor’s daughters, walking down the street, and finding an excuse for loitering in each dowdy shop window, every article in which they must know by heart, for they are in the street often enough, and can use their eyes well enough, I’m sure: there they were, with their outrageous crinolines, showing their anatomical-looking legs in a way that could not fail to attract the attention of any stranger coming up the street on the omnibus, whether doctor or not. The Miss Johnsons, you may be sure, were in Mrs Cook’s front parlour discussing the work for the bazaar, as they had been every afternoon for a week past. And I hope—for the sake of Miss Trimlett, the dressmaker opposite, who, though she has been engaged for the last twenty years, and could not want another lover, was looking out from behind the geraniums in the ground-floor window—that those young girls at the window above, her assistants and apprentices, worked by the piece, and not by the day; for it was one stitch and two minutes’ giggle, and another stitch and another two minutes’ giggle with them as long as I looked. And even old Miss Whittaker, who has been confined to her bed for the last three years with laziness and swollen legs, had sent over that extra sharp little girl of hers, to see whether the New Doctor was come.

I went into the White Hart parlour, sat down at my accustomed side of the fire, and had the glass of gin-and-water for which I had come. Wretched spirit they do keep there now, to be sure! and the water is never half boiling! It did not use to be so in old Cook’s time. There is some extraordinary fatality about it; but as I never require the fire-shovel, and am in constant want of the poker, the former is always placed close to my hands, and the latter on the opposite side of the fireplace, so that I cannot reach it without rising from my chair,—a work of time and difficulty to me, and involving the necessity of turning down Mrs Cook’s cat, which always gets upon my knee with my full consent. It is invariably the case, and of course there was no exception to the rule now; so I had to rise as usual to get the poker, and at the very moment when I was on my legs, the ’bus drove up to the door! Of course, I could not help looking out of window to see it then; and to my great joy—for I am delighted when idle curiosity is baffled—there was not a single passenger there, except little Philips, the commercial traveller, and fat Mrs Biggs, of Great Pigton. I am the best-natured man in the world, as a general rule; but I confess I was glad of this, and chuckled to myself, as I ordered another glass of grog on the strength of it.

Next morning, however, as I went down the street as usual, to look at the papers, everybody was all alive with the news, that the New Doctor had arrived, and in a most strange and unaccountable manner. The omnibus had not brought him, as we know; there was no other public conveyance; and no private nor posting carriage had entered the town during the night; for old Mrs Thomas, who was awake all night with the toothache, was ready to swear that no carriage had passed through the street; and the pikeman, who keeps the turnpike gate at the entrance of the village (the inhabitants of the place are so proud of it, that they would lynch me if they knew that I called it a village, but it really is little more), actually did swear—and he was examined and cross-examined enough on the subject—that the gate had been locked from twelve at night until seven the next morning, and he was certain that no carriage had passed through. But that the Doctor had really come there was no doubt, for one or two persons had seen him in the morning; and among the rest Miss Cringle, who lives opposite, and who had stated, in a note written to Mrs Jones, while she was taking her breakfast, that she had positively seen Mr Smith that morning, looking out of his first-floor window.

I ought to have stated before that the New Doctor had taken the house which old Mole had occupied; and that he had also bought his furniture as well as his patients. Very little there was of either of them; and very little bought them. Both purchases were very old and rickety; but though Mr Smith might possibly be able to dine off the tables, it was not likely that he would ever get much to put upon them out of the patients; for they never had anything but the gout, which is said to keep away every other disease; and they had each of them taken in a stock of about a peck of his celebrated gout-pills from old Mole, before he left the place. But Mole himself has told me that the new doctor, in his correspondence, scarcely made any inquiry about the practice or the furniture, but was most particular about the situation of the house, making it a sine qua non that it should be in a quiet, retired situation. Mole’s description of the house appeared to suit him, and it was retired enough and quiet enough in all conscience; indeed, it would have found it difficult to be anything else in Mudford. It is a square detached house, situated in the very outskirts of the place, and not to be overlooked, except from Miss Cringle’s window, which commands a magnificent view of the front door.

The men in Mudford are sociable enough among themselves; but the women are the very deuce! I suppose you would hardly find any two in the place agreeing that they stand on precisely the same social level. Green the surgeon and apothecary, and Ferris the ironmonger and tinman, are as friendly as possible when they meet; and indeed, Ferris is by far better educated and better informed than Green, who is one of the most ignorant men I know. To tell the truth, I am afraid that Ferris is rather too much above his business, and that Potts, that conceited little monkey, who was his apprentice, and has now set up in opposition to him, will make him find it out before long. Well, Green and Ferris are friendly enough, as I said; but catch Mrs Green speaking to Mrs Ferris in the same way! Oh, dear, no! And White and Black, the two lawyers, though they are always on opposite sides, and sometimes make the most tremendous onslaughts on each other at the County Courts and Magistrates’ Meetings, are in reality, I believe, good friends enough all the time, and play into each other’s hands, and help each other to fleece their clients, like honest fellows. But Mrs Black considers herself and family immeasurably superior to little Mrs White; because that near customer, Sir Henry Burton, has them once a year to dinner, when the neighbouring gentry are gone to town, where he never goes himself, and gives them cape and marsala with their dinner, and half a decanter of port after it; and makes use of their house whenever he comes into town, putting his horses into their little stable, and his coachman into their little kitchen, and has his cold chicken and sherry in their little parlour, because he won’t go to the expense of stopping at the hotel. Because he does all this for them, and does not know the Whites, Mrs Black considers herself—and, I verily believe, is really and spitefully considered, in their inmost hearts, by the other ladies, Mrs White included (though they never own it)—to be the leader of fashion and society in Mudford: so she is far above little Mrs White, and speaks to her when she meets her in the street with a sweet condescending smile, for which I wonder that Mrs White does not slap her face then and there. Black and White will both go to Jones’s whist parties, and drink his grog with the utmost heartiness; but catch Mrs Black or Mrs White visiting at that house, or permitting their daughters to do so, even if they felt inclined, which they don’t! And I remember when that spoony thread-paper boy, young White, took it into his head to be sweet upon the eldest Miss Jones—who, I happen to know, was engaged at the same time to her cousin in Devonshire, where she was on a visit some time since; a very much better match for her than young White would be—his parents and sisters were indignant and outrageous about it; and sent him away out of the town with all speed, as if he had been a royal prince about to marry a servant-girl. But they need not have troubled themselves;—Miss Jones, as I have said, had met with a much better match in her cousin.

It follows from all this, that, unless we hope to get something out of them, or think that we shall be honoured by their acquaintance, we in Mudford are not very prompt in showing attention to strangers. The men might call perhaps; but they have something else to do, and would rather, when possible, leave that kind of thing to the women; and, before long, they have met the new-comer so often in the Reading-room or at the White Hart, and have become so friendly with him, that a formal call, after all that, appears an absurdity: besides, they feel uncomfortable and out of their element sitting about in people’s drawing-rooms, holding their hats and twiddling their gloves in their hands; having no topic of conversation of common interest with the callees; and feeling that the usual hour for their own dinner is come, and that they are keeping the people of the house in the fidgets, from the thought that theirs is going cold in the little back sitting-room, whence they have been roused by that tremendous flourish of the knocker. The women don’t feel this sort of thing when they are the callers; but they take such a long time in considering whether the new people are eligible people or not (always provided, as before intimated, that it is not immediately evident that anything is to be got out of them in the way of profit or honour), that before they have made up their minds, the affair frequently gets out of date altogether, and the call is never made after all.

Now when I speak of becoming intimate soon with new-comers at the Reading-room or at the White Hart, I am speaking generally, and not of our New Doctor in particular; for, on the contrary, he was scarcely ever seen for the first week or two. And yet people didn’t call the more for this. Miss Cringle told me, indeed, that nobody had been to the house except Simpkins, the before-mentioned indefatigable Secretary of the Rifle Corps; and Timmins, the also-before-mentioned equally indefatigable Secretary of the Literary Institution; Rowe, Driver, and Grindley: no ladies, of course, for it was well known that Mr Smith was a bachelor, and so the ladies could not be expected to go. I believe these gentlemen were all somewhat disappointed; for though the New Doctor gave moderate subscriptions where they were asked for, and became an honorary member of the Rifle Corps, and a first-class member of the Institution, he wouldn’t promise to go to drill, nor to give a lecture, nor to go boating, nor cricketing, and told Grindley that he didn’t know a jig from the old hundredth psalm.

I did not call myself, for these things are out of my line, and nobody expects them from me; and, besides, those who did call did not seem to take much by their motion, for Mr Smith was generally “not at home,” and most of those gentlemen I have mentioned had to lie in wait for him, after all, in the street. Miss Cringle says, nevertheless, that she is sure the Doctor had not gone out when they called, and she is likely to know; for, poor creature! she was confined to the house with a dreadful cold, and sat all day long at the window, whence, as has been said, a very fine view of Mr Smith’s front door could be obtained. It must have been very tiresome for her, poor thing! to sit there so many hours; and I am sure it is an honour to human nature, and speaks volumes for the kindness of woman’s heart, that though there was really nothing entertaining nor agreeable in Miss Cringle, the young ladies of Mudford, knowing that she had nothing to amuse her except her knitting, should have devoted so much time to her during this period of her indisposition. Indeed, those kind creatures, the Miss Johnsons and the Miss MacClinkers—who, I know, at other times were in the habit of calling her a “spiteful old cat,” a name, I own, not altogether undeserved,—now that pain and anguish wrung her brow, were such indefatigable ministering angels that they kept her company from morning till night, until, as Miss Cringle told me herself, she was absolutely obliged to say to them that she would rather have their room than their company; and to throw out a very broad hint that she was perfectly aware that they didn’t come to see her, but to look out for the New Doctor! a hint which, however undeserved, did not fail to keep them away from the house for the future.

As I have said, the New Doctor was not seen out much at first; and as Mole was not there to introduce him to his patients, and there were uncommonly few patients to introduce him to, if he had been; and as scarcely anybody called on him, and he was seldom at home to those who did call, and he rarely came out, it was some time before people in general had an opportunity of making his acquaintance; indeed, I think it must have been quite three weeks before I saw him myself, except from Miss Cringle’s window. But of course I heard plenty about him. The men who had seen him did not, as a general rule, appear to think very highly of him; they said he was close and reserved, and a rum sort of fellow, and that he wouldn’t do for Mudford, and all that sort of thing. The verdict of the ladies was at first more favourable. They said he was certainly not handsome exactly, but was very distingué-looking and gentlemanlike indeed; the two Miss MacClinkers talked a great deal of his gentlemanly manners, because he had lifted his hat to them in passing, when they met him unexpectedly in the narrow passage that leads from the street down to Slocum’s Backs (how he could pass such expansive crinolines at all, in such a narrow way, is a mystery to me): and, to tell the truth, I am pained to confess that it is somewhat unusual to see a man lift his hat to a lady in Mudford; a bob of the head, like that of the nodding china figure of a mandarin, being the usual salutation.

The first time I saw Mr Smith to speak to was one evening in the bar of the White Hart. I happened to be there chatting with Mrs Cook, the landlady, when he stepped in to have a glass of ale. Mrs Cook, having the great natural and social advantages of being fat, jolly, a widow, and a landlady, was, of course, always on friendly terms with everybody, and Mr Smith chatted away with her as I had never heard of his doing with any one else. She could clearly make bold to introduce me, and did so accordingly, and the New Doctor and I then and there struck up an acquaintance. I used to be considered to have some little conversational powers, before I got stuck in the mud in this hole; and I flatter myself that I rather amused the New Doctor with some details of the place and the people, for he laughed, and had a second glass of ale, and asked me to take something; and the young lady in the bar sniggered and giggled, and Mrs Cook kept on lifting up her hands, and shaking her fat with laughing, and exclaiming, “Oh, fie, sir! now that is really too bad!” I may as well mention here that Mr Smith was a young man of dark complexion and gentlemanly manner, with a well-trimmed beard and mustache, who spoke like a man of education, and dressed like a gentleman—rather rare things in the village of Mudford. And, apropos to this, it was remarked that he always dressed in precisely the same way; there was never the slightest variety in his costume—always the same suit of black, the same black necktie, and the same scrupulously clean linen and glossy hat. Altogether, I was pleased with the New Doctor: there was certainly nothing brutal nor sensual in his appearance, and he did not look at all like a man who would——. But I must not anticipate.

I do not know how, or whence, or when the rumour first took its rise, but not long after Mr Smith’s arrival it began to be whispered about that there was something very queer, to say the least, about him. The mysterious manner of his arrival probably first gave rise to this rumour, and afterwards there were many things to increase the impression it had made. As I have said, Mr Smith at first rarely came out; and he never seemed to try or wish to get a patient. Indeed, when those two wild scamps, young Bones and young Skinner, going home late as usual, knocked him up about one o’clock in the morning, and said that he must go at once to Mr Cheeks of Little Pigton, some four miles off across the moors, who was very ill, he told them very blandly and courteously that he had no horse, and was just going to bed, and that they had better call Mr Green or Mr Higgins. I must say, I think that Green and Higgins need not have been so bitter against him, nor have called him “quack” so often as they did, especially as Green never passed the Hall in his life, and only got through the college by the skin of his teeth; and what Higgins’s qualifications are, except impudence, I believe nobody ever knew. As a matter of course, they are at daggers-drawn between themselves, as medical men in small towns always are, and say all sorts of disparaging things of each other,—for which nobody can blame them, as there is truth on both sides—but they certainly had no right to speak of Mr Smith as they did; at all events, at first, before those matters which I am about to relate were openly talked of.

