Melincourt

CHAPTER II FASHIONABLE ARRIVALS

It was late in the afternoon of an autumnal day, when the elegant post-chariot of the Honourable Mrs. Pinmoney, a lady of high renown in the annals of match-making, turned the corner of a stupendous precipice in the narrow pass which formed the only access to the valley of Melincourt. This honourable lady was accompanied by her only daughter Miss Danaretta Contantina; which names, by the bye, appear to be female diminutives of the Italian words danaro contante, signifying ready money, and genteelly hinting to all fashionable Strephons, the only terms on which the commodity so denominated would be disposed of, according to the universal practice of this liberal and enlightened generation, in that most commercial of all bargains, marriage.

Fashionable arrivals.

The ivied battlements and frowning towers of Melincourt Castle, as they burst at once upon the sight, very much astonished the elder and delighted the younger lady; for the latter had cultivated a great deal of theoretical romance—in taste, not in feeling—an important distinction—which enabled her to be most liberally sentimental in words, without at all influencing her actions; to talk of heroic affection and selfsacrificing enthusiasm, without incurring the least danger of forming a disinterested attachment, or of erring in any way whatever on the score of practical generosity. Indeed, in all respects of practice the young lady was the true counterpart of her mother, though they sometimes differed a little in the forms of sentiment: thus, for instance, when any of their dear friends happened to go, as it is called, down hill in the world, the old lady was generally very severe on their imprudence, and the young lady very pathetic on their misfortune: but as 17to holding any further intercourse with, or rendering any species of assistance to, any dear friend so circumstanced, neither the one nor the other was ever suspected of conduct so very unfashionable. In the main point, therefore, of both their lives, that of making a good match for Miss Danaretta, their views perfectly coincided; and though Miss Danaretta, in her speculative conversations on this subject, among her female acquaintance, talked as young ladies always talk, and laid down very precisely the only kind of man she would ever think of marrying, endowing him, of course, with all the virtues in our good friend Hookman’s Library; yet it was very well understood, as it usually is on similar occasions, that no other proof of the possession of the aforesaid virtues would be required from any individual who might present himself in the character of Corydon sospiroso than a satisfactory certificate from the old lady in Threadneedle Street, that the bearer was a good man, and could be proved so in the Alley.

Such were the amiable specimens of worldly wisdom, and affected romance, that prepared to invade the retirement of the mountain-enthusiast, the really romantic unworldly Anthelia.

‘What a strange-looking old place!’ said Mrs. Pinmoney; ‘it seems like anything but the dwelling of a young heiress. I am afraid the rascally postboys have joined in a plot against us, and intend to deliver us to a gang of thieves!’

‘Banditti, you should say, mamma,’ said Miss Danaretta; ‘thieves is an odious word.’

‘Pooh, child!’ said Mrs. Pinmoney. ‘The reality is odious enough, let the word be what it will. Is not a rogue a rogue, call him by what name you may?’

‘Oh, certainly not,’ said Miss Danaretta; ‘for in that case a poor rogue without a title, would not be more a rogue than a rich rogue with one; but that he is so in a most infinite proportion, the whole experience of the world demonstrates.’

‘True,’ said the old lady; ‘and as our reverend friend Dr. Bosky observes, to maintain the contrary would be to sanction a principle utterly subversive of all social order and aristocratical privilege.’

The carriage now rolled over the narrow ledge which connected the site of the castle with the neighbouring rocks. A furious peal at the outer bell brought forth a venerable porter, who opened the gates with becoming gravity, and the 18carriage entered a spacious court, of much more recent architecture than the exterior of the castle, and built in a style of modern Gothic, that seemed to form a happy medium between the days of feudality, commonly called the dark ages, and the nineteenth century, commonly called the enlightened age: why I could never discover.

The inner gates were opened by another grave and venerable domestic, who, with all the imperturbable decorum and formality of the old school, assisted the ladies to alight, and ushered them along an elegant colonnade into the library, which we shall describe no further than by saying that the apartment was Gothic, and the furniture Grecian: whether this be an unpardonable incongruity calculated to disarrange all legitimate associations, or a judicious combination of solemnity and elegance, most happily adapted to the purposes of study, we must leave to the decision, or rather discussion, of picturesque and antiquarian disputants.

The windows, which were of stained glass, were partly open to a shrubbery, which admitting the meditative mind into the recesses of nature, and excluding all view of distant scenes, heightened the deep seclusion and repose of the apartment. It consisted principally of evergreens; but the parting beauty of the last flowers of autumn, and the lighter and now fading tints of a few deciduous shrubs, mingled with the imperishable verdure of the cedar and the laurel.

The old domestic went in search of his young mistress, and the ladies threw themselves on a sofa in graceful attitudes. They were shortly joined by Anthelia, who welcomed them to Melincourt with all the politeness which the necessity of the case imposed.

The change of dress, the dinner, the dessert, seasoned with the newest news of the fashionable world, which the visitors thought must be of all things the most delightful to the mountain recluse, filled up a portion of the evening. When they returned from the dining-room to the library, the windows were closed, the curtains drawn, and the tea and coffee urns bubbling on the table, and sending up their steamy columns: an old fashion to be sure, and sufficiently rustic, for which we apologise in due form to the reader, who prefers his tea and coffee brought in cool by the butler in little cups on a silver salver, and handed round to the simpering company till it is as 19cold as an Iceland spring. There is no disputing about taste, and the taste of Melincourt Castle on this subject had been always very poetically unfashionable; for the tea would have satisfied Johnson, and the coffee enchanted Voltaire.

‘I must confess, my dear,’ said the Honourable Mrs. Pinmoney, ‘there is a great deal of comfort in your way of living, that is, there would be, in good company; but you are so solitary——’

‘Here is the best of company,’ said Anthelia, smiling, and pointing to the shelves of the library.

The Hon. Mrs. Pinmoney. Very true: books are very good things in their way; but an hour or two at most is quite enough of them for me; more can serve no purpose but to muddle one’s head. If I were to live such a life for a week as you have done for the last twelve months, I should have more company than I like, in the shape of a whole legion of blue devils.

Miss Danaretta. Nay, I think there is something delightfully romantic in Anthelia’s mode of life; but I confess I should like now and then, peeping through the ivy of the battlements, to observe a preux chevalier exerting all his eloquence to persuade the inflexible porter to open the castle gates, and allow him one opportunity of throwing himself at the feet of the divine lady of the castle, for whom he had been seven years dying a lingering death.

The Hon. Mrs. Pinmoney. And growing fatter all the while. Heaven defend me from such hypocritical fops! Seven years indeed! It did not take as many weeks to bring me and poor dear dead Mr. Pinmoney together.

Anthelia. I should have been afraid that so short an acquaintance would scarcely have been sufficient to acquire that mutual knowledge of each other’s tastes, feelings, and character, which I should think the only sure basis of matrimonial happiness.

The Hon. Mrs. Pinmoney. Tastes, feelings, and character! Why, my love, you really do seem to believe yourself in the age of chivalry, when those words certainly signified very essential differences. But now the matter is, very happily, simplified. Tastes,—they depend on the fashion. There is always a fashionable taste: a taste for driving the mail—a taste for acting Hamlet—a taste for philosophical lectures—a 20taste for the marvellous—a taste for the simple—a taste for the brilliant—a taste for the sombre—a taste for the tender—a taste for the grim—a taste for banditti—a taste for ghosts—a taste for the devil—a taste for French dancers and Italian singers, and German whiskers and tragedies—a taste for enjoying the country in November, and wintering in London till the end of the dog-days—a taste for making shoes—a taste for picturesque tours—a taste for taste itself, or for essays on taste;—but no gentleman would be so rash as have a taste of his own, or his last winter’s taste, or any taste, my love, but the fashionable taste. Poor dear Mr. Pinmoney was reckoned a man of exquisite taste among all his acquaintance; for the new taste, let it be what it would, always fitted him as well as his new coat, and he was the very pink and mirror of fashion, as much in the one as the other.—So much for tastes, my dear.

Anthelia. I am afraid I shall always be a very unfashionable creature; for I do not think I should have sympathised with any one of the tastes you have just enumerated.

The Hon. Mrs. Pinmoney. You are so contumacious, such a romantic heretic from the orthodox supremacy of fashion. Now, as for feelings, my dear, you know there are no such things in the fashionable world; therefore that difficulty vanishes even more easily than the first.

Anthelia. I am sorry for it.

The Hon. Mrs. Pinmoney. Sorry! Feelings are very troublesome things, and always stand in the way of a person’s own interests. Then, as to character, a gentleman’s character is usually in the keeping of his banker, or his agent, or his steward, or his solicitor; and if they can certify and demonstrate that he has the means of keeping a handsome equipage, and a town and country house, and of giving routs and dinners, and of making a good settlement on the happy object of his choice—what more of any gentleman’s character would you desire to know?

Anthelia. A great deal more. I would require him to be free in all his thoughts, true in all his words, generous in all his actions—ardent in friendship, enthusiastic in love, disinterested in both—prompt in the conception, and constant in the execution, of benevolent enterprise—the friend of the friendless, the champion of the feeble, the firm opponent of the powerful oppressor—not to be enervated by luxury, nor corrupted 21by avarice, nor intimidated by tyranny, nor enthralled by superstition—more desirous to distribute wealth than to possess it, to disseminate liberty than to appropriate power, to cheer the heart of sorrow than to dazzle the eyes of folly.

The Hon. Mrs. Pinmoney. And do you really expect to find such a knight-errant? The age of chivalry is gone.

Anthelia. It is, but its spirit survives. Disinterested benevolence, the mainspring of all that is really admirable in the days of chivalry, will never perish for want of some minds calculated to feel its influence, still less for want of a proper field of exertion. To protect the feeble, to raise the fallen—to liberate the captive—to be the persevering foe of tyrants (whether the great tyrant of an overwhelming empire, the petty tyrant of the fields, or the ‘little tyrant of a little corporation,’)^[4] it is not necessary to wind the bugle before enchanted castles, or to seek adventures in the depths of mountain caverns and forests of pine; there is no scene of human life but presents sufficient scope to energetic generosity; the field of action, though less splendid in its accompaniments, is not less useful in its results, nor less attractive to a liberal spirit: and I believe it is possible to find as true a knight-errant in a brown coat in the nineteenth century, as in a suit of golden armour in the days of Charlemagne.

The Hon. Mrs. Pinmoney. Well! well! my dear, when you have seen a little more of the world, you will get rid of some of your chivalrous whimsies; and I think you will then agree with me that there is not, in the whole sphere of fashion, a more elegant, fine-spirited, dashing, generous fellow than my nephew Sir Telegraph Paxarett, who, by the bye, will be driving his barouche this way shortly, and if you do not absolutely forbid it, will call on me in his route.

These words seemed to portend that the Honourable Mrs. Pinmoney’s visit would be a visitation, and at the same time threw a clear light on its motive; but they gave birth in the mind of Anthelia to a train of ideas which concluded in a somewhat singular determination.

CHAPTER III HYPOCON HOUSE

Anthelia had received intimations from various quarters of similar intentions on the part of various individuals, not less valuable than Sir Telegraph Paxarett in the scale of moral utility; and though there was not one among them for whom she felt the slightest interest, she thought it would be too uncourteous in a pupil of chivalry, and too inhospitable in the mistress of an old English castle, to bar her gates against them. At the same time she felt the want of a lord seneschal to receive and entertain visitors so little congenial to her habits and inclinations: and it immediately occurred to her that no one would be more fit for this honourable office, if he could be prevailed on to undertake it, than an old relation—a medium, as it were, between cousin and great-uncle; who had occasionally passed a week or a month with her father at Melincourt. The name of this old gentleman was Hippy—Humphrey Hippy, Esquire, of Hypocon House, in the county of Durham. He was a bachelor, and his character exhibited a singular compound of kind-heartedness, spleen, and melancholy, which governed him by turns, and sometimes in such rapid succession that they seemed almost co-existent. To him Anthelia determined on sending an express, with a letter entreating him to take on himself, for a short time, the superintendence of Melincourt Castle, and giving as briefly as possible her reasons for the request. In pursuance of this determination, old Peter Gray, a favourite domestic of Sir Henry, and, I believe, a distant relation of little Lucy,^[5] was despatched the following morning to Hypocon House, where the gate was opened to him by old Harry Fell, a distant relation of little Alice, who, 25as the reader well knows, ‘belonged to Durham.’ Old Harry had become, by long habit, a curious species of animated mirror, and reflected all the humours of his master with wonderful nicety. When Mr. Hippy was in a rage, old Harry looked fierce; when Mr. Hippy was in a good humour, old Harry was the picture of human kindness; when Mr. Hippy was blue-devilled, old Harry was vapourish; when Mr. Hippy was as melancholy as a gib-cat, old Harry was as dismal as a screech-owl. The latter happened to be the case when old Peter presented himself at the gate, and old Harry accordingly opened it with a most rueful elongation of visage. Peter Gray was ready with a warm salutation for his old acquaintance Harry Fell; but the lamentable cast of expression in the physiognomy of the latter froze it on his lips, and he contented himself with asking in a hesitating tone, ‘Is Mr. Hippy at home?’

Old Harry had become, by long habit, a curious species of animated mirror.

‘He is,’ slowly and sadly articulated Harry Fell, shaking his head.

‘I have a letter for him,’ said Peter Gray.

‘Ah!’ said Harry Fell, taking the letter, and stalking off with it as solemnly as if he had been following a funeral.

‘A pleasant reception,’ thought Peter Gray, ‘instead of the old ale and cold sirloin I dreamed of.’

Old Harry tapped three times at the door of his master’s chamber, observing the same interval between each tap as is usual between the sounds of a muffled drum: then, after a due pause, he entered the apartment. Mr. Hippy was in his night-gown and slippers, with one leg on a cushion, suffering under an imaginary attack of the gout, and in the last stage of despondency. Old Harry walked forward in the same slow pace till he found himself at the proper distance from his master’s chair. Then putting forth his hand as deliberately as if it had been the hour-hand of the kitchen clock, he presented the letter. Mr. Hippy took it in the same manner, sank back in his chair as if exhausted with the effort, and cast his eyes languidly on the seal. Immediately his eyes brightened, he tore open the letter, read it in an instant, sprang up, flung his night-gown one way, his night-cap another, kicked off his slippers, kicked away his cushion, kicked over his chair, and bounced downstairs, roaring for his coat and boots, and his travelling chariot, with old Harry capering at his heels, and 26re-echoing all his requisitions. Harry Fell was now a new man. Peter Gray was seized by the hand and dragged into the buttery, where a cold goose and a flagon of ale were placed before him, to which he immediately proceeded to do ample justice; while old Harry rushed off with a cold fowl and ham for the refection of Mr. Hippy, who had been too seriously indisposed in the morning to touch a morsel of breakfast. Having placed these and a bottle of Madeira in due form and order before his master, he flew back to the buttery, to assist old Peter in the demolition of the goose and ale, his own appetite in the morning having sympathised with his master’s, and being now equally disposed to make up for lost time.

Mr. Hippy’s travelling chariot was rattled up to the door by four high-mettled posters from the nearest inn. Mr. Hippy sprang into the carriage, old Harry vaulted into the dicky, the postilions cracked their whips, and away they went,

leaving old Peter gaping after them at the gate, in profound astonishment at their sudden metamorphosis, and in utter despair of being able, by any exertions of his own, to be their forerunner and announcer at Melincourt. Considering, therefore, that when the necessity of being too late is inevitable, hurry is manifestly superfluous, he mounted his galloway with great gravity and deliberation, and trotted slowly off towards the mountains, philosophising all the way in the usual poetical style of a Cumberland peasant. Our readers will of course feel much obliged to us for not presenting them with his meditations. But instead of jogging back with old Peter Gray, or travelling post with Humphrey Hippy, Esquire, we shall avail ourselves of the four-in-hand barouche which is just coming in view, to take a seat on the box by the side of Sir Telegraph Paxarett, and proceed in his company to Melincourt.

27

Sprang up, flung his night-gown one way, his night-cap another.

CHAPTER IV REDROSE ABBEY

Sir Telegraph Paxarett had entered the precincts of the mountains of Westmoreland, and was bowling his barouche along a romantic valley, looking out very anxiously for an inn, as he had now driven his regular diurnal allowance of miles, and was becoming very impatient for his equally regular diurnal allowance of fish, fowl, and Madeira. A wreath of smoke ascending from a thick tuft of trees at a distance, and in a straight direction before him, cheered up his spirits, and induced him to cheer up those of his horses with two or three of those technical terms of the road, which we presume to have formed part of the genuine language of the ancient Houyhnhnms, since they seem not only much better adapted to equine than human organs of sound, but are certainly much more generally intelligible to four-footed than to two-footed animals. Sir Telegraph was doomed to a temporary disappointment; for when he had attained the desired point, the smoke proved to issue from the chimneys of an ancient abbey which appeared to have been recently converted from a pile of ruins into the habitation of some variety of the human species, with very singular veneration for the relics of antiquity, which, in their exterior aspect, had suffered little from the alteration. There was something so analogous between the state of this building and what he had heard of Melincourt, that if it had not been impossible to mistake an abbey for a castle, he might almost have fancied himself arrived at the dwelling of the divine Anthelia. Under a detached piece of ruins near the road, which appeared to have been part of a chapel, several workmen were busily breaking the ground with spade and pickaxe: a gentleman was superintending their operations, and 30seemed very eager to arrive at the object of his search. Sir Telegraph stopped his barouche to inquire the distance to the nearest inn: the gentleman replied, ‘Six miles.’ ‘That is just five miles and a half too far,’ said Sir Telegraph, and was proceeding to drive on, when, on turning round to make his parting bow to the stranger, he suddenly recognised him for an old acquaintance and fellow-collegian.

‘Sylvan Forester!’ exclaimed Sir Telegraph; ‘who should have dreamed of meeting you in this uncivilised part of the world?’

‘I am afraid,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘this part of the world does not deserve the compliment implied in the epithet you have bestowed on it. Within no very great distance from this spot are divers towns, villages, and hamlets, in any one of which, if you have money, you may make pretty sure of being cheated, and if you have none, quite sure of being starved—strong evidences of a state of civilisation.’

‘Aha!’ said Sir Telegraph, ‘your old way, now I recollect—always fond of railing at civilised life, and holding forth in praise of savages and what you called original men. But what, in truth, make you in Westmoreland?’

‘I have purchased this old abbey,’ said Mr. Forester ‘(anciently called the abbey of Rednose, which I have altered to Redrose, as being more analogous to my notions of beauty, whatever the reverend Fellows of our old college might have thought of it), and have fitted it up for my habitation, with the view of carrying on in peace and seclusion some peculiar experiments on the nature and progress of man. Will you dine with me, and pass the night here? and I will introduce you to an original character.’

‘With all my heart,’ said Sir Telegraph; ‘I can assure you, independently of the pleasure of meeting an old acquaintance, it is a great comfort to dine in a gentleman’s house, after living from inn to inn and being poisoned with bad wine for a month.’

Sir Telegraph descended from his box, and directed one of his grooms to open the carriage-door and emancipate the coachman, who was fast asleep inside. Sir Telegraph gave him the reins, and Mr. Forester sent one of his workmen to show him the way to the stables.

‘Possibly,’ thought Sir Telegraph, ‘possibly I may have seen an uglier fellow.’

‘And pray,’ said Sir Telegraph, as the barouche 33disappeared among the trees, ‘what may be the object of your researches in this spot?’

‘You know,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘it is a part of my tenets that the human species is gradually decreasing in size and strength, and I am digging in the old cemetery for bones and skulls to establish the truth of my theory.’

‘Have you found any?’ said Sir Telegraph.

‘Many,’ said Mr. Forester. ‘About three weeks ago we dug up a very fine skeleton, no doubt of some venerable father, who must have been, in more senses than one, a pillar of the Church. I have had the skull polished and set in silver. You shall drink your wine out of it, if you please, to-day.’

‘I thank you,’ said Sir Telegraph, ‘but I am not particular; a glass will suit me as well as the best skull in Europe. Besides, I am a moderate man: one bottle of Madeira and another of claret are enough for me at any time; so that the quantity of wine a reverend sconce can carry would be just treble my usual allowance.’

They walked together towards the abbey. Sir Telegraph earnestly requested, that, before they entered, he might be favoured with a peep at the stable. Mr. Forester of course complied. Sir Telegraph found this important part of the buildings capacious and well adapted to its purpose, but did not altogether approve its being totally masked by an old ivied wall, which had served in former times to prevent the braw and bonny Scot from making too free with the beeves of the pious fraternity.

The new dwelling-house was so well planned, and fitted in so well between the ancient walls, that very few vestiges of the modern architect were discernible; and it was obvious that the growth of the ivy, and of numerous trailing and twining plants, would soon overrun all vestiges of the innovation, and blend the whole exterior into one venerable character of antiquity.

‘I do not think,’ said Mr. Forester, as they proceeded through part of the grounds, ‘that the most determined zealot of the picturesque would quarrel with me here. I found the woods around the abbey matured by time and neglect into a fine state of wildness and intricacy, and I think I have left enough of them to gratify their most ardent admirer.’

‘Quite enough, in all conscience,’ said Sir Telegraph, who 34was in white jean trousers, with very thin silk stockings and pumps. ‘I do not generally calculate on being, as an old song I have somewhere heard expresses it,

which would be all very pleasant perhaps, if the fine effect of picturesque roughness were not unfortunately, as Macbeth says of his dagger, “sensible to feeling as to sight.” But who is that gentleman, sitting under the great oak yonder in the green coat and nankins? He seems very thoughtful.’

‘He is of a contemplative disposition,’ said Mr. Forester: ‘you must not be surprised if he should not speak a word during the whole time you are here. The politeness of his manner makes amends for his habitual taciturnity. I will introduce you.’

The gentleman under the oak had by this time discovered them, and came forward with great alacrity to meet Mr. Forester, who cordially shook hands with him, and introduced him to Sir Telegraph as Sir Oran Haut-ton, Baronet.

Sir Telegraph looked earnestly at the stranger, but was too polite to laugh, though he could not help thinking there was something very ludicrous in Sir Oran’s physiognomy, notwithstanding the air of high fashion which characterised his whole deportment, and which was heightened by a pair of enormous whiskers, and the folds of a vast cravat. He therefore bowed to Sir Oran with becoming gravity, and Sir Oran returned the bow with very striking politeness.

‘Possibly,’ thought Sir Telegraph, ‘possibly I may have seen an uglier fellow.’

The trio entered the abbey, and shortly after sat down to dinner.

Mr. Forester and Sir Oran Haut-ton took the head and foot of the table. Sir Telegraph sat between them. ‘Some soup, Sir Telegraph?’ said Mr. Forester. ‘I rather think,’ said Sir Telegraph, ‘I shall trouble Sir Oran for a slice of fish.’ Sir Oran helped him with great dexterity, and then performed the same office for himself. ‘I think you will like this Madeira?’ said Mr. Forester. ‘Capital!’ said Sir Telegraph: ‘Sir Oran, shall I have the pleasure of taking 37wine with you?’ Sir Oran Haut-ton bowed gracefully to Sir Telegraph Paxarett, and the glasses were tossed off with the usual ceremonies. Sir Oran preserved an inflexible silence during the whole duration of dinner, but showed great proficiency in the dissection of game.

Sir Oran took a flying leap through the window.

When the cloth was removed, the wine circulated freely, and Sir Telegraph, as usual, filled a numerous succession of glasses. Mr. Forester, not as usual, did the same; for he was generally very abstemious in this respect; but, on the present occasion, he relaxed from his severity, quoting the Placari genius festis impune diebus, and the Dulce est desipere in loco, of Horace. Sir Oran likewise approved, by his practice, that he thought the wine particularly excellent, and Beviamo tutti tre appeared to be the motto of the party. Mr. Forester inquired into the motives which had brought Sir Telegraph to Westmoreland; and Sir Telegraph entered into a rapturous encomium of the heiress of Melincourt which was suddenly cut short by Sir Oran, who, having taken a glass too much, rose suddenly from table, took a flying leap through the window, and went dancing along the woods like a harlequin.

‘Upon my word,’ said Sir Telegraph, ‘a devilish lively, pleasant fellow! Curse me if I know what to make of him.’

‘I will tell you his history,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘by and by. In the meantime I must look after him, that he may neither do nor receive mischief. Pray take care of yourself till I return.’ Saying this, he sprang through the window after Sir Oran, and disappeared by the same track among the trees.

‘Curious enough!’ soliloquised Sir Telegraph; ‘however, not much to complain of, as the best part of the company is left behind: videlicet, the bottle.’

CHAPTER V SUGAR

Sir Telegraph was tossing off the last heeltap of his regular diurnal allowance of wine, when Mr. Forester and Sir Oran Haut-ton reappeared, walking past the window arm in arm; Sir Oran’s mode of progression being very vacillating, indirect, and titubant; enough so, at least, to show that he had not completely danced off the effects of the Madeira. Mr. Forester shortly after entered; and Sir Telegraph inquiring concerning Sir Oran, ‘I have persuaded him to go to bed,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘and I doubt not he is already fast asleep.’ A servant now entered with tea. Sir Telegraph proceeded to help himself, when he perceived there was no sugar, and reminded his host of the omission.

Mr. Forester. If I had anticipated the honour of your company, Sir Telegraph, I would have provided myself with a small quantity of that nefarious ingredient: but in this solitary situation, these things are not to be had at a moment’s notice. As it is, seeing little company, and regulating my domestic arrangements on philosophical principles, I never suffer an atom of West Indian produce to pass my threshold. I have no wish to resemble those pseudo-philanthropists, those miserable declaimers against slavery, who are very liberal of words which cost them nothing, but are not capable of advancing the object they profess to have at heart, by submitting to the smallest personal privation. If I wish seriously to exterminate an evil, I begin by examining how far I am myself, in any way whatever, an accomplice in the extension of its baleful influence. My reform commences at home. How can I unblushingly declaim against thieves, while I am a receiver of stolen goods? How can I seriously call myself an enemy to slavery, while I 39indulge in the luxuries that slavery acquires? How can the consumer of sugar pretend to throw on the grower of it the exclusive burden of their participated criminality? How can he wash his hands, and say with Pilate, “I am innocent of this blood, see ye to it”?

Sir Telegraph poured some cream into his unsweetened tea, drank it, and said nothing. Mr. Forester proceeded:

If every individual in this kingdom, who is truly and conscientiously an enemy to the slave-trade, would subject himself to so very trivial a privation as abstinence from colonial produce, I consider that a mortal blow would be immediately struck at the roots of that iniquitous system.

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. If every individual enemy to the slave-trade would follow your example, the object would no doubt be much advanced; but the practice of one individual more or less has little or no influence on general society: most of us go on with the tide, and the dread of the single word quiz has more influence in keeping the greater part of us within the pale of custom, fashion, and precedent, than all the moral reasonings and declamations in the world will ever have in persuading us to break through it. As to the diffusion of liberty, and the general happiness of mankind, which used to be your favourite topics when we were at college together, I should have thought your subsequent experience would have shown you that there is not one person in ten thousand who knows what liberty means, or cares a single straw for any happiness but his own——

Mr. Forester. Which his own miserable selfishness must estrange from him for ever. He whose heart has never glowed with a generous resolution, who has never felt the conscious triumph of a disinterested sacrifice, who has never sympathised with human joys or sorrows, but when they have had a direct and palpable reference to himself, can never be acquainted with even the semblance of happiness. His utmost enjoyment must be many degrees inferior to that of a pig, inasmuch as the sordid mire of selfish and brutal stupidity is more defiling to the soul, than any coacervation of mere material mud can possibly be to the body. The latter may be cleared away with two or three ablutions, but the former cleaves and accumulates into a mass of impenetrable corruption, that bids defiance to the united powers of Hercules and Alpheus.

40Sir Telegraph Paxarett. Be that as it may, every man will continue to follow his own fancy. The world is bad enough, I daresay; but it is not for you or me to mend it.

Mr. Forester. There is the keystone of the evil—mistrust of the influence of individual example. ‘We are bad ourselves, because we despair of the goodness of others.’^[6] Yet the history of the world abounds with sudden and extraordinary revolutions in the opinions of mankind, which have been effected by single enthusiasts.

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. Speculative opinions have been sometimes changed by the efforts of roaring fanatics. Men have been found very easily permutable into ites and onians, avians, and arians, Wesleyites or Whitfieldites, Huntingdonians or Muggletonians, Moravians, Trinitarians, Unitarians, Anythingarians: but the metamorphosis only affects a few obscure notions concerning types, symbols, and mysteries, which have scarcely any effect on moral theory, and of course, a fortiori, none whatever on moral practice: the latter is for the most part governed by the general habits and manners of the society we live in. One man may twang responses in concert with the parish clerk; another may sit silent in a Quakers’ meeting, waiting for the inspiration of the Spirit; a third may groan and howl in a tabernacle; a fourth may breakfast, dine, and sup in a Sandemanian chapel: but meet any of the four in the common intercourse of society, you will scarcely know one from another. The single adage, Charity begins at home, will furnish a complete key to the souls of all four; for I have found, as far as my observation has extended, that men carry their religion^[7] in other men’s heads, and their morality in their own pockets.

41Mr. Forester. I think it will be found that individual example has in many instances produced great moral effects on the practice of society. Even if it were otherwise, is it not better to be Abdiel among the fiends, than to be lost and confounded in the legion of imps grovelling in the train of the evil power?

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. There is something in that.

Mr. Forester. To borrow an allegory from Homer: I would say society is composed of two urns, one of good, and one of evil. I will suppose that every individual of the human species receives from his natal genius a little phial, containing one drop of a fluid, which shall be evil, if poured into the urn of evil, and good if into that of good. If you were proceeding to the station of the urns with ten thousand persons, every one of them predetermined to empty his phial into the urn of evil, which I fear is too true a picture of the practice of society, should you consider their example, if you were hemmed in in the centre of them, a sufficient excuse for not breaking from them, and approaching the neglected urn? Would you say, “The urn of good will derive little increase from my solitary drop, and one more or less will make very little difference in the urn of ill; I will spare myself trouble, do as the world does, and let the urn of good take its chance, from those who can approach it with less difficulty”? No: you would rather say, “That neglected urn contains the hopes of the human species: little, indeed, is the addition I can make to it, but it will be good as far as it goes”; and if, on approaching the urn, you should find it not so empty as you had anticipated, if the genius appointed to guard it should say to you, “There is enough in this urn already to allow a reasonable expectation that it will one day be full, and yet it has only accumulated drop by drop 42through the efforts of individuals, who broke through the pale and pressure of the multitude, and did not despair of human virtue”; would you not feel ten thousand times repaid for the difficulties you had overcome, and the scoffs of the fools and slaves you had abandoned, by the single reflection that would then rush upon your mind, I am one of these?

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. Gad, very likely: I never considered the subject in that light. You have made no allowance for the mixture of good and evil, which I think the fairest state of the case. It seems to me, that the world always goes on pretty much in one way. People eat, drink, and sleep, make merry with their friends, get as much money as they can, marry when they can afford it, take care of their children because they are their own, are thought well of while they live in proportion to the depth of their purse, and when they die, are sure of as good a character on their tombstones as the bellman and stonemason can afford for their money.

Mr. Forester. Such is the multitude; but there are noble exceptions to this general littleness.

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. Now and then an original genius strikes out of the common track; but there are two ways of doing that—into a worse as well as a better.

Mr. Forester. There are some assuredly who strike into a better, and these are the ornaments of their age, and the lights of the world. You must admit too, that there are many, who, though without energy or capacity to lead, have yet virtue enough to follow an illustrious example.

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. One or two.

Mr. Forester. In every mode of human action there are two ways to be pursued—a good and a bad one. It is the duty of every man to ascertain the former, as clearly as his capacity will admit, by an accurate examination of general relations; and to act upon it rigidly, without regard to his own previous habits, or the common practice of the world.

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. And you infer from all this that it is my duty to drink my tea without sugar.

Mr. Forester. I infer that it is the duty of every one, thoroughly penetrated with the iniquity of the slave-trade, to abstain entirely from the use of colonial produce.

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. I may do that, without any great effort of virtue. I find the difference, in this instance, more 43trivial than I could have supposed. In fact, I never thought of it before.

Mr. Forester. I hope I shall before long have the pleasure of enrolling you a member of the Anti-saccharine Society, which I have had the happiness to organise, and which is daily extending its numbers. Some of its principal members will shortly pay a visit to Redrose Abbey; and I purpose giving a festival, to which I shall invite all that is respectable and intelligent in this part of the country, and in which I intend to demonstrate practically, that a very elegant and luxurious entertainment may be prepared without employing a single particle of that abominable ingredient, and theoretically, that the use of sugar is economically superfluous, physically pernicious, morally atrocious, and politically abominable.

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. I shall be happy to join the party, and I may possibly bring with me one or two inside passengers, who will prove both ornamental and attractive to your festival. But you promised me an account of Sir Oran.

CHAPTER VI SIR ORAN HAUT-TON

Mr. Forester. Sir Oran Haut-ton was caught very young in the woods of Angola.

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. Caught!

Mr. Forester. Very young. He is a specimen of the natural and original man—the wild man of the woods; called in the language of the more civilised and sophisticated natives of Angola, Pongo, and in that of the Indians of South America, Oran Outang.

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. The devil he is!

Mr. Forester. Positively. Some presumptuous naturalists have refused his species the honours of humanity; but the most enlightened and illustrious philosophers agree in considering him in his true light as the natural and original man.^[8] 45One French philosopher, indeed, has been guilty of an inaccuracy, in considering him as a degenerated man;^[9] degenerated he cannot be; as his prodigious physical strength, his uninterrupted health, and his amiable simplicity of manners demonstrate. He is, as I have said, a specimen of the natural and original man—a genuine facsimile of the philosophical Adam.

He was caught by an intelligent negro very young, in the woods of Angola; and his gentleness and sweet temper^[10] winning the hearts of the negro and negress, they brought him up in their cottage as the playfellow of their little boys and girls, where, with the exception of speech, he acquired the practice of such of the simpler arts of life as the degree of civilisation in that part of Africa admits. In this way he lived till he was about seventeen years of age——

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. By his own reckoning?

Mr. Forester. By analogical computation. At this period, my old friend Captain Hawltaught of the Tornado frigate, being driven by stress of weather to the coast of Angola, was 46so much struck with the contemplative cast of Sir Oran’s countenance,^[11] that he offered the negro an irresistible bribe to surrender him to his possession. The negro brought him on board, and took an opportunity to leave him slily, but with infinite reluctance and sympathetic grief. When the ship weighed anchor, and Sir Oran found himself separated from the friends of his youth, and surrounded with strange faces, he wept bitterly,^[12] and fell into such deep grief that his life was despaired of.^[13] The surgeon of the ship did what he could for him; and a much better doctor, Time, completed his cure. By degrees a very warm friendship for my friend Captain Hawltaught extinguished his recollection of his negro friends. Three years they cruised together in the Tornado, when a dangerous wound compelled the old captain to renounce his darling element, and lay himself up in ordinary for the rest of his days. He retired on his half-pay and the produce of his prize-money to a little village in the West of England, where he employed himself very assiduously in planting cabbages and 47watching the changes of the wind. Mr. Oran, as he was then called, was his inseparable companion, and became a very expert practical gardener. The old captain used to observe, he could always say he had an honest man in his house, which was more than could be said of many honourable houses where there was much vapouring about honour.

Mr. Oran had long before shown a taste for music, and with some little instruction from a marine officer in the Tornado, had become a proficient on the flute and French horn.^[14] He could never be brought to understand the notes; but, from hearing any simple tune played or sung two or three times, he never failed to perform it with great exactness and brilliancy of execution. I shall merely observe, en passant, that music appears, from this and several similar circumstances, to be more natural to man than speech. The old captain was fond of his bottle of wine after dinner, and his glass of grog at night. Mr. Oran was easily brought to sympathise in this taste;^[15] and they have many times sat up together half the night over a flowing bowl, the old captain singing Rule Britannia, True Courage, or Tom Tough, and Sir Oran accompanying him on the French horn.

During a summer tour in Devonshire, I called on my old 48friend Captain Hawltaught, and was introduced to Mr. Oran. You, who have not forgotten my old speculations on the origin and progress of man, may judge of my delight at this happy rencontre. I exerted all the eloquence I was master of to persuade Captain Hawltaught to resign him to me, that I might give him a philosophical education.^[16] Finding this point unattainable, I took a house in the neighbourhood, and the intercourse which ensued was equally beneficial and agreeable to all three.

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. And what part did you take in their nocturnal concerts, with Tom Tough and the French horn?

Mr. Forester. I was seldom present at them, and often remonstrated, but ineffectually, with the captain, on his corrupting the amiable simplicity of the natural man by this pernicious celebration of vinous and spirituous orgies; but the only answer I could ever get from him was a hearty damn against all water-drinkers, accompanied with a reflection that he was sure every enemy to wine and grog must have clapped down the hatches of his conscience on some secret villainy, which he feared good liquor would pipe ahoy; and he usually concluded by striking up Nothing like Grog, Saturday Night, or Swing the flowing Bowl, his friend Oran’s horn ringing in sympathetic symphony.

The old captain used to say that grog was the elixir of life: but it did not prove so to him; for one night he tossed off his last bumper, sang his last stave, and heard the last flourish of his Oran’s horn. I thought poor Oran would have broken his heart; and, had he not been familiarised to me, and conceived a very lively friendship for me before the death of his old friend, I fear the consequences would have been fatal.

Considering that change of scene would divert his melancholy, I took him with me to London. The theatres delighted him, particularly the opera, which not only accorded admirably with his taste for music, but where, as he looked round on the ornaments of the fashionable world, he seemed to be particularly comfortable, and to feel himself completely at home.

49There is, to a stranger, something ludicrous in a first view of his countenance, which led me to introduce him only into the best society, where politeness would act as a preventive to the propensity to laugh; for he has so nice a sense of honour (which I shall observe, by the way, is peculiar to man), that if he were to be treated with any kind of contumely, he would infallibly die of a broken heart, as has been seen in some of his species.^[17] With a view of ensuring him the respect of society which always attends on rank and fortune, I have purchased him a baronetcy, and made over to him an estate. I have also purchased of the Duke of Rottenburgh one half of the elective franchise vested in the body of Mr. Christopher Corporate, the free, fat, and dependent burgess of the ancient and honourable borough of Onevote, who returns two members to Parliament, one of whom will shortly be Sir Oran. (Sir Telegraph gave a long whistle.) But before taking this important step, I am desirous that he should finish his education. (Sir Telegraph whistled again.) I mean to say that I wish, if possible, to put a few words into his mouth, which I have hitherto found impracticable, though I do not entirely despair of ultimate success. But this circumstance, for reasons which I will give you by and by, does not at all militate against the proofs of his being a man.

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. If he be but half a man, he will be the fitter representative of half an elector; for as that ‘large body corporate of one,’ the free, fat, and dependent burgess of Onevote, returns two members to the honourable house, Sir Oran can only be considered as the representative of half of him. But, seriously, is not your principal object an irresistible exposure of the universality and omnipotence of corruption by purchasing for an oran outang one of those seats, the sale of which is unblushingly acknowledged to be as notorious as the sun at noonday? or do you really think him one of us?

Mr. Forester. I really think him a variety of the human species; and this is a point which I have it much at heart to establish in the acknowledgment of the civilised world.

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. Buffon, whom I dip into now and then in the winter, ranks him, with Linnaeus, in the class of Simiae.

Mr. Forester. Linnaeus has given him the curious 50denominations of Troglodytes, Homo nocturnus, and Homo silvestris: but he evidently thought him a man; he describes him as having a hissing speech, thinking, reasoning, believing that the earth was made for him, and that he will one day be its sovereign.^[18]

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. God save King Oran! By the bye, you put me very much in mind of Valentine and Orson. This wild man of yours will turn out some day to be the son of a king, lost in the woods, and suckled by a lioness:—‘No waiter, but a knight templar’:—no Oran, but a true prince.

Mr. Forester. As to Buffon, it is astonishing how that great naturalist could have placed him among the singes, when the very words of his description give him all the characteristics of human nature.^[19] It is still more curious to think that modern travellers should have made beasts, under the names of Pongos, 51Mandrills, and Oran Outangs, of the very same beings whom the ancients worshipped as divinities under the names of Fauns and Satyrs, Silenus and Pan.^[20]

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. Your Oran rises rapidly in the scale of being:—from a baronet and M.P. to a king of the world, and now to a god of the woods.

Mr. Forester. When I was in London last winter, I became acquainted with a learned mythologist, who has long laboured to rebuild the fallen temple of Jupiter. I introduced him to Sir Oran, for whom he immediately conceived a high veneration, and would never call him by any name but Pan. His usual salutation to him was in the following words:

Which he thus translated:

52‘This,’ said he, ‘is part of the Orphic invocation of Pan. It alludes to the happy existence of the dancing Pans, Fauns, Orans, et id genus omne, whose dwellings are the caves of rocks and the hollows of trees, such as undoubtedly was, or would have been, the natural mode of life of our friend Pan among the woods of Angola. It alludes, too, to their musical powers, which in our friend Pan it gives me indescribable pleasure to find so happily exemplified. The epithet Bacchic, our friend Pan’s attachment to the bottle demonstrates to be very appropriate; and the epithet κοσμοκρατωρ, king of the world, points out a striking similarity between the Orphic Pan and the Troglodyte of Linnaeus, who believes that the earth was made for him, and that he will again be its sovereign.’ He laid great stress on the word AGAIN, and observed, if he were to develop all the ideas to which this word gave rise in his mind, he should find ample matter for a volume. Then repeating several times, Παν κοσμοκρατωρ, and iterum fore telluris imperantem, he concluded by saying he had known many profound philosophical and mythological systems founded on much slighter analogies.

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. Your learned mythologist appears to be non compos.

Mr. Forester. By no means. He has a system of his own, which only appears in the present day more absurd than other systems, because it has fewer followers. The manner in which the spirit of system twists everything to its own views is truly wonderful. I believe that in every nation of the earth the system which has most followers will be found the most absurd in the eye of an enlightened philosophy.

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. But if your Oran be a man, how is it that his long intercourse with other varieties of the human species has not taught him to speak?

Mr. Forester. Speech is a highly artificial faculty. Civilised man is a highly artificial animal. The change from the wild to the civilised state affects not only his moral, but his physical nature, and this not rapidly and instantly, but in a long process of generations. The same change is obvious in domestic animals, and in cultivated plants. You know not where to look for the origin of the common dog, or the common fowl. The wild and tame hog, and the wild and tame cat, are marked by more essential differences than the 53oran and the civilised man. The origin of corn is as much a mystery to us as the source of the Nile was to the ancients. Innumerable flowers have been so changed from their original simplicity, that the art of horticulture may almost lay claim to the magic of a new creation. Is it then wonderful that the civilised man should have acquired some physical faculties which the natural man has not? It is demonstrable that speech is one. I do not, however, despair of seeing him make some progress in this art. Comparative anatomy shows that he has all the organs of articulation. Indeed he has, in every essential particular, the human form, and the human anatomy. Now I will only observe that if an animal who walks upright—is of the human form, both outside and inside—uses a weapon for defence and attack—associates with his kind—makes huts to defend himself from the weather, better I believe than those of the New Hollanders—is tame and gentle—and instead of killing men and women, as he could easily do, takes them prisoners and makes servants of them—who has, what I think essential to the human kind, a sense of honour; which is shown by breaking his heart, if laughed at, or made a show, or treated with any kind of contumely—who, when he is brought into the company of civilised men, behaves (as you have seen) with dignity and composure, altogether unlike a monkey; from whom he differs likewise in this material respect, that he is capable of great attachment to particular persons, of which the monkey is altogether incapable; and also in this respect, that a monkey never can be so tamed that we may depend on his not doing mischief when left alone, by breaking glasses or china within his reach; whereas the oran outang is altogether harmless;—who has so much of the docility of a man that he learns not only to do the common offices of life, but also to play on the flute and French horn; which shows that he must have an idea of melody and concord of sounds, which no brute animal has;—and lastly, if joined to all these qualities he has the organ of pronunciation, and consequently the capacity of speech, though not the actual use of it; if, I say, such an animal be not a man, I should desire to know in what the essence of a man consists, and what it is that distinguishes a natural man from the man of art.^[22] That he 54understands many words, though he does not yet speak any, I think you may have observed, when you asked him to take wine, and applied to him for fish and partridge.^[23]

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. The gestures, however slight, that accompany the expression of the ordinary forms of intercourse, may possibly explain that.

Mr. Forester. You will find that he understands many things addressed to him on occasions of very unfrequent occurrence. With regard to his moral character, he is undoubtedly a man, and a much better man than many that are to be found in civilised countries,^[24] as, when you are better acquainted with him, I feel very confident you will readily acknowledge.^[25]

55Sir Telegraph Paxarett. I shall be very happy, when his election comes on for Onevote, to drive him down in my barouche to the honourable and ancient borough.

