Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. No. CCCCLX. February, 1854. Vol. LXXV

A GLANCE AT TURKISH HISTORY.

Had history recorded the increase and decrease in the numbers of mankind with the attention it has bestowed in chronicling the names of the worthless dynasties which have devoured the wealth of nations, and annihilated the accumulations of national industry, the history of the Turks would occupy a prominent place in the annals of the human race. No other people has made such extensive conquests. They subdued China before the Moguls, and they formed a considerable part of the armies of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, which subdued Russia and ravaged Syria. Even at the present day, though fallen from their ancient power, they are spread over a considerable portion of Europe and Asia, from the Adriatic and the Danube to the lake Baikal and the sources of the Lena. Their original seats are supposed to lie round the Altaï mountains. The Turkish nations of the present day, besides the descendants of the Seljouks, the Turkomans, and the Othomans, who dwell in the sultan’s dominions, are the Usbeks, the Ugours, the Kirgises, the Baskirs, the tribe called Nogay Tartars, and the so-called Tartars of Astrakan and Kasan. The real Tartars, or Moguls, are a different people, and the Kalmuks on the Volga are of Tartar, not Turkish race.

The only modern European nations which pretend to be mentioned in Scripture, are the Turks and Russians. Historical antiquaries tell us that Togarmah is used for Turk; and they affirm, that the Targhitaos of Herodotus, whom the Scythians called the founder of their nation, and the son of Jupiter, is identical with the Togarmah of Moses and Ezekiel.^[7]

The Russians can boast of much more precise notice in Scripture than their enemies the Turks. Though their name is omitted in our translation, it occurs in the Septuagint three times, and under the peculiar ethnic denomination in which it reappears in the Byzantine historians. The word is Ῥὼς, and on this name Gibbon remarks, “Among the Greeks this national appellation has a singular form as an undeclinable word;” but he does not mention that it is found in the Septuagint. The second and third verses of the thirty-eighth chapter of Ezekiel, according to the Greek text, read thus: “Son of man, set thy face against Gog, the land of Magog, the chief prince of the Russians (ἄρχοντα Ῥὼς), Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him, and say, Thus saith the Lord God, I am against thee, O chief prince of the Russians, Meshech and Tubal.” And again, in the first verse of the thirty-ninth chapter: “Therefore, son of man, prophesy against Gog, and say, Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of the Russians, Meshech and Tubal.”

The Russians are said also to be noticed in the Koran, though not with the same distinctness, under the name of Al Rass. In the chapter Al Forkan, which is the twenty-fifth of Sale’s translation, it is said, “We have prepared for the unjust a painful torment. Remember Ad and Tamud, and those who dwelt at Al Rass.” In the chapter called the letter Kaf, which is the fiftieth of Sale’s translation, we also find: “The people of Noah, and those who dwelt at Al Rass, and Thamud, and Ad, and Pharaoh, accused the prophets of injustice.”

The earliest authorities, however, who furnish us with an account of the Turkish nation as it now exists, with the distinct nationality and language preserved to the present day, are the Byzantine historians, Menander and Theophylactus Simocalta. The latter historian gives a very interesting account of the condition of the Turks in the sixth century of our era. They were then the sovereigns of a great city called Tavgas; they were the most valiant and populous of nations; they lived under the protection of just laws, and carried on an extensive commerce. Tavgas is supposed to be the name of a Chinese city, which was then one of the seats of the Turkish government, for there is no doubt that somewhat before this period the Turks had conquered a considerable part of the north of China. Indeed, traces of the language of these early conquerors are still preserved, which are identical with the Turkish spoken to-day at Constantinople, for time has effected less change in the Turkish than in any other European language. Collateral evidence concerning the power of the Turks in central Asia during the latter part of the fifth, and early part of the sixth centuries, is afforded by the history of the life and travels of Hiouen-thsang, recently translated by Monsieur Julien, whether that work be really the composition of a Chinese contemporary, or only a Chinese compilation from earlier Arabic authorities.^[8] It is certain that about the commencement of the sixth century the Turks ruled all central Asia, as far south as the Hindookoosh, including the ancient Sogdiana and Bactria.

The first political intercourse between the Turks and a European state occurred towards the middle of the sixth century. The great khan of the Turks sent an embassy to Justinian I., to persuade the Roman empire to refuse an asylum to the Avars. The dominions then ruled by the great khan formed the first of the three great Turkish empires which have exercised an important influence on the social condition of the Christian nations, both in Europe and Asia. The second of these empires was that of the Seljouk Turks, which caused the crusades, and ruined the Byzantine empire. And the third was that of the Othoman Turks, which destroyed the Greek empire, and has long been the master, patron, or tyrant, of the patriarchs of Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria.

The first Turkish empire took its rise from the oppression of the Avars, who were the dominant people in Asia, and who are supposed to have been a mixed race of Mogul and Turkish origin. The oppression of the Avars was submitted to as long as the body of the Turkish people was confined by its circumstances to an agricultural and pastoral life. The population being dispersed in small communities, which lived without much intercommunication, was composed of as many isolated tribes as there are springs in the plains they inhabitated; and these tribes were as incapable of acquiring common motives of action as the population of the islands in the eastern seas. But the scene changed in the fifth century. The Turks who dwelt on Mount Altaï grew rich by mining operations and manufactures. They became the principal traders in iron and steel, and the manufacturers and merchants of the arms and armour required in the Avar empire. But the government soon endeavoured to appropriate the wealth which it saw was created by the industry of its subjects to administrative purposes. Taxation was increased, and monopolies were established, to enable the court of the Avar emperor to display the power of centralisation. Governmental pageantry, court spectacles, and military pomp, consumed the wealth of the people in the unknown capital of this vanished empire; while the Turkish people, now inspired by common feelings, called for an administration that would dig wells, and construct cisterns and caravanserais in the desert. The Turks were now united by the lessons which their trade had disseminated through every province. With improved intercourse they had gained a more enlarged experience, and acquired national feelings. They at last rose in rebellion; and before the middle of the sixth century, the first great Turkish empire was founded by Toumen the blacksmith, the ancestor of Genghis Khan, and Timor the lame. This empire extended from the Caspian sea to the ocean. The great Khan of the Turks, Askel, who sent an embassy to the Roman emperor Justinian I., is supposed to have been the son of Toumen.

In the year 568 another embassy arrived at Constantinople from the great Khan Dizaboulos, with a letter for Justin II., written in the Scythian character, which, whatever it was, was not unknown to the learned interpreters of the Roman foreign office. One great object of Turkish diplomacy had been to get possession of the whole of the silk trade with Europe, but the Turkish ambassadors had been astonished to find that Justinian had already succeeded in introducing the culture of the silk-worm in the Roman empire, and that the imperial court was rich in native silk, manufactured in Asia Minor and the islands. The ambassadors of Dizaboulos, however, concluded the first formal treaty between the Turks and the emperors of Constantinople; the bond of union between the courts of Mount Altaï and Byzantium was hostility to Persia, and very profound and enlightened views concerning the maintenance of the balance of power in the East, while the tie which then connected the interests of the Turks with those of the Romans and Greeks was commerce.

The long wars between the Persian and Roman empires, and the arbitrary measures of the Persians, had stopped all commercial communications between India and Europe through the Persian dominions. The countries on the shores of the Mediterranean had in consequence been compelled to draw their supplies of Indian and Chinese produce, and the productions of the Spice islands, of which there was then an immense consumption, by way of the Red Sea. This trade, even as early as the time of Pliny, was so extensive as to excite the wonder of that aristocratic Roman. In the sixth century it had greatly increased, and both Arabia and Ethiopia were in a most prosperous condition, from the great profits it poured into those countries. In the year 523 the king of Ethiopia was able to collect a fleet of thirteen hundred ships in the Red Sea, and to obtain abundant supplies for a large army on the coast of Arabia, where a single ship and a company of infantry would find it difficult to procure provisions for a week. After the reign of Justinian this commerce rapidly declined. The increase of piracy on the coast near the entrance of the Persian gulf, and the wars of the Ethiopian kings in Arabia, were simultaneous with the poverty, depopulation, and destruction of capital in Africa and Italy, caused by the Vandal and Gothic wars of Justinian. At this crisis, when Alexandria and Rome were rapidly declining, the security which the extent of the Turkish empire and the policy of the great Khan afforded to merchants, turned a great portion of the Eastern trade towards Constantinople. The Indian traders began to prefer the caravan journey through the deserts of central Asia, to the tedious and dangerous navigation of the Red Sea. By sea they could no longer venture to visit the intermediate ports from fear of pirates, while on the land journey they could carry on a profitable trade in slaves, and in exchanging the precious metals, at many stations on their way. The great importance of the slave trade at this time in central Asia is proved by the circumstance that the emperor Tiberius II., A.D. 578–582, formed a corps of fifteen thousand mamlouks, composed entirely of purchased slaves, imported into the Roman empire by the traders engaged in the Indian or the fur trade. Had the supply continued, and had the successors of Tiberius II. pursued the same policy, the Roman empire would in all probability have been overthrown by Turkish mamlouks, as that of the caliphs of Bagdat was by following a similar military system at a later period.

The first Turkish empire was not of long duration. The Khazar kingdom, whose relations with the Roman and Persian empires in the hour of their decline give it an important place in history, arose in its western fragments, and inherited a considerable portion of its power and commercial influence. But the Khazars, though called Turks by the Byzantine historians, Nicephorus the patriarch and Theophanes, are supposed by modern scholars to have been a people of mixed race.

There are several points connected with the history of the rise and fall of the first Turkish empire which are interesting, as marking an era in the progress of civilisation. At no previous period in the history of mankind were greater changes made in the commercial, political, and religious ideas of mankind. Religion was then closely connected with political organisation. Christianity was identified with the Roman government; the religion of Zoroaster with Persian domination. The fact that both Christianity and the religion of Zoroaster were declining in the sixth century is unquestionable. Historians have not clearly explained the causes of a revolution so degrading to human nature. In Arabia, in central Asia, and in Spain, an extensive conversion to Judaism heralded the extraordinary rapidity with which the lizard-eaters of Arabia, led by the followers of Mahomet, exterminated the religion of Zoroaster, and converted the majority of the inhabitants of Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Africa to Mohammedanism. It is evident that an internal canker in the social condition of the Christians in the Roman empire, and of the inhabitants of Persia, prepared the way for the desolation of many of the richest provinces of the ancient world.

The second Turkish empire was founded by the Seljouks in the eleventh century. Its power grew up on the political decline of the caliphate of Bagdat and of the Byzantine empire. The dominions of the caliphs had been dismembered, and Bagdat itself had been plundered by Turkish mamlouks, before it was conquered by Togrulbeg with his Seljouks. The Byzantine empire, which, by the creation of a systematic and legal administration, had reinvigorated the expiring energies of the eastern Roman empire, had declined into a pure despotism, and the rulers of Constantinople were rapidly devouring the wealth and diminishing the numbers of their subjects by financial oppression. The exploits of Togrulbeg, Alp Arslan, and Malek Shah, may be read in the pages of Gibbon, which have secured them fame wherever English literature is known. Many traces of their handiwork are visible at the present,—monuments of what is called their glory. When they entered the countries between the Persian Gulf, the Caspian, the Black Sea, and the Mediterranean, they found them filled with cities, which, though declined in splendour and wealth by the loss of their municipal administrations, in consequence of the rapacious centralisation of the Roman, Byzantine, and Mohammedan empires, were nevertheless still well inhabited, and surrounded by a numerous agricultural population. But with the coming of the Seljouks, “the verdure fled the bloody sod.” They were a nomade people, and their armies were composed of nomadic tribes, who drew their supplies from the flocks and herds which moved with them. The inhabitants of cities were their enemies unless they became their tributaries; and in order to preserve a garrison in the countries they conquered, it was necessary for them to exterminate the cultivators of the soil in the richest and most central plains of their dominions. An encampment of tents could only be secure from surprise by being surrounded to the extent of a day’s journey by untilled pastures. Similar desolation has been effected in agricultural countries for ignobler objects. In England the traveller may still see the effects of an arbitrary act of devastation, perpetrated about the same period, by William the Conquerer, in the New Forest; and in wandering through Asia Minor many of our readers have probably passed over districts as fertile as the plains of Poland and Moldavia, on which wheat never grows, but which the page of history informs us were inhabited by an industrious agricultural population, until the towns were destroyed, and the population exterminated, by Kutulmish the lieutenant of Alp Arslan, and Suleiman his son, the lieutenant of Malek Shah. The Seljouk empire was soon divided into the three secondary kingdoms of Roum or Iconium, of Syria, and of Persia. It was subdued and rent into fragments by the successors of Genghis Khan, and in the fourteenth century the Othoman empire arose amidst its dismembered provinces.

Othman, the eponymous hero of the Othoman empire, entered the Seljouk empire of Roum with his father, who was the chieftain of a small tribe consisting of four hundred families. In the year 1289 he was appointed governor of the town of Karady-hissar by Aladdin III., the last Seljouk Sultan of Iconium. The market held on Friday at Karady-hissar was a trading mart of great local importance. A judge sat in the centre of the people to decide every question that arose without delay, and without appeal. Othman frequently occupied the judicial seat. It happened that, as he was presiding, an important dispute was brought before him for decision, in which a Christian of Belokoma in the Greek empire complained of the injustice of a Seljouk noble of Kermian. Othman decided in favour of the Christian, and the equity of the sentence extended his fame, and gave additional importance to his government. Years rolled on. Many emirs established themselves as independent princes, and have given their names to several provinces in Asia. Sultan Aladdin III. died in the year 1307, and Othman secured to himself a position as independent as any of the Seljouk emirs. Just before his death, he conquered Brusa from the Greeks, and laid the foundation-stone of the Othoman empire.

This new Turkish empire is remarkable for its rapid progress and firm consolidation, but still more so for the singular fact that it never reposed on a national basis. The four hundred families who accompanied Othman’s father into the Seljouk empire never became the nucleus even of an Othoman tribe. The Othoman empire threatened Europe with conquest; the Othoman armies were long invincible; the Othoman administration was superior to every contemporary government on the European continent; but, during the period of Othoman greatness and power, there was no such thing as an Othoman nation. Of the forty-eight grand-viziers who conducted the administration from the taking of Constantinople to the death of Sultan Achmet I. in 1617, only three or four were of Othoman or Seljouk families, while more than thirty were either renegades or children of Christian parents brought up in the Mohammedan religion. The other born Mussulmans were not even of Turkish race. Few absolute monarchies have preserved their pristine vigour with the same unimpaired energy as the Othoman, and none have passed triumphantly through greater disasters. Few national governments, indeed, could have survived the fearful ordeal of the defeat at Angora, and the conquest of Asia Minor by Timor. Neither Timor nor any of his contemporaries supposed that it was possible to re-constitute the Othoman government; and, indeed, the ease with which it regained its power over the Greek Christians and the Seljouk emirs, is a singular political phenomenon.

This vitality was due to the institutions implanted in the government as the very breath of its life, by Orkhan the son of Othman, the greatest legislator of modern times. As a lawgiver, Orkhan was something between a Lycurgus and a Loyola. At all events, he puts the modern constitution-makers of Europe to shame. They strive to improve the rotten fabric of their political institutions by patching the old despotic garment of Roman law with the new cloth of representative institutions, forgetting that the rabid appetite of centralisation swallows the old garment and the new patches far more easily than the boa-constrictor can swallow a blanket. The institutions of Orkhan were superior to the Code Napoleon and its progeny, in as far as they were framed on the exigencies of the time, and modelled on the demands of a progressive state of society—not borrowed from an extinct people in a different social and political condition.

We have no space to enumerate Orkhan’s institutions. It is sufficient for our purpose to notice the keystone of the fabric which raised a small band of emigrants from Mesopotamia, before three generations had elapsed, into the founders of one of the great empires of the earth. A tribute of Christian children, imposed by Orkhan on the people he conquered, was the basis, the cement, and the keystone of the Othoman empire. Never before were the laws of humanity and the principles of justice so systematically violated for so long a period with such success. The Othoman empire really dates from the year 1329, for it was in that year that Orkhan assumed the power of coining money, placed his name in the public prayers, and promulgated his laws. From that time he was regarded as the founder and the legislator of a new state, and not as the ruler of a Seljouk emirat. Orkhan made his household the nucleus of his empire. The strength of his dominions was, by his legislation and policy, concentrated within his palace walls. Under his roof was united a college, conducted with all the order and talent of a college of Jesuits, and a range of barrack-rooms, in which a discipline prevailed as severe as that of Lycurgus.

The history of the institution of the tribute children, and the formation of the corps of janissaries, is this: The Mohammedan law authorises—and, indeed, commands—every Mussulman to educate unbelieving children who have fallen into his power as orphans, in the Mohammedan faith. As the military usages of the Seljouk empire gave the Sultan a fifth of all the spoil taken in war, Orkhan soon became possessed of a numerous household of Christian slaves, whom he might have sold like the other Seljouk emirs, and hired mercenary troops with the produce, or filled his palace with concubines and poets, and devoted himself to the pursuit of pleasure and fame. Orkhan sought instruments to gratify his ambition, and to extend the dominion of the Koran. His wars as the ally of the rebel emperor and hypocritical historian Cantacuzenus, furnished him with a large supply of slaves from the Greek empire. The base ambition and rapacity of the rival emperors of Constantinople, induced them to allow Orkhan to insert a clause in his treaties, authorising him to transport Christian captives to Asia through the Greek territory. But it was difficult, by means of war, to secure a constant supply of healthy and intelligent children of the tender age required for their conversion, since the Mohammedan law strictly prohibits the forced conversion of prisoners who have attained the age of twelve. Orkhan’s great object, however, was to obtain a constant and regular addition to the young neophytes in his household. Either from his own impulse, or at the suggestion of his brother, Aladdin, who acted as his prime minister, or of his relation, Kara Khalil, who was his most intimate counsellor, he at last resolved to impose a fixed tribute of children on every Christian district he conquered. The measure was highly approved by all pious Mussulmans, and, strange to say, it met with little opposition from the Greek Christians. The empire of Constantinople had been so long the scene of civil war, and its provinces were so desolated by the fiscal oppression of the imperial administration, that famine prevailed among the Greek population in Asia and Europe for several years; and many parents saw no mode of saving their children from starvation but by sending them to the serai of Orkhan. The tribute of Christian children established by Orkhan was extended and systematised by his son, Murad I., and formed the keystone of the political and military power of the Othoman empire, until the corruption of the corps of janissaries by the introduction of other elements. The tribute of Christian children, however, continued until the year 1685, when it was formally abolished.

The tribute children were generally collected between the ages of seven and nine. They were at first lodged in the Sultan’s palace, and carefully instructed in the principles and forms of the Mohammedan religion under the ablest teachers, selected by Orkhan, who studied their dispositions and mental capacities. They then entered on a course of elementary knowledge and gymnastics. As their mental capacities were developed, and their physical strength increased, they were divided into several classes. Some, destined to become “men of the pen,” were educated in legal and administrative knowledge, and from them the officials in the civil and financial administration were usually selected. Many became secretaries of state, judges and viziers. Another division was disciplined as “men of the sword,” and the celebrated corps of janissaries was at first composed of select individuals from this body. This college of conquering missionaries, when formed by Orkhan, consisted of only one thousand, but before the end of his reign it had increased to three thousand; and when Mohammed II. took Constantinople, the number had attained twelve thousand. The tribute children were also numerous in the ranks of the cavalry, artillery, and police soldiers of the empire. Never, indeed, was so terrible an instrument of absolute power created so rapidly and so completely beyond all external influence as that which Orkhan formed. The tribute children were all members of the household of the Othoman Sultan. They had no ties of family or country, and felt no responsibility but what they owed to the prophet and the Sultan. At the beck of the Sultan, and with a fetva of the mufti, they were ready to strike down the proudest noble of the Seljouks, to shed the purest blood of the Arabs, and to trample on all the hereditary feelings and prejudices of the courts of the Caliphs. Against the Christian nations they were animated with the most fervent zeal; for it was a principal part of their education to infuse an enthusiastic wish to extend the empire of Islam. Thus Orkhan made Christian parents the most active agents in destroying the Christian religion. It is impossible to reflect on this lamentable occurrence without feeling that, had the Greek emperors and the orthodox priests of the period given their subjects and their parishioners as good an education as Orkhan gave his slaves, the attacks of the Turks might have been triumphantly repulsed.

That the system of education pursued in the palace of Orkhan must have derived some of its excellent qualities from the family system of Othman’s household, cannot be doubted. The Othoman tribe was not morally corrupted, like the society of the Seljouk Turks; the history of their empire bears strong testimony to the fact during several generations. The Othoman sultans were, during the early period of the empire, educated on the same system, and in the same manner, as the tribute children, and no state can show such a long succession of hereditary sovereigns remarkable for great talent. The Othoman institutions testify the sagacity of Orkhan and Murad I. more than their rapid conquests. Bayezid the Thunderbolt, though his rash pride caused the defeat of Angora and the ruin of the empire for a time, was liberal and generous to his Christian subjects, whom he admitted freely to his society. Mohammed I., who restored the empire ruined by his father’s ambition, was a staunch friend and a kind master, though, in his hostilities, as old Phrantzes says, he was as obstinately persevering as a camel. Murad II. distinguished himself by his attention to the administration of justice, and swept away many of the abuses which, under the Greek emperors, had exhausted the fortunes of the Christians. If any of his pashas or judges oppressed the Christians in his dominions they were severely punished. Mohammed II., the conqueror of Constantinople, united the activity of youth with the sagacity of age, both as a warrior and a statesman. He possessed considerable literary and scientific knowledge, and had made great progress in astrology, then the fashionable science both among Christians and Mussulmans. He was fond of reading, and spoke the Turkish, Arabic, Persian, Greek, Latin, and Sclavonian languages with fluency. Such is the character of the early sultans for six generations, as transmitted to us in the pages of their mortal enemies, the Byzantine Greeks. Other authorities tell us that these infidels were ready to receive suggestions for the improvement of their army and their civil administration, and that they were indefatigably engaged in submitting new ideas in the civil administration, and new inventions in the art of war, to the most rigorous examination. Activity and intelligence were stimulated in every branch of the public service by the example of the prince. The consequences form the staple of early Othoman history. New combinations in war and politics presented themselves daily to every Turkish pasha, which called for a prompt decision; and as it was incumbent on him to transmit a report of the reasons which had determined his conduct to an able and despotic master, he soon learned prudence in counsel as well as promptitude in action. For two centuries we find nothing vague and indefinite in the operations of the Othoman sultans, or of the pashas intrusted with the command of their armies. The first modern school of generals and statesmen was formed in the Othoman empire.

The general causes of the decline of the Othoman empire are well known. The janissaries, instead of being tribute children, were transformed into a garde nationale, like what we have seen flourish and disappear at Paris. But the logical principles of a paternal monarchy still exist at Constantinople. The Sultan is connected with his people, but can have no ties of family. He ought not to be the son of a free woman, but the child of a slave, destitute of every family tie, in order that no personal attachments and family sympathies may interfere with the cares of administration.

At the present moment we hear it asserted on all sides, that the Othoman administration is making great progress in restoring energy and intelligence in the government. Yet there are some who insist that the progress is small; that it is an empire without roads, and a government without a people; a central administration which every subject, be he Christian or Mussulman, detests for its financial rapacity and systematic contempt for justice. Inshallah! there is some truth on both sides, but it is not exactly our clue to separate the wheat from the tares, as they resemble one another so much at Stamboul as to confound the skill of European diplomatists. We know to our cost that there is no road either to Brusa or Adrianople fit for a French diligence, and that an abortive attempt was made to form a road from Trebizond to Erzeroum.

The great feature of the Othoman empire at the present day is this, that capital cannot be profitably employed in the improvement of the soil, and, strange to say, this peculiar feature of its social condition is common to the new-created monarchy of Greece, and to no other European state. Trade often flourishes, cities increase in population and wealth, gardens, vineyards, and orchards grow up round the towns from the overflow of commercial profits, but the canker is in the heart of the agricultural population; a yoke of land receives the same quantity of seed it did a hundred years ago, and the same number of families cultivate the same fields. This is the most favourable view of the case; but the fact is, that many of the richest plains of Thrace, Macedonia, and Asia Minor, are uncultivated, and have only the wolf and the jackal for their tenants. In Greece, too, under the scientific administration of King Otho, and with a representative government à la Française, we see the plains of Thebes, Messenia, and Tripolitza, present the same agricultural system which they did under the Othoman government, and agriculture in general quite as much neglected and more despised. Now the line of demarcation between civilisation and barbarism really consists in the profitable investment of capital in the soil. The agricultural population is the basis of a national existence, and unless the soil produce two bushels of wheat from the same surface where one formerly grew, and fatten two sheep where one merely gathered a subsistence, a nation gains little in strength and wellbeing though its cities double their population. The political and social problem, with regard to the governments of Constantinople and Athens, which now requires a solution, is, to determine the causes that prevent the cultivation of wheat on the European and Asiatic coasts of the Archipelago, and in the fertile island of Cyprus. The provinces between the Danube and the Don were in a similar condition when Akerman, Okzakoff, and Azof, were Turkish pashaliks; under the Russian government, they supply France and England with grain. Now, the grain-growers of Turkey could furnish half the grain exported at present from the Black Sea, and they could obtain much higher prices for their produce in consequence of the great saving of freight to consumers. Even the fertile districts of Bithynia and Thrace, bordering on the Sea of Marmora, than which there are no finer corn-districts in the world, cannot furnish Constantinople with a regular supply of wheat; and the Osmanlees would often suffer famine in the capital of their empire, unless they were provisioned from the provinces taken from them by the Moskof gaiour.

For our part, we must say that it is not unreasonable to entertain some doubts of the improvement which has manifested itself in the Othoman administration proving permanent, until we see some increase of the agricultural population. When the citizens of Stamboul and Athens begin to colonise the country, it will be time enough to talk of the regeneration of the Othoman power. And unless the population of the kingdom of Otho of Bavaria, which possess all the advantages to be derived from universal suffrage, joined to the inestimable liberty of walking about the streets with pistols and Turkish knives stuck in the belt, begin to abandon its passion for coffeehouses, and find pleasure and profit in the cultivation of the fields, the improvement of the Greek nation will not be generally admitted, even though Athens become a clean, elegant, and flourishing city. There must be an evident increase in the amount of the produce of the soil from a given number of acres, before those who study the political history of nations can be persuaded of the feasibility of the project of restoring a Greek empire.