One of the first things that people began to remark about the New Doctor was, that scarcely anybody was admitted to his house; and never, under any circumstances, unless he was there himself to receive them. Directly inside the front door of the house was a lobby, and on the right-hand side as you entered was a small room, and on the left hand side another; the former being fitted up as a surgery, and the latter as a sitting-room: into one of these rooms all visitors who entered the house at all were ushered; and the very first thing Mr Smith did after his arrival was to get a carpenter to put up a strong thick door in the middle of the lobby, directly beyond the entrance to these rooms, so as to cut them off entirely from the remainder of the building. The next step was just as strange: he had the masons, and built up the wall around the garden and courtlage at the back of the house at least two feet higher, in places where it was not already sufficiently lofty, so that no one, without climbing to the top of the wall, could possibly overlook the garden and back of the house. The gate which stood at the entrance to the back door, too, was always kept locked, and was furnished with a bell, so that anybody having business with the old servant or housekeeper that he had brought with him had to ring and be reconnoitred before being admitted. Strange precautions these of our New Doctor, and, you may be sure, not made the less of among the busy tongues of Mudford.

Another very remarkable thing about him was his most extraordinary absence of mind, or forgetfulness, or whatever it may have been. He would be quite friendly with people to-day—and he could be very agreeable if he chose—and to-morrow he would pass them in the street as if he had never seen them before. To be sure, he said he was near-sighted—and I ought to have mentioned that he always wore spectacles—but people can’t be expected to believe all they are told in this world; and it was known that he could see a long way off when he liked: and, besides, a defect of vision would not, at all events, account for defects in hearing, speaking, and thinking. You might tell him a thing to-day, and to-morrow he would appear to have forgotten all about it: you would have to tell it all over again, and then, very likely, his comments on it were totally different from what they had been on the previous day. And, strangest inconsistency of all, the next day again, perhaps, he would maintain his first opinion, as if he had never departed from it! When people made remarks to him about this, he would say with a laugh, “Ah, you must pardon me. I do forget strangely sometimes, but I am so very absent!” He was certainly the strangest man! “Nil erat unquam sic impar sibi.”

An instance of this strange absence of mind, or whatever it was, occurred with regard to myself, directly after making his acquaintance, as before related. On the following day I met him full butt in the street, and he would actually have passed on without taking the slightest notice of me, if I had not stopped him and held him by the button-hole.

“Mr Smith!” I exclaimed, “you have not forgotten me already, surely!”

“Why—a—really,” he said, looking puzzled; “excuse me, pray; my memory is so bad. Where had I the pleasure of meeting you?”

“Why, last evening,” I replied, “at the White Hart. Don’t you recollect? We had a glass together.”

“Ah, to be sure,” said he, “in the smoking-room, was it not? Really, I beg your pardon.”

“No, sir,” said I, with some indignation, “it was not in the smoking-room. We were in the bar, and Mrs Cook was present.”

“So it was,” said he; “I recollect perfectly now. In the bar, and Mrs Cook was present. What do you say to a glass of ale now?”

But I was too much offended for this, and left him with a somewhat haughty salute. Now—will it be believed—I met him again on the very next day, and he positively crossed the street to speak to me!

“Ah, my dear sir,” said he, “I am delighted to meet you! I have been looking out for you ever since we met in the bar of the White Hart, and you told me such amusing stories of our neighbours.”

“So!” I said; “your memory is better to-day, is it? Why, yesterday you had forgotten all about me!”

He burst into a hearty laugh. “What! my dear sir,” he said, “I was in one of my absent fits yesterday, was I? You really must not think anything of it. It is natural to me, and I cannot help it for the life of me.”

But I did think of it a little, nevertheless; for I like to know how to find people, and have no fancy for being treated with that sort of caprice.

I said that the New Doctor was never very popular with the men, but that the verdict of the women was more favourable. Before long, however, he became more unpopular than ever—and with the ladies most of all; and that not only on account of the peculiarities I have described, and of the rumours I have hinted at—which spread more and more every day, and which I shall have to speak of presently—but also for other reasons which I had better mention here, before going to more serious matters.

First, then, Mr Smith, whom almost nobody had called on, and whom scarcely anybody had asked to his house, or introduced to his family, was within a short time after his arrival invited to five pic-nics; one up the river, three down, and one in Twiddleham Park—and to not one of them did he go. Now, not to go to a pic-nic to which you are invited at Mudford, is to give the greatest offence to those who do go, especially if you happen to be a stranger and a bachelor: and that for these reasons.

Of course, if you do not go, there is one gentleman the less to escort the ladies, who, not having so much to attend to at home, or having a greater partiality for the pastime, are always in a great majority over the gentlemen at these parties. And if you should happen to be a marrying man, and a tolerably eligible match, the loss is, of course, so much the greater. This reason evidently affects principally marriageable young ladies, and those who are interested in getting them off their hands; but there is another reason which appeals to the hearts and feelings of everybody. It is this:—In these parties the ladies provide the eatables, and the gentlemen bring the drinkables, and club together to pay the costs of conveyance and other miscellaneous charges. Now, if one gentleman be subtracted from the total number going—a very small number generally, for reasons which will now be thoroughly understood—it follows that the remainder will necessarily have to pay more per head for conveyance, &c., and will also have to provide more each in the way of wine, spirit, bottled ale, and other liquids necessary to the success of pic-nics; or else that each individual will have less to drink. Human nature revolts at such an alternative; and we find it intelligible enough, that to refuse to go to a pic-nic at Mudford, should be considered by those who do go to be adding injury to insult.

But there was a reason greater even than this for the falling off of the New Doctor in the estimation of the young ladies, until even the Miss Johnsons and the Miss MacClinkers, who had thrown themselves at his head in every way which was open to them when he first came, had now nothing too bad to say of him. And that was, that he dared—he actually dared—how shall I tell it!—he dared to fall in love with a young lady who was a stranger and sojourner in the place, while there were so many native virgins ready and willing to be fallen in love with! Need I, after this, describe the bitterness with which he was spoken of by all the female portion of Mudford society! It was really most audacious conduct! To think that neither the Miss Johnsons, nor the Miss MacClinkers, nor the Misses Ferris, nor the Miss Skinners, nor any among the marriageable young ladies of Mudford, would suit his taste, and that he must pitch upon that little Laura Playfair from London, who had now come down on her second visit to her cousins, the Skinners! And yet, highly as I disapprove of the Doctor’s behaviour, I cannot help saying that Miss Playfair was a very nice and very superior girl, and that, had I been a young man myself, I should——. But never mind; I won’t have the bad taste to draw comparisons on such subjects, but will only go on to say that Laura had not been two days in the place before the wretch Smith saw her, and procured an introduction to her and to the three Miss Skinners at the same time. Those three sisters immediately put their innocent heads together, and absolutely prevailed on their mamma, who is as stingy as the grave, to give a party, and invite Mr Smith to it! It is well known that young doctors in country towns must marry, if they wish to get into practice; and those shrewd and benevolent young ladies fondly hoped that one of them might be destined to make Mr Smith’s fortune, and to partake of it. Think of their feelings when it became most manifest that the wretch was paying the greatest attention to Miss Playfair, to whom the same was evidently not unacceptable! The indignation of the other young ladies of the place was scarcely less; but then, to be sure, they had considerable consolation in the thought of what a snubbing those forward girls the Skinners had received. I am afraid, from what I have heard, that the Skinners’s hearts were turned from Laura from that time forth; but they did not dare openly to break with her, for the Playfairs were rather rich people, and kept their carriage (a one-horse phaeton, I believe), and occasionally invited the Miss Skinners to Bayswater; and Laura had one brother a clergyman, and another in the army; and the Skinners had always been fond of talking largely in Mudford about their connections; so, of course, they still kept up appearances as well as they could; but I know that Miss Playfair had intended to stay much longer than she did stay; and I have no doubt that it was owing to this affair of Mr Smith that her visit was brought to an untimely close.

The ingenious reader must have remarked that I have several times hinted at sundry dark and mysterious rumours about our New Doctor, which do not seem to harmonise with the kind of events that I have been narrating; but it must be understood that these rumours at first obtained no very serious notice from any except the lower classes; and some short time—a few weeks, perhaps—passed away between the little matters I have narrated, and the general prevalence of the dark suspicions which followed.

Here I see that I must attempt a somewhat more detailed account of the Doctor’s house than I have hitherto given. It is a square detached building, situated in the outskirts of the place, facing the road, and having no garden-railing or other space of any sort in front of it. What it appears, however, to want in privacy here, is made up for by the retirement to be obtained at the back of the house, which, it will be remembered, had been cut off from the front by the heavy door which the Doctor had erected in the middle of the lobby, and which he kept constantly locked, himself carrying the key always about him. The front of the house is continued, so to speak, by two high walls, that, together with the house itself, form the front of a long parallelogram, of which the sides and back are also high walls of masonry. The area within consists of a small paved court, and of a large garden, of which neither old Mole nor his successor took any care, and which is, and was, a perfect wilderness of rank luxuriant weeds, of moss-covered apple-trees, and of gooseberry and currant bushes on which the fruit never ripens. The walls are covered with ivy instead of fruit-trees, diversified here and there by a piece of new masonry, where the Doctor had them raised higher; and the whole place is dark, gloomy, cold, and tree-shaded.

The rumours about the Doctor, which at first were vague, and confined to the lower and more credulous order of persons, after a time began to be talked of among all classes; and it is wonderful, after they once began to be openly spoken of, how rapidly they spread, and how generally they were believed. It was said, then, that strange sounds were occasionally to be heard proceeding from the New Doctor’s house. A hoarse strange voice was sometimes heard speaking rapidly and threateningly for a time, and then was suddenly hushed; and it was said that occasionally a shrill wild shriek of agony or terror might be heard issuing from the recesses of the building. And those two young villains, Higgs’s boys, who will never come to any good, I fear, when they stole a ladder one night, and got over the back wall of the Doctor’s garden—to find their ball, they said, but, I believe, to steal the few apples that were on the trees—were so frightened by the strange ghostly lights that were flitting about in the windows of the house, that they ran off in the utmost terror and affright, leaving the ladder, and Bob’s, the youngest boy’s, cap behind them. I and some others did not pay much attention to these stories, although it was impossible to help believing some part of them—and, indeed, I had myself, on more than one occasion, heard from Miss Cringle’s room strange sounds proceeding from the Doctor’s house;—but amongst children and the ignorant they made an immense impression; so that, after a time, the little boys and girls would run away, screaming with terror, when the New Doctor approached; and even amongst grown persons there were more than chose to own it, who would as soon go a mile out of their way as pass his house alone after dark.

But there was soon a story out about the New Doctor, which appealed to the feelings of all, educated as well as ignorant. Miss Cringle, who had got into such a state of nervous excitement about him and his house, that she was obliged to have a woman to sleep with her, got out of bed one night about twelve o’clock, went to the window, and saw—what, I believe, no one would have credited on her unsupported testimony (not because people would have been indisposed to believe it, but because they would have been sure to disbelieve her). She called Mrs Rourke, the woman who slept with her, to her side; and they saw——They both swore it was true, and I suppose there can be no doubt about it now:—they both saw a light in one of the Doctor’s first-floor windows—a most rare thing on that side of the house—and plainly, distinctly thrown upon the blind was the shadow of a woman, evidently young and handsome, and utterly unlike the old housekeeper, doing up her hair for the night; and in such a state of deshabille that it was evident she was just going to bed! Presently passed also across the blind the shadow of a man—of the New Doctor; and in a moment, as if he had instantly perceived the imprudence of the woman in placing the candle where it was, the light was moved, the shadows vanished, and no more was seen.

Here was a discovery! Not a wink did Miss Cringle sleep that night, and no sleep did she permit to Mrs Rourke: indeed, it was as much as the latter could do, to persuade her not to send at once and knock up her friends in the middle of the night, that they might know without delay what she had seen. But next morning, before the shutters were down from all the shop windows, the news was over the place. The servant-girls brought the story in with the milk; the postman was double his proper time in going his rounds, owing to his loitering about so long—a vice to which he is rather prone—to discuss the news. My landlady could not wait until I got down-stairs; but brought up my shaving-water with her own hands, in order that she might tell me the story, from outside the door, before I got out of bed; and Miss Cringle had such a levée on that day as made her the most important person in Mudford. Indeed, I verily believe that all the women in the place went to see her, except the Miss Johnsons and the Miss MacClinkers, who have never forgiven to the present day the deadly offence Miss Cringle gave them.

It may be imagined how great was the indignation throughout Mudford; and no one can say that it was without sufficient cause. To think of this young bachelor Doctor coming amongst us, being admitted to our Institution, and even asked to lecture there; getting introduced to our wives and daughters, and meeting with kindness and hospitality at our hands (this was what people said; the reader will judge, from what he has read, how much attention and hospitality had really been shown him); going about looking us in the face, as if he had been an honest man, and all the while being guilty of such flagrant misconduct as this! It was really too bad! And then, to think of his conduct to Miss Playfair! There could be no mistake about that; for it was now a positive, declared engagement. This was worse than all; and I own that I myself felt desperately indignant with Mr Smith. The Miss Skinners, of course, told the young lady all about it, and were excessively kind in their expressions of sympathy: so anxious, indeed, were all the young ladies to condole with her, that I am informed she had nearly as many callers during the day as Miss Cringle; but the ungrateful girl made no reply to what the Miss Skinners told her, shut herself up in her own room for the whole of the day, positively refusing to see one of her visitors, and only stepped out in the evening to post some letters with her own hand. So great was the commotion in the place, that there was some talk at the Literary Institution of expelling the Doctor; but on the Secretary’s stating that the low state of the funds would prevent the returning his subscription, the idea was abandoned for the time. After all, he didn’t trouble us with his company there often, so it didn’t much matter. There was even some talk, I believe, of breaking his windows; but we had a very stern and inflexible Inspector of the County Police force stationed at Mudford, who, hearing of this project, at once gave it to be understood that he should not allow his private feelings to interfere with his duty; and that whoever was guilty of any unlawful or riotous act, should be immediately put in the lock-up: so that method of administering justice was at once abandoned.