Mr. Forester promised to avail himself of this proposal; when the iron tongue of midnight tolling twelve induced them to separate for the night.

CHAPTER VII THE PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION

The next morning, while Sir Telegraph, Sir Oran, and Mr. Forester were sitting down to their breakfast, a post-chaise rattled up to the door; the glass was let down, and a tall, thin, pale, grave-looking personage peeped from the aperture. ‘This is Mr. Fax,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘the champion of calm reason, the indefatigable explorer of the cold clear springs of knowledge, the bearer of the torch of dispassionate truth, that gives more light than warmth. He looks on the human world, the world of mind, the conflict of interests, the collision of feelings, the infinitely diversified developments of energy and intelligence, as a mathematician looks on his diagrams, or a mechanist on his wheels and pulleys, as if they were foreign to his own nature, and were nothing more than subjects of curious speculation.’

Mr. Forester had not time to say more; for Mr. Fax entered, and shook hands with him, was introduced in due form to Sir Telegraph, and sat down to assist in the demolition of the matériel of breakfast.

Mr. Fax. Your Redrose Abbey is a beautiful metamorphosis.—I can scarcely believe that these are the mouldering walls of the pious fraternity of Rednose, which I contemplated two years ago.

Mr. Forester. The picturesque tourists will owe me no goodwill for the metamorphosis, though I have endeavoured to leave them as much mould, mildew, and weather-stain as possible.

Mr. Fax. The exterior has suffered little; it still retains a truly venerable monastic character.

Mr. Fax.

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. Something monastic in the 59interior too.—Very orthodox old wine in the cellar, I can tell you. And the Reverend Father Abbot there, as determined a bachelor as the Pope.

Mr. Forester. If I am so, it is because, like the Squire of Dames, I seek and cannot find. I see in my mind’s eye the woman I would choose, but I very much fear that is the only mode of optics in which she will ever be visible.

Mr. Fax. No matter. Bachelors and spinsters I decidedly venerate. The world is overstocked with featherless bipeds. More men than corn is a fearful pre-eminence, the sole and fruitful cause of penury, disease, and war, plague, pestilence, and famine.

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. I hope you will not long have cause to venerate me. What is life without love? A rosebush in winter, all thorns, and no flowers.

Mr. Fax. And what is it with love? A double-blossomed cherry, flowers without fruit; if the blossoms last a month, it is as much as can be expected: they fall, and what comes in their place? Vanity, and vexation of spirit.

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. Better vexation than stagnation: marriage may often be a stormy lake, but celibacy is almost always a muddy horsepond.

Mr. Fax. Rather a calm clear river——

Mr. Forester. Flowing through a desert, where it moves in loneliness, and reflects no forms of beauty.

Mr. Fax. That is not the way to consider the case. Feelings and poetical images are equally out of place in a calm philosophical view of human society. Some must marry, that the world may be peopled: many must abstain, that it may not be overstocked. Little and good is very applicable in this case. It is better that the world should have a smaller number of peaceable and rational inhabitants, living in universal harmony and social intercourse, than the disproportionate mass of fools, slaves, coxcombs, thieves, rascals, liars, and cutthroats, with which its surface is at present encumbered. It is in vain to declaim about the preponderance of physical and moral evil, and attribute it, with the Manicheans, to a mythological principle, or, with some modern philosophers, to the physical constitution of the globe. The cause of all the evils of human society is single, obvious, reducible to the most exact mathematical calculation; and of course susceptible not only 60of remedy but even of utter annihilation. The cause is the tendency of population to increase beyond the means of subsistence. The remedy is an universal social compact, binding both sexes to equally rigid celibacy, till the prospect of maintaining the average number of six children be as clear as the arithmetic of futurity can make it.

Mr. Forester. The arithmetic of futurity has been found in a more than equal number of instances to baffle human skill. The rapid and sudden mutations of fortune are the inexhaustible theme of history, poetry, and romance; and they are found in forms as various and surprising, in the scenes of daily life, as on the stage of Drury Lane.

Mr. Fax. That the best prospects are often overshadowed, is most certainly true; but there are degrees and modes of well-grounded reliance on futurity, sufficient to justify the enterprises of prudence, and equally well-grounded prospiciences of hopelessness and helplessness, that should check the steps of rashness and passion, in their headlong progress to perdition.

Mr. Forester. You have little cause to complain of the present age. It is calculating enough to gratify the most determined votary of moral and political arithmetic. This certainly is not the time

What is friendship—except in some most rare and miraculous instances—but the fictitious bond of interest, or the heartless intercourse of idleness and vanity? What is love, but the most venal of all venal commodities? What is marriage, but the most sordid of bargains, the most cold and slavish of all the forms of commerce? We want no philosophical ice-rock, towed into the Dead Sea of modern society, to freeze that which is too cold already. We want rather the torch of Prometheus to revivify our frozen spirits. We are a degenerate race, half-reasoning developments of the principle of infinite littleness, ‘with hearts in our bodies no bigger than pins’ heads.’ We are in no danger of forgetting that two and two make four. There is no fear that the warm impulses of feeling will ever overpower, with us, the tangible eloquence of the pocket.

Mr. Fax. With relation to the middle and higher classes, 61you are right in a great measure as to fact, but wrong, as I think, in the asperity of your censure. But among the lower orders the case is quite different. The baleful influence of the poor laws has utterly destroyed the principle of calculation in them. They marry by wholesale, without scruple or compunction, and commit the future care of their family to Providence and the overseer. They marry even in the workhouse, and convert the intended asylum of age and infirmity into a flourishing manufactory of young beggars and vagabonds.

Sir Telegraph’s barouche rolled up gracefully to the door. Mr. Forester pressed him to stay another day, but Sir Telegraph’s plea of urgency was not to be overcome. He promised very shortly to revisit Redrose Abbey, shook hands with Mr. Forester and Sir Oran, bowed politely to Mr. Fax, mounted his box, and disappeared among the trees.

‘Those four horses,’ said Mr. Fax, as the carriage rolled away, ‘consume the subsistence of eight human beings, for the foolish amusement of one. As Solomon observes: “This is vanity, and a great evil.”’

‘Sir Telegraph is thoughtless,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘but he has a good heart and a good natural capacity. I have great hopes of him. He had some learning, when he went to college; but he was cured of it before he came away. Great, indeed, must be the zeal for improvement which an academical education cannot extinguish.’

CHAPTER VIII THE SPIRIT OF CHIVALRY

Sir Telegraph was welcomed to Melincourt in due form by Mr. Hippy, and in a private interview with the Honourable Mrs. Pinmoney, was exhorted to persevere in his suit to Anthelia, though she could not flatter him with very strong hopes of immediate success, the young lady’s notions being, as she observed, extremely outré and fantastical, but such as she had no doubt time and experience would cure. She informed him at the same time, that he would shortly meet a formidable rival, no less a personage than Lord Anophel Achthar,^[26] son and heir of the Marquis of Agaric^[27] who was somewhat in favour with Mr. Hippy, and seemed determined at all hazards to carry his point; ‘and with any other girl than Anthelia,’ said Mrs. Pinmoney, ‘considering his title and fortune, I should pronounce his success infallible, unless a duke were to make his appearance.’ She added, ‘The young lord would be accompanied by his tutor, the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub, and by a celebrated poet, Mr. Feathernest, to whom the Marquis had recently given a place in exchange for his conscience. It was thought by Mr. Feathernest’s friends that he had made a very good bargain. The poet had, in consequence, burned his old Odes to Truth and Liberty, and had published a volume of Panegyrical Addresses “to all the crowned heads in Europe,” with the motto, “Whatever is at court, is right.”’

The dinner-party that day at Melincourt Castle consisted of 63Mr. Hippy, in the character of lord of the mansion; Anthelia, in that of his inmate; Mrs. and Miss Pinmoney, as her visitors; and Sir Telegraph, as the visitor of Mrs. Pinmoney, seconded by Mr. Hippy’s invitation to stay. Nothing very luminous passed on this occasion.

The fame of Mr. Hippy, and his hospitable office, was rapidly diffused by Dr. Killquick, the physician of the district; who thought a draught or pill could not possibly be efficacious, unless administered with an anecdote, and who was called in, in a very few hours after Mr. Hippy’s arrival, to cure the hypochondriacal old gentleman of an imaginary swelling in his elbow. The learned doctor, who had studied with peculiar care the symptoms, diagnostics, prognostics, sedatives, lenitives, and sanatives of hypochondriasis, had arrived at the sagacious conclusion that the most effectual method of curing an imaginary disease was to give the patient a real one; and he accordingly sent Mr. Hippy a pint bottle of mixture, to be taken by a tablespoonful every two hours, which would have infallibly accomplished the purpose, but that the bottle was cracked over the head of Harry Fell, for treading on his master’s toe, as he presented the composing potion, which would perhaps have composed him in the Roman sense.

The fashionable attractions of Low-Wood and Keswick afforded facilities to some of Anthelia’s lovers to effect a logement in her neighbourhood, from whence occasionally riding over to Melincourt Castle, they were hospitably received by the lord seneschal, Humphrey Hippy, Esquire, who often made them fixed stars in the circumference of that jovial system, of which the bottle and glasses are the sun and planets, till it was too late to dislodge for the night; by which means they sometimes contrived to pass several days together at the Castle.

The gentlemen in question were Lord Anophel Achthar, with his two parasites, Mr. Feathernest and the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub; Harum O’Scarum, Esquire, the sole proprietor of a vast tract of undrained bog in the county of Kerry; and Mr. Derrydown, the only son of an old lady in London, who having in vain solicited a visit from Anthelia, had sent off her hopeful progeny to try his fortune in Westmoreland. Mr. Derrydown had received a laborious education, and had consumed a great quantity of midnight oil over ponderous tomes of ancient and 64modern learning, particularly of moral, political, and metaphysical philosophy, ancient and modern. His lucubrations in the latter branch of science having conducted him, as he conceived, into the central opacity of utter darkness, he formed a hasty conclusion ‘that all human learning is vanity’; and one day, in a listless mood, taking down a volume of the Reliques of Ancient Poetry, he found, or fancied he found, in the plain language of the old English ballad, glimpses of the truth of things, which he had vainly sought in the vast volumes of philosophical disquisition. In consequence of this luminous discovery, he locked up his library, purchased a travelling chariot, with a shelf in the back, which he filled with collections of ballads and popular songs; and passed the greater part of every year in posting about the country, for the purpose, as he expressed it, of studying together poetry and the peasantry, unsophisticated nature and the truth of things.

Mr. Hippy introduced Lord Anophel, and his two learned friends, to Sir Telegraph and Mrs. and Miss Pinmoney. Mr. Feathernest whispered to the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub, ‘This Sir Telegraph Paxarett has some good livings in his gift’; which bent the plump figure of the reverend gentleman into a very orthodox right angle.

Anthelia, who felt no inclination to show particular favour to any one of her Strephons, was not sorry to escape the evil of a solitary persecutor, more especially as they so far resembled the suitors of Penelope, as to eat and drink together with great cordiality. She could have wished, when she left them to the congenial society of Bacchus, to have retired to company more congenial to her than that of Mrs. Pinmoney and Miss Danaretta; but she submitted to the course of necessity with the best possible grace.

She explicitly made known to all her suitors her ideas on the subject of marriage. She had never perverted the simplicity of her mind by indulging in the usual cant of young ladies, that she should prefer a single life: but she assured them that the spirit of the age of chivalry, manifested in the forms of modern life, would constitute the only character on which she could fix her affections.

Lord Anophel was puzzled, and applied for information to his tutor. ‘Grovelgrub,’ said he, ‘what is the spirit of the age of chivalry?’

65‘Really, my lord,’ said the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub, ‘my studies never lay that way.’

‘True,’ said Lord Anophel; ‘it was not necessary to your degree.’

His lordship’s next recourse was to Mr. Feathernest. ‘Feathernest, what is the spirit of the age of chivalry?’

Mr. Feathernest was taken by surprise. Since his profitable metamorphosis into an ami du prince, he had never dreamed of such a question. It burst upon him like the spectre of his youthful integrity, and he mumbled a half-intelligible reply about truth and liberty—disinterested benevolence—self-oblivion—heroic devotion to love and honour—protection of the feeble, and subversion of tyranny.

‘All the ingredients of a rank Jacobin, Feathernest, ‘pon honour!’ exclaimed his lordship.

There was something in the word Jacobin very grating to the ears of Mr. Feathernest, and he feared he had thrown himself between the horns of a dilemma; but from all such predicament he was happily provided with an infallible means of extrication. His friend Mr. Mystic, of Cimmerian Lodge, had initiated him in some of the mysteries of the transcendental philosophy, which on this, as all similar occasions, he called in to his assistance; and overwhelmed his lordship with a volley of ponderous jargon, which left him in profound astonishment at the depth of Mr. Feathernest’s knowledge.

‘The spirit of the age of chivalry!’ soliloquised Mr. O’Scarum; ‘I think I know what that is: I’ll shoot all my rivals, one after another, as fast as I can find a decent pretext for picking a quarrel. I’ll write to my friend Major O’Dogskin to come to Low-Wood Inn, and hold himself in readiness. He is the neatest hand in Ireland at delivering a challenge.’

‘The spirit of the age of chivalry!’ soliloquised Mr. Derrydown; ‘I think I am at home there. I will be a knight of the round table. I will be Sir Lancelot, or Sir Gawaine, or Sir Tristram. No: I will be a troubadour—a love-lorn minstrel. I will write the most irresistible ballads in praise of the beautiful Anthelia. She shall be my lady of the lake. We will sail about Ulleswater in our pinnace, and sing duets about Merlin, and King Arthur, and Fairyland. I will develop the idea to her in a ballad; it cannot fail to fascinate her romantic spirit.’ And he sat down to put his scheme in execution.

66Sir Telegraph’s head ran on tilts and tournaments, and trials of skill and courage. How could they be resolved into the forms of modern life? A four-in-hand race he thought would be a pretty substitute; Anthelia to be arbitress of the contest, and place the Olympic wreath on the head of the victor, which he had no doubt would be himself, though Harum O’Scarum, Esquire, would dash through neck or nothing, and Lord Anophel Achthar was reckoned one of the best coachmen in England.

CHAPTER IX THE PHILOSOPHY OF BALLADS

The very indifferent success of Lord Anophel did not escape the eye of his abject slave, the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub, whose vanity led him to misinterpret Anthelia’s general sweetness of manner into the manifestation of something like a predilection for himself. Having made this notable discovery, he sat down to calculate the probability of his chance of Miss Melincourt’s fortune on the one hand, and the certainty of church-preferment, through the patronage of the Marquis of Agaric, on the other. The sagacious reflection, that a bird in the hand was worth two in the bush, determined him not to risk the loss of the Marquis’s favour for the open pursuit of a doubtful success; but he resolved to carry on a secret attack on the affections of Anthelia, and not to throw off the mask to Lord Anophel till he could make sure of his prize.

It would have totally disconcerted the schemes of the Honourable Mrs. Pinmoney, if Lord Anophel had made any progress in the favour of Anthelia—not only because she had made up her mind that her young friend should be her niece and Lady Paxarett, but because, from the moment of Lord Anophel’s appearance, she determined on drawing lines of circumvallation round him, to compel him to surrender at discretion to her dear Danaretta, who was very willing to second her views. That Lord Anophel was both a fool and a coxcomb, did not strike her at all as an objection; on the contrary, she considered them as very favourable circumstances for the facilitation of her design.

As Anthelia usually passed the morning in the seclusion of her library Lord Anophel and the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub killed the time in shooting; Sir Telegraph, in driving Mrs. and 68Miss Pinmoney in his barouche, to astonish the natives of the mountain-villages; Harum O’Scarum, Esquire, in riding full gallop along the best roads, looking every now and then at his watch, to see how time went; Mr. Derrydown, in composing his troubadour ballad; Mr. Feathernest, in writing odes to all the crowned heads in Europe; and Mr. Hippy, in getting very ill after breakfast every day of a new disease, which came to its climax at the intermediate point of time between breakfast and dinner, showed symptoms of great amendment at the ringing of the first dinner-bell, was very much alleviated at the butler’s summons, vanished entirely at the sight of Anthelia, and was consigned to utter oblivion after the ladies retired from table, when the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub lent his clerical assistance to lay its ghost in the Red Sea of a copious libation of claret.

Music and conversation consumed the evenings. Mr. Feathernest and Mr. Derrydown were both zealous admirers of old English literature; but the former was chiefly enraptured with the ecclesiastical writers and the translation of the Bible; the latter admired nothing but ballads, which he maintained to be, whether ancient or modern, the only manifestations of feeling and thought containing any vestige of truth and nature.

‘Surely,’ said Mr. Feathernest one evening, ‘you will not maintain that Chevy Chase is a finer poem than Paradise Lost?’

Mr. Derrydown. I do not know what you mean by a fine poem; but I will maintain that it gives a much deeper insight into the truth of things.

Mr. Feathernest. I do not know what you mean by the truth of things.

The Rev. Mr. Grovelgrub. Define, gentlemen, define; let the one explain what he means by a fine poem, and the other what he means by the truth of things.

Mr. Feathernest. A fine poem is a luminous development of the complicated machinery of action and passion, exalted by sublimity, softened by pathos, irradiated with scenes of magnificence, figures of loveliness, and characters of energy, and harmonised with infinite variety of melodious combination.

Lord Anophel Achthar. Admirable!

Miss Danaretta Contantina Pinmoney. Admirable, indeed, 69my lord! (With a sweet smile at his Lordship, which unluckily missed fire.)

The Rev. Mr. Grovelgrub. Now, sir, for the truth of things.

Mr. O’Scarum. Troth, sir, that is the last point about which I should expect a gentleman of your cloth to be very solicitous.

The Rev. Mr. Grovelgrub. I must say, sir, that is a very uncalled-for and very illiberal observation.

Mr. O’Scarum. Your coat is your protection, sir.

The Rev. Mr. Grovelgrub. I will appeal to his lordship if——

Mr. O’Scarum. I shall be glad to know his lordship’s opinion.

Lord Anophel Achthar. Really, sir, I have no opinion on the subject.

Mr. O’Scarum. I am sorry for it, my lord.

Mr. Derrydown. The truth of things is nothing more than an exact view of the necessary relations between object and subject, in all the modes of reflection and sentiment which constitute the reciprocities of human association.

The Rev. Mr. Grovelgrub. I must confess I do not exactly comprehend——

Mr. Derrydown. I will illustrate. You all know the ballad of Old Robin Gray.

In consequence whereof, as you all very well know, old Robin being rich, the damsel married the aforesaid old Robin.

The Rev. Mr. Grovelgrub. In the heterodox kirk of the north?

Mr. Derrydown. Precisely. Now, in this short space, you have a more profound view than the deepest metaphysical treatise or the most elaborate history can give you of the 70counteracting power of opposite affections, the conflict of duties and inclinations, the omnipotence of interest, tried by the test of extremity, and the supreme and irresistible dominion of universal moral necessity.

and would have had her, it is clear, though she does not explicitly say so, if there had not been a necessary moral motive counteracting what would have been otherwise the plain free will of both. ‘Young Jamie loved me well.’ She does not say that she loved young Jamie; and here is a striking illustration of that female decorum which forbids young ladies to speak as they think on any subject whatever: an admirable political institution, which has been found by experience to be most happily conducive to that ingenuousness of mind and simplicity of manner which constitute so striking a charm in the generality of the fair sex.

Here is the quintessence of all that has been said and written on the subject of love and prudence, a decisive refutation of the stoical doctrine that poverty is no evil, a very clear and deep insight into the nature of the preventive or prudential check to population, and a particularly luminous view of the respective conduct of the two sexes on similar occasions. The poor love-stricken swain, it seems, is ready to sacrifice all for love. He comes with a crown in his pocket, and asks for his bride. The damsel is a better arithmetician. She is fully impressed with the truth of the old proverb about poverty coming in at the door, and immediately stops him short with ‘What can you settle on me, Master Jamie?’ or, as Captain Bobadil would express it, ‘How much money ha’ you about you, Master Matthew?’ Poor Jamie looks very foolish—fumbles in his pocket—produces his crown-piece—and answers like Master Matthew with a remarkable elongation of visage, ‘’Faith, I ha’n’t past a five shillings or so.’ ‘Then,’ says the young lady, in the words of another very admirable ballad—where you will observe it is also the damsel who asks the question:

72

Anthelia.

73On which the poor lover shakes his head, and the lady gives him leave of absence. Hereupon Jamie falls into a train of reflections.

Mr. O’Scarum. Never mind his reflections.

Mr. Derrydown. The result of which is, that he goes to seek his fortune at sea; intending, with the most perfect and disinterested affection, to give all he can get to his mistress, who seems much pleased with the idea of having it. But when he comes back, as you will see in the sequel, he finds his mistress married to a rich old man. The detail of the circumstances abounds with vast and luminous views of human nature and society, and striking illustrations of the truth of things.

Mr. Feathernest. I do not yet see that the illustration throws any light on the definition, or that we are at all advanced in the answer to the question concerning Chevy Chase and Paradise Lost.

Mr. Derrydown. We will examine Chevy Chase, then, with a view to the truth of things, instead of Old Robin Gray:

Mr. O’Scarum. God prosper us all, indeed! if you are going through Chevy Chase at the same rate as you were through Old Robin Gray, there is an end of us all for a month. The truth of things, now!—is it that you’re looking for? Ask Miss Melincourt to touch the harp. The harp is the great key to the truth of things: and in the hand of Miss Melincourt it will teach you the music of the spheres, the concord of creation, and the harmony of the universe.

Anthelia. You are a libeller of our sex, Mr. Derrydown, if you think the truth of things consists in showing it to be more governed by the meanest species of self-interest than yours. Few, indeed, are the individuals of either in whom the spirit of the age of chivalry survives.

Mr. Derrydown. And yet, a man distinguished by that spirit would not be in society what Miss Melincourt is—a phoenix. Many knights can wield the sword of Orlando, but only one nymph can wear the girdle of Florimel.

The Hon. Mrs. Pinmoney. That would be a very pretty compliment, Mr. Derrydown, if there were no other ladies in the room.

74Poor Mr. Derrydown looked a little disconcerted: he felt conscious that he had on this occasion lost sight of his usual politeness by too close an adherence to the truth of things.

Anthelia. Both sexes, I am afraid, are too much influenced by the spirit of mercenary calculation. The desire of competence is prudence; but the desire of more than competence is avarice: it is against the latter only that moral censure should be directed: but I fear that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred in which the course of true love is thwarted by considerations of fortune, it will be found that avarice rather than prudence is to be considered as the cause. Love in the age of chivalry, and love in the age of commerce, are certainly two very different deities; so much so, that the former may almost be regarded as a departed power; and, perhaps, the little ballad I am about to sing does not contain too severe an allegory in placing the tomb of chivalric love among the ruins of the castles of romance.

CHAPTER X THE TORRENT

Anthelia did not wish to condemn herself to celibacy, but in none of her present suitors could she discover any trace of the character she had drawn in her mind for the companion of her life: yet she was aware of the rashness of precipitate judgments, and willing to avail herself of this opportunity of studying the kind of beings that constitute modern society. She was happy in the long interval between breakfast and dinner, to retire to the seclusion of her favourite apartment; whence she sometimes wandered into the shades of her shrubbery: sometimes passing onward through a little postern door, she descended a flight of rugged steps, which had been cut in the solid stone, into the gloomy glen of the torrent that dashed round the base of the castle-rock; and following a lonely path through the woods that fringed its sides, wandered into the deepest recesses of mountain solitude. The sunshine of a fine autumnal day, the solemn beauty of the fading woods, the thin gray mist, that spread waveless over the mountains, the silence of the air, the deep stillness of nature, broken only by the sound of the eternal streams, tempted her on one occasion beyond her usual limits.

Passing over the steep and wood-fringed hills of rock that formed the boundary of the valley of Melincourt, she descended through a grove of pines into a romantic chasm, where a foaming stream was crossed by a rude and ancient bridge, consisting of two distinct parts, each of which rested against a columnar rock, that formed an island in the roaring waters. An ash had fixed its roots in the fissures of the rock, and the knotted base of its aged trunk offered to the passenger a natural seat, over-canopied with its beautiful branches and 76leaves, now tinged with their autumnal yellow. Anthelia rested awhile in this delightful solitude. There was no breath of wind, no song of birds, no humming of insects, only the dashing of the waters beneath. She felt the presence of the genius of the scene. She sat absorbed in a train of contemplations, dimly defined, but infinitely delightful: emotions rather than thoughts, which attention would have utterly dissipated, if it had paused to seize their images.

She was roused from her reverie by sounds of music, issuing from the grove of pines through which she had just passed, and which skirted the hollow. The notes were wild and irregular, but their effect was singular and pleasing. They ceased. Anthelia looked to the spot from whence they had proceeded, and saw, or thought she saw, a face peeping at her through the trees; but the glimpse was momentary. There was in the expression of the countenance something so extraordinary, that she almost felt convinced her imagination had created it; yet her imagination was not in the habit of creating such physiognomies. She could not, however, apprehend that this remarkable vision portended any evil to her; for, if so, alone and defenceless as she was, why should it be deferred? She rose, therefore, to pursue her walk, and ascended, by a narrow winding path, the brow of a lofty hill, which sank precipitously on the other side, to the margin of a lake, that seemed to slumber in the same eternal stillness as the rocks that bordered it. The murmur of the torrent was inaudible at that elevation. There was an almost oppressive silence in the air. The motion and life of nature seemed suspended. The gray mist that hung on the mountains, spreading its thin transparent uniform veil over the whole surrounding scene, gave a deeper impression to the mystery of loneliness, the predominant feeling that pressed on the mind of Anthelia, to seem the only thing that lived and moved in all that wide and awful scene of beauty.

Proceeded very deliberately to pull up a pine.

Suddenly the gray mist fled before the rising wind, and a deep black line of clouds appeared in the west, that, rising rapidly, volume on volume, obscured in a few minutes the whole face of the heavens. There was no interval of preparation, no notice for retreat. The rain burst down in a sheeted cataract, comparable only to the bursting of a waterspout. The sides of the mountains gleamed at once with a thousand 79torrents. Every little hollow and rain-worn channel, which but a few minutes before was dry, became instantaneously the bed of a foaming stream. Every half-visible rivulet swelled to a powerful and turbid river. Anthelia glided down the hill like an Oread, but the wet and slippery footing of the steep descent necessarily retarded her progress. When she regained the bridge, the swollen torrent had filled the chasm beneath, and was still rising like a rapid and impetuous tide, rushing and roaring along with boiling tumult and inconceivable swiftness. She had passed one half of the bridge—she had gained the insular rock—a few steps would have placed her on the other side of the chasm—when a large trunk of an oak, which months, perhaps years, before had baffled the woodman’s skill, and fallen into the dingle above, now disengaged by the flood, and hurled onward with irresistible strength, with large and projecting boughs towering high above the surface, struck the arch she had yet to pass, which, shattered into instant ruin, seemed to melt like snow into the torrent, leaving scarcely a vestige of its place.

Anthelia followed the trunk with her eyes till it disappeared among the rocks, and stood gazing on the torrent with feelings of awful delight. The contemplation of the mighty energies of nature, energies of liberty and power which nothing could resist or impede, absorbed, for a time, all considerations of the difficulty of regaining her home. The water continued to rise, but still she stood riveted to the spot, watching with breathless interest its tumultuous revolutions. She dreamed not that its increasing pressure was mining the foundation of the arch she had passed. She was roused from her reverie only by the sound of its dissolution. She looked back, and found herself on the solitary rock insulated by the swelling flood.

Would the flood rise above the level of the rock? The ash must in that case be her refuge. Could the force of the torrent rend its massy roots from the rocky fissures which grasped them with giant strength? Nothing could seem less likely: yet it was not impossible. But she had always looked with calmness on the course of necessity: she felt that she was always in the order of nature. Though her life had been a series of uniform prosperity, she had considered deeply the changes of things, and the nearness of the paths of night and 80day^[28] in every pursuit and circumstance of human life. She sat on the stem of the ash. The torrent rolled almost at her feet. Could this be the calm sweet scene of the morning, the ivied bridges, the romantic chasm, the stream far below, bright in its bed of rocks, chequered by the pale sunbeams through the leaves of the ash?

She looked towards the pine-grove, through which she had descended in the morning; she thought of the wild music she had heard, and of the strange face that had appeared among the trees. Suddenly it appeared again: and shortly after a stranger issuing from the wood ran with surprising speed to the edge of the chasm.

Anthelia had never seen so singular a physiognomy; but there was nothing in it to cause alarm. The stranger seemed interested for her situation, and made gestures expressive of a design to assist her. He paused a moment, as if measuring with his eyes the breadth of the chasm, and then, returning to the grove, proceeded very deliberately to pull up a pine.^[29] Anthelia thought him mad; but infinite was her astonishment to see the tree sway and bend beneath the efforts of his incredible strength, till at length he tore it from the soil, and bore it on his shoulders to the chasm: where placing one end on a high point of the bank, and lowering the other on the insulated rock, he ran like a flash of lightning along the stem, caught Anthelia in his arms, and carried her safely over in an instant: not that we should wish the reader to suppose our heroine, a mountaineer from her infancy, could not have crossed a pine-bridge without such assistance; but the stranger gave her no time to try the experiment.

The remarkable physiognomy and unparalleled strength of the stranger caused much of surprise, and something of apprehension to mingle with Anthelia’s gratitude: but the air of high fashion which characterised his whole deportment 83diminished her apprehension, while it increased her surprise at the exploit he had performed.

Alighted on the doctor’s head as he was crossing the court.

Shouts were now heard in the wood, from which shortly emerged Mr. Hippy, Lord Anophel Achthar, and the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub. Anthelia had been missed at Melincourt at the commencement of the storm, and Mr. Hippy had been half distracted on the occasion. The whole party had in consequence dispersed in various directions in search of her, and accident had directed these three gentlemen to the spot where Anthelia was just set down by her polite deliverer, Sir Oran Haut-ton, Baronet.

Mr. Hippy ran up with great alacrity to Anthelia, assuring her that at the time when Miss Danaretta Contantina Pinmoney informed him his dear niece was missing, he was suffering under a complete paralysis of his right leg, and was on the point of swallowing a potion sent to him by Dr. Killquick, which, on receiving the alarming intelligence, he had thrown out of the window, and he believed it had alighted on the doctor’s head as he was crossing the court. Anthelia communicated to him the particulars of the signal service she had received from the stranger, whom Mr. Hippy stared at heartily, and shook hands with cordially.

Lord Anophel now came up, and surveyed Sir Oran through his quizzing-glass, who, making him a polite bow, took his quizzing-glass from him, and examined him through it in the same manner. Lord Anophel flew into a furious passion; but receiving a gentle hint from Mr. Hippy, that the gentleman to whom he was talking had just pulled up a pine, he deemed it prudent to restrain his anger within due bounds.

The Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub now rolled up to the party, muffled in a ponderous greatcoat, and surmounted with an enormous umbrella, humbly soliciting Miss Melincourt to take shelter. Anthelia assured him that she was so completely wet through, as to render all shelter superfluous, till she could change her clothes. On this, Mr. Hippy, who was wet through himself, but had not till that moment been aware that he was so, voted for returning to Melincourt with all possible expedition; adding that he feared it would be necessary, immediately on their arrival, to send off an express for Dr. Killquick, for his dear Anthelia’s sake, as well as his own. Anthelia disclaimed any intention or necessity on her part of calling in 84the services of the learned doctor, and, turning to Sir Oran, requested the favour of his company to dinner at Melincourt. This invitation was warmly seconded by Mr. Hippy, with gestures as well as words. Sir Oran bowed acknowledgment, but pointing in a direction different from that of Melincourt, shook his head, and took a respectful farewell.

‘I wonder who he is,’ said Mr. Hippy, as they walked rapidly homewards: ‘manifestly dumb, poor fellow! a man of consequence, no doubt: no great beauty, by the bye; but as strong as Hercules—quite an Orlando Furioso. He pulled up a pine, my lord, as you would do a mushroom.’

‘Sir,’ said Lord Anophel, ‘I have nothing to do with mushrooms; and as to this gentleman, whoever he is, I must say, notwithstanding his fashionable air, his taking my quizzing-glass was a piece of impertinence, for which I shall feel necessitated to require gentlemanly satisfaction.’

A long, toilsome, and slippery walk brought the party to the castle gate.

CHAPTER XI LOVE AND MARRIAGE

Sir Oran Haut-ton, as we conjecture, had taken a very long ramble beyond the limits of Redrose Abbey, and had sat down in the pine-grove to solace himself with his flute, when Anthelia, bursting upon him like a beautiful vision, riveted him in silent admiration to the spot whence she departed, about which he lingered in hopes of her reappearance, till the accident which occurred on her return enabled him to exert his extraordinary physical strength in a manner so remarkably advantageous to her. On parting from her and her companions, he ran back all the way to the Abbey, a formidable distance, and relieved the anxious apprehensions which his friend Mr. Forester entertained respecting him.

A few mornings after this occurrence, as Mr. Forester, Mr. Fax, and Sir Oran were sitting at breakfast, a letter was brought in, addressed to Sir Oran Haut-ton, Baronet, Redrose Abbey; a circumstance which very much surprised Mr. Forester, as he could not imagine how Sir Oran had obtained a correspondent, seeing that he could neither write nor read. He accordingly took the liberty of opening the letter himself.

It proved to be from a limb of the law, signing himself Richard Ratstail, and purporting to be a notice to Sir Oran to defend himself in an action brought against him by the said Richard Ratstail, solicitor, in behalf of his client, Lawrence Litigate, Esquire, lord of the manor of Muckwormsby, for that he, the said Oran Haut-ton, did, with force and arms, videlicet, sword, pistols, daggers, bludgeons, and staves, break into the manor of the said Lawrence Litigate, Esquire, and did then and there, with malice aforethought, and against the peace of our sovereign lord the King, his crown and dignity, cut down, 86root up, hew, hack, and cut in pieces, sundry and several pine-trees, of various sizes and dimensions, to the utter ruin, havoc, waste, and devastation of a large tract of pine-land; and that he had wilfully, maliciously, and with intent to injure the said Lawrence Litigate, Esquire, carried off with force and arms, namely, swords, pistols, bludgeons, daggers, and staves, fifty cartloads of trunks, fifty cartloads of bark, fifty cartloads of loppings, and fifty cartloads of toppings.

This was a complete enigma to Mr. Forester; and his surprise was increased when, on reading further, he found that Miss Melincourt, of Melincourt Castle, was implicated in the affair, as having aided and abetted Sir Oran in devastating the pine-grove, and carrying it off by cartloads with force and arms.

It immediately occurred to him that the best mode he could adopt of elucidating the mystery would be to call on Miss Melincourt, whom, besides, Sir Telegraph’s enthusiastic description had given him some curiosity to see; and the present appeared a favourable opportunity to indulge it.

He therefore asked Mr. Fax if he were disposed for a very long walk. Mr. Fax expressed a cordial assent to the proposal, and no time was lost in preparation.

Mr. Forester, though he had built stables for the accommodation of his occasional visitors, kept no horses himself, for reasons which will appear hereafter.

They set forth accordingly, accompanied by Sir Oran, who joined them without waiting for an invitation.

‘We shall see Sir Telegraph Paxarett,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘and, perhaps, his phoenix, Miss Melincourt.’

Mr. Fax. If a woman be the object, and a lover’s eyes the medium, I should say there is nothing in nature so easily found as a phoenix.

Mr. Forester. My eyes have no such magical property. I am not a lover, it is true, but it is because I have never found a phoenix.

Mr. Fax. But you have one in your mind, a beau ideal, I doubt not.

Mr. Forester. Not too ideal to exclude the possible existence of its material archetype, though I have never found it yet.

Mr. Fax. You will, however, find a female who has some one at least of the qualities of your imaginary damsel, and that one quality will serve as a peg on which your imagination will 87suspend all the others. This is the usual process of mental hallucination. A little truth forms the basis, and the whole superstructure is falsehood.

Mr. Forester. I shall guard carefully against such self-deception; though, perhaps, a beautiful chimera is better than either a hideous reality or a vast and formless void.

Mr. Fax. As an instrument of transitory pleasure, probably; but very far from it as a means of permanent happiness, which is only consistent with perfect mental tranquillity, which again is only consistent with the calm and dispassionate contemplation of truth.

Mr. Forester. What say you, then, to the sentiment of Voltaire?—

Mr. Fax. You will scarcely coincide with such a sentiment, when you consider how much this doctrine of happy errors, and pleasing illusions, and salutary prejudices, has tended to rivet the chains of superstition on the necks of the grovelling multitude.

Mr. Forester. And yet, if you take the colouring of imagination from the objects of our mental perception, and pour the full blaze of daylight into all the dark recesses of selfishness and cunning, I am afraid a refined and enthusiastic benevolence will find little to interest or delight in the contemplation of the human world.

Mr. Fax. That should rather be considered the consequence of morbid feelings, and exaggerated expectations of society and human nature. It is the false colouring in which youthful enthusiasm depicts the scenes of futurity that throws the gloom of disappointment so deeply on their actual presence. You have formed to yourself, as you acknowledge, a visionary model of female perfection, which has rendered you utterly insensible to the real attractions of every woman you have seen. This exaggerated imagination loses more than it gains. It has not made a fair calculation of the mixture of good and evil in every constituent portion of the world of reality. It has utterly excluded the latter from the objects of its hope, and has magnified the former into such gigantic proportions, 88that the real goodness and beauty, which would be visible and delightful to simpler optics, vanish into imperceptibility in the infinity of their diminution.

Mr. Forester. I desire no phantasm of abstract perfection—no visionary creation of a romantic philosophy: I seek no more than I know to have existed—than, I doubt not, does exist, though in such lamentable rarity that the calculations of probability make the search little better than desperate. I would have a woman that can love and feel poetry, not only in its harmony and decorations, which limit the admiration of ordinary mortals, but in the deep sources of love, and liberty, and truth, which are its only legitimate springs, and without which, well-turned periods and glittering images are nothing more nor less than the vilest and most mischievous tinsel. She should be musical, but she should have music in her soul as well as her fingers: her voice and her touch should have no one point in common with that mechanical squalling and jingling which are commonly dignified with the insulted name of music: they should be modes of the harmony of her mind.

Mr. Fax. I do not very well understand that; but I think I have a glimpse of your meaning. Pray proceed.

Mr. Forester. She should have charity—not penny charity——

Mr. Fax. I hope not.

Mr. Forester. But a liberal discriminating practical philanthropy, that can select with justice the objects of its kindness, and give that kindness a form of permanence equally delightful and useful to its object and to society, by increasing the aggregate mass of intelligence and happiness.

Mr. Fax. Go on.

Mr. Forester. She should have no taste for what are called public pleasures. Her pleasures should be bounded in the circle of her family, and a few, a very few congenial friends, her books, her music, her flowers—she should delight in flowers—the uninterrupted cheerfulness of domestic concord, the delightful effusions of unlimited confidence. The rocks, and woods, and mountains, boundaries of the valley of her dwelling, she should be content to look on as the boundaries of the world.

Mr. Fax. Anything more?

Mr. Forester. She should have a clear perception of the 89beauty of truth. Every species of falsehood, even in sportiveness, should be abhorrent to her. The simplicity of her thoughts should shine through the ingenuousness of her words. Her testimony should convey as irresistible conviction as the voice of the personified nature of things. And this ingenuousness should comprise, in its fullest extent, that perfect conformity of feelings and opinions which ought to be the most common, but is unfortunately the most rare, of the qualities of the female mind.

Mr. Fax. You say nothing of beauty.

Mr. Forester. As to what is usually called beauty, mere symmetry of form and features, it would be an object with me in purchasing a statue, but none whatever in choosing a wife. Let her countenance be the mirror of such qualities as I have described, and she cannot be otherwise than beautiful. I think with the Athenians, that beauty and goodness are inseparable. I need not remind you of the perpetual καλος κἀγαθος.

Mr. Fax. You have said nothing of the principal, and, indeed, almost the only usual consideration in marriage—fortune.

Mr. Forester. I am rich enough myself to dispense with such considerations. Even were I not so, I doubt if worldly wisdom would ever influence me to bend my knee with the multitude at the shrine of the omnipotence of money. Nothing is more uncertain, more transient, more perishable, than riches. How many prudent marriages of interest and convenience were broken to atoms by the French revolution! Do you think there was one couple, among all those calculating characters, that acted in those trying times like Louvet and his Lodoiska?^[30] But without looking to periods of public convulsion, in no state of society is any individual secure against the changes of fortune. What becomes of those ill-assorted unions, which have no basis but money, when, as is very often the case, the money departs, and the persons remain? The qualities of the heart and of the mind are alone out of the power of accident; and by these, and these only, shall I be guided in the choice of the companion of my life.

Mr. Fax. Are there no other indispensable qualities that you have omitted in your enumeration?

Mr. Forester. None, I think, but such as are implied in 90those I have mentioned, and must necessarily be co-existent with them; an endearing sensibility, an agreeable cheerfulness, and that serenity of temper which is truly the balm of being, and the absence of which, in the intercourse of domestic life, obliterates all the radiance of beauty, all the splendour of talent, and all the dignity of virtue.

Mr. Fax. I presume, then, you seriously purpose to marry, when you can find such a woman as this you have described?

Mr. Forester. Seriously I do.

Mr. Fax. And not till then?

Mr. Forester. Certainly not.

Mr. Fax. Then your present heir presumptive has nothing to fear for his reversion.

CHAPTER XII LOVE AND POVERTY

‘We shall presently,’ said Mr. Fax, as they pursued their walk, ‘come in sight of a cottage, which I remarked two years ago: a deplorable habitation! A picture of its exterior and interior suspended in some public place, in every town in the kingdom, with a brief commentary subjoined, would operate in terrorem in favour of the best interests of political economy, by placing before the eyes of the rising generation the lamentable consequences of imprudent marriage, and the necessary result of attachment, of which romance is the foundation and marriage the superstructure, without the only cement which will make it wind and water tight—money.’

Mr. Forester. Nothing but money! The resemblance Fluellen found between Macedon and Monmouth, because both began with an M, holds equally true of money and marriage: but there seems to be a much stronger connection in the latter case; for marriage is but a body, of which money is the soul.

Mr. Fax. It is so. It must be so. The constitution of society imperiously commands it to be so. The world of reality is not the world of romance. When a lover talks of lips of coral, teeth of pearl, tresses of gold, and eyes of diamonds, he knows all the while that he is lying by wholesale; and that no baker in England would give him credit for a penny roll on all this display of his Utopian treasury. All the aerial castles that are founded in the contempt of worldly prudence have not half the solidity of the cloud-built towers that surround the setting of the autumnal sun.

Mr. Forester. I maintain, on the contrary, that, let all possible calamities be accumulated on two affectionate and congenial spirits, they will find more true happiness in weeping 92together than they would have found in all the riches of the world, poisoned by the disunion of hearts.^[31]

Mr. Fax. The disunion of hearts is an evil of another kind. It is not a comparison of evils I wish to institute. That two rich people fettered by the indissoluble bond of marriage, and hating each other cordially, are two as miserable animals as any on the face of the earth, is certain; but that two poor ones, let them love each other ever so fondly, starving together in a garret, are therefore in a less positively wretched condition, is an inference which no logic, I think, can deduce. For the picture you must draw in your mind’s eye is not that of a neatly-dressed, young, healthy-looking couple, weeping in each other’s arms in a clean, however homely cottage, in a fit of tender sympathy; but you must surround them with all the squalid accompaniments of poverty, rags, and famine, the contempt of the world, the dereliction of friends, half a dozen hungry squalling children, all clothed perhaps in the cutting up of an old blanket, duns in presence, bailiffs in prospect, and the long perspective of hopelessness closed by the workhouse or the gaol.

Mr. Forester. You imagine an extreme case, which something more than the original want of fortune seems requisite to produce.

Mr. Fax. I have heard you declaim very bitterly against those who maintain the necessary connection between misfortune and imprudence.

Mr. Forester. Certainly. To assert that the unfortunate must necessarily have been imprudent, is to furnish an excuse to the cold-hearted and illiberal selfishness of a state of society, which needs no motive superadded to its own miserable narrow-mindedness, to produce the almost total extinction of benevolence and sympathy. Good and evil fortune depend so much on the combination of external circumstances, that the utmost skill and industry cannot command success; neither is the result of the most imprudent actions always fatal:

93Mr. Fax. Sometimes, no doubt; but not so often as to equalise the probable results of indiscretion and prudence. ‘Where there is prudence,’ says Juvenal, ‘fortune is powerless’; and this doctrine, though liable to exceptions, is replete with general truth. We have a nice balance to adjust. To check the benevolence of the rich, by persuading them that all misfortune is the result of imprudence, is a great evil; but it would be a much greater evil to persuade the poor that indiscretion may have a happier result than prudence; for where this appears to be true in one instance, it is manifestly false in a thousand. It is certainly not enough to possess industry and talent; there must be means for exerting them; and in a redundant population these means are often wanting, even to the most skilful and the most industrious: but though calamity sometimes seizes those who use their best efforts to avoid her, yet she seldom disappoints the intentions of those who leap headlong into her arms.

