The Cornhill Magazine Vol 1 No 1

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“Omnes omnia bona dicere.”

When young Mark Robarts was leaving college, his father might well declare that all men began to say all good things to him, and to extol his fortune in that he had a son blessed with so excellent a disposition.

This father was a physician living at Exeter. He was a gentleman possessed of no private means, but enjoying a lucrative practice, which had enabled him to maintain and educate a family with all the advantages which money can give in this country. Mark was his eldest son and second child; and the first page or two of this narrative must be consumed in giving a catalogue of the good things which chance and conduct together had heaped upon this young man’s head.

His first step forward in life had arisen from his having been sent, while still very young, as a private pupil to the house of a clergyman, who was an old friend and intimate friend of his father’s. This clergyman had one other, and only one other, pupil—the young Lord Lufton, and, between the two boys, there had sprung up a close alliance.

While they were both so placed, Lady Lufton had visited her son, and then invited young Robarts to pass his next holidays at Framley Court. This visit was made; and it ended in Mark going back to Exeter with a letter full of praise from the widowed peeress. She had been delighted, she said, in having such a companion for her son, and expressed a hope that the boys might remain together during the course of their education. Dr. Robarts was a man who thought much of the breath of peers and peeresses, and was by no means inclined to throw away any advantage which might arise to his child from such a friendship. When, therefore, the young lord was sent to Harrow, Mark Robarts went there also.

That the lord and his friend often quarrelled, and occasionally fought,—the fact even that for one period of three months they never spoke to each other—by no means interfered with the doctor’s hopes. Mark again and again stayed a fortnight at Framley Court, and Lady Lufton always wrote about him in the highest terms.

And then the lads went together to Oxford, and here Mark’s good fortune followed him, consisting rather in the highly respectable manner in which he lived, than in any wonderful career of collegiate success. His family was proud of him, and the doctor was always ready to talk of him to his patients; not because he was a prizeman, and had gotten medals and scholarships, but on account of the excellence of his general conduct. He lived with the best set—he incurred no debts—he was fond of society, but able to avoid low society—liked his glass of wine, but was never known to be drunk; and, above all things, was one of the most popular men in the university.

Then came the question of a profession for this young Hyperion, and on this subject, Dr. Robarts was invited himself to go over to Framley Court to discuss the matter with Lady Lufton. Dr. Robarts returned with a very strong conception that the Church was the profession best suited to his son.

Lady Lufton had not sent for Dr. Robarts all the way from Exeter for nothing. The living of Framley was in the gift of the Lufton family, and the next presentation would be in Lady Lufton’s hands, if it should fall vacant before the young lord was twenty-five years of age, and in the young lord’s hands if it should fall afterwards. But the mother and the heir consented to give a joint promise to Dr. Robarts. Now, as the present incumbent was over seventy, and as the living was worth 900l. a year, there could be no doubt as to the eligibility of the clerical profession.

And I must further say, that the dowager and the doctor were justified in their choice by the life and principles of the young man—as far as any father can be justified in choosing such a profession for his son, and as far as any lay impropriator can be justified in making such a promise. Had Lady Lufton had a second son, that second son would probably have had the living, and no one would have thought it wrong;—certainly not if that second son had been such a one as Mark Robarts.

Lady Lufton herself was a woman who thought much on religious matters, and would by no means have been disposed to place any one in a living, merely because such a one had been her son’s friend. Her tendencies were High Church, and she was enabled to perceive that those of young Mark Robarts ran in the same direction. She was very desirous that her son should make an associate of his clergyman, and by this step she would insure, at any rate, that. She was anxious that the parish vicar should be one with whom she could herself fully co-operate, and was perhaps unconsciously wishful that he might in some measure be subject to her influence. Should she appoint an older man, this might probably not be the case to the same extent; and should her son have the gift, it might probably not be the case at all.

And therefore it was resolved that the living should be given to young Robarts.

He took his degree—not with any brilliancy, but quite in the manner that his father desired; he then travelled for eight or ten months with Lord Lufton and a college don, and almost immediately after his return home was ordained.

The living of Framley is in the diocese of Barchester; and, seeing what were Mark’s hopes with reference to that diocese, it was by no means difficult to get him a curacy within it. But this curacy he was not allowed long to fill. He had not been in it above a twelvemonth, when poor old Dr. Stopford, the then vicar of Framley, was gathered to his fathers, and the full fruition of his rich hopes fell upon his shoulders.

But even yet more must be told of his good fortune before we can come to the actual incidents of our story. Lady Lufton, who, as I have said, thought much of clerical matters, did not carry her High Church principles so far as to advocate celibacy for the clergy. On the contrary, she had an idea that a man could not be a good parish parson without a wife. So, having given to her favourite a position in the world, and an income sufficient for a gentleman’s wants, she set herself to work to find him a partner in those blessings.

And here also, as in other matters, he fell in with the views of his patroness—not, however, that they were declared to him in that marked manner in which the affair of the living had been broached. Lady Lufton was much too highly gifted with woman’s craft for that. She never told the young vicar that Miss Monsell accompanied her ladyship’s married daughter to Framley Court expressly that he, Mark, might fall in love with her; but such was in truth the case.