I suppose there is no such thing as perfect unanimity in this world—I am sure there is not in the world of Mudford;—and there were not wanting persons who said that Miss Cringle was cracked, and in all probability Mrs Rourke was drunk. But so great was the prejudice against the New Doctor, that even those who professed this opinion were ready to own that if Miss Cringle and Mrs Rourke had not seen what they said they had, there was no doubt that they might have seen it, or something worse; so that the Doctor’s reputation did not gain much by their advocacy. And I must say here, in justice to those two ladies, that if any persons doubted their story at first, they could not in their hearts doubt it long, for the Doctor did not even attempt to deny it. Most people cut him without a word; but some few, and among them myself, told him what was said, and thus gave him an opportunity of contradicting the story; but he would only shrug his shoulders and turn away his head, neither owning nor denying it.

I don’t think the New Doctor could have led a very pleasant life just at this time; and there seemed less chance than ever of his getting into practice at Mudford. Miss Play fair was gone, and the few acquaintances he had made all dropped off. Scarcely anybody spoke to him; and, indeed, he now rarely came out until evening; when, as we knew from Miss Cringle, he would walk up and down the road for about an hour; come back at the end of that time to his house, stay in a few minutes, and then go out again for another walk in the same place. It must not be supposed, however, that nobody at all employed him. Two or three people had sent for him; and I don’t know that I shouldn’t have done so myself, notwithstanding all, if I had been unwell; for self is the great thing in such cases, and employ Green or Higgins I never can nor will: and those who had been the New Doctor’s patients all spoke highly of his attention and ability. This, however, did not influence our opinion of him in the least, as it is well known that the most diabolical of all possible personages can behave like a gentleman when expedient to do so.

Several months had now elapsed since the New Doctor came to Mudford. Miss Playfair, as I have just mentioned, was gone: indeed, she did not remain long after Miss Cringle’s dreadful discovery. One of the letters which she had posted herself on the following day was, as we ascertained from the postmaster, for her father,—no doubt informing him of her intention to come home at once. The other was to Mr Smith himself:—of course, its contents were not known to us, but it was generally supposed that it upbraided him with his conduct, and bade him an eternal farewell. In two days more she had left Mudford for London.

The stories about the Doctor did not fall off either in quantity or in quality, as the novelty of the affair died away. Perhaps they would have done so in time, but the time was not yet long enough; and, so far, scarcely a day elapsed but some new report of a startling character was brought out about him—some of these rumours being, I believe, not without truth in them; others being absurd, shocking, and incredible. Even had I space or time, I could not bring myself to narrate one tithe of the tales about him and the unhallowed doings in his house that passed current among the vulgar. But I must relate two events which were nearly bringing him into serious collision with the laws of his country.

Dreaded as the New Doctor’s house was, there were some of the more daring spirits in Mudford in whom curiosity was stronger than fear; and these often went out at night, by twos and threes, and climbing by some means to the top of the wall around the Doctor’s garden, watched there by the hour together, in hope of getting materials for some fresh story with which to horrify the inhabitants on the next day.

One very dark night, that daring young scamp, Flibbert, the blacksmith’s son—the only one in the place, I believe, who would have had the courage to do it—went there alone, and placed himself on watch at the top of the wall; and not long after, he came running home to his father, pale, breathless, and horror-struck. He said that he had not been long at his post when the Doctor came forth from his back door, accompanied by his old housekeeper, who held a lantern in her hand, while the Doctor carried a pick and a spade. They went to a corner in the garden among the apple-trees, and there the old woman held the light, while the doctor set to work to dig a small grave! He took some time about it, not being very expert in the use of the tools; and all the while the boy remained on the wall, close to them, afraid to move, and scarcely daring to breathe. When it was finished, the Doctor returned to the house, the old woman still remaining with the lantern near the grave, and presently came forth again, bringing under his arm a rough deal box or small coffin. He brought the coffin to the edge of the grave, and was just about to put it in, when the boy’s hold on the wall having become somewhat relaxed, he made a slight movement to get into a better position. The Doctor heard the sound, and called out sharply, “Who is there?” The boy made no reply, but, dropping at once to the ground outside the wall, ran home as fast as he could go, and told his father what he had witnessed.

Flibbert at first thought of putting the matter into the hands of the police; but on second thoughts, having some vague notions about obtaining a reward for the discovery, he determined to go and make a search himself in the place where his son had seen the grave. Accordingly on the next night, accompanied by his son and a neighbour, he went to the Doctor’s garden, and, getting over the wall by means of a ladder, proceeded to the spot indicated by the boy. It was plain enough, at first sight, that the earth in that place had been recently disturbed; but not all their digging could discover anything in the shape of a box or coffin. They filled in the earth again, and were about to make a search in other parts of the garden, when a pale, spectral light, proceeding they knew not whence, shone forth about them, making them look to each other so pale, so ghastly, so horrible, that they fled in the utmost terror from the spot, and returned to it no more.

It may be imagined what were the comments of the people of Mudford on this story, the truth of which no one could doubt. Flibbert reported it to the Inspector of Police, who reported it to the Superintendent, who reported it to the Chief Constable; but that gentleman did not think they could interfere in the matter without further evidence, and only gave orders that the police should keep a watchful eye on Mr Smith, and take particular notice of his actions.

They say, “Give a dog a bad name, and hang him;” and I suppose that at this time the New Doctor would have been by common consent, with or without evidence, considered guilty of any crimes that might have been committed at Mudford. But shortly after the event just narrated, he really had a very narrow escape indeed from being sent to jail for a most serious offence.

We had a cattle-market at Mudford shortly after the affair of the garden, and in the evening old Jobbs the farmer was walking home to his house, a short distance out of the town, having in his pocket about a hundred pounds in gold and notes which he had received for some cattle sold in the market. He confesses that he was rather tipsy, but swears that he was quite sufficiently himself to know what he was about. That night he was knocked down close to his own gate, and robbed of all the money he had about him; and the suspicions that the New Doctor was the perpetrator of the deed were so strong, that the magistrates issued a warrant for his apprehension.

Of course, such an event as the examination of our notorious Doctor before the magistrates, called together all the people in the place who could possibly leave their houses; and the number of persons who tried to get into the magistrates’ small office, would have more than filled the long room at the White Hart. I was fortunate enough to get a place, and will state the evidence given as briefly as I can.

John Jobbs swore that he was going home on foot about half-past nine o’clock on the evening after the cattle-market, having in his pocket about a hundred pounds, which he had received for some oxen. He had been drinking several glasses of grog, and was rather “overtook,” but knew very well what he was about. About half-way between Mudford and his house, his foot slipped and he fell; and, not being exactly sober, could not get up again as readily as usual. At that time a person came by, and helped him to rise. He knew Mr Smith, the New Doctor, very well by sight, and swore that he was the man. Mr Smith offered to see him home, but witness, knowing his infamous character, refused, and at the same time seized the opportunity to give him a bit of his mind in tolerably strong language. Finding, however, that he had hurt himself by his fall, and was unable to walk alone, he at length consented, and the Doctor took him by the arm, put him as far as his own gate, continuing to receive bits of his mind all the way, and there said “Good-night,” and left him, or pretended to leave him. Directly after, however, while Jobbs was standing in the same place, considering how best to steady himself so as to escape a scolding from his wife, he heard somebody behind him, and immediately was knocked down by a severe blow on the head, which rendered him insensible; and when he recovered, he found that he had been robbed of all the money in his pocket. Jobbs’s statement was corroborated by his wife, who deposed to his having come in without his money, and with the mark of a severe blow on the head. When he arrived, she looked at the clock, and saw that it was half-past ten. The man who keeps the turnpike gate just out of Mudford, swore that he saw Mr Jobbs going home under as much as he could carry; and that Jobbs was followed shortly after by the prisoner, whom he knew quite well, as he often walked that way. He was certain that prisoner was the man.

I believe that the magistrates would have committed the Doctor; but at this juncture Mr Burns, a very respectable old man, forced his way into the office with his son; and both volunteering their testimony, swore that Mrs Burns had been taken suddenly and alarmingly ill on the evening in question; that they had sent for Mr Green and Mr Higgins, both of whom were out of town; and that then, believing Mrs Burns to be in a most critical state, they had sent in desperation for Mr Smith. The Doctor arrived at their house, they both swore, at nine o’clock, and remained there, not being overwhelmed, as he said, with practice, until twelve, when the patient had fallen into a quiet sleep. Both Mr Burns and his son swore so positively as to the time, and that the Doctor had never left the house from nine until twelve, that the magistrates could not but consider the alibi sufficiently proved, and the prisoner was discharged.

This was certainly a very narrow escape for our New Doctor; and though the magistrates discharged him, the intelligent reader will not doubt that he was fully convicted in the minds of the public of Mudford; each individual of that great body having his or her own reason to give, more or less probable, and more or less charitable, for the evidence of Mr Burns and his son. Some believed that they had been mistaken as to time; others that they had perjured themselves; and many among the lower orders never doubted that the New Doctor had the power of being in two places at once, when to be so suited his purpose. For my part, I believed that Jobbs and the pikeman had been mistaken as to identity; but in this opinion I think I got no supporters. If anything could have increased the popular indignation against the Doctor, it would have been his escape in this manner from the hands of justice after having been so very nearly caught; and I am sorry to say that, on the evening after his discharge, he, Mr Burns, senior, and Mr Burns, junior, were burnt together in effigy.

Events with regard to the New Doctor had been following thick upon each other; and very soon after this robbery business occurred the most extraordinary event of all.

One morning I found waiting for me on my breakfast-table the following note:—

“Mr Smith presents his compliments to Mr So-and-so, and would feel greatly obliged by his company to-morrow morning at twelve, to take a glass of wine, and listen to a communication which Mr Smith wishes to make.”

I was perfectly electrified when I read this note; and before I had finished my breakfast, Jones, Johnson, and Ferris dropped in, each to show me a similar invitation, to inquire whether I had got one, and to tell me that, as far as was known, some seven or eight of them had been issued altogether. I believe the first impulse of all of us was to return an indignant refusal; but after some discussion and consultation with others, the desire to hear the promised communication eventually determined us on going,—though I believe that an invitation to take wine with a condemned criminal in Newgate, and hear his confession, would have had a less startling effect.

Next day came, and we walked up to the door together to the number of eight. We knocked and were admitted by the old servant; and for the first known time since the New Doctor had been in the place, the door erected in the lobby stood open, and we were ushered into a room at the back of the house, where he himself was waiting to receive us. The room was plainly furnished—indeed it was old Mole’s old furniture; but everything was tastefully arranged, and there were several pieces of lady’s work lying about, which told plainly enough of the presence of a woman.

At the Doctor’s invitation we took our seats; but, as had been previously concerted, we all refused to take any wine until we had heard the promised communication.

“Well then, gentlemen,” he said, “we will commence with this robbery affair, though it is the last, as far as I know, in point of date.”

And, taking a newspaper from his pocket, he showed us the confession of a criminal convicted of highway robbery at the assizes of a neighbouring county, which stated that he (the convict) was the man who had robbed the old farmer after the cattle-market at Mudford.

“So you see, gentlemen,” the Doctor said, “I am innocent of that crime at all events, and this paper has come to me most opportunely, so that I might convince you. And now for something else. I know well enough that there have been reports of a very black character in circulation about me; and among the rest, that I, a bachelor, have a lady closely shut up in this house. Is it not so?”

We all said that it was so, and that we should like to have it explained.

“Then, gentlemen,” said he, “please to understand that the lady in question is my wife, and that she was so before I came to Mudford.”

“Then, sir,” we all exclaimed with one voice, “how do you account for your conduct to Miss Playfair?”

“Wait a moment, gentlemen,” he said; “to explain that matter I must fetch something from the next room. I will be back again directly.”

He left the room, and we gazed on each other with looks of blank astonishment; but before we could say a word, he returned and resumed his seat.

Finding that he did not speak for some time, we began to grow impatient, and asked him for his promised explanation.

“Explanation?” said he, as if he had forgotten all about it. “What explanation, pray?”

“Why, your explanation about Miss Playfair!”

“Gentlemen,” he said, in the coolest manner possible, “I have nothing to say about Miss Playfair, except that she is a very charming and estimable young lady, and that I hope soon to make her my wife.”

“Your wife!” we exclaimed. “Why, you have a wife already in this very house!”

He looked from one to the other with an appearance of the greatest bewilderment; and then said, with the utmost coolness,

“O dear, no, gentlemen! You are mistaken, I assure you. I have no wife, and never had such a thing in my life.”

“Why, you told us but a minute since that the woman who has been in this house for we don’t know how long was your wife!”

“I beg your pardon,” he replied. “I never said anything of the sort. I have no wife, and never had one since I was born!”

We all started to our feet, exclaiming, “This is unbearable; we didn’t come here to be insulted!” and were about to leave the room and the house; but with a merry laugh the Doctor exclaimed—

“Stop, gentlemen! Stop a moment, I pray; and excuse my joking with you. The farce has lasted long enough.” And he touched the bell.

Immediately the door opened, and the New Doctor entered!