Mr. Forester. It seems, nevertheless, peculiarly hard that all the blessings of life should be confined to the rich. If you banish the smiles of love from the cottage of poverty, what remains to cheer its dreariness? The poor man has no friends, no amusements, no means of exercising benevolence, nothing to fill up the gloomy and desolate vacancy of his heart, if you banish love from his dwelling. ‘There is one alone, and there is not a second,’ says one of the greatest poets and philosophers of antiquity: ‘there is one alone, and there is not a second: yea, he hath neither child nor brother; yet is there no end of all his labour: ... neither saith he, For whom do I labour and bereave my soul of good?... Two are better than one ... for if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.’^[33] Society in poverty is better than 94solitude in wealth: but solitude and poverty together it is scarcely in human nature to tolerate.

Mr. Fax. This, if I remember rightly, is the cottage of which I was speaking.

The cottage was ruined and uninhabited. The roof had fallen in. The garden was choked with weeds. ‘What,’ said Mr. Fax, ‘can have become of its unfortunate inhabitants?’

Mr. Forester. What were they?

Mr. Fax. A couple for whom nature had done much, and fortune nothing. I took shelter in their cottage from a passing storm. The picture which you called the imagination of an extreme case falls short of the reality of what I witnessed here. It was the utmost degree of misery and destitution compatible with the preservation of life. A casual observer might have passed them by, as the most abject of the human race. But their physiognomy showed better things. It was with the utmost difficulty I could extract a word from either of them: but when I at last succeeded I was astonished, in garments so mean and a dwelling so deplorable, to discover feelings so generous and minds so enlightened. The semblance of human sympathy seemed strange to them; little of it as you may suppose could be discovered through my saturnine complexion, and the habitual language of what you call my frosty philosophy. By degrees I engaged their confidence, and he related to me his history, which I will tell you, as nearly as I can remember, in his own words.

CHAPTER XIII DESMOND

My name is Desmond. My father was a naval officer, who in the prime of life was compelled by wounds to retire from the service on his half-pay and a small additional pension. I was his only son, and he submitted to the greatest personal privations to procure me a liberal education, in the hope that by these means he should live to see me making my way in the world: but he always accompanied his wishes for this consummation with a hope that I should consider money as a means, and not as an end, and that I should remember the only real treasures of human existence were truth, health, and liberty. You will not wonder that, with such principles, the father had been twenty years a lieutenant, and that the son was looked on at College as a fellow that would come to nothing.

I profited little at the University, as you will easily suppose. The system of education pursued there appeared to me the result of a deep-laid conspiracy against the human understanding, a mighty effort of political and ecclesiastical machiavelism, to turn the energies of inquiring minds into channels, where they will either stagnate in disgust, or waste themselves in nugatory labour. To discover or even to illustrate a single moral truth, to shake the empire of a single prejudice, to apply a single blow of the axe of philosophy to the wide-spreading roots of superstition and political imposture, is to render a real service to the best hopes of mankind; but all this is diametrically opposed to the selfish interests of the hired misleaders of society, the chosen few, as they are called, before whom the wretched multitude grovel in the dust as before

Moral science, therefore, moral improvement, the doctrines of benevolence, the amelioration of the general condition of mankind, will not only never form a part of any public institution for the performance of that ridiculous and mischievous farce called the Finishing of Education; but every art of clerical chicanery and fraudulent misrepresentation will be practised, to render odious the very names of philosophy and philanthropy, and to extinguish, by ridicule and persecution, that enthusiastic love of truth, which never fails to conduct its votaries to conclusions very little compatible with the views of those who have built, or intend to build, their own worldly prosperity on the foundation of hypocrisy and servility in themselves, and ignorance and credulity in others.

The study of morals and of mind occupied my exclusive attention. I had little taste for the science of lines and numbers, and still less for verbal criticism, the pinnacle of academical glory.

I delighted in the poets of Greece and Rome, but I thought that the igneus vigor et coelestis origo of their conceptions and expressions was often utterly lost sight of in the microscopic inspection of philological minutiae. I studied Greek, as the means of understanding Homer and Aeschylus: I did not look on them as mere secondary instruments to the attainment of a knowledge of their language. I had no conception of the taste that could prefer Lycophron to Sophocles because he had the singular advantage of being obscure; and should have been utterly at a loss to account for such a phenomenon, if I had not seen that the whole system of public education was purposely calculated to make inferior minds recoil in disgust and terror from the vestibule of knowledge, and superior minds consume their dangerous energies in the difficiles nugae and labor ineptiarum of its adytum.

I did not finish, as it is called, my college education. My father’s death compelled me to leave it before the expiration of the usual period, at the end of which the same distinction is conferred on all capacities, by the academical noometry, not of merit but of time. I found myself almost destitute; but I felt the consciousness of talents, that I doubted not would amply 99provide for me in that great centre of intellect and energy, London. To London I accordingly went, and became a boarder in the humble dwelling of a widow, who maintained herself and an only daughter by the perilous and precarious income derived from lodgers.

‘My dear sir, only take the trouble of sitting a few hours in my shop.’

My first application was to a bookseller in Bond Street, to whom I offered the copyright of a treatise on the Elements of Morals. ‘My dear sir,’ said he, with an air of supercilious politeness, ‘only take the trouble of sitting a few hours in my shop, and if you detect any one of my customers in the act of pronouncing the word morals, I will give any price you please to name for your copyright.’ But, glancing over the manuscript, ‘I perceive,’ said he, ‘there are some smart things here; and though they are good for nothing where they are, they would cut a pretty figure in a Review. My friend Mr. Vamp, the editor, is in want of a hand for the moral department of his Review: I will give you a note to him.’ I thanked him for his kindness, and, furnished with the note, proceeded to the lodgings of Mr. Vamp, whom I found in an elegant first floor, lounging over a large quarto, which he was marking with a pencil. A number of books and pamphlets, and fragments of both curiously cut up, were scattered on the table before him, together with a large pot of paste and an enormous pair of scissors.

He received me with great hauteur, read the note, and said, ‘Mr. Foolscap has told you we are in want of a hand, and he thinks you have a turn in the moral line: I shall not be sorry if it prove so, for we have been very ill provided in that way a long while; and though morals are not much in demand among our patrons and customers, and will not do, by any means, for a standing dish, they make, nevertheless, a very pretty seasoning for our politics, in cases where they might otherwise be rather unpalatable and hard of digestion. You see this pile of pamphlets, these volumes of poetry, and this rascally quarto: all these, though under very different titles, and the productions of very different orders of mind, have, either openly or covertly, only one object; and a most impertinent one it is. This object is twofold: first, to prove the existence, to an immense extent, of what these writers think proper to denominate political corruption; secondly, to convince the public that this corruption ought to be 100extinguished. Now, we are anxious to do away the effect of all these incendiary clamours. As to the existence of corruption (it is a villainous word, by the bye—we call it persuasion in a tangible shape): as to the existence, then, of persuasion in a tangible shape, we do not wish to deny it; on the contrary, we have no hesitation in affirming that it is as notorious as the sun at noonday: but as to the inference that it ought to be extinguished—that is the point against which we direct the full fire of our critical artillery; we maintain that it ought to exist; and here is the leading article of our next number, in which we confound in one mass all these obnoxious publications, putting the weakest at the head of the list, that if any of our readers should feel inclined to judge for themselves (I must do them the credit to say I do not suspect many of them of such a democratical propensity), they may be stopped in limine, by finding very little temptation to proceed. The political composition of this article is beautiful; it is the production of a gentleman high in office, who is indebted to persuasion in a tangible shape for his present income of several thousands per annum; but it wants, as I have hinted, a little moral seasoning; and there, as ill-luck will have it, we are all thrown out. We have several reverend gentlemen in our corps, but morals are unluckily quite out of their way. We have, on some occasions, with their assistance, substituted theology for morals; they manage this very cleverly, but I am sorry to say it only takes among the old women; and though the latter are our best and most numerous customers, yet we have some very obstinate and hard-headed readers who will not, as I have observed, swallow our politics without a little moral seasoning; and, as I told Mr. Foolscap, if we did not contrive to pick up a spice of morals somewhere or other, all the eloquence of persuasion in a tangible shape would soon become of little avail. Now, if you will undertake the seasoning of this article in such a manner as to satisfy my employers, I will satisfy you: you understand me.’

I observed that I hoped he would allow me the free exercise of my own opinion; and that I should wish to season his article in such a manner as to satisfy myself, which I candidly told him would not be in such a manner as seemed likely to satisfy him.

On this he flew into a rage, and vowed vengeance against 101Mr. Foolscap for having sent him a Jacobin. I strenuously disclaimed this appellation; and being then quite a novice in the world, I actually endeavoured to reason with him, as if the conviction of general right and wrong could have any influence upon him; but he stopped me short, by saying that till I could reason him out of his pension I might spare myself the trouble of interfering with his opinions; as the logic from which they were deduced had presented itself to him in a much more tangible shape than any abstract notions of truth and liberty. He had thought, from Mr. Foolscap’s letter, that I had a talent for moral theory, and that I was inclined to turn it to account; as for moral practice, he had nothing to do with it, desired to know nothing about it, and wished me a good-morning.

I was not yet discouraged, and made similar applications to the editors and proprietors of several daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly publications, but I found everywhere the same indifference or aversion to general principles, the same partial and perverted views: every one was the organ of some division or subdivision of a faction; and had entrenched himself in a narrow circle, within the pale of which all was honour, consistency, integrity, generosity, and justice; while all without it was villainy, hypocrisy, selfishness, corruption, and lies. Not being inclined to imprison myself in any one of these magical rings, I found all my interviews terminate like that with Mr. Vamp.

By the advice and introduction of a college acquaintance, I accepted the situation of tutor in the family of Mr. Dross, a wealthy citizen, who had acquired a large fortune by contracts with Government, in the execution of which he had not forgotten to charge for his vote and interest. His conscience, indeed, of all the commodities he dealt in, was that which he had brought to the best market; though, among his more fair-dealing, and consequently poorer neighbours, it was thought he had made the ministry pay too dearly for so very rotten an article. They seemed not to be aware that a corrupt administration estimates conscience and Stilton cheese by the same criterion, and that its rottenness was its recommendation.

Mr. Dross was a tun of man, with the soul of a hazel-nut: his wife was a tun of woman, without any soul whatever. The principle that animated her bulk was composed of three 102ingredients—arrogance, ignorance, and the pride of money. They were, in every sense of the word, what the world calls respectable people.

Mrs. Dross aspired to be somebody, aped the nobility, and gave magnificent routs, which were attended by many noble personages, and by all that portion of the fashionable world that will go anywhere for a crowd and a supper.

Their idea of virtue consisted in having no debts, going regularly to church, and feeding the parson; their idea of charity, in paying the poor-rates, and putting down their names to public subscriptions: and they had a profound contempt for every species of learning, which they associated indissolubly with rags and famine, and with that neglect of the main chance, which they regarded as the most deadly of all deadly sins. But as they had several hopeful children, and as Mrs. Dross found it was fashionable to have a governess and a tutorer, they had looked out for two pieces of human furniture under these denominations, and my capricious destiny led me to their splendid dwelling in the latter capacity.

I found the governess, Miss Pliant, very admirably adapted to her situation. She did not presume to have a will of her own. Suspended like Mahomet’s coffin between the mistress and the housekeeper, despising the one, and despised by the other, her mind seemed unconscious of its vacancy, and her heart of its loneliness. She had neither feelings nor principles, either of good or ill: perfectly selfish, perfectly cold-hearted, and perfectly obsequious, she was contented with her situation, because it seemed likely to lead to an advantageous establishment; for if ever she thought of marriage, it was only in the light of a system of bargain, in which youth and beauty were very well disposed of when bartered for age and money. She was highly accomplished: a very scientific musician, without any soul in her performance; a most skilful copier of landscapes, without the least taste for the beauties of nature; and a proficient in French grammar, though she had read no book in that language but Telemaque, and hated the names of Rousseau and Voltaire, because she had heard them called rascals by her father, who had taken his opinion on trust from the Reverend Mr. Simony, who had never read a page of either of them.

I very soon found that I was regarded as an upper 103servant—as a person of more pretension, but less utility, than the footman. I was expected to be really more servile, in mind especially. If I presumed to differ in opinion from Mr. or Mrs. Dross, they looked at each other and at me with the most profound astonishment, wondering at so much audacity in one of their movables. I really envied the footman, living as he did among his equals, where he might have his own opinion, as far as he was capable of forming one, and express it without reserve or fear; while all my thoughts were to be those of a mirror, and my motions those of an automaton. I soon saw that I had but the choice of alternatives: either to mould myself into a slave, liar, and hypocrite, or to take my leave of Mr. Dross. I therefore embraced the latter, and determined from that moment never again to live under the roof of a superior, if my own dwelling were to be the most humble and abject of human habitations.

I returned to my old lodgings, and, after a short time, procured some employment in the way of copying for a lawyer. My labour was assiduous, and my remuneration scanty; but my habits were simple, my evenings were free, and in the daughter of the widow with whom I lodged I found a congenial mind: a desire for knowledge, an ardent love of truth, and a capacity that made my voluntary office of instruction at once easy and delightful.

The widow died embarrassed: her creditors seized her effects, and her daughter was left destitute. I was her only friend: to every other human being, not only her welfare, but even her existence, were matters of total indifference. The course of necessity seemed to have thrown her on my protection, and if I before loved her, I now regarded her as a precious trust, confided to me by her evil fate. Call it what you may—imprudence, madness, frenzy—we were married.

The lawyer who employed me had chosen his profession very injudiciously, for he was an honest and benevolent man. He interested himself for me, acquainted himself with my circumstances, and without informing me of his motives, increased my remuneration; though, as I afterwards found, he could very ill afford to do so. By this means we lived twelve months in comfort, I may say, considering the simplicity of our habits, in prosperity. The birth of our first child was an accession to our domestic happiness. We had no pleasures 104beyond the limits of our humble dwelling. Our circumstances and situation were much below the ordinary level of those of well-educated people: we had, therefore, no society, but we were happy in each other: our evenings were consecrated to our favourite authors; and the din of the streets, the tumult of crowds and carriages thronging to parties of pleasure and scenes of public amusement, came to us like the roar of a stormy ocean on which we had neither wish nor power to embark.

One evening we were surprised by an unexpected visitor; it was the lawyer, my employer. ‘Desmond!’ said he, ‘I am a ruined man. For having been too scrupulous to make beggars of others, I have a fair prospect of becoming one myself. You are shocked and astonished. Do not grieve on my account. I have neither wife nor children. Very trivial and very remediable is the evil that can happen to me. “The valiant by himself, what can he suffer?” You will think a lawyer has as little business with poetry as he has with justice. Perhaps so. I have been too partial to both.’

I was glad to see him so cheerful, and expressed a hope that his affairs would take a better turn than he seemed to expect. ‘You shall know more,’ said he, ‘in a few days; in the meantime, here are the arrears I owe you.’

When he came again, he said: ‘My creditors are neither numerous nor cruel. I have made over to them all my property, but they allow me to retain possession of a small house in Westmoreland, with an annuity for my life, sufficient to maintain me in competence. I could propose a wild scheme to you if I thought you would not be offended.’

‘That,’ said I, ‘I certainly will not, propose what you may.’

‘Tell me,’ said he, ‘which do you think the most useful and uncontaminating implement, the quill or the spade?’

‘The spade,’ said I, ‘generally speaking, unquestionably: the quill in some most rare and solitary instances.’

‘In the hand of Homer and Plutarch, of Seneca and Tacitus, of Shakespeare and Rousseau? I am not speaking of them, or of those who, however humbly, reflect their excellencies. But in the hands of the slaves of commerce, the minions of law, the venal advocates of superstition, the sycophants of corruption, the turnspits of literature, the paragraph-mongers of prostituted journals, the hireling compounders 105of party-praise and censure, under the name of periodical criticism, what say you to it?’

‘What can I say,’ said I, ‘but that it is the curse of society, and the bane of the human mind?’

‘And yet,’ said he, ‘in some of these ways must you employ it, if you wish to live by it. Literature is not the soil in which truth and liberty can flourish, unless their cultivators be independent of the world. Those who are not so, whatever be the promise of their beginning, will end either in sycophants or beggars. As mere mechanical instruments, in pursuits unconnected with literature, what say you to the comparison?’

‘What Cincinnatus would have said,’ I answered.

‘I am glad,’ said he, ‘to hear it. You are not one of the multitude, neither, I believe, am I. I embraced my profession, I assure you, from very disinterested motives. I considered that, the greater the powers of mischief with which that profession is armed, and, I am sorry to add, the practice of mischief in the generality of its professors, the greater might be the scope of philanthropy, in protecting weakness and counteracting oppression. Thus I have passed my life in an attempt to reconcile philanthropy and law. I had property sufficient to enable me to try the experiment. The natural consequence is, my property has vanished. I do not regret it, for I have done some good. But I can do no more. My power is annulled. I must retire from the stage of life. If I retire alone, I must have servants; I had much rather have friends. If you will accompany me to Westmoreland, we will organise a little republic of our own. Your wife shall be our housekeeper. We will cultivate our garden. We shall want little more, and that my annuity will amply supply. We will select a few books, and we will pronounce eternal banishment on pen and ink.’

I could not help smiling at the earnestness with which he pronounced the last clause. The change of a lawyer into a Roman republican appeared to me as miraculous as any metamorphosis in Ovid. Not to weary you with details, we carried this scheme into effect, and passed three years of natural and healthy occupation, with perfect simplicity and perfect content. They were the happiest of our lives. But at the end of this period our old friend died. His annuity died with him. He left me his heir, but his habitation and its 106furniture were all he had to leave. I procured a tenant for the house, and we removed to this even yet more humble dwelling. The difference of the rent, a very trifling sum indeed, constituted our only income. The increase of our family, and the consequent pressure of necessity, compelled us to sell the house. From the same necessity we have become strict Pythagoreans. I do not complain that we live hardly: it is almost wonderful that we live at all. The produce of our little garden preserves us from famine: but this is all it does. I consider myself a mere rustic, and very willingly engage in agricultural labour, when the neighbouring farmers think proper to employ me: but they feel no deficiency of abler hands. There are more labourers than means of labour. In the cities it is the same. If all the modes of human occupation in this kingdom, from the highest to the lowest, were to require at once a double number of persons, there would not remain one of them twelve hours unfilled.

With what views could I return to London? Of the throng continually pressing onward, to spring into the vacancies of employment, the foremost ranks are unfortunately composed of the selfish, the servile, the intriguing; of those to whose ideas general justice is a chimaera, liberty an empty name, and truth at best a verbal veil for the sycophantic falsehood of a mercenary spirit. To what end could a pupil of the ancient Romans mingle with such a multitude? To cringe, to lie, to flatter? To bow to the insolence of wealth, the superciliousness of rank, the contumely of patronage, that, while it exacts the most abject mental prostration, in return for promises never meant to be performed, despises the servility it fosters, and laughs at the credulity it betrays?

The wheel of fortune is like a water-wheel, and human beings are like the waters it disturbs. Many are thrown into the channels of action, many are thrown back to be lost for ever in the stream. I am one of the latter: but I shall not consider it disgraceful to me that I am so, till I see that candour, simplicity, integrity, and intellectual power, directed by benevolence and liberty, have a better claim to worldly estimation, than either venal talent prostituted to the wages of corruption, or ignorance, meanness, and imbecility, exalted by influence and interest.

CHAPTER XIV THE COTTAGE

Mr. Fax (in continuation). ‘I cannot help thinking,’ said I, when Desmond had done speaking, ‘that you have formed too hasty an estimate of the world. Mr. Vamp and Mr. Dross are bad specimens of human nature: but there are many good specimens of it in both those classes of men. The world is, indeed, full of prejudices and superstitions, which produce ample profit to their venal advocates, who consequently want neither the will nor the power to calumniate and persecute the enlightened and the virtuous. The rich, too, are usually arrogant and exacting, and those feelings will never perish for want of sycophants to nourish them. An ardent love of truth and liberty will, therefore, always prove an almost insuperable barrier to any great degree of worldly advancement. A celebrated divine, who turned his theological morality to very excellent account, and died en bonne odeur, used to say, he could not afford to have a conscience, for it was the most expensive luxury a man could indulge in. So it certainly is: but, though a conscientious man who has his own way to make in the world, will very seldom flourish in the sunshine of prosperity, it is not, therefore, necessary that he should sit quietly down and starve.’ He said he would think of it, and if he could find any loophole in the great feudal fortress of society, at which poverty and honesty could creep in together, he would try to effect an entrance. I made more particular inquiry into their circumstances, and they at length communicated to me, but with manifest reluctance, that they were in imminent danger of being deprived of their miserable furniture, and turned out of their wretched habitation, by Lawrence 108Litigate, Esquire, their landlord, for arrears of rent amounting to five pounds.

Mr. Forester. Which, of course, you paid?

Mr. Fax. I did so; but I do not see that it is of course.

Mr. Forester, Mr. Fax, and Sir Oran were still leaning over the gate of the cottage, when a peasant came whistling along the road. ‘Pray, my honest friend,’ said Mr. Fax, ‘can you inform me what has become of the family which inhabited this cottage two years ago?’—‘Ye’ll voind them,’ said the peasant, ‘about a mile vurther an, just by the lake’s edge like, wi’ two large elms by the door, and a vir tree.’ He resumed his tune and his way.

The philosophical trio proceeded on their walk.

Mr. Forester. You have said little of his wife.

Mr. Fax. She was an interesting creature. With her the feelings of misfortune had subsided into melancholy silence, while with him they broke forth in misanthropical satire.

Mr. Forester. And their children?

Mr. Fax. They would have been fine children, if they had been better clothed and fed.

Mr. Forester. Did they seem to repent their marriage?

Mr. Fax. Not for themselves. They appeared to have no wish but to live and die together. For their children, indeed, I could easily perceive they felt more grief than they expressed.

Mr. Forester. You have scarcely made out your case. Poverty had certainly come in at the door, but Love does not seem to have flown out at the window. You would not have prevailed on them to separate at the price of living in palaces. The energy of intellect was not deadened; the independence of spirit was not broken. The participation of love communicates a luxury to sorrow, that all the splendour of selfishness can never bestow. If, as has been said, a friend is more valuable than the elements of fire and water, how much more valuable must be the one only associate, the more than friend, to him whom in affliction and in poverty all other friends have abandoned! If the sun shines equally on the palace and the cottage, why should not love, the sun of the intellectual world, shine equally on both? More needful, indeed, is its genial light to the latter, where there is no worldly splendour to diminish or divide its radiance.

110

Sir Oran sat down in the artist’s seat.

111With a sudden turn of the road, a scene of magnificent beauty burst upon their view: the still expanse of a lake, bordered with dark precipices and fading woods, and mountains rising above them, height on height, till the clouds rested on their summits. A picturesque tourist had planted his travelling-chair under the corner of a rock, and was intently occupied in sketching the scene. The process attracted Sir Oran’s curiosity; he walked up to the tourist, who was too deeply engaged to notice his approach, and peeped over his shoulder. Sir Oran, after looking at the picture, then at the landscape, then at the picture, then at the landscape again, at length suddenly expressed his delight in a very loud and very singular shout, close in the painter’s ear, that re-echoed from rock to rock. The tourist sprang up in violent alarm, and seeing the extraordinary physiognomy of the personage at his elbow, drew a sudden conclusion of evil intentions, and ran off with great rapidity, leaving all his apparatus behind him. Sir Oran sat down in the artist’s seat, took up the drawing utensils, placed the unfinished drawing on his knee, and sat in an attitude of deep contemplation, as if meditating on the means to be pursued for doing the same thing himself.

The flying tourist encountered Messieurs Fax and Forester, who had observed the transaction, and were laughing at it as heartily as Democritus himself could have done. They tranquillised his apprehensions, and led him back to the spot. Sir Oran, on a hint from his friend Mr. Forester, rose, made the tourist a polite bow, and restored to him his beloved portfolio. They then wished him a good-morning, and left him in a state of nervous trepidation, which made it very obvious that he would draw no more that day.

Mr. Fax. Can Sir Oran draw?

Mr. Forester. No; but I think he would easily acquire the art. It is very probable that in the nation of the Orans, which I take to be a barbarous nation that has not yet learned the use of speech,^[34] drawing, as a means of communicating ideas, may be in no contemptible state of forwardness.^[35]

112Mr. Fax. He has, of course, seen many drawings since he has been among civilised men; what so peculiarly delighted and surprised him in this?

Mr. Forester. I suspect this is the first opportunity he has had of comparing the natural original with the artificial copy; and his delight was excited by seeing the vast scene before him transferred so accurately into so small a compass, and growing, as it were, into a distinct identity under the hand of the artist.

They now arrived at the elms and the fir-tree, which the peasant had pointed out as the landmarks of the dwelling of Desmond. They were surprised to see a very pretty cottage, standing in the midst of a luxuriant garden, one part of which sloped down to the edge of the lake. Everything bore the air of comfort and competence. They almost doubted if the peasant had been correct in his information. Three rosy children, plainly but neatly dressed, were sitting on the edge of the shallow water, watching with intense delight and interest the manœuvres of a paper flotilla, which they had committed to the mercy of the waves.

Mr. Fax. What is the difference between these children and Xerxes on the shores of Salamis?

Mr. Forester. None, but that where they have pure and unmingled pleasure, his feelings began in selfish pride, and ended in slavish fear; their amusement is natural and innocent; his was unnatural, cruel, and destructive, and therefore more unworthy of a rational being. Better is a poor and wise child than a foolish king that will not be admonished.

113A female came from the cottage. Mr. Fax recognised Mrs. Desmond. He was surprised at the change in her appearance. Health and content animated her countenance. The simple neatness of her dress derived an appearance of elegance from its interesting wearer; contrary to the fashionable process, in which dress neither neat nor simple, but a heterogeneous mixture of all the fripperies of Europe, gives what the world calls elegance, where less partial nature has denied it. There are, in this respect, two classes of human beings: Nature makes the first herself, for the beauty of her own creation; her journeymen cut out the second for tailors and mantua-makers to finish. The first, when apparelled, may be called dressed people—the second, peopled dresses; the first bear the same relation to their clothes as an oak bears to its foliage—the second, the same as a wig-block bears to a wig; the first may be compared to cocoa-nuts, in which the kernel is more valuable than the shell—the second, to some varieties of the Testaceous Mollusca, where a shell of infinite value covers a stupid fish that is good for nothing.

Mrs. Desmond recognised Mr. Fax. ‘O sir!’ said she, ‘I rejoice to see you.’—‘And I rejoice,’ said Mr. Fax, ‘to see you as you now are; Fortune has befriended you.’—‘You rendered us great service, sir, in our wretched condition; but the benefit, of course, was transient. With the next quarter-day Mr. Litigate, our landlord, resumed his persecutions; and we should have been turned out of our wretched dwelling to perish in the roads, had not some happy incident made Miss Melincourt acquainted with our situation. To know what it was, and to make it what it is, were the same thing to her. So suddenly, when the extremity of evil was impending over us, to be placed in this little Paradise in competence—nay, to our simple habits, in affluence, and in such a manner, as if we were bestowing, not receiving favours——O sir, there cannot be two Miss Melincourts! But will you not walk in and take some refreshment?—we can offer you refreshment now. My husband is absent at present, but he will very soon return.’

While she was speaking he arrived. Mr. Fax congratulated him. At his earnest solicitation they entered the cottage, and were delighted with the beautiful neatness that predominated in every part of it. The three children ran in to see the strangers. Mr. Forester took up the little girl, Mr. Fax a boy, 114and Sir Oran Haut-ton another. The latter took alarm at the physiognomy of his new friend, and cried and kicked, and struggled for release; but Sir Oran, producing a flute from his pocket, struck up a lively air, which reconciled the child, who then sat very quietly on his knee.

Some refreshment was placed before them, and Sir Oran testified, by a copious draught, that he found much virtue in home-brewed ale.

‘There is a farm attached to this cottage,’ said Mr. Desmond; ‘and Miss Melincourt, by having placed me in it, enabled me to maintain my family in comfort and independence, and to educate them in a free, healthy, and natural occupation. I have ever thought agriculture the noblest of human pursuits; to the theory and practice of it I now devote my whole attention, and I am not without hopes that the improvement of this part of my benefactress’s estate will justify her generous confidence in a friendless stranger; but what can repay her benevolence?’

‘I will answer for her,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘though she is as yet personally unknown to me, that she loves benevolence for its own sake, and is satisfied with its consummation.’

After a short conversation, and a promise soon to revisit the now happy family, Mr. Forester, Mr. Fax, and Sir Oran Haut-ton resumed their walk. Mr. Forester, at parting, put, unobserved, into the hand of the little boy, a folded paper, telling him to give it to his father. It was a leaf which he had torn from his pocket-book; he had enclosed in it a bank-note, and had written on it with a pencil, ‘Do not refuse to a stranger the happiness of reflecting that he has, however tardily and slightly, co-operated with Miss Melincourt in a work of justice.’

CHAPTER XV THE LIBRARY

Mr. Forester, Mr. Fax, and Sir Oran Haut-ton arrived at Melincourt Castle. They were shown into a parlour, where they were left alone a few minutes; when Mr. Hippy made his appearance, and recognising Sir Oran, shook hands with him very cordially. Mr. Forester produced the letter he had received from Mr. Ratstail, which Mr. Hippy having read, vented a string of invectives against the impudent rascal, and explained the mystery of the adventure, though he seemed to think it strange that Sir Oran could not have explained it himself. Mr. Forester shook his head significantly; and Mr. Hippy, affecting to understand the gesture, exclaimed, ‘Ah! poor gentleman!’ He then invited them to stay to dinner. ‘I won’t be refused,’ said he; ‘I am lord and master of this castle at present, and here you shall stay till to-morrow. Anthy will be delighted to see her friend here’ (bowing to Sir Oran, who returned it with great politeness), ‘and we will hold a council of war, how to deal with this pair of puppies, Lawrence Litigate, Esquire, and Richard Ratstail, Solicitor. I have several visitors here already: lords, baronets, and squires, all Corydons, sighing for Anthy; but it seems Love’s Labour Lost with all of them. However, love and wine, you know! Anthy won’t give them the first, so I drench them with the second: there will be more bottles than hearts cracked in the business, for all Anthy’s beauty. Men die and worms eat them, as usual, but not for love.

Mr. Forester inquired for Sir Telegraph Paxarett. ‘An excellent fellow after dinner!’ exclaimed Mr. Hippy. ‘I never see him in the morning; nor any one else, but my rascal, Harry Fell, and now and then Harry Killquick. The 116moment breakfast is over, one goes one way, and another another. Anthy locks herself up in the library.’

‘Locks herself up in the library!’ said Mr. Fax: ‘a young lady, a beauty, and an heiress, in the nineteenth century, think of cultivating her understanding!’

‘Strange, but true,’ said Mr. Hippy; ‘and here am I, a poor invalid, left alone all the morning to prowl about the castle like a ghost; that is, when I am well enough to move, which is not always the case. But the library is opened at four, and the party assembles there before dinner; and as it is now about the time, come with me, and I will introduce you.’

They followed Mr. Hippy to the library, where they found Anthelia alone.

‘Anthy,’ said Mr. Hippy, after the forms of introduction, ‘do you know you are accused of laying waste a pine-grove, and carrying it off by cartloads, with force and arms?’

Anthelia read Mr. Ratstail’s letter. ‘This is a very strange piece of folly,’ she said; ‘I hope it will not be a mischievous one.’ She then renewed the expressions of her gratitude to Sir Oran, and bade him welcome to Melincourt. Sir Oran bowed in silence.

‘Folly and mischief,’ said Mr. Fax, ‘are very nearly allied; and nowhere more conspicuously than in the forms of the law.’

Mr. Forester. You have an admirable library, Miss Melincourt: and I judge from the great number of Italian books, you are justly partial to the poets of that exquisite language. The apartment itself seems singularly adapted to the genius of their poetry, which combines the magnificent simplicity of ancient Greece with the mysterious grandeur of the feudal ages. Those windows of stained glass would recall to an enthusiastic mind the attendant spirit of Tasso; and the waving of the cedars beyond, when the wind makes music in their boughs, with the birds singing in their shades and the softened dash of the torrent from the dingle below, might with little aid from fancy be modulated into that exquisite combination of melody which flowed from the enchanted wood at the entrance of Rinaldo, and which Tasso has painted with a degree of harmony not less magical than the music he describes. Italian poetry is all fairyland: I know not any description of literature so congenial to the tenderness and delicacy of the female mind, 117which, however opposite may be the tendency of modern education, Nature has most pre-eminently adapted to be ‘a mansion for all lovely forms: a dwelling-place for all sweet sounds and harmonies.’^[36] Of these, Italian poetry is a most inexhaustible fountain; and for that reason I could wish it to be generally acknowledged a point of the very first importance in female education.

Anthelia. You have a better opinion of the understandings of women, sir, than the generality of your lordly sex seems disposed to entertain.

Mr. Forester. The conduct of men, in this respect, is much like that of a gardener who should plant a plot of ground with merely ornamental flowers, and then pass sentence on the soil for not bearing substantial fruit. If women are treated only as pretty dolls, and dressed in all the fripperies of irrational education; if the vanity of personal adornment and superficial accomplishments be made from their very earliest years to suppress all mental aspirations, and to supersede all thoughts of intellectual beauty, is it to be inferred that they are incapable of better things? But such is the usual logic of tyranny, which first places its extinguisher on the flame, and then argues that it cannot burn.

Mr. Fax. Your remark is not totally just: for though custom, how justly I will not say, banishes women from the fields of classical literature, yet the study of Italian poetry, of which you think so highly, is very much encouraged among them.

Mr. Forester. You should rather say it is not discouraged. They are permitted to know it: but in very few instances is the permission accompanied by any practical aid. The only points practically enforced in female education are sound, colour, and form,—music, dress, drawing, and dancing. The mind is left to take care of itself.

Mr. Fax. And has as much chance of doing so as a horse in a pound, circumscribed in the narrowest limits, and studiously deprived of nourishment.

Anthelia. The simile is, I fear, too just. To think is one of the most unpardonable errors a woman can commit in the eyes of society. In our sex a taste for intellectual pleasures is almost equivalent to taking the veil; and though not 118absolutely a vow of perpetual celibacy, it has almost always the same practical tendency. In that universal system of superficial education which so studiously depresses the mind of women, a female who aspires to mental improvement will scarcely find in her own sex a congenial associate; and the other will regard her as an intruder on its prescriptive authority, its legitimate and divine right over the dominion of thought and reason: and the general consequence is, that she remains insulated between both, in more than cloistered loneliness. Even in its effect on herself, the ideal beauty which she studies will make her fastidious, too fastidious, perhaps, to the world of realities, and deprive her of the happiness that might be her portion, by fixing her imagination on chimaeras of unattainable excellence.

Mr. Forester. I can answer for men, Miss Melincourt, that there are some, many I hope, who can appreciate justly that most heavenly of earthly things, an enlightened female mind; whatever may be thought by the pedantry that envies, the foppery that fears, the folly that ridicules, or the wilful blindness that will not see its loveliness. I am afraid your last observation approaches most nearly to the truth, and that it is owing more to their own fastidiousness than to the want of friends and admirers, that intelligent women are so often alone in the world. But were it otherwise, the objection will not apply to Italian poetry, a field of luxuriant beauty, from which women are not interdicted even by the most intolerant prejudice of masculine usurpation.

Anthelia. They are not interdicted, certainly; but they are seldom encouraged to enter it. Perhaps it is feared, that, having gone thus far, they might be tempted to go farther: that the friend of Tasso might aspire to the acquaintance of Virgil, or even to an introduction to Homer and Sophocles.

Mr. Forester. And why should she not? Far from desiring to suppress such a noble ambition, how delightful should I think the task of conducting the lovely aspirant through the treasures of Grecian genius!—to wander hand in hand with such a companion among the valleys and fountains of Ida, and by the banks of the eddying Scamander;^[37] through the island of Calypso, and the gardens of Alcinous;^[38] to the 119rocks of the Scythian desert;^[39] to the caverned shores of the solitary Lemnos;^[40] and to the fatal sands of Troezene^[41] to kindle in such scenes the enthusiasm of such a mind, and to see the eyes of love and beauty beaming with their reflected inspiration! Miserably perverted, indeed, must be the selfishness of him who, having such happiness in his power, would,

Mr. Fax. My friend’s enthusiasm, Miss Melincourt, usually runs away with him when any allusion is made to ancient Greece.

Mr. Forester had spoken with ardour and animation; for the scenes of which he spoke rose upon his mind and depicted in the incomparable poetry to which he had alluded; the figurative idea of wandering among them with a young and beautiful female aspirant assumed for a moment a visionary reality; and when he subsequently reflected on it it appeared to him very singular that the female figure in the mental picture had assumed the form and features of Anthelia Melincourt.

Anthelia, too, saw in the animated countenance of Sylvan Forester traces of more than common feeling, generosity, and intelligence: his imaginary wanderings through the classic scenes of antiquity assumed in her congenial mind the brightest colours of intellectual beauty; and she could not help thinking that if he were what he appeared, such wanderings, with such a guide, would not be the most unenviable of earthly destinies.

The other guests dropped in by ones and twos. Sir Telegraph was agreeably surprised to see Mr. Forester. ‘By the bye,’ said he, ‘have you heard that a general election is to take place immediately?’

‘I have,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘and was thinking of putting you and your barouche in requisition very shortly.’

‘As soon as you please,’ said Sir Telegraph.

The Honourable Mrs. Pinmoney took Sir Telegraph aside, to make inquiry concerning the new-comers.

120The Hon. Mrs. Pinmoney. Who is that very bright-eyed, wild-looking young man?

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. That is my old acquaintance and fellow-collegian, Sylvan Forester, now of Redrose Abbey, in this county.

The Hon. Mrs. Pinmoney. Is he respectable?

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. He has a good estate, if you mean that.

The Hon. Mrs. Pinmoney. To be sure I mean that. And who is that tall thin saturnine personage?

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. I know nothing of him but that his name is Fax, and that he is now on a visit to Mr. Forester at Redrose Abbey.

The Hon. Mrs. Pinmoney. And who is that very tall and remarkably ugly gentleman?

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. That is Sir Oran Haut-ton, Baronet; to which designation you may shortly add M.P. for the ancient and honourable borough of Onevote.

The Hon. Mrs. Pinmoney. A Baronet! and M.P.! Well, now I look at him again, I certainly do not think him so very plain: he has a very fashionable air. Haut-ton! French extraction, no doubt. And now I think of it, there is something very French in his physiognomy.

Dinner was announced, and the party adjourned to the dining-room. Mr. Forester offered his hand to Anthelia; and Sir Oran Haut-ton, following the example, presented his to the Honourable Mrs. Pinmoney.^[42]

CHAPTER XVI THE SYMPOSIUM

The dinner passed off with great harmony. The ladies withdrew. The bottle revolved with celerity, under the presidency of Mr. Hippy, and the vice-presidency of Sir Telegraph Paxarett. The Reverend Mr. Portpipe, who was that day of the party, pronounced an eulogium on the wine, which was echoed by the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub, Mr. O’Scarum, Lord Anophel Achthar, Mr. Feathernest, and Mr. Derrydown. Mr. Forester and Mr. Fax showed no disposition to destroy the unanimity of opinion on this interesting subject. Sir Oran Haut-ton maintained a grave and dignified silence, but demonstrated by his practice that his taste was orthodox. Mr. O’Scarum sat between Sir Oran and the Reverend Mr. Portpipe, and kept a sharp look-out on both sides of him; but did not, during the whole course of the sitting, detect either of his supporters in the heinous fact of a heeltap.

Mr. Hippy. Dr. Killquick may say what he pleases

The Rev. Mr. Portpipe. An excellent text!—sound doctrine, plain and practical. When I open the bottle, I shut the book of Numbers. There are two reasons for drinking: one is, when you are thirsty, to cure it; the other, when you are not thirsty, to prevent it. The first is obvious, mechanical, and 122plebeian; the second is most refined, abstract, prospicient, and canonical. I drink by anticipation of thirst that may be. Prevention is better than cure. Wine is the elixir of life. ‘The soul,’ says St. Augustine, ‘cannot live in drought.’^[44] What is death? Dust and ashes. There is nothing so dry. What is life? Spirit. What is Spirit? Wine.

Mr. O’Scarum. And whisky.

The Rev. Mr. Portpipe. Whisky is hepatic, phlogistic, and exanthematous. Wine is the hierarchical and archiepiscopal fluid. Bacchus is said to have conquered the East, and to have returned loaded with its spoils. ‘Marry how? tropically.’ The conquests of Bacchus are the victories of imagination, which, sublimated by wine, puts to rout care, fear, and poverty, and revels in the treasures of Utopia.

Mr. Feathernest. The juice of the grape is the liquid quintessence of concentrated sunbeams. Man is an exotic, in this northern climate, and must be nourished like a hot-house plant, by the perpetual adhibition of artificial heat.

Lord Anophel Achthar. You were not always so fond of wine, Feathernest?

Mr. Feathernest. Oh, my lord! no allusion, I beseech you, to my youthful errors. Demosthenes, being asked what wine he liked best, answered, that which he drank at the expense of others.

The Rev. Mr. Portpipe. Demosthenes was right. His circumstance, or qualification, is an accompaniment of better relish than a devilled biscuit or an anchovy toast.

Mr. Feathernest. In former days, my lord, I had no experience that way; therefore I drank water against my will.

Lord Anophel Achthar. And wrote Odes upon it, to Truth and Liberty.

Mr. Feathernest. ‘Ah, no more of that, an’ thou lovest me.’ Now that I can get it for a song, I take my pipe of wine a year: and what is the effect? Not cold phlegmatic lamentations over the sufferings of the poor, but high-flown, jovial, reeling dithyrambics ‘to all the crowned heads in Europe.’ I had then a vague notion that all was wrong. Persuasion has since appeared to me in a tangible shape, and convinced me that all is right, especially at court. Then I 125saw darkly through a glass—of water. Now I see clearly through a glass of wine.

Mr. Feathernest.

The Rev. Mr. Portpipe (looking through his glass at the light). An infallible telescope!

Mr. Forester. I am unfortunately one of those, sir, who very much admired your Odes to Truth and Liberty, and read your royal lyrics with very different sensations.

Mr. Feathernest. I presume, sir, every man has a right to change his opinions.

Mr. Forester. From disinterested conviction undoubtedly: but when it is obviously from mercenary motives, the apostasy of a public man is a public calamity. It is not his single loss to the cause he supported, that is alone to be lamented: the deep shade of mistrust which his conduct throws on that of all others who embark in the same career tends to destroy all sympathy with the enthusiasm of genius, all admiration for the intrepidity of truth, all belief in the sincerity of zeal for public liberty: if their advocates drop one by one into the vortex of courtly patronage, every new one that arises will be more and more regarded as a hollow-hearted hypocrite, a false and venal angler for pension and place; for there is in these cases no criterion by which the world can distinguish the baying of a noble dog that will defend his trust till death, from the yelping of a political cur, that only infests the heels of power to be silenced with the offals of corruption.

Lord Anophel Achthar. Cursed severe, Feathernest, ‘pon honour.

Mr. Fax. The gradual falling off of prudent men from unprofitable virtues is perhaps too common an occurrence to deserve much notice, or justify much reprobation.^[45]

Mr. Forester. If it were not common, it would not need reprobation. Vices of unfrequent occurrence stand sufficiently self-exposed in the insulation of their own deformity. The vices that call for the scourge of satire are those which pervade the whole frame of society, and which, under some specious pretence of private duty, or the sanction of custom and precedent, are almost permitted to assume the semblance of virtue, or at least to pass unstigmatised in the crowd of congenial transgressions.

Mr. Feathernest. You may say what you please, sir. I 126am accustomed to this language, and am quite callous to it, I assure you. I am in good odour at court, sir; and you know, Non cuivis homini contingit adire Corinthum. While I was out, sir, I made a great noise till I was let in. There was a pack of us, sir, to keep up your canine metaphor: two or three others got in at the same time: we knew very well that those who were shut out would raise a hue and cry after us: it was perfectly natural: we should have done the same in their place: mere envy and malice, nothing more. Let them bark on: when they are either wanted or troublesome, they will be let in, in their turn. If there be any man who prefers a crust and water to venison and sack, I am not of his mind. It is pretty and politic to make a virtue of necessity: but when there is an end of the necessity I am very willing that there should be an end of the virtue. If you could live on roots, said Diogenes to Aristippus, you would have nothing to do with kings.—If you could live on kings, replied Aristippus, you would have nothing to do with roots.—Every man for himself, sir, and God for us all.

Mr. Derrydown. The truth of things on this subject is contained in the following stave:

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. Buz the bottle.

Mr. O’Scarum. Over, by Jupiter!