Lady Lufton had but two children. The eldest, a daughter, had been married some four or five years to Sir George Meredith, and this Miss Monsell was a dear friend of hers. And now looms before me the novelist’s great difficulty. Miss Monsell,—or, rather, Mrs. Mark Robarts,—must be described. As Miss Monsell, our tale will have to take no prolonged note of her. And yet we will call her Fanny Monsell, when we declare that she was one of the pleasantest companions that could be brought near to a man, as the future partner of his home, and owner of his heart. And if high principles without asperity, female gentleness without weakness, a love of laughter without malice, and a true loving heart, can qualify a woman to be a parson’s wife, then was Fanny Monsell qualified to fill that station.

In person she was somewhat larger than common. Her face would have been beautiful but that her mouth was large. Her hair, which was copious, was of a bright brown; her eyes also were brown, and, being so, were the distinctive feature of her face, for brown eyes are not common. They were liquid, large, and full either of tenderness or of mirth. Mark Robarts still had his accustomed luck, when such a girl as this was brought to Framley for his wooing.

And he did woo her—and won her. For Mark himself was a handsome fellow. At this time the vicar was about twenty-five years of age, and the future Mrs. Robarts was two or three years younger. Nor did she come quite empty-handed to the vicarage. It cannot be said that Fanny Monsell was an heiress, but she had been left with a provision of some few thousand pounds. This was so settled, that the interest of his wife’s money paid the heavy insurance on his life which young Robarts effected, and there was left to him, over and above, sufficient to furnish his parsonage in the very best style of clerical comfort,—and to start him on the road of life rejoicing.

So much did Lady Lufton do for her protégé, and it may well be imagined that the Devonshire physician, sitting meditative over his parlour fire, looking back, as men will look back on the upshot of their life, was well contented with that upshot, as regarded his eldest offshoot, the Rev. Mark Robarts, the vicar of Framley.

But little has as yet been said, personally, as to our hero himself, and perhaps it may not be necessary to say much. Let us hope that by degrees he may come forth upon the canvas, showing to the beholder the nature of the man inwardly and outwardly. Here it may suffice to say that he was no born heaven’s cherub, neither was he a born fallen devil’s spirit. Such as his training made him, such he was. He had large capabilities for good—and aptitudes also for evil, quite enough: quite enough to make it needful that he should repel temptation as temptation only can be repelled. Much had been done to spoil him, but in the ordinary acceptation of the word he was not spoiled. He had too much tact, too much common sense, to believe himself to be the paragon which his mother thought him. Self-conceit was not, perhaps, his greatest danger. Had he possessed more of it, he might have been a less agreeable man, but his course before him might on that account have been the safer.

In person he was manly, tall, and fair-haired, with a square forehead, denoting intelligence rather than thought, with clear white hands, filbert nails, and a power of dressing himself in such a manner that no one should ever observe of him that his clothes were either good or bad, shabby or smart.

Such was Mark Robarts when at the age of twenty-five, or a little more, he married Fanny Monsell. The marriage was celebrated in his own church, for Miss Monsell had no home of her own, and had been staying for the last three months at Framley Court. She was given away by Sir George Meredith, and Lady Lufton herself saw that the wedding was what it should be, with almost as much care as she had bestowed on that of her own daughter. The deed of marrying, the absolute tying of the knot, was performed by the Very Reverend the Dean of Barchester, an esteemed friend of Lady Lufton’s. And Mrs. Arabin, the Dean’s wife, was of the party, though the distance from Barchester to Framley is long, and the roads deep, and no railway lends its assistance. And Lord Lufton was there of course; and people protested that he would surely fall in love with one of the four beautiful bridesmaids, of whom Blanche Robarts, the vicar’s second sister, was by common acknowledgment by far the most beautiful.

And there was there another and a younger sister of Mark’s—who did not officiate at the ceremony, though she was present—and of whom no prediction was made, seeing that she was then only sixteen, but of whom mention is made here, as it will come to pass that my readers will know her hereafter. Her name was Lucy Robarts.

And then the vicar and his wife went off on their wedding tour, the old curate taking care of the Framley souls the while.

And in due time they returned; and after a further interval, in due course, a child was born to them; and then another; and after that came the period at which we will begin our story. But before doing so, may not assert that all men were right in saying all manner of good things to the Devonshire physician, and in praising his luck in having such a son?

“You were up at the house to-day, I suppose?” said Mark to his wife, as he sat stretching himself in an easy chair in the drawing-room, before the fire, previously to his dressing for dinner. It was a November evening, and he had been out all day, and on such occasions the aptitude for delay in dressing is very powerful. A strong-minded man goes direct from the hall-door to his chamber without encountering the temptation of the drawing-room fire.

“No; but Lady Lufton was down here.”

“Full of arguments in favour of Sarah Thompson?”

“Exactly so, Mark.”

“And what did you say about Sarah Thompson?”

“Very little as coming from myself; but I did hint that you thought, or that I thought that you thought, that one of the regular trained schoolmistresses would be better.”

“But her ladyship did not agree?”

“Well, I won’t exactly say that;—though I think that perhaps she did not.”

“I am sure she did not. When she has a point to carry, she is very fond of carrying it.”

“But then, Mark, her points are generally so good.”

“But, you see, in this affair of the school she is thinking more of her protégée than she does of the children.”