Yes, the New Doctor entered; and yet the New Doctor had been in the room before, and was there still. We looked from one to the other in the utmost astonishment. There were two New Doctors! but just exactly alike; the same features, the same figure, the same quality of voice, the same cut of beard and mustache, and the same style of dress, down to the minutest particular!

“Gentlemen,” continued the one who had been in the room before, “this is my brother, Henry Smith, the married man. I am Herbert Smith, the bachelor; and as you are now, I believe, satisfied that I did not rob old Jobbs, I may as well own at once that the alibi by which I escaped was founded on a mistake. It was I who put the old farmer home to his gate, as a charitable action, and there left him, little thinking he was going to be so attacked immediately after by that scoundrel; and it was my brother who attended on Mrs Burns in her illness. It was the first time, I believe, that we ever ventured out at the same time in Mudford; but such a call was not to be disobeyed; and it was well for me that it happened as it did.”

It may be supposed how much we were all astonished: but having heard and seen so much, we were prepared for almost anything; and we thought that we might now venture to take a glass of wine. We did so, and the wine, being very good, warmed our hearts, so that we felt more favourably disposed towards the Doctor, or Doctors, than a short time before we should have thought possible.

“Now, gentlemen,” continued the one who had last spoken, “as we are about immediately to leave Mudford—for which Mudford, I fancy, will not mourn excessively—and should not wish to leave behind us a character altogether infamous, we have asked you, as being the most respectable and intelligent men in the place” (here we all bowed, and took another glass of wine), “to meet us here to-day, in order to hear a short explanation of this curious affair, which has given rise to such dreadful stories about us.

“My brother and I are orphans, and were brought up to the medical profession by an old uncle, very rich, very eccentric, and with an excessive fondness for money, which has gone on increasing rapidly with every successive year of his life. We are twin brothers; we were educated together, we passed through our professional studies at the same time, and a short time ago we lived near each other in London, neither of us having any fixed idea of where we should ultimately settle. Shortly before we came here, my brother got married, and at about the same time he got into debt. He had taken a number of shares in a speculation which has since proved a success; but before that happy time, a bank, in which he had deposited his money, broke: he lost all, and, being unable to pay up the calls, his shares in the speculation referred to were also forfeited. These disasters threw him deeply into debt; and our uncle, who was most obstinate when he had once made up his mind, and absolutely miserly in some matters, not only refused to assist him, but said that, if he disgraced the family by going to prison, he would not leave a farthing of his fortune to him or to me. We knew that he was quite capable of carrying out this threat, and were at our wits’ end what to do; for my brother’s creditors were so vindictive and watchful, that for him to escape to the Continent appeared out of the question, when Miss Playfair, to whom I had just become engaged——”

“What!” we exclaimed; “did you know Miss Playfair before you came here?”

“Yes,” he said; “and it was she who first put into our heads the notion of coming. She had been on a visit at Mudford once; and when she heard that Mr Mole’s practice was to be sold, an idea occurred to her. She suggested it to me, and we all talked it over between us, and at length determined to carry it out, my uncle being especially delighted with the plan, from a cunning feeling of pleasure at the trick itself, as well as from the prospect of escaping an advance of cash, and yet of the family avoiding the disgrace of Henry’s going to prison. The plan was, that I should buy Mr Mole’s practice, which did not require a large outlay, and that we should all come quietly down here together, making it at the same time be believed that Henry and his wife had escaped to the Continent. My brother and I being, as you see, very much alike, we thought that, by taking care not to go out together, nor to be seen at the same time—by trimming our beards and mustaches in precisely the same way, and by always wearing exactly the same kind of dress—we might cause it to be believed, especially by strangers, that we were one and the same person. My brother’s wife, almost ever since her marriage, had been an invalid, and was confined almost entirely to the house, so that there was no fear of our being found out through her; and for our housekeeper we chose an old servant of the family, on whose fidelity we could depend. There were several reasons which determined us on taking the proposed step. My brother’s wife was horrified at the idea of her husband being taken from her and sent to prison, and would have put up with anything rather than that; and Miss Playfair was coming down here again on a visit, so that we thought we should be able frequently to see each other—a thing which my uncle’s strange character, and the uncertainty of my prospects from him, made her parents rather object to at home. Besides this, my brother and I had jointly made some rather important discoveries in chemistry and electricity, and we wished to remain together in order to carry out a systematic course of experiments, and conjointly to write a work on the subject. More than all, as I said before, the notion took our uncle’s fancy so much, that he made quite a point of it, and we saw that we could not refuse to go on with the scheme without giving him the greatest offence, which, under the circumstances, we could not afford to do.

“But we had not sufficiently calculated the tattle and espionage of a small town; and had no foreboding of the dark rumours and suspicions about us to which our plot would give rise: else, I am sure, we should never have ventured to carry it out. Whatever had been the consequence, we could, I think, have gone on with it no longer after what has occurred: but, two days ago, we received a communication stating that our uncle had died almost suddenly, and had left all his property—a very considerable one—to my brother and myself: so that my brother can now pay all his debts, and meet his creditors in the gate; and we have each of us an income which enables us to dispense with the active practice of our profession. As, at the same time, it fortunately happens that our book and our experiments are completed, and my sister-in-law nearly recovered, we intend to leave this place to-morrow: but, before doing so, we thought it but right to ask you gentlemen to meet us here to-day, in order that you may understand what has appeared so mysterious about us, and explain the same, as I hope you will have the kindness to do, to your friends. Come, gentlemen, a glass of wine.”

“But,” said one of our party, “young Flibbert saw a grave in your garden, and a coffin, and all that. What was that, Doctor?”

“Oh,” said Henry, the married man, with a laugh, “that was my wife’s pet cockatoo! The poor thing died, and I promised my wife to give it decent burial in the garden; but when I heard the fellow on the wall, I fancied they would be for digging it up again; and, determined to disappoint them, I brought the bird back, and stuffed it, having acquired the art some years ago. Here it is, gentlemen.”

He opened a cupboard, and showed us the stuffed figure of a large white cockatoo, wanting only a glass case to be really a very handsome thing.

“Anything else, gentlemen?”

“Why,” said another of the party, “the strange lights that have been seen, and the strange sounds that have been heard; we should like to have them explained, if not too much trouble.”

“Well,” said he, “our experiments in chemistry and electricity produced some strange lights now and then; and we purposely frightened the fellows when they came to dig up the poor cockatoo; and I daresay we occasionally caused some strange sounds in the same way: but I fancy that for these latter the late lamented cockatoo is principally responsible. He was a deuce of a fellow to scream and chatter, though you wouldn’t think it, to look at him now. Take another glass of wine, gentlemen.”

We took one more glass, and then departed, feeling rather as if we were walking with our heads on the ground and our boots in the air. As we went out at the front door, I saw Miss Cringle at her window, panting to hear the news; and so I went up to communicate them to her, the others of the party not daring to breathe a word to anybody until they had told the whole story to their expectant wives. Of course, the tale was not long in circulating through Mudford; and I am afraid that, on the whole, it created a feeling of disappointment: for, though there was something very strange about it as it was, I think people in general would rather that the New Doctor had been a robber, and a murderer, and a villain of the deepest dye.

Next day the two Doctors, with Mrs Smith, and the housekeeper, and the stuffed cockatoo, all departed from Mudford, leaving instructions with Knox, the auctioneer, to sell the furniture for what it would bring. A few months after I got wedding-cards from Mr and Mrs Herbert Smith; and last Christmas I received a Stilton cheese and a barrel of natives from the same quarter.

And so ended the strangest affair which has ever occurred at Mudford during my long residence in the place.

POLITICS AT HOME AND ABROAD.

Seldom has the opening of Parliament been looked forward to with less of public or party excitement than at present. The country is in a remarkably tranquil mood, disposed to take all things very quietly. And yet the circumstances of the time are full of grave interest. An unparalleled disaster has befallen the gigantic fabric of our manufacturing industry; and abroad we behold an array of events which, a few years ago, would have sufficed to produce among us no small degree of uneasiness and excitement. But ever since the convulsions of 1848 broke up the long peace which settled on Europe after Waterloo—still more since the ambition of the late Czar led us to renew our experience of the realities of war—the people of this country have been becoming used to crises. Since 1859, especially, when the conviction was forced upon us that French Imperialism is still very much what it was in the days of our fathers, the public has begun to “discount” the contingencies of the future, and to insure itself against damage from their occurrence. We have made ourselves secure—at least as secure as needs be in present circumstances—against external attack; and we are well assured that we have no enemies at home—that never before were all classes of our people so united in bonds of mutual sympathy and goodwill, or so universally contented with our national institutions. A country so circumstanced is virtually impregnable; and therefore we can look forth from our happy island-home upon the troubles or wars of other States, not indeed in selfish indifference, but with a sense of security and a consciousness of power, which invest us with a tranquillity that may be mistaken for apathy.

The great and sad feature of the internal condition of the country is the cotton famine, which for a year past has weighed like a nightmare upon our manufacturing districts, extending its baleful influence over four millions of our people. The calamity came upon us so suddenly that there was little time to prepare for it. It is true, our liability to such a calamity had been pointed out, in language of serious warning, by one or two of our ablest political thinkers, and foremost among these by Sir Archibald Alison. But the parties most interested, the great cotton-lords and the manufacturers generally, despised the warning, and took no measures to avert disaster. Their faith in the doctrine of demand always producing supply blinded them to their danger. It was a noble fabric of industry, truly, which they had reared up—a mighty addition to the wealth and resources of the country—a vast field of employment for the ever-increasing population of our isles. The effect was as beneficial as if several thousand square miles of productive land had been gradually added to the narrow area of the British Isles—affording remunerative employment to hundreds of thousands of our people who must otherwise have emigrated, and proportionately adding to the power of the country and the resources of the State. But any thoughtful man, as he viewed the annually increasing growth of that great industry, must have trembled for its permanence; and now that the blow has fallen, every one must recognise the improvidence exhibited by the great chiefs of that industry. “We will buy only in the cheapest market,” they said: “an efficient demand will always secure an adequate supply.” And as long as there was the least hope of the cotton-dearth being over in a year or so, they resolutely declined to take any steps to obtain new sources of supply. They had overstocked the markets with their goods, and as long as there was a prospect of their old source of supply being available again by the time those surplus stocks had run off, it seemed to them better to content themselves with working their mills only half-time, than to procure future stability for their industry by an outlay of money. That outlay, indeed, would amply repay itself in the long-run; but no one likes putting his hand in his pocket; and month after month of increasing distress passed away without the manufacturers showing any disposition to move. Recently this inaction has partially given way; the continued dearth of cotton at length left the manufacturers no alternative but to open new sources of supply, or see their own fortunes ruined. The pressure of adversity is hard to bear, and we have no desire to scrutinise too closely the conduct of the manufacturers in this most trying crisis. Yet as a mere question of fact, as a singular political souvenir, it deserves to be noted that an influential body of these free-traders par excellence—men who had denounced bounties and privileges of any kind as alike unjust and impolitic—actually memorialised the Government to procure cotton for them in India, by encouraging the growth of cotton by means of bounties from the State! Mr Bright himself has recently advocated the same proposal. We trust, however, that the manufacturers are now convinced of the hopelessness as well as impolicy of such a project, and that they will do what every other class has to do—act for themselves, and with that energy and ability which so eminently distinguish them. The country has responded, and is still responding, nobly to the bitter cry of distress from Lancashire; but it is no part of the duty either of the public or of the Government to procure cotton for the mill-owners by the offer of State bounties.

Lamentable as is the distress which thus weighs upon so numerous and industrious a portion of our population, it is consolatory to know that never yet was a material calamity so redeemed by its moral aspect. National virtue never before was so strikingly displayed. We may thank Providence that the disaster has come in its present form. In the opinion of many good judges, the distress which now so lamentably prevails in the manufacturing districts, would have come upon us in the natural course of trade, as the result of the over-production of previous years. In such a case, it is not to be thought that public sympathy would have been so widely and heartily displayed, and that the accusing voices of the operatives would not have been heard against their masters. But happily the calamity has come in a shape which silences cavil, and unites the hearts and hands of all in the mitigation of the distress. The cause of the disaster was beyond our control; and the very over-production of previous years now proves advantageous—for the gradual sale of the surplus stocks at good prices (which in other circumstances would have continued to glut the market and check production) now helps to compensate the mill-owners for their losses, and enables them to act with liberality to the suffering operatives. And that, as a class, they do so act, we have the testimony of the noble Earl who, with princely munificence, generous sympathy, and statesmanlike intelligence, heads the movement for the relief of the distress. All classes, both high and low, are nobly doing their duty. The patient endurance of the suffering working-classes is heroic; the lively sympathy and active co-operation of the other classes of the community on their behalf are without a parallel. The change which has taken place, in this respect, during a single generation, is something marvellous. Formerly, under the pressure of hardships less great and equally beyond the power of any one to prevent, the working-classes became reckless and broke into outrage; and the rest of the community, which had done little by its benefactions to avert this outbreak of suffering, found itself compelled to take stringent measures against these organised conspirators against the public peace. Now all this is changed. It is needless, and it were unjust, to throw stones at the old times. What is now could not have been then. If we examine the causes of the great change which has supervened, we shall find it first in the increased intercommunication between all parts of the country; and, secondly, in the spread of education and intelligence. Railways and newspapers now bind together all parts and all classes of the country. Ignorance is the mother of apathy and disunion. When each city, or district, or class knew little of the character and concerns of the other parts of the country or classes of the community, it was vain to expect the ready sympathy and general co-operation on behalf of a suffering locality, such as, we rejoice to say, has become common now. Moreover, wealth has increased enormously in this country since the beginning of the century—and it is only the surplus wealth of a community that is available for the relief of distress. Let us thank God that we are as we are, without charging it as a social crime against our fathers that they acted differently. Let us rejoice that, heavy though the calamity be, it has at least become a means of uniting all classes of our people—classes who have so often warred with one another—in the bonds of sympathy and confidence; and that the British nation has at length perfected its social existence, by growing into a compact and harmonious community, every part of which knows intimately and sympathises heartily with the condition and concerns of the rest.