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. No.

Mr. O’Scarum. Yes.

The Rev. Mr. Portpipe. No. The baronet has a most mathematical eye. Buzzed to a drop!

Mr. Forester. Fortunately, sir, for the hopes of mankind, every man does not bring his honour and conscience to market, though I admit the majority do: there are some who dare be honest in the worst of times.

Mr. Feathernest. Perhaps, sir, you are one of those who can afford to have a conscience, and are therefore under no necessity of bringing it to market. If so, you should ‘give God thanks, and make no boast of it.’ It is a great luxury certainly, and well worth keeping, caeteris paribus. But it is neither 127meat, clothes, nor fire. It becomes a good coat well; but it will never make one. Poets are verbal musicians, and, like other musicians, they have a right to sing and play, where they can be best paid for their music.

Mr. Forester. There could be no objection to that, if they would be content to announce themselves as dealers and chapmen: but the poetical character is too frequently a combination of the most arrogant and exclusive assumption of freedom and independence in theory, with the most abject and unqualified venality, servility, and sycophancy in practice.

Mr. Feathernest. It is as notorious, sir, as the sun at noonday, that theory and practice are never expected to coincide. If a West Indian planter declaims against the Algerines, do you expect him to lose any favourable opportunity of increasing the number of his own slaves? If an invaded country cries out against spoliation, do you suppose, if the tables were turned, it would show its weaker neighbours the forbearance it required? If an Opposition orator clamours for a reform in Parliament, does any one dream that, if he gets into office, he will ever say another word about it? If one of your reverend friends should display his touching eloquence on the subject of temperance, would you therefore have the barbarity to curtail him of one drop of his three bottles? Truth and liberty, sir, are pretty words, very pretty words—a few years ago they were the gods of the day—they superseded in poetry the agency of mythology and magic: they were the only passports into the poetical market: I acted accordingly the part of a prudent man: I took my station, became my own crier, and vociferated Truth and Liberty, till the noise I made brought people about me, to bid for me: and to the highest bidder I knocked myself down, at less than I am worth certainly; but when an article is not likely to keep, it is by no means prudent to postpone the sale.

Mr. Hippy. A dry discussion! Pass the bottle, and moisten it.

Mr. O’Scarum. Here’s half of us fast asleep. Let us make a little noise to wake us. A glee now: I’ll be one: who’ll join?

128Sir Telegraph Paxarett. I.

The Rev. Mr. Portpipe. And I.

Mr. Hippy. Strike up then. Silence!

Mr. Hippy. Bravo! I should like to have my house so haunted. The deuce is in it, if three such ghosts would not keep the blue devils at bay. Come, we’ll lay them in a bumper of claret.

(Sir Oran Haut-ton took his flute from his pocket, and played over the air of the glee. The company was at first extremely surprised, and then joined in applauding his performance. Sir Oran bowed acknowledgment, and returned his flute to his pocket.)

Mr. Forester. It is, perhaps, happy for yourself, Mr. Feathernest, that you can treat with so much levity a subject that fills me with the deepest grief. Man under the influence of civilisation has fearfully diminished in size and deteriorated in strength. The intellectual are confessedly nourished at the expense of the physical faculties. Air, the great source and fountain of health and life, can scarcely find access to civilised 129man, muffled as he is in clothes, pent in houses, smoke-dried in cities, half-roasted by artificial fire, and parboiled in the hydrogen of crowded apartments. Diseases multiply upon him in compound proportion. Even if the prosperous among us enjoy some comforts unknown to the natural man, yet what is the poverty of the savage, compared with that of the lowest classes of civilised nations? The specious aspect of luxury and abundance in one is counterbalanced by the abject penury and circumscription of hundreds. Commercial prosperity is a golden surface, but all beneath it is rags and wretchedness. It is not in the splendid bustle of our principal streets—in the villas and mansions that sprinkle our valleys—for those who enjoy these things (even if they did enjoy them—even if they had health and happiness—and the rich have seldom either) bear but a small proportion to the whole population:—but it is in the mud hovel of the labourer—in the cellar of the artisan—in our crowded prisons—our swarming hospitals—our overcharged workhouses—in those narrow districts of our overgrown cities which the affluent never see—where thousands and thousands of families are compressed within limits not sufficient for the pleasure-ground of a simple squire,—that we must study the true mechanism of political society. When the philosopher turns away in despair from this dreadful accumulation of moral and physical evil, where is he to look for consolation, if not in the progress of science, in the enlargement of mind, in the diffusion of philosophical truth? But if truth is a chimaera—if virtue is a name—if science is not the handmaid of moral improvement, but the obsequious minister of recondite luxury, the specious appendage of vanity and power—then indeed, that man has fallen never to rise again,^[46] is as much the cry of nature as the dream of superstition.

The Rev. Mr. Portpipe. Man has fallen, certainly, by the fruit of the tree of knowledge: which shows that human learning is vanity and a great evil, and therefore very properly discountenanced by all bishops, priests, and deacons.

Mr. Fax. The picture which you have drawn of poverty is not very tempting; and you must acknowledge that it is most galling to the most refined feelings. You must not, therefore, wonder that it is peculiarly obnoxious to the practical notions of poets. If the radiance of gold and silver gleam not 130through the foliage of the Pierian laurel, there is something to be said in their excuse if they carry their chaplet to those who will gild its leaves; and in that case they will find their best customers and patrons among those who are ambitious of acquiring panegyric by a more compendious method than the troublesome practice of the virtues that deserve it.

Mr. Forester. You have quoted Juvenal, but you should have completed the sentence: ‘If you see no glimpse of coin in the Pierian shade, you will prefer the name and occupation of a barber or an auctioneer.’^[47] This is most just: if the pursuits of literature, conscientiously conducted, condemn their votary to famine, let him live by more humble, but at least by honest, and therefore honourable occupations: he may still devote his leisure to his favourite pursuits. If he produce but a single volume consecrated to moral truth, its effect must be good as far as it goes; but if he purchase leisure and luxury by the prostitution of talent to the cause of superstition and tyranny, every new exertion of his powers is a new outrage to reason and virtue, and in precise proportion to those powers is he a curse to his country and a traitor to mankind.

Mr. Feathernest. A barber, sir!—a man of genius turn barber!

Mr. O’Scarum. Troth, sir, and I think it is better he should be in the suds himself, than help to bring his country into that situation.

Mr. Forester. I can perceive, sir, in your exclamation the principle that has caused so enormous a superabundance in the number of bad books over that of good ones. The objects of the majority of men of talent seem to be exclusively two: the first, to convince the world of their transcendent abilities; the second, to convert that conviction into a source of the greatest possible pecuniary benefit to themselves. But there is no class of men more resolutely indifferent to the moral tendency of the means by which their ends are accomplished. Yet this is the most extensively pernicious of all modes of dishonesty; for that of a private man can only injure the pockets of a few individuals (a great evil, certainly, but light in comparison); while that of a public writer, who has previously taught the 131multitude to respect his talents, perverts what is much more valuable, the mental progress of thousands; misleading, on the one hand, the shallow believers in his sincerity; and on the other, stigmatising the whole literary character in the opinions of all who see through the veil of his venality.

Mr. Feathernest. All this is no reason, sir, why a man of genius should condescend to be a barber.

Mr. Forester. He condescends much more in being a sycophant. The poorest barber in the poorest borough in England, who will not sell his vote, is a much more honourable character in the estimate of moral comparison than the most self-satisfied dealer in courtly poetry, whose well-paid eulogiums of licentiousness and corruption were ever re-echoed by the ‘most sweet voices’ of hireling gazetteers and pensioned reviewers.

The summons to tea and coffee put a stop to the conversation.

CHAPTER XVII MUSIC AND DISCORD

The evenings were beginning to give symptoms of winter, and a large fire was blazing in the library. Mr. Forester took the opportunity of stigmatising the use of sugar, and had the pleasure of observing that the practice of Anthelia in this respect was the same as his own. He mentioned his intention of giving an anti-saccharine festival at Redrose Abbey, and invited all the party at Melincourt to attend it. He observed that his aunt, Miss Evergreen, who would be there at the time, would send an invitation in due form to the ladies, to remove all scruples on the score of propriety; and added, that if he could hope for the attendance of half as much moral feeling as he was sure there would be of beauty and fashion, he should be satisfied that a great step would be made towards accomplishing the object of the Anti-saccharine Society.

The Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub felt extremely indignant at Mr. Forester’s notion ‘of every real enemy to slavery being bound by the strictest moral duty to practical abstinence from the luxury which slavery acquires’; but when he found that the notion was to be developed in the shape of a festival, he determined to suspend his judgment till he had digested the solid arguments that were to be brought forward on the occasion.

Mr. O’Scarum was, as usual, very clamorous for music, and was seconded by the unanimous wish of the company, with which Anthelia readily complied, and sang as follows:

‘I am afraid,’ said Mr. Derrydown, ‘the flower of modern love is neither the rose nor the amaranth, but the chrysanthemum, or gold-flower. If Miss Danaretta and Mr. O’Scarum will accompany me, we will sing a little harmonised ballad, something in point, and rather more conformable to the truth of things.’ Mr. O’Scarum and Miss Danaretta consented, and they accordingly sang the following:—

During this terzetto the Reverend Mr. Portpipe fell asleep, and accompanied the performance with rather a deeper bass than was generally deemed harmonious.

Sir Telegraph Paxarett took Mr. Forester aside, to consult him on the subject of the journey to Onevote.

‘I have asked,’ said he, ‘my aunt and cousin, Mrs. and Miss Pinmoney, to join the party, and have requested them to exert their influence with Miss Melincourt to induce her to accompany them.’

‘That would make it a delightful expedition, indeed,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘if Miss Melincourt could be prevailed on to comply.’

‘Nil desperandum,’ said Sir Telegraph.

The Honourable Mrs. Pinmoney drew Anthelia into a corner, and developed all her eloquence in enforcing the proposition. Miss Danaretta joined in it with great earnestness; 135and they kept up the fire of their importunity till they extorted from Anthelia a promise that she would consider of it.

Mr. Forester took down a splendid edition of Tasso, printed by Bodoni at Parma, and found it ornamented with Anthelia’s drawings. In the magic of her pencil the wild and wonderful scenes of Tasso seemed to live under his eyes: he could not forbear expressing to her the delight he experienced from these new proofs of her sensibility and genius, and entered into a conversation with her concerning her favourite poet, in which the congeniality of their tastes and feelings became more and more manifest to each other.

Mr. Feathernest and Mr. Derrydown got into a hot dispute over Chapman’s Homer and Jeremy Taylor’s Holy Living: Mr. Derrydown maintaining that the ballad metre which Chapman had so judiciously chosen rendered his volume the most divine poem in the world; Mr. Feathernest asserting that Chapman’s verses were mere doggerel: which vile aspersion Mr. Derrydown revenged by depreciating Mr. Feathernest’s favourite Jeremy. Mr. Feathernest said he could expect no better judgment from a man who was mad enough to prefer Chevy Chase to Paradise Lost; and Mr. Derrydown retorted, that it was idle to expect either taste or justice from one who had thought fit to unite in himself two characters so anomalous as those of a poet and a critic, in which duplex capacity he had first deluged the world with torrents of execrable verses, and then written anonymous criticisms to prove them divine. ‘Do you think, sir,’ he continued, ‘that it is possible for the same man to be both Homer and Aristotle? No, sir; but it is very possible to be both Dennis and Colley Cibber, as in the melancholy example before me.’

At this all the blood of the genus irritabile boiled in Mr. Feathernest’s veins, and uplifting the ponderous folio, he seemed inclined to bury his antagonist under Jeremy’s weight of words, by applying them in a tangible shape; but wisely recollecting that this was not the time and place

he contented himself with a point-blank denial of the charge that he wrote critiques on his own works, protesting that all the articles on his poems were written either by his friend Mr. 136Mystic, of Cimmerian Lodge, or by Mr. Vamp, the amiable editor of the Legitimate Review. ‘Yes,’ said Mr. Derrydown, ‘on the “Tickle me, Mr. Hayley” principle; by which a miserable cabal of doggerel rhymesters and worn-out paragraph-mongers of bankrupt gazettes ring the eternal changes of panegyric on each other, and on everything else that is either rich enough to buy their praise, or vile enough to deserve it: like a gang in a country steeple, paid for being a public nuisance, and maintaining that noise is melody.’

Mr. Feathernest on this became perfectly outrageous; and waving Jeremy Taylor in the air, exclaimed, ‘Oh that mine enemy had written a book! Horrible should be the vengeance of the Legitimate Review!’

Mr. Hippy now deemed it expedient to interpose for the restoration of order, and entreated Anthelia to throw in a little musical harmony as a sedative to the ebullitions of a poetical discord. At the sound of the harp the antagonists turned away, the one flourishing his Chapman and the other his Jeremy with looks of lofty defiance.

138

He managed so skilfully that his Lordship became himself the proposer of the scheme.

CHAPTER XVIII THE STRATAGEM

The Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub, who had acquired a great proficiency in the art of hearing without seeming to listen, had overheard Mrs. Pinmoney’s request to Anthelia; and, notwithstanding the young lady’s hesitation, he very much feared she would ultimately comply. He had seen, much against his will, a great congeniality in feelings and opinions between her and Mr. Forester, and had noticed some unconscious external manifestations of the interior mind on both sides, some outward and visible signs of the inward and spiritual sentiment, which convinced him that a more intimate acquaintance with each other would lead them to a conclusion, which, for the reasons we have given in the ninth chapter, he had no wish to see established. After long and mature deliberation, he determined to rouse Lord Anophel to a sense of his danger, and spirit him up to an immediate coup-de-main. He calculated that, as the young Lord was a spoiled child, immoderately vain, passably foolish, and totally unused to contradiction, he should have little difficulty in moulding him to his views. His plan was, that Lord Anophel, with two or three confidential fellows, should lie in ambush for Anthelia in one of her solitary rambles, and convey her to a lonely castle of his Lordship’s on the seacoast, with a view of keeping her in close custody, till fair means or foul should induce her to regain her liberty in the character of Lady Achthar. This was to be Lord Anophel’s view of the subject; but the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub had in the inner cave of his perceptions a very promising image of a different result. As he would have free access to Anthelia in her confinement, he intended to worm himself into her favour, under the cover of friendship and sympathy, with the most 140ardent professions of devotion to her cause and promises of endeavours to effect her emancipation, involving the accomplishment of this object in a multitude of imaginary difficulties, which it should be his professed study to vanquish. He deemed it very probable that, by a skilful adoperation of these means, and by moulding Lord Anophel, at the same time, into a system of conduct as disagreeable as possible to Anthelia, he might himself become the lord and master of the lands and castle of Melincourt, when he would edify the country with the example of his truly orthodox life, faring sumptuously every day, raising the rents of his tenants, turning out all who were in arrear, and occasionally treating the rest with discourses on temperance and charity.

With these ideas in his head, he went in search of Lord Anophel, and proceeding pedetentim, and opening the subject peirastically, he managed so skilfully that his Lordship became himself the proposer of the scheme, with which the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub seemed unwillingly to acquiesce.

Mr. Forester, Mr. Fax, and Sir Oran Haut-ton took leave of the party at Melincourt Castle; the former having arranged with Sir Telegraph Paxarett that he was to call for them at Redrose Abbey in the course of three days, and reiterated his earnest hopes that Anthelia would be persuaded to accompany Mrs. Pinmoney and her beautiful daughter in the expedition to Onevote.

Lord Anophel Achthar and the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub also took leave, as a matter of policy, that their disappearance at the same time with Anthelia might not excite surprise. They pretended a pressing temporary engagement in a distant part of the country, and carried off with them Mr. Feathernest the poet, whom, nevertheless, they did not deem it prudent to let into the secret of their scheme.

She thought there was something peculiar in his look.

The next day Anthelia, still undecided on this subject, wandered alone to the ruined bridge, to contemplate the scene of her former misadventure. As she ascended the hill that bounded the valley of Melincourt, a countryman crossed her path, and touching his hat passed on. She thought there was something peculiar in his look, but had quite forgotten him, when, on looking back as she descended on the other side, she observed him making signs, as if to some one at a distance: she could not, however, consider that they had any relation to her. The day was clear and sunny; and when she entered 143the pine-grove, the gloom of its tufted foliage, with the sunbeams chequering the dark-red soil, formed a grateful contrast to the naked rocks and heathy mountains that lay around it, in the full blaze of daylight. In many parts of the grove was a luxuriant laurel underwood, glittering like silver in the partial sunbeams that penetrated the interstices of the pines. Few scenes in nature have a more mysterious solemnity than such a scene as this. Anthelia paused a moment. She thought she heard a rustling in the laurels, but all was again still. She proceeded; the rustling was renewed. She felt alarmed, yet she knew not why, and reproached herself for such idle and unaccustomed apprehensions. She paused again to listen; the soft tones of a flute sounded from a distance: these gave her confidence, and she again proceeded. She passed by the tuft of laurels in which she had heard the rustling. Suddenly a mantle was thrown over her. She was wrapped in darkness, and felt that she was forcibly seized by several persons, who carried her rapidly along. She screamed, but the mantle was immediately pressed on her mouth, and she was hurried onward. After a time the party stopped: a tumult ensued: she found herself at liberty, and threw the mantle from her head. She was on a road at the verge of the pine-grove: a chaise-and-four was waiting. Two men were running away in the distance: two others, muffled and masked, were rolling on the ground, and roaring for mercy, while Sir Oran Haut-ton was standing over them with a stick,^[48] and treating them as if he were a thresher and they were sheaves of corn. By her side was Mr. Forester, who, taking her hand, assured her that she was in safety, while at the same time he endeavoured to assuage Sir Oran’s wrath, that he might raise and unmask the fallen foes. Sir Oran, however, proceeded in his summary administration of natural justice till he had dispensed what was to his notion a quantum sufficit of the application: then throwing his stick aside, he caught them both up, one under each arm, and climbing with great dexterity a high and precipitous rock, left them perched upon its summit, bringing away their masks in his hand, and making them a profound bow at taking leave.^[49]

144Mr. Forester was anxious to follow them to their aerial seat, that he might ascertain who they were, which Sir Oran’s precipitation had put it out of his power to do; but Anthelia begged him to return with her immediately to the Castle, assuring him that she thought them already sufficiently punished, and had no apprehension that they would feel tempted again to molest her.

Sir Oran now opened the chaise-door, and drew out the postboys by the leg, who, at the beginning of the fray, had concealed themselves from his fury under the seat. Mr. Forester succeeded in rescuing them from Sir Oran, and endeavoured to extract from them information as to their employers: but the boys declared that they knew nothing of them, the chaise having been ordered by a strange man to be in waiting at that place, and the hire paid in advance.

Anthelia, as she walked homeward, leaning on Mr. Forester’s arm, inquired to what happy accident she was indebted for the timely intervention of himself and Sir Oran Haut-ton. Mr. Forester informed her, that having a great wish to visit the scene which had been the means of introducing him to her acquaintance, he had made Sir Oran understand his desire, and they had accordingly set out together, leaving Mr. Fax at Redrose Abbey, deeply engaged in the solution of a problem in political arithmetic.

145

He caught them both up, one under each arm.

CHAPTER XIX THE EXCURSION

Anthelia found, from what Mr. Forester had said, that she had excited a much greater interest in his mind than she had previously supposed; and she did not dissemble to herself that the interest was reciprocal. The occurrence of the morning, by taking the feeling of safety from her solitary walks, and unhinging her long associations with the freedom and security of her native mountains, gave her an inclination to depart for a time at least from Melincourt Castle; and this inclination, combining with the wish to see more of one who appeared to possess so much intellectual superiority to the generality of mankind, rendered her very flexible to Mrs. Pinmoney’s wishes, when that honourable lady renewed her solicitations to her to join the expedition to Onevote. Anthelia, however, desired that Mr. Hippy might be of the party, and that her going in Sir Telegraph’s carriage should not be construed in any degree into a reception of his addresses. The Honourable Mrs. Pinmoney, delighted to carry her point, readily complied with the condition, trusting to the influence of time and intimacy to promote her own wishes and the happiness of her dear nephew.

Mr. Hippy was so overjoyed at the project, that, in the first ebullitions of his transport, meeting Harry Fell on the landing-place, with a packet of medicine from Dr. Killquick, he seized him by the arm, and made him dance a pas de deux: the packet fell to the earth, and Mr. Hippy, as he whirled old Harry round to the tune of La Belle Laitière, danced over that which, but for this timely demolition, might have given his heir an opportunity of dancing over him.

It was accordingly arranged that Sir Telegraph Paxarett, 148with the ladies and Mr. Hippy, should call on the appointed day at Redrose Abbey for Mr. Forester, Mr. Fax, and Sir Oran Haut-ton.

Mr. Derrydown and Mr. O’Scarum were inconsolable on the occasion, notwithstanding Mr. Hippy’s assurance that they should very soon return, and that the hospitality of Melincourt Castle should then be resumed under his supreme jurisdiction. Mr. Derrydown determined to consume the interval at Keswick, in the composition of dismal ballads; and Mr. O’Scarum to proceed to Low-wood Inn, and drown his cares in claret with Major O’Dogskin.

We shall pass over the interval till the arrival of the eventful day on which Mr. Forester, from the windows of Redrose Abbey, watched the approach of Sir Telegraph’s barouche. The party from Melincourt arrived, as had been concerted, to breakfast; after which, they surveyed the Abbey, and perambulated the grounds. Mr. Forester produced the Abbot’s skull,^[50] and took occasion to expatiate very largely on the diminution of the size of mankind; illustrating his theory by quotations and anecdotes from Homer,^[51] Herodotus^[52] Arrian, 149Plutarch, Philostratus, Pausanias, and Solinus Polyhistor. He asked if it were possible that men of such a stature as they have dwindled to in the present age could have erected that 150stupendous monument of human strength, Stonehenge? in the vicinity of which, he said, a body had been dug up, measuring fourteen feet ten inches in length.^[53]

151The barouche bowled off from the Abbey gates, carrying four inside, and eight out; videlicet, the Honourable Mrs. Pinmoney, Miss Danaretta, Mr. Hippy, and Anthelia, inside; Sir Telegraph Paxarett and Sir Oran Haut-ton on the box, the former with his whip, and the latter with his French horn, in the characters of coachman and guard; Mr. Forester and Mr. Fax in the front of the roof; and Sir Telegraph’s two grooms, with Peter Gray and Harry Fell, behind. Sir Telegraph’s coachman, as the inside of the carriage was occupied, had been left at Melincourt.

In addition to Sir Telegraph’s travelling library—(which consisted of a single quarto volume, magnificently bound: videlicet, a Greek Pindar, which Sir Telegraph always carried with him; not that he ever read a page of it, but that he thought such a classical inside passenger would be a perpetual vindication of his tethrippharmatelasipedioploctypophilous 152pursuits), Anthelia and Mr. Forester had taken with them a few of their favourite authors; for, as the ancient and honourable borough of Onevote was situated almost at the extremity of the kingdom, and as Sir Telegraph’s diurnal stages were necessarily limited, they had both conjectured that

might furnish an agreeable evening employment in the dearth of conversation. Anthelia also, in compliance with the general desire, had taken her lyre, by which the reader may understand, if he pleases, the harp-lute-guitar; which, whatever be its merit as an instrument, has so unfortunate an appellation, that we cannot think of dislocating our pages with such a cacophonous compound.

They made but a short stage from Redrose Abbey, and stopped for the first evening at Low-wood Inn, to the great joy of Mr. O’Scarum and Major O’Dogskin. Mr. O’Scarum introduced the Major; and both offered their services to assist Mr. Hippy and Sir Telegraph Paxarett in the council they were holding with the landlady on the eventful subject of dinner. This being arranged, and the hour and minute punctually specified, it was proposed to employ the interval in a little excursion on the lake. The party was distributed in two boats: Sir Telegraph’s grooms rowing the one, and Peter Gray and Harry Fell the other. They rowed to the middle of the lake, and rested on their oars. The sun sank behind the summits of the western mountains: the clouds that, like other mountains, rested motionless above them, crested with the towers and battlements of aerial castles, changed by degrees from fleecy whiteness to the deepest hues of crimson. A solitary cloud, resting on an eastern pinnacle, became tinged with the reflected splendour of the west: the clouds overhead spreading, like a uniform veil of network, through the interstices of which the sky was visible, caught in their turn the radiance, and reflected it on the lake, that lay in its calm expanse like a mirror, imaging with such stillness and accuracy the forms and colours of all around and above it, that it seemed as if the waters were withdrawn by magic, and the boats floated in crimson light between the mountains and the sky.

The whole party was silent, even the Honourable Mrs. 153Pinmoney, till Mr. O’Scarum entreated Anthelia to sing ‘something neat and characteristic; or a harmony now for three voices, would be the killing thing; eh! Major?’—‘Indeed and it would,’ said Major O’Dogskin; ‘there’s something very soft and pathetic in a cool evening on the water, to sit still doing nothing at all but listening to pretty words and tender melodies.’ And lest the sincerity of his opinion should be questioned, he accompanied it with an emphatical oath, to show that he was in earnest; for which the Honourable Mrs. Pinmoney called him to order.

Major O’Dogskin explained.

Anthelia, accompanied by Miss Danaretta and Mr. O’Scarum, sang the following

Sir Oran Haut-ton now produced his flute, and treated the company with a solo. Another pause succeeded. The contemplative silence was broken by Major O’Dogskin, who began to fidget about in the boat, and drawing his watch from his fob held it up to Mr. Hippy, and asked him if he did not think the partridges would be spoiled? ‘To be sure they will,’ said Mr. Hippy, ‘unless we make the best of our way. Cold 154comfort this, after all: sharp air and water;—give me a roaring fire and a six-bottle cooper of claret.’

The oars were dashed into the water, and the fairy reflections of clouds, rocks, woods, and mountains were mingled in the confusion of chaos. The reader will naturally expect that, having two lovers on a lake, we shall not lose the opportunity of throwing the lady into the water, and making the gentleman fish her out; but whether that our Thalia is too veridicous to permit this distortion of facts, or that we think it the more original incident to return them to the shore as dry as they left it, the reader must submit to the disappointment, and be content to see the whole party comfortably seated, without let, hindrance, or molestation, at a very excellent dinner, served up under the judicious inspection of mine hostess of Low-wood.

The heroes and heroines of Homer used to eat and drink all day till the setting sun;^[54] and by dint of industry, contrived to finish that important business by the usual period at which modern beaux and belles begin it—who are, therefore, necessitated, like Penelope, to sit up all night; not, indeed, to destroy the works of the day, for how can nothing be annihilated? This does not apply to all our party, and we hope not to many of our readers.

CHAPTER XX THE SEA-SHORE

They stopped the next evening at a village on the sea-shore. The wind rose in the night, but without rain. Mr. Forester was up before the sun, and descending to the beach, found Anthelia there before him, sitting on a rock, and listening to the dash of the waves, like a Nereid to Triton’s shell.

Mr. Forester. You are an early riser, Miss Melincourt.

Anthelia. I always was so. The morning is the infancy of the day, and, like the infancy of life, has health and bloom, and cheerfulness and purity, in a degree unknown to the busy noon, which is the season of care, or the languid evening, which is the harbinger of repose. Perhaps the song of the nightingale is not in itself less cheerful than that of the lark: it is the season of her song that invests it with the character of melancholy.^[55] It is the same with the associations of infancy: it is all cheerfulness, all hope: its path is on the flowers of an untried world. The daisy has more beauty in the eye of childhood than the rose in that of maturer life. The spring is the infancy of the year: its flowers are the flowers of promise and the darlings of poetry. The autumn, too, has its flowers; but they are little loved, and little praised: for the associations of autumn are not with ideas of cheerfulness, but 156with yellow leaves and hollow winds, heralds of winter and emblems of dissolution.

Mr. Forester. These reflections have more in them of the autumn than of the morning. But the mornings of autumn participate in the character of the season.

Anthelia. They do so; yet even in mists and storms the opening must be always more cheerful than the closing day.

Mr. Forester. But this morning is fine and clear, and the wind blows over the sea. Yet this, to me at least, is not a cheerful scene.

Anthelia. Nor to me. But our long habits of association with the sound of the winds and the waters have given them to us a voice of melancholy majesty: a voice not audible by those little children who are playing yonder on the shore. To them all scenes are cheerful. It is the morning of life: it is infancy that makes them so.

Mr. Forester. Fresh air and liberty are all that is necessary to the happiness of children. In that blissful age ‘when nature’s self is new,’ the bloom of interest and beauty is found alike in every object of perception—in the grass of the meadow, the moss on the rock, and the seaweed on the sand. They find gems and treasures in shells and pebbles; and the gardens of fairyland in the simplest flowers. They have no melancholy associations with autumn or with evening. The falling leaves are their playthings; and the setting sun only tells them that they must go to rest as he does, and that he will light them to their sports in the morning. It is this bloom of novelty, and the pure, unclouded, unvitiated feelings with which it is contemplated, that throw such an unearthly radiance on the scenes of our infancy, however humble in themselves, and give a charm to their recollections which not even Tempe can compensate. It is the force of first impressions. The first meadow in which we gather cowslips, the first stream on which we sail, the first home in which we awake to the sense of human sympathy, have all a peculiar and exclusive charm, which we shall never find again in richer meadows, mightier rivers, and more magnificent dwellings; nor even in themselves, when we revisit them after the lapse of years, and the sad realities of noon have dissipated the illusions of sunrise. It is the same, too, with first love, whatever be the causes that render it unsuccessful: the 159second choice may have just preponderance in the balance of moral estimation; but the object of first affection, of all the perceptions of our being, will be most divested of the attributes of mortality. The magical associations of infancy are revived with double power in the feelings of first love; but when they too have departed, then, indeed, the light of the morning is gone.

Their conversation was interrupted by the appearance of Mr. Hippy.

Anthelia. If this be so, let me never be the object of a second choice: let me never love, or love but once.

Mr. Forester. The object of a second choice you cannot be with any one who will deserve your love; for to have loved any other woman, would show a heart too lightly captivated to be worthy of yours. The only mind that can deserve to love you is one that would never have known love if it never had known you.

Anthelia and Mr. Forester were both so unfashionably sincere, that they would probably, in a very few minutes, have confessed to each other more than they had till that morning, perhaps, confessed to themselves, but that their conversation was interrupted by the appearance of Mr. Hippy fuming for his breakfast, accompanied by Sir Telegraph cracking his whip, and Sir Oran blowing the réveillée on his French horn.

‘So ho!’ exclaimed Sir Telegraph; ‘Achilles and Thetis, I protest, consulting on the sea-shore.’

Anthelia. Do you mean to say, Sir Telegraph, that I am old enough to be Mr. Forester’s mother?

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. No, no; that is no part of the comparison; but we are the ambassadors of Agamemnon (videlicet, Mr. Fax, whom we left very busily arranging the urns, not of lots by the bye, but of tea and coffee); here is old Phoenix on one side of me, and Ajax on the other.

Mr. Forester. And you of course are the wise Ulysses.

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. There the simile fails again. Comparatio non urgenda, as I think Heyne used to say, before I was laughed out of reading at College.

Mr. Forester. You should have found me too, if you call me Achilles, solacing my mind with music, φρενα τερπομενον φορμιγγι λιγειῃ; but, to make amends for the deficiency, you have brought me a musical Ajax.

160Sir Telegraph Paxarett. You have no reason to wish even for the golden lyre of my old friend Pindar himself: you have been listening to the music of the winds and the waters, and to what is more than music, the voice of Miss Melincourt.

Mr. Hippy. And there is a very pretty concert waiting for you at the inn—the tinkling of cups and spoons, and the divine song of the tea-urn.

CHAPTER XXI THE CITY OF NOVOTE

On the evening of the tenth day the barouche rattled triumphantly into the large and populous city of Novote, which was situated at a short distance from the ancient and honourable borough of Onevote. The city contained fifty thousand inhabitants, and had no representative in the Honourable House, the deficiency being virtually supplied by the two members for Onevote; who, having no affairs to attend to for the borough, or rather the burgess, that did return them, were supposed to have more leisure for those of the city which did not; a system somewhat analogous to that which the learned author of Hermes calls a method of supply by negation.

Sir Oran signalised his own entrance by playing on his French horn, See the conquering hero comes! Bells were ringing, ale was flowing, mobs were huzzaing, and it seemed as if the inhabitants of the large and populous city were satisfied of the truth of the admirable doctrine, that the positive representation of one individual is a virtual representation of fifty thousand. They found afterwards that all this festivity had been set in motion by Sir Oran’s brother candidate, Simon Sarcastic, Esq., to whom we shall shortly introduce our readers.

The barouche stopped at the door of a magnificent inn, and the party was welcomed with some scores of bows from the whole corps d’hôtel, with the fat landlady in the van, and Boots in the rear. They were shown into a splendid apartment, a glorious fire was kindled in a minute, and while Mr. Hippy looked over the bill of fare, and followed mine hostess to inspect the state of the larder, Sir Telegraph proceeded to peel, 162and emerged from his four benjamins, like a butterfly from its chrysalis.

After dinner they formed, as usual, a semicircle round the fire, with the table in front supported by Mr. Hippy and Sir Telegraph Paxarett.

‘Now this,’ said Sir Telegraph, rubbing his hands, ‘is what I call devilish comfortable after a cold day’s drive—an excellent inn, a superb fire, charming company, and better wine than has fallen to our lot since we left Melincourt Castle.’

The waiter had picked up from the conversation at dinner that one of the destined members for Onevote was in the company; and communicated this intelligence to Mr. Sarcastic, who was taking his solitary bottle in another apartment. Mr. Sarcastic sent his compliments to Sir Oran Haut-ton, and hoped he would allow his future colleague the honour of being admitted to join his party. Mr. Hippy, Mr. Forester, and Sir Telegraph, undertook to answer for Sir Oran, who was silent on the occasion: Mr. Sarcastic was introduced, and took his seat in the semicircle.

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. Your future colleague, Mr. Sarcastic, is a man of few words; but he will join in a bumper to your better acquaintance. (The collision of glasses ensued between Sir Oran and Mr. Sarcastic.)

Mr. Sarcastic. I am proud of the opportunity of this introduction. The day after to-morrow is fixed for the election. I have made some preparations to give a little éclat to the affair, and have begun by intoxicating half the city of Novote, so that we shall have a great crowd at the scene of election, whom I intend to harangue from the hustings, on the great benefits and blessings of virtual representation.

Mr. Forester. I shall, perhaps, take the opportunity of addressing them also, but with a different view of the subject.

Mr. Sarcastic. Perhaps our views of the subject are not radically different, and the variety is in the mode of treatment. In my ordinary intercourse with the world I reduce practice to theory; it is a habit, I believe, peculiar to myself, and a source of inexhaustible amusement.

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. Fill and explain.

Mr. Sarcastic. Nothing, you well know, is so rare as the coincidence of theory and practice. A man who ‘will go through fire and water to serve a friend’ in words, will not 163give five guineas to save him from famine. A poet will write Odes to Independence, and become the obsequious parasite of any great man who will hire him. A burgess will hold up one hand for purity of election, while the price of his own vote is slily dropped into the other. I need not accumulate instances.

Mr. Forester. You would find it difficult, I fear, to adduce many to the contrary.

Mr. Sarcastic. This then is my system. I ascertain the practice of those I talk to, and present it to them as from myself, in the shape of theory; the consequence of which is, that I am universally stigmatised as a promulgator of rascally doctrines. Thus I said to Sir Oliver Oilcake, ‘When I get into Parliament I intend to make the sale of my vote as notorious as the sun at noonday. I will have no rule of right, but my own pocket. I will support every measure of every administration, even if they ruin half the nation for the purpose of restoring the Great Lama, or of subjecting twenty millions of people to be hanged, drawn, and quartered at the pleasure of the man-milliner of Mahomet’s mother. I will have shiploads of turtle and rivers of Madeira for myself, if I send the whole swinish multitude to draff and husks.’ Sir Oliver flew into a rage, and swore he would hold no further intercourse with a man who maintained such infamous principles.

Mr. Hippy. Pleasant enough, to show a man his own picture, and make him damn the ugly rascal.

Mr. Sarcastic. I said to Miss Pennylove, whom I knew to be laying herself out for a good match, ‘When my daughter becomes of marriageable age, I shall commission Christie to put her up to auction, “the highest bidder to be the buyer; and if any dispute arise between two or more bidders, the lot to be put up again and resold.”’ Miss Pennylove professed herself utterly amazed and indignant that any man, and a father especially, should imagine a scheme so outrageous to the dignity and delicacy of the female mind.

The Honourable Mrs. Pinmoney and Miss Danaretta. A most horrid idea certainly.

Mr. Sarcastic. The fact, my dear ladies, the fact; how stands the fact? Miss Pennylove afterwards married a man old enough to be her grandfather, for no other reason but because he was rich; and broke the heart of a very worthy 164friend of mine, to whom she had been previously engaged, who had no fault but the folly of loving her, and was quite rich enough for all purposes of matrimonial happiness. How the dignity and delicacy of such a person could have been affected, if the preliminary negotiation with her hobbling Strephon had been conducted through the instrumentality of honest Christie’s hammer, I cannot possibly imagine.

Mr. Hippy. Nor I, I must say. All the difference is in the form, and not in the fact. It is a pity that form does not come into fashion; it would save a world of trouble.

Mr. Sarcastic. I irreparably offended the Reverend Doctor Vorax by telling him, that having a nephew, whom I wished to shine in the church, I was on the look-out for a luminous butler, and a cook of solid capacity, under whose joint tuition he might graduate. ‘Who knows,’ said I, ‘but he may immortalise himself at the University, by giving his name to a pudding?’—I lost the acquaintance of Mrs. Cullender, by saying to her, when she had told me a piece of gossip as a very particular secret, that there was nothing so agreeable to me as to be in possession of a secret, for I made a point of telling it to all my acquaintance;

Mrs. Cullender left me in great wrath, protesting she would never again throw away her confidence on so leaky a vessel.

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. Ha! ha! ha! Bravo! Come, a bumper to Mrs. Cullender.

Mr. Sarcastic. With all my heart; and another if you please to Mr. Christopher Corporate, the free, fat, and dependent burgess of Onevote, of which ‘plural unit’ the Honourable Baronet and myself are to be the joint representatives. (Sir Oran Haut-ton bowed.)

Mr. Hippy. And a third, by all means, to his Grace the Duke of Rottenburgh.

Mr. Sarcastic. And a fourth, to crown all, to the blessings of virtual representation, which I shall endeavour to impress on as many of the worthy citizens of Novote as shall think fit 165to be present, the day after to-morrow, at the proceedings of the borough of Onevote.

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. And now for tea and coffee. Touch the bell for the waiter.

The bottles and glasses vanished, and the beautiful array of urns and cups succeeded. Sir Telegraph and Mr. Hippy seceded from the table, and resigned their stations to Mrs. and Miss Pinmoney.

Mr. Forester. Your system is sufficiently amusing, but I much question its utility. The object of moral censure is reformation, and its proper vehicle is plain and fearless sincerity: Verba animi proferre, et vitam impendere vero.

Mr. Sarcastic. I tried that in my youth, when I was troubled with the passion for reforming the world;^[57] of which I have been long cured by the conviction of the inefficacy of moral theory with respect to producing a practical change in the mass of mankind. Custom is the pillar round which opinion twines, and interest is the tie that binds it. It is not by reason that practical change can be effected, but by making a puncture to the quick in the feelings of personal hope and personal fear. The Reformation in England is one of the supposed triumphs of reason. But if the passions of Henry the Eighth had not been interested in that measure, he would as soon have built mosques as pulled down abbeys; and you will observe that, in all cases, reformation never goes as far as reason requires, but just as far as suits the personal interest of those who conduct it. Place Temperance and Bacchus side by side, in an assembly of jolly fellows, and endow the first with the most powerful eloquence that mere reason can give, with the absolute moral force of mathematical demonstration, Bacchus need not take the trouble of refuting one of her arguments; he will only have to say, ‘Come, my boys, here’s Damn Temperance in a bumper,’ and you may rely on the toast being drunk with an unanimous three times three.

(At the sound of the word bumper, with which Captain Hawltaught had made him very familiar, Sir Oran Haut-ton looked round for his glass, but, finding it vanished, comforted himself with a dish of tea from the fair hand of Miss Danaretta, which, as his friend Mr. Forester had interdicted him from the 166use of sugar, he sweetened as well as he could with a copious infusion of cream.)^[58]

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. As an Opposition orator in the Honourable House will bring forward a long detail of unanswerable arguments, without even expecting that they will have the slightest influence on the vote of the majority.

Mr. Sarcastic. A reform of that honourable body, if ever it should take place, will be one of the ‘triumphs of reason.’ But reason will have little to do with it. All that reason can say on the subject has been said for years, by men of all parties—while they were out; but the moment they were in, the moment their own interest came in contact with their own reason, the victory of interest was never for a moment doubtful. While the great fountain of interest, rising in the caverns of borough patronage and ministerial influence, flowed through the whole body of the kingdom in channels of paper-money, and loans, and contracts, and jobs, and places either found or made for the useful dealers in secret services, so long the predominant interests of corruption overpowered the true and permanent interests of the country; but as those channels become dry, and they are becoming so with fearful rapidity, the crew of every boat that is left aground are convinced, not by reason—that they had long heard and despised—but by the unexpected pressure of personal suffering, that they had been going on in the wrong way. Thus the reaction of interest takes place; and when the concentrated interests of thousands, combined by the same pressure of personal suffering, shall have created an independent power, greater than the power of the interest of corruption, then, and not till then, the latter will give way, and this will be called the triumph of reason; though, in truth, like all the changes in human society that have ever taken place from the birthday of the world, it will be only the triumph of one mode of interest over another; but as the triumph in this case will be of the interest of the many over that of the few, it is certainly a consummation devoutly to be wished.

Mr. Forester. If I should admit that ‘the hope of personal advantage, and the dread of personal punishment,’ are the 167only springs that set the mass of mankind in action, the inefficacy of reason, and the inutility of moral theory, will by no means follow from the admission. The progress of truth is slow, but its ultimate triumph is secure; though its immediate effects may be rendered almost imperceptible by the power of habit and interest. If the philosopher cannot reform his own times, he may lay the foundation of amendment in those that follow. Give currency to reason, improve the moral code of society, and the theory of one generation will be the practice of the next. After a certain period of life, and that no very advanced one, men in general become perfectly unpersuadable to all practical purposes. Few philosophers, therefore, I believe, expect to produce much change in the habits of their contemporaries, as Plato proposed to banish from his republic all above the age of ten, and give a good education to the rest.

Mr. Sarcastic. Or, as Heraclitus the Ephesian proposed to his countrymen, that all above the age of fourteen should hang themselves, before he would consent to give laws to the remainder.

CHAPTER XXII THE BOROUGH OF ONEVOTE

The day of election arrived. Mr. Sarcastic’s rumoured preparations, and the excellence of the ale which he had broached in the city of Novote, had given a degree of éclat to the election for the borough of Onevote, which it had never before possessed; the representatives usually sliding into their nomination with the same silence and decorum with which a solitary spinster slides into her pew at Wednesday’s or Friday’s prayers in a country church. The resemblance holds good also in this respect, that, as the curate addresses the solitary maiden with the appellation of dearly beloved brethren, so the representatives always pluralised their solitary elector, by conferring on him the appellation of a respectable body of constituents. Mr. Sarcastic, however, being determined to amuse himself at the expense of this most ‘venerable feature’ in our old constitution, as Lord C. calls a rotten borough, had brought Mr. Christopher Corporate into his views by the adhibition of persuasion in a tangible shape. It was generally known in Novote that something would be going forward at Onevote, though nobody could tell precisely what, except that a long train of brewer’s drays had left the city for the borough, in grand procession, on the preceding day, under the escort of a sworn band of special constables, who were to keep guard over the ale all night. This detachment was soon followed by another, under a similar escort, and with similar injunctions; and it was understood that this second expedition of frothy rhetoric was sent forth under the auspices of Sir Oran Haut-ton, Baronet, the brother candidate of Simon Sarcastic, Esquire, for the representation of the ancient and honourable borough.

169The borough of Onevote stood in the middle of a heath, and consisted of a solitary farm, of which the land was so poor and untractable, that it would not have been worth the while of any human being to cultivate it, had not the Duke of Rottenburgh found it very well worth his to pay his tenant for living there, to keep the honourable borough in existence.

Mr. Sarcastic left the city of Novote some hours before his new acquaintance, to superintend his preparations, followed by crowds of persons of all descriptions, pedestrians and equestrians; old ladies in chariots, and young ladies on donkeys; the farmer on his hunter, and the tailor on his hack; the grocer and his family six in a chaise; the dancing-master in his tilbury; the banker in his tandem; mantua-makers and servant-maids twenty-four in the waggon, fitted up for the occasion with a canopy of evergreens; pastry-cooks, men-milliners, and journeymen tailors, by the stage, running for that day only, six inside and fourteen out; the sallow artisan emerging from the cellar or the furnace, to freshen himself with the pure breezes of Onevote Heath; the bumpkin in his laced boots and Sunday coat, trudging through the dust with his cherry-cheeked lass on his elbow; the gentleman coachman on his box, with his painted charmer by his side; the lean curate on his half-starved Rosinante; the plump bishop setting an example of Christian humility in his carriage and six; the doctor on his white horse, like Death in the Revelation; and the lawyer on his black one, like the devil in the Wild Huntsmen.