“Tell her that, and I am sure she will give way.”

And then again they were both silent. And the vicar having thoroughly warmed himself, as far as this might be done by facing the fire, turned round and began the operation à tergo.

“Come, Mark, it is twenty minutes past six. Will you go and dress?”

“I’ll tell you what, Fanny: she must have her way about Sarah Thompson. You can see her to-morrow and tell her so.”

“I am sure, Mark, I would not give way, if I thought it wrong. Nor would she expect it.”

“If I persist this time, I shall certainly have to yield the next; and then the next may probably be more important.”

“But if it’s wrong, Mark?”

“I didn’t say it was wrong. Besides, if it is wrong, wrong in some infinitesimal degree, one must put up with it. Sarah Thompson is very respectable; the only question is whether she can teach.”

The young wife, though she did not say so, had some idea that her husband was in error. It is true that one must put up with wrong, with a great deal of wrong. But no one need put up with wrong that he can remedy. Why should he, the vicar, consent to receive an incompetent teacher for the parish children, when he was able to procure one that was competent? In such a case,—so thought Mrs. Robarts to herself,—she would have fought the matter out with Lady Lufton.

On the next morning, however, she did as she was bid, and signified to the dowager that all objection to Sarah Thompson would be withdrawn.

“Ah! I was sure he would agree with me,” said her ladyship, “when he learned what sort of person she is. I know I had only to explain;”—and then she plumed her feathers, and was very gracious; for, to tell the truth, Lady Lufton did not like to be opposed in things which concerned the parish nearly.

“And, Fanny,” said Lady Lufton, in her kindest manner, “you are not going anywhere on Saturday, are you?”

“No, I think not.”

“Then you must come to us. Justinia is to be here, you know”—Lady Meredith was named Justinia—“and you and Mr. Robarts had better stay with us till Monday. He can have the little book-room all to himself on Sunday. The Merediths go on Monday; and Justinia won’t be happy if you are not with her.”

It would be unjust to say that Lady Lufton had determined not to invite the Robarts’s if she were not allowed to have her own way about Sarah Thompson. But such would have been the result. As it was, however, she was all kindness; and when Mrs. Robarts made some little excuse, saying that she was afraid she must return home in the evening, because of the children, Lady Lufton declared that there was room enough at Framley Court for baby and nurse, and so settled the matter in her own way, with a couple of nods and three taps of her umbrella.

This was on a Tuesday morning, and on the same evening, before dinner, the vicar again seated himself in the same chair before the drawing-room fire, as soon as he had seen his horse led into the stable.

“Mark,” said his wife, “the Merediths are to be at Framley on Saturday and Sunday; and I have promised that we will go up and stay over till Monday.”

“You don’t mean it! Goodness gracious, how provoking!”

“Why? I thought you wouldn’t mind it. And Justinia would think it unkind if I were not there.”

“You can go, my dear, and of course will go. But as for me, it is impossible.”

“But why, love?”

“Why? Just now, at the school-house, I answered a letter that was brought to me from Chaldicotes. Sowerby insists on my going over there for a week or so; and I have said that I would.”

“Go to Chaldicotes for a week, Mark?”

“I believe I have even consented to ten days.”

“And be away two Sundays?”

“No, Fanny, only one. Don’t be so censorious.”

“Don’t call me censorious, Mark; you know I am not so. But I am so sorry. It is just what Lady Lufton won’t like. Besides, you were away in Scotland two Sundays last month.”

“In September, Fanny. And that is being censorious.”

“Oh, but, Mark, dear Mark! don’t say so. You know I don’t mean it. But Lady Lufton does not like those Chaldicotes people. You know Lord Lufton was with you the last time you were there; and how annoyed she was!”

“Lord Lufton won’t be with me now, for he is still in Scotland. And the reason why I am going is this: Harold Smith and his wife will be there, and I am very anxious to know more of them. I have no doubt that Harold Smith will be in the government some day, and I cannot afford to neglect such a man’s acquaintance.”

“But, Mark, what do you want of any government?”

“Well, Fanny, of course I am bound to say that I want nothing; neither in one sense do I; but nevertheless, I shall go and meet the Harold Smiths.”

“Could you not be back before Sunday?”

“I have promised to preach at Chaldicotes. Harold Smith is going to lecture at Barchester, about the Australasian archipelago, and I am to preach a charity sermon on the same subject. They want to send out more missionaries.”

“A charity sermon at Chaldicotes!”

“And why not? The house will be quite full, you know; and I dare say the Arabins will be there.”

“I think not; Mrs. Arabin may get on with Mrs. Harold Smith, though I doubt that; but I’m sure she’s not fond of Mrs. Smith’s brother. I don’t think she would stay at Chaldicotes.”

“And the bishop will probably be there for a day or two.”

“That is much more likely, Mark. If the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Proudie is taking you to Chaldicotes, I have not a word more to say.”

“I am not a bit more fond of Mrs. Proudie, than you are, Fanny,” said the vicar, with something like vexation in the tone of his voice, for he thought that his wife was hard upon him. “But it is generally thought that a parish clergyman does well to meet his bishop now and then. And as I was invited there, especially to preach while all these people are staying at the place, I could not well refuse.” And then he got up, and taking his candlestick, escaped to his dressing-room.