MACAULAY’S SPEECHES. [9]

As we never had the good fortune of moving in that circle of society to which the power of retailing anecdote, with minute circumstantiality, was considered as the proper passport—as we never were invited to listen to the small scandals of the group collected at Holland House, or the smaller delivery of the contents of commonplace books, which, in less renowned Whig coteries, is considered the perfection of sprightly converse—we are not ashamed to acknowledge our momentary oblivion of the party, who, in the sonorous verse and rounded periods of a brother dramatist, recognised his own thunder. We cannot at this moment accurately remember whether it was the figurative Puff or Plagiary, or the real Cumberland, who preferred that accusation; and, therefore, we frankly admit, that we lie at the mercy of those gentlemen who consider a slip in an anecdote, or an erroneous name and date in a fragment of gossip, as the evidence of deficient education, and the token of unpolished intercourse. We allude to the story in question merely because the preface to Mr Macaulay’s collected speeches exhibits a curious specimen of the wrath which may be excited by another method of conveyance. It is not the appropriation of his thunder, but the non-appropriation of it, which seems to have roused Mr Macaulay to a point of very vehement indignation. It appears that a London publisher, Mr Vizetelly, availing himself of a licence which the law permits—namely, that of reprinting speeches which have been publicly delivered—conceived that the issue of a collection of Mr Macaulay’s speeches might possibly prove a paying speculation. He reprinted, as we are given to understand, from “Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates,” a number of these orations; but, in his preliminary advertisement he appears to have announced that he did so “by special permission.” That phrase ought not to have been used; or if used, it should have been accompanied by a distinct reference to the party who granted the permission. Nine out of ten of the reading public would certainly conclude, from the terms employed, that Mr Macaulay, not the proprietor of Hansard, had authorised the publication; and, so far, there is just ground for complaint. It was not only natural, but proper, and due to himself, that Mr Macaulay should have taken steps to disavow any connection with, or any countenance given to the enterprise of the enigmatical publication. But he has not contented himself with a broad disclaimer. Stung to the quick by some absurd blunders which the self-constituted editor has committed, and which are specially referred to in the preface, in terms of vehement indignation, he has thought it necessary for his own fame to suspend “a work which is the business and the pleasure of my life, in order to prepare these speeches for publication.” It is no compliment to Mr Macaulay to say that the public will not thank him for having done so. The desire and eagerness, on the part of the public, to receive a new instalment of his History, is only equalled by their repugnance to peruse speeches upon subjects the interest of which has long gone by—a repugnance not lessened by the impression that, even when new, the speeches were not of a superlative degree of merit. We are sorry that because Vizetelly—whom Mr Macaulay supposes to be actuated by a desire of attaining the same distinction which was formerly enjoyed by Curll—should have mistaken Pundits for Pandects, and magnified the city of Benares into an oriental nation—because he has made the gifted orator “give an utterly false history of Lord Nottingham’s Occasional Conformity Bill”—or because he has represented him as saying “that Whitfield held and taught that the connection between Church and State was sinful,” whereas Whitfield never said anything of the kind, nor was Mr Macaulay so ignorant as to have averred that he did,—we say we are sorry that because Vizetelly did these things, our brilliant, though tardy historian, should have considered his reputation so dangerously imperilled, as to depart from his legitimate and most interesting labours, for the purpose of presenting us with a mediocre and uninspiring volume of speeches. It is true that he avers reluctance, nay, even disinclination to the task. If that were his real feeling, he need not have troubled himself much about the speculations of Vizetelly. During the last twenty years, many public speakers—nay, some men who may be classed as real orators—all of them far more distinguished than Mr Macaulay, for power, energy, pathos, wit, and influence, have gone to their graves; and yet no attempt has been made, though the absence of copyright in speeches might have encouraged the speculation, to publish their works in a collected form. If we want to form an idea of the styles of the late Earl Grey, or Lord Durham, or Sir Francis Burdett, we must necessarily have recourse to the Mirror of Parliament. The filial piety of their relatives, great as it was, did not lead them to the generous error of supposing that their speeches would hereafter rank with those of Demosthenes or Cicero. In our own day no man, as a popular orator, equalled Daniel O’Connell; yet where are his collected speeches?—and be it remembered that popular oratory is essentially Demosthenic, and that O’Connell could produce a greater effect upon a mixed audience—which is the test of oratory—than any other man of our time. Where are Shiel’s speeches? In Hansard—where, we hesitate not to say, the speeches of every man of the slightest eminence in public life ought to be allowed to remain, without separate collection, at least during his own lifetime, and until his career is accomplished. Indeed, there are many prudential reasons, at the present day, against the collection of senatorial speeches. No one has proposed to issue those of the late Sir Robert Peel, although there can be no doubt that such a publication would afford some curious subjects for commentary. It would serve the same purpose as the ancient collections of commonplaces—loci communes, loci rerum, &c.—from which the tyro in rhetoric might draw arguments adapted for immediate use on either side of a question. In such a collection all possible pros and contras would be found, not drily stated, but set forth with elaborate ingenuity. One speech would give the Protestant, and another the Catholic side of the question—one while we should find the orator supporting agriculture against manufactures—another, manufactures against agriculture; the zeal and sincerity being in both cases the same. Then, what a charming miscellany Sir James Graham has it in his power to offer to the public! What deftness—what dexterity—what amazing complexity of tergiversation would be exhibited by a collection of his Parliamentary speeches! We feel almost inclined to advise Mr Vizetelly to ransack Hansard for the Netherby harangues; the more so because Mr Macaulay, in his own edition, has taken care to insert nothing calculated to irritate Sir James. That is not altogether fair, and it is certainly the reverse of valorous. Mr Macaulay had occasion, in his place in Parliament, to direct vigorous speeches both against Sir Robert Peel and against Sir James Graham. He tells us now in his preface that “it was especially painful to me to find myself under the necessity of recalling to my own recollection, and to the recollection of others, the keen encounters which took place between the late Sir Robert Peel and myself;” and he pays a very handsome compliment to the memory of the deceased statesman. That is graceful, amiable, and, we doubt not, entirely sincere. Nevertheless he publishes verbatim, what he said in debate against Sir Robert Peel, who is no more; whereas we find no trace of his famous speech in the letter-opening case, directed against Sir James Graham, who is the living colleague of Lord John Russell. The omission may be accidental; or Mr Macaulay may think the speech in question not so felicitous as to be worth recording. If the latter, we differ from him. It was a spirited speech—much more nettlesome and pungent than threefourths of those which he has included in the present volume; and we have no doubt that Sir James Graham, if appealed to, will corroborate our opinion. Be it observed, however, that we do not by any means maintain that Mr Macaulay was bound to reprint his diatribe against Sir James. We make these remarks for the purpose of showing how unwise it is for any man to become the editor of his own speeches; seeing that he must either give huge offence to the living, or let them escape scot-free, whilst he repeats his strictures on the dead. After all, we think he would have acted prudently in submitting to the “great wrong,” which Mr Vizetelly, under the tacit sanction of the law, which in theory is held to countenance no wrong, has found it his interest to inflict. We rather fear that he has been too hasty in intermitting his historical labours. Had some excessively imprudent speculator in literature chosen to risk his capital by reprinting from Hansard the speeches of Lord John Russell or of Lord Aberdeen, we are certain that Mr Macaulay, if consulted on the subject, would have advised these eminent statesmen—even although the ignoramus of an editor had distorted the nature of their arguments, and substituted Pandects for Pundits—to abstain from putting forth their lucubrations in a collected form. We have that confidence in his judgment and discretion, when called upon to advise others in matters of a literary nature, that we cannot doubt such would have been the tenor of his recommendation. But, unfortunately, in regarding matters personal to themselves, the great majority of mankind use glasses materially differing in focus from those which they assume when investigating the affairs of others; and it is painful to remark that, on this occasion, Mr Macaulay has acted as his own optician. It would have been much wiser in him to have allowed Mr Vizetelly to have disposed of as many copies as the public would take, without more remonstrance than a simple disclaimer, than to have fastened upon the blunders about Benares, and Whitfield, and Lord Nottingham’s Bill, as so many apologies for bringing forward a revised and collected series of his speeches.

He has done so, however; and we have now to consider him as a man, who, by no means verging towards the end of his career—for we trust he may long be spared to delight the public by the elaborate compositions of a mind naturally highly gifted, greatly improved by exercise, and prodigiously stored with information—has deliberately chosen to set forth his claims to be ranked in the scale of orators. Whether Mr Macaulay may choose to believe that we are sincere, or not, in the opinion we are about to express, is, to us, of little consequence. Politically, of course, we differ from him in many respects. We cannot even challenge, what is generally understood to be the opinion of his own party, that he is not qualified to act in the capacity of a leading statesman, or member of the Cabinet. We believe his mind to be of that cast, that it does not readily and aptly conform itself to present exigencies. It is too much wedded to the past, and to mere party traditions and intrigues. Let a crisis arrive, demanding immediate and decided action, and Mr Macaulay will be found puzzling back to the Revolution Settlement of 1688, or some other event of lesser consequence about the same date; and descanting on the conduct of the leading Whig Lords of that period, and the way in which they managed to juggle and forswear themselves; and from these premises he would form conclusions applicable to the present times. The Whig party leaders are notoriously addicted to tradition, but Mr Macaulay’s ideas go back a great deal farther than is convenient even for their purpose. They, naturally enough, do not want the aid of history farther than concerns their immediate guidance; and they would be glad to sink altogether the memory of dynastical questions, and begin with Fox, who is the proper god of their idolatry. Mr Macaulay, by resolutely harking back to forgotten eras, frightfully embarrassed his colleagues in the Cabinet, when he ranked as a minister. It was an excessive bore to be told what Danby did or would have done, or what Halifax meditated, or William of Orange proposed, when the point at issue was something referring to our own day, arising out of entirely novel circumstances, and having nothing whatever in common with the policy that actuated statesmen at a time when rival dynasties placed in dispute the true succession to the crown. In reality, however, it is no disparagement to Mr Macaulay to say that, from the peculiar turn of his mind, the nature of his pursuits, and the intenseness of his literary habits, he has failed in acquiring even a moderate reputation as a statesman. To the public, his withdrawal or exclusion from office ought to be anything but matter of regret; since it is better, both for his own fame and for the literary reputation of our country, that he should be employed in illustrating its annals according to his own views and conviction, than if he were participating in the labours of Molesworth, Wood, and the other eminent individuals who drone away their time in the Cabinet. As an historian, he has already made himself a name far more enduring than that of any mere politician, and he can very well afford to abandon the honours and responsibilities of office to inferior men who regard that alone as the summit of earthly ambition. And we know, and are pleased to know, from his own statement and from the assurance of his friends, that he feels anything but regret at having exchanged the harassments of office for the literary leisure, which he knows so well and so effectively to employ. We are only sorry that he has thought fit, in this very marked and unusual manner, to invite public discussion of his claims to be considered as an orator. As an historian, and historical writer, he has already received, in the pages of the Magazine, a warm and deserved tribute. Without acknowledging the soundness of all his views—indeed, while questioning many, and decidedly objecting to some, both as regards facts and conclusion—we have been, and are ready to bear testimony to his talent, his research, the vigour of his style, and the occasional brilliancy of his pictures. That he is a literary artist of high rank and position, we have admitted most cheerfully, and, we know, have said so cordially. But he now comes before us in another character. The historian requests—nay, demands—that we shall regard him as a public speaker, and assign him his proper place in the roll of orators. In doing so, he certainly departs from his own familiar walk, challenges comparison, which it would have been wise to have avoided—and provokes criticism which otherwise would not have been exerted. When men play many parts, it is inevitable, unless in the case of such a phœnix as the Admirable Crichton, that some one part must be vastly inferior to the others. As an historian, an essayist, and a vivid versifier, we are inclined to rank Mr Macaulay high. We cannot admit that he is an orator in the strict sense of the term. As a public speaker, he has almost invariably failed in realising the expectations excited by his literary renown.

We must, as we are aware, assign sufficient reasons for that opinion; and we shall be met, at the outset, by the fact, that a speech from Macaulay is considered as an event. So it is; and so, too, in the House of Commons, would be deemed a speech from Sir Charles Wood, did that parody of a statesman confine himself to a single harangue in the year. Mr Macaulay, we know, will not suspect us of any intention of comparing him with the present President of the Board of Control. We are in no danger of mistaking Hyperion for a satyr. But the truth is, that men who have been thrust, whether by interest or not, into high official situations, are as likely, if they practise general reticence, to be listened to in the House of Commons, as are men of exalted intellect; and that an elderly proser, who speaks only once in each session, has a better chance of an audience than the glib and voluble orator who starts up in every debate. In public life Mr Macaulay has shown great discretion. During the last twenty years he has spoken but seldom, and never without careful and elaborate preparation; therefore, when it becomes known that he is about to address the House, he is sure to meet with a large, respectful, and attentive audience. Nor is this to be wondered at, on other grounds; for, independently of his high celebrity, Mr Macaulay’s speeches are much better worth listening to than the majority of those now delivered in the House of Commons. The language is correct and well-chosen, the arguments are carefully arranged, and there is none of that hesitation, repetition, and digression, which frequently disfigures the efforts of those who have less leisure beforehand to prepare and adjust their speeches. The curiosity of the audience is excited by the eminence of the speaker, and they are well assured that what he is about to lay before them will bear the peculiar and unmistakable impress of his style. And so it does; but then the genius of Mr Macaulay is not of the oratorical kind. He can impart information—that is, he can summon to the aid of his arguments whole lists of precedents, some of them not very applicable, and countless parallels, or instances which he alleges to be such. These give, at all events, an air of profundity to his discourse, and cannot be called inappropriate to the mouth of an historian. But upon a mixed audience they can produce very little effect, for this reason, that they are not familiar with one out of ten of the cases which he cites, or the incidents to which he refers; and, consequently, they must either receive them on trust, or disregard them altogether. We do not think, as some of his associates have alleged, that Mr Macaulay intends to make a parade of his acquired learning. We rather incline to hold that, as is common with men who addict themselves greatly to any particular branch of study, he takes it for granted that the whole world is studying in the same direction, and is not conscious that he is throwing an extravagant quantity of historical pearls—or, it may be, paste—before his audience. Such at least is our belief; for we are not willing to suppose that Mr Macaulay would condescend to that very low kind of pedantry, not unusual among country preachers and schoolmasters, which seeks to astonish by the assumption of superior learning. “It was in this way,” said Mr Macaulay, in one of his earlier speeches, “that Charles II. was forced to part with Oropesa, and that Charles III. was forced to part with Squillacci.” Very likely it was; but how many of the House of Commons had ever heard of Oropesa or Squillacci? How many were familiar with the events he referred to? Probably not one. He would have produced the same effect upon their reason and understanding, have influenced their convictions quite as powerfully, if he had told his audience that Mumbo-jumbo and Arimaspes had been dismissed by Don John, or Peter of Portugal. Let us refer to that passage in his speech on the Dissenters’ Chapels Bill, which the ignorant Vizetelly mangled. The speech is evidently a favourite with Mr Macaulay, and we presume he has restored it in its integrity. Addressing himself to the point, that prescription constitutes a good title to property, he brings into the compass of one page such a mass of illustration from all ages, nations, and institutions, that we cease to be shocked at the barbarism of the Vizetellian blunder, especially when we observe that the Jurists who framed the Code of Justinian are referred to in the same sentence with the Pundits of Benares. Indeed, we think that Mr Vizetelly is fairly entitled to stand upon the very excuse which the legally-inclined Mr Bartoline Saddletree proponed, when challenged by Reuben Butler for an error on the same subject.

“‘It’s owre true, Mr Butler,’ answered Bartoline, with a sigh; ‘if I had had the luck—or rather, if my father had had the sense to send me to Leyden and Utrecht to learn the Substitutes and Pandex’——

“‘You mean the Institutes—Justinian’s Institutes, Mr Saddletree?’ said Butler.

“‘Institutes and substitutes are synonymous words, Mr Butler, and used indifferently as such in deeds of tailzie, as you may see in Balfour’s Practiques, or Dallas of St Martin’s Styles. I understand these things pretty weel, I thank God; but I own I should have studied in Holland.’”

Such far-fetched illustrations necessarily tend to diminish the force of Mr Macaulay’s speeches, which is the more unfortunate, because he is peculiarly addicted to that kind of argument which the old rhetoricians styled the παράδειγμα, being that which is drawn from Example. Even when he does not pass into ground altogether unknown to his audience, when he refers in support of his position to some passages in British history, he avoids those which are most familiar, and selects the remoter and more obscure. Hence it is that he so often fails in exciting and maintaining enthusiasm. No sympathy can be roused by references to Sir George Savile, Hugh Peters, or Praise-God-Barebones; nor is the substitution of a political essay for a speech the best means of commanding the admiration or influencing the will of an audience. We are inclined to think that Mr Macaulay’s early oratorical training has exercised a prejudicial rather than a salutary influence over his subsequent style. He was, we believe, a member of the Union Debating Society at Cambridge, in which arena questions of immediate political interest were discussed quite as keenly as on the floor of the House of Commons. Without pronouncing an opinion hostile to the institution of debating societies, we may be allowed to remark, that the too frequent introduction of politics as the subject of discussion among the young can hardly receive the approbation of any thinking man of maturer years. The arguments employed on such occasions must be, and are, the spent weapons of politicians who are engaged in real warfare; and these are used by the juvenile enthusiasts without any examination as to their soundness or propriety. There is, in truth, little sense, and no advantage in this mimic warfare. Young men are thereby induced, not to reason, but to dogmatise—not to argue, but to declaim; and the opposition which they encounter to their borrowed views only serves to strengthen them in prejudice. The leader of a political debating society is usually an insufferable specimen of the juvenile prig. He can prate for the hour on such generalities as the constitution, the liberty of the subject, the rights of the people, and so forth; but, if you bring him to book, and demand a distinct explanation of what he has been saying, you will immediately discover that he is neither in possession of fixed notions nor of intelligible ideas. There is a kind of frothy rhetoric, very much used in debating societies, which serves to disguise commonplaces, and helps to make them appear almost brilliant to an inexperienced audience; and in that sort of rhetoric Mr Macaulay early became an adept. Most men who have acquired this style in public are compelled to get rid of it. At the bar it would not be tolerated; and it is worthy of remark that the most shining lights in debating societies usually pale their ineffectual fires when brought into the legal profession. In the senate, where less precision is required, they succeed better; but even there it requires an immense deal of attrition and wear before they can become expert masters of debate. Now it seems to us, after a diligent perusal of his speeches, that Mr Macaulay has never been able to emancipate himself from the bondage of the debating society. He speaks now, just as he might have spoken more than thirty years ago; only that his language is more select, his range of illustration larger, and his perorations more artificial, and therefore more frigid than before. In point of confidence, we do not believe that he has either gained or lost. Some men begin their public career with diffidence and trembling, and end by becoming remarkably self-possessed. Others, who had a fine stock of assurance to begin with, are so cowed by the buffets they receive, as actually to have modesty forced upon them; and we have known more than one instance of a young Boanerges who, by dint of constant punishment, has been brought to see the error of his ways, and the exaggerated estimate he had formed of his own natural powers. Mr Macaulay, however, belongs to neither category. He believed himself an oracle as a boy: he believes himself an oracle as a man. And, if justified in the one belief, who shall venture to say that he is erroneous in the other? Certain it is that, in 1826, when he penned his essay on Milton, he displayed as much power, taste, and vigour, as are exhibited in the volumes of his History given to the public in 1849. He spoke with more animation, clearness, and effect, on the subject of the Reform Bill in 1831, than on any subsequent occasion, though some of his later speeches may have been more highly elaborated. He is, of course, better informed now on points of history, science, and literature, than when he emerged from Cambridge; but we question whether he has gained much additional knowledge of the world, or of the motives which actuate mankind. Never, perhaps, did a man attain so high a point of literary distinction without possessing in a moderate degree the power of affecting the passions. We can scarcely refer to a single passage out of his whole writings, whether in prose or verse, which is likely to have drawn a tear. His speeches, as we now read them, are remarkably frigid. They may satisfy the understanding, but they never could influence the will. We are well aware that, in the House of Commons, as presently constituted, no speech, however eloquent, can be supposed to affect the votes of any considerable section; but the peculiarity of Mr Macaulay’s speaking is this, that we can hardly conceive the possibility of his making a convert. This is owing, we think, in a great measure, to a somewhat singular disregard—for we cannot suppose it ignorance—of the means which the chief orators, both of ancient and modern times have deemed it their duty to employ. In the first place, Mr Macaulay never seems to think it necessary to take the slightest pains to conciliate his audience. Of course there are many cases when such introductory conciliation is not required—for example, when addressing an entirely sympathetic meeting, or when retorting upon the direct attack of an antagonist—but in very few instances indeed does Mr Macaulay introduce himself, upon a debated point, otherwise than as a determined partisan. There can be no doubt that introductions of a conciliatory nature require the utmost delicacy of handling. They are made for the purpose of showing that the speaker comes to the consideration of the question at issue, with as much fairness, deliberation, and candour, as can be expected from man of mortal mould; and further, that he does not intend to dictate to his audience, but rather, by impressing them with his own views, to induce them to consider calmly whether his conclusions are true or false. This does not imply the abandonment of the strongest argument, or the most forcible illustration in the after-part of the speech. It is an arrangement dictated by nature; because in every case, when a man rises to address an assembly, his first care ought to be to dispel, if possible, personal suspicion if that should exist, and to secure a willing auditory. Of this art Cicero was an entire master; and it is no exaggeration to say, that his most remarkable forensic triumphs were achieved rather by the effect of his introductions, than by the subsequent ingenuity of his arguments, and his unrivalled skill in the disposition of narrative. We are quite aware that introductions of this kind, when badly framed, have exactly the opposite effect from that which was intended. There probably never was a worse one than that attempted by the late Sir Robert Peel, in his memorable speech delivered in the House of Commons on 27th January 1846, in which he beat about the bush so long, that he entirely destroyed the effect which he intended to produce. But, whether as regards the immediate impression on the House, or the subsequent effect on the country, we must hold that a speaker ought to endeavour, in the first instance, to divest himself of the appearance of being actuated by mere party motives. Such men as the late Duke of Wellington, or the present Marquis of Lansdowne, whose long and unblemished public lives have been accepted as full evidence of the purity of their motives, might indeed dispense with any such protestation; but there are not many who, from age and public confidence, have acquired a similar privilege. Now, it is rather curious to observe that Mr Macaulay seems, throughout his whole career, to have disdained any kind of conciliation. He has approached every question, not only with his mind made up upon it, but in the spirit of the strongest contempt and depreciation towards all who disagreed with him. He never, like Themistocles, volunteered to receive a buffet in order to gain a hearing. He rather, in imitation of Dares, walked into the arena with the gauntlets buckled round his wrists,

It is no business of ours to recount how often he has met with an Entellus, who has doled out severe punishment; we are now simply referring to what we consider to be his oratorical deficiencies or omissions.

Next we would observe, that the impression left on our mind by the perusal of these Speeches—which, referring as they do to bygone events, do not excite the slightest feeling of antagonism—is that the value of the matter is generally disproportioned to the grandiose nature of the style, and the uniform pomposity of language. It is quite true, that Mr Macaulay has spoken upon several interesting and important questions; and it is equally true that an orator, in addressing himself to themes of that description, is entitled to assume a higher tone than might be suitable to a meaner subject of debate. But then, he must take care that his thoughts and sentiments are raised to the like elevation. One distinguishing quality of the real orator is, that he rises with his subject. His intellect seems to expand in proportion to the greatness of his theme—he elevates himself in feeling and energy above the level of his audience, and the high thoughts which then rush upon his mind are expressed with corresponding dignity. The orator, like the poet, has his fits of inspiration, varying in intensity and degree according to the subject with which he deals. This, of course, precludes that method of slavish preparation, now unfortunately too common, by means of which not only the substance of the speech, but the very words, are elaborately fabricated in the closet, and committed to memory. The man who adopts that system may be a good speaker, but he never will attain the highest point of elevation as an orator. Like the swimmer on a stormy sea, the orator should rise and fall with the wave of his audience; for he is contending for the mastery over a moral element, than which the natural one is not always more fluctuating or fierce. It may be well to calculate and consider beforehand the line of argument to be adopted, just as a prudent general will make his dispositions before going into battle. But as no commander can foresee what may happen in the field, can provide for every emergency, or lay down for himself a course of action from which he will not deviate—so neither ought the orator to commit himself to a certain form of words, which possibly may prove either unappropriate to the occasion, or injurious to his cause. Men think differently in the closet, and in the scene of action. In the former they are comparatively unimpassioned—in the latter they must necessarily exhibit passion if they seek to rouse it in others. The most skilful and elaborate discourse, if coldly conceived and expressed, will have a drenching rather than an inspiring effect upon an audience which is already possessed with a considerable degree of enthusiasm. Their feeling, favourable to the speaker and his cause, must not be put back—it ought, on the contrary, to be heightened. The force of these observations will become apparent to every one who will take pains to investigate the subject, for there is nothing more certain, than that the success of an orator depends mainly upon the amount of energy which he can display. Energy was the secret of the success of Demosthenes; and Cicero, with all his art, could not find a higher quality to recommend. It must be confessed that modern statesmen have been too much in the habit of disregarding this evident truth. Some of them—and we would instance as a notable example the late Sir Robert Peel—might have secured a far more enthusiastic following than they ever could boast, but for their extreme and over-cautious frigidity. To this remark Lord John Russell, who perhaps has had more opportunities than any other living man of acquiring personal influence, is also peculiarly liable. On the contrary, take the case of Lord Palmerston. He is not implicitly trusted by any strong party in the state; and yet, in the House of Commons, no man can produce a greater effect, or possesses a larger personal influence. And why is this? Because he can carry an audience along with him—because he is never frigid, never dull, never addicted to circumlocution—because he possesses and exerts energy in a high degree; and is, in truth, what few of his contemporaries can claim to be—an orator. Read one of his speeches, and you see at once that it was not concocted in the closet—that he had not stooped to polish sentences beforehand, or to select language which should pass for a pattern of composition. Mark, too, the variety of his style—how quietly and playfully he disposes of a small matter—how, during debate and attack, to use the language of Canning, he “silently concentrates the power to be put forth on an adequate occasion.” No wonder that, when the occasion arrives, he should extort admiration even from his adversaries. Very different is the case with Mr Macaulay. Whatever be the subject, he rises to lecture, and has his lecture thoroughly prepared. He is speaking to-night, amidst the hum of the House of Commons, what he wrote yesterday in the quiet seclusion of his chambers in the Albany. He had no thought whatever of his audience; he was thinking simply of his style. That he may adorn and heighten; but he cannot vary it at pleasure. Ask him to pronounce a panegyric upon a deceased hero, and a discourse upon a drowned mouse, and he will execute both in the same strain. The victor in a hundred fields will not be celebrated in periods more stately than the invader of a hundred cheeses. Simplicity is not part of his nature—he must have recourse to rhetoric or be dumb.

Now, although this style may be tolerated in writing, it becomes very tedious when adopted in public speaking. Dress up a mere commonplace with the utmost skill and ingenuity, and yet, to the hearer, it retains its original character. The way in which a thing is said, does not alter the substance of the thing itself—the fine features cannot conceal the emaciation of the body beneath. We have gone over several of the speeches contained in this volume, for the purpose of ascertaining the real value, power, and ingenuity of the arguments set forth; and we are compelled to say, that in no one instance have we been able to discover the trace of an independent thought, or of a purely original idea. Some of them are unquestionably able speeches. Ask a man of high talent and extensive information, like Mr Macaulay, to deliver a discourse upon any possible theme, and he will do so in a manner which shall elicit shouts of applause from a Mechanic’s Institute. Nay, he will be loudly cheered even within the walls of Parliament, provided that a considerable interval is allowed to elapse between each exhibition—because, as we know from the history of Euphuism, fine language commands admiration, and rounded periods are always grateful to the ear. Besides this, it would be untrue, and highly unfair to Mr Macaulay to insinuate that he cannot make proper use and disposition of such arguments as lie before him. He states them well and adroitly; though, as we have already hinted, frequently marring their effect by the extreme remoteness of his illustrations. But neither our reading nor our recollection can furnish us with one case in which Mr Macaulay has put forth an original view, or disentangled himself from the general mass of debaters. In political life or strife, he appears simply as a furbisher of old iron, a process in which he certainly is expert; and he manages to make an exceedingly rusty rapier pass for a tolerable Toledo. More he seldom attempts. His speeches are often brilliant, in the same sense in which we apply the epithet to fireworks; tolerably, though not strictly logical; always sententious, rounded, and adapted to a mouthing delivery—but never ardent, never eloquent, never calculated to excite enthusiasm. If mere rhetoric could make an orator, Mr Macaulay ought undoubtedly to be the first of the age. He has studied it on the same principle as did Gorgias, who made it his boast that he could speak, and speak well upon any given subject, even though he was not conversant with its details, by aid of the commonplaces which he could dress up for the occasion. Gorgias had some reputation during his lifetime, but he is now remembered only on account of his extravagant boast. His works have long since perished; and we do not think that the efforts of Mr Macaulay, as an orator, will survive even so long as those of Gorgias.

If there had been, in this collection, one speech upon which we could have dwelt with any feeling of artistic interest—one which we could have withdrawn from the rest, to rank among the remarkable specimens of British eloquence—we should not only have been delighted, but proud to have selected it for eulogy. That which we have perused with the most pleasure, on account of its sentiment and manly feeling, is the speech delivered in 1846 upon the subject of the Ten Hours’ Bill. Regarded merely as an oration, it may not be of high value; but it displays, in a most pleasing light, the genuine kindness of his heart, his strong sympathy with suffering, and his genuine hatred of oppression. Such speeches are worthy of record, because they rank in the category of good deeds and noble actions; and deserve to be remembered with gratitude as exertions in the cause of humanity. We do not inquire now into the abstract merit of the speeches of Wilberforce, nor does his fame depend at all upon his oratorical skill. He has passed from the roll of speakers to the catalogue of philanthropists; and instead of directing the attention of youthful aspirants after public distinction to the force of his style, or the energy of his expression, we pay homage to his memory as the chief instrument, under Providence, of removing the fetters from the slave. In like manner, notwithstanding certain peculiarities which lead us rather to admire than to love, Mr Macaulay has high claims to the public gratitude and respect. In open questions, and those in which party considerations do not materially interfere, he has always shown himself accessible to conviction, generous in his views, and just in the expression of his sentiments. There are, among living public men, some who are more genial and attractive; but there are not many who are better entitled to our respect. Our criticism has been framed utterly irrespective of politics. We cannot boast, at the present day, of so large a list of men, either of genius or of high talent, as to omit the opportunity of paying tribute, where tribute is justly due. “I hope that I am,” says Mr Macaulay, in the last sentence of his last recorded speech, “at once a Liberal and a Conservative politician.” We hope so too; and we hope, moreover, that the avowal was made—not because Lord Aberdeen and Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell and Mr Gladstone, Sir William Molesworth and Mr Sidney Herbert, have agreed to lie down together—but because Mr Macaulay wishes henceforward to emancipate himself from party trammels. It is certainly time that he should do so. He has occupied a subordinate rank in the Whig regiment longer than he ought to have done for his own reputation; and we are not sorry to see this disclaimer put forth in so marked a manner at the very end of his last publication. It is, like the reading of the closing line of the Iliad in the famous manuscript copy, which the supporters of the Cyclic theory point to as clearly indicative of further action, a phrase fraught with meaning; and when the coalition is dissolved, as it soon must be by the influence of a political thaw, we trust that Mr Macaulay’s tendencies may indeed appear to be Conservative, without the sacrifice of the true liberality which becomes the gentleman and the scholar. We do not believe that the general verdict of the public upon this collection will be of a different tenor from our own. But, after all, Mr Macaulay has no great reason to repine because he has failed to achieve a high place in the roll of British orators. His speeches will not be quoted for their eloquence and power, as those of Burke, Grattan, Erskine, and Canning are; but his history and essays, and even ballads, will insure him a reputation not less extensive and enduring. We need scarcely remind him that men who have attained high reputations as statesmen, and been conspicuous as public speakers, have altogether failed in their attempts to found a literary name. No one who has perused the historical chapters composed by Fox, can regret that his design proved abortive, and that the subject has been left to the more brilliant and dexterous treatment of Macaulay. We cannot say with truth that Lord John Russell’s literary efforts inspire us with an exalted idea of the author’s powers—we are even of opinion that he would have done well in abstaining from appearing before the public, either as a dramatist, biographer, or editor. Ne sutor ultra crepidam. It is by natural instinct that every man addresses himself to the occupation in which he is qualified to excel; and that ambition which prompts men to deviate from their destiny, and undertake tasks which are not congenial to their feelings and sympathies, ought to be repressed. We cannot view Mr Macaulay’s career without being convinced that nature designed him to play his part as a literary man rather than as a politician. He has indeed tacitly admitted that; for he has withdrawn himself very much of late years from debate, preferring literary occupation to the excitement of political strife. We are sorry that he has been induced to interrupt his more interesting labours for the sake of undertaking this collection; for, although the volume will find its way into many libraries—as what volume that bore his name upon the title-page would not?—it will be regarded hereafter with little interest, and may possibly be cited as an instance of unsuccessful ambition. We repeat that Mr Macaulay’s fame rests upon his writings, and that the publication of his speeches is by no means calculated to extend or heighten his intellectual reputation; though it cannot diminish the just estimation in which he is held as a man.