Almost in the rear of this motley cavalcade went the barouche of Sir Telegraph Paxarett, and rolled up to the scene of action amidst the shouts of the multitude.

The heath had very much the appearance of a race-ground; with booths and stalls, the voices of pie-men and apple-women, the grinding of barrel organs, the scraping of fiddles, the squeaking of ballad-singers, the chirping of corkscrews, the vociferations of ale-drinkers, the cries of the ‘last dying speeches of desperate malefactors,’ and of ‘The History and Antiquities of the honourable Borough of Onevote, a full and circumstantial account, all in half a sheet, for the price of one halfpenny!’

The hustings were erected in proper form, and immediately opposite to them was an enormous marquee with a small 170opening in front, in which was seated the important person of Mr. Christopher Corporate, with a tankard of ale and a pipe. The ladies remained in the barouche under the care of Sir Telegraph and Mr. Hippy. Mr. Forester, Mr. Fax, and Sir Oran Haut-ton joined Mr. Sarcastic on the hustings.

Mr. Sarcastic stepped forward amidst the shouts of the assembled crowd, and addressed Mr. Christopher Corporate:

‘Free, fat, and dependent burgess of this ancient and honourable borough! I stand forward an unworthy candidate, to be the representative of so important a personage, who comprises in himself a three-hundredth part of the whole elective capacity of this extensive empire. For if the whole population be estimated at eleven millions, with what awe and veneration must I look on one who is, as it were, the abstract and quintessence of thirty-three thousand six hundred and sixty-six people! The voice of Stentor was like the voice of fifty, and the voice of Harry Gill^[59] was like the voice of three; but what are these to the voice of Mr. Christopher Corporate, which gives utterance in one breath to the concentrated power of thirty-three thousand six hundred and sixty-six voices? Of such an one it may indeed be said, that he is himself an host, and that none but himself can be his parallel.

‘Most potent, grave, and reverend signor! it is usual on these occasions to make a great vapouring about honour and conscience; but as those words are now generally acknowledged to be utterly destitute of meaning, I have too much respect for your understanding to say anything about them. The monied interest, Mr. Corporate, for which you are as illustrious as the sun at noonday, is the great point of connection and sympathy between us; and no circumstances can throw a wet blanket on the ardour of our reciprocal esteem, while the fundamental feature of our mutual interests presents itself to us in so tangible a shape.^[60] How high a value I set upon your voice, you may judge by the price I have paid for half of it; which, indeed, deeply lodged as my feelings are in my pocket, I yet see no reason to regret, since you will thus confer on mine a transmutable and marketable value which I trust by proper management will leave me no loser by the bargain.’

172

‘We shall always be deeply attentive to your interests.’

173‘Huzza!’ said Mr. Corporate.

‘People of the city of Novote!’ proceeded Mr. Sarcastic, ‘some of you, I am informed, consider yourselves aggrieved, that while your large and populous city has no share whatever in the formation of the Honourable House, the plural unity of Mr. Christopher Corporate should be invested with the privilege of double representation. But, gentlemen, representation is of two kinds, actual and virtual; an important distinction, and of great political consequence.

‘The Honourable Baronet and myself, being the actual representatives of the fat burgess of Onevote, shall be the virtual representatives of the worthy citizens of Novote; and you may rely on it, gentlemen (with his hand on his heart), we shall always be deeply attentive to your interests, when they happen, as no doubt they sometimes will, to be perfectly compatible with our own.

‘A member of Parliament, gentlemen, to speak to you in your own phrase, is a sort of staple commodity, manufactured for home consumption. Much has been said of the improvement of machinery in the present age, by which one man may do the work of a dozen. If this be admirable, and admirable it is acknowledged to be by all the civilised world, how much more admirable is the improvement of political machinery, by which one man does the work of thirty thousand! I am sure I need not say another word to a great manufacturing population like the inhabitants of the city of Novote, to convince them of the beauty and utility of this most luminous arrangement.

‘The duty of a representative of the people, whether actual or virtual, is simply to tax. Now this important branch of public business is much more easily and expeditiously transacted by the means of virtual, than it possibly could be by that of actual representation. For when the minister draws up his scheme of ways and means, he will do it with much more celerity and confidence, when he knows that the propitious countenance of virtual representation will never cease to smile upon him as long as he continues in place, than if he had to encounter the doubtful aspect of actual representation, which might, perhaps, look black on some of his favourite projects, thereby greatly impeding the distribution of secret service money at home, and placing foreign legitimacy in a very awkward predicament. 174The carriage of the state would then be like a chariot in a forest, turning to the left for a troublesome thorn, and to the right for a sturdy oak; whereas it now rolls forward like the car of Juggernaut over the plain crushing whatever offers to impede its way.

‘The constitution says that no man shall be taxed but by his own consent; a very plausible theory, gentlemen, but not reducible to practice. Who will apply a lancet to his own arm, and bleed himself? Very few, you acknowledge. Who then, a fortiori, would apply a lancet to his own pocket, and draw off what is dearer to him than his blood—his money? Fewer still, of course; I humbly opine, none.—What then remains but to appoint a royal college of state surgeons, who may operate on the patient according to their views of his case? Taxation is political phlebotomy: the Honourable House is, figuratively speaking, a royal college of state surgeons. A good surgeon must have firm nerves and a steady hand; and, perhaps, the less feeling the better. Now, it is manifest that, as all feeling is founded on sympathy, the fewer constituents a representative has, the less must be his sympathy with the public, and the less, of course as is desirable, his feeling for his patient—the people:—who, therefore, with so much sang froid, can phlebotomise the nation, as the representative of half an elector?

‘Gentlemen, as long as a full Gazette is pleasant to the quidnunc; as long as an empty purse is delightful to the spendthrift; as long as the cry of Question is a satisfactory answer to an argument, and to outvote reason is to refute it; as long as the way to pay old debts is to incur new ones of five times the amount; as long as the grand recipes of political health and longevity are bleeding and hot water—so long must you rejoice in the privileges of Mr. Christopher Corporate, so long must you acknowledge from the very bottom of your pockets the benefits and blessings of virtual representation.’

This harangue was received with great applause, acclamations rent the air, and ale flowed in torrents. Mr. Forester declined speaking, and the party on the hustings proceeded to business. Sir Oran Haut-ton, Baronet, and Simon Sarcastic, Esquire, were nominated in form. Mr. Christopher Corporate held up both his hands, with his tankard in one, and his pipe in the other; and neither poll nor scrutiny being demanded, the 177two candidates were pronounced duly elected as representatives of the ancient and honourable borough of Onevote.

‘Hail, plural unit!’

The shouts were renewed; the ale flowed rapidly; the pipe and tankard of Mr. Corporate were replenished. Sir Oran Haut-ton, Baronet, M.P., bowed gracefully to the people with his hand on his heart.

A cry was now raised of ‘Chair ’em! chair ’em!’ when Mr. Sarcastic again stepped forward.

‘Gentlemen,’ said he, ‘a slight difficulty opposes itself to the honour you would confer on us. The members should, according to form, be chaired by their electors; and how can one elector, great man as he is, chair two representatives? But to obviate this dilemma as well as circumstances admit, I move that the “large body corporate of one” whom the Honourable Baronet and myself have the honour to represent, do resolve himself into a committee.’

He had no sooner spoken, than the marquee opened, and a number of bulky personages, all in dress, aspect, size, and figure, very exact resemblances of Mr. Christopher Corporate, each with his pipe and his tankard, emerged into daylight, who, encircling their venerable prototype, lifted their tankards high in air, and pronounced with Stentorian symphony, ‘Hail, plural unit!’ Then, after a simultaneous draught, throwing away their pipes and tankards, for which the mob immediately scrambled, they raised on high two magnificent chairs, and prepared to carry into effect the last ceremony of the election. The party on the hustings descended. Mr. Sarcastic stepped into his chair; and his part of the procession, headed by Mr. Christopher Corporate, and surrounded by a multiform and many-coloured crowd, moved slowly off towards the city of Novote, amidst the undistinguishable clamour of multitudinous voices.

Sir Oran Haut-ton watched the progress of his precursor, as his chair rolled and swayed over the sea of heads, like a boat with one mast on a stormy ocean; and the more he watched the agitation of its movements, the more his countenance gave indications of strong dislike to the process; so that when his seat in the second chair was offered to him, he with a very polite bow declined the honour. The party that was to carry him, thinking that his repugnance arose entirely from diffidence, proceeded with gentle force to overcome his scruples, 178when not precisely penetrating their motives, and indignant at this attempt to violate the freedom of the natural man, he seized a stick from a sturdy farmer at his elbow, and began to lay about him with great vigour and effect. Those who escaped being knocked down by the first sweep of his weapon ran away with all their might, but were soon checked by the pressure of the crowd, who, hearing the noise of conflict, and impatient to ascertain the cause, bore down from all points upon a common centre, and formed a circumferential pressure that effectually prohibited the egress of those within; and they, in their turn, in their eagerness to escape from Sir Oran (who like Artegall’s Iron Man, or like Ajax among the Trojans, or like Rodomonte in Paris, or like Orlando among the soldiers of Agramant, kept clearing for himself an ample space in the midst of the encircling crowd), waged desperate conflict with those without; so that from the equal and opposite action of the centripetal and centrifugal forces, resulted a stationary combat, raging between the circumferences of two concentric circles, with barbaric dissonance of deadly feud, and infinite variety of oath and execration, till Sir Oran, charging desperately along one of the radii, fought a free passage through all opposition; and rushing to the barouche of Sir Telegraph Paxarett, sprang to his old station on the box, from whence he shook his sapling at the foe with looks of mortal defiance. Mr. Forester, who had been forcibly parted from him at the commencement of the strife, had been all anxiety on his account, mounted with great alacrity to his station on the roof; the rest of the party was already seated; the Honourable Mrs. Pinmoney, half-fainting with terror, earnestly entreated Sir Telegraph to fly: Sir Telegraph cracked his whip, the horses sprang forward like racers, the wheels went round like the wheels of a firework. The tumult of battle, lessening as they receded, came wafted to them on the wings of the wind; for the flame of discord having been once kindled, was not extinguished by the departure of its first flambeau—Sir Oran; but war raged wide and far, here in the thickest mass of central fight, there in the light skirmishing of flying detachments. The hustings were demolished, and the beams and planks turned into offensive weapons: the booths were torn to pieces, and the canvas converted into flags floating over the heads of magnanimous heroes that rushed to revenge they 181knew not what, in deadly battle with they knew not whom. The stalls and barrows were upset; and the pears, apples, oranges, mutton-pies, and masses of gingerbread, flew like missiles of fate in all directions. The sanctum sanctorum of the ale was broken into, and the guardians of the Hesperian liquor were put to ignominious rout. Hats and wigs were hurled into the air, never to return to the heads from which they had suffered violent divorce. The collision of sticks, the ringing of empty ale-casks, the shrieks of women, and the vociferations of combatants, mingled in one deepening and indescribable tumult; till at length, everything else being levelled with the heath, they turned the mingled torrent of their wrath on the cottage of Mr. Corporate, to which they triumphantly set fire, and danced round the blaze like a rabble of village boys round the effigy of the immortal Guy. In a few minutes the ancient and honourable borough of Onevote was reduced to ashes; but we have the satisfaction to state that it was rebuilt a few days afterwards, at the joint expense of its two representatives, and His Grace the Duke of Rottenburgh.

Began to lay about him with great vigour and effect.

CHAPTER XXIII THE COUNCIL OF WAR

The compassionate reader will perhaps sympathise in our anxiety to take one peep at Lord Anophel Achthar and the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub, whom we left perched on the summit of the rock where Sir Oran had placed them, looking at each other as ruefully as Hudibras and Ralpho in their ‘wooden bastile,’ and falling by degrees into as knotty an argument, the quaeritur of which was, how to descend from their elevation—an exploit which to them seemed replete with danger and difficulty. Lord Anophel, having, for the first time in his life, been made acquainted with the salutary effects of manual discipline, sate boiling with wrath and revenge; while the Rev. Mr. Grovelgrub, who in his youthful days had been beaten black and blue in the capacity of fag (a practice which reflects so much honour on our public seminaries), bore the infliction with more humility.

Lord Anophel Achthar (rubbing his shoulder). This is all your doing, Grovelgrub—all your fault, curse me!

The Rev. Mr. Grovelgrub. Oh, my Lord! my intention was good, though the catastrophe is ill. The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.

Lord Anophel Achthar. But the battle was to the strong in this instance, Grovelgrub, curse me! though from the speed with which you began to run off on the first alarm, it was no fault of yours that the race was not to the swift.

The Rev. Mr. Grovelgrub. I must do your Lordship the justice to say, that you too started with a degree of celerity highly creditable to your capacity of natural locomotion; and if that ugly monster, the dumb Baronet, had not knocked us both down in the incipiency of our progression——

183

Perched on the summit of the rock.

185Lord Anophel Achthar. We should have escaped as our two rascals did, who shall bitterly rue their dereliction. But as to the dumb Baronet, who has treated me with gross impertinence on various occasions, I shall certainly call him out, to give me the satisfaction of a gentleman.

The Rev. Mr. Grovelgrub. Oh, my Lord.

Lord Anophel Achthar. One of us must perish, Grovelgrub, ‘pon honour. Death or revenge! We’re blown, Grovelgrub. He took off our masks; and though he can’t speak, he can write, no doubt, and read too, as I shall try with a challenge.

The Rev. Mr. Grovelgrub. Can’t speak, my Lord, is by no means clear. Won’t speak, perhaps; none are so dumb as those who won’t speak. Don’t you think, my Lord, there was a sort of melancholy about him—a kind of sullenness? Crossed in love, I suspect. People crossed in love, Saint Chrysostom says, lose their voice.

Lord Anophel Achthar. Then I wish you were crossed in love, Grovelgrub, with all my heart.

The Rev. Mr. Grovelgrub. Nay, my Lord, what so sweet in calamity as the voice of the spiritual comforter? All shall be well yet, my Lord. I have an infallible project hatching here; Miss Melincourt shall be ensconced in Alga Castle, and then the day is our own.

Lord Anophel Achthar. Grovelgrub, you know the old receipt for stewing a carp: ‘First, catch your carp.’

The Rev. Mr. Grovelgrub. Your Lordship is pleased to be facetious; but if the carp be not caught, let me be devilled like a biscuit after the second bottle, or a turkey’s leg at a twelfth night supper. The carp shall be caught.

Lord Anophel Achthar. Well, Grovelgrub, only take notice that I’ll not come again within ten miles of dummy.

The Rev. Mr. Grovelgrub. You may rely upon it, my Lord, I shall always know my distance from the Honourable Baronet. But my plot is a good plot, and cannot fail of success.

Lord Anophel Achthar. You are a very skilful contriver, to be sure; this is your contrivance, our perch on the top of 186this rock. Now contrive, if you can, some way of getting to the bottom of it.

The Rev. Mr. Grovelgrub. My Lord, there is a passage in Aeschylus very applicable to our situation, where the chorus wishes to be in precisely such a place.

Lord Anophel Achthar. Then I wish the chorus were here instead of us, Grovelgrub, with all my soul.

The Rev. Mr. Grovelgrub. It is a very fine passage, my Lord, and worth your attention: the rock is described as

That is, my Lord, a precipitous rock, inaccessible to the goat—not to be pointed at (from having, as I take it, its head in the clouds), where there is the loneliness of mind, and the solitude of desolation, where the vulture has its nest, and the precipice testifies a deep and headlong fall.

Lord Anophel Achthar. I’ll tell you what, Grovelgrub; if ever I catch you quoting Aeschylus again, I’ll cashier you from your tutorship—that’s positive.

The Rev. Mr. Grovelgrub. I am dumb, my Lord.

Lord Anophel Achthar. Think, I tell you, of some way of getting down.

The Rev. Mr. Grovelgrub. Nothing more easy, my Lord.

Lord Anophel Achthar. Plummet fashion, I suppose?

The Rev. Mr. Grovelgrub. Why, as your Lordship seems to hint, that certainly is the most expeditious method; but not, I think, in all points of view, the most advisable. On this side of the rock is a dumetum: we can descend, I think, by the help of the roots and shoots. O dear! I shall be like Virgil’s goat: I shall be seen from far to hang from the bushy rock dumosa pendere procul de rupe videbor!

Lord Anophel Achthar.—Confound your Greek and Latin! you know there is nothing I hate so much; and I thought you did so too, or you have finished your education to no purpose at college.

The Rev. Mr. Grovelgrub. I do, my Lord; I hate them mortally, more than anything except philosophy and the dumb Baronet.

187Lord Anophel Achthar proceeded to examine the side of the rock to which the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub had called his attention; and as it seemed the most practicable mode of descent, it was resolved to submit to necessity, and make a valorous effort to regain the valley; Lord Anophel, however, insisting on the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub leading the way. The reverend gentleman seized with one hand the stem of a hazel, with the other the branch of an ash; set one foot on the root of an oak, and deliberately lowered the other in search of a resting-place; which having found on a projecting point of stone, he cautiously disengaged one hand and the upper foot, for which in turn he sought and found a firm appui; and thus by little and little he vanished among the boughs from the sight of Lord Anophel, who proceeded with great circumspection to follow his example.

Lord Anophel had descended about one third of the elevation, comforting his ear with the rustling of the boughs below, that announced the safe progress of his reverend precursor; when suddenly, as he was shifting his right hand, a treacherous twig in his left gave way, and he fell with fearful lapse from bush to bush, till, striking violently on a bough to which the unfortunate divine was appended, it broke beneath the shock, and down they went, crashing through the bushes together. Lord Anophel was soon wedged into the middle of a large holly, from which he heard the intermitted sound of the boughs as they broke and were broken by the fall of his companion; till at length they ceased, and fearful silence succeeded. He then extricated himself from the holly as well as he could, at the expense of a scratched face, and lowered himself down without further accident. On reaching the bottom, he had the pleasure to find the reverend gentleman in safety, sitting on a fragment of stone, and rubbing his shin. ‘Come, Grovelgrub,’ said Lord Anophel, ‘let us make the best of our way to the nearest inn.’—‘And pour oil and wine into our wounds,’ pursued the reverend gentleman, ‘and over our Madeira and walnuts lay a more hopeful scheme for our next campaign.’

CHAPTER XXIV THE BAROUCHE

The morning after the election Sir Oran Haut-ton and his party took leave of Mr. Sarcastic, Mr. Forester having previously obtained from him a promise to be present at the anti-saccharine fête. The barouche left the city of Novote, decorated with ribands; Sir Oran Haut-ton was loudly cheered by the populace, and not least by those whom he had most severely beaten; the secret of which was, that a double allowance of ale had been distributed over-night, to wash away the effects of his indiscretion; it having been ascertained by political economists, that a practical appeal either to the palm or the palate will induce the friends of things as they are to submit to anything.

Autumn was now touching on the confines of winter, but the day was mild and sunny. Sir Telegraph asked Mr. Forester if he did not think the mode of locomotion very agreeable.

Mr. Forester. That I never denied; all I question is, the right of any individual to indulge himself in it.

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. Surely a man has a right to do what he pleases with his own money.

Mr. Forester. A legal right, certainly, not a moral one. The possession of power does not justify its abuse. The quantity of money in a nation, the quantity of food, and the number of animals that consume that food, maintain a triangular harmony, of which, in all the fluctuations of time and circumstance, the proportions are always the same. You must consider, therefore, that for every horse you keep for pleasure, you pass sentence of non-existence on two human beings.

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. Really, Forester, you are a very 189singular fellow. I should not much mind what you say, if you had not such a strange habit of practising what you preach; a thing quite unprecedented, and, egad, preposterous. I cannot think where you got it: I am sure you did not learn it at college.

Mr. Fax. In a political light, every object of perception may be resolved into one of these three heads: the food consumed—the consumers—and money. In this point of view all convertible property that does not eat and drink is money. Diamonds are money. When a man changes a bank-note for a diamond, he merely changes one sort of money for another, differing only in the facility of circulation and the stability of value. None of the produce of the earth is wasted by the permutation.

Mr. Forester. The most pernicious species of luxury, therefore, is that which applies the fruits of the earth to any other purposes than those of human subsistence. All luxury is indeed pernicious, because its infallible tendency is to enervate the few and enslave the many; but luxury, which, in addition to this evil tendency, destroys the fruits of the earth in the wantonness of idle ostentation, and thereby prevents the existence of so many human beings as the quantity of food so destroyed would maintain, is marked by criminality of a much deeper dye.

Mr. Fax. At the same time you must consider that, in respect of population, the great desideratum is not number, but quality. If the whole surface of this country were divided into gardens, and in every garden were a cottage, and in every cottage a family living entirely on potatoes, the number of its human inhabitants would be much greater than at present; but where would be the spirit of commercial enterprise, the researches of science, the exalted pursuits of philosophical leisure, the communication with distant lands, and all that variety of human life and intercourse, which is now so beautiful and interesting? Above all, where would be the refuge of such a population in times of the slightest defalcation? Now, the waste of plenty is the resource of scarcity. The canal that does not overflow in the season of rain will not be navigable in the season of drought. The rich have been often ready, in days of emergency, to lay their superfluities aside; but when the fruits of the earth are applied in plentiful or even ordinary 190seasons, to the utmost possibility of human subsistence, the days of deficiency in their produce must be days of inevitable famine.

Mr. Forester. What then will you say of those who in times of actual famine persevere in their old course, in the wanton waste of luxury?

Mr. Fax. Truly I have nothing to say for them but that they know not what they do.

Mr. Forester. If, in any form of human society, any one human being dies of hunger, while another wastes or consumes in the wantonness of vanity as much as would have preserved his existence, I hold that second man guilty of the death of the first.

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. Surely, Forester, you are not serious.

Mr. Forester. Indeed I am. What would you think of a family of four persons, two of whom should not be contented with consuming their own share of diurnal provision but, having adventitiously the pre-eminence of physical power, should either throw the share of the two others into the fire, or stew it down into a condiment for their own?

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. I should think it very abominable, certainly.

Mr. Forester. Yet what is human society but one great family? What is moral duty, but that precise line of conduct which tends to promote the greatest degree of general happiness? And is not this duty most flagrantly violated, when one man appropriates to himself the subsistence of twelve; while, perhaps in his immediate neighbourhood, eleven of his fellow-beings are dying with hunger? I have seen such a man walk with a demure face into church, as regularly as if the Sunday bell had been a portion of his corporeal mechanism, to hear a bloated and beneficed sensualist hold forth on the text of Do as ye would be done by, or Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me: whereas, if he had wished his theory to coincide with his practice he would have chosen for his text, Behold a man gluttonous, and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners:^[62] and when the duty of words was over, the auditor and his ghostly adviser, issuing forth together, have committed poor 191Lazarus to the care of Providence, and proceeded to feast in the lordly mansion, like Dives that lived in purple.^[63]

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. Well, Forester, there I escape your shaft; for I have ‘forgotten what the inside of a church is made of,’ since they made me go to chapel twice a day at college. But go on, and don’t spare me.

Mr. Fax. Let us suppose that ten thousand quarters of wheat will maintain ten thousand persons during any given portion of time: if the ten thousand quarters be reduced to five, or if the ten thousand persons be increased to twenty, the consequence will be immediate and general distress: yet if the proportions be equally distributed, as in a ship on short allowance, the general perception of necessity and justice will preserve general patience and mutual goodwill; but let the first supposition remain unaltered, let there be ten thousand quarters of wheat, which shall be full allowance for ten thousand people; then, if four thousand persons take to themselves the portion of eight thousand, and leave to the remaining six thousand the portion of two (and this I fear is even an inadequate picture of the common practice of the world), these latter will be in a much worse condition on the last than on the first supposition; while the habit of selfish prodigality deadening all good feelings and extinguishing all sympathy on the one hand, and the habit of debasement and suffering combining with the inevitable sense of oppression and injustice on the other, will produce an action and reaction of open, unblushing, cold-hearted pride, and servile, inefficient, ill-disguised resentment, which no philanthropist can contemplate without dismay.

Mr. Forester. What then will be the case if the same 192disproportionate division continues by regular gradations through the remaining six thousand, till the lowest thousand receive such a fractional pittance as will scarcely keep life together? If any of these perish with hunger, what are they but the victims of the first four thousand, who appropriated more to themselves than either nature required or justice allowed? This, whatever the temporisers with the world may say of it, I have no hesitation in pronouncing to be wickedness of the most atrocious kind; and this I make no doubt was the sense of the founder of the Christian religion when he said, It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Mr. Fax. You must beware of the chimaera of an agrarian law, the revolutionary doctrine of an equality of possession; which can never be possible in practice, till the whole constitution of human nature be changed.

Mr. Forester. I am no revolutionist. I am no advocate for violent and arbitrary changes in the state of society. I care not in what proportions property is divided (though I think there are certain limits which it ought never to pass, and approve the wisdom of the American laws in restricting the fortune of a private citizen to twenty thousand a year), provided the rich can be made to know that they are but the stewards of the poor, that they are not to be the monopolisers of solitary spoil, but the distributors of general possession; that they are responsible for that distribution to every principle of general justice, to every tie of moral obligation, to every feeling of human sympathy; that they are bound to cultivate simple habits in themselves, and to encourage most such arts of industry and peace as are most compatible with the health and liberty of others.

Mr. Fax. On this principle, then, any species of luxury in the artificial adornment of persons and dwellings, which condemns the artificer to a life of pain and sickness in the alternations of the furnace and the cellar, is more baleful and more criminal than even that which, consuming in idle prodigality the fruits of the earth, destroys altogether, in the proportion of its waste, so much of the possibility of human existence: since it is better not to be than to be in misery.

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. That is some consolation for me, as it shows me that there are others worse than myself; for I 193really thought you were going between you to prove me one of the greatest rogues in England. But seriously, Forester, you think the keeping of pleasure-horses, for the reasons you have given, a selfish and criminal species of luxury?

Mr. Forester. I am so far persuaded of it, that I keep none myself.

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. But are not these four very beautiful creatures? Would you wish not to see them in existence, living as they do a very happy and easy kind of life?

Mr. Forester. That I am disposed to question, when I compare the wild horse, in his native deserts, in the full enjoyment of health and liberty, and all the energies of his nature, with those docked, cropped, curtailed, mutilated animals, pent more than half their lives in the close confinement of a stable, never let out but to run in trammels, subject, like their tyrant man, to an infinite variety of diseases, the produce of civilisation and unnatural life, and tortured every now and then by some villain of a farrier, who has no more feeling for them than a West Indian planter has for his slaves; and when you consider, too, the fate of the most cherished of the species, racers and hunters, instruments and often victims of sports equally foolish and cruel, you will acknowledge that the life of the civilised horse is not an enviable destiny.

Mr. Fax. Horses are noble and useful animals; but as they must necessarily exist in great numbers for almost every purpose of human intercourse and business, it is desirable that none should be kept for purposes of mere idleness and ostentation. A pleasure-horse is a sort of four-footed sinecurist.

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. Not quite so mischievous as a two-footed one.

Mr. Forester. Perhaps not: but the latter has always a large retinue of the former, and therefore the evil is doubled.

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. Upon my word, Forester, you will almost talk me out of my barouche, and then what will become of me? What shall I do to kill time?

Mr. Forester. Read ancient books, the only source of permanent happiness left in this degenerate world.

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. Read ancient books! That may be very good advice to some people: but you forget that I have been at college, and finished my education. By the bye I 194have one inside, a portable advocate for my proceedings, no less a personage than old Pindar.

Mr. Forester. Pindar has written very fine odes on driving, as Anacreon has done on drinking; but the first can no more be adduced to prove the morality of the whip, than the second to demonstrate the virtue of intemperance. Besides, as to the mental tendency and emulative associations of the pursuit itself, no comparison can be instituted between the charioteers of the Olympic games and those of our turnpike roads; for the former were the emulators of heroes and demigods, and the latter of grooms and mail coachmen.

Sir Telegraph Paxarett. Well, Forester, as I recall to mind the various subjects against which I have heard you declaim, I will make you a promise. When ecclesiastical dignitaries imitate the temperance and humility of the founder of that religion by which they feed and flourish: when the man in place acts on the principles which he professed while he was out: when borough electors will not sell their suffrage, nor their representatives their votes: when poets are not to be hired for the maintenance of any opinion: when learned divines can afford to have a conscience: when universities are not a hundred years in knowledge behind all the rest of the world: when young ladies speak as they think, and when those who shudder at a tale of the horrors of slavery will deprive their own palates of a sweet taste, for the purpose of contributing all in their power to its extinction:—why then, Forester, I will lay down my barouche.

CHAPTER XXV THE WALK

They were to pass, in their return, through an estate belonging to Mr. Forester, for the purpose of taking up his aunt Miss Evergreen, who was to accompany them to Redrose Abbey. On arriving at an inn on the nearest point of the great road, Mr. Forester told Sir Telegraph that, from the arrangements he had made, it was impossible for any carriage to enter his estate, as he had taken every precaution for preserving the simplicity of his tenants from the contagious exhibitions and examples of luxury. ‘This road,’ said he, ‘is only accessible to pedestrians and equestrians: I have no wish to exclude the visits of laudable curiosity, but there is nothing I so much dread and deprecate as the intrusion of those heartless fops, who take their fashionable autumnal tour, to gape at rocks and waterfalls, for which they have neither eyes nor ears, and to pervert the feelings and habits of the once simple dwellers of the mountains.^[64] Nature seems to have 196raised her mountain-barriers for the purpose of rescuing a few favoured mortals from the vortex of that torrent of physical and moral degeneracy which seems to threaten nothing less than the extermination of the human species:^[65] but in vain, while the annual opening of its sluices lets out a side stream of the worst specimens of what is called refined society, to inundate the mountain valleys with the corruptions of metropolitan folly. Thus innocence, and health, and simplicity of life and manners, are banished from their last retirement, and nowhere more lamentably so than in the romantic scenery of the northern lakes, where every wonder of nature is made an article of trade, where the cataracts are locked up, and the echoes are sold: so that even the rustic character of that ill-fated region is condemned to participate in the moral stigma which must dwell indelibly on its poetical name.’

The party alighted, and a consultation being held, it was resolved to walk to the village in a body, the Honourable Mrs. Pinmoney lifting her hands and eyes in profound astonishment at Mr. Forester’s old-fashioned notions.

197They followed a narrow winding path through rocky and sylvan hills. They walked in straggling parties of ones, twos, and threes. Mr. Forester and Anthelia went first. Sir Oran Haut-ton followed alone, playing a pensive tune on his flute. Sir Telegraph Paxarett walked between his aunt and cousin, the Honourable Mrs. Pinmoney and Miss Danaretta. Mr. Hippy, in a melancholy vein, brought up the rear with Mr. Fax. A very beautiful child which had sat on the old gentleman’s knee, at the inn where they breakfasted, had thrown him, not for the first time on a similar occasion, into a fit of dismal repentance that he had not one of his own: he stalked along accordingly, with a most ruefully lengthened aspect, uttering every now and then a deep-drawn sigh. Mr. Fax in philosophic sympathy determined to console him, by pointing out to him the true nature and tendency of the principle of population, and the enormous evils resulting from the multiplication of the human species: observing that the only true criterion of the happiness of a nation was to be found in the number of its old maids and bachelors, whom he venerated as the sources and symbols of prosperity and peace. Poor Mr. Hippy walked on sighing and groaning, deaf as the adder to the voice of the charmer: for, in spite of all the eloquence of the antipopulationist, the image of the beautiful child which he had danced on his knee continued to haunt his imagination, and threatened him with the blue devils for the rest of the day.

‘I see,’ said Sir Telegraph to Mrs. Pinmoney, ‘my hopes are at an end. Forester is the happy man, though I am by no means sure that he knows it himself.’

‘Impossible,’ said Mrs. Pinmoney; ‘Anthelia may be amused a little while with his rhapsodies, but nothing more, believe me. The man is out of his mind. Do you know, I heard him say the other day, “that not a shilling of his property was his own, that it was a portion of the general possession of human society, of which the distribution had devolved upon him: and that for the mode of that distribution he was most rigidly responsible to the principles of immutable justice.” If such a mode of talking——’

‘And acting too,’ said Sir Telegraph; ‘for I assure you he quadrates his practice as nearly as he can to his theory.’

‘Monstrous!’ said Mrs. Pinmoney, ‘what would our reverend friend, poor dear Doctor Bosky, say to him? But if 198such a way of talking and acting be the way to win a young heiress, I shall think the whole world is turned topsy-turvy.’

‘Your remark would be just,’ said Sir Telegraph, ‘were that young heiress any other than Anthelia Melincourt.’

‘Well,’ said Mrs. Pinmoney, ‘there are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far——’

‘That I deny,’ said Sir Telegraph.

‘Who will gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar,’ proceeded Mrs. Pinmoney.

‘That will not do,’ said Sir Telegraph: ‘I shall resign with the best grace I can muster to a more favoured candidate, but I shall never think of another choice.’

‘Twelve months hence,’ said Mrs. Pinmoney, ‘you will tell another tale. In the meantime you will not die of despair as long as there is a good turnpike road and a pipe of Madeira in England.’

‘You will find,’ said Mr. Forester to Anthelia, ‘in the little valley we are about to enter, a few specimens of that simple and natural life which approaches as nearly as the present state of things will admit to my ideas of the habits and manners of the primaeval agriculturists, or the fathers of the Roman republic. You will think perhaps of Fabricius under his oak, of Curius in his cottage, of Regulus, when he solicited recall from the command of an army, because the man whom he had intrusted, in his absence, with the cultivation of his field and garden had run away with his spade and rake, by which his wife and children were left without support; and when the senate decreed that the implements should be replaced, and a man provided at the public expense to maintain the consul’s family, by cultivating his fields in his absence. Then poverty was as honourable as it is now disgraceful: then the same public respect was given to him who could most simplify his habits and manners that is now paid to those who can make the most shameless parade of wanton and selfish prodigality. Those days are past for ever: but it is something in the present time to resuscitate their memory, to call up even the shadow of the reflection of republican Rome—Rome the seat of glory and of virtue, if ever they had one on earth.^[66]

199‘You excite my curiosity very highly,’ said Anthelia, ‘for, from the time when I read

how much have I regretted never to discover in the actual inhabitants of the country the realisation of the pictures of Spenser and Tasso!’

‘The palaces,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘that everywhere rise around them to shame the meanness of their humble dwellings, the great roads that everywhere intersect their valleys, and bring them continually in contact with the overflowing corruption of cities, the devastating monopoly of large farms, that has almost swept the race of cottagers from the face of the earth, sending the parents to the workhouse or the army, and the children to perish like untimely blossoms in the blighting imprisonment of manufactories, have combined to diminish the numbers and deteriorate the character of the inhabitants of the country; but whatever be the increasing ravages of the Triad of Mammon, avarice, luxury, and disease, they will always be the last involved in the vortex of progressive degeneracy, realising the beautiful fiction of ancient poetry, that, when primaeval Justice departed from the earth, her last steps were among the cultivators of the fields.’^[67]

CHAPTER XXVI THE COTTAGERS

The valley expanded into a spacious amphitheatre, with a beautiful stream winding among pastoral meadows, which, as well as the surrounding hills, were studded with cottages, each with its own trees, its little garden, and its farm. Sir Telegraph was astonished to find so many human dwellings in a space that, on the modern tactics of rural economy, appeared only sufficient for three or four moderate farms; and Mr. Fax looked perfectly aghast to perceive the principle of population in such a fearful state of activity. Mrs. and Miss Pinmoney expressed their surprise at not seeing a single lordly mansion asserting its regal pre-eminence over the dwellings of its miserable vassals; while the voices of the children at play served only to condense the vapours that obfuscated the imagination of poor Mr. Hippy. Anthelia, as their path wound among the cottages, was more and more delighted with the neatness and comfort of the dwellings, the exquisite order of the gardens, the ingenuous air of happiness and liberty that characterised the simple inhabitants, and the health and beauty of the little rosy children that were sporting in the fields. Mr. Forester had been recognised from a distance. The cottagers ran out in all directions to welcome him: the valley and the hills seemed starting into life, as men, women, and children poured down, as with one impulse, on the path of his approach, while some hastened to the residence of Miss Evergreen, ambitious of being the first to announce to her the arrival of her nephew. Miss Evergreen came forward to meet the party, surrounded by a rustic crowd of both sexes, and of every age, from the old man leaning on his stick, to the little child that could just run alone, but had 201already learnt to attach something magical to the sound of the name of Forester.

The first idea they entertained at the sight of his party was that he was married, and had brought his bride to visit his little colony; and Anthelia was somewhat disconcerted by the benedictions that were poured upon her under this impression of the warm-hearted rustics.

They entered Miss Evergreen’s cottage, which was small, but in a style of beautiful simplicity. Anthelia was much pleased with her countenance and manners; for Miss Evergreen was an amiable and intelligent woman, and was single, not from having wanted lovers, but from being of that order of minds which can love but once.

Mr. Fax took occasion, during a temporary absence of Miss Evergreen from the apartment in which they were taking refreshment, to say he was happy to have seen so amiable a specimen of that injured and calumniated class of human beings commonly called old maids, who were often so from possessing in too high a degree the qualities most conducive to domestic happiness; for it might naturally be imagined that the least refined and delicate minds would be the soonest satisfied in the choice of a partner, and the most ready to repair the loss of a first love by the substitution of a second. This might have led to a discussion, but Miss Evergreen’s re-entrance prevented it. They now strolled out among the cottages in detached parties and in different directions. Mr. Fax attached himself to Mr. Hippy and Miss Evergreen. Anthelia and Mr. Forester went their own way. She was above the little affectation of feeling her dignity offended, as our female novel-writers express it, by the notions which the peasants had formed respecting her. ‘You see,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘I have endeavoured as much as possible to recall the images of better times, when the country was well peopled, from the farms being small, and cultivated chiefly by cottagers who lived in what was in Scotland called a cottar town.^[68] Now you may go over vast tracts of country without seeing anything like an old English Cottage, to say nothing of the fearful difference which has been caused in the interior of the few that remain by the pressure of exorbitant taxation, of which the real, though not the nominal burden, always falls most heavily 202on the labouring classes, backed by that canker at the heart of national prosperity, the imaginary riches of paper-credit, of which the means are delusion, the progress monopoly, and the ultimate effect the extinction of the best portion of national population, a healthy and industrious peasantry. Large farms bring more rent to the landlord, and therefore landlords in general make no scruple to increase their rents by depopulating their estates,^[69] though Anthelia Melincourt will not comprehend the mental principle in which such feelings originate.’

‘Is it possible,’ said Anthelia, ‘that you, so young as you are, can have created such a scene as this?’

‘My father,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘began what I merely perpetuate. He estimated his riches, not by the amount of rent his estate produced, but the number of simple and happy beings it maintained. He divided it into little farms of such a size as were sufficient, even in indifferent seasons, to produce rather more than the necessities of their cultivators required. So that all these cottagers are rich, according to the definition of Socrates;^[70] for they have at all times a little more than they actually need, a subsidium for age or sickness, or any accidental necessity.’

They entered several of the cottages, and found in them all the same traces of comfort and content, and the same images of the better days of England: the clean-tiled floor, the polished beechen table, the tea-cups on the chimney, the dresser with its glittering dishes, the old woman with her spinning-wheel by the fire, and the old man with his little grandson in the garden, giving him his first lessons in the use of the spade, the good wife busy in her domestic arrangements, and the pot boiling on the fire for the return of her husband from his labour in the field.

‘My father,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘began what I merely perpetuate.’

‘Is it not astonishing,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘that there should be any who think, as I know many do, the number of cottagers on their land a grievance, and desire to be quit of them,^[71] and have no feeling of remorse in allotting to one solitary family as much extent of cultivated land as was ploughed by the whole Roman people in the days of Cincinnatus?^[72] The three great 205points of every political system are the health, the morals, and the number of the people. Without health and morals the people cannot be happy; but without numbers they cannot be a great and powerful nation, nor even exist for any considerable time.^[73] And by numbers I do not mean the inhabitants of the cities, the sordid and sickly victims of commerce, and the effeminate and enervated slaves of luxury; but in estimating the power and the riches of a country, I take my only criterion from its agricultural population.’

CHAPTER XXVII THE ANTI-SACCHARINE FÊTE

Miss Evergreen accompanied them in their return, to preside at the anti-saccharine fête. Mr. Hippy was turned out to make room for her in the barouche, and took his seat on the roof with Messieurs Forester and Fax. Anthelia no longer deemed it necessary to keep a guard over her heart: the bud of mutual affection between herself and Mr. Forester, both being, as they were, perfectly free and perfectly ingenuous, was rapidly expanding into the full bloom of happiness: they dreamed not that evil was near to check, if not to wither it.

The whole party was prevailed on by Miss Evergreen to be her guests at Redrose Abbey till after the anti-saccharine fête, which very shortly took place, and was attended by the principal members of the Anti-saccharine Society, and by an illustrious assemblage from near and from far: amongst the rest by our old acquaintance, Mr. Derrydown, Mr. O’Scarum, Major O’Dogskin, Mr. Sarcastic, the Reverend Mr. Portpipe, and Mr. Feathernest the poet, who brought with him his friend Mr. Vamp the reviewer. Lord Anophel Achthar and the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub deemed it not expedient to join the party, but ensconced themselves in Alga Castle, studying michin malicho, which means mischief.

The anti-saccharine fête commenced with a splendid dinner, as Mr. Forester thought to make luxury on this occasion subservient to morality, by showing what culinary art could effect without the intervention of West Indian produce; and the preparers of the feast, under the superintendence of Miss Evergreen, had succeeded so well, that the company testified very general satisfaction, except that a worthy Alderman and Baronet from London (who had been studying the picturesque at Low-wood Inn, and had given several manifestations of 207exquisite taste that had completely won the hearts of Mr. O’Scarum and Major O’Dogskin) having just helped himself to a slice of venison, fell back aghast against the back of his chair, and dropped the knife and fork from his nerveless hands, on finding that currant-jelly was prohibited: but being recovered by an application of the Honourable Mrs. Pinmoney’s vinaigrette, he proceeded to revenge himself on a very fine pheasant, which he washed down with floods of Madeira, being never at a loss for some one to take wine with him, as he had the good fortune to sit opposite to the Reverend Mr. Portpipe, who was toujours prêt on the occasion, and a coup-d’œil between them arranged the whole preliminary of the compotatory ceremonial.

After dinner Mr. Forester addressed the company. They had seen, he said, that culinary luxury could be carried to a great degree of refinement without the intervention of West Indian produce: and though he himself deprecated luxury altogether, yet he would waive that point for the present, and concede a certain degree of it to those who fancied they could not do without it, if they would only in return make so very slight a concession to philanthropy, to justice, to liberty, to every feeling of human sympathy, as to abstain from an indulgence which was obtained by the most atrocious violation of them all, an indulgence of which the foundations were tyranny, robbery, and murder, and every form of evil, anguish, and oppression, at which humanity shudders; all which were comprehended in the single name of Slavery. ‘Sugar,’ said he, ‘is economically superfluous, nay, worse than superfluous: in the middling classes of life it is a formidable addition to the expenses of a large family, and for no benefit, for no addition to the stock of domestic comfort, which is often sacrificed in more essential points to this frivolous and wanton indulgence. It is physically pernicious, as its destruction of the teeth, and its effects on the health of children much pampered with sweetmeats, sufficiently demonstrate. It is morally atrocious, from being the primary cause of the most complicated corporeal suffering and the most abject mental degradation that ever outraged the form and polluted the spirit of man. It is politically abominable, for covering with every variety of wretchedness some of the fairest portions of the earth, which, if the inhabitants of free countries could be persuaded to 208abstain from sugar till it were sent to them by free men, might soon become the abodes of happiness and liberty. Slaves cannot breathe in the air of England: ‘They touch our country and their fetters fall.’ Who is there among you that is not proud of this distinction?—Yet this is not enough: the produce of the labour of slavery should be banished from our shores. Not anything, not an atom of anything, should enter an Englishman’s dwelling, on which the Genius of Liberty had not set his seal. What would become of slavery if there were no consumers of its produce? Yet I have seen a party of pretended philanthropists sitting round a tea-table, and while they dropped the sugar into their cups repeat some tale of the sufferings of a slave, and execrate the colonial planters, who are but their caterers and stewards—the obsequious ministers of their unfeeling sensuality! O my fair countrywomen! you who have such tender hearts, such affectionate spirits, such amiable and delicate feelings, do you consider the mass of mischief and cruelty to which you contribute, nay, of which you are among the primary causes, when you indulge yourselves in so paltry, so contemptible a gratification as results from the use of sugar? while to abstain from it entirely is a privation so trivial, that it is most wonderful to think that Justice and Charity should have such a boon to beg from Beauty in the name of the blood and the tears of human beings. Be not deterred by the idea that you will have few companions by the better way: so much the rather should it be strictly followed by amiable and benevolent minds.^[74] Secure to yourselves at least the delightful consciousness of reflecting that you are in no way whatever accomplices in the cruelty and crime of slavery, and accomplices in it you certainly are, nay, its very original springs, as long as you are receivers and consumers of its iniquitous acquisitions.’