“But what am I to say to Lady Lufton?” his wife said to him, in the course of the evening.

“Just write her a note, and tell her that you find I had promised to preach at Chaldicotes next Sunday. You’ll go, of course?”

“Yes: but I know she’ll be annoyed. You were away the last time she had people there.”

“It can’t be helped. She must put it down against Sarah Thompson. She ought not to expect to win always.”

“I should not have minded it, if she had lost, as you call it, about Sarah Thompson. That was a case in which you ought to have had your own way.”

“And this other is a case in which I shall have it. It’s a pity that there should be such a difference; isn’t it?”

Then the wife perceived that, vexed as she was, it would be better that she should say nothing further; and before she went to bed, she wrote the note to Lady Lufton, as her husband recommended.

The Framley Set, and the Chaldicotes Set.

It will be necessary that I should say a word or two of some of the people named in the few preceding pages, and also of the localities in which they lived.

Of Lady Lufton herself enough, perhaps, has been written to introduce her to my readers. The Framley property belonged to her son; but as Lufton Park—an ancient ramshackle place in another county—had heretofore been the family residence of the Lufton family, Framley Court had been apportioned to her for her residence for life. Lord Lufton himself was still unmarried; and as he had no establishment at Lufton Park—which indeed had not been inhabited since his grandfather died—he lived with his mother when it suited him to live anywhere in that neighbourhood. The widow would fain have seen more of him than he allowed her to do. He had a shooting-lodge in Scotland, and apartments in London, and a string of horses in Leicestershire—much to the disgust of the county gentry around him, who held that their own hunting was as good as any that England could afford. His lordship, however, paid his subscription to the East Barsetshire pack, and then thought himself at liberty to follow his own pleasure as to his own amusement.

Framley itself was a pleasant country place, having about it nothing of seignorial dignity or grandeur, but possessing everything necessary for the comfort of country life. The house was a low building of two stories, built at different periods, and devoid of all pretensions to any style of architecture; but the rooms, though not lofty, were warm and comfortable, and the gardens were trim and neat beyond all others in the county. Indeed, it was for its gardens only that Framley Court was celebrated.

Village there was none, properly speaking. The high road went winding about through the Framley paddocks, shrubberies, and wood-skirted home fields, for a mile and a half, not two hundred yards of which ran in a straight line; and there was a cross-road which passed down through the domain, whereby there came to be a locality called Framley Cross. Here stood the “Lufton Arms,” and here, at Framley Cross, the hounds occasionally would meet; for the Framley woods were drawn in spite of the young lord’s truant disposition; and then, at the Cross also, lived the shoemaker, who kept the post-office.

Framley church was distant from this just a quarter of a mile, and stood immediately opposite to the chief entrance to Framley Court. It was but a mean, ugly building, having been erected about a hundred years since, when all churches then built were made to be mean and ugly; nor was it large enough for the congregation, some of whom were thus driven to the dissenting chapels, the Sions and Ebenezers, which had got themselves established on each side of the parish, in putting down which Lady Lufton thought that her pet parson was hardly as energetic as he might be. It was, therefore, a matter near to Lady Lufton’s heart to see a new church built, and she was urgent in her eloquence, both with her son and with the vicar, to have this good work commenced.

Beyond the church, but close to it, were the boys’ school and girls’ school, two distinct buildings, which owed their erection to Lady Lufton’s energy; then came a neat little grocer’s shop, the neat grocer being the clerk and sexton, and the neat grocer’s wife, the pew-opener in the church. Podgens was their name, and they were great favourites with her ladyship, both having been servants up at the house.

And here the road took a sudden turn to the left, turning, as it were, away from Framley Court; and just beyond the turn was the vicarage, so that there was a little garden path running from the back of the vicarage grounds into the churchyard, cutting the Podgens’s off into an isolated corner of their own;—from whence, to tell the truth, the vicar would have been glad to banish them and their cabbages, could he have had the power to do so. For has not the small vineyard of Naboth been always an eyesore to neighbouring potentates?

The potentate in this case had as little excuse as Ahab, for nothing in the parsonage way could be more perfect than his parsonage. It had all the details requisite for the house of a moderate gentleman with moderate means, and none of those expensive superfluities which immoderate gentlemen demand, or which themselves demand—immoderate means. And then the gardens and paddocks were exactly suited to it; and everything was in good order;—not exactly new, so as to be raw and uncovered, and redolent of workmen; but just at that era of their existence in which newness gives way to comfortable homeliness.

Other village at Framley there was none. At the back of the Court, up one of those cross-roads, there was another small shop or two, and there was a very neat cottage residence, in which lived the widow of a former curate, another protégé of Lady Lufton’s; and there was a big, staring brick house, in which the present curate lived; but this was a full mile distant from the church, and farther from Framley Court, standing on that cross-road which runs from Framley Cross in a direction away from the mansion. This gentleman, the Rev. Evan Jones, might, from his age, have been the vicar’s father; but he had been for many years curate of Framley; and though he was personally disliked by Lady Lufton, as being low church in his principles, and unsightly in his appearance, nevertheless, she would not urge his removal. He had two or three pupils in that large brick house, and if turned out from these and from his curacy, might find it difficult to establish himself elsewhere. On this account, mercy was extended to the Rev. E. Jones, and, in spite of his red face and awkward big feet, he was invited to dine at Framley Court, with his plain daughter, once in every three months.