It is a not less remarkable feature of the times that in politics also all England now is nearly of one mind. We say “nearly,” for there is one class which is an exception, and the existence of which has an important influence upon the relative composition of the two great parties in the State. But, unquestionably, the great bulk of the nation is now of one mind in regard to political questions. In a country like England this is a truly remarkable condition of affairs, and suggestive of but one inference. Homogeneous nations under a centralised form of government—as in France—may readily conceive a universal passion for change, the nation acting together in its wisdom or madness like one man. But the case is very different in this country. The United Kingdom is an aggregate of the most opposite forces—it is full of conflicting interests, each intrenched in some vigorous organisation, whether of aristocracy, church, commerce, corporations, leagues, or companies. In such circumstances, a universal agreement of opinion in favour of altering a single part of our constitution, either in Church or State, would be an event little short of a miracle. Unanimity of political feeling in England, therefore, cannot possibly signify anything else than political contentment—the wish to rest and enjoy, satisfaction with the form and machinery of the Constitution, and a desire only to see the machinery of Government ably and honestly worked. And what else is this than Conservatism? It is Conservatism adopted by the whole nation. It is a mistake to attribute this universal Conservatism to the breakdown of democratic institutions in America. The “Conservative reaction,” to adopt the common but exceptionable phrase, had unmistakably manifested itself before a single shot had been fired in America—before the bloodless bombardment of Fort Sumter announced the approach of that deplorable conflict which has served to expose democracy in its worst and most contemptible form, and to reveal, in the bosom of republican America, a mass of corruption, imbecility, meanness, and malignity which, taken together, have never been equalled in the whole world. But if a Conservative feeling had been steadily growing up in England before the “bursting of the American bubble,” it is equally true that that great collapse of democracy has done much to give to that feeling its present universality. Abstract reasoning cannot affect mankind with the same force as actual experiment and practical demonstration. Every sensible man in this country now acknowledges—what nearly all sensible men for some years past felt, but lacked the courage to say—that we have already gone as far towards democracy as it is safe to go, and that another step like that proposed by Lord Russell would have carried us irretrievably over the precipice. This is the great moral benefit which we have derived from the events in America. The vast superiority of our mixed Constitution is now so demonstrated, that every man may now say what he thinks publicly and without reserve. Even men who have been all their lives supporters of the “Liberal” party—men who, up to the last moment, were in favour of a farther degradation of the franchise—now see the folly of their course, and, moreover, have an excuse for avowing their change of opinion. Hence it is that England is now all of one mind. And what is that, we repeat, but that all England is Conservative, and that the Liberal party in office is an anachronism?

There might be some excuse for this anomalous position of affairs, if the Liberal Ministry ever professed to believe that Liberal principles are still popular. But they do not—they cannot. After nearly ten years of selfish and most reckless trafficking in Reform Bills, Lord Russell himself repudiated his own work. He abandoned it in the same spirit of selfishness as he took it up. It was in the hope of reviving his faded popularity that he first proposed a further Reform Bill in the end of 1851; and, backed by a party as insincere as himself, he kept playing off his precious Bill, year after year, as a convenient party manœuvre against his Conservative rivals. But no sooner, when reinstated in office, did he and his colleagues find that they were about to be “hoist with their own petard,” than the Bill was shelved. Reform was not only abandoned, but treated with contempt by the Whig occupants of the Treasury Bench; and the Minister who had once shed tears when forced by his colleagues to postpone his Bill, at length, on the 5th of February 1861, not only buried Reform, but, like a wild Irishman, danced upon its grave! In their projects of ecclesiastical innovation, the members of the present Ministry have been equally defeated. When baffled in their attacks upon the State, they still thought it was a popular thing to assault the Church. In this also they have at length been undeceived: and now what have they left to do? They have not a single card left to play. Their whole list of measures, after having been deliberately considered by the nation, has been condemned and rejected with contempt. Like the Federal generals at Fredericksburg, they have tried attack after attack upon every part of their rivals’ position, and with every man they could muster, only to see every attack fail, and recoil in ruinous loss upon themselves. The Federal general, when condemned to inaction and menaced by a superior force, wisely abandoned his ground, and put a river between himself and his foe. It is time the Whig Ministry should execute a similar “strategic movement,” if they do not wish to fare worse than General Burnside, and be kicked across the Rappahannock, instead of avoiding a catastrophe by a timely retreat.

We have said that there is one exception to the unanimity of political feeling which now pervades this country, and that exception, we need hardly say, is the party of Radicals whose mouthpiece is Mr Bright. We can no longer call this the “Manchester” party; for, whatever may have been their sentiments hitherto, we have reason to believe that the views of Mr Bright are now repudiated by the greater part even of our manufacturing classes. But Mr Bright is incurable. All his life he has been a man of one idea, and one-ideaed he must be to the end. There must always be men of this kind. We must lay our account to have Radicals. Like the poor, they are always with us. And they are not without use in their way. This is a free country, and a few eloquent or blustering Radicals serve to “let off the steam” of their class, and serve to remind the sober-minded portion of the community what a very mad and drunken thing Radicalism is. Mr Bright and his followers may hold a place in political England as usefully as the drunken Helots did in the social usages of Sparta. But though we have no great zeal for the conversion of this Abbot of Unreason and his motley followers, we think the country will agree with us that they ought not to be taken by the hand by those in high places, and allowed to play their pranks in the government of the country. Yet this is just what must happen in the present anomalous position of parties. The country has no objection to hear Mr Bright speak on any subject and in any way he likes, either in or out of Parliament; but it cannot regard with indifference a position of affairs which makes his support indispensable to the existence of a Ministry. The Tories are not only the strongest party in Parliament, but now equal in number the Whigs and Radicals put together. By a slow and steady growth the Conservative party is regaining the predominant position which it held from 1842 to 1847, when a question, not of constitutional but of commercial policy, so lamentably disrupted its power. Now, as in 1841, the Whig Ministry is at its mercy, and is only spared for the sake of the gallant old statesman who heads the motley crew, and is worth all the others put together.

We see nothing surprising in this recovery of the Conservative party. The only surprising thing would have been if it had not taken place. It is not necessary, nor would it be correct, to attribute the recovery to any extraordinary generalship on the part of its leaders. In the five years which followed the Reform Bill, the Conservative party made almost as great a rally as they have done in the fifteen years which followed the split on the Corn-laws; and yet that split was not on a constitutional question, and the Conservative section which left the main body might have remained as good Conservatives as ever. The Conservative “reaction,” now in progress, and nearly accomplished, has been slow and tardy, but it promises unmistakably to be proportionately enduring. In the opinion of all, the work of Constitutional Reform has been carried as far as it is wise to carry it; and in the opinion of all, the Whig Ministers who, for a dozen years, have been urging us towards further innovations both in Church and State, have proved themselves to be unsafe leaders. As the sole means of retaining office, the Whigs now repudiate their old measures and principles—everything that was peculiar to them—and act the part of unwilling Conservatives. Now in regard to constitutional questions—which are the grand tests of difference between Whig and Tory—there is a notable difference between a change of opinion on the part of a Liberal and of a Conservative. The greatest and not least illusory boast of the Liberals hitherto has been, that all their distinctive measures have been carried in the end, and have been accepted by the Conservatives themselves; and, therefore, that the Conservatives have always been in the wrong, and the Whigs in the right. Such a boast, partially fallacious as to facts, is totally illusory in its logic, for it is to be observed that, as the capacity of the people for self-government is always increasing with the increase of wealth and intelligence, it may be that the Conservatives were right when they opposed a particular change, and right also when subsequently they adopted or acquiesced in it. But with the Liberals this is impossible. If Lord Russell’s Reform Bill was bad and worthy only of contempt in 1861, it must have been still more mistimed and worthy of all condemnation in 1851, when he first announced it. The same is true of the Ballot question and the other proposed innovations upon the Constitution. Thus one of two things must follow. Either the Whig Ministers were right and the whole country is wrong; or else, a more probable supposition, the country is right and the Whigs were wrong. If we accept the first alternative, what are we to think of Ministers who repudiate what they believe to be right for the sake of retaining office, and act the part of Conservatives when believing that the welfare of the country calls for “sweeping reforms?” If we accept the other alternative, can we, on a review of the last ten years, imagine a deeper depth of degradation than that to which Liberalism and its chiefs have now sunk? for while Liberalism has proved itself a perilous absurdity, its chiefs have not only endorsed that judgment, but have gleefully repudiated their old professions for the sake of postponing their fall from office.

In truth, the greatest retarding obstacle to the triumph of the Conservative party is the completeness of the triumph achieved by their opinions. Conservatism is now so universally the feeling of the nation, that there is no room for rivalry. Although the Liberals are in office, they know that their creed is now an absurdity—that the measures which they have so long vaunted and ventilated would now be scoffed out of the House, and held up to public ridicule in ‘Punch’ and the ‘Times.’ They feel that it is vain to contend against the Conservative feeling of the nation, and therefore they fall in with it. Their best defence, their best plea for being allowed to retain office, is based on the very fact that the triumph of their rivals’ principles is now too complete to be gainsaid. “It does not matter who is in office,” say the Ministerial apologists; “the country is all of one mind, and the policy of the Government must be the same whether Whig or Tory be in office.” They forget to complete the exposition by saying that that policy must be Conservative! Able and willing to eject the party of innovation from Downing Street, the Conservatives are naturally somewhat embarrassed to find the premises occupied by a set of men professing Conservatism. If Liberalism and Conservatism were to come into conflict, Liberalism would instantly go to the wall, and the Ministry be expelled by an overwhelming majority. But the quondam Liberals think of nothing so much as eschewing Liberalism: they will have nothing to do with it; they will back it no longer; they will not even name it lest they give occasion for a challenge!

Even supposing the quondam Liberals now in office were sincerely convinced of the folly of the measures which they so long supported, but which the country so emphatically rejected, they cannot be good Conservatives if they wished it. For to retain office they must propitiate the Bright party. They must throw them crumbs occasionally, smuggle little Radical clauses into otherwise good bills, and go into the same lobby with them on all questions which do not endanger their existence as a Ministry. This is a most irritating, vexatious, and contemptible game, and would justify the country in cutting it short by a vote of want of confidence. The Ministry now forswear all the Liberal measures as Government questions, but they support them with their votes and influence. They retain office in the character of Conservatives, but they give all the influence of office in favour of Liberalism. Such a system cannot last long.

A Cabinet so ignominiously circumstanced has not often been seen. Defeated again and again—impotent to propose a single measure of practical value—their only skill is shown in the way in which they evade a decisive trial of strength with the Opposition. And in the constituencies their only hope lies in the longevity of their supporters. For every two Whig or Radical seats that become vacant, a Conservative is sure to get one of them—still further swelling the triumphant phalanx of the Opposition. The leading journal itself now scoffs at the whole programme of Liberalism. When alluding to the programme of the Ministerial candidate for Southampton—namely, “Extension of the franchise, the Ballot, abolition of Church-rates, and progressive political and ecclesiastical reform”—the ‘Times’ rightly calls it “dreary old stuff,” and adds:—“There is not in the programme either a sentiment to raise the soul from the street mud, or a measure which can be said to be really before the British public. As a political statement it is at once hazy and pedestrian, unpractical and unideal. No reasonable being expects that either the franchise will be extended, or the Ballot introduced, or Church-rates abolished, unless it be by some compromise; or that there will be any very remarkable reforms, either in Church or State, for many a day.” And the same journal now claims for the Premier as his highest credit that he has “no principles!” As the ‘Times’ aims above all things to express public opinion, these are remarkable words, and show what a defunct, petrified, and wholly antediluvian thing Liberalism has become. We use the word Liberalism, of course, in its accepted sense, as equivalent to the opinions and measures of the party which has called itself “Liberal,” though with no special claim to the title—in fact, with less real claim than the Conservatives have; for the liberalism of the Liberals has been all in the air, and is now (happily for the country) nowhere; whereas the liberalism of the Conservatives, if of a more homely, is of a more genuine and practical kind, which pervades the whole scope alike of their measures and of their policy. To be truly liberal is a very different thing from being simply innovating; and although the bastard liberalism of the Whigs and Radicals is now justly discredited, we need not shrink from taking credit for the genuine and practical liberality which has characterised the administration of recent Conservative Governments. As regards administrative ability, the statesmen of the Conservative party can still more unquestionably claim a superiority over their rivals. One of the bitterest antagonists of Conservative principles lately admitted that Lord Derby’s last Cabinet was the most efficient Administration he had ever known; and every one who contrasts the activity and wise legislation of that Cabinet, in all its departments, with the “wasted sessions” which have marked the career of the present Ministry, cannot fail to endorse that opinion. Nor must we forget the immense negative as well as positive benefits which the country owes to the Conservative party. At a time like the present, when it is evident that the Conservatives are again about to be raised to power, with a fair prospect of a long term of office, it is right to remember what they accomplished as a party in the “cold shade” of the Opposition benches. Ever since the short-lived Administration of Sir R. Peel and the Duke of Wellington in 1835, the Conservatives have been able to foil the attacks of their antagonists upon the Constitution, both in Church and State. At that time the Appropriation Bill received at their hands its quietus, despite the shameful compact between the Whigs and the O’Connell party; and we can now name half-a-dozen measures inimical to the Constitution which have recently been resisted with equal success, despite a similar degrading compact between the Whigs and the Radical followers of Mr Bright. One has only to look back upon the last thirty years, and contrast the prospects of the country then with its condition now, to see how remarkable have been the achievements and how valuable the services rendered to the country by the Conservative party. As Sir Stafford Northcote well said when recently addressing the Conservatives of South Devon:—

“To the Conservative party the country is indebted for the fact that we have now a constitutional and ancient monarchy, and that we do not live either under a republic or a despotism; that we have a House of Lords respected and independent; that we have a House of Commons such as he would not say was ideally perfect, but such as fairly represented all classes; that we have a pure and Established Protestant Church, which is at once established and regulated by law, and yet is not a slave or tool of the State; besides other blessings which he need not enumerate. All this they owed to the gallant stand made by the Conservative party, and to the way in which their exertions had been backed up by the people throughout the length and breadth of the land.”