FIFTY YEARS IN BOTH HEMISPHERES. [10]

The memoirs of a man of a singularly adventurous and speculative turn, who, having entered upon the occupations of manhood early, and retained its energies late, has prolonged the active period of his life to upwards of half a century, who has been an eyewitness of not a few of the important events that occurred in Europe and America between the years 1796 and 1850, and himself a sharer in more than one of them, who has been associated or an agent in some of the largest commercial and financial operations that British and Dutch capital and enterprise ever ventured upon, and has been brought into contact and acquaintance—not unfrequently into intimacy—with a number of the remarkable men of his time, can hardly, one would imagine, be otherwise than highly interesting, if the author have but sufficient command of his native tongue plainly to write down what his memory has retained, sufficient discrimination and self-restraint to avoid dwelling upon details of too trifling and egotistical a nature. Generally speaking, we have but little confidence in the interesting qualities of German septuagenarian autobiographers. Garrulity is the privilege of age, and German garrulity is a grievous thing, particularly when it displays itself upon paper. In Germany, where nearly everybody capable of grammar writes a book, even though he have nothing to write about, elderly gentlemen, who really have seen something worth the telling, are apt to imagine they can never make too much of it, and instead of delighting us with the pure spirit, drench us with a feeble dilution. Such was the case, we well remember, with our old acquaintance, Baron von Rahden, whose military experiences during the stirring period of 1813–14–15 we brought before our readers now just seven years since, and who, instead of cutting short the tolerably prolix history of his life and adventures at the date when peace sheathed his sword, elaborated two other ponderous and very wearisome volumes, scarcely relieved by an account of General Chassé’s defence of Antwerp, and by sketches of a campaign in Catalonia, in which the indefatigable and restless old fire-eater, unable to pass his latter days in tranquillity, served under the orders of the Carlist general Cabrera. There is more variety and vivacity in the book now before us than in the baron’s interminable record, of which, however, it has in some respects reminded us. Von Rahden, a soldier by profession and inclination, gave us far too much of his proceedings in times of peace, and dwelt at tedious length on garrison rivalries, his own unrewarded merit, and German provincial topics. Mr Nolte, on the contrary, by profession a man of peace, whose weapon is the pen, his field of battle the Exchange, and his campaigns amongst cotton bales, whose tutelar deity has been Mercury instead of Mars, and whose commanders and allies, instead of the martial-sounding appellations of Blucher, Gneisenau, and Chassé, have borne the pacific but scarcely less famous names of Hope, Labouchere, and Baring, has mingled, in the rather complicated narrative of his mercantile pursuits, triumphs, and disasters, much adventure both by flood and field, in which he himself was personally engaged, and displays, in the telling, not a little of the go-ahead spirit proper to the people amongst whom he has passed a large portion of his life. He has really seen a great deal, and his reminiscences, although here and there his style of narrating them be trivial and in questionable taste—whilst some of his long accounts of financial and commercial operations will more particularly interest bankers and merchants than the general reader—contain much that will attract all. In Germany the first edition of his book has gone off at a gallop,—no small testimony to its merits in a year during which present politics have been the all-absorbing topic. We do not wonder at its popularity; for, besides the mass of anecdote and historical recollections it comprises, the author has contrived to give an interest to his individuality, by the off-hand style in which he tells of his errors and of his triumphs, of his many reverses and disasters, as well as of his rarer moments of prosperity and success.

We should as soon think of attempting, within the compass of an article, a digest of an encyclopædia as of Mr Nolte’s volumes. We should fill half a magazine by merely tracing his itinerary. There never was such a rolling stone. He treats the Atlantic as most men do Dover Straits, and thinks no more of a few hundred leagues of land travel than a modern Cockney of a run to Ramsgate. Whole years of his life must have been passed on board ship, and behind post-horses. His book necessarily partakes of the desultory nature of his career. It better bears dipping into than reading from end to end.

Born at Leghorn, in the year 1779, of a German father, Mr Vincent Nolte’s first reminiscence, of much interest to his readers, is connected with the invasion of Italy by the French under Buonaparte. His father had for some years left Italy, and settled in Hamburg, his native place; but young Vincent, after being educated in Germany, was sent back to Leghorn, to take his place as junior clerk in his uncle’s counting-house, one of the most important in that city. He was in his seventeenth year when, upon the last Saturday in June 1796, a courier from the British minister at Florence brought news to the consul at Leghorn that the French were approaching. There was great bustle amongst the English merchants to get their property shipped, and place it and themselves under the protection of Nelson’s squadron, then cruising off the port. After unremitting labour, and favoured by the wind, the last ships, with English goods on board, left the harbour at noon on Monday. They had been but two hours gone, when it suddenly became known in the city that the French were close at hand, advancing by the Pisa road, and presently a party of cavalry galloped round the fortifications to the Porta Colonella, and rode straight up to the fort, on which the Tuscan flag waved. Suddenly those colours disappeared, and were replaced by the French tricolor, displayed for the first time to the wondering eyes of the Tuscans. Almost at the same moment the cannon of the fort thundered, and sent some shots after those English vessels nearest to the harbour—thus signalling to Nelson the entrance of the French. Young Nolte, who had little love for the desk, whose wish it was to become a painter, and who then, and all his life through, was ardent, impetuous, and a lover of excitement, could sit still no longer, but ran out of the respectable counting-house of Otto Franck & Co., consul for Hamburg, &c., to stare at the invaders. At the head of a body of cavalry, a horseman of remarkable beauty galloped up the street, and alighted at the door of the Genevese banker, Dutremoul. It was Murat. This was between two and three in the afternoon.

“At six in the evening, the news spread that General Buonaparte was at the Pisa gate. No sooner did he learn that the English residents had had time to escape with their property, than he broke into a violent rage. At that moment Count Spannochi, attired in the ordinary uniform, a blue coat, red waistcoat, and white breeches (the full-dress uniform consisted of a white coat and red waistcoat and breeches), and, surrounded by his officers, and by the chief authorities of the city, advanced to welcome the general, who still sat upon his horse. Buonaparte gave him no time to speak, but at once violently assailed him. ‘How dare you,’ he cried, ‘appear before me thus? Do you not know your duty? You are an insolent fellow, a traitor! You have let the English escape; you shall pay for that. A court-martial shall sit immediately. You are my prisoner—give up your sword!’ And Count Spannochi disappeared. Buonaparte’s words were repeated to me that same evening by my fellow-clerk, Giacomini, who had gone with the crowd outside the Pisa gate, and had heard them. Next day we learned that the governor had been sent under arrest to Florence, and that the French general, Vaubois, commanded in his stead. Hardly had Buonaparte and his staff reached the grand-ducal palace, when police-agents went round to all the houses, ordering a general illumination, under heavy penalties in case of disobedience. The only Leghorn newspaper that then existed announced, upon the following day, the arrival of the victor of Lodi and Arcola, adding, that the inhabitants had spontaneously illuminated. I then, for the first time, got a correct idea of a spontaneous illumination, and was never afterwards at a loss to understand the expression. At eleven o’clock the next morning, the foreign consuls waited upon the general, who quickly dismissed them, when suddenly his eye was attracted by my uncle’s red coat. ‘What is that?’ he cried. ‘An English uniform?’ My uncle, taken quite aback, had just enough presence of mind to reply, ‘No, Padrone, questa e l’uniforme di Amburgo!’ and endeavoured, but in vain, to make his escape. Buonaparte burst forth with a violent diatribe against everything that looked English, against all who thought like Englishmen, or had anything to do with England. ‘Those English,’ he said, according to my uncle’s account to me upon his return home, ‘shall get such a lesson as they have never yet had! My road now lies to Vienna, then farther north, to destroy their nests in Hamburg and elsewhere, and then to seek them in their own robbers’ den!’”

Young Nolte was bent upon seeing the hero of the day, who, before attaining his eight-and-twentieth year, had played such havoc amongst Austria’s veteran commanders, and, disregarding his uncle’s commands to keep in-doors, and out of the way of the dense mob upon the Piazza d’Arme, he again played truant, and stationed himself at the corner of the palace, at whose entrance an open carriage awaited the French general. His account of the impression he carried away of Napoleon’s appearance has some originality. The peculiar expression, attributed by him to the eyes, reminds one of the present French Emperor.

“At last there came out, accompanied by a number of officers, a little, youthful-looking man, in a plain uniform, with a pale, almost a yellow complexion, and long, lank, raven-black hair, hanging over his ears, after the fashion of the Florida savages called Talapouches. That was the hero of Arcola! Whilst he took the right-hand place in the carriage, and whilst his aides-de-camp got in, I had a few moments to observe him closely. There was a continued smile round his mouth, with which, however, the man himself had evidently nothing to do, for the fixed indifferent look of his eyes showed that the mind was busy elsewhere. I never again beheld so remarkable an expression. It was the dull gaze of a mummy, barring a certain beam of intelligence betraying the inward life, but only by a faint and glimmering gleam. Macbeth’s words to Banquo’s ghost, ‘There is no speculation in those eyes!’ would almost have fitted here, had not previous and subsequent events sufficiently shown what a spirit lurked behind those impressive orbs. The carriage drove away—seven years elapsed before I again beheld that extraordinary man. He left the town the next day. I must not omit to mention a colossal and well-built officer, who stood, in a respectful attitude, beside the carriage-door. This man, who had just been named town-major of Leghorn, was the grenadier who, seven years previously, on the 14th July 1789, led the storm of the Bastile, and was the first to scale its walls, who afterwards, as General Hullin, was governor of Berlin after the battle of Jena, and presided over the court-martial appointed to try, or rather to shoot, the unfortunate Duke d’Enghien.”

The presence and proceedings of the French in Leghorn were alike odious to the inhabitants, who found an important branch of their trade—that with England—completely cut off, and who had to satisfy unceasing demands for money and equipments. Large bodies of ragged, barefooted troops continually entered the town, to quit it well shod and with new uniforms. The republican cockade became an abomination in the eyes of the Leghornese, who christened it il pasticcino—the little pie—and wrote innumerable lampoons upon its wearers. Leghorn was converted into a camp, and on a large altar in the middle of the Piazza d’Arme, a statue of Liberty was erected, at the foot of which the popular representatives, Garat and Salicetti, daily harangued the troops upon parade. Business was at a standstill; Vincent Nolte deserted his desk and roamed about the town, sketching the groups of foreign soldiers. And even when things began to settle down, he would do nothing but ramble in picture-galleries and make love to pretty Florentines, until at last his uncle, despairing of his doing any good, wrote to his father that he was on the high-road to perdition. This alarming piece of information produced an instant summons to Hamburg, where, in the paternal counting-house, the young scamp amended his ways and applied earnestly to business, displaying great energy, industry, and capacity.

The year 1799 was a disastrous one for Hamburg. Within six weeks there occurred upwards of one hundred and thirty failures for a total of thirty-six millions of marks. The panic was universal, and trade was shaken to its foundations. Mr Nolte’s house weathered the storm, but was compelled, three years later, to suspend its payments in consequence of the failure of the Leghorn establishment. The creditors received eighty-five per cent, and the numerous friends of the unfortunate merchant subscribed a capital of one hundred and twenty thousand marks to start him again in business. Upon the list figured the well-known name of Francis Baring, a former schoolfellow of the insolvent’s, for the munificent sum of twenty thousand marks, upon which he positively refused to receive interest. Thus supported, Mr Nolte again applied himself to business. But he was then a man advanced in years and of little enterprise, and his son, bold and ambitious, saw that he was not likely to strike out new paths to wealth, whereas the old and ordinary avenues to commercial profits were then closed, all over the European continent, by the iron hand of Napoleon, that mortal foe to trade, and contemner of its votaries. And as young Nolte could be of no use to his father, who despised his views as the dreams of a stripling, bent upon pleasure and unworthy of attention, he sought employment abroad. This he found in the house of Labouchere and Trotreau at Nantes, where he accepted an engagement for three years, to carry on the German and English correspondence. And so, in his twenty-fifth year, he took leave of his parents, with a heavy heart, he says, but without uneasiness as to the future, and travelled, by way of Bremen, to Paris.

Mr Nolte’s arrival in the French capital coincided with the proclamation of Napoleon as emperor, and with Moreau’s imprisonment on the charge of a plot against the government and life of the First Consul. It was his first visit to Paris—the period was interesting. He was so fortunate as to find a friend who willingly undertook to be his cicerone, and a few weeks flew rapidly by, during which, thanks to his guide’s familiarity with places and persons, he acquired a better knowledge of both than he would in as many months had he been left to himself; for it would have served him little (except, perhaps, in the way of emptying his pockets) that the doors of Frascati’s, then the favourite resort of the Parisian fashionable world, were open to all who could pay for admission, and who chose to roam through its gorgeous saloons and brilliantly illuminated gardens, had he not had with him some one able to inform him that yonder beautiful woman was Madame Recamier—yonder elegant young man, leaning against the pedestal of a statue, the renowned ball-room hero Trénis—and the one beyond him, with a music-book in his hand, the celebrated singer Garat. But of all that Mr Nolte saw and heard, nothing made a deeper impression upon him than the lively and universal interest taken in the fate of Moreau. “Rarely,” he says, “was that name uttered by the middle and lower classes without an expression of love and respect, and without a curse upon his two implacable persecutors, the First Consul, and the governor of Paris, General Murat, whose proclamations exhibited at every street corner the name of Moreau in juxtaposition with the words—‘Traitor to the Republic.’ Men could not and would not credit the guilt of the distinguished general; and the Paris wits, never at a loss, declared that there were but two parties in France, ‘les moraux (Moreaus) et les immoraux’—a saying which one heard everywhere repeated.” Condemned to banishment, the conqueror of Hohenlinden betook himself, by way of Cadiz, to the United States, where Mr Nolte some years afterwards met him, and made his acquaintance.

Mr Nolte was present at the first review passed by the new emperor, on the Place du Carrousel at Paris. He was very desirous to get a near view of the victorious general and successful adventurer, whom he had first seen, seven years before, in the full flush of triumph at Leghorn. Two officers of the Danish life-guards, with whom he had travelled from Bremen, made interest for him with their ambassador, and procured him admission to the gallery of the Louvre, a favour granted to few. “I saw the great man of the day, surrounded by a brilliant staff, and by uniforms of every kind, ride several times up and down through the ranks, then gallop full speed along the front of the lines of cavalry drawn up outside the inner court, amidst cries of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ when suddenly his horse fell, and Napoleon rolled upon the ground, still grasping the bridle tightly. In a few seconds he had mounted again, and galloped on, before even a part of his staff, who quickly dismounted, could go to his assistance. The newspapers said nothing of this incident, and its ominous character struck me the more by reason of their silence.”

The chief partner of the mercantile house into whose employment Mr Nolte now entered, was a younger brother of the late P. C. Labouchere, of the celebrated house of Hope of Amsterdam. Mr A. M. Labouchere was very desirous to extend his connection and business with the United States, but did not seem fully to appreciate the facilities for so doing afforded him by his close alliance with the Hopes and Barings, whose names appeared as references in the circulars of the Nantes house. Nolte, whose energy and talent early earned him a considerable share of his employer’s confidence, urged Mr Labouchere to send an agent to the States to carry out his wishes, and offered to go himself, if no better was to be found. He was told to put upon paper his ideas concerning America, and concerning the advantages to be derived from a journey thither. This statement he executed in a manner to excite the warm approval of Mr Labouchere, who desired him to forward it to his brother in Amsterdam. The reply was a summons to the Dutch capital. There the elder Labouchere, who had formed a high opinion of Nolte from his correspondence, unfolded to him a gigantic project, the mere sketch of which bewildered him; and although not diffident of his own powers, he declared that he did not hold himself sufficiently experienced to undertake such responsibility, and felt that he should not be able to come up to his employer’s expectations. “That is my business, and not yours,” Mr Labouchere replied. “I have but one thing to recommend to you, and that is, never to do aught that shall give you cause to blush before me or before yourself.” This was lightening the load of responsibility from which the young man shrank, and giving him fresh confidence by showing him that others appreciated him more highly than he did himself, and he no longer made objections. He was to go to the United States, and for a few months merely to look around him and acquire a knowledge of the country. Before entering, however, which he does at great length, into an account of the important business about to be confided to him, and into whose details he was not initiated until some time afterwards, he gives an amusing chapter to a sketch of the celebrated banker and contractor Ouvrard, from whose combinations the proposed operation issued, and with whom Mr Nolte was well acquainted, and had frequent intercourse at several periods of his life. The chapter includes some curious traits and anecdotes of Napoleon, who, it is well known, detested Ouvrard, and tyrannised over him, although he was more than once obliged to seek his aid. Napoleon notoriously hated and despised traders and bankers. “I do not like merchants!” he is reported to have said—with that brusquerie which, in a less man, would have been designated as brutal ill-breeding—to the deputation from the merchants of Antwerp that went to welcome him to the town; “a merchant is a man who would sell his country for a three-franc piece!” He was jealous of, or at least indignant at, Ouvrard’s enormous wealth, and the influence it gave him—both of which he considered too great for any private person to possess; but, according to Mr Nolte, who seems quite conversant with the scandalous chronicles of any day during the last half-century, there were other private causes of irritation, which most of Napoleon’s biographers either were ignorant of, or thought it unnecessary to mention, and which certainly are less out of place in the present author’s far from prudish pages than they would be in a grave biography. Ouvrard’s own Memoirs, published nearly thirty years ago,^[11] are now little remembered; and Mr Nolte is evidently indebted to them for the outline of his sketch, as well as for several incidents and anecdotes, but he has filled up details which the great speculator thought proper to omit. The relative positions of Ouvrard and Napoleon, at different periods of their lives, present the strangest contrasts. When the former, quitting the army in which he had for a short time served, applied himself with skill and success to commercial and speculative operations, and quickly realised a fortune of several millions of francs, Napoleon was so needy as to be desirous to avail himself of a decree of the Committee of Public Safety, by which officers were entitled to receive as much cloth as would make them a uniform. The anecdote is well known. Napoleon’s application was rejected because he was not just then employed, and he was very glad when Ouvrard, with whom he had become acquainted at the house of the Director Barras, induced Madame Tallien, whose lover the capitalist then was, to give him a letter of recommendation to the commissary of the 17th military division; a letter which procured young Buonaparte what he had great need of—a new uniform. Subsequently, in Napoleon’s days of power and magnificence, when he began to spite and squeeze Ouvrard, the latter loved to tell this anecdote—a contrast with Talma, who had been Napoleon’s intimate, and had often lent him money in his days of penury, and who became ever more reserved in his communications and behaviour the higher his friend ascended upon fortune’s ladder. To Ouvrard Napoleon was unquestionably harsh, cruel, and unjust. His dislike to him seemed to augment in a direct ratio with the magnitude of the gains which the capitalist owed to the circumstances of the times, to his great financial capacity, and to the vastness of his operations. Of the extent of these and of his profits, we may form some idea from a passage in Mr Nolte’s book, where he states positively that Ouvrard cleared six hundred thousand pounds sterling by his contract for victualling the Spanish fleet under Mazaredo when it lay at Brest, and afterwards at Cadiz. But if his gains were large, his losses, arising chiefly from Napoleon’s ill-will and despotic acts, were also heavy. During the Egyptian campaign, the Directory borrowed ten millions of francs from him, which he produced with the greatest ease. After Buonaparte’s return and the fall of the Directory, the First Consul asked him for twelve millions more. Ouvrard declined. The other Paris bankers were applied to; they either could not or would not. The First Consul was furious—doubly so when Ouvrard claimed repayment of the ten millions lent to the Directory. He had him paid in assignments on the revenue of the past year, which had all been expended. It was equivalent to a repudiation of the debt. Soon afterwards, Ouvrard was arrested, under pretext of fraud in his dealings with the government and supply of the French navy. He was kept in strict confinement, his papers were sealed up, and a committee of councillors of state was appointed to investigate his affairs. Nothing could be substantiated against him, but it was ascertained that his fortune, in landed property, money and French rentes, (then worth but 15 per cent) amounted to twenty-seven millions of francs. “On this occasion,” says Mr Nolte, quoting almost the words of Ouvrard, “a discovery was made which deeply wounded the First Consul—namely, that, during his absence in Egypt, Ouvrard had supplied Josephine, who was an old friend of his, and who had remained at Malmaison, with money. She had become his debtor to a considerable amount. This circumstance, combined with the refusal of the twelve millions, inspired Buonaparte with the most violent antipathy to Ouvrard, at whose arrest all Paris (especially the bankers) was indignant and loud in complaint. Collot, afterwards director of the mint, who was one of the First Consul’s most intimate advisers, did not scruple to tell him that it was beginning badly, thus to let all apprehend that they might in their turn be the victims of such arbitrary measures. ‘A man,’ replied Buonaparte ‘who possesses thirty millions, and sets no value on them, is much too dangerous for my position.’” Josephine and other influential personages interceded for Ouvrard, who escaped the military tribunal with which Napoleon threatened him, and was set at liberty, but remained under the surveillance of gens-d’armes. This in no way prevented his continuing to receive with princely hospitality at his château of Raincy (afterwards the Duchess of Berry’s) the best society of Paris, and the most distinguished foreigners who visited that capital—amongst others, Fox and Lord Erskine, who were his guests after the peace of Amiens.

But we must take Mr Nolte away from Paris—which seems his favourite city, but where he can never linger without getting scandalous—and across the Atlantic. He sailed in July 1805, and reached New York in forty-two days, then a marvellously rapid passage. The astonished owner of the American ship “Flora” could hardly believe his eyes when he saw her come into port before he had received advice of her arrival at Amsterdam. Mr Nolte found the yellow fever in New York, and left the place for a few weeks, but returned thither in time to witness the arrival in the bay of a vessel from Cadiz, with General Moreau on board. The drums beat, and the militia turned out and formed up in Broadway. As each company had a different uniform—sometimes a very odd one—the effect of the whole display was a good deal like that produced by a harlequin’s jacket, which did not prevent the commander of the motley corps from being prodigiously proud of his warriors, and asking Moreau—when he landed, plainly dressed in a blue coat, and rode into the town, upon a horse in waiting for him, amidst cheers and music, and surrounded by the variegated staff of the militia—what he thought of the American troops? Moreau replied that he had never in his life seen such soldiers—which he probably never had. A similar reply has been since attributed to General Bertrand, when he landed in the States some years ago, and a review was held in his honour. The speculative spirit of the Yankees, who love to combine business with pleasure, and to turn an honest dollar whilst admiring a hero or listening to a Lind, slumbered not in 1805 any more than in 1850. The same genius for advertisement which made a hatter pay some hundred dollars for the best place at the Swedish Nightingale’s concert, stimulated the promoters of one that was to be given, on the night of General Moreau’s arrival, in the great hall of the City Hotel—then the first in New York—to beseech his presence, and, as soon as he had promised it, to placard his name. The crowd was tremendous. Moreau, it was on all hands agreed, looked very little like a French general, in his simple dress, without cocked hat, feather, or embroidery—whereas General Morton, chief of the militia, had a most martial aspect in his Washington uniform. He introduced to the French leader all who chose, and there was a prodigious shaking of hands. Mr Nolte was standing near the two generals when a Quaker was presented, who shook Moreau’s hand heartily. “Glad to see you safe in America,” quoth Broadbrim. “Pray, general, do you remember what was the price of cochineal when you left Cadiz?” The hero of Hohenlinden shrugged his shoulders and confessed his ignorance. It was not until some time afterwards, in Philadelphia, that Mr Nolte became personally acquainted with Moreau, whom he found, he says, “a mild, agreeable, but, in an intellectual point of view, upon the whole, an insignificant and uninteresting man. His manners were simple, and possessed a certain naturalness which was attractive, but his conversation, or rather his monologue—for we seldom had long dialogues—fettered the attention only when its subject was that of his certainly highly remarkable and distinguished military exploits. Then there was pleasure in listening to him. Of Napoleon he scarcely ever spoke but as ‘the tyrant.’” The best portrait—indeed, the only good one we are acquainted with—of Moreau, that by Gérard, conveys quite the same idea here given of him by Mr Nolte—that of a mild, amiable, but by no means a highly intellectual man, with less of the military air and look about the head than perhaps in any other distinguished general of the French republic or empire.

We do not purpose going into the details of Mr Nolte’s commercial proceedings as one of Hope’s agents in America. They were connected with Ouvrard’s well-known colossal plan for drawing specie from Mexico, in whose treasury—owing to the interruption, by the war with England, of intercourse between Spain and her colonies—seventy millions of dollars had accumulated. The duties assigned to Mr Nolte compelled him to take up his quarters at New Orleans, then in its infancy as a commercial city, and in the worst possible repute. Louisiana, after belonging alternately to France and Spain, and then to France again, had been but recently sold to the United States, and three-fifths of the white population of its capital were French by birth or extraction. New Orleans then had about sixteen thousand inhabitants, one-third of whom were slaves and coloured people. The character its citizens enjoyed in the Northern States may be judged of by the following anecdote: A friend of Mr Nolte’s, who had just formed an establishment at New Orleans, finding himself at Boston, and seeing a vessel advertised to sail thence for the former city, called upon the owner to ask him to consign the ship to his house. Whereupon the owner told him in strict confidence that he had just as much intention of sending his vessel to the moon as to New Orleans, and that he had inserted the advertisement merely in the expectation that amongst the persons applying for a passage he should find a rascal who had defrauded one of his friends of a considerable sum. “It is probable,” he added, “that he will try to get to New Orleans, that being the natural rendezvous of all rogues and scoundrels.” Not one of the eighteen or twenty commercial houses existing at New Orleans when Mr Nolte first went there possessed capital worth the naming, and a respectable character was nearly as great a rarity as ready cash. Roguery, disguised under the polite name of “cleverness,” was commonly practised and indulgently viewed. Juries and authorities were corrupt, false witnesses easily purchased, and justice was hard to obtain. In illustration of this state of things Mr Nolte tells some curious stories, one in particular, in which the celebrated American jurist Edward Livingston figures. “I well remember,” he says, “the remarkable trial of a certain Beleurgey, the editor of one of the first American newspapers which appeared in New Orleans, in 1806 and 1807, in French and English, under the name of Le Telegraphe. To obtain money he had forged the signature of a rich planter, to whom, when his crime was discovered, he wrote, confessing his guilt, and earnestly entreating him not to prosecute him. The planter seemed disposed to accede to his prayer, but the letter was already in the hands of justice. How then did Livingston contrive, as Beleurgey’s counsel and defender, to obtain his acquittal in spite of that damning proof of his guilt? Davezac (Livingston’s brother-in-law and factotum) brought forward witnesses who swore that they knew Beleurgey to be such a liar that no word of truth had ever issued from his lips. ‘See here,’ then said Livingston to his French jury—‘it is proved that the man is incapable of speaking the truth; the very confession is a lie, for none but a madman would accuse himself. So that Beleurgey either has lied or is out of his senses; in either case he knew not what he did, and cannot be found guilty!’ And the jury acquitted him!” New Orleans was evidently not a tempting place to settle in, for an honest man, with money to be robbed of; but then, with conduct and judgment, there was money to be made, and moreover Mr Nolte, as a mere agent for others, had no choice but to abide there. Presently the arrival, in quick succession, of three fast-sailing schooners from Vera Cruz, bringing half a million of Mexican dollars to the address of Vincent Nolte, drew attention to the young man whom previously few had heeded—save the French planters, to whom his knowledge of their language was a recommendation. But now boundless hospitality was shown him, no party was complete without him, and for three months he passed a pleasant enough life, when suddenly the yellow fever laid him on his back. Upon the morning of the third day there appeared at his bedside one Zachary, the cashier of the Louisiana bank, and one of the very limited number of honourable men in the city, and gravely asked him if he had made his will. To this ominous inquiry Mr Nolte replied by a negative and an interrogative. “No! Why?”—“Well,” continued Zachary, “I suppose I need not tell you that you have got the yellow fever, and that it is more than possible you will die tomorrow, for the fourth is the critical day, which one does not generally get over. You have large sums lying at the bank—larger sums than have ever before been seen here—and, if you die, the capital will fall into very unsafe hands. The persons appointed by the State to take charge of the property of foreigners dying intestate, are not only undeserving of confidence, but, to speak plainly, are downright rascals.” The sick man’s reply was that he neither felt inclined nor intended to die. “And as I am sure not to die,” he concluded, “I see no use in bothering my head about my will.” Zachary looked hard at him. “Well, my dear Mr Nolte,” he at last said, “since that is your mood, I too am certain you will not die,”—a prognostic justified by the patient’s speedy recovery. In the yellow fever, as in other maladies, a faint heart kills many.