Over and above these, there was hardly a house in the parish of Framley, outside the bounds of Framley Court, except those of farmers and farm labourers; and yet the parish was of large extent.

Framley is in the eastern division of the county of Barsetshire, which, as all the world knows, is, politically speaking, as true blue a county as any in England. There have been backslidings even here, it is true; but then, in what county have there not been such backslidings? Where, in these pinchbeck days, can we hope to find the old agricultural virtue in all its purity? But, among those backsliders, I regret to say, that men now reckon Lord Lufton. Not that he is a violent Whig, or perhaps that he is a Whig at all. But he jeers and sneers at the old county doings; declares, when solicited on the subject, that, as far as he is concerned, Mr. Bright may sit for the county, if he pleases; and alleges, that being unfortunately a peer, he has no right even to interest himself in the question. All this is deeply regretted, for, in the old days, there was no portion of the county more decidedly true blue than that Framley district; and, indeed, up to the present day, the dowager is able to give an occasional helping hand.

Chaldicotes is the seat of Nathaniel Sowerby, Esq., who, at the moment supposed to be now present, is one of the members for the Western Division of Barsetshire. But this Western Division can boast none of the fine political attributes which grace its twin brother. It is decidedly Whig, and is almost governed in its politics by one or two great Whig families.

It has been said that Mark Robarts was about to pay a visit to Chaldicotes, and it has been hinted that his wife would have been as well pleased had this not been the case. Such was certainly the fact; for she, dear, prudent, excellent wife as she was, knew that Mr. Sowerby was not the most eligible friend in the world for a young clergyman, and knew, also, that there was but one other house in the whole county, the name of which was so distasteful to Lady Lufton. The reasons for this were, I may say, manifold. In the first place, Mr. Sowerby was a Whig, and was seated in Parliament mainly by the interest of that great Whig autocrat the Duke of Omnium, whose residence was more dangerous even than that of Mr. Sowerby, and whom Lady Lufton regarded as an impersonation of Lucifer upon earth. Mr. Sowerby, too, was unmarried—as indeed, also, was Lord Lufton, much to his mother’s grief. Mr. Sowerby, it is true, was fifty, whereas the young lord was as yet only twenty-six, but, nevertheless, her ladyship was becoming anxious on the subject. In her mind, every man was bound to marry as soon as he could maintain a wife; and she held an idea—a quite private tenet, of which she was herself but imperfectly conscious—that men in general were inclined to neglect this duty for their own selfish gratifications, that the wicked ones encouraged the more innocent in this neglect, and that many would not marry at all, were not an unseen coercion exercised against them by the other sex. The Duke of Omnium was the very head of all such sinners, and Lady Lufton greatly feared that her son might be made subject to the baneful Omnium influence, by means of Mr. Sowerby and Chaldicotes.

And then Mr. Sowerby was known to be a very poor man, with a very large estate. He had wasted, men said, much on electioneering, and more in gambling. A considerable portion of his property had already gone into the hands of the Duke, who, as a rule, bought up everything around him that was to be purchased. Indeed it was said of him by his enemies, that so covetous was he of Barsetshire property, that he would lead a young neighbour on to his ruin, in order that he might get his land. What—oh! what if he should come to be possessed in this way of any of the fair acres of Framley Court? What if he should become possessed of them all? It can hardly be wondered at that Lady Lufton should not like Chaldicotes.

The Chaldicotes set, as Lady Lufton called them, were in every way opposed to what a set should be according to her ideas. She liked cheerful, quiet, well-to-do people, who loved their Church, their country, and their Queen, and who were not too anxious to make a noise in the world. She desired that all the farmers round her should be able to pay their rents without trouble, that all the old women should have warm flannel petticoats, that the working men should be saved from rheumatism by healthy food and dry houses, that they should all be obedient to their pastors and masters—temporal as well as spiritual. That was her idea of loving her country. She desired also that the copses should be full of pheasants, the stubble-field of partridges, and the gorse covers of foxes;—in that way, also, she loved her country. She had ardently longed, during that Crimean war, that the Russians might be beaten—but not by the French, to the exclusion of the English, as had seemed to her to be too much the case; and hardly by the English under the dictatorship of Lord Palmerston. Indeed, she had had but little faith in that war after Lord Aberdeen had been expelled. If, indeed, Lord Derby could have come in!

But now as to this Chaldicotes set. After all, there was nothing so very dangerous about them; for it was in London, not in the country, that Mr. Sowerby indulged, if he did indulge, his bachelor mal-practices. Speaking of them as a set, the chief offender was Mr. Harold Smith, or perhaps his wife. He also was a member of Parliament, and, as many thought, a rising man. His father had been for many years a debater in the House, and had held high office. Harold, in early life, had intended himself for the cabinet; and if working hard at his trade could ensure success, he ought to obtain it sooner or later. He had already filled more than one subordinate station, had been at the Treasury, and for a month or two at the Admiralty, astonishing official mankind by his diligence. Those last-named few months had been under Lord Aberdeen, with whom he had been forced to retire. He was a younger son, and not possessed of any large fortune. Politics as a profession was therefore of importance to him. He had in early life married a sister of Mr. Sowerby; and as the lady was some six or seven years older than himself, and had brought with her but a scanty dowry, people thought that in this matter Mr. Harold Smith had not been perspicacious. Mr. Harold Smith was not personally a popular man with any party, though some judged him to be eminently useful. He was laborious, well-informed, and, on the whole, honest; but he was conceited, long-winded, and pompous.