The sole prestige of the present Cabinet centres in the Premier. In the estimation of the country, Lord Palmerston is the Government. Ministerial candidates swear by no one else. Lord Russell is already becoming a name of the past, and in practical administration has proved himself the greatest blunderer of his day. As regards Mr Gladstone, the country has got sick of his clever and risky budgets, and sighs for a plain business-like balancing of income and expenditure, accompanied by as much economy as can be effected without impairing the efficiency of our national establishments. But Lord Palmerston, with fourscore years on his shoulders, has now a greater reputation than he ever had, or than is accorded to any of his contemporaries. England loves old statesmen. No Minister in these days need expect to acquire the confidence of the country under sixty, but, if he avoid any great failure, every year after that may be expected to add to his reputation. It is an additional sign of the times that the only popular statesman in the present Cabinet is an old Tory—one who grew up in the Toryism of Pitt, and for a dozen years was initiated in the management of war and the conduct of foreign policy under Castlereagh. In his old age, in the last and brightest phase of his long career, Palmerston acquires his fame in the very character in which he first entered upon office. It is as a War Minister that the Premier chiefly commands the confidence of the country. As a legislator he was never of any account; as a Foreign Minister he was bold, astute, and on the whole successful; but now that, as Premier, he can direct both the War Office and the Foreign Office, he has the widest possible scope for his peculiar abilities. And he has this great advantage, that he is not only a vigorous and sagacious director of our foreign policy, but the country fully believes in his vigour and sagacity—nay, great as they are, exaggerates them. He is the only statesman in England that the people would follow to war unhesitatingly. In some respects this may not be a matter of congratulation, but in other respects it is a great advantage. Foreign Governments, when they see England well armed, and know that she is ready to use her power promptly and energetically, if need be, will be cautious how they seek either to injure or insult us. This is unquestionably a benefit which we derive from the dictatorship of Lord Palmerston; and we have much need to acknowledge it, for it is the only one! The Cabinet without Palmerston is nothing. Fancy the same set of men with Lord Russell or Mr Gladstone for Premier, and the Ministry would not last a day. Foreign politics is still the great affair of the time; and, failing the present Premier, there are two men to whom the eyes of the country would by common consent turn, and these are Lord Derby and Lord Malmesbury. Beyond all question, these two statesmen are our great Foreign Ministers of the future; and, however troubled that future may be, the fortunes of the country will be safe in their hands. In the trying period of 1859, the Earl of Malmesbury displayed a discernment, firmness, and masterly tact, which now, though tardily, are fully acknowledged. When Palmerston was at fault—when that veteran statesman imagined that Napoleon did not purpose war, and when he kept repeating that “the Treaty of 1815 must be respected”—Lord Malmesbury had already seen through the game of the French Emperor, and took the ablest means to meet it. If deprived of Lord Palmerston, the Liberal party would not have a single man competent to direct the foreign affairs of the country; but there is no such lack on the side of the Conservatives. And this is fortunate—for it is evidently the Conservatives who are to be the predominant party in the State for a good many years to come, and it is upon them accordingly that the onerous duty of maintaining the honour and integrity of the country will chiefly devolve.

Lord Palmerston, there is no doubt, is the supreme director of the foreign policy of the Government. Lord Russell is allowed, more suo, to write extraordinary despatches, and to quote Vattel and Puffendorf to show how little he understands them; but whenever he takes a view which Palmerston thinks wrong, the Foreign Minister has to do as the Premier desires him. Thus it is no secret that the Foreign Secretary was in favour of the formation of Italy into two States—an idea which his chief very wisely negatived. And although not generally known, it is not less true that when, in May 1860, the French Government proposed a joint intervention, in order to prevent Garibaldi crossing from Sicily into Naples, Lord Russell was willing to acquiesce in the imperial project, but was overruled by the decisive and sagacious judgment of the veteran Premier. But when not thus in leading-strings, Lord Russell plays most fantastic tricks, so that Continental diplomatists have often wondered that such a mountebank should be the occupant of the British Foreign Office. The air of Germany seems especially to disagree with his Lordship, as three notable escapades suffice to demonstrate. There was first the grand mission to Vienna in 1855, whither his Lordship chose to go en famille, and from which he returned with such a progeny of blunders as astonished his colleagues, and induced even the model young Whigs to sign a round-robin begging him to resign, and not pull down the Ministry along with him. In the autumn of 1860 he was again in Germany, and the fruit of his cogitations in that foreign atmosphere was his memorable despatch of August 31, which he immediately afterwards repudiated by his still more memorable despatch of October 27. Once more he has been in Germany, and again the “black-fate” seems to have fallen upon him: for in the despatch which he wrote on the Danish question at Cobourg he has at once reversed the policy of his own and of all our other Governments during the last ten years, and taken part against a nation with whom we have especial reasons to be friends, and at the very time when such an act of unfriendliness towards Denmark was peculiarly out of place. Startling and incomprehensible as have been the blunders of Lord Russell, alike in domestic and foreign policy, it surpassed belief that he should have reserved his masterpiece of folly and incapacity to be directed against a nation, between whose dynasty and our own an official announcement had just been made of an impending matrimonial alliance.

Lord Russell’s despatch of 24th September, by which, for the first time, the British Government is made to side with the Germanic Diet in menacing the integrity of Denmark, produces an embarrassment for that country at the very time when the difficulties of the Scandinavian kingdoms were on the eve of a most happy solution. For two or three years past there has been a growing desire on the part of the Scandinavian peoples for closer union, by the consolidation of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark into one State. The difficulty was as to the means by which this was to be accomplished, and as to the form which the desired union of the cognate kingdoms should take. At one time it seemed as if an extraneous influence would exercise a malefic influence upon the process. At the beginning of September 1861 the King of Sweden, grandson of the French general Bernadotte, went by invitation to visit the Emperor Napoleon at Paris; and by some of the strange means which diplomatists have at command, it transpired that a secret arrangement had been come to by the two sovereigns that the King of Sweden should begin to play an ambitious game in the Baltic, supported by the Emperor of the French. Charles XV., youthful and ambitious of military glory, longed to repeat in the North the rôle which Victor Emmanuel had played in the South; and the purport of the agreement between the monarchs of France and Sweden was, that in return for co-operating with France whenever a necessity should arise, by disquieting or attacking either Russia in Finland, or Prussia through Holstein, the dominions of the Swedish King should be aggrandised by Finland on the east, and on the west by the absorption of Denmark. Of the agitation which was immediately commenced in Finland we need not now speak; but a Swedish propagandism was at the same time commenced in Denmark, both in the towns and in the rural districts, for the purpose of altering the succession to the throne of Denmark in favour of the descendant of Bernadotte. As the King of Denmark has no heirs, it had been settled by the “London protocol,” and the act of succession based upon it, that Prince Christian of Holstein-Sonderburg should be recognised as heir to the Danish crown: hence the first object of the Swedish party in Denmark was to get this Act set aside. And as it is stipulated by the Act that the accession of Prince Christian to the throne shall be conditional upon the consent and approval of the Danish people, every means was employed to render the hereditary prince unpopular.

The closing months of last year witnessed a most happy change. The jealous opposition of the King of Sweden has recently given way to feelings the very opposite. The difficulty which his ambition threatened to occasion has been solved in a manner which will happily secure the Scandinavian kingdoms against any such danger in the future, and, moreover, gives promise of uniting them on equal terms and by mutual consent into one powerful and harmonious kingdom. Prince Christian, the heir to the crown of Denmark, has a tolerably large family; Charles of Sweden has only one daughter. It seems that it is now arranged that the eldest son of Prince Christian is to marry the only daughter of the King of Sweden; so that, when Charles of Sweden on the one hand, and the present King of Denmark and his immediate heir (Prince Christian) on the other, shall have passed from the scene, the crowns of Denmark and Sweden will be virtually united, as the King of Denmark will then be husband of the Queen of Sweden;^[5] and in the generation following the crowns will be united de facto upon the head of their offspring. This will be a happy consummation in the eyes of the Scandinavians; it is desirable also as a matter of European policy. The Scandinavian kingdoms, though not rich either in population or resources, and at present of little weight as military Powers, occupy a geographical position of great strategical importance in naval warfare. Severed as they now are, neither of them could defend its own position—Sweden against Russia, Denmark against Germany. But if united, their seamen are so excellent, and their position so insulated, as to render their frontiers comparatively secure. They would need little assistance from any friendly Power; and yet, if that Power were a maritime one like England, they could render it in return the most important service. They hold the gates of the Baltic. Rifled cannon have now rendered the Sound totally impassable in the face of the batteries which crown the heights on either shore. Even in former times, Nelson only got through by hugging the Swedish shore, the batteries on which did not open fire. At present we are at peace, and we ever wish to remain at peace; but should the old and formidable project of a maritime confederacy be again tried against us—a project which it required all the naval genius of Nelson, and the secrecy and promptitude of the Copenhagen expedition, to foil—we shall be at no loss to comprehend the importance of having the gates of the Baltic held by a friendly Power. The cutting off the co-operation of the Russian fleet against us would be equivalent to an addition to our navy of fifteen sail of the line. It is only natural, then, that the Russian Government should now express its approval of Earl Russell’s proposal, which cannot fail to estrange England and Denmark, and also tends to obstruct the formation of an independent Scandinavian Power, which would naturally be a rival of Russia on the Baltic.

Seven years ago, when reviewing the contingencies of the future,^[6] we pointed out the importance to England of establishing a close alliance with the Scandinavian Powers, and dwelt on the natural ties and common interests which ought to make such an alliance easy of attainment and permanent in duration. The happy event, now about to be consummated, of a matrimonial alliance between the Royal Families of England and Denmark, will naturally cement an alliance also between the two countries. Before Prince Christian’s eldest son weds the only daughter of the King of Sweden, his eldest daughter will have become the consort of the heir to the British throne. This promises to be a most happy, as it is of all others, a most natural alliance. The Danes and English are kindred peoples. The former have given to the British nation the best portion of its blood. To our Scandinavian forefathers we owe our national love of the sea, our spirit of enterprise and adventure which carries us into all parts of the world; and also from them, as much as from the Saxons, we derive our love of freedom and free institutions. Royal matrimonial connections have not the importance they once had,—for the will of the nation has supplanted the mere personal will of the sovereign; but in the present case the nations are so kindred in blood, and have so many interests in common, that the people of England and Denmark are likely to be as good friends as their respective Courts could desire. Without attaching undue weight to the new relationship about to be formed between the two countries, we may at least hail it with satisfaction as certain to make either nation think more of the other, and in so doing to perceive the striking similarity of character and community of interest which exist between them. We are happy to feel assured that it is not as a political match that this marriage is to be contracted by the son of our beloved Queen, and that the bride-elect possesses in an eminent degree those advantages of person, charms of manner, and piety and amiability of character which captivate affection and secure domestic happiness. Nevertheless, while as a good princess and queen she will win our hearts, it is an additional pleasure to feel that, as sister of the future Scandinavian King, she will rivet an old and natural alliance, and draw into closer bonds the kindred races of Northern Europe.

In such a position of affairs, it was to be expected that if any change took place in the policy of England towards Denmark, it would be towards the side of friendliness. Yet the very reverse has been the case. Reversing the policy of his predecessors, and even of the present Government, Lord Russell has withdrawn the support of England from the Danish Government, and now backs up the Germanic Diet in its unfounded pretensions and serious attack upon the integrity of Denmark. His Lordship’s bizarre blundering on past occasions has prepared us for almost any folly which it was in his power to commit; but his cruel blunder in regard to Denmark is so inexplicable, so wholly devoid either of reason or excuse, and it has been perpetrated, too, in so insensate a fashion, that it is extraordinary and intolerable even for Lord Russell. The States of Holstein and Lauenburg are German duchies which for centuries have formed part of the Danish kingdom, but which are also members of the Germanic Confederacy, and over which, accordingly, the German Diet can claim a certain degree of control. When the present King of Denmark framed a common constitution for his whole dominions, the German Powers objected, and by hostile menaces compelled the Danish Government to give a separate Constitution to Holstein and Lauenburg. Such an imperium in imperio is a grave difficulty for Denmark, as it would be for any State; and recently the Danish Government has agreed “to accord to the Estates of Holstein a legislative and supply-granting power, in conformity with the decrees of the Diet of 4th March 1860 and 7th February 1861.”^[7] So far as Holstein is concerned, the Danish Government, to its own great embarrassment, has virtually consented to all that the German Diet demands.^[8] But the Diet is not content, and has now undertaken a similar interference with the condition of Schleswig. Unlike Holstein, Schleswig is a purely Danish province. In 1823 the Prussian Government itself declared that “the Confederation was excluded from interfering in the government of Schleswig, as that duchy does not form one of the Confederated States (Bundeslande), and is therefore beyond the influence of the Diet.” The sole ground upon which this assumption to interfere is now made, is, that so many Germans have migrated into Schleswig that they now compose half of the population. Upon this preposterous ground the Germanic Diet demands that Schleswig also shall have a separate constitution! If this were conceded, the small territory of Denmark would contain no less than four separate constitutions, and four rival Estates—namely, of Lauenburg, Holstein, Schleswig, and Denmark Proper—each of which could give check to the others, and bring the whole administration to a dead-lock. To add to the extravagance of this project, the German Diet, after long declining to formulate its demands, proposes to accomplish the autonomy of the Danish provinces which it so modestly takes under its charge, by the establishment of a new constitution for the Danish kingdom, in which each of the four provinces or states of the kingdom shall have as many representatives as the other; so that Lauenburg, with its 50,000 inhabitants, shall have as many votes as Denmark Proper, with its 1,600,000 inhabitants. And as Holstein and Lauenburg are both German, and as Schleswig is half German, it would follow that the whole legislation and policy of the kingdom would be regulated by the German element, which numbers only about 750,000 out of the two and a half millions of the population.