‘I will answer you, Mr. Forester,’ said Mr. Sarcastic, ‘for myself and the rest of the company. You shock our feelings excessively by calling us the primary causes of slavery; and there are very few among us who have not shuddered at the tales of West Indian cruelty. I assure you we are very liberal of theoretical sympathy; but as to practical abstinence 209from the use of sugar, do you consider what it is you require? Do you consider how very agreeable to us is the sensation of sweetness in our palates? Do you suppose we would give up that sensation because human creatures of the same flesh and blood as ourselves are oppressed and enslaved, and flogged and tortured, to procure it for us? Do you consider that Custom^[75] is the great lord and master of our conduct? And 210do you suppose that any feeling of pity, and sympathy, and charity, and benevolence, and justice, will overcome the power of Custom, more especially where any pleasure of sense is attached to his dominion? In appealing to our pockets, indeed, you touched us to the quick: you aimed your eloquence at our weak side—you hit us in the vulnerable point; but if it should appear that in this particular we really might save our money, yet being expended in a matter of personal and sensual gratification, it is not to be supposed so completely lost and wasted as it would be if it were given either to a friend or a stranger in distress. I will admit, however, that you have touched our feelings a little, but this disagreeable impression will soon wear off: with some of us it will last as long as pity for a starving beggar, and with others as long as grief for the death of a friend; and I find, on a very accurate average calculation, that the duration of the former may be considered to be at least three minutes, and that of the latter at most ten days.

‘Mr. Sarcastic,’ said Anthelia, ‘you do not render justice to the feelings of the company; nor is human nature so selfish and perverted as you seem to consider it. Though there are undoubtedly many who sacrifice the general happiness of humankind to their own selfish gratification, yet even these, I am willing to believe, err not in cruelty but in ignorance, from not seeing the consequences of their own actions; but it is not by persuading them that all the world is as bad as themselves, that you will give them clearer views and better feelings. Many are the modes of evil—many the scenes of human suffering; but if the general condition of man is ever to be ameliorated, it can only be through the medium of BELIEF IN HUMAN VIRTUE.’

‘Well, Forester,’ said Sir Telegraph, ‘if you wish to increase the numbers of the Anti-saccharine Society, set me down for one.’

‘Remember,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘by enrolling your name among us you pledge yourself to perpetual abstinence from West Indian produce.’

‘I am aware of it,’ said Sir Telegraph, ‘and you shall find me zealous in the cause.’

The fat Alderman cried out about the ruin of commerce, and Mr. Vamp was very hot on the subject of the revenue. 211The question was warmly canvassed, and many of the party who had not been quite persuaded by what Mr. Forester had said in behalf of the anti-saccharine system, were perfectly convinced in its favour when they had heard what Mr. Vamp and the fat Alderman had to say against it; and the consequence was, that, in spite of Mr. Sarcastic’s opinion of the general selfishness of mankind, the numbers of the Anti-saccharine Society were very considerably augmented.

‘You see,’ said Mr. Fax to Mr. Sarcastic, ‘the efficacy of associated sympathies. It is but to give an impulse of cooperation to any good and generous feeling, and its progressive accumulation, like that of an Alpine avalanche, though but a snowball at the summit, becomes a mountain in the valley.’

CHAPTER XXVIII THE CHESS DANCE

The dinner was followed by a ball, for the opening of which Sir Telegraph Paxarett, who officiated as master of the ceremonies, had devised a fanciful scheme, and had procured for the purpose a number of appropriate masquerade dresses. An extensive area in the middle of the ballroom was chalked out into sixty-four squares of alternate white and red, in lines of eight squares each. Sir Telegraph, while the rest of the company was sipping, not without many wry faces, their anti-saccharine tea, called out into another apartment the gentlemen whom he had fixed on to perform in his little ballet; and Miss Evergreen at the same time withdrew with the intended female performers. Sir Telegraph now invested Mr. Hippy with the dignity of White King, Major O’Dogskin with that of Black King, and the Reverend Mr. Portpipe with that of White Bishop, which the latter hailed as a favourable omen, not precisely comprehending what was going forward. As the reverend gentleman was the only one of his cloth in the company, Sir Telegraph was under the necessity of appointing three lay Bishops, whom he fixed on in the persons of two country squires, Mr. Hermitage and Mr. Heeltap, and of the fat Alderman already mentioned, Sir Gregory Greenmould. Sir Telegraph himself, Mr. O’Scarum, Mr. Derrydown, and Mr. Sarcastic, were the Knights: and the Rooks were Mr. Feathernest the poet; Mr. Paperstamp, another variety of the same genus, chiefly remarkable for an affected infantine lisp in his speech, and for always wearing waistcoats of a duffel gray; Mr. Vamp the reviewer; and Mr. Killthedead, from Frogmarsh Hall, a great compounder of narcotics, under the denomination of Battles, for he never heard of a deadly field, especially if 215dotage and superstition, to which he was very partial, gained the advantage over generosity and talent, both of which he abhorred, but immediately seizing his goosequill and foolscap,

The company was sipping, not without many wry faces, their anti-saccharine tea.

Mr. Feathernest was a little nettled on being told that he was to be the King’s Rook, but smoothed his wrinkled brow on being assured that no mauvaise plaisanterie was intended.

The Kings were accordingly crowned, and attired in regal robes. The Reverend Mr. Portpipe and his three brother Bishops were arrayed in full canonicals. The Knights were equipped in their white and black armour, with sword, and dazzling helm, and nodding crest. The Rooks were enveloped in a sort of mural robe, with a headpiece formed on the model of that which occurs in the ancient figures of Cybele; and thus attired they bore a very striking resemblance to the walking wall in Pyramus and Thisbe.

The Kings now led the way to the ballroom, and the two beautiful Queens, Miss Danaretta Contantina Pinmoney and Miss Celandina Paperstamp, each with eight beautiful nymphs, arrayed for the mimic field in light Amazonian dresses, white and black, did such instant execution among the hearts of the young gentlemen present, that they might be said to have ‘fought and conquered ere a sword was drawn.’

They now proceeded to their stations on their respective squares: but before we describe their manœuvres we will recapitulate the

Mr. Hippy took his station on a black square, near the centre of one of the extreme lines, and Major O’Dogskin on an opposite white square of the parallel extreme. The Queens, who were to command in chief, stood on the left of the Kings: the Bishops were posted to the right and left of their respective sovereigns; the Knights next to the Bishops; the corners were occupied by the Rooks. The two lines in front of these principal personages were occupied by the Nymphs;—a space of four lines of eight squares each being left between the opposite parties for the field of action.

The array was now complete, with the exception of the Reverend Mr. Portpipe, who being called by Miss Danaretta to take his place at the right hand of Mr. Hippy, and perceiving that he should be necessitated, in his character of Bishop, to take a very active part in the diversion, began to exclaim with great vehemence, Nolo episcopari! which is probably the only occasion on which these words were ever used with sincerity. But Mr. O’Scarum, in his capacity of White Knight, pounced on the reluctant divine, and placing him between himself and Mr. Hippy, stood by him with his sword drawn, as if to prevent his escape; then clapping a sword into the hand of the reverend gentleman, exhorted him to conduct himself in a manner becoming an efficient member of the true church militant.

Lots were then cast for the privilege of attack; and the chance falling on Miss Danaretta, the music struck up the tune of The Triumph, and the whole of the white party began dancing, with their faces towards the King, performing at the same time various manœuvres of the sword exercise, with appropriate pantomimic gestures, expressive of their entire 217devotion to His Majesty’s service, and their desire to be immediately sent forward on active duty. In vain did the Reverend Mr. Portpipe remonstrate with Mr. O’Scarum that his dancing days were over: the inexorable Knight compelled him to caper and flourish his sword, ‘till the toil-drops fell from his brows like rain.’ Sir Gregory Greenmould did his best on the occasion, and danced like an elephant in black drapery; but Miss Danaretta and her eight lovely Nymphs rescued the exertions of the male performers from too critical observation. King Hippy received the proffered service of his army with truly royal condescension. Miss Danaretta waved her sword with inimitable grace, and made a sign to the damsel in front of the King to advance two squares. The same manœuvres now took place on the black side; and Miss Celandina sent forward the Nymph in front of Major O’Dogskin to obstruct the further progress of the white damsel. The dancing now recommenced on the white side, and Miss Danaretta ordered out the Reverend Mr. Portpipe to occupy the fourth square in front of Squire Heeltap. The reverend gentleman rolled forward with great alacrity, in the secret hope that he should very soon be taken prisoner, and put hors de combat for the rest of the evening. Squire Hermitage was detached by Miss Celandina on a similar service; and these two episcopal heroes being thus brought together in the centre of the field, entered, like Glaucus and Diomede, into a friendly parle, in the course of which the words Claret and Burgundy were repeatedly overheard. The music frequently varied as in a pantomime, according to circumstances: the manœuvres were always directed by the waving of the sword of the Queen, and were always preceded by the dancing of the whole party, in the manner we have mentioned, which continued ad libitum, till she had decided on her movement. The Nymph in front of Sir Gregory Greenmould advanced one square. Mr. Sarcastic stepped forward to the third square of Squire Hermitage. Miss Danaretta’s Nymph advanced two squares, and being immediately taken prisoner by the Nymph of Major O’Dogskin, conceded her place with a graceful bow, and retired from the field. The Nymph in front of Sir Gregory Greenmould avenged the fate of her companion; and Mr. Hippy’s Nymph withdrew in a similar manner. Squire Hermitage was compelled to cut short his conversation with Mr. Portpipe, 218and retire to the third square in front of Mr. Derrydown. Sir Telegraph skipped into the place which Sir Gregory Greenmould’s Nymph had last forsaken. Mr. Killthedead danced into the deserted quarters of Squire Hermitage, and Major O’Dogskin swept round him with a minuet step into those of Mr. Sarcastic. To carry on the detail would require more time than we can spare, and, perhaps, more patience than our readers possess. The Reverend Mr. Portpipe saw his party fall around him, one by one, and survived against his will to the close of the contest. Miss Danaretta and Miss Celandina moved like light over the squares, and Fortune alternately smiled and frowned on their respective banners, till the heavy mural artillery of Mr. Vamp being brought to bear on Mr. Paperstamp, who fancied himself a tower of strength, the latter was overthrown and carried off the field. Mr. Feathernest avenged his fate on the embattled front of Mr. Killthedead, and fell himself beneath the sword of Mr. Sarcastic. Squire Heeltap was taken off by the Reverend Mr. Portpipe, who begged his courteous prisoner to walk to the sideboard and bring him a glass of Madeira; for Homer, he said, was very orthodox in his opinion that wine was a great refresher in the toils of war.^[76]

The changeful scene concluded by Miss Danaretta, with the aid of Sir Telegraph and the Reverend Mr. Portpipe, hemming Major O’Dogskin into a corner, where he was reduced to an incapacity of locomotion; on which the Major bowed and made the best of his way to the sideboard, followed by the reverend gentleman, who, after joining the Major in a pacific libation, threw himself into an arm-chair, and slept very comfortably till the annunciation of supper.

Waltzes, quadrilles, and country dances followed in succession, and, with the exception of the interval of supper, in which Miss Evergreen developed all the treasures of anti-saccharine taste, were kept up with great spirit till the rising of the sun.

Anthelia, who of course did not join in the former, expressed to Mr. Forester her astonishment to see waltzing in Redrose Abbey. ‘I did not dream of such a thing,’ said Mr. Forester; ‘but I left the whole arrangement of the ball to Sir Telegraph, and I suppose he deemed it incumbent on him to consult the general taste of the young ladies. Even I, young as I am, can 219remember the time when there was no point of resemblance between an English girl in a private ballroom and a French figurante in a theatrical ballet; but waltzing and Parisian drapery have levelled the distinction, and the only criterion of the difference is the place of the exhibition. Thus every succeeding year witnesses some new inroad on the simple manners of our ancestors; some importation of continental vice and folly; some unnatural fretwork of tinsel and frippery on the old Doric column of the domestic virtues of England. An Englishman in stays, and an Englishwoman waltzing in treble-flounced short petticoats, are anomalies so monstrous, that till they actually existed, they never entered the most ominous visions of the speculators on progressive degeneracy. What would our Alfred, what would our third Edward, what would our Milton, and Hampden, and Sidney, what would the barons of Runnymead have thought, if the voice of prophecy had denounced to them a period, when the perfection of accomplishment in the daughters of England would be found in the dress, manner, and action of the dancing girls of Paris?’

The supper, of course, did not pass off without songs; and among them Anthelia sang the following, which recalled to Mr. Forester their conversation on the sea-shore.

CHAPTER XXIX THE DISAPPEARANCE

The morning after the fête Anthelia and her party returned to Melincourt. Before they departed she conversed a few minutes alone with Mr. Forester in his library. What was said on this occasion we cannot precisely report; but it seemed to be generally suspected that Mr. Hippy’s authority would soon be at an end, and that the services of the Reverend Mr. Portpipe would be required in the old chapel of Melincourt Castle, which, we are sorry to say, had fallen for some years past very much into disuse, being never opened but on occasions of birth, marriage, and death in the family; and these occasions, as our readers are aware, had not of late been very numerous.

The course of mutual love between Anthelia and Mr. Forester was as smooth as the gliding of a skiff down a stream, through the flowery meadows of June: and if matters were not quite definitely settled between them, yet, as Mr. Forester was shortly to be a visitor at the Castle, there was a very apparent probability that their intercourse would terminate in that grand climax and finale of all romantic adventure—marriage.

After the departure of the ladies, Mr. Forester observed with concern that his friend Sir Oran’s natural melancholy was visibly increased, and Mr. Fax was of opinion that he was smitten with the tender passion: but whether for Miss Melincourt, Mrs. Pinmoney, or Miss Danaretta, it was not so easy to determine. But Sir Oran grew more and more fond of solitude, and passed the greater part of the day in the woods, though it was now the reign of the gloomy November, which, however, accorded with the moody temper of his spirit; and he often went without his breakfast, though he always 223came home to dinner. His perpetual companion was his flute, with which he made sad response to the wintry wind.

Mr. Fax was of opinion that he was smitten.

Mr. Forester and Mr. Fax were one morning consulting on the means to be adopted for diverting Sir Oran’s melancholy, when Sir Telegraph Paxarett drove up furiously to the door—sprang from the box—and rushed into the apartment with the intelligence that Anthelia had disappeared. No one had seen her since the hour of breakfast on the preceding day. Mr. Hippy, Mr. Derrydown, Mr. O’Scarum, and Major O’Dogskin were scouring the country in all directions in search of her.

Mr. Forester determined not to rest night or day till he had discovered Anthelia. Sir Telegraph drove him, with Mr. Fax and Sir Oran, to the nearest inn, where leaving Sir Telegraph to pursue another track, they took a chaise-and-four, and posted over the country in all directions, day after day, without finding any clue to her retreat. Mr. Forester had no doubt that this adventure was connected with that which we have detailed in the eighteenth chapter; but his ignorance of the actors on that occasion prevented his deriving any light from the coincidence. At length, having investigated in vain all the main and cross roads for fifty miles round Melincourt, Mr. Fax was of opinion that she could not have passed so far along any of them, being conveyed, as no doubt she was, against her will, without leaving some trace of her course, which their indefatigable inquiries must have discovered. He therefore advised that they should discontinue their system of posting, and take a thorough pedestrian perlustration of all the most bye and unfrequented paths of the whole mountain-district, in some secluded part of which he had a strong presentiment she would be found. This plan was adopted; but the season was unfavourable to its expeditious accomplishment; and they could sometimes make but little progress in a day, being often compelled to turn aside from the wilder tracks, in search of a town or village, for the purposes of refreshment or rest:—there being this remarkable difference between the lovers of the days of chivalry and those of modern times, that the former could pass a week or two in a desert or a forest, without meat, drink, or shelter—a very useful art for all travellers, whether lovers or not, which these degenerate days have unfortunately lost.

224They arrived in the evening of the first day of their pedestrianism at a little inn among the mountains. They were informed they could have no beds; and that the only parlour was occupied by two gentlemen, who meant to sit up all night, and would, perhaps, have no objection to their joining the party. A message being sent in, an affirmative answer was very politely returned; and on entering the apartment they discovered Mr. O’Scarum and Major O’Dogskin engaged in a deep discussion over a large jug of wine.

‘Troth, now,’ said Mr. O’Scarum, ‘and this is a merry meeting, sure enough, though it’s on a dismal occasion, for it’s Miss Melincourt you’re looking for, as we are too, though you have most cause, Mr. Forester; for I understand you are to be the happy man. Troth, and I did not know so much when I came to your fête, or, perhaps, I should have been for arguing the point of a prior claim (as far as my own consent was concerned) over a bit of neat turf, twelve yards long; but Major O’Dogskin tells me, that by getting muzzy, and so I did, sure enough, on your old Madeira, and rare stuff it is, by my conscience, when Miss Melincourt was in your house, I have sanctioned the matter, and there’s an end of it: but, by my soul, I did not mean to have been cut out quietly: and the Major says, too, you’re too good a fellow to be kilt, and that’s true enough: so I’ll keep my ammunition for other friends; and here’s to you and Miss Melincourt, and a happy meeting to you both, and the devil take him that parts you, says Harum O’Scarum.’—‘And so says Dermot O’Dogskin,’ said the Major. ‘And my friend O’Scarum and myself will ride about till we get news of her, for we don’t mind a little hardship.—You shall be wanting some dinner, joys, and there’s nothing but fat bacon and potatoes; but we have made a shift with it, and then here is the very creature itself, old sherry, my jewels! troth, and how did we come home by it, think you? I know what it is to pass a night in a little inn in the hills, and you don’t find Major O’Dogskin turning out of the main road, without giving his man a couple of kegs of wine just to balance the back of his saddle. Sherry’s a good traveller, and will stand a little shaking; and what would one do without it in such a place as this, where it is water in the desert, and manna in the wilderness?’

Mr. Forester thanked them very warmly for their good 225wishes and active exertions. The humble dinner of himself and his party was soon despatched; after which, the Major placed the two little kegs on the table and said, ‘They were both filled to-day; so, you see, there is no lack of the good creature to keep us all alive till morning, and then we shall part again in search of Miss Melincourt, the jewel! for there is not such another on the face of the earth. Och!’ continued the Major, as he poured the wine from one of the kegs into a brown jug; for the house could not afford them a decanter, and some little ale tumblers supplied the place of wine-glasses,—‘Och! the ould jug that never held anything better than sour ale: how proud he must feel of being filled to the brim with sparkling sherry, for the first and last time in the course of his life!’

CHAPTER XXX THE PAPER-MILL

Taking leave of Mr. O’Scarum and Major O’Dogskin, they continued their wandering as choice or chance directed: sometimes penetrating into the most sequestered valleys; sometimes returning into the principal roads, and investigating the most populous districts. Passing through the town of Gullgudgeon, they found an immense crowd assembled in a state of extreme confusion, exhibiting every symptom of hurry, anxiety, astonishment, and dismay. They stopped to inquire the cause of the tumult, and found it to proceed from the sudden explosion of a paper-mill, in other words, the stoppage of the country bank of Messieurs Smokeshadow, Airbubble, Hopthetwig, and Company. Farmers, bumpkins, artisans, mechanics, tradesmen of all descriptions, the innkeeper, the lawyer, the doctor, and the parson; soldiers from the adjoining barracks, and fishermen from the neighbouring coast, with their shrill-voiced and masculine wives, rolled in one mass, like a stormy wave, around a little shop, of which the shutters were closed, with the word BANK in golden letters over the door, and a large board on the central shutter, notifying that ‘Messieurs Smokeshadow, Airbubble, Hopthetwig, and Company had found themselves under the disagreeable necessity of suspending their payments’; in plain English, had found it expedient to fly by night, leaving all the machinery of their mill, and all the treasures of their mine, that is to say, several reams of paper, half a dozen account-books, a desk, a joint-stool, and inkstand, a bunch of quills, and a copper-plate, to satisfy the claims of the distracted multitude, who were shoaling in from all quarters, with promises to pay, of the said Smokeshadow, 227Airbubble, Hopthetwig, and Company, to the amount of a hundred thousand pounds.

Mr. Fax addressed himself for an explanation of particulars to a plump and portly divine, who was standing at a little distance from the rest of the crowd, and whose countenance exhibited no symptoms of the rage, grief, and despair which were depicted on the physiognomies of his dearly beloved brethren of the town of Gullgudgeon.

‘You seem, sir,’ said Mr. Fax, ‘to bear the general calamity with Christian resignation.’

‘I do, sir,’ said the reverend gentleman, ‘and for a very orthodox reason—I have none of their notes—not I. I was obliged to take them now and then against my will, but I always sent them off to town, and got cash for them directly.’

‘You mean to say,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘you got a Threadneedle Street note for them.’

‘To be sure, sir,’ said the divine, ‘and that is the same thing as cash. There is a Jacobin rascal in this town, who says it is a bad sign when the children die before the parent, and that a day of reckoning must come sooner or later for the old lady as well as for her daughters; but myself and my brother magistrates have taken measures for him, and shall soon make the town of Gullgudgeon too hot to hold him, as sure as my name is Peppertoast.’

‘You seriously think, sir,’ said Mr. Fax, ‘that his opinion is false?’

‘Sir,’ said the reverend gentleman, somewhat nettled, ‘I do not know what right any one can have to ask a man of my cloth what he seriously thinks, when all that the world has to do with is what he seriously says.’

‘Then you seriously say it, sir?’ said Mr. Fax.

‘I do, sir,’ said the divine; ‘and for this very orthodox reason, that the system of paper-money is inseparably interwoven with the present order of things, and the present order of things I have made up my mind to stick by, precisely as long as it lasts.’

‘And no longer?’ said Mr. Fax.

‘I am no fool, sir,’ said the divine.

‘But, sir,’ said Mr. Fax, ‘as you seem to have perceived the instability of what is called (like lucus a non lucendo) the firm of Smokeshadow, Airbubble, Hopthetwig, and Company, 228why did not you warn your flock of the impending danger?’

‘Sir,’ said the reverend gentleman, ‘I dined every week with one of the partners.’

Mr. Forester took notice of an elderly woman who was sitting with a small handful of dirty paper, weeping bitterly on the step of a door. ‘Forgive my intrusion,’ said he; ‘I need not ask you why you weep; the cause is in your hand.’—‘Ah, sir!’ said the poor woman, who could hardly speak for sobbing, ‘all the savings of twenty years taken from me in a moment; and my poor boy, when he comes home from sea——’ She could say no more: grief choked her utterance.

‘Good God!’ said Mr. Fax, ‘did you lay by your savings in country paper?’

‘O sir!’ said the poor woman, ‘how was I to know that one piece of paper was not as good as another? And everybody said that the firm of Smokeshadow, Airbubble, Hopthetwig, and Company was as good as the Bank of England.’ She then unfolded one of the promises to pay, and fell to weeping more bitterly than ever. Mr. Forester comforted her as well as he could; but he found the purchasing of one or two of her notes much more efficacious than all the lessons of his philosophy.

‘This is all your fault,’ said a fisherman to his wife; ‘you would be hoarding and hoarding, and stinting me of my drop of comfort when I came in after a hard day’s work, tossed and beaten, and wet through with salt water, and there’s what we’ve got by it.’

‘It was all your fault,’ retorted the wife; ‘when we had scraped together twenty as pretty golden guineas as ever laid in a chest, you would sell ’em, so you would, for twenty-seven pounds of Mr. Smokeshadow’s paper; and now you see the difference.’

‘Here is an illustration,’ said Mr. Fax to Mr. Forester, ‘of the old maxim of experience teaching wisdom, or, as Homer expresses it, ῥεχθεν δε τε νηπιος ἐγνω.’

‘We ought now to be convinced, if not before,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘that what Plato has said is strictly true, that there will be no end of human misery till governors become philosophers or philosophers governors; and that all the evils which this country suffers, and, I fear, will suffer to a much greater 229extent, from the bursting of this fatal bubble of paper-money—this chimerical symbol of imaginary riches—are owing to the want of philosophy and true political wisdom in our rulers, by which they might have seen things in their causes, not felt them only in their effects, as even the most vulgar man does: and by which foresight, all the mischiefs that are befalling us might have been prevented.’^[77]

‘Very hard,’ said an old soldier, ‘very, very hard:—a poor five pounds, laid up for a rainy day,—hardly got, and closely kept—very, very hard.’

‘Poor man!’ said Mr. Forester, who was interested in the soldier’s physiognomy, ‘let me repair your loss. Here is better paper for you; but get gold and silver for it as soon as you can.’

‘God bless your honour,’ said the soldier, ‘and send as much power as goodwill to all such generous souls. Many is the worthy heart that this day’s work will break, and here is more damage than one man can mend. God bless your honour.’

A respectable-looking female approached the crowd, and addressing herself to Mr. Fax, who seemed most at leisure to her, asked him what chance there seemed to be for the creditors of Messieurs Smokeshadow, Airbubble, Hopthetwig, and Company. ‘By what I can gather from the people around me,’ said Mr. Fax, ‘none whatever.’ The lady was in great distress at this intelligence, and said they were her bankers, and it was the second misfortune of the kind that had happened to her. Mr. Fax expressed his astonishment that she should have been twice the victim of the system of paper-coinage, which seemed to contradict the old adage about a burnt child; and said it was for his part astonishing to him how any human being could be so deluded after the perils of the system had been so clearly pointed out, and amongst other things, in a pamphlet of his own on the Insubstantiality of Smoke. ‘Indeed,’ she said, ‘she had something better to do than to trouble herself about politics, and wondered he should insult her in her distress by talking of such stuff to her.’

‘Was ever such infatuation?’ said Mr. Fax, as the lady turned away. ‘This is one of those persons who choose to walk blindfold on the edge of a precipice, because it is too 230much trouble to see, and quarrel with their best friends for requesting them to make use of their eyes. There are many such, who think they have no business with politics; but they find to their cost that politics will have business with them.’

‘A curse light on all kite-flyers!’ vociferated a sturdy farmer. ‘Od rabbit me, here be a bundle o’ trash, measters! not worth a voive-and-zixpenny dollar all together. This comes o’ peaper-mills. “I promise to pay,” ecod! O the good old days o’ goulden guineas, when I used to ride whoame vrom market wi’ a great heavy bag in my pocket; and when I whopped it down on the old oak teable, it used to make zuch a zound as did one’s heart good to hear it. No promise to pay then. Now a man may eat his whole vortin in a zandwich, or zet vire to it in a vardin rushlight. Promise to pay!—the lying rascals, they never meant to pay: they knew all the while they had no effects to pay; but zuch a pretty, zmooth-spoken, palavering zet o’ fellers! why, Lord bless you! they’d ha’ made you believe black was white! and though you could never get anything of ’em but one o’ their own dirty bits o’ peaper in change vor another, they made it out as clear as daylight that they were as rich as zo many Jews. Ecod! and we were all vools enough to believe ’em, and now mark the end o’t.’

‘Yes, father,’ said a young fop at his elbow, ‘all blown, curse me!’

‘Ees,’ said the farmer, ‘and thee beest blown, and thee mun zell thy hunter, and turn to the plough-tail; and thy zisters mun churn butter, and milk the cows, instead of jingling penny-vorties, and dancing at race-balls wi’ squires. We mun be old English varmers again, and none o’ your voine high-flying promise-to-pay gentlevolks. There they be—spell ’em: I promise to pay to Mr. Gregory Gas, or bearer, on demand, the zum o’ voive pounds. Gullgudgeon Bank, April the virst. Vor Zmokeshadow, Airbubble, Zelf, and Company, Henry Hopthetwig. Entered, William Walkoff. And there be their coat o’ arms: two blacksmiths blowing a vorge, wi’ the chimney vor a crest, and a wreath o’ smoke coming out o’t; and the motto, ‘You can’t catch a bowlful.’ Od rabbit me! here be a whole handvul of ’em, and I’ll zell ’em all vor a voive-and-zixpenny dollar.’

The ‘Jacobin rascal,’ of whom the reverend gentleman had spoken, happened to be at the farmer’s elbow. ‘I told you 231how it would be,’ said he, ‘Master Sheepshead, many years ago; and I remember you wanted to put me in the stocks for my trouble.’

‘Why, I believe I did, Mr. Lookout,’ said the farmer, with a very penitent face; ‘but if you’ll call on me zome day we’ll drown old grudges in a jug o’ ale, and light our poipes wi’ the promises o’ Measter Hopthetwig and his gang.’

‘Not with all of them I entreat you,’ said Mr. Lookout. ‘I hope you will have one of them framed and glazed, and suspended over your chimney, as a warning to your children, and your children’s children for ever, against “the blessed comforts of paper-money.”’

‘Why, Lord love you, Measter Lookout,’ said the farmer, ‘we shall ha’ nothing but peaper-money still, you zee, only vrom another mill like.’

‘As to that, Master Sheepshead,’ replied Mr. Lookout, ‘I will only say to you in your own phrase, Mark the end o’t.’

‘Do you hear him?’ said the Rev. Mr. Peppertoast; ‘do you hear the Jacobin rascal? Do you hear the libellous, seditious, factious, levelling, revolutionary, republican, democratical, atheistical villain?’

CHAPTER XXXI CIMMERIAN LODGE

After a walk of some miles from the town of Gullgudgeon, where no information was to be obtained of Anthelia, their path wound along the shores of a lonely lake, embosomed in dark pine-groves and precipitous rocks. As they passed near a small creek, they observed a gentleman just stepping into a boat, who paused and looked up at the sound of their approximation; and Mr. Fax immediately recognised the poeticopolitical, rhapsodicoprosaical, deisidaemoniacoparadoxographical, pseudolatreiological, transcendental meteorosophist, Moley Mystic, Esquire, of Cimmerian Lodge. This gentleman’s Christian name, according to his own account, was improperly spelt with an e, and was in truth nothing more nor less than

and which was, in the mind of Homer, a pure anticipated cognition of the system of Kantian metaphysics, or grand transcendental science of the luminous obscure; for it had a dark root,^[78] which was mystery; and a white flower, which was abstract truth: it was called Moly by the gods, who then kept it to themselves; and was difficult to be dug up by mortal men, having, in fact, lain perdu in subterranean darkness till the immortal Kant dug for it under the stone of doubt, and produced it to the astonished world as the root of human science. Other persons, however, derived his first name differently; and maintained that the e in it showed it very clearly to be a 233corruption of Mole-eye, it being the opinion of some naturalists that the mole has eyes, which it can withdraw or project at pleasure, implying a faculty of wilful blindness, most happily characteristic of a transcendental metaphysician; since, according to the old proverb, None are so blind as those who won’t see. But be that as it may, Moley Mystic was his name, and Cimmerian Lodge was his dwelling.

Mr. Mystic invited Mr. Fax and his friends to step with him into the boat, and cross over his lake, which he called the Ocean of Deceitful Form, to the Island of Pure Intelligence, on which Cimmerian Lodge was situated: promising to give them a great treat in looking over his grounds, which he had laid out according to the topography of the human mind; and to enlighten them, through the medium of ‘darkness visible,’ with an opticothaumaturgical process of transcendentalising a cylindrical mirror, which should teach them the difference between objective and subjective reality.^[79] Mr. Forester was unwilling to remit his search, even for a few hours; but Mr. Fax observing that great part of the day was gone, and that Cimmerian Lodge was very remote from the human world; so that if they did not avail themselves of Mr. Mystic’s hospitality, they should probably be reduced to the necessity of passing the night among the rocks, sub Jove frigido, which he did not think very inviting, Mr. Forester complied; and with Mr. Fax and Sir Oran Haut-ton stepped into the boat. The reader who is deficient in taste for the bombast, and is no admirer of the obscure, may as well wait on the shore till they return. But we must not enter the regions of mystery without an Orphic invocation.

They had scarcely left the shore when they were involved in a fog of unprecedented density, so that they could not see one another; but they heard the dash of Mr. Mystic’s oars, and were consoled by his assurances that he could not miss his way in a state of the atmosphere so consentaneous to his peculiar mode of vision; for that, though, in navigating his little skiff on the Ocean of Deceitful Form, he had very often wandered wide and far from the Island of Pure Intelligence, yet this had always happened when he went with his eyes open, in broad daylight; but that he had soon found the means of obviating this little inconvenience, by always keeping his eyes close shut whenever the sun had the impertinence to shine upon him.

He immediately added that he would take the opportunity of making a remark perfectly in point: ‘that Experience was a Cyclops, with his eye in the back of his head’; and when Mr. Fax remarked that he did not see the connection, Mr. Mystic said he was very glad to hear it; for he should be sorry if any one but himself could see the connection of his ideas, as he arranged his thoughts on a new principle.

They went steadily on through the dense and heavy air, over waters that slumbered like the Stygian pool; a chorus of frogs, that seemed as much delighted with their own melody as if they had been an oligarchy of poetical critics, regaling 235them all the way with the Aristophanic symphony of Brek-ek-ek-ex! ko-ax! ko-ax!^[81] till the boat fixed its keel in the Island of Pure Intelligence; and Mr. Mystic landed his party, as Charon did Aeneas and the Sibyl, in a bed of weeds and mud:^[82] after floundering in which for some time, from losing their guide in the fog, they were cheered by the sound of his voice from above, and scrambling up the bank, found themselves on a hard and barren rock; and, still following the sound of Mr. Mystic’s voice, arrived at Cimmerian Lodge.

The fog had penetrated into all the apartments: there was fog in the hall, fog in the parlour, fog on the staircases, fog in the bedrooms;

It was a little rarefied in the kitchen, by virtue of the enormous fire; so far, at least, that the red face of the cook shone through it, as they passed the kitchen door, like the disk of the rising moon through the vapours of an autumnal river: but to make amends for this, it was condensed almost into solidity in the library, where the voice of their invisible guide bade them welcome to the adytum of the LUMINOUS OBSCURE.

Mr. Mystic now produced what he called his synthetical torch, and requested them to follow him, and look over his grounds. Mr. Fax said it was perfectly useless to attempt it in such a state of the atmosphere; but Mr. Mystic protested that it was the only state of the atmosphere in which they could be seen to advantage; as daylight and sunshine utterly destroyed their beauty.

They followed the ‘darkness visible’ of the synthetical torch, which, according to Mr. Mystic, shed around it the rays of transcendental illumination; and he continued to march before them, walking, and talking, and pointing out innumerable images of singularly nubilous beauty, though Mr. Forester and Mr. Fax both declared they could see nothing but the fog and ‘la pale lueur du magique flambeau‘: till Mr. Mystic observing that they were now in a Spontaneity free from Time or Space, and at the point of Absolute Limitation, Mr. Fax said he was very glad to hear it; for in that case they could go no farther. 236Mr. Mystic observed that they must go farther; for they were entangled in a maze, from which they would never be able to extricate themselves without his assistance; and he must take the liberty to tell them that the categories of modality were connected into the idea of absolute necessity. As this was spoken in a high tone, they took it to be meant for a reprimand; which carried the more weight as it was the less understood. At length, after floundering on another half-hour, the fog still thicker and thicker, and the torch still dimmer and dimmer, they found themselves once more in Cimmerian Lodge.

Mr. Mystic observed that they must go farther.

Mr. Mystic asked them how they liked his grounds, and they both repeated they had seen nothing of them: on which he flew into a rage and called them empirical psychologists, and slaves of definition, induction, and analysis, which he intended for terms of abuse, but which were not taken for such by the persons to whom he addressed them.

Recovering his temper, he observed that it was nearly the hour of dinner: and as they did not think it worth while to be angry with him, they contented themselves with requesting that they might dine in the kitchen, which seemed to be the only spot on the Island of Pure Intelligence in which there was a glimmer of light.

Mr. Mystic remarked that he thought this very bad taste, but that he should have no objection if the cook would consent; who, he observed, had paramount dominion over that important division of the Island of Pure Intelligence. The cook, with a little murmuring, consented for once to evacuate her citadel 237as soon as the dinner was on table; entering, however, a protest, that this infringement on her privileges should not be pleaded as a precedent.

Mr. Fax was afraid that Mr. Mystic would treat them as Lord Peter treated his brothers; that he would put nothing on the table, and regale them with a dissertation on the pure idea of absolute substance; but in this he was agreeably disappointed; for the anticipated cognition of a good dinner very soon smoked before them, in the relation of determinate coexistence; and the objective phenomenon of some superexcellent Madeira quickly put the whole party in perfect good humour. It appeared, indeed, to have a diffusive quality of occult and mysterious virtue; for, with every glass they drank, the fog grew thin, till by the time they had taken off four bottles among them, it had totally disappeared.

Mr. Mystic now prevailed on them to follow him to the library, where they found a blazing fire and a four-branched gas-lamp, shedding a much brighter radiance than that of the synthetical torch. He said he had been obliged to light this lamp, as it seemed they could not see by the usual illumination of Cimmerian Lodge. The brilliancy of the gas-lights he much disapproved; but he thought it would be very unbecoming in a transcendental philosopher to employ any other material for a purpose to which smoke was applicable. Mr. Fax said he should have thought, on the contrary, that ex fumo dare lucem would have been, of all things, the most repugnant to his principles; and Mr. Mystic replied that it had not struck him so before, but that Mr. Fax’s view of the subject ‘was exquisitely dusky and fuliginous’: this being his usual mode of expressing approbation, instead of the common phraseology of bright thoughts and luminous ideas, which were equally abhorrent to him both in theory and practice. However, he said, there the light was, for their benefit, and not for his: and as other men’s light was his darkness, he should put on a pair of spectacles of smoked glass, which no one could see through but himself. Having put on his spectacles, he undrew a black curtain, discovered a cylindrical mirror, and placed a sphere before it with great solemnity. ‘This sphere,’ said he, ‘is an oblong spheroid in the perception of the cylindrical mirror: as long as the mirror thought that the object of his perception was the real external oblong spheroid, he was a mere empirical 238philosopher; but he has grown wiser since he has been in my library; and by reflecting very deeply on the degree in which the manner of his construction might influence the forms of his perception, has taken a very opaque and tenebricose view of how much of the spheroidical perception belongs to the object, which is the sphere, and how much to the subject, which is himself, in his quality of cylindrical mirror. He has thus discovered the difference between objective and subjective reality: and this point of view is transcendentalism.’

‘A very dusky and fuliginous speculation, indeed,’ said Mr. Fax, complimenting Mr. Mystic in his own phrase.

Tea and coffee were brought in. ‘I divide my day,’ said Mr. Mystic, ‘on a new principle: I am always poetical at breakfast, moral at luncheon, metaphysical at dinner, and political at tea. Now you shall know my opinion of the hopes of the world.—General discontent shall be the basis of public resignation!^[83] The materials of political gloom will build the steadfast frame of hope.^[84] The main point is to get rid of analytical reason, which is experimental and practical, and live only by faith,^[85] which is synthetical and oracular. The contradictory interests of ten millions may neutralise each other.^[86] But the spirit of Antichrist is abroad:^[87]—the people read!—nay, they think!! The people read and think!!! The public, the public in general, the swinish multitude, the many-headed monster, actually reads and thinks!!!!^[88] Horrible in thought, but in fact most horrible! Science classifies flowers. Can it make them bloom where it has placed them in its classification!^[89] No. Therefore flowers ought not to be classified. This is transcendental logic. Ha! in that cylindrical mirror I see three shadowy forms:—dimly I see them through the smoked glass of my spectacles. Who art thou?—Mystery!—I hail thee! Who art thou?—Jargon—I love thee! Who art thou?—Superstition!—I worship thee! Hail, transcendental TRIAD!’

Mr. Fax cut short the thread of his eloquence by saying he would trouble him for the cream-jug.

240

Sir Oran Haut-ton ascending the stairs with the great rain-water tub.

241Mr. Mystic began again, and talked for three hours without intermission, except that he paused a moment on the entrance of sandwiches and Madeira. His visitors sipped his wine in silence till he had fairly talked himself hoarse. Neither Mr. Fax nor Mr. Forester replied to his paradoxes; for to what end, they thought, should they attempt to answer what few would hear and none would understand?

It was now time to retire, and Mr. Mystic showed his guests to the doors of their respective apartments, in each of which a gas-light was burning, and ascended another flight of stairs to his own dormitory, with a little twinkling taper in his hand. Mr. Forester and Mr. Fax stayed a few minutes on the landing-place, to have a word of consultation before they parted for the night. Mr. Mystic gained the door of his apartment—turned the handle of the lock—and had just advanced one step—when the whole interior of the chamber became suddenly sheeted with fire: a tremendous explosion followed; and he was precipitated to the foot of the stairs in the smallest conceivable fraction of the infinite divisibility of time.

Mr. Forester picked him up, and found him not much hurt, only a little singed, and very much frightened. But the whole interior of the apartment continued to blaze. Mr. Forester and Sir Oran Haut-ton ran for water: Mr. Fax rang the nearest bell: Mr. Mystic vociferated ‘Fire!’ with singular energy: the servants ran about half-undressed: pails, buckets, and pitchers, were in active requisition; till Sir Oran Haut-ton ascending the stairs with the great rain-water tub, containing one hundred and eight gallons of water,^[90] threw the whole contents on the flames with one sweep of his powerful arm.

The fire being extinguished, it remained to ascertain its cause. It appeared that the gas-tube in Mr. Mystic’s chamber had been left unstopped, and the gas evolving without combustion (the apartment being perfectly air-tight), had condensed into a mass, which, on the approach of Mr. Mystic’s taper, instantly ignited, blowing the transcendentalist downstairs, and setting fire to his curtains and furniture.

Mr. Mystic, as soon as he recovered from his panic, began to bewail the catastrophe: not so much, he said, for itself, as 242because such an event in Cimmerian Lodge was an infallible omen of evil—a type and symbol of an approaching period of public light—when the smoke of metaphysical mystery, and the vapours of ancient superstition, which he had done all that in him lay to consolidate in the spirit of man, would explode at the touch of analytical reason, leaving nothing but the plain common sense matter-of-fact of moral and political truth—a day that he earnestly hoped he might never live to see.

‘Certainly,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘it is a very bad omen for all who make it their study to darken the human understanding, when one of the pillars of their party is blown up by his own smoke; but the symbol, as you call it, may operate as a warning to the apostles of superstitious chimaera and political fraud, that it is very possible for smoke to be too thick; and that, in condensing in the human mind the vapours of ignorance and delusion, they are only compressing a body of inflammable gas, of which the explosion will be fatal in precise proportion to its density.’

CHAPTER XXXII THE DESERTED MANSION

They rose, as usual, before daylight, that they might pursue their perlustration; and, on descending, found Mr. Mystic awaiting them at a table covered with a sumptuous apparatus of tea and coffee, a pyramid of hot rolls, and a variety of cold provision. Cimmerian Lodge, he said, was famous for its breed of tame geese, and he could recommend the cold one on the table as one of his own training. The breakfast being despatched, he rowed them over the Ocean of Deceitful Form before the sun rose to disturb his navigation.

After walking some miles, a ruined mansion at the end of an ancient avenue of elms attracted their attention. As they made a point of leaving no place unexamined, they walked up to it. There was an air of melancholy grandeur in its loneliness and desolation which interested them to know its history. The briers that choked the court, the weeds that grew from the fissures of the walls and on the ledges of the windows, the fractured glass, the half-fallen door, the silent and motionless clock, the steps worn by the tread of other years, the total silence of the scene of ancient hospitality, broken only by the voices of the rooks whose nests were in the elms, all carried back the mind to the years that were gone. There was a sun-dial in the centre of the court: the sun shone on the brazen plate, and the shadow of the index fell on the line of noon. ‘Nothing impresses me more,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘in a ruin of this kind, than the contrast between the sun-dial and the clock, which I have frequently observed. This contrast I once made the basis of a little poem, which the similarity of circumstances induces me to repeat to you though you are no votary of the spirit of rhyme.’

Mr. Forester made inquiries of him.

An old man approached them, in whom they observed that look of healthy and cheerful antiquity which showed that time 247only, and neither pain nor sickness, had traced wrinkles on his cheek. Mr. Forester made inquiries of him on the object he had most at heart: but the old man could give no gleam of light to guide his steps. Mr. Fax then asked some questions concerning the mansion before them.