Mrs. Harold Smith was the very opposite of her lord. She was a clever, bright woman, good-looking for her time of life—and she was now over forty—with a keen sense of the value of all worldly things, and a keen relish for all the world’s pleasures. She was neither laborious, nor well-informed, nor perhaps altogether honest—what woman ever understood the necessity or recognized the advantage of political honesty? but then she was neither dull nor pompous, and if she was conceited, she did not show it. She was a disappointed woman, as regards her husband; seeing that she had married him on the speculation that he would at once become politically important; and as yet Mr. Smith had not quite fulfilled the prophecies of his early life.

And Lady Lufton, when she spoke of the Chaldicotes set, distinctly included, in her own mind, the Bishop of Barchester, and his wife and daughter. Seeing that Bishop Proudie was, of course, a man much addicted to religion and to religious thinking, and that Mr. Sowerby himself had no peculiar religious sentiments whatever, there would not at first sight appear to be ground for much intercourse, and perhaps there was not much of such intercourse; but Mrs. Proudie and Mrs. Harold Smith were firm friends of four or five years’ standing—ever since the Proudies came into the diocese; and therefore the bishop was usually taken to Chaldicotes whenever Mrs. Smith paid her brother a visit. Now Bishop Proudie was by no means a High Church dignitary, and Lady Lufton had never forgiven him for coming into that diocese. She had, instinctively, a high respect for the episcopal office; but of Bishop Proudie himself she hardly thought better than she did of Mr. Sowerby, or of that fabricator of evil, the Duke of Omnium. Whenever Mr. Robarts would plead that in going anywhere he would have the benefit of meeting the bishop, Lady Lufton would slightly curl her upper lip. She could not say in words, that Bishop Proudie—bishop as he certainly must be called—was no better than he ought to be; but by that curl of her lip she did explain to those who knew her that such was the inner feeling of her heart.

And then it was understood—Mark Robarts, at least, had so heard, and the information soon reached Framley Court—that Mr. Supplehouse was to make one of the Chaldicotes party. Now Mr. Supplehouse was a worse companion for a gentlemanlike, young, High Church, conservative county parson than even Harold Smith. He also was in Parliament, and had been extolled during the early days of that Russian war by some portion of the metropolitan daily press, as the only man who could save the country. Let him be in the ministry, the Jupiter had said, and there would be some hope of reform, some chance that England’s ancient glory would not be allowed in these perilous times to go headlong to oblivion. And upon this the ministry, not anticipating much salvation from Mr. Supplehouse, but willing, as they usually are, to have the Jupiter at their back, did send for that gentleman, and gave him some footing among them. But how can a man born to save a nation, and to lead a people, be content to fill the chair of an under-secretary? Supplehouse was not content, and soon gave it to be understood that his place was much higher than any yet tendered to him. The seals of high office, or war to the knife, was the alternative which he offered to a much-belaboured Head of Affairs—nothing doubting that the Head of Affairs would recognize the claimant’s value, and would have before his eyes a wholesome fear of the Jupiter. But the Head of Affairs, much belaboured as he was, knew that he might pay too high even for Mr. Supplehouse and the Jupiter; and the saviour of the nation was told that he might swing his tomahawk. Since that time he had been swinging his tomahawk, but not with so much effect as had been anticipated. He also was very intimate with Mr. Sowerby, and was decidedly one of the Chaldicotes set.

And there were many others included in the stigma whose sins were political or religious rather than moral. But they were gall and wormwood to Lady Lufton, who regarded them as children of the Lost One, and who grieved with a mother’s grief when she knew that her son was among them, and felt all a patron’s anger when she heard that her clerical protégé was about to seek such society. Mrs. Robarts might well say that Lady Lufton would be annoyed.

“You won’t call at the house before you go, will you?” the wife asked on the following morning. He was to start after lunch on that day, driving himself in his own gig, so as to reach Chaldicotes, some twenty-four miles distant, before dinner.

“No, I think not. What good should I do?”

“Well, I can’t explain; but I think I should call: partly, perhaps, to show her that as I had determined to go, I was not afraid of telling her so.”

“Afraid! That’s nonsense, Fanny. I’m not afraid of her. But I don’t see why I should bring down upon myself the disagreeable things she will say. Besides, I have not time. I must walk up and see Jones about the duties; and then, what with getting ready, I shall have enough to do to get off in time.”

He paid his visit to Mr. Jones, the curate, feeling no qualms of conscience there, as he rather boasted of all the members of Parliament he was going to meet, and of the bishop who would be with them. Mr. Evan Jones was only his curate, and in speaking to him on the matter he could talk as though it were quite the proper thing for a vicar to meet his bishop at the house of a county member. And one would be inclined to say that it was proper: only why could he not talk of it in the same tone to Lady Lufton? And then, having kissed his wife and children, he drove off, well pleased with his prospect for the coming ten days, but already anticipating some discomfort on his return.