The Germanic Powers have no right of any kind to interfere with the affairs of Schleswig, and their attempt to do so is one of the most glaring assumptions of power which a stronger State ever put forward at the expense of a weaker. The Danish Government, with that simple-hearted daring which distinguishes the Scandinavian race, has given a direct negative to the demands of the Diet; and rather than permit a foreign Power to interfere in its domestic affairs, is ready, with its handful of gallant and dauntless forces, to give the Germans a sample of Danish pluck and prowess. The Danish Government has not flinched an inch, although Lord Russell has strangely transferred his support to the other side. His Lordship, indeed, does not adopt in its exact form the Germanic programme; he does not propose that there shall be a common constitution for the whole kingdom, in which each province shall be equally represented; but he would give Schleswig (as well as Holstein and Lauenburg) a separate constitution from Denmark Proper, and would give to each of these provinces a co-ordinate power with the rest of the kingdom. He would have a “normal budget” on the lowest scale, to be fixed every ten years by agreement among the four Estates of the kingdom, any one of which can reject it, and thereby “stop the supplies” at once. And all extraordinary expenses—i.e., such as exceed this minimum budget—must be sanctioned annually by each of the four Estates. Anything so impracticable was never before proposed by a statesman, and two years ago was expressly condemned as impracticable by Lord Russell himself.^[9] Lauenburg, with its 50,000 inhabitants, could bring all Denmark to a dead-lock. It is extremely doubtful whether even the normal or minimum budget would ever be voted by all of the Estates; but in regard to the extraordinary expenses, which would actually be called for every year, disagreement would be inevitable. Fancy Denmark wishing to increase her fleet—that fleet which Germany regards with so much jealousy, having been made to feel its power—would Holstein or Lauenburg agree to the vote? Or in the case of a rupture with the aggressive German Powers, would not these provinces avail themselves of the power which Lord Russell and the Germanic Diet propose shall be conferred on them, in order to stop the budget being voted in any form?

Of all the mad pranks which Lord Russell has played, this is certainly the most insensate. What a precedent he makes! With equal reason France might interfere in the affairs of our own country, and demand that Ireland should have a Parliament of her own, and also that the consent of that Parliament should be requisite before a single tax could be levied in any part of the United Kingdom! With equal reason Russia might demand separate governments for any or every part of the Turkish empire, and, moreover, insist that each of these parts should have a power of checkmating all the others. We naturally protest against the despatches of Lord Russell on account of their absurdity—we protest also on account of their injustice and substantial hostility to Denmark; and not less do we protest against any such act of interference being committed at all. Is it not strange, ludicrous, humiliating, to see our Foreign Minister lecturing little Denmark on her duties to her own subjects, and submitting a constitution cut-and-dry for her adoption, even prescribing minute details of taxation, &c.; and yet, at the very same time, our Government dare not say a word to the Cabinet of Washington—nay, is full of ample apologies for one of its own members who happened to express an opinion which is universal in this country—and stands by in humble silence and inaction while “the North fights for conquest and the South for independence”? The contrast is striking and humiliating. The attempt to coerce little Denmark is ignoble—the proposals which it is desired to enforce are absurd in their form, and most impolitic in their object. We wait to hear what the British Parliament will say to a policy in which folly and meanness are combined in equal proportions.

Strangely enough, the Continental Power which is foremost in demanding these “reforms” in the internal Government of Denmark, is itself exhibiting a melancholy spectacle of a government at feud with its own subjects. For three years past the condition of Germany has been growing more and more distracted. In the search for unity it is becoming divided; and nowhere does dissension show itself so much as in the very Power which was looked to as the natural head and rallying-point of the work of union. We deeply lament the troubles of Prussia, and not less deeply do we lament the injurious influence which they exercise upon the general condition and prospects of the Fatherland. There is no State in Europe which more tries the temper of the British public than Prussia. As a people we desire to think well of her; and yet ever and anon she checks our sympathy by some astounding exhibition of the dullest wrongheadedness. The Germans have little that is bad in their nature, but they are provokingly dull, and get into “insuperable difficulties” which might easily be evaded. The present conflict in Prussia between the King and the Chambers is a difficulty of their own making. We have not here the case of a despot wishing to crush the liberties of the nation, nor a revolutionary Chamber whose main desire is to overturn the Throne. After watching the progress of the quarrel from the commencement, and with the impartiality which comes easily to an observer at a distance, we are convinced that the King and the Chamber are alike sincere in their desire to do right, and that their lamentable strife has arisen from what was at first but an accident of the position.

The cause of the quarrel between the Prussian Government and the popular branch of the Legislature dates from 1859. In that year two distinct but correlative sentiments became universal in Germany. One of these was the insecurity of the Fatherland from external attack, owing to the defects of the military organisation; the other was a revival of the old desire for a closer union among the States of the Confederation, with a view to the ultimate unification of Germany. These sentiments were shared by both the King and the Parliament of Prussia; but the King was most influenced by the first of these sentiments, the lower Chamber by the second. The Chamber desired that the Government should immediately commence measures for the unification of Germany—measures which could only be carried out by “mediatising” or sweeping away the lesser courts. The King, an honourable and conscientious man, declined to attack the rights of the other Sovereign Princes of Germany, but addressed himself with zeal to the improvement of the military resources of his own State. The result of military investigation proved that, under the existing system of only three years’ service, the average training of the soldiers was too short to perfect them in the use of the arms of precision, and the new manœuvres thereby rendered necessary, by which the fortunes of every battle are now determined. Hence the Government, acting upon the report of a committee appointed to investigate the matter, ordered that the minimum period of military service should be lengthened from three years to five: a regulation which, the conscription being kept up at its previous amount, also augmented the numerical strength of the army. When the Chambers met in 1860, the lower House made great opposition to the part of the budget which related to the additional expenditure thus rendered necessary; but they allowed it to pass for that year only. At the same time they carried a motion against the Government, urging the Government to adopt a “strong policy,” with the view of promoting the unification of the Fatherland under the leadership of Prussia. Averse as the King was to adopt a course of action inimical to the rights of the other German Courts, the Government could not fail to see that, if the Chamber were thus resolved upon aggression, it furnished an additional reason why the Prussian army should be kept in a state of efficiency. As the Prime Minister observed, it is ridiculous for a State to adopt a “strong policy” without having a strong army to back it. Accordingly in the following year the obnoxious item again made its appearance in the Budget. The opposition of the Lower Chamber became more vehement than ever: but again the military estimates were allowed to pass provisionally, and with a distinct intimation to the Government that nothing would induce the Chamber to sanction the vote in the following year.

Thus, last year, the affair came to a crisis. The Lower Chamber or House of Commons struck out of the Budget the sum required for the increase of the army made in 1859 by the prolongation of the term of service. The Upper Chamber replaced it. But on the Budget thus amended, or rather thus restored to its original form, being returned to the Lower Chamber for its approval, the Chamber refused to pass it. Thus the country was left without any Budget at all. In this dilemma the Government decreed, that as no Budget had been passed, their only course was to fall back upon the Budget voted by the Chambers in the previous year (which contained the allowance for the increase of the army), and the taxes have been levied accordingly.

It is curious to observe that both the Government and the Lower Chamber appeal to the Constitution in support of their totally opposite views. One article of the Prussian Constitution, as revised ten years ago, decrees that the Upper Chamber shall have no power to alter, but simply to reject, the Budget. Another article decrees that the Budget shall be treated as an ordinary legislative enactment: and for all such enactments it is decreed that they cannot become valid without the united consent of the two Chambers and of the Crown. It is also decreed by the Constitution, that in the event of no Budget being passed, the Budget of the previous year shall continue in force. In regard to what actually took place, the Lower Chamber can maintain that the Constitution was violated by the Upper Chamber altering (it is allowed they had the power to reject) the Budget. But that is a question between the two Houses with which the Government has nothing to do. The only fact which the Government had to deal with was, that no Budget was passed. (And obviously the result would have been the same if the Upper Chamber, instead of altering the Budget, had simply rejected it.) Accordingly, no Budget having been passed, the Budget of the previous year continued in force in virtue of the Constitution itself. It is a mistake, therefore, to suppose that any Bill of Indemnity is required by the Government. The levying of taxes during the past year, to the amount of the previous Budget, was no special act of theirs, but was enjoined by the Constitution. We extremely regret, therefore, to see that the Prussian Deputies appear resolved to act as if the Government had committed an actual violation of the constitution,—which most certainly it has not done.

While the King and Parliament of Prussia are thus demonstrating how much mischief may be occasioned even by good intentions—by a simple-hearted but dull-witted desire on either side to do what is right—and thereby destroying the high prestige which once made the hegemony of Germany appear to be the natural reversion of Prussia, the other great leading Power in Germany is displaying a broad freedom, frank constitutionalism, and statesmanlike ability, which are winning for her universal admiration and respect. Despotism has been but a recent and transitory phenomenon in the history of Austria. It ought to be remembered that members of the House of Hapsburg were the first royal champions of political reform in Europe. Not to go back to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when the Estates of Austria enjoyed an amount of influence second only to that possessed by the Parliament of England; the Grand-Duke Leopold immortalised himself by his bold and thoughtful reforms in Tuscany, which, though established nearly a century ago, were cherished by his subjects as in unison with the times even down to the present day. The Emperor Joseph II. played a similar part in the history of Austria, exhibiting a liberality of opinion so ardent, and in those days so singular, that he was regarded in most quarters as an eminently rash, though amiable and philanthropic theorist. He commenced the work of reform without any pressure from below, and he trusted to regulate and complete the work happily by placing himself at its head. The wild outburst of the French Revolution of 1789, which startled and checked Pitt in his projects of Parliamentary Reform, produced a similar effect in other countries; and with reluctance and regret the Austrian Emperor paused in his work of liberalising the administration, and the long war with France diverted the thoughts of his successor into another channel. Francis-Joseph has resumed the work which fell incomplete from the hands of Joseph II. He has also undone at a stroke the project of autocratic centralisation, which was in part a mistake, and in part a lamentable but necessary consequence of the revolutionary contests of 1848–49—which, it ought to be remembered, proved fatal to the liberties of the people in France not less than in Austria. It is only within the last fifteen years that the internal government of Austria assumed that despotic form which has been so injurious to the character of the House of Hapsburg in free countries like ours. While France still groaned under the old regime which was overthrown in 1789—while she bled under the atrocious despots of the Republic, or was held in chains under the brilliant tyranny of Napoleon I.—the subjects of the Austrian crown enjoyed personal rights and local institutions which, in comparison, were perfect freedom. No State, during the long war with France, received so many deadly blows as Austria; yet all those blows were firmly sustained, and those reverses nobly retrieved, by the steady and gallant loyalty of its subjects. It was the practical freedom and good government enjoyed by the Austria peoples which prevented the sundering of an empire above all others most liable to be split up under the effects of great reverses, and which rallied the noble races of the Tyrol and Hungary around the throne of their sovereign in the gloomiest hours of the empire. The Emperor Francis-Joseph is now doing his best—wisely and bravely—to retrieve the mistakes, and obliterate from memory the stern necessities of the recent past. And he is already reaping his reward in a revival on the part of his people of the old loyalty which formerly so brightly illustrated the annals of Austria.

These happy changes in Austria have produced a corresponding change of public feeling towards her in this country. Four years ago, the epithet “Austrian” was devised by the Liberals as the most telling which could be employed against the Conservative Government. It was purely an “invention of the enemy;” for the Conservative Government showed no special favour to Austria, but only found in her a Power desirous of peace, and willing to make concessions; whereas they rightly discerned in the French Government a fixed resolve to force on a war, and to evade all attempts at a compromise. But who would use the same epithet as opprobrious now? Lord Palmerston himself, who more than any British statesman has acted an unfriendly part towards Austria, now goes out of his way to attend a dinner to Baron Thierry at Southampton, and to express himself in the most friendly terms towards that Government. Austria, in truth, during the last three years, has been doing more for the spread of constitutional government than all the other Governments of the Continent put together. The French Government has felt itself compelled to follow in her wake—first, by allowing freedom of debate to the Chamber of Deputies; and, secondly, by abandoning the right to open “extraordinary credits” on the mere will of the Sovereign; the example in both cases having first been practically given in the new Austrian Constitution. Unhappily the press of France has still to envy the freedom so fully enjoyed by the journals of Austria.