‘Ah, zur!’ said the old man, ‘this be the zeat o’ Squire Openhand: but he doan’t live here now; the house be growed too large vor’n, as one may zay. I remember un playing about here on the grass-plot, when he was half as high as the sun-dial poast, as if it was but yesterday. The days that I ha’ zeed here! Rare doings there used to be wi’ the house vull o’ gentlevolks zometimes to be zure: but what he loiked best was, to zee a merry-making of all his tenants, round the great oak that stands there in the large vield by himzelf. He used to zay if there was anything he could not abide it was the zight of a zorrowful feace; and he was always prying about to voind one: and if he did voind one, Lord bless you! it was not a zorrowful feace long, if it was anything that he could mend. Zo he lived to the length of his line, as the zaying is; and when times grew worse, it was a hard matter to draw in; howsomdever he did; and when the tax-gatherers came every year vor more and more, and the peaper-money flew about, buying up everything in the neighbourhood; and every vifty pounds he got in peaper wasn’t worth, as he toald me, vorty pounds o’ real money, why there was every year fewer horses in his steable, and less wine on his board: and every now and then came a queer zort o’ chap dropped out o’ the sky like—a vundholder he called un—and bought a bit of ground vor a handvul o’ peaper, and built a cottage horny, as they call it—there be one there on the hill-zide—and had nothing to do wi’ the country people, nor the country people wi’ he: nothing in the world to do, as we could zee, but to eat and drink, and make little bits o’ shrubberies, o’ quashies, and brutuses, and zelies, and cubies, and filigrees, and ruddydunderums, instead o’ the oak plantations the old landlords used to plant; and the Squire could never abide the zight o’ one o’ they gimcrack boxes; and all the while he was nailing up a window or two every year, and his horses were going one way, and his dogs another, and his old zervants were zent away, one by one, wi’ heavy hearts, poor souls, and at last it came that he could not get half his rents, and zome o’ his tenants went to the workhouse, 248and others ran away, because o’ the poor-rates, and everything went to zixes and zevens, and I used to meet the Squire in his walks, and think to myzelf it was very hard that he who could not bear to zee a zorrowful feace should have zuch a zorrowful one of his own; and he used to zay to me whenever I met un: “All this comes o’ peaper-money, Measter Hawthorn.” Zo the upshot was, he could not afford any longer to live in his own great house, where his vorevathers had lived out o’ memory of man, and went to zome outlandish place wi’ his vamily to live, as he said, in much zuch a box as that gimcrack thing on the hill.’

‘You have told us a very melancholy story,’ said Mr. Forester; ‘but at present, I fear, a very common one, and one of which, if the present system continue, every succeeding year will multiply examples.’

‘Ah, zur!’ said the old man, ‘there was them as vorezeed it long ago, and voretold it too, up in the great house in Lunnon, where they zettles the affairs o’ the nation: a pretty of zettling it be, to my thinking, to vill the country wi’ tax-gatherers and vundholders, and peaper-money men, that turns all the old families out o’ the country, and zends their tenants to the workhouse: but there was them as vorezeed and voretold it too, but nobody minded ’em then: they begins to mind ’em now.’

‘But how do you manage in these times?’ said Mr. Forester.

‘I lives, measter,’ said the old man, ‘and pretty well too, vor myself. I had a little vreehold varm o’ my own, that has been in my vamily zeven hundred year, and we woan’t part wi’ it, I promise you, vor all the tax-collectors and vundholders in England. But my zon was never none o’ your gentleman varmers, none a’ your reacing and hunting bucks, that it’s a shame vor a honest varmer to be: he always zet his shoulder to the wheel—alway a-vield by peep o’ day: zo now I be old, I’ve given up the varm to him; and that I wouldn’t ha’ done to the best man in all the county bezide: but he’s my son, and I loves un. Zo I walks about the vields all day, and sits all the evening in the chimney-corner wi’ an old neighbour or zo, and a jug o’ ale, and talks over old times, when the Openhands, and zuch as they, could afford to live in the homes o’ their vorevathers. It be a bad state o’ things, my measters, and 249must come to a bad end, zooner or later; but it’ll last my time.’

‘You are not in the last stage of a consumption, are you, honest friend?’ said Mr. Fax.

‘Lord love you, no, measter,’ said the old farmer, rather frightened; ‘do I look zo?’

‘No,’ said Mr. Fax; ‘but you talked so.’

‘Ah! thee beest a wag, I zee,’ said the farmer. ‘Things be in a conzumption zure enough, but they’ll last my time vor all that; and if they doan’t it’s no fault o’ mine; and I’se no money in the vunds, nor no sinecure pleace, zo I eats my beefsteak and drinks my ale, and lets the world slide.’

CHAPTER XXXIII THE PHANTASM

The course of their perambulations brought them into the vicinity of Melincourt, and they stopped at the Castle to inquire if any intelligence had been obtained of Anthelia. The gate was opened to them by old Peter Gray, who informed them that himself and the female domestics were at that time the only inmates of the Castle, as the other male domestics had gone off at the same time with Mr. Hippy in search of their young mistress; and the Honourable Mrs. Pinmoney and Miss Danaretta were gone to London, because of the opera being open.

Mr. Forester inquired of the manner of Anthelia’s disappearance. Old Peter informed him that she had gone into her library as usual after breakfast, and when the hour of dinner arrived she was missing. The central window was open, as well as the little postern door of the shrubbery that led into the dingle, the whole vicinity of which they had examined, and had found the recent print of horses’ feet on a narrow green road that skirted the other side of the glen; these traces they had followed till they had totally lost them in a place where the road became hard and rocky, and divided into several branches: the pursuers had then separated into parties of two and three, and each party had followed a different branch of the road, but they had found no clue to guide them, and had hitherto been unsuccessful. He should not himself, he said, have remained inactive, but Mr. Hippy had insisted on his staying to take care of the Castle. He then observed that, as it was growing late, he should humbly advise their continuing where they were till morning. To this they assented, and he led the way to the library.

251Everything in the library remained precisely in the place in which Anthelia left it. Her chair was near the table, and the materials of drawing were before it. The gloom of the winter evening, which was now closing in, was deepened through the stained glass of the windows. The moment the door was thrown open, Mr. Forester started, and threw himself forward into the apartment towards Anthelia’s chair; but before he reached it, he stopped, placed his hand before his eyes, and, turning round, leaned for support on the arm of Mr. Fax. He recovered himself in a few minutes, and sate down by the table. Peter Gray, after kindling the fire, and lighting the Argand lamp that hung from the centre of the apartment, went to give directions on the subject of dinner.

Mr. Forester observed, from the appearance of the drawing materials, that they had been hastily left, and he saw that the last subject on which Anthelia had been employed was a sketch of Redrose Abbey. He sate with his head leaning on his hand, and his eyes fixed on the drawing in perfect silence. Mr. Fax thought it best not to disturb his meditations, and took up a volume that was lying open on the table, the last that Anthelia had been reading. It was a posthumous work of the virtuous and unfortunate Condorcet, in which that most amiable and sublime enthusiast, contemplating human nature in the light of his own exalted spirit, had delineated a beautiful vision of the future destinies of mankind.^[91]

Sir Oran Haut-ton kept his eyes fixed on the door with looks of anxious impatience, and showed manifest and increasing disappointment at every re-entrance of Old Peter, who at length summoned them to dinner.

Mr. Fax was not surprised that Mr. Forester had no appetite, but that Sir Oran had lost his appeared to him extremely curious. The latter grew more and more uneasy, rose from table, took a candle in his hand, and wandered from room to room, searching every closet and corner in the Castle, to the infinite amazement of Old Peter Gray, who followed him everywhere, and became convinced that the poor gentleman was crazed for love of his young mistress, who, he made no doubt, was the object of his search; and the conviction was strengthened by the perfect inattention of Sir Oran to all his assurances that his dear young lady was not in any of those places which 252he searched so scrupulously. Sir Oran at length, having left no corner of the habitable part of the Castle unexamined, returned to the dining-room, and throwing himself into a chair began to shed tears in great abundance.

Mr. Fax made his two disconsolate friends drink several glasses of Madeira, by way of raising their spirits, and then asked Mr. Forester what it was that had so affected him on their first entering the library.

Mr. Forester. It was the form of Anthelia, in the place where I first saw her, in that chair by the table. The vision was momentary, but, while it lasted, had all the distinctness of reality.

Mr. Fax. This is no uncommon effect of the association of ideas when external objects present themselves to us after an interval of absence, in their remembered arrangement, with only one form wanting, and that the dearest among them, to perfect the resemblance between the present sensation and the recollected idea. A vivid imagination, more especially when the nerves are weakened by anxiety and fatigue, will, under such circumstances, complete the imperfect scene, by replacing for a moment the one deficient form among those accustomed objects which had long formed its accompaniments in the contemplation of memory. This single mental principle will explain the greater number of credible tales of apparitions, and at the same time give a very satisfactory reason why a particular spirit is usually found haunting a particular place.

Mr. Forester. Thus Petrarch’s beautiful pictures of the Spirit of Laura on the banks of the Sorga are assuredly something more than the mere fancies of the closet, and must have originated in that system of mental connection, which, under peculiar circumstances, gives ideas the force of sensations. Anxiety and fatigue are certainly great promoters of the state of mind most favourable to such impressions.

Sir Oran, throwing himself into a chair, began to shed tears in great abundance.

Mr. Fax. It was under the influence of such excitements that Brutus saw the spirit of Caesar; and in similar states of feeling the phantoms of poetry are usually supposed to be visible: the ghost of Banquo, for example, and that of Patroclus. But this only holds true of the poets who paint from nature; for their artificial imitators, when they wish to call a spirit from the vasty deep, are not always so attentive to the mental circumstances of the persons to whom they present it. In the 255early periods of society, when apparitions form a portion of the general creed; when the life of man is wandering, precarious, and turbulent; when the uncultured wildness of the heath and the forest harmonises with the chimaeras of superstition; and when there is not, as in later times, a rooted principle of reason and knowledge, to weaken such perceptions in their origin, and destroy the seeming reality of their subsequent recollection, impressions of this nature will be more frequent, and will be as much invested with the character of external existence, as the scenes to which they are attached by the connecting power of the mind. They will always be found with their own appropriate character of time, and place, and circumstance. The ghost of the warrior will be seen on the eve of battle by him who keeps his lonely watch near the blaze of the nightly fire, and the spirit of the huntress maid will appear to her lover when he pauses on the sunny heath, or rests in the moonlit cave.

CHAPTER XXXIV THE CHURCHYARD

The next morning Mr. Forester determined on following the mountain road on the other side of the dingle, of which Peter Gray had spoken: but wishing first to make some inquiries of the Reverend Mr. Portpipe, they walked to his vicarage, which was in a village at some distance. Just as they reached it, the reverend gentleman emerged in haste, and seeing Mr. Forester and his friends, said he was very sorry that he could not attend to them just then, as he had a great press of business to dispose of; namely, a christening, a marriage, and a funeral; but he would knock them off as fast as he could, after which he should be perfectly at their service, hoped they would wait in the vicarage till his return, and observed he had good ale and a few bottles of London Particular. He then left them to despatch his affairs in the church.

They preferred waiting in the churchyard. ‘A christening, a marriage, and a funeral!’ said Mr. Forester. ‘With what indifference he runs through the whole drama of human life, raises the curtain on its commencement, superintends the most important and eventful action of its progress, and drops the curtain on its close!’

Mr. Fax. Custom has rendered them all alike indifferent to him. In every human pursuit and profession the routine of ordinary business renders the mind indifferent to all the forms and objects of which that routine is composed. The sexton ‘sings at grave-making’; the undertaker walks with a solemn face before the coffin, because a solemn face is part of his trade; but his heart is as light as if there were no funeral at his heels: he is quietly conning over the items of his bill, or thinking of the party in which he is to pass his evening; and 259the reverend gentleman who concludes the process, and consigns to its last receptacle the shell of extinguished intelligence, has his thoughts on the wing of the sports of the field or the jovial board of the Squire.

A great press of business to dispose of.

Mr. Forester. Your observation is just. It is this hardening power of custom that gives steadiness to the hand of the surgeon, firmness to the voice of the criminal judge, coolness to the soldier ‘in the imminent deadly breach,’ self-possession to the sailor in the rage of the equinoctial storm. It is under this influence that the lawyer deals out writs and executions as carelessly as he deals out cards at his evening whist; that the gaoler turns the key with the same stern indifference on unfortunate innocence as on hardened villainy; that the venal senator votes away by piecemeal the liberties of his country; and that the statesman sketches over the bottle his series of deliberate schemes for the extinction of human freedom, the enchaining of human reason, and the waste of human life.

Mr. Fax. Contemplate any of these men only in the sphere of their routine, and you will think them utterly destitute of all human sympathy. Make them change places with each other, and you will see symptoms of natural feelings. Custom cannot kill the better feelings of human nature: it merely lays them asleep.

Mr. Forester. You must acknowledge, then, at least, that their sleep is very sound.

Mr. Fax. In most cases certainly as sound as that of Epimenides, or of the seven sleepers of Ephesus. But these did wake at last, and, therefore, according to Aristotle, they had always the capacity of waking.

Mr. Forester. You must allow me to wait for a similar proof before I admit such a capacity in respect to the feelings of some of the characters we have mentioned. Yet I am no sceptic in human virtue.

Mr. Fax. You have no reason to be, with so much evidence before your eyes of the excellence of the past generation, and I do not suppose the present is much worse than its predecessors. Read the epitaphs around you, and see what models and mirrors of all the social virtues have left the examples of their shining light to guide the steps of their posterity.

Mr. Forester. I observe the usual profusion of dutiful 260sons, affectionate husbands, faithful friends, kind neighbours, and honest men. These are the luxuriant harvest of every churchyard. But is it not strange that even the fertility of fiction should be so circumscribed in the variety of monumental panegyric? Yet a few words comprehend the summary of all the moral duties of ordinary life. Their degrees and diversities are like the shades of colour, that shun for the most part the power of language: at all events, the nice distinctions and combinations that give individuality to historical character scarcely come within the limits of sepulchral inscription, which merely serves to testify the regret of the survivors for one whose society was dear, and whose faults are forgotten. For there is a feeling in the human mind, that, in looking back on former scenes of intercourse with those who are passed for ever beyond the limits of injury and resentment, gradually destroys all the bitterness and heightens all the pleasures of the remembrance; as, when we revert in fancy to the days of our childhood, we scarcely find a vestige of their tears, pains, and disappointments, and perceive only their fields, their flowers, and their sunshine, and the smiles of our little associates.

Mr. Fax. The history of common life seems as circumscribed as its moral attributes: for the most extensive information I can collect from these gravestones is, that the parties married, lived in trouble, and died of a conflict between a disease and a physician. I observe a last request, which I suppose was very speedily complied with—that of a tender husband to his loving wife not to weep for him long. If it be as you say, that the faults of the dead are soon forgotten, yet the memory of their virtues is not much longer lived; and I have often thought that these words of Rabelais would furnish an appropriate inscription for ninety-nine gravestones out of every hundred:—Sa mémoire expira avecque le son des cloches qui carillonèrent à son enterrement.

CHAPTER XXXV THE RUSTIC WEDDING

The bride and bridegroom, with half a dozen of their friends, now entered the churchyard. The bride, a strong, healthy-looking country girl, was clinging to the arm of her lover, not with the light and scarcely perceptible touch with which Miss Simper complies with the request of Mr. Giggle, ‘that she will do him the honour to take his arm,’ but with a cordial and unsophisticated pressure that would have made such an arm as Mr. Giggle’s black and blue. The bridegroom, with a pair of chubby cheeks, which in colour precisely rivalled his new scarlet waistcoat, and his mouth expanded into a broad grin that exhibited the total range of his teeth, advanced in a sort of step that was half a walk and half a dance, as if the preconceived notion of the requisite solemnity of demeanour were struggling with the natural impulses of the overflowing joy of his heart.

Mr. Fax looked with great commiseration on this bridal pair, and determined to ascertain if they had a clear notion of the evils that awaited them in consequence of the rash step they were about to take. He therefore accosted them with an observation that the Reverend Mr. Portpipe was not at leisure, but would be in a few minutes. ‘In the meantime,’ said he, ‘I stand here as the representative of general reason, to ask if you have duly weighed the consequences of your present proceeding.’

The Bridegroom. General Reason! I be’s no soger man, and bean’t countable to no General whatzomecomedever. We bean’t under martial law, be we? Voine times indeed if General Reason be to interpose between a poor man and his sweetheart.

262Mr. Fax. That is precisely the case which calls most loudly for such an interposition.

The Bridegroom. If General Reason waits till I or Zukey calls loudly vor’n, he’ll wait long enough. Woan’t he, Zukey?

The Bride. Ees, zure, Robin.

Mr. Fax. General reason, my friend, I assure you, has nothing to do with martial law, nor with any other mode of arbitrary power, but with authority that has truth for its foundation, benevolence for its end, and the whole universe for its sphere of action.

The Bridegroom (scratching his head). There be a mort o’ voine words, but I zuppose you means to zay as how this General Reason be a Methody preacher; but I be’s true earthy-ducks church, and zo be Zukey: bean’t you, Zukey?

The Bride. Ees, zure, Robin.

The Bridegroom. And we has nothing to do wi’ General Reason neither on us. Has we, Zukey?

The Bride. No, zure, Robin.

Mr. Fax. Well, my friend, be that as it may, you are going to be married?

The Bridegroom. Why, I think zo, zur, wi’ General Reason’s leave. Bean’t we, Zukey?

The Bride. Ees, zure, Robin.

Mr. Fax. And are you fully aware, my honest friend, what marriage is?

The Bridegroom. Vor zartin I be: Zukey and I ha’ got it by heart out o’ t’ Book o’ Common Prayer. Ha’n’t we, Zukey? (This time Susan did not think proper to answer.) It be ordained that zuch persons as hav’n’t the gift of——(Susan gave him such a sudden and violent pinch on the arm, that his speech ended in a roar). Od rabbit me! that wur a twinger! I’ll have my revenge, howzomecomedever. (And he imprinted a very emphatical kiss on the lips of his blushing bride that greatly scandalised Mr. Fax.)

Mr. Fax. Do you know, that in all likelihood, in the course of six years, you will have as many children?

The Bridegroom. The more the merrier, zur. Bean’t it, Zukey? (Susan was mute again.)

Mr. Fax. I hope it may prove so, my friend; but I fear you will find the more the sadder. What are your occupations?

The Bridegroom. Anan, zur?

263

‘Do you know, that in all likelihood, in the course of six years, you will have as many children?’

265Mr. Fax. What do you do to get your living?

The Bridegroom. Works vor Varmer Brownstout: zows and reaps, threshes, and goes to market wi’ corn and cattle, turns to plough-tail when hap chances, cleans and feeds horses, hedges and ditches, fells timber, gathers in t’ orchard, brews ale, and drinks it, and gets vourteen shill’n’s a week for my trouble. And Zukey here ha’ laid up a mint o’ money: she wur dairymaid at Varmer Cheesecurd’s, and ha’ gotten vour pounds zeventeen shill’n’s and ninepence in t’ old chest wi’ three vlat locks and a padlock. Ha’n’t you, Zukey?

The Bride. Ees, zure, Robin.

Mr. Fax. It does not appear to me, my worthy friend, that your fourteen shillings a week, even with Mrs. Susan’s consolidated fund of four pounds seventeen shillings and ninepence, will be altogether adequate to the maintenance of such a family as you seem likely to have.

The Bridegroom. Why, sir, in t’ virst pleace I doan’t know what be Zukey’s intentions in that respect——Od rabbit it, Zukey! doan’t pinch zo——and in t’ next pleace, wi’ all due submission to you and General Reason the Methody preacher, I takes it to be our look-out, and none o’ nobody’s else.

Mr. Fax. But it is somebody’s else, for this reason; that if you cannot maintain your own children, the parish must do it for you.

The Bridegroom. Vor zartin—in a zort o’ way; and bad enough at best. But I wants no more to do wi’ t’ parish than parish wi’ me.

Mr. Fax. I dare say you do not, at present. But, my good friend, when the cares of a family come upon you, your independence of spirit will give way to necessity; and if, by any accident, you are thrown out of work, as in the present times many honest fellows are, what will you do then?

The Bridegroom. Do the best I can, measter, az I always does, and nobody can’t do no better.

Mr. Fax. Do you suppose, then, you are doing the best you can now, in marrying, with such a doubtful prospect before you? How will you bring up your children?

The Bridegroom. Why, in the vear o’ the Lord, to be zure.

Mr. Fax. Of course: but how will you bring them up to get their living?

The Bridegroom. That’s as thereafter may happen. 266They woan’t starve, I’se warrant ’em, if they teakes after their veyther. But I zees now who General Reason be. He be one o’ your sinecure vundholder peaper-money taxing men, as isn’t satisfied wi’ takin’ t’ bread out o’ t’ poor man’s mouth, and zending his chilern to army and navy, and vactories, and suchlike, but wants to take away his wife into t’ bargain.

Mr. Fax. There, my honest friend, you have fallen into a radical mistake, which I shall try to elucidate for your benefit. It is owing to poor people having more children than they can maintain, that those children are obliged to go to the army and navy, and consequently that statesmen and conquerors find so many ready instruments for the oppression and destruction of the human species: it follows, therefore, that if people would not marry till they could be certain of maintaining all their children comfortably at home——

The Bridegroom. Lord love you, that be all mighty voine rigmarole; but the short and the long be this: I can’t live without Zukey, nor Zukey without I, can you, Zukey?

The Bride. No, zure, Robin.

The Bridegroom. Now there be a plain downright honest-hearted old English girl; none o’ your quality madams, as zays one thing and means another; and zo you may tell General Reason he may teake away chair and teable, salt-box and trencher, bed and bedding, pig and pig-stye, but neither he nor all his peaper-men together shall take away his own Zukey vrom Robin Ruddyfeace; if they shall I’m doomed.

‘What profane wretch,’ said the Reverend Mr. Portpipe, emerging from the church, ‘what profane wretch is swearing in the very gate of the temple?’ and seeing by the bridegroom’s confusion that he was the culprit, he reprimanded him severely, and declared he would not marry him that day. The very thought of such a disappointment was too much for poor Robin to bear, and, after one or two ineffectual efforts to speak, he distorted his face into a most rueful expression, and struck up such a roar of crying as completely electrified the Rev. Mr. Portpipe, whose wrath, nevertheless, was not to be mollified by Robin’s grief and contrition, but yielded at length to the intercessions of Mr. Forester. Robin’s face cleared up in an instant, and the natural broad grin of his ruddy countenance shone forth through his tears like the sun through a shower. ‘You are such an honest and warm-hearted fellow,’ said Mr. 267Forester, putting a bank-note into Robin’s hand, ‘that you must not refuse me the pleasure of making this little addition to Mistress Susan’s consolidated fund.’—‘Od rabbit me!’ said the bridegroom, overcome with joy and surprise, ‘I doan’t know who thee beest, but thee beesn’t General Reason, that’s vor zartin.’

The rustic party then followed the Reverend Mr. Portpipe into the church. Robin, when he reached the porch, looked round over his shoulder to Mr. Fax, and said with a very arch look, ‘My dutiful sarvice to General Reason.’ And looking round a second time before he entered the door, added: ‘and Zukey’s too.’

CHAPTER XXXVI THE VICARAGE

When the Rev. Mr. Portpipe had despatched his ‘press of business,’ he set before his guests in the old oak parlour of the vicarage a cold turkey and ham, a capacious jug of ‘incomparable ale,’ and a bottle of his London Particular; all which, on trial, were approved to be excellent, and a second bottle of the latter was very soon required, and produced with great alacrity. The reverend gentleman expressed much anxiety in relation to the mysterious circumstance of the disappearance of Anthelia, on whom he pronounced a very warm eulogium, saying she was the flower of the mountains, the type of ideal beauty, the daughter of music, the rosebud of sweetness, and the handmaid of charity. He professed himself unable to throw the least light on the transaction, but supposed she had been spirited away for some nefarious purpose. He said that the mountain road had been explored without success in all its ramifications, not only by Mr. Hippy and the visitors and domestics of Melincourt, but by all the peasants and mountaineers of the vicinity—that it led through a most desolate and inhospitable tract of country, and he would advise them, if they persisted in their intention of following it themselves, to partake of his poor hospitality till morning, and set forward with the first dawn of daylight. Mr. Fax seconded this proposal, and Mr. Forester complied.

They spent the evening in the old oak parlour, and conversed on various subjects, during which a knotty point opposing itself to the solution of an historical question, Mr. Forester expressed a wish to be allowed access to the reverend gentleman’s library. The reverend gentleman hummed awhile with great gravity and deliberation: then slowly rising from his 269large arm-chair, he walked across the room to the farther corner, where throwing open the door of a little closet, he said with extreme complacency, ‘There is my library: Homer, Virgil, and Horace, for old acquaintance sake, and the credit of my cloth: Tillotson, Atterbury, and Jeremy Taylor, for materials of exhortation and ingredients of sound doctrine: and for my own private amusement in an occasional half-hour between my dinner and my nap, a translation of Rabelais and The Tale of a Tub.’

Mr. Fax. A well-chosen collection.

The Rev. Mr. Portpipe.—Multum in parvo. But there is something that may amuse you: a little drawer of mineral specimens that have been picked up in this vicinity, and a fossil or two. Among the latter is a curious bone that was found in a hill just by, invested with stalactite.

Mr. Forester. The bone of a human thumb, unquestionably.

The Rev. Mr. Portpipe. Very probably.

Mr. Forester. Which, by its comparative proportion, must have belonged to an individual about eleven feet six or seven inches in height: there are no such men now.

Mr. Fax. Except, perhaps, among the Patagonians, whose existence is, however, disputed.

Mr. Forester. It is disputed on no tenable ground, but that of the narrow and bigoted vanity of civilised men, who, pent in the unhealthy limits of towns and cities, where they dwindle from generation to generation in a fearful rapidity of declension towards the abyss of the infinitely little, in which they will finally vanish from the system of nature, will not admit that there ever were, or are, or can be, better, stronger, and healthier men than themselves. The Patagonians are a vagrant nation, without house or home, and are, therefore, only occasionally seen on the coast: but because some voyagers have not seen them, I know not why we should impeach the evidence of those who have. The testimony of a man of honour, like Mr. Byron, would alone have been sufficient: but all his officers and men gave the same account. And there are other testimonies: that, for instance, of M. de Guyot, who brought from the coast of Patagonia a skeleton of one of these great men, which measured between twelve and thirteen feet. This skeleton he was bringing to Europe, but happening to be 270caught in a great storm, and having on board a Spanish Bishop (the Archbishop of Lima), who was of opinion that the storm was caused by the bones of this Pagan which they had on board; and having persuaded the crew that this was the case, the captain was obliged to throw the skeleton overboard. The Bishop died soon after, and was thrown overboard in his turn. I could have wished that he had been thrown overboard sooner, and then the bones of the Patagonian would have arrived in Europe.^[92]

The Rev. Mr. Portpipe. Your wish is orthodox, inasmuch as the Bishop was himself a Pagan, and moreover an Inquisitor. And your doctrine of large men is also orthodox, for the sons of Anak and the family of Goliath did once exist, though now their race is extinct.

Mr. Forester. The multiplication of diseases, the diminution of strength, and the contraction of the term of existence, keep pace with the diminution of the stature of men. The mortality of a manufacturing town, compared with that of a mountain village, is more than three to one, which clearly shows the evil effects of the departure from natural life, and of the coacervation of multitudes within the narrow precincts of cities, where the breath of so many animals, and the exhalations from the dead, the dying, and corrupted things of all kinds, make the air little better than a slow poison, and so offensive as to be perceptible to the sense of those who are not accustomed to it; for the wandering Arabs will smell a town at the distance of several leagues. And in this country the cottagers who are driven by the avarice of landlords and great tenants to seek a subsistence in towns, are very soon destroyed by the change.^[93] And this hiving of human beings is not the only evil effect of commerce, which tends also to keep up a constant circulation of the elements of destruction, and to make the vices and diseases of one country the vices and diseases of all.^[94] Thus, with every extension of our intercourse with distant lands, we bring home some new seed of death; and how many we leave as vestiges of our visitation, let the South Sea Islanders testify. Consider, too, the frightful consequences of the consumption of spirituous liquors: a practice so destructive, that if all the devils were again to be assembled 271in Pandemonium to contrive the ruin of the human species, nothing so mischievous could be devised by them;^[95] but which it is considered politic to encourage, according to our method of raising money on the vices of the people.^[96] When these and many other causes of destruction are considered, it would be wonderful indeed if every new generation were not, as all experience proves that it is, smaller, weaker, more diseased, and more miserable than the preceding.

Mr. Fax. Do you find, in the progress of science and the rapid diffusion of intellectual light, no counterpoise to this mass of physical calamity, even admitting it to exist in the extent you suppose?

Mr. Forester. Without such a counterpoise the condition of human nature would be desperate indeed. The intellectual, as I have often observed to you, are nourished at the expense of the animal faculties.

Mr. Fax. You cannot, then, conceive the existence of mens sana in corpore sano?

Mr. Forester. Scarcely in the present state of human degeneracy: at best in a very limited sense.

Mr. Fax. Nevertheless you do, nay, you must acknowledge that the intellectual, which is the better part of human nature, is in a progress of rapid improvement, continually enlarging its views and multiplying its acquisitions.

Mr. Forester. The collective stock of knowledge which is the common property of scientific men necessarily increases, and will increase from the circumstance of admitting the cooperation of numbers: but collective knowledge is as distinct from individual mental power as it is confessedly unconnected with wisdom and moral virtue, and independent of political liberty. A man of modern times, with machines of complicated powers, will lift a heavier mass than that which Hector hurled from his unassisted arm against the Grecian gates; but take away his mechanism, and what comparison is there between him and Hector? In the same way a modern man of science knows more than Pythagoras knew: but consider them with relation only to mental power, and what comparison remains between them? No more than between a modern poet and Homer—a comparison which the most strenuous partisan of modern improvement will scarcely venture to institute.

272Mr. Fax. I will venture to oppose Shakespeare to him nevertheless.

Mr. Forester. That is, however, going back two centuries, to a state of society very peculiar, and very fertile in genius. Shakespeare is the great phenomenon of the modern world, but his men and women are beings like ourselves; whereas those of Homer are of a nobler and mightier race; and his poetry is worthy of his characters: it is the language of the gods.

Mr. Forester rose, and approached the little closet, with the avowed intention of taking down Homer. ‘Take care how you touch him,’ said the Reverend Mr. Portpipe: ‘he is in a very dusty condition, for he has not been disturbed these thirty years.’

CHAPTER XXXVI THE MOUNTAINS

They followed the mountain road till they arrived at the spot where it divided into several branches, one of which they selected on some principle of preference, which we are not sagacious enough to penetrate. They now proceeded by a gradual ascent of several miles along a rugged passage of the hills, where the now flowerless heath was the only vestige of vegetation; and the sound of the little streams that everywhere gleamed beside their way, the only manifestation of the life and motion of nature.

‘It is a subject worthy of consideration,’ said Mr. Fax, ‘how far scenes like these are connected with the genius of liberty: how far the dweller of the mountains, who is certainly surrounded by more sublime excitements, has more loftiness of thought, and more freedom of spirit, than the cultivator of the plains.’

Mr. Forester. A modern poet has observed, that the voices of the sea and the mountains are the two voices of liberty: the words mountain liberty have, indeed, become so intimately associated, that I never yet found any one who even thought of questioning their necessary and natural connection.

Mr. Fax. And yet I question it much; and in the present state of human society I hold the universal inculcation of such a sentiment, in poetry and romance, to be not only a most gross delusion, but an error replete with the most pernicious practical consequences. For I have often seen a young man of high and aspiring genius, full of noble enthusiasm for the diffusion of truth and the general happiness of mankind, withdrawn from all intercourse with polished and intellectual society, by the distempered idea that he would nowhere find 274fit aliment for his high cogitations, but among heaths, and rocks, and torrents.

Mr. Forester. In a state of society so corrupted as that in which we live, the best instructors and companions are ancient books; and these are best studied in those congenial solitudes, where the energies of nature are most pure and uncontrolled, and the aspect of external things recalls in some measure the departed glory of the world.

Mr. Fax. Holding, as I do, that no branch of knowledge is valuable, but such as in its ultimate results has a plain and practical tendency to the general diffusion of moral and political truth, you must allow me to doubt the efficacy of solitary intercourse with stocks and stones, however rugged and fantastic in their shapes, towards the production of this effect.

Mr. Forester. It is matter of historical testimony that occasional retirement into the recesses of nature has produced the most salutary effects of the very kind you require, in the instance of some of the most illustrious minds that have adorned the name of man.

Mr. Fax. That the health and purity of the country, its verdure and its sunshine, have the most beneficial influence on the mental and corporeal faculties, I am very far from being inclined to deny: but this is a different consideration from that of the connection between the scenery of the mountains and the genius of liberty. Look into the records of the world. What have the mountains done for freedom and mankind? When have the mountains, to speak in the cant of the new school of poetry, ‘sent forth a voice of power’ to awe the oppressors of the world? Mountaineers are for the most part a stupid and ignorant race: and where there are stupidity and ignorance, there will be superstition; and where there is superstition, there will be slavery.

Mr. Forester. To a certain extent I cannot but agree with you. The names of Hampden and Milton are associated with the level plains and flat pastures of Buckinghamshire; but I cannot now remember what names of true greatness and unshaken devotion to general liberty are associated with these heathy rocks and cloud-capped mountains of Cumberland. We have seen a little horde of poets, who brought hither from the vales of the south the harps which they had consecrated 275to Truth and Liberty, to acquire new energy in the mountain winds: and now those harps are attuned to the praise of luxurious power, to the strains of courtly sycophancy, and to the hymns of exploded superstition. But let not the innocent mountains bear the burden of their transgressions.

Mr. Fax. All I mean to say is, that there is nothing in the nature of mountain scenery either to make men free or to keep them so. The only source of freedom is intellectual light. The ignorant are always slaves, though they dwell among the Andes. The wise are always free, though they cultivate a savannah. Who is so stupid and so servile as a Swiss, whom you find, like a piece of living furniture, the human latch of every great man’s door?

Mr. Forester. Let us look back to former days, to the mountains of the North:

Mr. Fax. As to the ‘Scald’s strong verse,’ I must say I have never seen any specimens of it that I did not think mere trash. It is little more than a rhapsody of rejoicing in carnage, a ringing of changes on the biting sword and the flowing of blood and the feast of the raven and the vulture, and fulsome flattery of the chieftain, of whom the said Scald was the abject slave, vassal, parasite, and laureate, interspersed with continual hints that he ought to be well paid for his lying panegyrics.

Mr. Forester. There is some justice in your observations: nevertheless, I must still contend that those who seek the mountains in a proper frame of feeling will find in them images of energy and liberty, harmonising most aptly with the loftiness of an unprejudiced mind, and nerving the arm of resistance to every variety of oppression and imposture that winds the chains of power round the free-born spirit of man.

CHAPTER XXXVIII THE FRACAS

After a long ramble among heath and rock, and over moss and moor, they began to fear the probability of being benighted among those desolate wilds, when fortunately they found that their track crossed one of the principal roads, which they followed for a short time, and entered a small town, where they stopped for the night at an inn. They were shown upstairs into an apartment separated from another only by a movable partition, which allowed the two rooms to be occasionally laid into one. They were just sitting down to dinner when they heard the voices of some newly-arrived company in the adjoining apartment, and distinguished the tones of a female voice indicative of alarm and anxiety, and the masculine accents of one who seemed to be alternately comforting the afflicted fair one, and swearing at the obsequious waiter, with reiterated orders, as it appeared, for another chaise immediately. Mr. Fax was not long in divining that the new-comers were two runaway lovers in momentary apprehension of being overtaken; and this conjecture was confirmed, when, after a furious rattle of wheels in the yard, the door of the next apartment was burst open, and a violent scream from the lady was followed by a gruff shout of—‘So ho, miss, here you are. Gretna, eh? Your journey’s marred for this time; and if you get off again, say you have my consent—that’s all.’ Low soft tones of supplication ensued, but in undistinguishable words, and continued to be repeated in the intervals of the following harangue: ‘Love indeed! don’t tell me. Aren’t you my daughter? Answer me that. And haven’t I a right over you till you are twenty-one? You may marry then; but not a rap of the ready: my money’s my own all my life. Haven’t 277I chosen you a proper husband—a nice rich young fellow not above forty-five?—Sixty, you minx! no such thing. Rolling in riches: member for Threevotes: two places, three pensions, and a sinecure: famous borough interest to make all your children generals and archbishops. And here a miserable vagabond with only five hundred a year in landed property.—Pish! love indeed!—own age—congenial minds—pshaw! all a farce. Money—money—money—that’s the matter: money is the first thing—money is the second thing—money is the third thing—money is the only thing—money is everything and all things.’—‘Vagabond, sir,’ said a third voice: ‘I am a gentleman, and have money sufficient to maintain your daughter in comfort.’—‘Comfort!’ said the gruff voice again; ‘comfort with five hundred a year, ha! ha! ha! eh, Sir Bonus?’—‘Hooh! hooh! hooh! very droll indeed,’ said a fourth voice, in a sound that seemed a mixture of a cough and a laugh.—‘Very well, sir,’ said the third voice; ‘I shall not part with my treasure quietly, I assure you.’—‘Rebellion! flat rebellion against parental authority,’ exclaimed the second. ‘But I’m too much for you, youngster. Where are all my varlets and rascals?’

A violent trampling of feet, and various sounds of tumult ensued, as if the old gentleman and his party were tearing the lovers asunder by main force; and at length an agonising scream from the young lady seemed to announce that their purpose was accomplished. Mr. Forester started up with a view of doing all in his power to assist the injured damsel; and Sir Oran Haut-ton, who, as the reader has seen, had very strong feelings of natural justice, and a most chivalrous sympathy with females in distress, rushed with a desperate impulse against the partition, and hurled a great portion of it, with a violent crash, into the adjoining apartment. This unexpected event had the effect of fixing the whole group within for a few moments in motionless surprise in their respective places.

The fat and portly father, who was no other than our old acquaintance Sir Gregory Greenmould, and the old valetudinarian he had chosen for his daughter, Sir Bonus Mac Scrip, were directing the efforts of their myrmidons to separate the youthful pair. The young lady was clinging to her lover with the tenacity of the tendrils of a vine: the young gentleman’s 278right arm was at liberty, and he was keeping the assailants at bay with the poker, which he had seized on the first irruption of the foe, and which had left vestiges of its impression, to speak in ancient phraseology, in various green wounds and bloody coxcombs.

As Sir Oran was not habituated to allow any very long process of syllogistic reasoning to interfere between his conception and execution of the dictates of natural justice, he commenced operations by throwing the assailants one by one downstairs, who, as fast as they could rise from the ground, ran or limped away into sundry holes and coverts. Sir Bonus Mac Scrip retreated through the breach, and concealed himself under the dining-table in Mr. Forester’s apartment. Mr. Forester succeeded in preventing Sir Gregory from being thrown after his myrmidons: but Sir Oran kept the fat baronet a close prisoner in the corner of the room, while the lovers slipped away into the inn-yard, where the chaise they had ordered was in readiness; and the cracking of whips, the trampling of horses, and the rattling of wheels announced the final discomfiture of the schemes of Sir Gregory Greenmould and the hopes of Sir Bonus Mac Scrip.

279

Sir Bonus Mac Scrip retreated through the breach, and concealed himself under the dining-table.

CHAPTER XXXIX MAINCHANCE VILLA

The next day they resumed their perquisitions, still without any clue to guide them in their search. They had hitherto had the advantage of those halcyon days which often make the middle of winter a season of serenity and sunshine; but, on this day, towards the evening, the sky grew black with clouds, the snow fell rapidly in massy flakes, and the mountains and valleys were covered with one uniform veil of whiteness. All vestiges of roads and paths were obliterated. They were winding round the side of a mountain, and their situation began to wear a very unpromising aspect, when, on a sudden turn of the road, the trees and chimneys of a villa burst upon their view in the valley below. To this they bent their way, and on ringing at the gate-bell, and making the requisite inquiries, they found it to be Mainchance Villa, the new residence of Peter Paypaul Paperstamp, Esquire, whom we introduced to our readers in the twenty-eighth chapter. They sent in their names, and received a polite invitation to walk in. They were shown into a parlour, where they found their old acquaintance Mr. Derrydown tête-à-tête at the piano with Miss Celandina, with whom he was singing a duet. Miss Celandina said, ‘her papa was just then engaged, but would soon have the pleasure of waiting on them: in the meantime Mr. Derrydown would do the honours of the house.’ Miss Celandina left the room; and they learned in conversation with Mr. Derrydown, that the latter, finding his case hopeless with Anthelia, had discovered some good reasons in an old ballad for placing his affections where they would be more welcome; he had therefore thrown himself at the feet of Miss Celandina Paperstamp; the young lady’s father, having inquired into 282Mr. Derrydown’s fortune, had concluded, from the answer he received, that it would be a very good match for his daughter; and the day was already definitely arranged on which Miss Celandina Paperstamp was to be metamorphosed into Mrs. Derrydown.

Mr. Derrydown informed them that they would not see Mr. Paperstamp till dinner, as he was closeted in close conference with Mr. Feathernest, Mr. Vamp, Mr. Killthedead, and Mr. Anyside Antijack, a very important personage just arrived from abroad on the occasion of a letter from Mr. Mystic of Cimmerian Lodge, denouncing an approaching period of public light, which had filled Messieurs Paperstamp, Feathernest, Vamp, Killthedead, and Antijack with the deepest dismay; and they were now holding a consultation on the best means to be adopted for totally and finally extinguishing the light of the human understanding. ‘I am excluded from the council,’ proceeded Mr. Derrydown, ‘and it is their intention to keep me altogether in the dark on the subject; but I shall wait very patiently for the operation of the second bottle, when the wit will be out of the brain, and the cat will be out of the bag.’

‘Is that picture a family piece?’ said Mr. Fax.

‘I hardly know,’ said Mr. Derrydown, ‘whether there is any relationship between Mr. Paperstamp and the persons there represented; but there is at least a very intimate connection. The old woman in the scarlet cloak is the illustrious Mother Goose;—the two children playing at see-saw are Margery Daw and Tommy with his Banbury cake;—the little boy and girl, the one with a broken pitcher, and the other with a broken head, are little Jack and Jill: the house, at the door of which the whole party is grouped, is the famous house that Jack built; you see the clock through the window and the mouse running up it, as in that sublime strain of immortal genius, entitled Dickery Dock: and the boy in the corner is little Jack Horner eating his Christmas pie. The latter is one of the most splendid examples on record of the admirable practical doctrine of “taking care of number one,” and he is therefore in double favour with Mr. Paperstamp, for his excellence as a pattern of moral and political wisdom, and for the beauty of the poetry in which his great achievement of extracting a plum from the Christmas pie is celebrated. Mr. Paperstamp, Mr. Feathernest, Mr. Vamp, Mr. Killthedead, and Mr. 283Anyside Antijack are unanimously agreed that the Christmas pie in question is a type and symbol of the public purse; and as that is a pie in which every one of them has a finger, they look with great envy and admiration on little Jack Horner, who extracted a plum from it, and who, I believe, haunts their dreams with his pie and his plum, saying, “Go, and do thou likewise!”’

The secret council broke up, and Mr. Paperstamp entering with his four compeers, bade the new-comers welcome to Mainchance Villa, and introduced to them Mr. Anyside Antijack. Mr. Paperstamp did not much like Mr. Forester’s modes of thinking; indeed he disliked them the more, from their having once been his own; but a man of large landed property was well worth a little civility, as there was no knowing what turn affairs might take, what party might come into place, and who might have the cutting up of the Christmas pie.

They now adjourned to dinner, during which, as usual, little was said, and much was done. When the wine began to circulate, Mr. Feathernest held forth for some time in praise of himself; and by the assistance of a little smattering in Mr. Mystic’s synthetical logic, proved himself to be a model of taste, genius, consistency, and public virtue. This was too good an example to be thrown away; and Mr. Paperstamp followed it up with a very lofty encomium on his own virtues and talents, declaring he did not believe so great a genius, or so amiable a man as himself, Peter Paypaul Paperstamp, Esquire, of Mainchance Villa, had appeared in the world since the days of Jack the Giantkiller, whose coat of darkness he hoped would become the costume of all the rising generation, whenever adequate provision should be made for the whole people to be taught and trained.

Mr. Vamp, Mr. Killthedead, and Mr. Anyside Antijack were all very loud in their encomiums of the wine, which Mr. Paperstamp observed had been tasted for him by his friend Mr. Feathernest, who was a great connoisseur in ‘Sherris sack.’