We pass over several chapters and some years. They include a good deal of interesting matter, and, of course, abundance of travelling;—a return to Europe, and brief residences in various cities of the United States, in London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Hamburg. On a voyage from the Havana to Baltimore, Mr Nolte was wrecked upon the Carysford reef, which owes its name to the total loss of the frigate Carysford in 1774; and he gives a capital account of his sufferings and those of his ten companions on a raft composed of three small spars, six oars, and a hencoop, half immersed, and neglected by passing vessels, who took them for shipwrecked Spaniards, and feared to succour them, lest, when rescued, they should rise against their deliverers and take the ship into Cuba, an act of ingratitude that had been recently perpetrated under similar circumstances. A woodcut of the frail and curiously-constructed raft is the only illustration the book contains. At Philadelphia, Mr Nolte, who, it is to be observed, has been all his life an unlucky man, was run away with in his tandem, and, jumping out, broke his leg, which, badly set by two ignorant American Sawbones, occasioned him terrible suffering and long confinement. His agency for Hope’s house at an end, and after declining two advantageous offers of partnerships in Europe, one of which he would perhaps have done wisely in accepting, he determined to apply the very liberal sum he had received for his services to the establishment of a commercial firm at New Orleans, in aid of which the houses of Hope and Baring advanced him funds, opened him a credit, and allowed him to put their names in his circular as his friends and supporters. This brings us to the most interesting portion of his book.

Mr Nolte has a habit of interlarding his German, especially the scraps of dialogue scattered through his volumes, with a great deal of English and French, both of which languages he evidently understands as well as his mother-tongue. To readers in the same case, this practice gives to the book additional character and pungency; but to those to whom German alone is familiar it will prove troublesome, since he does not subjoin translations. As an instance of this, we will give his account of a casual meeting with a man who has since become universally celebrated. It was during his journey on horseback from Philadelphia to Pittsburg, where he was to join a friend with whom he had entered into partnership, and whence they were to proceed, with a couple of flat boats laden with flour, two thousand miles down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans, there to form their mercantile establishment. Steam had not at that date annihilated distance in America; there were no boilers bursting on the rivers, or trains on railroads rattling through the States, and travelling was slow work, particularly with goods. The voyage by flat boats from Pittsburg to New Orleans was a forty or fifty days’ business. On a cold December morning, after a solitary ride over Laurel Hill, the highest of the Alleghanies, Mr Nolte halted, towards ten o’clock, at a small tavern by the falls of the Juniata river, and asked for a solid breakfast.

“The hostess showed me into a room, and said I might just take my food with a strange gentleman who was seated there already. ‘He is quite a stranger,’ she said. On stepping in, the man at once struck me as being what is commonly called an odd fellow. He sat at a table, in front of the fire, with a Madras handkerchief round his head, after the fashion of a French sailor, or of labourers in a French seaport. I courteously approached him, with the words: ‘I hope I don’t incommode you, by coming to take my breakfast with you?’ The reply was: ‘No, sir!’ spoken with a strong French accent, and sounding like ‘No, serre.’ ‘Ah!’ I continued, ‘vous êtes Français, Monsieur?’ ‘No, serre!’ was the reply; ‘ai em en Henglieshmen’ (I am an Englishman). ‘Why,’ I continued, ‘how do you make that out? You look like a Frenchman, and you speak like one.’ ‘I am an Englishman, because I got an English wife,’ replied he, with the same accent. Without further investigation of the matter, we agreed, over our breakfast, to ride together to Pittsburg. He showed himself more and more of an oddity, but at last admitted that he was a born Frenchman, from La Rochelle, had been brought to Louisiana when a child, had grown up in the sea-service, but had gradually become a real American. ‘Well,’ said I, ‘but how do you reconcile that with your quality of an Englishman?’ To which he replied, in French at last: ‘Au bout du compte, je suis un peu cosmopolite; j’appartiens à tous les pays.’”

When we mention that all the dialogue in the above extract, with the exception of one sentence, is, in the original, in the same languages in which we here give it, and that such polyglot passages are of constant occurrence throughout these volumes, it becomes evident that Mr Nolte will sorely puzzle and tantalise such of his German readers as are unacquainted with French, and with that composite Anglo-Saxon tongue for which the learned German has declared his preference over all other modern languages. The eccentric traveller was Audubon, the famous ornithologist, who was also bound for New Orleans. On reaching Pittsburg, no means of conveyance offered except Mr Nolte’s boat, and as he had by this time discovered that the naturalist was not only an accomplished draughtsman, but a good and amiable man, he offered him a cot in his little cabin, a service which Audubon afterwards thankfully recorded and acknowledged in the third volume of the text to his great work on “American Ornithology.” Mr Nolte knew nothing of the object of his guest’s journey until they reached Limestone, a small place in the north-western corner of Ohio State. There they landed their horses, intending to visit Lexington, and thence proceed to Louisville, where Audubon expected to find his wife—the daughter of an Englishman named Bakewell. “At Limestone,” says Mr Nolte, “we had hardly finished our breakfast, when Audubon suddenly sprang up. ‘Now, then,’ he cried to me, in French, ‘I must begin to lay the foundations of my establishment!’ Thereupon he took from his pocket a parcel of address-cards, a hammer, and some small nails, and began nailing one of the cards upon the door of the little tavern. It contained the words:

So, said I to myself, you have found a rival before reaching your journey’s end. But I felt little inclination to deal in the flesh of swine, or apprehensive of very formidable opposition from my new acquaintance. We rode on to Lexington, chief town of Kentucky, a flourishing place, where I heard much talk of a certain highly-gifted lawyer, who, during the elections for Congress, had distinguished himself by his pugilistic prowess in the streets and taverns. This man, who soon afterwards became more and more celebrated, was Henry Clay, whose exterior was no way calculated to give a high idea of his intellectual qualities, but who had already acquired great fame as an orator.

“A horrible custom was at that time almost universal amongst the inhabitants (for the most part rough and brutal people) of the Western States. It was that of allowing the finger-nails to grow until they could be cut into the shape of small sickles, which were used, in the quarrels and fights that continually occurred, to scoop out the eyes of an opponent. This barbarous art was called gouging. During our ride through Kentucky, we saw several persons who wanted an eye, and others who had lost both. The excitement then prevalent in the United States on account of the misunderstanding with England, was much greater in the western provinces than on the seaboard, and the feeling of irritation in the former was very considerable. Passing through Frankfort on my way to Louisville, I learned that the Kentucky State Legislature was just then sitting, and I determined to witness its proceedings, in order to compare it with the Territorial Legislature of Louisiana, which was composed of the strangest mixture of born Americans, and of French and Spanish creoles. Hardly had I entered the hall, when I heard a very animated orator indulging in a violent diatribe against England. ‘We must have war with Great Britain,’ he said. ‘War will ruin her commerce! Commerce is the apple of Britain’s eye—there we must gouge her!’ This flower of rhetoric was prodigiously applauded, and I could not deny that for a Kentucky audience it must have a certain poetical charm.”

Thus, sketching by the way a state of society which a lapse of forty years has fortunately greatly altered for the better, Mr Nolte reached Louisville. The Ohio had been for some days frozen, and his boats, with his friend and partner, Hollander, were fast bound in the ice some distance higher up the stream. “Three days afterwards, just as we sat down to dinner, the whole house was violently shaken; glasses, plates, and bottles fell from the table—most of the guests sprang up, with the cry: ‘There is the earthquake, by jingo! There is no humbug about it!’ and ran out into the street. The commotion was soon over, and people returned to their houses. Early next morning I learned that the shock had broken up the ice on the river, and that several boats had come down to Shippingport, a little town about a league off.” Among them were Nolte’s craft, and he continued his journey, presently quitting the clear transparent stream of the Ohio, and entering the slimy waters of the Mississippi. In voyages of that kind it was customary to bring-to at nightfall, and make fast the boats to the shore until next morning, snags and sawyers rendering progress unsafe during the darkness. On the evening of the 6th February 1812, the halting-place was hard by the little town of New Madrid. About twenty boats, which had left Shippingport together, were there assembled. “It was a bright moonlight night,” says Mr Nolte; “at eleven o’clock my partner, Hollander, had gone to bed, and I was sitting at a little table drawing a caricature of President Madison—who had just published a flaming proclamation, calling upon the nation to ‘put on armour and warlike attitude,’ but who was said to be himself completely under petticoat government—when a terrible report, like the sudden roar of cannon, echoed without, immediately succeeded by innumerable flashes. The Mississippi foamed up like the boiling water in a kettle, and then again receded with a rushing sound; the trees of a little wood near to which we had moored our boats, cracked, broke, and were overthrown. The terrible spectacle lasted for several minutes: there seemed no end to the vivid lightning, to the alternate rise and fall of the troubled water, and to the crash of falling trees. Hollander, startled from his sleep, called out, ‘What is that, Nolte?’ I could only tell him that I myself did not know, but took it for an earthquake. I went on deck. What a sight! The river, which had resumed its ordinary course, was covered with floating trees and branches, borne rapidly along by the current. Of the town, only a few very distant lights were to be seen. It was a real chaos. Our little crew consisted of three sailors, whom want of employment, in consequence of the embargo, had driven to Pittsburg, and of a river-pilot. They told me that the other boats had all cut loose from the shore and floated on, and asked me if we should not do the same. It struck me that if, under ordinary circumstances, it was unsafe to proceed by night, it must be doubly dangerous now that the river was covered with floating trees. And so we remained where we were. The rising sun showed us the unfortunate city of New Madrid more than three parts destroyed, and flooded, with here and there one of the wretched inhabitants making his way out of the ruins. Our boats were in the centre of a sort of island formed by falling trees, and several hours passed before we could extricate ourselves. At Natchez, which we reached on the thirty-second day, and where we remained a week, we heard full particulars of the earthquake, but we saw nothing of any of the boats that had surrounded us on the evening of the 6th February. At New Orleans, the only sign perceived of the commotion was a swinging to and fro of the chandeliers in the ball-room, and the sickness and fainting of a great number of ladies. This remarkable earthquake commenced in the north-west of Missouri state, was felt more or less throughout Louisiana, and extended through the Gulf of Mexico to Caraccas, where it played great havoc, destroying nearly the whole city, and swallowing up or reducing to poverty forty thousand persons. Nothing more was ever heard of the boats, and if we had not remained stationary we should doubtless have shared their fate.”

After five years’ absence, Mr Nolte found New Orleans greatly increased in size, but very little improved with respect to the character of its inhabitants, who had added to their former bad qualities a taste for lawsuits and chicanery, introduced amongst them by an immigration of greedy advocates from the Northern States. Mr Nolte—who, as somebody said of him, many years later, when he was an inmate of the Queen’s Bench at the suit of the litigious and crack-brained ex-duke of Brunswick, was all his life the plaything of misfortune, and whose best concerted and most prudent plans were invariably marred by some unforeseen incident or disaster—had no sooner taken and furnished a house in the chief city of Louisiana than news came from Washington of war having been declared against England—a crushing blow to our poor adventurer’s well-founded hopes of extensive and profitable transactions with the great European houses who wished him well and favoured his enterprise. There was no help for it; he could but cross his hands and pray for peace. The Mississippi was blockaded by British men-of-war. The state of things at New Orleans resembled the intolerable monotony and inactivity of a calm at sea, with the difference that the latter can last but a few days or weeks, whilst the former might endure for years. The only incidents that varied the monotony of life at New Orleans during that war were of an unpleasant nature. In August 1812, a frightful hurricane drove on shore eighteen of the ships in harbour, and unroofed nearly the whole city. A few months later, Mr Nolte broke his right arm at the elbow by a fall from his horse, and the limb ever afterwards remained stiff and crooked. Party-spirit ran high; private scandal, quarrels, and duels, were resorted to by the restless and disreputable citizens of New Orleans as a refuge from ennui. This portion of Mr Nolte’s book abounds in curious details. “The whole neighbouring coast was kept in a state of alarm by the piracies of the brothers Laffitte from Bayonne, by Jauvinet, Beluche, Dominique, Gamba, and others, who might be seen promenading the streets of New Orleans in broad daylight, and wholly unmolested. They had their friends and connections and warehouses in the city, and sold, almost openly, their stolen goods, especially English manufactures. But the slave trade was their great resource. They captured Spanish and other slavers on the high seas, and took them to their chief depôt, the little island of Barataria on the coast near New Orleans, whither the planters, chiefly of French extraction, went to purchase the slaves—for one hundred and fifty or two hundred dollars, instead of six hundred or seven hundred, which they would have paid in the market—and conveyed them to their plantations, up the numerous bayous or creeks intersecting that district. And as the pirates would be paid in hard dollars, specie soon began to be rare in the city.” Brought into contact, by certain banking operations, with reckless and unscrupulous men, Mr Nolte managed to get involved in a couple of duels, in which his stiff arm was of course highly disadvantageous to him, and, with his usual good luck, he received a bullet in his leg, which he still carries about with him. A serious danger put a temporary end to these squabbles. An attack was expected from the English, and General Jackson made his appearance at New Orleans with fifteen hundred men, the most efficient amongst whom were five hundred riflemen who had served with Jackson in the Indian war, and were known as Coffee’s Brigade, from their commander’s name. These were the fellows who picked off the British officers from behind the cotton-bale barricades, of which the materials proceeded from Mr Nolte’s stores. Trained in repeated encounters with the savages, they were the sort of men Sealsfield has so vividly painted, totally ignorant of military organisation and discipline, but inaccessible to fear, perfectly cool in danger, of great presence of mind and personal resource, and, above all, unerring marksmen. Mr Nolte, although his stiff arm exempted him from service, did not choose to see his friends go out to fight and himself remain behind—the less so that he was already suspected of partiality to the English—and he joined the light company of a battalion of militia, several of whose officers had served under Napoleon. According to Mr Nolte’s account, Jackson, blustering, presumptuous, and overweeningly self-confident, would have led his militia and irregulars to certain destruction at the hands of the well-drilled British troops, but for the advice given him by Livingston, who acted as one of his aides-de-camp, to consult a French emigrant major named St Gême, who had formerly been in the English service in Jamaica, and now commanded a company in the battalion in which Mr Nolte had enrolled himself. “This officer had been a great deal with Moreau, when the latter, on a visit to Louisiana a few years previously, had scanned, with the critical eye of a tactician, the position of New Orleans and its capabilities of defence. St Gême rendered General Jackson and the American cause the great service of making him understand that, in the open field, the English would surround him and his handful of inexperienced followers, who had but the name of soldiers, would utterly rout and certainly capture them; and he pointed out to him the M’Carthy canal as the position which Moreau had himself fixed upon as the most defensible, especially for raw troops.” Mr Nolte, who writes impartially, and without visible leaning either to English or to Americans, praises Jackson for the self-command (a quality he did not often display) with which he waived his own wishes in deference to the opinion of the French general (he must have been mad to have disregarded it), and abandoned plans which assuredly, if carried out, would have led to the annihilation of his army and the capture of New Orleans. Livingston, by whose representations he was induced to take counsel of the French major, was a much better lawyer and statesman than warrior, according to Mr Nolte, and showed himself but little where bullets were flying. When the position decided upon was to be taken up and redoubts built, the ground was found to be swampy and slimy, and the earth unavailable for any sort of fortification, whereupon a French engineer suggested the employment of cotton bales. The plan adopted, Jackson would lose no time. “It was observed to him,” says unlucky Mr Nolte, lugubriously, “that he certainly might have plenty of cotton in the city for six or seven cents a pound, but its conveyance would cause a day’s delay, whereas a barque, already laden with cotton, and whose departure for the Havana had only been prevented by the arrival of the English squadron, lay close to the shore. It had on board two hundred and forty-five bales, which I myself had shipped just before the invasion, and sixty others belonging to a Spaniard of New Orleans. I was ill-pleased, when they could have had cheap cotton for six or seven cents in the town, to see them land, from a ship all ready to sail, my best quality, which had cost me ten or eleven cents, and I said as much to Livingston, who was my usual legal adviser in New Orleans, and whom I fell in with at Battery No. 3. He was never at a loss for an answer. ‘Well, Nolte,’ said he, ‘since it is your cotton, you will not mind the trouble of defending it.’ A reply which was the foundation of the story that, when the owner of the cotton complained of its seizure, Jackson sent him a musket, with the message that upon no man was it so incumbent to defend the bales as upon their owner, and that he therefore hoped he would not abandon them.” Mr Nolte’s whole account of the operations at New Orleans is clear and graphic, but that brief campaign has been so often described that we are not induced to dwell at much length upon his narrative, although it contains some passages that, proceeding from an actor on the American side, possess particular interest. On the left wing were the best sharpshooters of Kentucky and Tennessee, invisible in the cypress wood, and loading their rifles with three or four buckshot besides the bullet. Their good weapons and sure aim sent destruction through the ranks of the English, who saw no foe, but beheld all their officers picked off. The whole right flank of the English column was raked by this deadly fire, whilst in front the American batteries kept up an uninterrupted discharge. “From time to time,” says Mr Nolte, “when the smoke blew aside, I and my company obtained a view over the battle-field, and there we saw the whole English centre retreating, throwing away their fascines, and a staff-officer on a black horse gallop forward, his hat in his hand, which he angrily waved as if threatening the flying column. Suddenly, struck by several bullets, he fell backwards from his horse—some soldiers wrapped him hastily in blankets and carried him off. We learned in the evening that the staff-officer was the commander-in-chief, General Pakenham.” The fight was soon over. As Mr Nolte justly observes, it was a butchery rather than a battle. The Americans, completely sheltered, had but some thirty men killed and wounded, whilst their opponents had to deplore the loss of many hundred good soldiers, than whom none braver ever bore muskets, but whose commander’s good fortune was, upon that occasion, unfortunately not equal to his often-tried valour, and who, moreover, was misled by false information.

Mr Nolte does ample justice to the coolness, energy, and resolution of General Jackson, and shows that even the gasconades and exaggerations in which he constantly indulged had their use, since he thereby deluded his own people, and all the prisoners taken by the English concurred in such formidable accounts of the forces at his disposal as could not fail to influence the proceedings of the invaders. But after the affair of the 8th January, Jackson, prodigiously elevated by his triumph, was anxious to assume the offensive. For the second time he was indebted to Livingston for sound advice. “What would you have more?” said the lawyer; “the city is saved; the English will not renew the attack. Against troops like those, whose intrepidity amidst the most frightful slaughter you yourself have witnessed, what is the use of exposing yourself and your handful of men to be roughly handled, to the diminution of your glory and at risk of valuable lives?” As in the case of the position, the general took his aide-de-camp’s sensible advice, and, as is not unusual, got the whole credit of adopting the only rational course. Livingston, some of whose eulogists have made of him a hero as well as a lawgiver, was seized, it appears from Mr Nolte’s version of the campaign, with a bad colic on the evening of the 7th, just after it became known that the English would attack next morning, and retired into New Orleans, where he next day received news of the action. An hour afterwards he was back in camp—the English and the colic having retreated together. Another of Jackson’s volunteer aides-de-camp, also a lawyer, was off into the city before daybreak on the 8th, without even a pretext, and passed the morning riding about the streets, shouting out that the foe was at hand, and calling upon all to arm and hasten to the field—whereas all capable of bearing arms were in the field, except a few skulkers like himself. No notice was taken of these gentlemen’s shy behaviour, and Jackson, in his despatch, drawn up by Livingston, thanked his military and voluntary aides-de-camp “for their cool and deliberate bravery!”

The cotton bales used for the redoubts, and a quantity of blankets that had been taken from Mr Nolte’s warehouse during his absence from the city, gave rise to discussions which brought out the least favourable side of Jackson’s character. Immediately after the embarkation of the English, a commission was appointed to settle all claims. Mr Nolte’s was for 750 blankets and 245 bales of cotton. The former he was allowed for at the price of the day on which the English landed—namely, eleven dollars a-pair; but when the order was submitted to Jackson for his signature and ratification, he said that as the blankets had been taken (almost forcibly) by the Tennessee riflemen, they should be paid for in Tennessee notes—then worth 10 per cent less than New Orleans paper-money. Mr Nolte was fain to submit to this shabby trick, worthy of a Connecticut pedlar. As regarded his cotton he had much more trouble. He produced the invoice, proving that he had bought it, two years previously, at 10 cents a pound, from a well-known wealthy cotton-grower. He claimed that price, with the addition of two years’ interest. During the whole of that time, it had never been lower than 10 to 11 cents a pound, and a few days before the landing of the English he had bought some at 12½ cents. But when the British troops were on shore, and close at hand, there was a panic; markets fell, the timid realised at any price, and a small parcel of cotton of the same quality was sold at 7 cents. When Mr Nolte’s claim was submitted to Jackson, he allowed it, and said the cotton must be paid for at the price it would have fetched upon the day the American troops marched out of the town. No notice being taken of Mr Nolte’s written protest against such manifest injustice, he went to Jackson, then in all the intoxication of his triumph, and of the exaggerated homage paid him by his countrymen, and very well disposed to exert the arbitrary power given him by the military law he still quite unnecessarily maintained—a stretch of authority for which it will be remembered that he was afterwards fined by the civil tribunals. In reply to Mr Nolte’s representation and remonstrance—

“‘Aren’t you very lucky,’ he asked, ‘to have saved the rest of your cotton through my defence of the city?’

“‘Certainly, general,’ answered I, ‘as lucky as every other man in the place, but with this difference, that it costs them nothing, and that I have to bear all the loss.’

“‘Loss?’ cried the general, getting rather angry—‘loss? You have saved everything!’

“I saw it was no use arguing with such an obstinate man, and remarked to him that I only wanted compensation for my cotton, nothing more, and that the best compensation would be to give me back the same quantity and quality that had been taken from me; that I would appoint one merchant, he another; they would agree as to quality, buy the cotton, deliver it me, and he should pay for it.

“‘No, no, sir!’ replied Jackson; ‘I like straightforward business, and that is too complicated. You must take 6 cents for your cotton. I have nothing more to say.’

“I wanted to make the whole thing clear to him, but he cut me short: ‘Come, sir, come! Take a glass of whiskey-and-water; you must be damned dry after all your arguing.’

“All I could do was to say: ‘Well, general, I did not expect such injustice at your hands! Good morning, sir!’ And I went away. Three days afterwards news came of the conclusion of peace, and the consequence was an immediate rise of cotton to 16 cents, at which price I bought several parcels. The committee of claims were embarrassed; they felt that it was now impossible to fob me off with 6 cents. At last I was asked if I would now be content with payment of my invoice; and I agreed to be so, since I must else have complained to Congress, and the affair might have dragged on for years.”

Some pages are devoted by Mr Nolte to an appreciation of Old Hickory’s character. He condemns his arbitrary and overbearing disposition, and his cruelty to the unfortunate Indians, whom he so implacably and perseveringly hunted down, but does justice to his shrewdness and other good qualities, considering, however, that good luck had more to do than commanding talent with the distinction and popularity he attained to in the States—an opinion which we suspect to be now entertained by a very large number of Jackson’s countrymen. Of the general’s tone and manners—rough as those of a far-west woodsman—Mr Nolte gives some humorous examples. After the action in front of New Orleans, demonstrations innumerable were made in the hero’s honour. On his return into the city, Mrs Livingston placed a crown of laurel upon his head, which seemed considerably to embarrass the slayer of Seminoles, who took it off as if it burned his brow; the ladies subscribed for a costly set of jewels for Mrs General Jackson; and the principal inhabitants got up a grand ball in the French Exchange. Mr Nolte, who had seen more public festivities than most of the people of New Orleans, was a prominent and active member of the committee.

“The upper part of the Exchange was arranged for dancing, the lower part for supper, with flowers, coloured lamps, and transparencies. Before supper, Jackson desired to go alone and take a view of the arrangements, and I had to show him the way. On one of the transparencies, between the arcades, were to be read the words: ‘Jackson and victory, they are but one.’ The general turned round to me, in a more cordial manner than I might have expected, and asked, ‘Why did you not say Hickory and victory, they are but one?’ After supper the hero of the day gave us the diverting spectacle of a pas de deux between him and his wife—an Irish emigrant of low origin and considerable corpulence, whom he had taken away from a planter in Georgia. To see those two, the general a long lean man with skeleton-like limbs, and his wife, a short thick specimen of the female figure, dancing opposite to each other like half-drunken Indians, to the wild tune of ‘Opossum up a gum tree,’ was truly one of those remarkable spectacles which would be sought in vain in any European ballet.”

During the second year of the war between England and the States, a fine West Indiaman of 900 tons burthen, the “Lord Nelson,” was captured by the Yankee privateer Saratoga, taken into New Orleans, and sold by auction for a fourth of its value. Mr Nolte was the purchaser. Now that the war was over, he loaded her with cotton and deerskins, altered her name to the “Horatio,” and sailed for Nantes, with several passengers on board. The ship was but just outside the mouths of the Mississippi, when she spoke a vessel that had made an unusually short voyage from Havre, and brought news of Napoleon’s landing at Cannes, rapid march through France, and reinstallation in the Tuileries. Two Frenchmen, who were amongst the passengers, and one of whom had served under the emperor, were overjoyed. Presently it was discovered that the “Horatio” had not enough ballast for her two thousand bales of cotton, and she put into the Havana to supply the deficiency, thus somewhat lengthening her voyage. Off the Scilly Islands she spoke the monthly packet from London to New York. After the interchange of a little nautical information: “What news from France?” roared Mr Nolte’s captain through his speaking-trumpet. “The Duke of Wellington and the British army are in Paris,” was the reply. “Where is Buonaparte?” “Fled—nobody knows where.” And the two ships pursued their respective courses. The French passengers would not believe a word of it. It was English news, they said, manufactured in London; and they proved to each other, as clear as sunlight, that it was physically and morally impossible the intelligence should be true. It took the testimony of a French pilot, and the sight of the white flag on the banks of the Loire, to convince them that Napoleon had again fallen. The French population of New Orleans went yet farther in their incredulity. The Buonapartist Courrier de la Louisiane analysed the news, and ingeniously proved that the pretended victory of the Allies was merely a mask for a total defeat; that the emperor had achieved one of his great triumphs, which should forthwith be celebrated. And accordingly Napoleon’s bust, crowned with laurels, was that evening carried in procession, by the light of hundreds of torches, with several bands of music playing French national airs;—premature rejoicings, which the confirmation of the defeat of the French converted into profound consternation.