If such has been the influence produced on other countries by the enlightened principles of government now in operation at Vienna, they have not failed to produce an equally powerful effect upon public feeling in Germany. Prussia, once so popular, is falling behind, grumbling; while Austria, without showing any unfriendly rivalry with Prussia, is completely outstripping her in wisdom and liberality of policy. For some years past the Prussian Government has been talking of the necessity of reforming the Germanic Diet, yet without proposing any definite remedy for its defects: last year Austria, without any palaver, quietly tabled a proposal which would most effectually liberalise the Diet, and in the best of all ways. At present the Diet consists entirely of delegates from the respective Governments of the Confederated States,—in fact, it simply represents the Courts; but alongside of the present Diet Austria proposes that another “House” be constituted, the members of which shall be chosen by the Parliaments of the different States; so that, while the existing Diet represents the Courts, the new body would represent the people of Germany. This proposal was adopted by a majority of the Committee of the Diet; but Prussia, instead of being foremost in welcoming such a project, as from her professions might have been expected, sulked—and not only sulked, but raged against the proposal, and hinted that she would even employ force to resist its adoption. As the Diet, however, has declined to accept the resolution of their Committee, the Austrian plan of reform is at present in abeyance; and Prussia, desirous to regain the initiative, now talks of outbidding Austria in the liberality of her proposals. Nevertheless, Prussia has appeared to great disadvantage in this act of rivalry. In truth, it is impossible not to recognise the superiority in statesmanship and breadth of views in the Austrian Government and legislators compared with those of Prussia. And the Prussians must be blind indeed if they do not see that the mingled folly and dogmatism which, scorning compromise, has now brought constitutional government to a dead-lock at Berlin, as well as the opposition which, from motives of jealousy, the Prussian Government is offering to the reform of the Diet, is rapidly destroying their prestige in Germany, and is making many an eye now turn to Vienna, which formerly looked for a leader of the united Fatherland in the House of Hohenzollern.

The great embarrassment which still hangs round the Austrian Government is the refusal of the Hungarians to join with the other sections of the empire in sending representatives to the Reichsrath, or Imperial Parliament. The prospect of the Hungarians foregoing their demand for a wholly separate administration is better than it was, yet still is not so great as the friends alike of Austria and of Hungary could desire. A separate administration for Hungary, while all the other parts of the empire are represented in the Reichsrath, would never work. The Hungarians must either desire it as a step towards entire separation from Austria, or else they are making a mistake. And if they desire to separate from the German, Polish, Sclavonian, and other nationalities which constitute the Austrian empire, the best or only issue to which they can look forward is union with a similar medley of certainly not superior races, in a Confederation of the Danube. We do not see what the Hungarians would gain even if the issue were accomplished in a manner the most favourable for them; but if we take into account the many formidable opposing obstacles, and the probability that the expectations of the Hungarians would be considerably disappointed, the only judgment at which we can arrive is, that the Hungarians are much better as they are, and would act wisely in frankly accepting for themselves the liberal constitution which is already in operation in the other parts of the empire. The Magyars are men of high spirit, great ability, and perhaps the most eloquent speakers in Europe. Moreover, they will count fully fourscore votes in the Reichsrath: surely, then, they need have no fear of not having their fair proportion of influence in the assembly,—the greater likelihood is that they would have too much.

The Hungarian question is a misfortune for all Europe. For, until it is settled, there can be no pacific solution of the Venetian question. As long as Hungary remains in a state of sullen rebellion, the cession of Venetia to Italy would only bring an enemy close to the heart of Austria, and permit a direct co-operation between the Hungarians and their “sympathisers” in Italy. But if Hungary were reconciled, and were again playing her part loyally as an integral portion of the Austrian empire, we believe that the Austrian Government would no longer hesitate to rid themselves of the Venetian difficulty, even though the Quadrilateral is invaluable to them as the most impregnable frontier and position in Europe.

There is still one year more in which a happy solution of both of these serious questions may be attained. Austria has still a year for negotiating with the Hungarians, without the interference of hostile Powers. Italy is in no position to provoke a conflict with Austria for the possession of Venetia. Her old “ally” France has now turned against her, so unceremoniously that even the Italian Government, so ready to hope all things, can no longer mistake the Imperial intentions. The fall of Garibaldi has removed the only fear which Napoleon had before his eyes. Garibaldi was a name of power not only in Italy, but in Europe; and it was at any time within the range of possibility that a great movement would arise under his leadership, which would either compel the French to evacuate Italy, or produce a conflict which would endanger Napoleon’s position in France, and rupture the sagacious policy by which he vibrates to and fro between despotism and revolution, without wholly breaking with either. There is no man in Italy—we might say in Europe—who can do that now. Napoleon is at ease, and snubs the Italian Government with little ceremony. For not only has Garibaldi been removed from the scene, but the prestige of Victor Emmanuel has at the same time received a serious blow. Aspromonte will never be forgotten—in many quarters never forgiven. Rattazzi has, in consequence, been ignominiously overthrown; and in Southern Italy the shooting of the great national hero has given increased force to the discontent with the King’s Government. France now kneels securely on the breast of Italy, and Napoleon does not abandon his hope of being able to break up the new kingdom, and throw Italy back into a state of disunion. There is nothing now for Italy but to improve and consolidate her internal condition, and await the course of events; which, if she play her part wisely, will force the French Emperor to come to her terms, in order that he may profit by her help. One advantage the Italians have certainly derived from recent events: they now know that they must rely only on themselves, and that they have no concessions to expect from the French Emperor but such as they can make it for his interest to yield. The Government, although receding somewhat from the bold and manly position taken up by the late Foreign Minister, General Durando,^[10] has at least desisted from those vain repetitions by which it formerly hoped to soften the heart of the Emperor. They are now resolved to take the matter into their own hands, and to make themselves strong enough to enforce their rightful claims. In his address to the King on New Year’s Day, the President of the Deputies said that the Chamber was deeply impressed with the necessity of reorganising and arming the country, and did not hesitate to add—“When we have an army of 400,000 men, and a chief like you, Sire! we shall see if any Power will dare to gainsay our claims to have our own.” The Italians are in the right track now; but they will find that before they are ready to enforce the evacuation of Rome, Napoleon will anticipate a hostile collision by timeously bargaining to cede to them their capital in return for renewed co-operation between the two Governments.

In the neighbouring peninsula a revolution has taken place which startled Europe by its unexpectedness, and which may by-and-by give rise to important consequences. For the present, however, no such consequences attend the movement. The Greeks have been orderly, peaceable, and discreet; and although we entertain no doubt that this movement will ere long extend itself at the expense of Turkey, and will hasten the final disruption of the Ottoman Empire, we trust that the Greeks will continue to act with prudence, and not compromise their fortunes by hasty efforts to revive a Panhellenic kingdom. Their choice of Prince Alfred to be their new King—the founder of a dynasty whose territories would soon comprise all Greece, and the isles alike of the Adriatic and the Ægean—was a great compliment to England, and a proof that the quick sagacity of their race has survived amidst the decay of many nobler powers. It was an instinct, a universal emotion, which declared that they would have no King but Alfred of England; and that instinct was as correct as if the question had been debated in popular assembly for a twelvemonth before. Prince Alfred comes of a good stock, and has had an excellent training; and England is the Power who could, if she would, either assist or oppose the Greek revolution more effectually than any other. England is the stanchest ally of the Porte; but the Greeks knew that they could reckon also upon our still greater attachment to freedom; and, moreover, that if they did secure our alliance, they should not have to pay for it, as their neighbours in Italy had to pay France. Still more, England is commercial, full of capital and enterprise, and the Greeks might reasonably conclude that if our Prince became their King, the bleak hills and deserted harbours of the Morea would soon bloom with verdure, or teem with new life. What they will do now that they are disappointed in their hopes and unanimous desire, we do not know. It is certainly a hard thing for a people that they should be checked in the choice of a King on account of a treaty which they had no hand in making. Were Prince Alfred to become their King, his kingdom probably would ere long rise into an influential place in Europe; but certainly the vacant throne possesses no such attractions as would lead us to desire the annulment of the treaty which forbids it to be filled by an English Prince. The choice of Prince Alfred by the Greeks, however, has had the good effect of checking any dreams of ambition which may have been entertained by Russia, by inducing her to adhere to the treaty, instead of putting forward Prince Leuchtenberg as a candidate for the throne. Important as may be the issues likely to flow from this outburst of new life on the part of Greece, the only matter of any consequence to us at present is the proposed cession to it of the Ionian Islands by Her Majesty’s Government. The cession is to be made only upon certain conditions, and therefore may never take place at all. If the Greeks do not care to comply with these conditions, or if the Ionian people prefer to remain under our rule, that is their concern: and our Government will at least have given proof that its retention of the Ionian Islands does not proceed from a grasping selfishness, but simply (in fulfilment of the trust reposed in us by the other Powers in 1815) to prevent those islands falling into bad hands. In a few years hence, at most, there can hardly fail to be hostilities on the Adriatic, whether between Austria and Italy, or between the Porte and some of its provinces, not unassisted by other Powers; and in such a case our possession of the Ionian Islands would be very embarrassing to us, unless it were known and felt by every one that we remained there only in discharge of a duty to Europe which profited us nothing. Times are greatly altered since 1815: neither France nor Russia has the least chance of ever again being left in possession of Corfu and its sister islands. With a united Italy on one side of the Adriatic, and the growing maritime power of Greece on the other—States which can hardly be enemies, but ought to be firm allies—there is small chance of an extraneous Power being allowed to establish itself in the basin of the Adriatic. Nor, in these times when the principle of nationality is the foremost regulating force in politics, is it likely that Europe would remain indifferent to so flagrant a violation of that principle, as well as of common justice.

As France has her hands full in Mexico, and is waiting till the pear is ripe in Germany, we may count upon another year of peace in Europe. We regard with no jealousy the intervention of France in Mexico. It cannot possibly do us harm; and if the result of the intervention be to raise Mexico to new life and productiveness, the world may congratulate itself on the happy change. Meanwhile, it acts as a diversion, and turns the military ambition of France away from Europe; so that for another year we may take our ease or follow our industry, without fearing to be disturbed by any serious hostilities. Still there is no assured tranquillity; we shall have no Long Peace such as the last generation enjoyed; and for many years to come the country is likely to feel the advantage of keeping its naval and military resources in a state of thorough efficiency.

In a few days Parliament will meet, and already the usual rumours and speculations are current as to the programme of the Ministry. It is very safe to say that there will be nothing in the Speech from the Throne to provoke a conflict. The most prominent feature of the Speech will doubtless be the paragraphs which relate to the great distress in the manufacturing districts, and the admirable spirit with which it is borne by the sufferers and alleviated by the wise munificence of the other classes of the community. There will be an expression of regret for the continuance of the lamentable contest in America, and a hope that it will soon terminate. The country will be congratulated on the extraordinary vitality of its trade and commerce, indicated by the Board of Trade returns, despite the unparalleled disaster which has befallen our greatest branch of industry; and the commercial treaty with France will come in for another laudation. Nothing will be said of the new and indefensible policy of the Government on the Danish question; but the affairs of Greece will be alluded to in a friendly spirit. And finally, Parliament will be congratulated on our friendly relations with all foreign Powers, and the happy prospect of a year of tranquillity. It is rumoured that Mr Gladstone, with his characteristic restlessness, means to propose important changes in regard to the position of the Bank of England; and we have no confidence that the changes proposed by a statesman so crotchetty will be for the better. Although the subject is not likely to be alluded to in the Royal Speech, it appears certain that very considerable reductions are to be proposed in all branches of the national defences. If the work of retrenchment is to be accomplished in a right way, by studying economy without destroying efficiency, the country will be grateful. But if the reduction in the naval and military estimates is to be made, not by improving the organisation and administration of these departments, but by summarily cutting them down—by stopping the work in our dockyards, and dismissing trained soldiers and sailors whose places will by-and-by have to be refilled by raw recruits—it will be a recurrence to the old penny-wise pound-foolish economy which produced the breakdown and disasters of the Crimean war. Time will show. Meanwhile we rejoice to know that the Conservative party, augmented alike in numbers and in prestige, is now so powerful that it ought to be able to resist successfully any measures of wrong policy or mistaken legislation on the part of the Government. The gains and losses at the elections since the last change of Ministry show a net balance of ten seats in favour of the Conservative party—two of which are the new seats, Lancashire and Birkenhead; so that the Conservative Ministry, which was defeated in June 1859 by thirteen votes, would now, in similar circumstances, have a majority of five. But, in truth, the circumstances are not similar. Reform since then has been seen through and discarded; and the feeling of the country is now so universally Conservative, that, if in office, the Conservative party would command a great majority. As it is, they are already so strong, that, when united, they can determine the judgment of the House. Happily the constitution of the State is no longer in danger. Lord Russell’s Reform Bills have had their day, and have been consigned to the limbo of vanities. The constitution of the Church, however, is still an object of virulent and persevering attack; and we trust that the Conservative party will not relax its vigilance and energy from an over-confidence in its successes of last session. Let them remember East Kent, where they threw away an important seat by sheer remissness and mismanagement, and not allow reverses to befall them in Parliament from a like cause. Church questions are now the great battle-field between Conservative and Liberal. Let the Opposition strain every nerve to convert the drawn battle in Church-rates last year into a crowning and decisive victory; so that the work of Radical innovation be finally brought to an end, and that the Conservative party may find its last difficulties vanquished even before it quits its present position on the Opposition benches, and enters upon the pleasurable responsibilities of office, which so soon await it, and of which it promises to have a long term.