Mr. Derrydown was very intent on keeping the bottle in motion, in the hope of bringing the members of the critico-poetical council into that state of blind self-love, when the great vacuum of the head, in which brain was, like Mr. Harris’s indefinite article, supplied by negation, would be inflated with oenogen gas, or, in other words, with the fumes of wine, the 284effect of which, according to psychological chemistry, is, after filling up every chink and crevice of the cranial void, to evolve through the labial valve, bringing with it all the secrets both of memory and anticipation which had been carefully laid up in the said chinks and crevices. This state at length arrived; and Mr. Derrydown, to quicken its operation, contrived to pick a quarrel with Mr. Vamp, who being naturally very testy and waspish, poured out upon him a torrent of invectives, to the infinite amusement of Mr. Derrydown, who, however, affecting to be angry, said to him in a tragical tone,

This produced a general cry of ‘Chair! chair!’ Mr. Paperstamp called Mr. Derrydown to order. The latter apologised with as much gravity as he could assume, and said, to make amends for his warmth, he would give them a toast, and pronounced accordingly: ‘Your scheme for extinguishing the light of the human understanding: may it meet the success it merits.’

Mr. Anyside Antijack. Nothing can be in a more hopeful train. We must set the alarmists at work, as in the Antijacobin war: when, to be sure, we had one or two honest men among our opposers^[98]—(Mr. Feathernest and Mr. Paperstamp smiled and bowed)—though they were for the most part ill-read in history, and ignorant of human nature.^[99]

Mr. Feathernest and Mr. Paperstamp. How, sir?

Mr. Anyside Antijack. For the most part, observe me. Of course I do not include my quondam antagonists, and now very dear friends, Mr. Paperstamp and Mr. Feathernest, who have altered their minds, as the sublime Burke altered his mind,^[100] from the most disinterested motives.

Mr. Forester. Yet there are some persons, and those not the lowest in the scale of moral philosophy, who have called the sublime Burke a pensioned apostate.

Mr. Vamp. Moral philosophy! Every man who talks of 285moral philosophy is a thief and a rascal, and will never make any scruple of seducing his neighbour’s wife, or stealing his neighbour’s property.^[101]

Mr. Forester. You can prove that assertion of course.

Mr. Vamp. Prove it! The editor of the Legitimate Review required to prove an assertion!

Mr. Anyside Antijack. The church is in danger!

Mr. Forester. I confess I do not see how the church is endangered by a simple request to prove the asserted necessary connection between the profession of moral philosophy and the practice of robbery.

Mr. Anyside Antijack. For your satisfaction, sir, and from my disposition to oblige you, as you are a gentleman of family and fortune, I will prove it. Every moral philosopher discards the creed and commandments:^[102] the sixth commandment says, Thou shalt not steal; therefore, every moral philosopher is a thief.

Mr. Feathernest, Mr. Killthedead, and Mr. Paperstamp. Nothing can be more logical. The church is in danger! The church is in danger!

Mr. Vamp. Keep up that. It is an infallible tocsin for rallying all the old women about us when everything else fails.

Mr. Vamp, Mr. Feathernest, Mr. Paperstamp, Mr. Killthedead, and Mr. Anyside Antijack. The church is in danger! the church is in danger!

Mr. Forester. I am very well aware that the time has been when the voice of reason could be drowned by clamour, and by rallying round the banners of corruption and delusion a mass of blind and bigoted prejudices, that had no real connection with the political question which it was the object to cry down: but I see with pleasure that those days are gone. The people read and think: their eyes are opened; they know that all their grievances arise from the pressure of taxation far beyond their means, from the fictitious circulation of paper-money, and from the corrupt and venal state of popular representation. These facts lie in a very small compass; and till you can reason them out of this knowledge, you may vociferate ‘The church is in danger’ for ever, without a single unpaid voice to join in the outcry.

Mr. Feathernest. My friend Mr. Mystic holds that it is a 286very bad thing for the people to read: so it certainly is. Oh for the happy ignorance of former ages! when the people were dolts, and knew themselves to be so.^[103] An ignorant man, judging from instinct, judges much better than a man who reads, and is consequently misinformed.^[104]

Mr. Vamp. Unless he reads the Legitimate Review.

Mr. Paperstamp. Darkness! darkness! Jack the Giantkiller’s coat of darkness! That is your only wear.

Mr. Anyside Antijack. There was a time when we could lead the people any way, and make them join with all their lungs in the yell of war: then they were people of sound judgment, and of honest and honourable feelings:^[105] but when they pretend to feel the pressure of personal suffering, and to read and think about its causes and remedies—such impudence is intolerable.

Mr. Fax. Are they not the same people still? If they were capable of judging then, are they not capable of judging now?

Mr. Anyside Antijack. By no means: they are only capable of judging when they see with our eyes; then they see straight forward; when they pretend to use their own, they squint.^[106] They saw with our eyes in the beginning of the Antijacobin war. They would have determined on that war, if it had been decided by universal suffrage.^[107]

Mr. Fax. Why was not the experiment tried?

Mr. Anyside Antijack. It was not convenient. But they were in a most amiable ferment of intolerant loyalty.^[108]

Mr. Forester. Of which the proof is to be found in the immortal Gagging Bills, by which that intolerant loyalty was coerced.

Mr. Anyside Antijack. The Gagging Bills? Hem! ha! What shall we say to that? (To Mr. Vamp.)

Mr. Vamp. Say? The church is in danger!

Mr. Feathernest, Mr. Paperstamp, Mr. Killthedead, and Mr. Anyside Antijack. The church is in danger! the church is in danger!

Mr. Forester. Why was a war undertaken to prevent revolution, if all the people of this country were so well fortified 287in loyalty? Did they go to war for the purpose of forcibly preventing themselves from following a bad example against their own will? For this is what your argument seems to imply?

Mr. Fax. That the people were in a certain degree of ferment is true: but it required a great deal of management and delusion to turn that ferment into the channel of foreign war.

Mr. Anyside Antijack. Well, sir, and there was no other way to avoid domestic reform, which every man who desires is a ruffian, a scoundrel, and an incendiary,^[109] as much so as those two rascals Rousseau and Voltaire, who were the trumpeters of Hebert and Marat.^[110] Reform, sir, is not to be thought of; we have been at war twenty-five years to prevent it; and to have it, after all, would be very hard. We have got the national debt instead of it: in my opinion a very pretty substitute.

Mr. Derrydown sings—

Mr. Anyside Antijack. I am happy to reflect that the silly question of reform will have very few supporters in the Honourable House: but few as they are, the number would be lessened if all who come into Parliament by means which that question attempts to stigmatise would abstain from voting upon it. Undoubtedly such practices are scandalous, as being legally, and therefore morally wrong: but it is false that any evil to the legislature arises from them.^[111]

Mr. Forester. Perhaps not, sir; but very great evil arises through them from the legislature to the people. Your admission, that they are legally, and therefore morally wrong, implies a very curious method of deriving morality from law; but I suspect there is much immorality that is perfectly legal, and much legality that is supremely immoral. But these practices, you admit, are both legally and morally wrong; yet you call it a silly question to propose their cessation; and you assert that all who wish to abolish them, all who wish to 288abolish illegal and immoral practices, are ruffians, scoundrels, and incendiaries.

Mr. Killthedead. Yes, and madmen moreover, and villains.^[112] We are all upon gunpowder! The insane and the desperate are scattering firebrands!^[113] We shall all be blown up in a 289body: sinecures, rotten boroughs, secret-service-men, and the whole honourable band of gentlemen pensioners, will all be blown up in a body! A stand! a stand! it is time to make a stand against popular encroachment!

Mr. Vamp, Mr. Feathernest, and Mr. Paperstamp. The church is in danger!

Mr. Anyside Antijack. Here is the great blunderbuss that is to blow the whole nation to atoms! the Spencean blunderbuss! (Saying these words he produced a popgun from his pocket,^[114] and shot off a paper pellet in the ear of Mr. Paperstamp,

which made the latter spring up in sudden fright, to the irremediable perdition of a decanter of ‘Sherris sack,’ over which Mr. Feathernest lamented bitterly.)

Mr. Forester. I do not see what connection the Spencean theory, the impracticable chimaera of an obscure herd of fanatics, has with the great national question of parliamentary reform.

Mr. Anyside Antijack. Sir, you may laugh at this popgun, 290but you will find it the mallet of Thor.^[115] The Spenceans are far more respectable than the parliamentary reformers, and have a more distinct and intelligible system!!!^[116]

Mr. Vamp. Bravo! bravo! bravo! There is not another man in our corps with brass enough to make such an assertion, but Mr. Anyside Antijack. (Reiterated shouts of Bravo! from Mr. Vamp, Mr. Feathernest, Mr. Paperstamp, and Mr. Killthedead.)

Mr. Killthedead. Make out that, and our job is done.

Mr. Anyside Antijack. Make it out! Nonsense! I shall take it for granted: I shall set up the Spencean plan as a more sensible plan than that of the parliamentary reformers: then knock down the former, and argue against the latter, a fortiori. (The shouts of Bravo! here became perfectly deafening, the critico-poetical corps being by this time much more than half-seas-over.)

Mr. Killthedead.—The members for rotten boroughs are the most independent members in the Honourable House, and the representatives of most constituents least so.^[117]

Mr. Fax. How will you prove that?

Mr. Killthedead. By calling the former gentlemen, and the latter mob representatives.^[118]

Mr. Vamp. Nothing can be more logical.

Mr. Fax. Do you call that logic?

Mr. Vamp. Excellent logic. At least it will pass for such with our readers.

Mr. Anyside Antijack. We, and those who think with us, are the only wise and good men.^[119]

Mr. Forester. May I take the liberty to inquire what you mean by a wise and a good man?

Mr. Anyside Antijack. A wise man is he who looks after the one thing needful; and a good man is he who has it. The acme of wisdom and goodness in conjunction consists in appropriating as much as possible of the public money; and saying to those from whose pockets it is taken, ‘I am perfectly satisfied with things as they are. Let well alone!’

Mr. Paperstamp. We shall make out a very good case; but you must not forget to call the present public distress an 291awful dispensation:^[120] a little pious cant goes a great way towards turning the thoughts of men from the dangerous and jacobinical propensity of looking into moral and political causes for moral and political effects.

Mr. Fax. But the moral and political causes are now too obvious, and too universally known, to be obscured by any such means. All the arts and eloquence of corruption may be overthrown by the enumeration of these simple words: boroughs, taxes, and paper-money.

Mr. Anyside Antijack. Paper-money! What, is the ghost of bullion abroad?^[121]

Mr. Forester. Yes! and till you can make the buried substance burst the paper cerements of its sepulchre, its ghost will continue to walk like the ghost of Caesar, saying to the desolated nation: ‘I am thy evil spirit!’

Mr. Anyside Antijack. I must say, I am very sorry to find a gentleman like you taking the part of the swinish multitude, who are only fit for beasts of burden, to raise subsistence for their betters, pay taxes for placemen, and recruit the army and navy for the benefit of legitimacy, divine right, the Jesuits, the Pope, the Inquisition, and the Virgin Mary’s petticoat.

Mr. Paperstamp. Hear! hear! hear! Hear the voice which the stream of Tendency is uttering for elevation of our thought!

Mr. Forester. It was once said by a poet, whose fallen state none can more bitterly lament than I do:

Mr. Feathernest. Poets, sir, are not amenable to censure, however frequently their political opinions may exhibit marks of inconsistency.^[122] The Muse, as a French author says, is a mere étourdie, a folâtre who may play at her option on heath or on turf, and transfer her song at pleasure from Hampden to Ferdinand, and from Washington to Louis.

Mr. Forester. If a poet be contented to consider himself 292in the light of a merry-andrew, be it so. But if he assume the garb of moral austerity, and pour forth against corruption and oppression the language of moral indignation, there would at least be some decency, if, when he changes sides, he would let the world see that conversion and promotion have not gone hand in hand.

Mr. Feathernest. What decency might be in that, I know not: but of this I am very certain, that there would be no wisdom in it.

Mr. Anyside Antijack. No! no! there would be no wisdom in it.

Mr. Feathernest. Sir, I am a wise and a good man: mark that, sir; ay, and an honourable man.

Mr. Vamp. ‘So are we all, all honourable men!’

Mr. Anyside Antijack. And we will stick by one another with heart and hand——

Mr. Killthedead. To make a stand against popular encroachment——

Mr. Feathernest. To bring back the glorious ignorance of the feudal ages——

Mr. Paperstamp. To rebuild the mystic temples of venerable superstition——

Mr. Vamp. To extinguish, totally and finally, the light of the human understanding——

Mr. Anyside Antijack. And to get all we can for our trouble!

Mr. Feathernest. So we will all say.

Mr. Paperstamp. And so we will all sing.

294MR. ANYSIDE ANTIJACK

CHAPTER XL THE HOPES OF THE WORLD

The mountain-roads being now buried in snow, they were compelled, on leaving Mainchance Villa, to follow the most broad and beaten track, and they entered on a turnpike road which led in the direction of the sea.

‘I no longer wonder,’ said Mr. Fax, ‘that men in general are so much disposed as I have found them to look with supreme contempt on the literary character, seeing the abject servility and venality by which it is so commonly debased.’^[123]

Mr. Forester. What then becomes of the hopes of the world, which you have admitted to consist entirely in the progress of the mind, allowing, as you must allow, the incontrovertible fact of the physical deterioration of the human race?

Mr. Fax. When I speak of the mind, I do not allude either to poetry or to periodical criticism, nor, in any great 296degree, to physical science; but I rest my hopes on the very same basis with Mr. Mystic’s fear—the general diffusion of moral and political truth.

Mr. Forester. For poetry, its best days are gone. Homer, Shakspeare, and Milton will return no more.

Mr. Fax. Lucretius we yet may hope for.

Mr. Forester. Not till superstition and prejudice have been shorn of a much larger portion of their power. If Lucretius should arise among us in the present day, exile or imprisonment would be his infallible portion. We have yet many steps to make before we shall arrive at the liberality and toleration of Tiberius!^[124] And as to physical science, though it does in some measure weaken the dominion of mental error, yet I fear, where it proves itself in one instance the friend of human liberty, it will be found in ninety-nine the slave of corruption and luxury.

Mr. Fax. In many cases science is both morally and politically neutral, and its speculations have no connection whatever with the business of life.

Mr. Forester. It is true; and such speculations are often called sublime: though the sublimity of uselessness passes my comprehension. But the neutrality is only apparent: for it has in these cases the real practical effect, and a most pernicious one it is, of withdrawing some of the highest and most valuable minds from the only path of real utility, which I agree with you to be that of moral and political knowledge, to pursuits of no more real importance than that of keeping a dozen eggs at a time dancing one after another in the air.

Mr. Fax. If it be admitted, on the one hand, that the progress of luxury has kept pace with that of physical science, it must be acknowledged, on the other, that superstition has decayed in at least an equal proportion; and I think it cannot be denied that the world is a gainer by the exchange.

Mr. Forester. The decay of superstition is immeasurably beneficial; but the growth of luxury is not, therefore, the less pernicious. It is lamentable to reflect that there is most indigence in the richest countries;^[125] and that the increase of superfluous enjoyment in the few is counterbalanced by the 297proportionate diminution of comfort in the many. Splendid equipages and sumptuous dwellings are far from being symbols of general prosperity. The palace of luxurious indolence is much rather the symbol of a thousand hovels, by the labours and privations of whose wretched inhabitants that baleful splendour is maintained. Civilisation, vice, and folly grow old together. Corruption begins among the higher orders, and from them descends to the people; so that in every nation the ancient nobility is the first to exhibit symptoms of corporeal and mental degeneracy, and to show themselves unfit both for council and war. If you recapitulate the few titled names that will adorn the history of the present times, you will find that almost all of them are new creations. The corporeal decay of mankind I hold to be undeniable: the increase of general knowledge I allow: but reason is of slow growth; and if men in general only become more corrupt as they become more learned, the progress of literature will oppose no adequate counterpoise to that of avarice, luxury, and disease.

298Mr. Fax. Certainly, the progress of reason is slow, but the ground which it has once gained it never abandons. The interest of rulers, and the prejudices of the people, are equally hostile to everything that comes in the shape of innovation; but all that now wears the strongest sanction of antiquity was once received with reluctance under the semblance of novelty: and that reason, which in the present day can scarcely obtain a footing from the want of precedents, will grow with the growth of years, and become a precedent in its turn.^[126]

Mr. Forester. Reason may be diffused in society, but it is only in minds which have courage enough to despise prejudice and virtue enough to love truth only for itself,^[127] that its seeds will germinate into wholesome and vigorous life. The love of truth is the most noble quality of human intellect, the most delightful in the interchange of private confidence, the most important in the direction of those speculations which have public happiness for their aim. Yet of all qualities this is the most rare: it is the Phoenix of the intellectual world. In private intercourse, how very very few are they whose assertions carry conviction! How much petty deception, paltry equivocation, hollow profession, smiling malevolence, and polished hypocrisy combine to make a desert and a solitude of what is called society! How much empty pretence and simulated patriotism, and shameless venality, and unblushing dereliction of principle, and clamorous recrimination, and daring imposture, and secret cabal, and mutual undermining of ‘Honourable Friends,’ render utterly loathsome and disgusting the theatre of public life! How much timid deference to vulgar prejudice, how much misrepresentation of the motives of conscientious opponents, how many appeals to unreflecting passion, how much assumption of groundless hypothesis, how many attempts to darken the clearest light and entangle the simplest clue, render not only nugatory, but pernicious, the speculations of moral and political reason! Pernicious, inasmuch as it is better for the benighted traveller to remain stationary in darkness, than to follow an ignis fatuus through the fen! Falsehood is the great vice of the age: falsehood 299of heart, falsehood of mind, falsehood of every form and mode of intellect and intercourse: so that it is hardly possible to find a man of worth and goodness of whom to make a friend: but he who does find such an one will have more enjoyment of friendship than in a better age; for he will be doubly fond of him, and will love him as Hamlet does Horatio, and with him retiring and getting, as it were, under the shelter of a wall, will let the storm of life blow over him.^[128]

Mr. Fax. But that retirement must be consecrated to philosophical labour, or, however delightful to the individuals, it will be treason to the public cause. Be the world as bad as it may, it would necessarily be much worse if the votaries of truth and the children of virtue were all to withdraw from its vortex, and leave it to itself. If reason be progressive, however slowly, the wise and good have sufficient encouragement to persevere; and even if the doctrine of deterioration be true, it is no less their duty to contribute all in their power to retard its progress, by investigating its causes and remedies.

Mr. Forester. Undoubtedly. But the progress of theoretical knowledge has a most fearful counterpoise in the accelerated depravation of practical morality. The frantic love of money, which seems to govern our contemporaries to a degree unprecedented in the history of man, paralyses the energy of independence, darkens the light of reason, and blights the blossoms of love.

Mr. Fax. The amor sceleratus habendi is not peculiar either to our times or to civilised life. Money you must have, no matter from whence, is a sentence, if we may believe Euripides, as old as the heroic age: and the monk Rubruquis says of the Tartars, that, as parents keep all their daughters till they can sell them, their maids are sometimes very stale before they are married.^[129]

Mr. Forester. In that respect, then, I must acknowledge the Tartars and we are much on a par. It is a collateral question well worth considering, how far the security of property, which contributes so much to the diffusion of knowledge and the permanence of happiness, is favourable to the growth of individual virtue.

Mr. Fax. Security of property tranquillises the minds of 300men, and fits them to shine rather in speculation than in action. In turbulent and insecure states of society, when the fluctuations of power, or the incursions of predatory neighbours, hang like the sword of Damocles over the most flourishing possessions, friends are more dear to each other, mutual services and sacrifices are more useful and more necessary, the energies of heart and hand are continually called forth, and shining examples of the self-oblivious virtues are produced in the same proportion as mental speculation is unknown or disregarded: but our admiration of these virtues must be tempered by the remark, that they arise more from impulsive feeling than from reflective principle; and that where life and fortune hold by such a precarious tenure, the first may be risked, and the second abandoned, with much less effort than would be required for inferior sacrifices in more secure and tranquil times.

Mr. Forester. Alas, my friend! I would willingly see such virtues as do honour to human nature, without being very solicitous as to the comparative quantities of impulse and reflection in which they originate. If the security of property and the diffusion of general knowledge were attended with a corresponding increase of benevolence and individual mental power, no philanthropist could look with despondency on the prospects of the world: but I can discover no symptoms of either the one or the other. Insatiable accumulators, overgrown capitalists, fatteners on public spoil, I cannot but consider as excrescences on the body politic, typical of disease and prophetic of decay: yet it is to these and such as these that the poet tunes his harp, and the man of science consecrates his labours: it is for them that an enormous portion of the population is condemned to unhealthy manufactories, not less deadly but more lingering than the pestilence: it is for them that the world rings with lamentations, if the most trivial accident, the most transient sickness, the most frivolous disappointment befall them: but when the prisons swarm, when the workhouses overflow, when whole parishes declare themselves bankrupt, when thousands perish by famine in the wintry streets, where then is the poet, where is the man of science, where is the elegant philosopher? The poet is singing hymns to the great ones of the world, the man of science is making discoveries for the adornment of their dwellings or the enhancement 301of their culinary luxuries, and the elegant philosopher is much too refined a personage to allow such vulgar subjects as the sufferings of the poor to interfere with his sublime speculations. They are married and cannot come!

Mr. Fax. Ἐψαυσας ἀλγεινοτατας ἐμοι μεριμνας!^[130] Those elegant philosophers are among the most fatal enemies to the advancement of moral and political knowledge; laborious triflers, profound investigators of nothing, everlasting talkers about taste and beauty, who see in the starving beggar only the picturesqueness of his rags, and in the ruined cottage only the harmonising tints of moss, mildew, and stonecrop.

Mr. Forester. We talk of public feeling and national sympathy. Our dictionaries may define those words and our lips may echo them, but we must look for the realities among less enlightened nations. The Canadian savages cannot imagine the possibility of any individual in a community having a full meal while another has but half an one:^[131] still less could they imagine that one should have too much, while another had nothing. Theirs is that bond of brotherhood which nature weaves and civilisation breaks, and from which the older nations grow the farther they recede.

Mr. Fax. It cannot be otherwise. The state you have described is adapted only to a small community, and to the infancy of human society. I shall make a very liberal concession to your views, if I admit it to be possible that the middle stage of the progress of man is worse than either the point from which he started or that at which he will arrive. But it is my decided opinion that we have passed that middle stage, and that every evil incident to the present condition of human society will be removed by the diffusion of moral and political knowledge, and the general increase of moral and political liberty. I contemplate with great satisfaction the rapid decay of many hoary absurdities, which a few transcendental 302hierophants of the venerable and the mysterious are labouring in vain to revive. I look with well-grounded confidence to a period when there will be neither slaves among the northern, nor monks among the southern Americans. The sun of freedom has risen over that great continent, with the certain promise of a glorious day. I form the best hopes for my own country, in the mental improvement of the people, whenever she shall breathe from the pressure of that preposterous system of finance which sooner or later must fall by its own weight.

Mr. Forester. I apply to our system of finance a fiction of the northern mythology. The ash of Yggdrasil overshadows the world: Ratatosk, the squirrel, sports in the branches: Nidhogger, the serpent, gnaws at the root.^[132] The ash of Yggdrasil is the tree of national prosperity: Ratatosk the squirrel is the careless and unreflecting fundholder: Nidhogger the serpent is POLITICAL CORRUPTION, which will in time consume the root, and spread the branches on the dust. What will then become of the squirrel?

Mr. Fax. Ratatosk must look to himself: Nidhogger must be killed, and the ash of Yggdrasil will rise like a vegetable Phoenix to flourish again for ages.

Thus conversing, they arrived on the sea-shore, where we shall leave them to pursue their way, while we investigate the fate of Anthelia.

304

She immediately ran through the shrubbery.

CHAPTER XLI ALGA CASTLE

Anthelia had not ventured to resume her solitary rambles after her return from Onevote; more especially as she anticipated the period when she should revisit her favourite haunts in the society of one congenial companion whose presence would heighten the magic of their interest, and restore to them that feeling of security which her late adventure had destroyed. But as she was sitting in her library on the morning of her disappearance, she suddenly heard a faint and mournful cry, like the voice of a child in distress. She rose, opened the window, and listened. She heard the sounds more distinctly. They seemed to ascend from that part of the dingle immediately beneath the shrubbery that fringed her windows. It was certainly the cry of a child. She immediately ran through the shrubbery and descended the rocky steps into the dingle, where she found a little boy tied to the stem of a tree, crying and sobbing as if his heart would break. Anthelia easily set him at liberty, and his grief passed away like an April shower. She asked who had the barbarity to treat him in such a manner. He said he could not tell—four strange men on horseback had taken him up on the common where his father lived, and brought him there and tied him to the tree, he could not tell why. Anthelia took his hand and was leading him from the dingle, intending to send him home by Peter Gray, when the men who had made the little child their unconscious decoy broke from their ambush, seized Anthelia, and taking effectual precautions to stifle her cries, placed her on one of their horses, and travelled with great rapidity along narrow and unfrequented ways, till they arrived at a solitary castle on the sea-shore, where they conveyed her to a splendid 306suite of apartments, and left her in solitude, locking, as they retired, the door of the outer room.

She was utterly unable to comprehend the motive of so extraordinary a proceeding, or to form any conjecture as to its probable result. An old woman of a very unmeaning physiognomy shortly after entered, to tender her services; but to all Anthelia’s questions she only replied with a shake of the head, and a smile which she meant to be very consolatory.

The old woman retired, and shortly after reappeared with an elegant dinner, which Anthelia dismissed untouched. ‘There is no harm intended you, my sweet lady,’ said the old woman; ‘so pray don’t starve yourself.’ Anthelia assured her she had no such intention, but had no appetite at that time; but she drank a glass of wine at the old woman’s earnest entreaty.

In the evening the mystery was elucidated by a visit from Lord Anophel Achthar; who, falling on his knees before her, entreated her to allow the violence of his passion to plead his pardon for a proceeding which nothing but the imminent peril of seeing her in the arms of a rival could have induced him to adopt. Anthelia replied that, if his object were to obtain her affections, he had taken the most effectual method to frustrate his own views; that if he thought by constraint and cruelty to obtain her hand without her affections, he might be assured that he would never succeed. Her heart, however, she candidly told him, was no longer in her power to dispose of; and she hoped, after this frank avowal, he would see the folly, if not the wickedness, of protracting his persecution.

He now, still on his knees, broke out into a rhapsody about love, and hope, and death, and despair, in which he developed the whole treasury of his exuberant and overflowing folly. He then expatiated on his expectations, and pointed out all the advantages of wealth and consequence attached to the title of Marchioness of Agaric, and concluded by saying that she must be aware so important and decisive a measure had not been taken without the most grave and profound deliberation, and that he never could suffer her to make her exit from Alga Castle in any other character than that of Lady Achthar. He then left her to meditate on his heroic resolution.

He flattered himself that Anthelia would at length come to a determination.

The next day he repeated his visit—resumed his supplications—reiterated his determination to persevere—and received 309from Anthelia the same reply. She endeavoured to reason with him on the injustice and absurdity of his proceedings; but he told her the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub and Mr. Feathernest the poet had taught him that all reasonings pretending to point out absurdity and injustice were manifestly jacobinical, which he, as one of the pillars of the state, was bound not to listen to.

He renewed his visits every day for a week, becoming with every new visit less humble and more menacing, and consequently more disagreeable to Anthelia, as the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub, by whose instructions he acted, secretly foresaw and designed. The latter now undertook to plead his Lordship’s cause, and set in a clear point of view to Anthelia the inflexibility of his Lordship’s resolutions, which, properly expounded, could not fail to have due weight against the alternatives of protracted solitude and hopeless resistance.

The reverend gentleman, however, had other views than those he held out to Lord Anophel, and presented himself to Anthelia with an aspect of great commiseration. He said he was an unwilling witness of his Lordship’s unjust proceedings, which he had done all in his power to prevent, and which had been carried into effect against his will. It was his firm intention to set her at liberty as soon as he could devise the means of doing so; but all the outlets of Alga Castle were so guarded that he had not yet been able to devise any feasible scheme for her escape; but it should be his sole study night and day to effect it.

Anthelia thanked him for his sympathy, and asked why he could not give notice to her friends of her situation, which would accomplish the purpose at once. He replied that Lord Anophel already mistrusted him, and that if anything of the kind were done, however secretly he might proceed, the suspicion would certainly fall upon him, and that he should then be a ruined man, as all his worldly hopes rested on the Marquis of Agaric. Anthelia offered to make him the utmost compensation for the loss of the Marquis of Agaric’s favour; but he said that was impossible, unless she could make him a bishop, as the Marquis of Agaric would do. His plan, he said, must be to effect her liberation, without seeming to be himself in any way whatever concerned in it; and though he would willingly lose everything for her sake, yet he trusted she would 310not think ill of him for wishing to wait a few days, that he might try to devise the means of serving her without ruining himself.

He continued his daily visits of sympathy, sometimes amusing her with a hopeful scheme, at others detailing with a rueful face the formidable nature of some unexpected obstacle, hinting continually at his readiness to sacrifice everything for her sake, lamenting the necessity of delay, and assuring her that in the meanwhile no evil should happen to her. He flattered himself that Anthelia, wearied out with the irksomeness of confinement, and the continual alternations of hope and disappointment, and contrasting the respectful tenderness of his manner with the disagreeable system of behaviour to which he had fashioned Lord Anophel, would at length come to a determination of removing all his difficulties by offering him her hand and fortune as a compensation for his anticipated bishopric. It was not, however, very long before Anthelia penetrated his design; but as she did not deem it prudent to come to a rupture with him at that time, she continued to listen to his daily details of plans and impediments, and allowed him to take to himself all the merit he seemed to assume for supplying her with music and books; though he expressed himself very much shocked at her asking him for Gibbon and Rousseau, whose works, he said, ought to be burned in foro by the hands of Carnifex.

The windows of her apartment were at an immense elevation from the beach, as that part of the castle-wall formed a continued line with the black and precipitous side of the rock on which it stood. During the greater portion of the hours of daylight she sate near the window with her harp, gazing on the changeful aspects of the wintry sea, now slumbering like a summer lake in the sunshine of a halcyon day—now raging beneath the sway of the tempest, while the dancing snow-flakes seemed to accumulate on the foam of the billows, and the spray was hurled back like snow-dust from the rocks. The feelings these scenes suggested she developed in the following stanzas, to which she adapted a wild and impassioned air, and they became the favourite song of her captivity.

311

Gazing on the changeful aspects of the wintry sea.

CHAPTER XLII CONCLUSION

Lord Anophel one morning paid Anthelia his usual visit. ‘You must be aware, Miss Melincourt,’ said he, ‘that if your friends could have found you out, they would have done it before this; but they have searched the whole country far and near, and have now gone home in despair.’

Anthelia. That, my Lord, I cannot believe; for there is one, at least, who I am confident will never be weary of seeking me, and who, I am equally confident, will not always seek in vain.

Lord Anophel Achthar. If you mean the young lunatic of Redrose Abbey, or his friend the dumb Baronet, they are both gone to London to attend the opening of the Honourable House; and if you doubt my word, I will show you their names in the Morning Post, among the Fashionable Arrivals at Wildman’s Hotel.

Anthelia. Your Lordship’s word is quite as good as the authority you have quoted.

Lord Anophel Achthar. Well, then, Miss Melincourt, I presume you perceive that you are completely in my power, and that I have gone too far to recede. If, indeed, I had supposed myself an object of such very great repugnance to you, which I must say (looking at himself in a glass) is quite unaccountable, I might not, perhaps, have laid this little scheme, which I thought would be only settling the affair in a compendious way; for that any woman in England would consider it a very great hardship to be Lady Achthar, and hereafter Marchioness of Agaric, and would feel any very mortal resentment for means that tended to make her so, was an idea, egad, that never entered my head. However, as 319I have already observed, you are completely in my power: both our characters are compromised, and there is only one way to mend the matter, which is to call in Grovelgrub, and make him strike up ‘Dearly beloved.’

Preparing to administer natural justice by throwing him out at the window.

Anthelia. As to your character, Lord Anophel, that must be your concern. Mine is in my own keeping; for, having practised all my life a system of uniform sincerity, which gives me a right to be believed by all who know me, and more especially by all who love me, I am perfectly indifferent to private malice or public misrepresentation.

Lord Anophel Achthar. There is such a thing, Miss Melincourt, as tiring out a man’s patience; and, ‘pon honour, if gentle means don’t succeed with you, I must have recourse to rough ones, ‘pon honour.

Anthelia. My Lord!

Lord Anophel Achthar. I am serious, curse me. You will be glad enough to hush all up, then, and we’ll go to court together in due form.

Anthelia. What you mean by hushing up, Lord Anophel, I know not: but of this be assured, that under no circumstances will I ever be your wife; and that whatever happens to me in any time or place, shall be known to all who are interested in my welfare. I know too well the difference between the true quality of a pure and simple mind and the false affected modesty which goes by that name in the world, to be intimidated by threats which can only be dictated by a supposition that your wickedness would be my disgrace, and that false shame would induce me to conceal what both truth and justice would command me to make known.

We shall leave them to run ad libitum.

Lord Anophel stood aghast for a few minutes, at the declaration of such unfashionable sentiments. At length saying, ‘Ay, preaching is one thing, and practice another, as Grovelgrub can testify,’ he seized her hand with violence, and threw his arm round her waist. Anthelia screamed, and at that very moment a violent noise of ascending steps was heard on the stairs; the door was burst open, and Sir Oran Haut-ton appeared in the aperture, with the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub in custody, whom he dragged into the apartment, followed by Mr. Forester and Mr. Fax. Mr. Forester flew to Anthelia, who threw herself into his arms, hid her face in his bosom, and burst into tears: which when Sir Oran saw, his wrath grew 320boundless, and quitting his hold of the Rev. Mr. Grovelgrub (who immediately ran downstairs, and out of the castle, as fast as a pair of short thick legs could carry him), seized on Lord Anophel Achthar, and was preparing to administer natural justice by throwing him out at the window; but Mr. Fax interposed, and calling Mr. Forester’s attention, which was totally engaged with Anthelia, they succeeded in rescuing the terrified sprig of nobility; who immediately, leaving the enemy in free possession, flew downstairs after his reverend tutor; whom, on issuing from the castle, he discovered at an immense distance on the sands, still running with all his might. Lord Anophel gave him chase, and after a long time came within hail of him, and shouted to him to stop. But this only served to quicken the reverend gentleman’s speed; who, hearing the voice of pursuit, and too much terrified to look back, concluded that the dumb Baronet had found his voice, and was then in the very act of gaining on his flight. Therefore, the more Lord Anophel shouted ‘Stop!’ the more nimbly the reverend gentleman sped along the sands, running and roaring all the way, like Falstaff on Gadshill; his Lordship still exerting all his powers of speed in the rear, and gaining on his flying 323Mentor by very imperceptible gradations: where we shall leave them to run ad libitum, while we account for the sudden appearance of Mr. Forester and his friends.

‘He would confess all.’

We left them walking along the shore of the sea, which they followed till they arrived in the vicinity of Alga Castle, from which the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub emerged in evil hour, to take a meditative walk on the sands. The keen sight of the natural man descried him from far. Sir Oran darted on his prey; and though it is supposed that he could not have overtaken the swift-footed Achilles,^[133] he had very little difficulty in overtaking the Reverend Mr. Grovelgrub, who had begun to run for his life as soon as he was aware of the foe. Sir Oran shook his stick over his head, and the reverend gentleman dropping on his knees, put his hands together, and entreated for mercy, saying ‘he would confess all.’ Mr. Forester and Mr. Fax came up in time to hear the proposal: the former restrained the rage of Sir Oran, who, however, still held his prisoner fast by the arm; and the reluctant divine, with many a heavy groan, conducted his unwelcome company to the door of Anthelia’s apartments.

‘O Forester!’ said Anthelia, ‘you have realised all my wishes. I have found you the friend of the poor, the enthusiast of truth, the disinterested cultivator of the rural virtues, the active promoter of the cause of human liberty. It only remained that you should emancipate a captive damsel, who, however, will but change the mode of her durance, and become your captive for life.’

It was not long after this event, before the Reverend Mr. Portpipe and the old chapel of Melincourt Castle were put in requisition, to make a mystical unit of Anthelia and Mr. Forester. The day was celebrated with great festivity throughout their respective estates, and the Reverend Mr. Portpipe 324was voti compos, that is to say, he had taken a resolution on the day of Anthelia’s christening, that he would on the day of her marriage drink one bottle more than he had ever taken at one sitting on any other occasion; which resolution he had now the satisfaction of carrying into effect.

Sir Oran Haut-ton continued to reside with Mr. Forester and Anthelia. They discovered in the progress of time that he had formed for the latter the same kind of reverential attachment as the Satyr in Fletcher forms for the Holy Shepherdess:^[134] and Anthelia might have said to him in the words of Corin:

His greatest happiness was in listening to the music of her harp and voice: in the absence of which he solaced himself, as usual, with his flute and French horn. He became likewise a proficient in drawing; but what progress he made in the art of speech we have not been able to ascertain.

325Mr. Fax was a frequent visitor at Melincourt, and there was always a cover at the table for the Reverend Mr. Portpipe.

Mr. Hippy felt half inclined to make proposals to Miss Evergreen; but understanding from Mr. Forester that, from the death of her lover in early youth, that lady had irrevocably determined on a single life,^[135] he comforted himself with passing half his time at Melincourt Castle, and dancing the little Foresters on his knee, whom he taught to call him ‘grandpapa Hippy,’ and seemed extremely proud of the imaginary relationship.

Mr. Forester disposed of Redrose Abbey to Sir Telegraph Paxarett, who, after wearing the willow twelve months, married, left off driving, and became a very respectable specimen of an English country gentleman.

We must not conclude without informing those among our 326tender-hearted readers who would be much grieved if Miss Danaretta Contantina Pinmoney should have been disappointed in her principal object of making a good match, that she had at length the satisfaction, through the skilful management of her mother, of making the happiest of men of Lord Anophel Achthar.

THE COURTSHIP OF MORRICE BUCKLER. By A. E. W. Mason.

PUNCH.—“Readers will, unless gratitude be extinct, thank me for my strong recommendation as to the excellent entertainment provided for them in The Courtship of Morrice Buckler.”

GRAPHIC.—“A fine stirring narrative it is. Mr. Mason is a new recruit to the growing school of historical romancers in which Mr. Stanley Weyman and Mr. Conan Doyle are conspicuous figures, and he promises to make himself well worthy of his company. The ‘Record of the Growth of an English Gentleman during the years 1685–1687 under strange and difficult circumstances’ is a gallant and chivalrous story, cast in a period and among scenes of which I, at least, am never tired of reading.”

HIS HONOR AND A LADY. By Mrs. Everard Cotes (Sara Jeannette Duncan). Illustrated by A. D. McCormick.

DAILY CHRONICLE.—“We are inclined to place it as the best book that Mrs. Everard Cotes has yet written. The story is exceedingly well told, is everywhere witty. It has that charm of atmosphere which India yields so readily for the canvas of a consummate artist.”

PALL MALL GAZETTE.—“This is a fascinating story of Anglo-Indian life, accurate in detail and true to nature. The authoress has not only maintained the high standard of her Simple Adventures of a Mem-Sahib, but surpassed it. This is praise, but true.”

ADAM JOHNSTONE’S SON. By F. Marion Crawford.

DAILY NEWS.—“Mr. Crawford has written stories richer in incident and more powerful in intention, but we do not think that he has handled more deftly or shown a more delicate insight into tendencies that go towards making some of the more spiritual tragedies of life.”

SPEAKER.—“A book to be enjoyed by everybody.”

THE RELEASE, OR CAROLINE’S FRENCH KINDRED. By Charlotte M. Yonge.

DENIS. A Study in Black and White. By Mrs. E. M. Field.

TOM GROGAN. By F. Hopkinson Smith. With Illustrations by Charles S. Reinhart.

GLASGOW HERALD.—“A clever bit of character study.”

THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK. With Illustrations by J. Lockwood Kipling. Twenty-first Thousand.

DAILY TELEGRAPH.—“The appearance of The Second Jungle Book is a literary event of which no one will mistake the importance. Unlike most sequels, the various stories comprised in the new volume are at least equal to their predecessors.”

THE JUNGLE BOOK. With Illustrations by J. L. Kipling, W. H. Drake, and P. Frenzeny. Twenty-eighth Thousand. Crown 8vo. 6s.

ATHENÆUM.—“We tender our sincere thanks to Mr. Kipling for the hour of pure and unadulterated enjoyment which he has given us, and many another reader, by this inimitable Jungle Book.”

PUNCH.—“‘Æsop’s Fables and dear old Brer Fox and Co.,’ observes the Baron sagely, ‘may have suggested to the fanciful genius of Rudyard Kipling the delightful idea, carried out in the most fascinating style, of The Jungle Book.’”

WEE WILLIE WINKIE and other Stories. Crown 8vo. 6s.

SOLDIERS THREE and other Stories. Crown 8vo. 6s.

ST. JAMES’S GAZETTE.—“In these, as the faithful are aware, are contained some of Mr. Kipling’s very finest work.”

GLOBE.—“Containing some of the best of his highly vivid work.”

PLAIN TALES FROM THE HILLS. Thirty-first Thousand. Crown 8vo. 6s.

Saturday Review.—“Mr. Kipling knows and appreciates the English in India, and is a born story-teller and a man of humour into the bargain.... It would be hard to find better reading.”

GLASGOW HERALD.—“Character, situation, incident, humour, pathos, tragic force, are all in abundance; words alone are at a minimum. Of course these are ‘plain’ tales—lightning-flash tales. A gleam, and there the whole tragedy or comedy is before you—elaborate it for yourself afterwards.”

THE LIGHT THAT FAILED. Re-written and considerably enlarged. Nineteenth Thousand. Crown 8vo. 6s.

ACADEMY.—“Whatever else be true of Mr. Kipling, it is the first truth about him that he has power, real intrinsic power.... Mr. Kipling’s work has innumerable good qualities.”

MANCHESTER COURIER.—“The story is a brilliant one and full of vivid interest.”

LIFE’S HANDICAP. Being Stories of Mine Own People. Twenty-third Thousand. Crown 8vo. 6s.

BLACK AND WHITE.—“Life’s Handicap contains much of the best work hitherto accomplished by the author, and, taken as a whole, is a complete advance upon its predecessors.”

OBSERVER.—“The stories are as good as ever, and are quite as well told.... Life’s Handicap is a volume that can be read with pleasure and interest under almost any circumstances.”

MANY INVENTIONS. Twentieth Thousand. Crown 8vo. 6s.

PALL MALL GAZETTE.—“The completest book that Mr. Kipling has yet given us in workmanship, the weightiest and most humane in breadth of view.... It can only be regarded as a fresh landmark in the progression of his genius.”

NATIONAL OBSERVER.—“The book is one for all Mr. Kipling’s admirers to rejoice in—some for this, and some for that, and not a few for well-nigh everything it contains.”

BEAST AND MAN IN INDIA. A Popular Sketch of Indian Animals in their Relations with the People. By John Lockwood Kipling, C.I.E. With Illustrations by the Author. Extra crown 8vo. 7s. 6d.

SATURDAY REVIEW.—“Mr. Boldrewood can tell what he knows with great point and vigour, and there is no better reading than the adventurous parts of his books.”

PALL MALL GAZETTE.—“The volumes are brimful of adventure, in which gold, gold-diggers, prospectors, claim-holders, take an active part.”

MORNING POST.—“Life-like, and full of individuality.”

DAILY NEWS.—“Throughout written with spirit, good feeling, and ability, and a certain dash of humour.”

SPECTATOR.—“With the solitary exception of Mrs. Oliphant we have no living novelist more distinguished for variety of theme and range of imaginative outlook than Mr. Marion Crawford.”

ST. JAMES’S GAZETTE.—“Interesting as specimens of romance, the style of writing is so excellent—scholarly and at the same time easy and natural—that the volumes are worth reading on that account alone. But there is also masterly description of persons, places, and things; skilful analysis of character; a constant play of wit and humour; and a happy gift of instantaneous portraiture.”

SPEAKER.—“The best work of Mr. Bret Harte stands entirely alone ... marked on every page by distinction and quality.... Strength and delicacy, spirit and tenderness, go together in his best work.”

SATURDAY REVIEW.—“He has the power of seeing with the artistic perception of the few, and of writing about what he has seen, so that the many can understand and feel with him.”

WORLD.—“His touch is so light, and his humour, while shrewd and keen, so free from bitterness.”

SPECTATOR.—“In our opinion there have not been many novels published better worth reading. The literary workmanship is excellent, and all the windings of the stories are worked with patient fulness and a skill not often found.”

TIMES.—“Mr. Clark Russell is one of those writers who have set themselves to revive the British sea story in all its glorious excitement. Mr. Russell has made a considerable reputation in this line. His plots are well conceived, and that of ‘Marooned’ is no exception to this rule.”

SPECTATOR.—“Mr. Christie Murray has more power and genius for the delineation of English rustic life than any half-dozen of our surviving novelists put together.”

SATURDAY REVIEW.—“Few modern novelists can tell a story of English country life better than Mr. D. Christie Murray.”

ACADEMY.—“At her best she is, with one or two exceptions, the best of living English novelists.”

SATURDAY REVIEW.—“Has the charm of style, the literary quality and flavour that never fails to please.”