Paris, whither Mr Nolte hastened as soon as possible after landing, was full of novelty and excitement, and the focus on which the eyes of Europe were fixed. He devotes an interesting chapter to sketches of “Paris after Waterloo.” Amongst the crowds of foreign uniforms were here and there to be seen, he says, “spectral figures, in long blue coats buttoned to the chin, spurred boots, and hats pressed down over their eyes. These men, who cast such gloomy glances around them, were the officers of the disbanded French army. The ribbon of the Legion of Honour had disappeared from their button-hole, but it was easy to recognise them by their flashing eyes and fierce expression when an English uniform drew near. An accidental push or touch on the foot, often unavoidable in a crowd, and they would burst out, in great bitterness, with an angry—‘Je suis Français, Monsieur!’ or, ‘No, Padrone, questa e l’uniforme di Amburgo!’ and if the ‘Pardon, Monsieur!’ was not forthcoming, a quarrel was the almost inevitable result. The police had the difficult task of keeping these remnants of the French army out of Paris, but they were not very successful in so doing. Notwithstanding the violent irritation of the French military, which was kept under only by the strong hand, nobody in Paris went amongst them more fearlessly than the Duke of Wellington, who showed himself everywhere in a plain blue frock, with the English red scarf round his waist, and a simple red and white feather in his cocked hat, and usually rode about alone, followed only by a sergeant. Thus plainly equipped and slenderly escorted, I saw him one morning ride into the court of the Hotel de l’Empire, and ask for the celebrated London banker Angerstein, who was stopping there.” Ney’s death, the restaurants and coffeehouses then in vogue, and which were thronged with English and Prussian officers, and grand reviews of the allied troops, are in turn glanced at. At the review of the Russian guard, drawn up along the whole length of the boulevards, Mr Nolte had a particularly good view of the sovereigns. By favour of a colonel, with whom he had fallen into conversation, he was allowed to remain within the line cleared by the sentries, and close to the colonel’s horse. “Suddenly the three monarchs came riding rapidly up, the Emperor Alexander in the middle, his eyes directed to the ladies in the balconies and at the windows—on his right the Emperor Francis, with a serious straightforward gaze—on his left King Frederick-William III., who seemed to be examining the grisettes in the crowd rather than the ladies at the windows. The staff, according to the estimate of my obliging colonel, comprised more than a thousand military men of all nations. As good luck would have it, the sovereigns and their whole retinue paused in front of the regiment on my right, and the colonel pointed out to me the Russian grand-dukes, the Austrian archdukes, several Prussian princes, Wellington, Schwarzenberg, Blucher, Platoff,” &c. &c. Of all the commanders then assembled in Paris, the most dissatisfied was the American general, Scott (since noted for his campaign in Mexico), who had been opposed to the English on the Canadian frontier, had taken a fort or two, and was looked upon by his countrymen as a military star of the very first magnitude—second only to Jackson, and equal to any other warrior then extant. He had been sent to Europe to increase his military knowledge and study the art of war, and reached Paris fully convinced that all the great chiefs of the Continental armies would hasten to greet and compliment him. “To his visible vexation, he found himself completely mistaken. In the great military meetings in the French capital, where Wellington, Blucher, Schwarzenberg, Kutusoff, Woronzoff, and a host of other celebrities, laden with stars and orders, were assembled—the long thin man, in his blue coat without embroidery, and with only a pair of moderate-sized epaulets, excited no attention. Scott could not get over the contrast between the figure he had so recently cut in his native land, and the insignificance he was condemned to in France, and he often exhibited bitter and somewhat laughable ill-humour.” After a visit to the field of Waterloo, Mr Nolte returns to America, on cotton speculations intent—of which, and of Baring Brothers, he for some time discourses, until we are not sorry to see the theme changed, and him back in Paris, passing a Sunday at the country-house of Maison sur Seine, built by Louis XIV., and then just purchased from the French government by the banker Jacques Laffitte, whom he found in his park, accompanied by two plainly-dressed and plain-mannered Englishmen, who talked knowingly about cotton, and whom he took for Manchester cotton-spinners. At dinner, to his surprise, although Casimir Perrier and several deputies and Frenchmen of mark were present, the places of honour were for the Englishmen. He made up his mind that they must be very great people in the cotton-spinning line—perhaps the first in Manchester—and that they must have large credits on Laffitte’s house—that giving, not unfrequently, the measure of the hospitality of Parisian bankers. Laffitte, who was a great talker—given to discourse for hours together, with scarcely a break, and with innumerable digressions totally irrelevant to the subject under discussion—was loquacious as usual, and related many things that had occurred during the Hundred Days. At that time Napoleon had sent for and consulted him almost daily. Laffitte said that he had never been a worshipper of Napoleon’s, but he then had opportunity of convincing himself that the emperor possessed, in the highest degree, the art of popularity. “‘He was very confidential with me,’ said Laffitte, ‘spoke without reserve, and once made a striking remark concerning our nation. “To govern the French,” he said, “one must have arms of iron and gloves of velvet.”’ My readers may probably have heard this remark, but not the reply immediately made by Madame Laffitte’s right-hand neighbour (one of the Manchester cotton-spinners aforesaid). ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that is very true, but—he often forgot to put on his gloves.’ The remark was so apt and true that all present laughed heartily. I asked my next neighbour who the witty foreigner was, and learned that it was the Marquis of Lansdowne.”

Involved in the commercial disasters of 1825–6, Mr Nolte left New Orleans, sixteen years after his first establishment there, and went to seek in Europe that fortune which had constantly eluded his grasp in the States. His success in the Old World was little better than in the New. In after years, he again more than once visited America, and engaged in enormous cotton speculations, in which he burnt his fingers. Cotton seems to have had for him the same irresistible attraction that dice have for the veteran gambler. Although many of his misfortunes were the result of circumstances neither to be foreseen nor guarded against, and although we may suppose that he makes out the best case he fairly can, the impression left by his book upon the reader’s mind is, that Mr Vincent Nolte has been, to say the least, a very venturesome person, and that his abilities and opportunities would have amply sufficed to insure him ultimate affluence, had he been less impatient to acquire a large and rapid fortune. On the other hand, he deserves credit for his unflinching pluck, and for his elasticity under misfortune. When he left New Orleans, he attempted to form a partnership at Havre, but in vain; and he himself frankly admits that he was unsuccessful, because the merchants with whom he would have associated himself were deterred by his reputed taste for the vast and daring operations in which he had been early initiated. The slow but sure gains of the steady trader he never had patience to collect; the ordinary routine of commercial affairs was to him wearisome and intolerable; he carried into the peaceful paths of trade something of that venturesome and aspiring spirit which, upon the battle-field, insures the soldier high distinction or sudden death—a bullet or a marshal’s baton. We regret to fear that it has led Mr Nolte, after his long and busy life, to no very prosperous position; although he seems to preserve to the last the spirit and vigour that have borne him through so many trying vicissitudes. At the time now referred to, he was still in his prime, and full of hope and confidence. From Havre he betook himself to his favourite city of Paris, where, by the assistance and introduction of his staunch friends the Barings, he was on the eve of concluding a partnership for the establishment of a house at Marseilles. The circulars were printed; Mr Nolte took a run to Hamburg, Holland, and England, to visit commercial friends, and everywhere he met a kind and encouraging reception. He reached Southampton, on his return to Paris, two hours after the departure of the packet, and, with characteristic impatience, rather than wait two days, hired an open boat, whose owner undertook to land him at Havre early the next morning. It was a moonlight night, and a fair wind at starting, but he was becalmed in the Channel, and lay a whole day roasting in the sun. Upon the morning of the 26th July 1830, he landed at Havre, and posted on to Paris. At Rouen he remarked signs of uneasiness, and the troops were under arms; at Courbevoie he received the first news of the fatal ordinances; outside the Paris barrier, a few persons stopped his chaise, and tore the white cockade from the postilion’s hat. Paris was enacting the most peaceful and respectable of its numerous revolutions.

Mr Nolte witnessed the proceedings of the three days of July, and betook himself to Marseilles, where he had scarcely commenced business when the failure of the Irish-French bankers who were to advance the greater part of the capital on behalf of his partner compelled him again to abandon it, and once more to return to Paris. He had been on very intimate terms with General Lafayette during that veteran revolutionist’s visit to the United States in 1825, had travelled with him, acted as his banker, rendered him some service, and shown him many attentions; for which he deemed himself far more than compensated by the privilege of the general’s society, and by the interest of his conversation. Alone with him, in the cabin of the American steamer which the authorities of New Orleans had allotted to the use of Washington’s old friend and comrade, Lafayette spoke freely of his past life and present opinions, and Mr Nolte was astonished by the revelation of plans which he would never have suspected to have lingered in that venerable head—so soon, in all probability, to be laid in the grave. The man who, at least as well as any living, had had opportunities of judging the Bourbon character—before and since the day when, upon the balcony at Versailles, he kissed, in sign of peace and good understanding, the hand of the defamed and martyred Marie Antoinette, amidst the acclamations of assembled thousands, whose discontent the symbol and the promised return of the royal family to Paris promptly, although but temporarily, appeased—declared his conviction of its unworthiness. For the good of France, in his opinion, she must expel the race of whom Talleyrand so truly said, that they had forgotten nothing, and learned nothing. “‘France cannot be happy under the Bourbons,’ said Lafayette, ‘and we must get rid of them. It would be already done, had Laffitte chosen.’

“‘Indeed!’ I exclaimed; ‘how so?’

“‘It is not so long ago,’ continued the general, ‘that you will have forgotten how two of the regiments of guards that were ordered to Spain under the command of the Duke of Angoulême, halted in Toulouse, and showed signs of raising the banner of revolt. The affair was quickly suppressed, and kept as quiet as possible. But the plan was ripe! I knew that from my private correspondence with several officers, and nothing but money was wanting for a successful insurrection then to have occurred. I addressed myself to Laffitte; he had scruples; he would and he would not. At last I offered to carry the thing through without his participation. On the first occasion when we are alone together—I said to him—but as soon as possible, lay a million of francs in bank-notes upon the chimney-piece—I will put them in my pocket without your perceiving it. The rest you may leave to me! Laffitte hesitated, was undecided, and at last declared he would have nothing whatever to do with the affair. And so the whole project fell through!’

“I could not conceal my surprise. ‘Had I heard what you have just told me from any other lips than yours, general,’ I said, ‘I would not have believed a word of it.’ The general merely replied, ‘C’etait pourtant ainsi.’”

In 1830 Lafayette’s desire was fulfilled—not to its full extent, for he wished the Bourbons to be replaced by a republic, partly because he believed that form of government the best suited to render France happy and prosperous, and partly because it would have best enabled him to gratify his unbounded greed of popularity. But the Bourbons had fled, and France had a citizen king and a national guard. Arms were required for the latter, and Mr Nolte thought that their supply would be a profitable business—quite in his way, because there was much money to be made in a short time. Lafayette, besides being commander-in-chief of the national guard, was the intimate friend of Gerard, Louis Philippe’s first minister of war, in whose department the matter lay, and who was desirous of making contracts for the supply of muskets. Mr Nolte betook himself to Lafayette, who received him most cordially (embracing him, to the infinite astonishment of his aide-de-camp, who had taken Nolte for an Englishman), and gave him the strongest recommendation to Gerard; the result of which was, that he obtained extensive contracts for the supply not only of muskets, but of the briquets or short Roman swords which Soult, who succeeded Gerard at the war-office, introduced into the army, and by which the mercenary old marshal—so his enemies affirmed, and thousands to this day believe—himself pocketed no inconsiderable sum. Be this true or not—and Soult’s proved rapacity at many previous periods of his life gave but too much probability to the accusation—Mr Nolte had occasion, whilst carrying out his contracts, which extended over a considerable time, to note several instances of that venality of French officials which rose to such a height under Louis Philippe’s reign as at last to extend to his very ministers, and to constitute one of the prominent causes of his dethronement. As early as 1831, Mr Nolte assures us, itching palms were plenty in France, and that amongst personages of no humble rank. But as far as military men were concerned, this was a mere continuation of the traditions and usages of the Empire—that period of unrefined sensuality and reckless extravagance, during which Napoleon’s subalterns, following their leader’s unscrupulous example, filled their pockets whenever and wherever they could, without much regard to the delicacy of the means employed. Amongst the anecdotes illustrative of this state of corruption to be found in Mr Nolte’s Reminiscences, is one of a certain general officer, not named, whom he thought it advisable to propitiate by a present. In this case, as in all others of the kind in which he had to deal with men of good breeding and position, the puzzle was how to administer the douceur so that it might be taken without embarrassment. Mrs Nolte, to whom her husband communicated his difficulty, undertook to ascertain, through her acquaintances, the tastes and partialities of the high functionary in question. She discovered that he was very fond of snuff-boxes.

“This ascertained,” says Mr Nolte, “I chose a very handsome box, and placed a bank-note in it, in such a manner that on opening the box the amount, 1000 francs, must immediately catch the eye. Then I took the first opportunity that presented itself, when my friend had recourse to his own box for a pinch, to produce mine, as if for the same purpose. It immediately attracted his attention. ‘That snuff-box is really in excellent taste!’ he exclaimed. ‘Since it pleases you, general,’ I replied, ‘oblige me by accepting it as a keepsake!’ He thanked me, took the box, and at once opened it. I did not long remain in doubt as to the manner in which my present would be received. ‘Aha!’ he cried, ‘but it is right you should know that I am a great snuff-taker. A double pinch never does any harm, my dear sir!’ and so saying, he pocketed the box. The hint sufficed. On my return home, I enclosed a second thousand-franc note, with my card, in an envelope, and sent it to him.”

Another officer of rank, a colonel of artillery, who had served under Napoleon, and was then in command of the arsenal at Havre, made some difficulty about receiving a much larger sum, offered him by Mr Nolte in acknowledgment of important and gratuitous services, most kindly rendered. He ended by pocketing the affront, when it was sent by Mr Nolte under cover to his confidential servant, and probably, as an old soldier of the Empire, he thought it quite equitable and honourable that he should have his slice of the contractor’s gain. But he afterwards made a most generous use of a portion of the sum. Poor Nolte, after toiling hard for three years, during which time he delivered arms to the amount of nearly eight millions of francs, fell amongst thieves, as too often happened to him, and was swindled out of all his earnings. Some time afterwards, when he was absent from Paris in pursuit of fresh schemes, Colonel Lefrançois happened to hear that his wife was in embarrassed circumstances, and immediately called upon her. “My dear Madam,” he said, “I have received a great deal of money from your husband, much more than I had any claim to—I have spent and squandered the greater part of it, as one is wont to do with windfalls of that kind. But now that you need it, it is my duty to return you what remains. Here it is—do me the favour to accept it. You, your husband, and your little family, will always be dear to me.” This trait contrasts pleasingly with the numerous others, of a very contrary nature, to be found in the record of Mr Nolte’s Parisian experiences and transactions. These were of a nature to bring him into unavoidable—but, to him, in no way discreditable—connection with various equivocal characters. Some of his contracts were for secondhand muskets, which he employed agents to seek in the brokers’ shops of Paris. Many of these agents were recommended to him by the subordinate officials of the war-office. Others he fell in with casually. Thus, in the month of December 1831, a down-looking man, of unprepossessing exterior, accosted him on the stairs of the artillery depot, in the Rue de Luxembourg, and offered his services for the purchase of old muskets. Mr Nolte briefly replied, that if he knew of a parcel of such weapons for sale, he would send to look at them, and would buy them if price and quality suited. Accordingly, several small parcels of arms were purchased of this man, whose name was Darmenon, and whose flighty, uncertain manner always displeased Mr Nolte, and made him think he must have done something that would not bear daylight. On inquiry of the police, he learned that he was a forger, who had served his time at the galleys. He could not, however, on this account, make up his mind to refuse the unfortunate fellow’s services, and so, perhaps, drive him again to crime, so he continued to employ him, and Darmenon made himself very useful, and, moreover, gave him constant information of the plans and movements of the malcontents of the Faubourg St Antoine. Through him and other agents, Mr Nolte was kept informed of the number of muskets daily brought into Paris, the persons to whom they were delivered, and various other particulars. It was rare that more than 100 or 120 came in at a time. One morning, however, Darmenon informed his employer that 2600 had been brought in at an early hour through the barrier of St Denis, and had been taken to the faubourg of the same name. On reporting this at the ministry of war, Mr Nolte received directions to purchase the whole lot immediately on government account, and regardless of price. The purchase was effected, but not without some competition, which he thought unlikely to proceed from a merely mercantile motive, and on setting his agents to work, he found that his competitors were the Legitimists, who had been very busy for some time past. He became convinced, from this and other information that reached him, that there was a plot in existence against Louis Philippe, and he desired Darmenon to keep a sharp look-out, and inform him of whatever came to his knowledge. The occupation seemed to the taste of the ex-galley-slave, who reported, on the morning of the 1st February, that several Carlist emissaries were at work in the Faubourg St Antoine, that towards noon there would probably be a gathering of workmen, who would raise the banner of Henry V., and that at ten o’clock at night the conspirators would leave the house, No. 18 Rue des Prouvaires, force their way into the Tuileries, where there was to be a ball that evening, surround Louis Philippe, lead him away, and put him to death. The conspirators, with whom Darmenon confessed himself to have been long in the habit of intercourse, had offered him 6000 francs for 200 muskets, and had paid him 2000 francs in advance. These circumstantial details, and the sight of the notes, convincing Mr Nolte of the truth of the story, he jumped into his cab and drove to the prefecture of police, then presided over by the notorious Gisquet. On his way he called at the Bourse. There had been a sudden fall of 1½ per cent, owing to alarming rumours and to heavy sales by the Carlists. Gisquet, with whom Mr Nolte was acquainted, discredited, or affected to discredit, the whole affair, but noted a few particulars, and politely thanked his informant for the needless trouble he had given himself. But, before seven o’clock that evening, Darmenon had the whole 6000 francs in his possession. The 200 muskets were to be sent for before ten o’clock. Mr Nolte again hurried to Gisquet, and asked if he should deliver them. “Yes,” was the reply; “a few at a time; I will have them followed.” Mr Nolte gave the needful instructions, and was informed, the next morning, by his storekeeper, that Darmenon had had seventeen muskets delivered to him, and had been forthwith arrested. The Paris papers of the 2d February announced that the police, with Mr Carlier (then chief of the municipal guard, since prefect of police under the Republic) at their head, had forced their way into the house, No. 18 Rue des Prouvaires, at 11 o’clock on the previous night, and, after some resistance, had captured the whole band of conspirators there assembled. From the evidence on the trial, it appeared that Gisquet, incredulous to the eleventh hour, was even then undecided what to do. He feared the attack of the opposition press, ever ready to accuse the police of fabricating the plots they discovered. Carlier at last put an end to his perplexity, by violently exclaiming, “They are armed; we are of superior force; we must enter the house and use our weapons!” An hour later this was done; a municipal guard was killed, and Carlier himself received a slight bullet-wound on the head.

When Marshal Soult, Mr Nolte tells us, learned that it was one of his contractors who had led the way to the discovery of the plot, he was displeased that he had not been first informed of it, instead of the prefect of police. He was jealous of Thiers, then minister of the interior, who, on his part, bore him no love. Soult would not have been sorry to expose the inefficiency of his colleague’s police; Thiers, owing to the course adopted by Mr Nolte, was enabled to make a boast of its vigilance. All the merit of the affair was attributed to Gisquet, who was promoted to the rank of officer of the Legion of Honour. And when that worthy, after he was dismissed for his venality and scandalous immorality, wrote his memoirs and attempted justification, he ascribed the discovery of the plot of the Rue des Prouvaires entirely to his own activity and zeal, and made no mention whatever of Mr Nolte.

A chapter of amusing gossip, headed “Reminiscences of the Artistic World of Paris,” tempts us to linger, but the length to which this paper has already extended admonishes us to pause. We conclude by extracting a short anecdote, which we do not remember to have before heard, of that eccentric genius, Horace Vernet. It was some time before the capture of the Smala, his picture of which added so greatly to his reputation. Vernet was in Marshal Bugeaud’s camp, where all the soldiers knew of his presence, and one of them, who had promised to send his portrait to his mother, went to him and asked him if he would undertake the work, and at what price. Vernet’s reply was that he could not do it for less than a twenty-franc piece. The soldier thought this rather a high figure, but agreed to pay it, provided the likeness was perfect. This the painter promised that it should be, and accordingly, when the picture was done, it was exhibited in the camp, and the striking resemblance was proclaimed by all the comrades of the original. Thereupon the soldier paid the stipulated price, which Vernet quietly pocketed, observing that an artist must live by the price of his work. On leaving the camp, two days afterwards, he sent twenty napoleons to the captain of the soldier’s company, for distribution to him and his brave comrades.

Seldom, either in print or in the flesh, have we fallen in with so restless, versatile, and excursive a genius as Vincent Nolte, Esq., of Europe and America—no more limited address will sufficiently express his cosmopolitan domicile. The reader will perhaps imagine, after the perusal of this tolerably desultory paper, that we have traced a considerable portion of his journey through life. No idea was ever more erroneous. We have only picked a little here and there, and have taken scarcely any notice of the parts the author doubtless considers the most important in his book, and which will certainly be read with strong interest by bankers and merchants old enough to remember the mercantile history of the first quarter of the present century. It is chiefly to those intimate and personal commercial details that we attribute the uncommon success Mr Nolte’s autobiography has had in its place of publication, and in Germany generally. Independently of those, it contains matter of interest and entertainment for all classes of readers.

A SPORTING SETTLER IN CEYLON. [12]

One of the most striking features of the present age, with reference to our own country, is to be found in that wonderful chain of steam communication, which within the last few years we have seen gradually linking together the British dominions, and which must girdle the globe before it completely connects every portion of our vast empire. But if it is a subject of national pride that our possessions are scattered so widely over the face of the earth, the universal ignorance which prevails respecting them in the mother country only becomes the more incomprehensible and deeply to be deplored. Moreover, the comparatively small amount of intelligence which has been brought to bear upon the subject has been most partially and improperly distributed. The colonies of Great Britain have engrossed all the sympathies of the home public. The dependencies are utterly neglected, or, which comes to much the same thing, consigned unreservedly to the tender mercies of the Colonial Office.

However much may be regretted this marked preference in favour of the colony, it is easily accounted for. An inviting and almost totally uninhabited country of vast extent and genial climate, possessing a fertile soil, and sources of unknown wealth, tempts a certain class of the home community to quit for ever their native shores and risk their fortunes in those distant lands, which henceforward possess an interest in the eyes of those they have left behind, and create in them the spirit of inquiry and enterprise. In the case of the dependency, no such inducement exists. A tropical climate is a bugbear utterly appalling to the intending emigrant. He shudders at the bare idea of passing the rest of his existence in a temperature of 90°, exposed to the attacks of cholera, fever, natives, and snakes. He has heard of fortunes having been made in India, but he has never heard of children having been brought up there, and so having failed in the attempt to get a writership for his son, he pities the lot of those who are more successful, does not bestow a second thought upon that continent to which his country owes, in a great measure, her prosperity, and betakes himself, with his wife and family, to the backwoods of Canada.

And if India is treated with such indifference, what must be the fate of that large pear-shaped island at its southern extremity, perhaps more easily recognised by the well educated as Taprobane than as Ceylon. To be sure, Trincomalee (the white man’s grave) is a name familiar to their ears, but the existence of Colombo, a city containing 60,000 inhabitants, and the seat of government, is altogether ignored, just as the Cingalese themselves seldom hear of England, or are accustomed to think of it only as the capital of London. The absence of any recent popular work upon Ceylon may in some measure account for, while it cannot quite excuse, this ignorance. And we should certainly deeply commiserate any one who, in a moment of infatuation, attempted to acquire his information from the work of Sir Emerson Tenant, which was published about two years ago, entitled Christianity in Ceylon. Those who are really interested in the subject of Christianity will find it treated of there in a cold, unsympathising manner, calculated rather to repel than to attract them. Indeed, the unfavourable reception which this book has already met with, proves that the general public, but too little mindful of Christianity at home, care as little for its development in Ceylon as did Sir Emerson himself during his late administration as Colonial Secretary of the island. Mr Baker has evidently a much better appreciation of the popular taste, when, instead of “Christianity,” he gives us “The Rifle and the Hound” in Ceylon; and we entertain no doubt that the result will prove this satisfactorily alike to himself and to his publishers.

We have, indeed, seldom perused a work with a keener relish than the one we have just laid down. Our author has shown in it that he can wield his pen as ably as he can handle his rifle, and in his exciting description of wild sports in Ceylon, he gives the public a “view halloo” of the game he is in sight of there, that must stir within him the soul of every true sportsman. But the interest of Mr Baker’s book does not consist so much in the telling and graphic manner in which he relates his own adventures and hairbreadth escapes, as in the perfectly new character in which he represents the island where he has now permanently established himself, and where he seems to be enjoying existence in a capacity hitherto untried in that tropical clime; for he is no coffee-planter reconciling himself to a solitary existence in the jungle by the hope of speedily realising what he terms “a comfortable independence,” upon which to return to his native land—or Ceylon civil servant, revelling in the prospect of retiring when he is grey-headed to enjoy anything but a comfortable independence, viz. £500 a-year, or half the highest salary that splendid service offers to unfortunate younger sons. Nor is he stationed out here with his regiment, altogether regardless, as a soldier ought to be, of a comfortable independence, and anxious to keep his hand in for natives by shooting elephants. He is no mere dilettante sportsman, endeavouring to recover the effects, and dissipate the recollections, of half a dozen London seasons. He is a settler—positively a settler in Ceylon. If our preconceived impressions of this colony be true, what a sanguine temperament our author must possess, to enable him to expose himself so cheerfully to the attacks of fever and wild beasts for the rest of his life. There certainly never was such an act of insanity perpetrated; he might as well have emigrated to the infernal regions at once. We have no doubt his friends told him so before he quitted the genial clime of his native land. But before we condemn him so roundly, let us see where he has pitched his tent, and what sort of answer he sends back to the inquiries of these anxious friends of his.

“Here, then, I am in my private sanctum, my rifles all arranged in their respective stands above the chimney-piece, the stag’s horns round walls hung with horn-cases, powder-flasks, and the various weapons of the chase. Even as I write, the hounds are yelling in the kennel.

“The thermometer is at 62° Fahr., and it is mid-day. It never exceeds 72° in the hottest weather, and sometimes falls below freezing point at night. The sky is spotless, and the air calm. The fragrance of mignonettes, and a hundred flowers that recall Old England, fill the air. Green fields of grass and clover, neatly fenced, surround a comfortable house and grounds. Well-fed cattle of the choicest breeds, and English sheep, are grazing in the paddocks. Well made roads and gravel walks run through the estate. But a few years past, and this was all wilderness.

“Dense forest reigned where now not even the stump of a tree is standing; the wind howled over hill and valley, the dank moss hung from the scathed branches, the deep morass filled the hollows; but all is changed by the hand of civilisation and industry. The dense forests and rough plains, which still form the boundaries of the cultivated land, only add to the beauty. The monkeys and parrots are even now chattering among the branches; and occasionally the elephant, in his nightly wanderings, trespasses upon the fields, unconscious of the oasis within his territory of savage nature.

“The still starlight night is awakened by the harsh bark of the elk; the lofty mountains, grey with the silvery moonlight, echo back the sound, and the wakeful hounds answer the well-known cry by a prolonged and savage yell.

“This is ‘Newera Ellia,’ the sanatorium of Ceylon, the most perfect climate of the world. It now boasts of a handsome church, a public reading-room, a large hotel, the barracks, and about twenty private residences.

“The adjacent country, of comparatively table-land, occupies an extent of some thirty miles in length, varying in altitude from six thousand two hundred to seven thousand feet, forming a base for the highest peaks in Ceylon, which rise to nearly nine thousand feet.

“Alternate large plains, separated by belts of forest, rapid rivers, waterfalls, precipices, and panoramic views of boundless extent, form the features of this country, which, combined with the sports of the place, render a residence at Newera Ellia a life of health, luxury, and independence.”

So Mr Baker is not quite a maniac after all—in fact, his lines seem cast in rather pleasant places; and, if we may draw our own inferences from the brief description he gives us of his island home, the pleasures of the chase are only resorted to as an agreeable variation from the ordinary routine of his agricultural pursuits. He is a solitary specimen in Ceylon of that race so highly respected in our own country, which combines at once the sportsman, the farmer, and the gentleman.