On the three following days, Mrs. Robarts did not meet her ladyship. She did not exactly take any steps to avoid such a meeting, but she did not purposely go up to the big house. She went to her school as usual, and made one or two calls among the farmers’ wives, but put no foot within the Framley Court grounds. She was braver than her husband, but even she did not wish to anticipate the evil day.

On the Saturday, just before it began to get dusk, when she was thinking of preparing for the fatal plunge, her friend, Lady Meredith, came to her.

“So, Fanny, we shall again be so unfortunate as to miss Mr. Robarts,” said her ladyship.

“Yes. Did you ever know anything so unlucky? But he had promised Mr. Sowerby before he heard that you were coming. Pray do not think that he would have gone away had he known it.”

“We should have been sorry to keep him from so much more amusing a party.”

“Now, Justinia, you are unfair. You intend to imply that he has gone to Chaldicotes, because he likes it better than Framley Court; but that is not the case. I hope Lady Lufton does not think that it is.”

Lady Meredith laughed as she put her arm round her friend’s waist. “Don’t lose your eloquence in defending him to me,” she said. “You’ll want all that for my mother.”

“But is your mother angry?” asked Mrs. Robarts, showing by her countenance, how eager she was for true tidings on the subject.

“Well, Fanny, you know her ladyship as well as I do. She thinks so very highly of the vicar of Framley, that she does begrudge him to those politicians at Chaldicotes.”

“But, Justinia, the bishop is to be there, you know.”

“I don’t think that that consideration will at all reconcile my mother to the gentleman’s absence. He ought to be very proud, I know, to find that he is so much thought of. But come, Fanny, I want you to walk back with me, and you can dress at the house. And now we’ll go and look at the children.”

After that, as they walked together to Framley Court, Mrs. Robarts made her friend promise that she would stand by her if any serious attack were made on the absent clergyman.

“Are you going up to your room at once?” said the vicar’s wife, as soon as they were inside the porch leading into the hall. Lady Meredith immediately knew what her friend meant, and decided that the evil day should not be postponed. “We had better go in, and have it over,” she said, “and then we shall be comfortable for the evening.” So the drawing-room door was opened, and there was Lady Lufton alone upon the sofa.

“Now, mamma,” said the daughter, “you mustn’t scold Fanny much about Mr. Robarts. He has gone to preach a charity sermon before the bishop, and under those circumstances, perhaps, he could not refuse.” This was a stretch on the part of Lady Meredith—put in with much good nature, no doubt; but still a stretch; for no one had supposed that the bishop would remain at Chaldicotes for the Sunday.

“How do you do, Fanny?” said Lady Lufton, getting up. “I am not going to scold her; and I don’t know how you can talk such nonsense, Justinia. Of course, we are very sorry not to have Mr. Robarts; more especially as he was not here the last Sunday that Sir George was with us. I do like to see Mr. Robarts in his own church, certainly; and I don’t like any other clergyman there as well. If Fanny takes that for scolding, why——”

“Oh! no, Lady Lufton; and it’s so kind of you to say so. But Mr. Robarts was so sorry that he had accepted this invitation to Chaldicotes, before he heard that Sir George was coming, and——”

“Oh, I know that Chaldicotes has great attractions which we cannot offer,” said Lady Lufton.

“Indeed, it was not that. But he was asked to preach, you know; and Mr. Harold Smith——” Poor Fanny was only making it worse. Had she been worldly wise, she would have accepted the little compliment implied in Lady Lufton’s first rebuke, and then have held her peace.

“Oh, yes; the Harold Smiths! They are irresistible, I know. How could any man refuse to join a party, graced both by Mrs. Harold Smith and Mrs. Proudie—even though his duty should require him to stay away?”

“Now, mamma—” said Justinia.

“Well, my dear, what am I to say? You would not wish me to tell a fib. I don’t like Mrs. Harold Smith—at least, what I hear of her; for it has not been my fortune to meet her since her marriage. It may be conceited; but to own the truth, I think that Mr. Robarts would be better off with us at Framley than with the Harold Smiths at Chaldicotes,—even though Mrs. Proudie be thrown into the bargain.”

It was nearly dark, and therefore the rising colour in the face of Mrs. Robarts could not be seen. She, however, was too good a wife to hear these things said without some anger within her bosom. She could blame her husband in her own mind; but it was intolerable to her that others should blame him in her hearing.

“He would undoubtedly be better off,” she said; “but then, Lady Lufton, people can’t always go exactly where they will be best off. Gentlemen sometimes must——”

“Well—well, my dear, that will do. He has not taken you, at any rate; and so we will forgive him.” And Lady Lufton kissed her. “As it is,”—and she affected a low whisper between the two young wives—“as it is, we must e’en put up with poor old Evan Jones. He is to be here to-night, and we must go and dress to receive him.”

And so they went off. Lady Lufton was quite good enough at heart to like Mrs. Robarts all the better for standing up for her absent lord.

Chaldicotes.