It has ever been a matter of astonishment to us that no sportsman of the Cinnamon Isle has before this been inspired by his romantic and adventurous life to depict those scenes in which he has himself revelled, so as to allow the public the gratification of participating, although only in imagination, in wild sports of a nature as exciting and hazardous as the manner in which they are prosecuted is novel and enjoyable. We have not only explored, with Gordon Cumming, the interior of South Africa, but have been bored to death by exhibitions in our own country of the trophies which attest his courage and energy. Although we have never visited the Far West, we are as familiar with the life of the buffalo-hunter or prairie Indian as Washington Irving himself.—For did we not live among trappers, with the inimitable Ruxton for our companion, while we have only just returned from a solitary ramble with Palliser. And so tired are we of shooting tigers and hunting boars in India with the Cockney who goes out for a winter excursion, or the “Company’s” lady who wishes to astonish her sisters at home, and disgust her husband at “the station,” that we should infinitely prefer reading the account in the county paper of the last run of the subscription pack, to Mrs M.’s charming description of the Shickar at B——, and the grand Tomasha with which it terminated. And, indeed, if we are accused of giving too unfavourable an impression of Indian sport, it is because, when we compare our own experiences of sport in Bengal with that in Ceylon, we feel that the merits of the latter have been utterly ignored and overwhelmed by a profusion of rubbishy, exaggerated pictures of tiger-hunting and pig-sticking, half of which have been drawn, as a sportsman can at once detect, by those who have never seen a tiger or a wild boar before they gave us this account of their “fearful adventures.” We certainly will maintain that sport in India is very far inferior to sport in Ceylon, inasmuch as it is much more exciting to shoot an elephant than to ride one. The insipidity of rocking about on the back of an elephant, looking for a tiger among long grass, and running away or not when you find one, as it suits the fancy of the mahout or the elephant, is easily appreciated by those who have ever indulged in the delectable amusement of stalking a “rogue,” with nothing but a pair of rifle barrels and a pair of stout legs to trust to. We engage to say, that if there were as much elephant-shooting in Ceylon as there is tiger-shooting in India, the proportion of deaths in the former country would be as ten to one. We will admit that “shickar” arrangements are made on a much more magnificent and luxurious scale in India than in Ceylon; but this is a very secondary consideration with the true sportsman, and we certainly never enjoyed life more thoroughly at any time than while making our jungle trips in those wild districts in Ceylon which are so plentifully stocked with game. What an independent existence was that! far from the haunts of men by some secluded tank,—a monument of the industry and greatness of a race long since passed away,—shadowed over by the lofty and graceful tamarind tree, is pitched our snug little single-poled tent. Some camp-stools are our seats by day, and fit into one another so as to form comfortable beds; the small circular table is fixed to the tent-pole; the canteen, some green native baskets containing our wardrobe, and a long range of guns, complete the furniture. It is mid-day, and the occupants are taking a siesta in their pyjamas; the coolies are snoring where the jungle forms the densest shade; the cook and servants have built a house for themselves of branches, and are engaged in culinary occupations. No sooner is the intense heat of mid-day past than we sally forth, working steadily for about four hours; then comes the luxurious fare known well to the Ceylon hunter. Our coolies and ourselves are alike dependent entirely on our trusty rifles. We sometimes indulge in beer, but it is a most extravagant practice—always, however, in a good cook. It is not yet quite dusk: we dine in the open air. There is roast peafowl with buffalo tongue, venison pasty and jugged hare, with a curry of jungle fowl, with pigs’ fry, if we are not otherwise well supplied; but, as a general rule, wild boar is to be avoided, especially if dead elephants are abundant in the vicinity. Presently the full moon in the cloudless sky throws the shadows long and sharp over our encampment, and we prepare for night-work. Our tent is quite concealed from the tank to which we now repair: it is about three-quarters dry, and the water is not more than half a mile in circumference. There are two round holes prepared for our reception close to the water’s edge, of sufficient depth to conceal the occupants. All through the night, with the moon looking calmly down upon us, brightly reflected in the waters of the tank, we watch. As it is early yet, there are plenty of buffaloes still to be seen. Soon large herds of deer come down to drink; they are quite unsuspicious, and pass to and fro within a few yards of the loaded rifles. Then the sharp bark of the elk rings through the still air, and a noble buck walks knee deep into the water, and a moment afterwards the doe more timidly follows. Large sounders of pigs grunt about constantly. After midnight, more important game appears, and rouses the eager sportsmen to more vigorous action; whether we have made a bag or not depends upon whether there are elephants in the neighbourhood. If there are, they will now be heard crashing through the jungle. They come very slowly, and the excitement is intense; they keep stopping by the way, and beating about with their trunks. We are getting very impatient—they never will come! At last, one after another, they stalk across the open in the clear moonlight; a large herd is soon splashing, and bubbling, and roaring in the muddy water. They are out of shot, and we are obliged to stalk them, for moonlight shooting is deceptive, and we have put lime on the sight of the guns—a precaution, by the way, we do not hear that Mr Baker adopted when shooting by moonlight. We no sooner fire than the uproar and noise of the retreating elephants are tremendous: they seldom charge at night, the whole transaction being too sudden and mysterious; but the crashing of the jungle, as the terrified herd sweeps through it, is inconceivable. An hour or two before daybreak chetahs and bears come stealthily down and stay for a moment, and are gone again. In the course of one night, in the northern part of Ceylon, we have literally seen and fired at every description of the game we have just enumerated. At daybreak we swallow a quantity of warm strong coffee, and only return when the barrels of our rifles become too hot to hold, unless, indeed, we are absolutely on the track of an elephant, and then the blazing sun itself is despised. On our way home we discharge our rifles at the scaly backs of innumerable alligators that bask open-mouthed upon the sloping bank, but never with the hope of getting, though sometimes of killing, one. We have occasionally put a ball between the greaves of their armour, but can testify most assuredly (although Mr Baker seems to doubt it) that an alligator’s back will turn a rifle ball at twenty yards, as upon one occasion the ball from a friend’s rifle lodged in a tree above us, although he was standing at a distance of about a hundred yards off, and the alligator at which he had fired was in a totally opposite direction. And so the days fly past, and our trip is at an end, while our appetite for excitement and adventure remains unappeased; but we are soon reconciled to the change from the rough jungle-life to the comforts of civilisation, for with them we combine the invigorating air of the mountains, and sport of another kind. The tent is exchanged at Newera Ellia for the warm thatched cottage, with its rustic porch covered with sweet-pea and honeysuckle, and well-furnished carpeted rooms, where a comfortable wood-fire crackles upon every hearth, and sheds its grateful influence upon the party gathered round it, and which is composed of the most diverse materials. Bengal civilians, who were supposed to be dying when they left the Sandheads, are narrating with no little satisfaction their exploits in the morning’s elk-hunt; officers from Colombo, and middies from Trincomalee, are eagerly canvassing the prospects for the morrow; coffee-planters, tourists, and Ceylon officials, have become excellent friends on short acquaintance, and are all burning to distinguish themselves. At 5 A.M. it requires some courage to emerge from beneath a couple of warm blankets: the ground is covered with a thick hoar-frost, and fingers long accustomed to wield a pen in some Indian cutcherry can scarcely hold the reins. Enterprising ladies, with very red tips to their noses, join the party, and the meet is a gay and animated scene. But we must not follow the fortunes of the hunt—our reminiscences have already led us beyond the orthodox limits of a review—and we shall gladly turn to Mr Baker for a description of those sports which he, in common with ourselves, so highly appreciates. We would first, however, say a few words more in reference to the lovely spot in which he has taken up his abode, and of which he has unfortunately given us a very meagre account.

The few Englishmen of a lower class in society who have found their way to Newera Ellia are thriving well; they are, for the most part, discharged soldiers, or persons whose original object, in coming to Ceylon, was to superintend coffee plantations. English blacksmiths, carpenters, shoemakers, or tailors, are all sure of plenty of employment; while storekeeping, or taking charge of the residences of those government functionaries who are fortunate enough to possess them, is a profitable occupation. The great drawback to extensive settling in Newera Ellia, is the absence of a permanent market. At some seasons of the year the plain is overflowing with civilians and military men from the lower provinces, or from the continent of India, who flock to enjoy its bracing climate; at other times visitors are few and far between, and the produce must be transported in bullock-carts to Kandy or Colombo.

The nearest coffee plantations are situated in Dimboola, seven or eight miles distant, the elevation of the plain being too great for the growth of the berry. All the ordinary productions of our kitchen-gardens are to be procured in abundance, and delicious strawberries may here be grown, to recall to the acclimatised Company’s servant the long-forgotten tastes of his native land. There can be no doubt that when the merits of Newera Ellia become better known they will be more highly appreciated, while its proximity to India will then insure those who have settled there a speedy and profitable return for their outlay.

We regret that the scope and tenor of Mr Baker’s work do not admit of a full account of his farming experiences, which must have been both novel and interesting. His sketches of scenery are graceful and life-like, evincing a warm susceptibility and a cultivated mind—qualities which must ever distinguish the thorough sportsman from a mere butcher on a large scale. “To a true sportsman,” says our author, “the enjoyment of a sport increases in proportion to the wildness of the country.” The deliberate manner in which Mr Baker awaits the furious charge of a rogue elephant, with his rifle on full cock, wrapped in the contemplation of the beauties of nature, is truly appalling to us uninitiated Westerns; and, indeed, at these critical moments he is ever most enthusiastic—a very Izaak Walton of Nimrods.

“There is a mournful silence in the calmness of the evening, when the tropical sun sinks upon the horizon, a conviction that man has left this region undisturbed to its wild tenants. No hum of distant voices, no rumbling of busy wheels, no cries of domestic animals meet the ear. He stands upon a wilderness, pathless and untrodden by the foot of civilisation, where no sound is ever heard but that of the elements, when the thunder rolls among the towering forests, or the wind howls along the plains. He gazes far, far into the distance, where the blue mountains melt into an indefinite haze; he looks above him to the rocky pinnacles which spring from the level plain, their swarthy cliffs glistening from the recent shower, and patches of rich verdure clinging to precipices a thousand feet above him. His eye stretches along the grassy plains, taking at one full glance a survey of woods, and rocks, and streams; and imperceptibly his mind wanders to thoughts of home, and in one moment scenes long left behind are conjured up by memory, and incidents are recalled which banish for a time the scene before him. Lost for a moment in the enchanting power of solitude, where fancy and reality combine in their most bewitching forms, he is suddenly roused by a distant sound, made doubly loud by the surrounding silence—the shrill trumpet of an elephant.”

This is a good specimen of our author in his softer moods; but we must hurry on to more stirring scenes. Some seven or eight years ago Mr Baker visited Ceylon on a sporting tour, and the first part of his volume is devoted to an account of his adventures upon that occasion. He subsequently returned to Ceylon, and, making Newera Ellia his permanent headquarters, he enjoyed elk-hunting at his own doors; and, having profited by former experience, made his elephant-shooting excursions in a deliberate and well-organised manner. His battery consisted “of one four-ounce rifle (a single barrel) weighing twenty-one pounds, one long two-ounce rifle (single barrel) weighing sixteen pounds, and four double-barrelled rifles, No. 10, weighing each fifteen pounds.” The No. 10 double barrels did most execution, and were twelve-grooved, carrying a conical ball of two ounces and a half. It is certainly a popular delusion to suppose that smooth bores are better than these for elephant-shooting. We have already enumerated the varieties of game at which this formidable battery is directed.

About eighty miles to the north-east of Kandy, the lake of Minneria lies embosomed amid the most luxuriant vegetation, presenting a sheet of water twenty miles in circumference; and here, far distant from the haunts of men, surrounded by some of the loveliest scenery which Ceylon can boast, Mr Baker introduces us to his first buffalo. Our author’s brother is the only companion of his sport; they have just arrived in the island, and consequently are complete novices in its wild sports. No sooner do they reach Minneria than, carried away by the excitement of such close proximity to their noble game, they sally forth to attack a herd of buffaloes, improperly supplied with ammunition. A bull charges and is wounded, the herd retreats, and our author, leaving his brother to extinguish the wounded bull, follows another, who disdains a rapid flight. He is at length overtaken, and as he faces about to his pursuer, Mr Baker puts two balls into his chest at fifteen paces, without effect, “save that his eye, which had hitherto been merely sullen, was now beaming with fury, but his form was motionless as a statue.” This is decidedly startling—more startling still to find that there is not another ball left. It was now the bull’s turn. “I dared not turn to retreat, as I knew he would immediately charge, and we stared one another out of countenance.” For a quarter of an hour Mr B. stares fiercely but hopelessly at his maddened antagonist, then a bright thought flashes across him:—

“Without taking my eyes off the animal before me, I put a double charge of powder down the right-hand barrel, and tearing off a piece of my shirt, I took all the money from my pouch, three shillings in sixpenny pieces, and two anna pieces, which I luckily had with me in this small coin for paying coolies. Quickly making them into a rouleau with the piece of rag, I rammed them down the barrel, and they were hardly well home before the bull again sprang forward. So quick was it that I had no time to replace the ramrod, and I threw it in the water, bringing my gun on full cock in the same instant.”

His brother now comes up:—

“It was the work of an instant. B. fired without effect. The horns were lowered, their points were on either side of me, and the muzzle of the gun barely touched his forehead when I pulled the trigger, and three shillings’ worth of small change rattled into his hard head. Down he went, and rolled over with the suddenly checked momentum of his charge. Away went B. and I as fast as our heels would carry us, through the water and over the plain, knowing that he was not dead but only stunned.”

We have generally found in the course of our own short experience that there was nothing for meeting a charge like a little ready money, but this is squaring accounts with a vengeance. In a moment more Mr Baker must inevitably have paid the debt of nature—he paid 3s. 6d. instead, and we will venture to say he never before spent that sum more quickly or satisfactorily to himself. Upon the following day our two sportsmen are charged by a herd, and again narrowly escape destruction. “Although,” says Mr Baker, “I have since killed about two hundred wild buffaloes, I have never witnessed another charge by a herd. This was an extraordinary occurrence, and fortunately stands alone in buffalo-shooting.” Mr Baker only thinks it necessary to select from his extensive buffalo-shooting experiences those occasions which involved considerable personal hazard, and exhibited, at the same time, the extraordinary courage and instinct of the animal. Unless buffalo-shooting be followed up as a sport by itself, the real character of the animal must remain unknown. “Some will fight and some will fly, and no one can tell which will take place—it is at the option of the beast. Caution and good shooting, combined with heavy rifles, are necessary. Without heavy metal the sport would be superlatively dangerous, if regularly followed up.” Mr Baker places great confidence in, and is not a little proud of, his heavy rifles, and he gives some wonderful instances of his performances with them, which fully justify his high estimate of their capabilities. The last day’s work on the occasion of his subsequent visits to Minneria is worthy of record. He begins by knocking over a bull at three hundred and fifty-two paces, then a cow from horseback at a long range, and a bull at about four hundred yards. These are mere experiments; presently he comes to closer quarters. A young bull is hidden in a thick cover, and our author rides in to dislodge him:—

“I beat about to no purpose for about twenty minutes, and I was on the point of giving it up when I suddenly saw the tall reeds bow down just before me. I beard the rush of an animal as he burst through, and I just saw the broad black nose, quickly followed by the head and horns, as the buffalo charged into me. The horse reared to his full height as the horns almost touched his chest, and I fired as well as I was able. In another instant I was rolling on the ground, with my horse upon me, in a cloud of smoke and confusion.

“In a most unsportsmanlike manner (as persons may exclaim who were not there), I hid behind my horse as he regained his legs. All was still—the snorting of the frightened horse was all that I could hear. I expected to have seen the infuriated buffalo among us. I peeped over the horse’s back, and, to my delight and surprise, I saw the carcass of the bull lying within three feet of him. His head was pierced by the ball exactly between the horns, and death had been instantaneous. The horse having reared to his full height, had entangled his hind legs in the grass, and he had fallen backwards without being touched by the buffalo, although the horns were close into him.”

On his way home, after this disagreeable rencontre, Mr Baker falls in with a small herd of five, and drops both bulls and an infuriated cow, the latter in the act of charging, at a distance of fifteen paces. The two remaining cows and a calf are killed in their retreat, and Mr Baker is strolling home satisfied with a bag of ten buffaloes, when he suddenly stumbles upon a herd of elephants. These beat an immediate retreat. But singling out a fine bull, Mr Baker drops him severely wounded with the four ounce, and, taking his second gun, he runs up just in time to catch him as he is half risen.

“Feeling sure of him, I ran up within two yards of his head, and fired into his forehead. To my amazement, he jumped quickly up, and with a loud trumpet he rushed towards the jungle. I could just keep close alongside him, as the grass was short, and the ground level, and being determined to get him, I ran close to his shoulder, and, taking a steady shot behind the ear, I fired my remaining barrel. Judge of my surprise,—it only increased his speed, and in another moment he reached the jungle: he was gone. He seemed to bear a charmed life. I had taken two shots within a few feet of him that I would have staked my life upon. I looked at my gun. Ye gods! I had been firing snipe shot at him. It was my rascally horsekeeper, who had actually handed me the shot-gun, which I had received as the double-barrelled ball-gun, that I knew was carried by a gun-bearer. How I did thrash him! If the elephant had charged instead of making off, I should have been caught, to a certainty.”

This is a judgment upon him evidently for boasting too much of his battery. The abundance of game at Minneria, however, is not to be compared to the enormous sports which Mr Baker finds in the almost unexplored country beyond Hambautotte. “Here the deer were in such masses that I restricted myself to bucks, and I at length became completely satiated. There was too much game. During a whole day’s walk I was certainly not five minutes without seeing either deer, elk, buffaloes, or hogs.”

Gradually our sportsman gets still more particular; he refuses tempting shots, and goes out simply in search of large antlers. None appearing of sufficient size he does not fire, and only kills buffaloes if they look vicious, and he can get a charge out of them. Notwithstanding this dainty shooting, he comes home one morning to breakfast, at eight o’clock, with three fine bucks and two buffaloes in his bag. Altogether we cannot charge Mr Baker with indiscriminate slaughter. A thorough sportsman, he is a humane man; but if we may so phrase it, he is a little too conscientious in his sport. He gives us glimpses of much that is interesting in his search after game; but, because it is unconnected with the matter in hand, he hurries us away upon the track of a rogue elephant or a buffalo, and will not allow us to linger for a moment upon those fairy scenes which he has himself conjured up, or to inquire more deeply into subjects of interest he has himself suggested. We should have liked to have heard a little more of the Veddahs, for instance; but the district they inhabit is the finest part of Ceylon for sport, so of course we must not expect to be told about wild men when there are wild beasts in the case. We have, however, a brief description of the manners and habits (or rather want of habits) of the animal:—

“The Veddah in person is extremely ugly; short, but sinewy; his long uncombed locks fall to his waist, looking more like a horse’s tail than human hair. He despises money; but is thankful for a knife, a hatchet, or a gaudy-coloured cloth, or brass pot for cooking. The women are horribly ugly, and are almost entirely naked. They have no matrimonial regulations, and the children are squalid and miserable. Still these people are perfectly happy, and would prefer their present wandering life to the most luxurious restraint. Speaking a language of their own, with habits akin to those of wild animals, they keep entirely apart from the Cingalese. They barter deer-horns and bees’-wax with the travelling Moormen pedlars in exchange for their trifling requirements. If they have food they eat it; if they have none they go without until by some chance they procure it. In the mean time they chew the bark of various trees, and search for berries, while they wend their way for many miles to some remembered store of deer’s flesh and honey, laid by in a hollow tree.”

They are expert trackers, but are not so skilled in the use of bows and arrows as savages usually are. Without any fixed place of residence, they wander over their beautiful country, always finding abundance to eat and drink, while the warm temperature renders any description of clothing superfluous. Upon another occasion, Mr Baker, in search of elephants, stumbles upon the ruins of Mahagam. As he is unsuccessful in finding any game, he gives us a short description of what remains of this ancient city, the first records of which date back to the year 286 B.C.

“We were among the ruins of ancient Mahagam. One of the ruined buildings had apparently rested upon seventy-two pillars. These were still erect, standing in six lines of twelve columns: every stone appeared to be about fourteen feet high by two feet square, and twenty-five feet apart. This building must therefore have formed an oblong of three hundred feet by one hundred and fifty. Many of the granite blocks were covered with rough carving; large flights of steps, now irregular from the inequality of the ground, were scattered here and there; and the general appearance of the ruins was similar to that of Pollanarua, but of smaller extent. The stone causeway which passed through the ruins was about two miles in length, being for the most part overgrown with low jungle and prickly cactus. I traversed the jungle for some distance, until arrested by the impervious nature of the bushes; but wherever I went the ground was strewed with squared stones and fallen brickwork overgrown with rank vegetation.”

At Pollanarua the ruins are still more interesting, and our author is evidently just becoming romantic when his reveries are disturbed in a manner inexcusable even in a sportsman. He is strolling through shady glades, and moralising over palaces which have crumbled into shapeless mounds of bricks: “Massive pillars, formed of a single stone some twelve feet high, stand in upright rows throughout the jungle here and there over an extent of miles of country. The buildings which they once supported have long since fallen, and the pillars now stand like tombstones over vanished magnificence.” While Mr Baker is wandering amid these ruins, meditating upon the touching mementoes by which he is surrounded, of a race long since passed away—

Instead of quoting Wordsworth, what does Mr Baker do? “I was within twenty yards of her before she was aware of my vicinity, and I bagged her by a shot with a double-barrelled gun. At the report of the gun a herd of about thirty deer which were concealed among the ruins rushed close by me, and I bagged another doe with the remaining barrel.” Really Mr Baker should be ashamed of bagging does right and left amid pillars which stand as tombstones over vanished magnificence; or, if it was the effect of an impulse irresistible at the moment, the placid reader should be spared the sudden shock which such an admission is likely to cause.

The most extensive ruins are strewn over all this country, those of Anarajapoura, comprising a surface of two hundred and fifty-six square miles, being the most celebrated. Numerous tanks attest the existence of a dense population, where now elephants and buffaloes roam unmolested. The tank at Doolana, a secluded spot, is a favourite resort for single or rogue elephants; and here Mr Baker and his brother find a notorious pair, and determine upon their destruction. The difficulty of following an elephant through the dense forests of Ceylon is so great that the assistance of native trackers is often absolutely necessary. In this instance, unfortunately, even the trackers mistake the direction, and our two sportsmen are standing hopelessly near a wall of impenetrable jungle, into which the elephants had been seen to retreat, wondering how they are ever to achieve the desired end, when, says Mr Baker,

“I suddenly heard a deep guttural sound in the thick rattan within four feet of me; in the same instant the whole tangled fabric bent over me, and, bursting asunder, showed the furious head of an elephant with uplifted trunk in full charge upon me.

“I had barely time to cock my rifle, and the barrel almost touched him as I fired. I knew it was in vain, as his trunk was raised. B. fired his right-hand barrel at the same moment without effect from the same cause. I jumped on one side and attempted to spring through the deep mud: it was of no use; the long grass entangled my feet, and in another instant I lay sprawling in the enraged elephant’s path within a foot of him. In that moment of suspense I expected to hear the crack of my own bones as his massive foot would be upon me. It was an atom of time. I heard the crack of a gun; it was B.’s last barrel. I felt a spongy weight strike my heel, and, turning quickly heels over head, I rolled a few paces and regained my feet. That last shot had floored him just as he was upon me; the end of his trunk had fallen upon my heel. Still he was not dead, but he struck at me with his trunk as I passed round his head to give him a finisher with the four-ounce rifle, which I had snatched from our solitary gun-bearer.

“My back was touching the jungle from which the rogue had just charged, and I was almost in the act of firing through the temple of the still struggling elephant when I heard a tremendous crash in the jungle behind me similar to the first, and the savage scream of an elephant. I saw the ponderous fore-leg cleave its way through the jungle directly upon me. I threw my whole weight back against the thick rattans to avoid him, and the next moment his foot was planted within an inch of mine. His lofty head was passing over me in full charge at B., who was unloaded, when, holding the four-ounce rifle perpendicularly, I fired exactly under his throat. I thought he would fall upon me and crush me, but this shot was the only chance, as B. was perfectly helpless.

“A dense cloud of smoke from the heavy charge of powder for the moment obscured everything. I had jumped out of the way the instant after firing. The elephant did not fall, but he had his death wound: the ball had severed his jugular, and the blood poured from the wound. He stopped, but, collecting his stunned energies, he still blundered forward towards B. He, however, avoided him by running to one side, and the wounded brute staggered on through the jungle. We now loaded the guns; the first rogue was quite dead, and we followed in pursuit of rogue number two.”

He had received his death wound, and was found dead in the jungle a day or two afterwards. We have no doubt a large proportion of those who take up Mr Baker’s book, will read this, and many other similar adventures which it contains, in a spirit of profound scepticism. Of course, we cannot vouch for their credibility otherwise than by saying that, from our own experience and our knowledge of the experience of others, we believe not only in the possibility, but in the probability of scenes such as those described by Mr Baker frequently occurring in a long course of elephant-shooting. When a man can show three hundred or four hundred tails adorning the walls of his room, he may fairly expect us to consider them as vouchers for his own good faith; and carpet sportsmen may laugh as they please, but they will find, if they have got the pluck to try to procure similar ornaments, that elephants don’t generally allow their tails to be cut off without fighting for them, and that the mild specimen in the Zoological Gardens is not altogether to be taken as a type of the race generally.

“I have often heard people exclaim,” says Mr Baker, “upon hearing anecdotes of elephant-hunting, ‘poor things!’

“Poor things, indeed! I should like to see the very person who thus expresses his pity going at his best pace with a savage elephant after him: give him a lawn to run upon if he likes, and see the elephant gaining a foot in every yard of the chase, fire in his eye, fury in his headlong charge; and would not the flying gentleman who lately exclaimed ‘poor thing!’ be thankful to the lucky bullet that would save him from destruction?

“There are no animals more misunderstood than elephants; they are naturally savage, wary, and revengeful, displaying as great courage when in their wild state as any animal known. The fact of their natural sagacity renders them the more dangerous as foes.”

Of course, in describing a series of rencontres, involving so much personal peril as must necessarily be the accompaniment of elephant-shooting, there is much scope for exaggeration, and the more marvellous a story really is, the more susceptible it is of colouring; so that, unless the narrator be continually on his guard, he may insensibly be drawn, by the exciting nature of the incidents he recounts, into a way of relating them which smacks so strongly of undue embellishment, that the ignorant reader is disposed to discredit those facts themselves which, had he possessed personal experience, he would not have hesitated to accept. “Often,” says Mr Baker, who anticipates such unlearned criticism, “have I pitied Gordon Cumming, when I have heard him talked of as a palpable Munchausen by men who never fired a rifle or saw a wild beast except in a cage, and still these men form the greater proportion of the readers of these works.” And we are assured by our author that he has carefully abstained from working up his scenes for the sake of effect—that, in fact, if he has erred at all, it is in under-drawing them. Now, although we would not for a moment be supposed to discredit any one of the accounts which he gives us of his adventures, we cannot do Mr Baker the injustice to agree with him in this, and we consider ourselves competent judges, although we may not have been present. In looking over the illustrations which grace the work, and which are spiritedly done, there appeared to us one fault, if fault it may be called; our author and his friends always seem to be shooting with air-guns—there is a remarkable absence of any smoke. Now, without meaning in the least to infer that Mr Baker has transferred it from the pictorial representations of those scenes of which its presence would have been the appropriate ornament to the descriptions of them, which would suffer seriously from such an addition, we only remark that he has occasionally given a handle for that sort of criticism, which we, in common with himself, so much deprecate. We wish, for instance, that his measurements of distance in moments of extreme peril had been a little more vague than they are. A striking instance of the precision with which our author calculates distance occurs in the course of one of his elephant hunts; after a long combat with a rogue, he is obliged to throw away his heavy rifle and take to his heels.

“I had about three feet start of him, and I saw with delight that the ground was as level and smooth as a lawn; there was no fear of tripping up, and away I went at the fastest pace that I ever ran either before or since, taking a look behind me to see how the chase went on. I saw the bullet-mark in his forehead, which was covered with blood; his trunk was stretched to its full length to catch me, and was now within two feet of my back: he was gaining on me, although I was running at a tremendous pace. I could not screw an inch more speed out of my legs, and I kept on, with the brute gaining upon me at every stride. He was within a foot of me, and I had not heard a shot fired, and not a soul had come to the rescue. The sudden thought struck me that my brother could not possibly overtake the elephant at the pace at which we were going, and I suddenly doubled short to my left into the open plain, and back towards the guns. The rogue overshot me. I met my brother close to his tail,” &c. &c.

We remember hearing that Major Rogers once dodged between an elephant’s legs; but Major Rogers’ presence of mind was nothing to Mr Baker’s, who could deliberately calculate his distance when at full speed, and who, joyously trotting on with an elephant’s trunk first three, and then two feet from his back, does not think it worth while to double until the distance is decreased to twelve inches. It is quite possible that the elephant’s trunk was in most unpleasant proximity to the fugitive—indeed, a sporting friend of ours once had his cap taken off by a rogue in full chase, and after all fairly outran his pursuer—so that we do not doubt that Mr Baker had an uncommonly near shave, and was excessively glad to find his brother at his pursuer’s tail; but this is just the tone of description that gives rise to doubts in the minds of those who do not happen ever to have run away from an elephant.

It may be said that the same remark is applicable to the accounts we have of the powers of the four-ounce. There is an elephant killed stone dead at one hundred and twenty yards; a buffalo at six hundred, if not eight hundred. These are both unprecedented shots; but as sixteen drachms is a common charge with Mr Baker, and as we certainly never used a rifle heavy enough to bear a charge of an ounce of powder, we are not in a position to question them. Moreover, when we consider the performances of the Minié, we are inclined to regard them as quite possible, although distance, if not actually measured, must always be very much a matter of opinion. However, in reading this narrative of adventure, the experience of an intrepid sportsman, it must be remembered that only those incidents are selected for relation which were most remarkable or attended with the greatest risk. They are a collection of the most perilous moments of a life of peril, and we have simply to add up the long catalogue of those who have fallen victims in Ceylon to that sport which Mr Baker so ardently pursues, to perceive its danger; and so far from denying the possibility of those hairbreadth escapes which startle us in every page of this work, we should then be induced rather to wonder that its author still lives to tempt that Providence by which he has hitherto been so wonderfully preserved.

But we must not allow the rifle an undue share of our attention. Mr Baker has as good reason to be proud of his hounds as of his rifles, and there is a greater novelty to the English sportsman in hunting elk at Newera Ellia than in shooting elephants or buffaloes at Minneria. A buck elk—the Samber deer of India—stands about fourteen hands high at the shoulder, and weighs about six hundred pounds: he is in colour dark brown, with a mane of coarse bristly hair of six inches in length; the rest of his body is covered with the same coarse hair of about two inches in length. His antlers are sometimes upwards of three feet long, but seldom have more than six points. He is a solitary animal; when brought to bay he fights to the last, and charges man and hound indiscriminately, a choice hound being often the price of victory. The country in which he is hunted is the mountainous district in Ceylon; for though he is to be found in almost every part of the island, the sport is only prosecuted at an elevation which varies from four thousand to seven thousand feet above the sea. The sharp, bracing climate of Newera Ellia, while it agrees admirably with the hounds, enables the sportsman to undergo that prolonged and violent exercise on foot which the sport involves, and which would be utterly out of the question in the low country.

The principal features of the highlands of Ceylon being a series of wild marshy plains, forests, torrents, mountains, and precipices, a peculiar hound is required for elk-hunting. Upon the occasion of Mr Baker’s second visit, he arrived with a pack of thorough-bred foxhounds. These he soon found were quite a mistake; they invariably open upon the scent at a great distance, and after warning the elk too soon, they stick to him too long, and ultimately fall victims to chetahs or starvation, the penalty of inexperienced perseverance. The offspring of crosses with pointers, bloodhounds, and half-bred foxhounds, are the right stamp for the sport; while the Australian lurcher proves often of immense service upon the open. The hero of Mr Baker’s pack was a Manilla bloodhound of enormous strength and indomitable pluck. The performances of old Smut are worthy of a volume to themselves; and if his master could appreciate the merits of his favourite hound when alive, he proves himself an historian well qualified to do justice to his memory. The reader will also be proud to make the acquaintance of Killbuck, Bran, and Lena, who prove themselves good dogs and true. About sixteen miles from Newera Ellia, lie the Horton Plains, situated at an elevation of seven thousand feet above the level of the sea. They are perfectly uninhabited; and here it is that Mr Baker introduces us to his favourite sport. He and his friends have taken up their abode in a snug corner of the plains, where they have built for themselves a hunting-lodge and kennel. They are within hail of civilisation, but they depend almost entirely upon the dogs for sustenance, combined with the efforts of a perfect Soyer of a cook.

“This knight of the gridiron was a famous fellow, and could perform wonders; of stoical countenance, he was never seen to smile. His whole thoughts were concentrated in the mysteries of gravies, and the magic transformation of one animal into another by the art of cookery: in this he excelled to a marvellous degree. The farce of ordering dinner was always absurd. It was something in this style. ‘Cook!’ (Cook answers) ‘Coming sar!’ (enter cook).—‘Now, cook, you make a good dinner; do you hear?’ Cook: ‘Yes, sar: master tell, I make.’—‘Well, mulligatawny soup.’ ‘Yes, sar.’—‘Calves’ head, with tongue, and brain-sauce.’ ‘Yes, sar.’—‘Gravy omelette.’ ‘Yes, sar.’—‘Mutton chops.’ ‘Yes, sar.’—‘Fowl cotelets.’ ‘Yes, sar.’—‘Beefsteaks.’ ‘Yes, sar.’—‘Marrow-bones.’ ‘Yes, sar.’—‘Rissoles.’ ‘Yes, sar.’ All these various dishes he literally imitated uncommonly well, the different portions of an elk being their only foundation.”

During a trip of two months at the Horton Plains, Mr Baker killed forty-three elk, which was working the pack pretty hard. At Newera Ellia the game, though not quite so plentiful, is sufficiently abundant to satisfy any reasonable sportsman, and an extract of three months’ hunting, at his own door, from our author’s game-book, shows a return of eleven bucks, seventeen does, and four hogs.

Though the sport of elk-hunting is most exciting, the recital of elk-hunting experiences must ever be somewhat monotonous: there is so little room for varied incident. The hunter follows the music of his pack over the open, at a long swinging trot, and bursts his way through the dense jungle, and down the steep bank to the foaming torrent, in the midst of which the elk is keeping the hounds at bay:—

“There they are in that deep pool formed by the river as it sweeps round the rock. A buck! a noble fellow! Now he charges at the hounds, and strikes the foremost beneath the water with his forefeet; up they come again to the surface,—they hear their master’s well-known shout,—they look round and see his welcome figure on the steep bank. Another moment, a tremendous splash, and he is among his hounds, and all are swimming towards their noble game. At them he comes with a fierce rush. Avoid him as you best can, ye hunters, man, and hounds!”

This reminds us of an amusing experience of our own, under somewhat similar circumstances. The master of one of the packs at Newera Ellia, in those days a good specimen of a Ceylon Nimrod, and an old elk-hunter, was anxious to show a naval friend of his the sport in perfection. We happened to be of the party, and before long our ears were rejoiced with that steady chorus which always tells of a buck at bay. Away we dashed through the thorny jungle, and arrived at the edge of a deep black pool, in which the elk was swimming, surrounded by the entire pack. Another moment and we should have formed one of the damp but picturesque group, when our naval friend, who had been left a little in the rear, unused to such rough work, came up torn and panting. It suddenly occurs to Nimrod, just as he is going to jump in, that it is hardly civil to his guest to secure to himself the sportsman’s most delicious moment; he feels the sacrifice he is making as, with a forced blandness, and an anxious glance at the buck, he presses his hunting-knife into Captain F.’s hand, saying, “After you, sir, pray.” “Eh! after me; where?—you don’t mean me to go in there, do you?” “Certainly not, if you would rather stay here; in that case be so good as give me the knife, as there is no time to be lost.” “Oh, ah!—I didn’t understand;—how very stupid! Go in—oh certainly: I shall be delighted;” and in dashed the gallant captain with his two-edged blade gleaming in the morning sun. For a second the waters closed over him, then he appeared spluttering and choking, and waving aloft the naked steel preparatory to going down again; it was plain that he could not swim a stroke, and it cost us no little trouble to pull out the plucky sailor, who took the whole thing as a matter of course, and would evidently have gone anywhere that he had been told. It is a difficult matter to stick an elk while swimming, as the hide is very thick, and the want of any sufficient purchase renders an effective blow almost impossible. There is also a great risk of being struck by the elk’s fore-legs, while impetuous young dogs are apt to take a nip of their master by mistake. A powerful buck at bay is always a formidable customer, and the largest dogs may be impaled like kittens if they do not learn to temper their valour with discretion.

“The only important drawback,” says Mr Baker, “to the pleasure of elk-hunting is the constant loss of dogs. The best are always sure to go. What with deaths by boars, leopards, elk, and stray hounds, the pack is with difficulty maintained. Poor old Bran, who, being a thorough-bred greyhound, is too fine in the skin for such rough hunting, has been sewn up in so many places that he is a complete specimen of needlework;” while Killbuck and Smut, the hero of about four hundred deaths of elk and boar, have terminated their glorious careers. Killbuck was pierced by the sharp antlers of a spotted buck, after a splendid course over the plains in the low country. If the bay of the deer is not so good as that of the elk, the enjoyment of riding to your game renders deer-coursing a far more agreeable sport than elk-hunting. Unfortunately for Killbuck his buck came to bay as pluckily as any elk, and had pinned the noble hound to the earth, before his master, who had been thrown in the course of a reckless gallop, could come up to the rescue. But the boar is the most destructive animal to the pack, and a fierce immovable bay, in which every dog joins in an impetuous chorus, is always a dreaded sound to the hunter, who knows well that tusks, and not antlers, are at work.

The following description of a boar at bay will give some idea of the scene that then occurs:—

“There was a fight! The underwood was levelled, and the boar rushed to and fro with Smut, Bran, Lena, and Lucifer, all upon him. Yoick to him! and some of the most daring of the maddened pack went in. The next instant we were upon him mingled with a confused mass of hounds; and throwing our whole weight upon the boar, we gave him repeated thrusts, apparently to little purpose. Round came his head and gleaming tusks to the attack of his fresh enemies, but old Smut held him by the nose, and, although the bright tusks were immediately buried in his throat, the stanch old dog kept his hold. Away went the boar covered by a mass of dogs, and bearing the greater part of our weight in addition, as we hung on to the hunting-knives buried in his shoulders. For about fifty paces he tore through the thick jungle, crashing it like a cobweb. At length he again halted; the dogs, the boar, and ourselves were mingled in a heap of confusion. All covered with blood and dirt, our own cheers added to the wild bay of the infuriated hounds, and the savage roaring of the boar. Still he fought and gashed the dogs right and left. He stood about thirty-eight inches high, and the largest dogs seemed like puppies beside him; still not a dog relaxed his hold, and he was covered with wounds. I made a lucky thrust for the nape of his neck. I felt the point of the knife touch the bone; the spine was divided, and he fell dead.

“Smut had two severe gashes in the throat, Lena was cut under the ear, and Bran’s mouth was opened completely up to his ear in a horrible wound.”

But the boar sometimes comes off victorious; and the death of poor old Smut has never been revenged. He was almost cut in half before Mr Baker reached the bay, which lasted for an hour. At the end of that period, Smut, gashed with many additional wounds, was expiring, and three of the best remaining dogs were severely wounded; the dogs were with difficulty called off the victorious monster; and Mr Baker records, with feelings of profound emotion, the only defeat he ever experienced, and which terminated fatally to the gallant leader of his pack.

The usual drawbacks and discomforts attendant upon a new settlement having been overcome, our author assures us that Newera Ellia forms a delightful place of residence. But it must not be supposed that, on the occasion of his second visit to Ceylon, he confined himself to elk-hunting and agriculture. He is frequently tempted from his highland home to the elephant country, which is only about two days’ journey distant; and the latter part of his volume abounds with exciting descriptions of new encounters with rogues, involving the usual amount of personal hazard; and lest the too ardent pursuit of this fascinating sport seems scarcely to justify the apparent cruelty it involves, it must be remembered that it is not more cruel to kill a large animal than a small one, though this is a distinction we are too apt to make; and when the large animal is also often destructive to life and property, its slaughter is not only justifiable, but commendable in those who are disposed to risk their lives for the benefit of the public and their own gratification.

Indeed, so extensive are the ravages committed by elephants, that a price is offered by government for their tails; since, however, the procuring of tails has become a fashionable amusement among Europeans, the reward has been reduced to the miserable sum of 7s. 6d. The Moorish part of the community were the recognised elephant-slayers, so long as there was profit to be made by these means. They now devote themselves almost entirely to the capture of elephants alive for the purpose of exportation to India. Mr Baker gives an amusing account of having assisted to catch an elephant. He started with his brother and thirty Moormen, armed with ropes, towards a herd of seven, of whose presence in the neighbourhood intelligence had been received. Upon coming in sight of the herd, one was selected for capture. Mr Baker and his brother and their gun-bearers, taking the wind, advance under cover of the jungle to open the ball. This they do in style, bagging six elephants in almost the same number of minutes. The seventh starts off in full retreat with the multitude at his heels. At last an active Moorman dexterously throws a noose of thick but finely twisted hide rope over one of his hind-legs. Following the line which the unconscious elephant trails after him like a long snake, they wait until he enters the jungle, and then unceremoniously check his further progress by taking a double turn round a tree.

“Any but a hide rope of that diameter must have given way; but this stretched like a harp-string, and, at every effort to break it, the yielding elasticity of the hide threw him upon his head, and the sudden contraction after the fall jerked his leg back to its full length.

“After many vain but tremendous efforts to free himself, he turned his rage upon his pursuers, and charged every one right and left; but he was safely tied, and we took some little pleasure in teasing him. He had no more chance than a fly in a spider’s web. As he charged in one direction, several nooses were thrown round his hind-legs; then his trunk was caught in a slip-knot, then his fore-legs, then his neck, and the ends of all these ropes being brought together and hauled tight, he was effectually hobbled.

“This had taken some time to effect (about half an hour), and we now commenced a species of harness to enable us to drive him to the village.

“The first thing was to secure his trunk by tying it to one of his fore-legs; this leg was then fastened with a slack rope to one of his hind-legs, which prevented him from taking a longer stride than about two feet; his neck was then tied to his other fore-leg, and two ropes were made fast to both his fore and hind legs; the ends of these ropes being manned by thirty men.”

He was then driven to the village, and three days afterwards was sufficiently tamed to be mounted. His value was then about £15.

Mr Baker at last becomes as dainty in his elephant-shooting as we have already found him in the deer country. Where elephants are abundant he despises a herd, and confines himself to rogues, where they are procurable, always singling out the most vicious-looking, and this must in some measure account for the redundancy of adventure in his narrative. For though elephant-shooting is always attended with some risk, the comparative extent of this depends entirely upon the manner in which the sport is pursued. If tails are the desiderata, then a herd in a nice open jungle presents the best chance of obtaining a supply with the least possible amount of personal danger; but if sport is really sought, then a rogue upon the open is certain to afford enough to satisfy the most ardent Nimrod that ever drew trigger. The fatigue of elephant-shooting is something inconceivable to those who have not for six or eight consecutive hours laboured under a tropical sun with a heavy rifle,—the barrels of which are so hot that they can scarcely be touched,—over wide plains, and through long grass, matted over hidden rocks and tangled jungle, with an underwood of the twining bamboo and thorny mimosa. It is only the most intense excitement that could carry a man through fatigue such as this; and a prize worthy of all that he has undergone is needed to reward him for the day’s work. Under these circumstances, it is clear that, the more imminent the peril, the more satisfactory is the sport considered. There would be very little gratification in toiling all day in a temperature of 130°, if there was no opportunity presented of risking one’s life. Mr Baker’s enjoyment must have reached its climax when he was actually wounded by an elephant’s tusk. This indeed compensated for much hardship and discomfort. It happened in this wise:

About two days’ journey from Newera Ellia is situated a large tract of country called the Park. This is the most favourite resort of Ceylon sportsmen, as elephants are generally abundant. The scenery is beautiful, of a character which may be inferred from the name it now bears among Europeans. It is of vast extent, watered by numerous large rivers, and ornamented by rocky mountains, such as no English park can boast. The lemon grass grows over the greater part of this country to a height of ten or twelve feet, and large herds of elephants wander through it, the crowns of their capacious brown heads, or the tips of their trunks, tossed occasionally into the air, alone attesting their presence.

A number of these appearing over the waving grass, delight the eyes of Mr Baker and his brother one morning as they sally forth from their night encampment with their usual deadly intent. Upon discovering the daring intruders, the herd, consisting of ten, rally round the two leaders, whose deep growls, like rumbling peals of thunder, is the call in time of danger. Our author and his brother immediately advance towards the dense mass, nothing daunted by so imposing an array. A part of the herd beat a retreat, but five charge viciously; they are dropped in as many successive shots, the last at a distance of only ten paces; four more are slain in retreat, a faithless mother alone escaping, whose little charge, so unusually deserted, Mr Baker captures, by taking hold of his tail and trunk, and throwing him on his back. Those who have seen an unweaned elephant calf will admit this to be no very difficult feat. Having secured the infant, and left him in charge of his brother and the gun-bearers, Mr Baker returns to seek his legitimate trophies in the shape of tails.

“I had one barrel still loaded, and I was pushing my way through the tangled grass towards the spot where the five elephants lay together, when I suddenly heard Wallace shriek out, ‘Look out, sir! Look out!—an elephant’s coming!’

“I turned round in a moment; and close past Wallace, from the very spot where the last dead elephant lay, came the very essence and incarnation of a ‘rogue’ elephant in full charge. His trunk was thrown high in the air, his ears were cocked, his tail stood high above his back as stiff as a poker, and, screaming exactly like the whistle of a railway engine, he rushed upon me through the high grass with a velocity that was perfectly wonderful. His eyes flashed as he came on, and he had singled me out as his victim.

“I have often been in dangerous positions, but I never felt so totally devoid of hope as I did in this instance. The tangled grass rendered retreat impossible. I had only one barrel loaded, and that was useless, as the upraised trunk protected his forehead. I felt myself doomed; the few thoughts that rush through men’s minds in such hopeless positions flew through mine, and I resolved to wait for him till he was close upon me before I fired, hoping that he might lower his trunk and expose his forehead.

“He rushed along at the pace of a horse in full speed; in a few moments, as the grass flew to the right and left before him, he was close upon me, but still his trunk was raised and I would not fire. One second more, and at this headlong pace he was within three feet of me; down slashed his trunk with the rapidity of a whip-thong, and with a shrill scream of fury he was upon me.

“I fired at that instant; but in the twinkling of an eye I was flying through the air like a ball from a bat. At the moment of firing I had jumped to the left, but he struck me with his tusk in full charge upon my right thigh, and hurled me eight or ten paces from him. That very moment he stopped, and, turning round, he beat the grass about with his trunk, and commenced a strict search for me. I heard him advancing close to the spot where I lay as still as death, knowing that my last chance lay in concealment. I heard the grass rustling close to the spot where I lay; closer and closer he approached, and he at length beat the grass with his trunk several times exactly above me. I held my breath, momentarily expecting to feel his ponderous foot upon me. Although I had not felt the sensation of fear while I had stood opposed to him, I felt like what I never wish to feel again while he was deliberately hunting me up. Fortunately I had reserved my fire until the rifle had almost touched him, for the powder and smoke had nearly blinded him, and had spoiled his acute power of scent. To my joy I heard the rustling of the grass grow fainter; again, I heard it at a still greater distance; at length it was gone.”

“There could not,” says our author naïvely, “be a better exemplification of a rogue than in this case.” The knowing way in which he had remained patiently concealed, while his enemies expended their ammunition and energies upon the herd, and the sudden and furious manner in which he came upon them, while unsuspectingly appropriating the tails of his brethren, quite justifies this opinion of Mr Baker’s. He escapes triumphantly, as he deserves to have done, and leaves Mr Baker to contemplate his wounded leg for some days, during which he is unable to move. We must do our author the justice to say that he seeks his revenge as soon as he is able to put his foot to the ground, and a few days afterwards we find him chasing a herd, until he says “my leg, which had lost all feeling, suddenly gave way, and I lay sprawling on my face, incapable of going a step farther. I had killed four elephants; it was very bad luck, as the herd consisted of eleven, but my leg gave way when most required.” If Mr Baker is not satisfied, we are. We shall not, therefore, follow him through the exciting details of a jungle trip, with which he concludes his most interesting work, and from which he and his two companions, the Hon. Mr Stuart Wortley and Mr E. Palliser, return in three weeks, with a bag of fifty elephants, five deer, and two buffaloes. We have said enough to indicate to the reader in search of excitement by his fireside where it is to be found—more than enough to tempt the enthusiastic sportsman to exchange for a season the comforts of home for the wild stirring life of the elephant-hunter; and we may venture to assure him that he will ever recur with delight to the enjoyment and rough luxury that a jungle trip alone affords, and he will be ready to adopt, as we do ourselves, the concluding words of our author:

“The well-arranged tent, the neatly spread table, the beds forming a triangle around the walls, and the clean guns piled in a long row against the gun-rack, will often recall a tableau in after years, in countries far from this land of independence. The acknowledged sports of England will appear child’s play; the exciting thrill will be wanting, when a sudden rush in the jungle brings the rifle on full cock; and the heavy guns will become useless mementos of past days, like the dusty helmets of yore, hanging up in an old hall. The belt and the hunting-knife will alike share the fate of the good rifle, and the blade, now so keen, will blunt from sheer neglect. The slips, which have held the necks of dogs of such staunch natures, will hang neglected from the wall; and all these souvenirs of wild sports, contrasted with the puny implements of the English chase, will awaken once more the longing desire for the ‘Rifle and the Hound in Ceylon.’”

GRAY’S LETTERS. [13] — Case.

We do not intend upon the present occasion, however legitimate the opportunity, to trespass long upon the patience of our readers, in discussing the merits or demerits of Gray’s poetical style. Some few remarks we are tempted to make, chiefly of a conciliatory character; but we shall very rapidly pass on to his Life and Letters, which are the more immediate subject of the book before us. In critical debates upon English poetry, the name of Gray has been often a rallying point for the disputants: he has been held up as a bright example by one party, and by another, as a salutary warning to all youthful aspirants. “Of all English poets,” says Sir James Mackintosh, “he was the most finished artist. He attained the highest degree of splendour of which poetical style seems to be capable.” We all know what Wordsworth thought of the splendour of this poetical style, and how severely he and others have dealt with it.

Poetry is a very difficult subject to reason about; and the more refined, and the more bold, and the more complex the associations of thought in which it deals, the more difficult does it become to prove, by any process of argument, that it is good or bad. As little can you teach a man to enjoy poetry, to discover it when it lies before him, by any rules, or process of reasoning, analytic or synthetic, as you could teach a man by the same methods to write poetry. For there is always in the more subtle kinds of poetry an element of unreason; plain truth is somewhere set at defiance; and who can possibly draw the line, or say precisely to what extent imagination, under the sway of feeling or sentiment, shall be allowed to transgress on the palpable verities of our senses, or our better judgment? How can reason decide exactly, where reason herself shall be set aside in favour of emotion? Emotion, after all, must have her voice in the matter; and the final result must be some uncertain compromise between them.

We will draw an illustration of our meaning from no vulgar critic. The refined taste of Mr Landor will be at once admitted; nor will he lie open to the objection often brought against our northern critics, that they are too metaphysical or analytic in their strictures upon metaphorical language. We extract the two following annotations, from his conversation between himself and Southey, on two several passages in Milton’s Paradise Lost. They will aptly illustrate the difficulty which every one will encounter who has to reason upon the right and wrong of a poet’s imagination.

“What a beautiful expression is there in verse 546, which I do not remember that any critic has noticed—

Here the hill itself is instinct with life and activity.”

Agreed: it is a beautiful expression; and if any one insists that a hill does not climb, but is a thing to be climbed upon, we pronounce him a blockhead for his pains. Nevertheless the blockhead has palpable truth upon his side. The hill does not climb in fact, and there is no process we know of by which it can be made to climb in his imagination. Now for our second comment—

Often and often have these verses been quoted without a suspicion how strongly the corporeal is substituted for the moral. However Atlantean his shoulders might be, the might of monarchies could no more be supported by them than by the shoulders of a grasshopper.”

Here, Mr Landor takes part with plain matter-of-fact against that play of poetic imagination, which often succeeds in making one deep and harmonious impression out of incongruous materials, merely by the dexterous rapidity with which these are passed before the mind. We confess to have admired the bold, vague, instantaneous, transitory combination of physical with moral properties, which we have in these celebrated lines. The monarchies do not rest directly on the “shoulders,” but on the sage man with these broad shoulders, and the epithet “Atlantean,” by suggesting immediately a mythological person, has already half allegorised the figure. The shoulders which are for an instant brought before the mind’s eye, have never supported any less honourable weight than that of a whole world. Mr Landor, however, may be right; we are not disputing the correctness of his criticism; we are only pointing out the inherent difficulties of the subject. Mr Landor may be right; but what answer would he give to the man of plain understanding who did not comprehend how a hill could climb, and who should insist upon it, that a mound of earth could no more be “instinct with life and activity” than broad shoulders could help a man to govern well?

Turning over the pages of a work of Meinherr Feuchtersleben on Medical Psychology, we met with the remark, that the effort to enjoy or attend to some of our finer sensations was not always followed by an increase in those pleasurable sensations. Thus, he says, we distend our nostrils and inspire vigorously when we would take our fill of some agreeable odour, and yet certain of the more refined scents escape us by this very effort to seize and appropriate them. Passing by a bed of violets, the flowers themselves perhaps unseen, how charming a fragrance has hit upon the unwarned sense! Turn back, and strenuously inhale for the very purpose of enjoying it more fully, the fairy favour has escaped you. It floated on the air, playing with the sense of him who sought not for it; but quite refusing to be fed upon voraciously by the prying and dilated nostril. Something like this may be observed in the case of poetical enjoyment. The susceptible reader feels it, though he sought it not, and the more varied the culture of his mind, the more likely is he to be visited by this pleasure; but it will not be captured by any effort of hard, vigorous attention, or the merely scrutinising intellect. The poetry of the verse, like the fragrance of the violet, will not be rudely seized; and he who knits his brow and strains his faculty of thought over the light and musical page may wonder how it happens that the charm grows less as his desire to fix and to appropriate it has increased.

When, therefore, we discuss the merits of a poetical style, we enter upon a subject on which we must not expect to reason with strict certainty, or arrive at very dogmatic conclusions. To the last some minds will find a glorious imagination, where others will perceive only a logical absurdity. We can only come, as we have said, to some compromise between reason and emotion. They meet together in the arena of imagination, and must settle their rival claims as they best can.

That Gray was a true poet surely no one will deny. Who has bequeathed, in proportion to the extent or volume of his writings, a greater number of those individual lines and passages which live in the memory of all men, and are recognised as the most perfect expression of a given thought or sentiment that our British world has produced? But such lines and passages rarely bear the stamp of the poet’s mannerism. They would not have gained their universal acceptation if they had. Highest excellence is all of one style. That manner which constitutes the peculiarity of Gray, and which distinguishes him from other poets, we certainly do not admire, and we will give the best reasons for our dislike to it that we are able.

Poetry we have somewhere heard defined as “passionate rhythmical expression;” and, if our memory fail us, and we do not quote correctly, we nevertheless venture to promulgate this as a very sufficient definition. It is passionate rhythmical expression; and it becomes imaginative because it is passionate. Every one knows that strong feeling runs to metaphor and imagery to express itself; or, in other words, that a predominant sentiment will gather round itself a host of kindred ideas held often together by almost imperceptible associations. In proportion as the mind is full of ideas or remembered objects, will be the complex structure which will grow out of this operation. It is not, therefore, because a strain is complex, ornate, or full of learning, that it ceases to be spontaneous or natural. If Milton rolls out thought after thought, gathered from the literature of Rome or Greece, the verse may be quite as natural, quite as genuine an expression of sentiment as any ballad in the Percy Reliques. But what is desired is, that, learned or not, the strain have this character of spontaneity, that it be the language in which some mortal has verily and spontaneously thought. We do not mean, of course, that the style should not be corrected by afterthought, but the corrections should be made in the same spirit, the language moving from the thought and passion of the man. Now, there is much of Gray’s writing of which it cannot be said that the language or imagery flows by any such spontaneous process; in which we are perpetually reminded of effort and artifice, which, as it never came from, so it can never go home straightway to any human soul.

We might venture even to take for an instance the popular line—

This quotation has obtained a general currency: “ashes” and their “fires” bear each other out so well, that the careless reader has no doubt the meaning is all right. Yet we suspect that very many quote the line without any distinct meaning whatever attached to it. And for this reason,—no Englishman would ever naturally have expressed the sentiment in this language. Men, at least some men, are careful where they shall lay their bones; they would sleep amongst their fathers, their countrymen, their children; some seek a retired spot; some where friends will congregate; some choose the sun, and some the shadow. They endue the dead clay that will be lying under the turf with some vague sentiment of feeling—with some residue of the old affections. Would any Englishman, impressed with such a feeling, go back in imagination to classic times, when the body was burnt, and speak of “ashes” which never will exist, rather than of the slumbering corpse which his eye must be following, as he speaks, into the earth? Here is the whole stanza:—

It is altogether, it will be seen, a very elaborate structure. Gray was a genuine lover of nature; yet he would rather make a patchwork out of poetical phrases, and the traditional imagery of the poets, than place himself in the scene he meant to describe, and watch in imagination the effects it would produce upon him. The critics have remarked that, in the opening stanzas of the Elegy, events are described as contemporaneous which must have been successive. We have sunset in one stanza:—

And in the next, we have advanced into the perfect moonlight:—

It may be argued, indeed, that time does not stand still with the poet; and that, as he lingered in the churchyard, twilight had given way to midnight. But we are afraid that the true answer is simply this—that the ivy-mantled tower, the moon, and the owl, were, at all events, to be introduced as fit accompaniments of the scene; and that no question was ever asked how they would harmonise with the sunset view of distant fields, that we had glanced at just before.

That one who loved mountains, and frequented them, should put a string of unmeaning words like these into the mouth of his Welsh bard! There is absolutely nothing in them. Give your Welsh harper the finest ear imaginable, and put him on what mountain you will, what “desert caves” will he hear sighing in response to giant oaks, and these again to the torrent beneath?

The oaks waving in wrath “their hundred arms,” is a fine frenzy enough; but it is spoilt again by the “hoarser murmurs breathe,”—words in which no man ever thought.

Instances of this artificial manner of building up the rhyme, it would be superfluous to multiply. Let us rather drop a hint against carrying our strictures to an undue degree of severity. There is, especially, a running charge of plagiarism brought against Gray, and all such composite poets, which is altogether unfair. If they have formed their style in the study of other poets, it follows that they must repeat the phrases of their predecessors; but, if they do this in the expression of a new thought of their own, such use of their language must not be described as plagiarism. A critic before us thus comments on some lines in the Elegy:—

“This stanza is made up of various pieces inlaid. ‘Stubborn glebe’ is from Gay; ‘drive a-field’ from Milton; ‘sturdy stroke’ from Spencer.”^[14] Now, there is not one of these expressions which does not here fall very properly into its place; and a writer familiar with poetic diction would make use of them without any reference to the authors from whom they might have been, in the first place, received. Indeed, it would be quite impossible for any one to compose in this mosaic fashion; nor is there any end to the charges of plagiarism that might, on this principle, be brought. If such expressions as “sturdy stroke,” and “drive a-field,” are to be traced to the ownership of some predecessor, one does not see how one is to move at all. The language of the country, like its arable land, is all appropriated. In the passage here commented on, the critic needed not have stopped where he did. “How jocund,” he might have added, is from Fletcher, and “how bent the woods,” from Dryden; and then only consider if these three lines were composed after such a fashion, what a wonderful piece of workmanship they must be! Whilst we are as hostile as any to laborious, conscious artifice, or the mere repetition of traditional phrases and images, we must deprecate a species of criticism which would shut out the poet from his legitimate resources, deter him from the careful study of his predecessors, and either drive him into a poor, timid, barren style of composition, or else induce him to seek the praise of originality by coining new words and fantastical expressions.

We must now address ourselves to the work before us, The Correspondence of Gray and Mason, as here presented to us by the careful editorship of Mr Mitford.

Mr Mitford has by his editorial offices for ever associated his own name with that of the poet Gray. In the Aldine edition of his works he performed the good office of restoring the genuine text of Gray’s letters, which his first biographer, Mason, had so singularly garbled. For this and other good services of the same kind the public were already indebted to Mr Mitford. He has now, we presume, completed his labours on this subject by the publication of The Correspondence of Gray and Mason in the form Mason himself had preserved it, with copious notes explanatory of all things necessary to be known, and some which, we are happy to think, are not quite necessary items in the sum of human knowledge.

The publication of this octavo volume in its separate form was, we suppose, inevitable. The course of editorial labours will not run smooth any more than any other courses. In due order of things, Mr Mitford, when he prepared his edition of Gray’s Letters for the press, should have had the materials which form this volume put into his hands; he could then have incorporated in his book such additions to the letters of Gray as are to be found here; he could have avoided reprinting a considerable number of them, and might have given us such of the letters of Mason (none others are of the least value) as throw light upon the biography and writings of the poet Gray. But this natural order of things was not to be permitted. It was, we must presume, after the Aldine edition had been printed that the manuscript of Mason came under his inspection. Thus this large new volume was judged indispensable, although it is manifestly destined to a very brief existence; and, in spite of its luxury of type, and its neat livery of green and gold, must be absorbed, its personality entirely lost, in the next and more complete edition of the works of Gray.

When Mason prepared the letters of his distinguished friend for publication, he was not sufficiently unreasonable to thrust many of his own upon the notice of the reader; but he took care to preserve carefully in a manuscript volume the correspondence of both parties, or at least such portions of his own letters as he thought were creditable to himself. This manuscript volume he bequeathed to his friend Mr Stonhewer; from him “it passed,” Mr Mitford tells us in his preface, “into the hands of his relative, Mr Bright of Skeffington Hall, Leicestershire. When, in the year 1845, the library of Gray was sold by the sons of that gentleman, then deceased, this volume of Correspondence was purchased by Mr Penn of Stoke Park, and by him was kindly placed in my hands for publication.”

Mr Mitford has not only judged it worthy of a separate publication, but has bestowed the utmost pains in preparing it for the press. His industrial annotation strikes us with a sort of wonder. We are amazed at the pertinacity of research, all the more laudable, we presume, because the prize held forth was of such almost inappreciable value. “So you have christened Mr Dayrolles’ child,” says Mr Gray to the Rev William Mason, and passes on, regardless, to other matter—to something pertaining to the then Chancellor of the Exchequer. Not so the conscientious editor. Who is this Mr Dayrolles? and why has the christening of his child by the Rev. William Mason been glanced at by the poet? Forthwith a ransacking amongst all memoirs; we are referred to Chesterfield’s Letters, Maty’s edition, and Lord Mahon’s edition, and Walpole’s Miscellaneous Letters; and at length, in a manuscript memorandum (so far do we extend our researches), we find the bit of scandal: this “Mr Dayrolles’ child” is not the child of Mr Dayrolles at all, but of one Mr Stanhope; and to this it was that, we are told, “Mr Gray silently pointed.”—P. 129.

It is not always that we get even such a result. Sometimes we have a long list of references, with some dates and facts, dry as a parish register. Here is a note on a certain Mr Cambridge.

“On Mr Cambridge and his habits of conversation, see ‘Walpole’s Letters to Lady Ossory,’ vol. i. pp. 132, 140, 410; vol. ii. p. 242; Walpole to Mason, vol. i. p. 235; and ‘Nichol’s Literary Illustrations,’ vol. i. p. 130; and ‘Rockingham Memoirs,’ vol. i. p. 215, for his letter to Lord Hardwicke, in June 1765. In conversation he was said to be full of entertainment, liveliness, and anecdote. One sarcastic joke on Capability Brown testifies his wit, and his Scribleriad still survives in the praises of Dr Warton; yet the radical fault that pervades it is well shown in Annual Review, ii. 584.”—P. 184.

Even the “one sarcastic joke” we are not permitted to hear; but we are kindly told in what volume of the Annual Review we shall find the “radical fault,” pointed out of a satire that lives only “in the praises of Dr Warton.” One more instance we must select, that our readers may form some just appreciation of the indefatigable research of our learned editor. The name of Sir Richard Lyttleton being mentioned, we are invited to the perusal of the following note:—

“Richard Lyttleton, K.B. He married the Lady Rachel Russell, sister of John Duke of Bedford, and widow of Scrope Egerton, Duke of Bridgewater. He was first page of honour to Queen Caroline; then successively Captain of Marines, Aide-de-Camp to the Earl of Stair at the battle of Dettingen, and Deputy Quartermaster-General in South Britain, with the rank of Lieut.-Colonel and Lieut.-General, &c. He was fifth son of Sir Thomas, fourth baronet and younger brother of George, First Lord Lyttleton.—See some letters by him in ‘Chatham Correspondence,’ vol. ii. p. 173, &c. He was Governor of Minorca in 1764, and subsequently Governor of Guernsey.—See ‘Walpole’s Misc. Letters,’ iv. pp. 363, 424. He died in 1770. His house, in the Harley Street corner, 1 Cavendish Square, was bought by the Princess Emily, and was afterwards Mr Hope’s, and then Mr Watson Taylor’s.—See ‘Grenville Papers,’ i. pp. 49, 249; and ii. pp. 442, 449. When in Minorca, he was involved in some dispute with Samuel Johnson, who held a situation under him.—See reference to it in ‘Walpole’s Letters to Lord Hertford,’ Feb. 6, 1764.”

All this, we doubt not, is very praiseworthy; but where is it to end? A learned man writing to another learned man, says, in honest blunt vernacular, “Have you seen Mr Thomson?” and passes on to other matter. Is the heart of an editor to beat within him till he has discovered who this Thomson was, and everything discoverable about him—what house he lived in, and whom he quarrelled with? This Thomson is mentioned only once, and we have nothing of him but his name. The more mysterious, seems the indefatigable editor to think; and the more meritorious, if from so slight a clue he can succeed in identifying this defunct Thomson. Whereupon a ransacking of all libraries and innumerable references,—see this, see that! see, see! We wonder if there is any one man in Great Britain, not an editor, so laboriously idle as to climb the steps of a library to see after all these surprising discoveries.

Books, it seems, are used by different persons for very different purposes. Some build up theories of all sorts with them; children take them out of the book-case, and build houses and castles with them, perhaps almost as substantial; the good monks in one of the monasteries of the Levant, Mr Curzon tells us, used them as mats, or cushions, to protect their bare feet from the cold pavement of the chapel; and others, again, pull them about, and toss over the leaves with restless agitation—to find who Mr Thomson was! Of the two last, we infinitely prefer the quiet serviceable employment of them by the monks whom Mr Curzon visited.

“There is a pleasure in poetic pains”—there must be a charm in labour editorial that only editors can know. There is withal, it seems, a gravity of duty, a weight of responsibility, which they only can duly appreciate. We are happy to hear, that in proportion to the dulness is the virtue of their labours. “To give some personality,” says our present editor in his preface, “to names, most of them new, even to those who are acquainted with the common biographies of Gray, has been found, from the lapse of time, a matter of some difficulty; and success has only been attained by the assistance of various friends. To have passed over this part of the task would have been unsatisfactory, and considered a dereliction of duty!” It is added, with a little inconsistency, that the persons whose names are here heard for the first time, “formed the select and intimate society of one who was not remarkable for the facility with which his acquaintance was gained.” What intimate friend have we here added to the well-known list? But let us grant that the mantle of the poet ennobles all it touches, does the Reverend William Mason also rank among the inspired?—for we find that his letters are edited with the same reverential care.

We shall be answered, that if we do not think highly of the immortal author of Elfrida, and Caractacus, and The English Garden, others do. Mr Mitford does. “The place in his library was pointed out to me,” he pathetically tells us, “where Mason usually sate and wrote. His poetical chair—sedes beata—was kindly bequeathed to me; and I have left it by will to the Poet Laureate of the day, that it may rest amongst the sacred brotherhood!” What an announcement for Mr Tennyson to read! What will he do with the chair when it comes? A superstitious man would hardly venture to sit in it. Who knows what spirit of drowsiness may be still clinging about it?

If we have been provoked into any impatient remarks on this excess of editorship, we would at the same time express—as we feel—an undiminished respect for Mr Mitford. He is a literary veteran who has performed many a good service. We would rather retract every word, and beg that every expression be set down to mere petulance on our part, than be thought wanting in personal respect to one who has well earned his reputable position in the world of letters. But we cannot help ourselves; we must “tell the tale,” as the tale tells itself to us.

Of the few additions made in the present volume to the letters of Gray, those which congratulate Mason on his clerical promotion, and on his marriage, are amongst the most sprightly and entertaining. The following extracts may be new to our readers:—

“Dear Mason,—It is a mercy that old men are mortal, and that dignified clergymen know how to keep their word. I heartily rejoice with you in your establishment, and with myself that I have lived to see it—to see your insatiable mouth stopped, and your anxious periwig at rest and slumbering in a stall. The Bishop of London, you see, is dead; there is a fine opening. Is there nothing further to tempt you? Feel your own pulse, and answer me seriously. It rains precentorships; you have only to hold up your skirts to catch them.” * * *

“Dear Doctor,—I send your reverence the lesson, &c. No sooner do people feel their income increase than they want amusement. Why, what need have you of any other than to sit like a Japanese divinity, with your hands folded on your fat belly, wrapped, and, as it were, annihilated in the contemplation of your own copuses and revenues?”

His felicitations upon his friend’s marriage are not always distinguished for their delicacy. With full allowance for the difference of the times, we still encounter a certain coarseness we should not have expected in the fastidious Gray. But the following is a very charming letter:—

“Dear Mason,—Res est sacra miser (says the poet), but I say it is the happy man that is the sacred thing, and therefore let the profane keep their distance. He is one of Lucretius’ gods, supremely blest in the contemplation of his own felicity, and what has he to do with worshippers? This, mind, is the first reason why I did not come to York; the second is, that I do not love confinement, and probably by next summer may be permitted to touch whom, and where, and with what I think fit, without giving you any offence; the third and last, and not the least perhaps, is, that the finances were at so low an ebb that I could not exactly do what I wished, but was obliged to come the shortest road to town and recruit them. I do not justly know what your taste in reasons may be since you altered your condition, but there is the ingenious, the petulant, and the dull; any one would have done, for in my conscience I do not believe you care a halfpenny for reasons at present: so God bless ye both, and give ye all ye wish, when ye are restored to the use of your wishes.

“I am returned from Scotland charmed with my expedition: it is of the Highlands I speak; the Lowlands are worth seeing once, but the mountains are ecstatic, and ought to be visited in pilgrimage once a-year. None but those monstrous creatures of God know how to join so much beauty with so much horror. A fig for your poets, painters, gardeners, and clergymen, that have not been among them; their imagination can be made up of nothing but bowling-greens, flowering shrubs, horse-ponds, Fleet-ditches, shell grottoes, and Chinese rails. Then I had so beautiful an autumn—Italy could hardly produce a nobler scene—and this so sweetly contrasted with the perfection of nastiness, and total want of accommodation, that Scotland only can supply! Oh, you would have blessed yourself! I shall certainly go again.”

“Dear Mason,—I rejoice; but has she common sense? Is she a gentlewoman? Has she money? Has she a nose? I know she sings a little, and twiddles on the harpsichord, hammers at sentiment, and puts herself in an attitude, admires a cast in the eye, and can say Elfrida by heart. But these are only the virtues of a maid. Do let her have some wife-like qualities, and a double portion of prudence, as she will have not only herself to govern but you also, and that with an absolute sway. Your friends, I doubt not, will suffer for it. However, we are very happy, and have no other wish than to see you settled in the world. We beg you would not stand fiddling about it, but be married forthwith.”

It is impossible, and indeed would be doing injustice to the editor, to regard this present volume in any other light than as a supplement to his edition of the Works of Gray. We must beg leave, therefore, to revert briefly to the life and letters as they are set forth in this preceding publication. It so happens that Mr Mitford was not fortunate even here in the order and method in which his materials reached him, and were consequently arranged. Fresh accessions came in at the latest hour; a fifth volume was to be added, in which there was much repetition; whole letters being reprinted that had already appeared in their place in the previous volumes. Sometimes also an interesting fact is slipped into an appendix, where it may chance to have escaped the eye of all but very attentive readers.

One such fact arrested our own attention, and is a fact of great significance. To some of our readers we may be rendering a welcome service by bringing it forward. We are referred to Sir Egerton Brydges as the authority for it.

Few lives, even of literary men, are said to have been more devoid of incident than Gray’s; yet it is probable that, if we could lift the curtain from his domestic life during the period of his youth, we should find that it was disturbed enough, and of such a nature as must have left deep traces in the subsequent character of the man. Gray, it will be remembered, was (to adopt the language of Horace Walpole) “the son of a money scrivener by Mary Antrobus, a milliner in Cornhill, and sister to two Antrobus’s who were ushers of Eton School. He was born in 1716, and educated at Eton College, chiefly under the direction of one of his uncles, who took prodigious pains with him, which answered exceedingly. From Eton he went to Peter House at Cambridge,” &c. &c. So in all biographies glides on the simple account of his career. Nothing is said of that home in Cornhill, or wherever it was in the City.

But now, some years ago, at a sale of books belonging to one Isaac Reid, there was purchased a manuscript volume of law cases, written out very probably by some studious pupil, for his future behoof and instruction. Amongst these law cases was one drawn up by the mother of Gray, or by some one on her part, and laid formally before counsel for his opinion. It reveals in its one solitary statement the history of years; it tells of domestic discord of the harshest character, and this brought on and imbittered by pecuniary difficulties. Whilst young Gray was studying at Peter House, Cambridge, his mother was drawing up the following case for the opinion of counsel.

“Philip Gray, before his marriage with his wife (then Dorothy Antrobus, and who was then partner with her sister Mary Antrobus), entered into certain articles of agreement”—(permitting, in short, the said Dorothy Antrobus to continue the said partnership for her own sole and separate use.)

“That in pursuance of the said articles, the said Mary, with the assistance of the said Dorothy her sister, hath carried on the said trade for near thirty years, with tolerable success for the said Dorothy. That she hath been at no charge to the said Philip; and during all the said time hath not only found herself in all manner of apparel, but also for all her children to the number of twelve, and most of the furniture of his house; and paying £40 a-year for his shop, almost providing everything for her son, whilst at Eton school, and now he is at Peter House at Cambridge.

“Notwithstanding which, almost ever since he hath been married, he hath used her in the most inhuman manner, by beating, kicking, pinching, and with the most vile and abusive language; that she hath been in the utmost fear, and danger of her life, and hath been obliged this last year to quit her bed and lie with her sister. This she was resolved, if possible, to bear; not to leave her shop of trade for the sake of her son, to be able to assist in the maintenance of him at the University, since his father won’t.

“There is no cause for this usage unless it be an unhappy jealousy of all mankind in general (her own brother not excepted); but no woman deserves or hath maintained a more virtuous character: or it is presumed, if he can make her sister leave off trade, he thinks he can then come into his wife’s money, but the articles are too secure for his vile purposes.

“He daily threatens he will pursue her with all the vengeance possible, and will ruin himself to undo her and his only son; in order to which he hath given warning to her sister to quit his shop where they have carried on their trade so successfully, which will be almost their ruin: but he insists she shall go out at Midsummer next; and the said Dorothy, his wife, in necessity must be forced to go along with her to some other house and shop, to be assisting to her said sister in the said trade, for her own and her son’s support.

“But if she can be quiet, she neither expects nor desires any help from him: but he is really so very vile in his nature, she hath all the reason to expect most troublesome usage from him that can be thought of.”—Vol. i. Appendix B.

Then follow some questions, and the answer of Counsel, which it is not necessary to extract. What must have been the effect of such domestic scenes as are here disclosed to us, on the sensitive mind of Gray, may be partly guessed. Nor need we be surprised that the college youth at Peter House, and the associate of Horace Walpole, early contracted a habit of silence upon the events of his own life. Bonstettin, whom he took so cordially to his friendship, says, “Je racontais à Gray ma vie et mon pays, mais toute sa vie à lui était fermée pour moi. Jamais il ne me parlait de lui. Il y avait chez Gray entre le present et le passé un abîme infranchisable. Quand je voulais un approche, de sombre nuées venaient le couvrir.”—Vol. V., Notes, p. 181.

We understand now why Gray held his mother in so much esteem, and why the father was rarely spoken of, while her name was never mentioned to the latest day without a trembling of the voice; why there was found at his death, still unopened, in his room, the chest containing her wearing-apparel: he had never dared to open it, or had never reconciled himself to part with its contents. To his mother he owed his education and the position he occupied in life—a greater debt than even that life which she twice gave. He was the only one of twelve children who survived. The rest died in their infancy, as we are told, “from suffocation produced by a fulness of blood;” and this strange family destiny would have befallen Gray also, but that his mother “removed the paroxysm which attacked him, by opening a vein with her own hand.”

The chief incident of Gray’s life, so far as biographers have been able to record it, is his intimacy with Walpole;—his journey with him upon the Continent, and the rupture that took place between them. Of this quarrel we find an explanation in a note which is by no means honourable to Walpole. Entertaining a suspicion that Gray had spoken ill of him to some friends in England, he clandestinely opened and re-sealed one of Gray’s letters. After this, there was “little cordiality between them.” We should think not, for, short of a crime, could one man be guilty towards another of a more dishonourable action? But we are not satisfied with the authority on which this explanation is given. The account will be found in a note, vol. ii. p. 175. We have only that sort of hearsay evidence which lawyers have universally agreed in rejecting. A Mr Isaac Reed makes a private memorandum (some time after the conversation) of what a Mr Roberts, of the Pell office, had told him. This is not sufficient authority for what, we presume in the time of Walpole as well as our own, would be regarded as a grave charge, if brought against a gentleman. Of Mr Roberts, of the Pell office, and how he heard the story, we are told nothing. Mr Isaac Reed merely says of him “that he was likely to be well informed.”

The quarrel, its cause and its reconciliation, are, perhaps, now of very little moment, but the intimacy with Walpole must always remain as one of the most important facts in the life of Gray. For what is the character which Gray reveals to us? In few words, it is the incongruous combination of the sensitive poet and man of letters, with the affectation and levity of a man of the world. This latter phase of his character must have owed much of its development to his early intercourse with the son of a prime-minister, and one whose wit and pleasantry would fully justify and explain an influence over his graver companion. Gray was a man who had a heart, and had learnt to hide it under the affectation of indifference; neither could he have been without the stirrings of a noble ambition; but he had taught himself that it was a prettier thing to graft the man of letters on the refined gentleman, than to give himself, heart and soul, to some intellectual enterprise. He thinks, or he can write, that “Literature, to take it in its most comprehensive sense, and include everything that requires invention or judgment, or barely application and industry, seems indeed drawing apace to its dissolution;” but he makes no serious effort to arrest this dissolution. What is the literature of a country but the efforts of such men as he? There was a younger contemporary, one Gibbon, then turning over the same classic pages as himself, who was soon to add to the literature of England a History which would display more learning and more eloquence than had ever before been united together. Antiquarian as he was, what epoch has he illustrated for us? Zoologist, botanist; he corrects the latinity of Linnæus! He makes notes innumerable—notes on Strabo, notes on Plato; the text of what author has he amended or explained for us? When appointed Professor of History, he does not even write a single lecture.

“The political opinions of Gray, H. Walpole says, he never rightly understood;” and his biographer adds that his religious opinions lie in a certain obscurity. Some writers “not favourable to the cause of Christianity,” have ranked him, it seems, amongst freethinkers: orthodox and pious friends have no doubt whatever about his orthodoxy or his piety. The perusal of his Letters never led us, for a moment, to rank him amongst unbelievers; but if any one should suggest that he had not thought on the subject with sufficient earnestness even to be a doubter, we might be disposed to acquiesce in this explanation. He lived in a time when there was little earnestness of thought, and he was not of that energetic nature which rises above the influence of the age. He was scandalised at Rousseau and Voltaire because they were disturbers of the peace: one is not sure that there was a deeper feeling in his hostility towards them. The manner in which a person is written to is often as significant as the manner in which he himself writes. Throughout their correspondence, the Rev. William Mason never alludes to his clerical profession in any one respect but as a means of living well and comfortably in the world—as a career in which promotion and good living are to be encountered. The credit of this quite secular tone must be divided between the correspondents: perhaps in the greater measure to the elder and more influential of the two.

These correspondents were, no doubt, excellent friends; but Gray never speaks to a third person in a very flattering manner of Mason. He is disposed always to deny any very close intimacy. He appears to have said to himself, Men will laugh at us two poets, communing upon verse, and flattering each other upon the muse; they will make me out also no better than a poet; whereas I am gentleman by profession and poet by accident. Writing to Walpole, he says, “I like Mr Aston Hervey’s Fable, and an ode by Mr Mason, a new acquaintance of mine.” Of this new acquaintance he had written to Warton, more than two years before, in the following strain: “Mr Mason is my acquaintance; I liked that ode very much, but have found no one else that did. He has much fancy, little judgment, and a good deal of modesty. I take him for a good and well-meaning creature; but then he is really in simplicity a child, and loves everybody he meets with; he reads little or nothing, writes abundance, and that with a design to make his fortune by it.” In another place he says of him that he “has not, properly speaking, anything one can call a passion about him, except a little malice and revenge.” Such phrases as these occur in his correspondence with Warton and Brown: “I do not hear from Mason;” “You think us great correspondents, but,” &c. To us it seems that he really liked the younger poet, who more, perhaps, than any other man he knew, sympathised with him on the poetical side of his character; but then he did not like to be grouped with him, in the eyes of the wits and the worldlings. They will compare us, and associate us, and think us rival candidates for popular applause.

We see this morbid sense of ridicule betray itself in his publication of his poems. He insists upon it that the poems shall be published as mere illustrations of the drawings of Bentley, which accompanied them. The book met with applause, and the Elegy became at once a popular favourite. He seems, in a letter to Warton, to reprove and to repudiate this abundant praise. “I should have been glad that you and two or three more people had liked them, which would have satisfied my ambition on this head amply.” For all this, when he published the Bard, and other odes which, from their nature, appealed still more to the select few, he was not a little nettled because “the town” found them obscure.

In his manner and carriage, Gray is described as being cold and fastidious to an offensive degree. A contemporary and admirer, Rev. William Cole, says, “I am apt to think the characters of Voltaire and Mr Gray were similar. They were both little men, very nice and exact in their persons and dress, most lively and agreeable in conversation, except that Mr Gray was apt to be too satirical, and both of them full of affectation.” And then contrasting him with Dr Farmer, he thus describes the two men: “The one (Dr Farmer) a cheerful, companionable, hearty, open, downright man, of no great regard to dress or common forms of behaviour; the other (Gray) of a most fastidious and recluse distance of carriage, rather averse to sociability, but of the graver turn; nice, and elegant in his person, dress, and behaviour, even to a degree of finicalness and effeminacy.”—Vol. i., Appendix. The contrast here drawn between Gray and Dr Farmer, suggests to us the dissimilarity and mutual distaste which existed between Gray and a still greater contemporary, Dr Johnson. They repelled each other far more by diversity of manner than by opposition of opinion. Gray refused to be personally acquainted with Johnson. Passing him in the streets of London, he whispered to the companion with whom he was walking, “There is the Great Bear! there goes Ursa Major!” and accompanied the words with a sort of shrinking and recoil. It is well known that the antipathy was mutual. The judgment passed upon Gray in the Lives of the Poets is the harshest and the least equitable criticism throughout that work. One cannot help admitting, however, that, if Gray had written the life of Johnson, there would have been a piece of criticism produced still less equitable. Gray is rarely just to any of his contemporaries. He seldom admires, and the little praise he bestows is distributed most capriciously. He speaks as highly of Lyttleton’s Monody as of the Odes of Collins. He mentions Sterne but coldly, and when he would be complimentary, always selects his Sermons! You would say that a certain superciliousness has been creeping over and into the very heart of the man.

But now change the point of view, and from this the world-aspect turn to the poetic side of the character. It was not a heartless man who wrote the Elegy and the Bard, who was the friend of West, who in later times was the friend of Bonstettin, who at all times could find society in meditation, and companionship in beauties of nature. The Letters of Gray are too well known to render it necessary for us to make extracts from them, to show how often a vein of deep feeling runs through a half-playful style of diction. His pathos touches us still more, whether he is describing nature, or speaking of himself and of his friends, from the restraint he has evidently put upon his own enthusiasm, or his own tenderness. The “melancholy Gray” was a far higher being than the witty and Walpolian Gray; and it is the blending of the two together that has made the singular charm of the Letters.

If evidence were wanted to prove that there existed uncorrupted in the mind of Gray springs of pure and genuine feeling, we should find that evidence in his attachment to Bonstettin. This young foreigner, by his own ardent temper, had broken down all those cold artificial barriers in which it is said the poet habitually intrenched himself. Gray had taken lodgings for him at Cambridge, near his own rooms, and they spent the evenings together, reading the Greek poets and philosophers. When Bonstettin returned to his native country, Switzerland, Gray felt the loss of his friend in a manner which he does not seek even to disguise, but expresses with unaffected warmth:—

“Never did I feel, my dear Bonstettin, to what a tedious length the few short moments of our life may be extended by impatience and expectation, till you had left me: nor ever knew before with so strong a conviction how much this frail body sympathises with the inquietude of the mind. I am grown old in the compass of less than three weeks, like the Sultan in the Turkish tales, that did but plunge his head into a vessel of water, and take it out again, as the standers-by affirmed, at the command of a Dervise, and found he had passed many years in captivity, and begot a large family of children. The strength and spirits that now enable me to write to you are only owing to your last letter, a temporary gleam of sunshine. Heaven knows when it may shine again. I did not conceive till now, I own, what it was to lose you, nor felt the solitude and insipidity of my own condition before I possessed the happiness of your friendship.

“But enough of this—I return to your letter. It proves at least that, in the midst of your new gaieties, I still hold some place in your memory; and, what pleases me above all, it has an air of undissembled sincerity. Go on, my best and amiable friend, to show me your heart simply, and without the shadow of disguise, and leave me to weep over it, as I now do, no matter whether from joy or sorrow.”

“Alas! how do I every moment feel the truth of what I have somewhere read, ‘Ce n’est pas le voir, que de s’en souvenir’; and yet that remembrance is the only satisfaction I have left. My life now is but a conversation with your shadow—the known sound of your voice still rings in my ears—there, on the corner of the fender, you are standing, or tinkling on the pianoforte, or stretched at length on the sofa. Do you reflect, my dearest friend, that it is a week or eight days before I can receive a letter from you, and as much more before you can have my answer; and that all that time I am employed, with more than Herculean toil, in pushing the tedious hours along, and wishing to annihilate them: the more I strive, the heavier they move, and the longer they grow. I cannot bear this place, where I have spent many tedious years, within less than a month since you left me. I am going for a few days to see poor Nicholls,” &c., &c.

“I am returned, my dear Bonstettin, from the little journey I made into Suffolk, without answering the end proposed. The thought that you might have been with me there, has imbittered all my hours. Your letter has made me happy, as happy as so gloomy, so solitary a being as I am, is capable of being made. I know, and have too often felt, the disadvantages I lay myself under; how much I hurt the little interest I have in you, by this air of sadness, so contrary to your nature and present enjoyments; but sure you will forgive, though you cannot sympathise with me. It is impossible for me to dissemble with you: such as I am I expose my heart to your view, nor wish to conceal a single thought from your penetrating eyes.”

These are not the letters of a youth; they are the outpourings of the mature man. How grossly do we err indeed when we think that youth is the especial or exclusive season of friendship, or even of love. In the experience of many it has been found that the want of the heart, the thirst for affection, has been felt far more in manhood than in youth. It was so, perhaps, with Gray. We are not disposed to think that there was any peculiar merit in Bonstettin to justify this overflow of sentiment. But the heart of the man was full, and his was the hand that shook the mantling cup till it ran over.

We have already quoted a part of a brief account which Bonstettin gives of Gray—that account proceeds thus: “Je crois que Gray n’avait jamais aimé,—c’était le mot de l’énigme. Gray avait de la gaieté dans l’esprit, et de la mélancolie dans le caractère. Mais cette mélancolie n’est qu’un besoin non satisfait de la sensibilité.” That Gray had never loved, is an explanation which would better suit the novelist than the more sedate biographer. Nevertheless, M. Bonstettin gives us something to reflect upon. It is well said that Gray had gaiety in his mind, but sadness at his heart; and who can tell how far that sadness was due to repressed or unoccupied affection?

We had intended to offer to our readers some rather copious extracts from Gray’s Letters, to illustrate the several phases of his character; but space would be wanting, and perhaps, the Letters being sufficiently known, this labour would be needless. Unfortunately, a few brief detached extracts would not serve our purpose. We cannot help remarking, indeed, the false impression often created by just such partial extracts. A sentence which itself is the product only of a momentary feeling, and which is neutralised, perhaps, in the very next page, is made to express a permanent sentiment of the writer. “Be it mine,” says Gray at one moment, “to read eternal new romances of Marivaux and Crébillon;” and this quotation has been so often repeated, that a person who had not read the Letters might imagine that Gray was a most exemplary reader of novels. How very different a kind of reading occupied his hours we need not say. He was apt, indeed, to represent himself as an idler, but there was something of affectation in this—an affectation not unfrequent amongst literary men, who represent themselves as more indolent than they are, because they know people will be expecting some ostensible result of their industry, or because they desire this result to wear the appearance of an easy and a rapid performance. The much marvelling Mr Mason, with his round open eyes that see nothing, he too has his manner of quotation. “‘To be employed is to be happy,’ said Gray; and if he had never said anything else, either in prose or in verse, he would have deserved the esteem of all posterity!” So a discovery as old as Solomon, as old as man, is assigned to Mr Gray! Yet if a grateful posterity should turn to the very letter from which this quotation is made, they would find that Gray was not the most energetic nor the most complete preacher on his own text. He felt, as every one not a savage or an idiot must feel, that employment was an imperative necessity; but he often seems driven to the expedient of finding employment for the sake of employment. Now if he had devoted himself to some one literary task, of more or less utility to the world, and wrought steadily for its accomplishment, he would have carried his philosophy and his happiness one step farther. Next to living solitary, the great error of his career was that he had not adopted, either as poet or historian, some large and useful task.