Chaldicotes is a house of much more pretension than Framley Court. Indeed, if one looks at the ancient marks about it, rather than at those of the present day, it is a place of very considerable pretension. There is an old forest, not altogether belonging to the property, but attached to it, called the Chase of Chaldicotes. A portion of this forest comes up close behind the mansion, and of itself gives a character and celebrity to the place. The Chase of Chaldicotes—the greater part of it, at least—is, as all the world knows, Crown property, and now, in these utilitarian days, is to be disforested. In former times it was a great forest, stretching half across the country, almost as far as Silverbridge; and there are bits of it, here and there, still to be seen at intervals throughout the whole distance; but the larger remaining portion, consisting of aged hollow oaks, centuries old, and wide-spreading withered beeches, stands in the two parishes of Chaldicotes and Uffley. People still come from afar to see the oaks of Chaldicotes, and to hear their feet rustle among the thick autumn leaves. But they will soon come no longer. The giants of past ages are to give way to wheat and turnips; a ruthless Chancellor of the Exchequer, disregarding old associations and rural beauty, requires money returns from the lands; and the Chase of Chaldicotes is to vanish from the earth’s surface.

Some part of it, however, is the private property of Mr. Sowerby, who hitherto, through all his pecuniary distresses, has managed to save from the axe and the auction-mart that portion of his paternal heritage. The house of Chaldicotes is a large stone building, probably of the time of Charles the Second. It is approached on both fronts by a heavy double flight of stone steps. In the front of the house a long, solemn, straight avenue through a double row of lime-trees, leads away to lodge-gates, which stand in the centre of the village of Chaldicotes; but to the rear the windows open upon four different vistas, which run down through the forest: four open green rides, which all converge together at a large iron gateway, the barrier which divides the private grounds from the Chase. The Sowerbys, for many generations, have been rangers of the Chase of Chaldicotes, thus having almost as wide an authority over the Crown forest as over their own. But now all this is to cease, for the forest will be disforested.

It was nearly dark as Mark Robarts drove up through the avenue of lime-trees to the hall-door; but it was easy to see that the house, which was dead and silent as the grave through nine months of the year, was now alive in all its parts. There were lights in many of the windows, and a noise of voices came from the stables, and servants were moving about, and dogs barked, and the dark gravel before the front steps was cut up with many a coach-wheel.

“Oh, be that you, sir, Mr. Robarts?” said a groom, taking the parson’s horse by the head, and touching his own hat. “I hope I see your reverence well.”

“Quite well, Bob, thank you. All well at Chaldicotes?”

“Pretty bobbish, Mr. Robarts. Deal of life going on here now, sir. The bishop and his lady came this morning.”

“Oh—ah—yes! I understood they were to be here. Any of the young ladies?”

“One young lady. Miss Olivia, I think they call her, your reverence.”

“And how’s Mr. Sowerby?”

“Very well, your reverence. He, and Mr. Harold Smith, and Mr. Fothergill—that’s the duke’s man of business, you know—is getting off their horses now in the stable-yard there.”

“Home from hunting—eh, Bob?”

“Yes, sir, just home, this minute.” And then Mr. Robarts walked into the house, his portmanteau following on a footboy’s shoulder.

It will be seen that our young vicar was very intimate at Chaldicotes; so much so that the groom knew him, and talked to him about the people in the house. Yes; he was intimate there: much more than he had given, the Framley people to understand. Not that he had wilfully and overtly deceived any one; not that he had ever spoken a false word about Chaldicotes. But he had never boasted at home that he and Sowerby were near allies. Neither had he told them there how often Mr. Sowerby and Lord Lufton were together in London. Why trouble women with such matters? Why annoy so excellent a woman as Lady Lufton?

And then Mr. Sowerby was one whose intimacy few young men would wish to reject. He was fifty, and had lived, perhaps, not the most salutary life; but he dressed young, and usually looked well. He was bald, with a good forehead, and sparkling moist eyes. He was a clever man, and a pleasant companion, and always good-humoured when it so suited him. He was a gentleman, too, of high breeding and good birth, whose ancestors had been known in that county—longer, the farmers around would boast, than those of any other landowner in it, unless it be the Thornes of Ullathorne, or perhaps the Greshams of Greshamsbury—much longer than the De Courcys at Courcy Castle. As for the Duke of Omnium, he, comparatively speaking, was a new man.

And then he was a member of Parliament, a friend of some men in power, and of others who might be there; a man who could talk about the world as one knowing the matter of which he talked. And moreover, whatever might be his ways of life at other times, when in the presence of a clergyman he rarely made himself offensive to clerical tastes. He neither swore, nor brought his vices on the carpet, nor sneered at the faith of the church. If he was no churchman himself, he at least knew how to live with those who were.

How was it possible that such a one as our vicar should not relish the intimacy of Mr. Sowerby? It might be very well, he would say to himself, for a woman like Lady Lufton to turn up her nose at him—for Lady Lufton, who spent ten months of the year at Framley Court, and who during those ten months, and for the matter of that, during the two months also which she spent in London, saw no one out of her own set. Women did not understand such things, the vicar said to himself; even his own wife—good, and nice, and sensible, and intelligent as she was—even she did not understand that a man in the world must meet all sorts of men; and that in these days it did not do for a clergyman to be a hermit.

’Twas thus that Mark Robarts argued when he found himself called upon to defend himself before the bar of his own conscience for going to Chaldicotes and increasing his intimacy with Mr. Sowerby. He did know that Mr. Sowerby was a dangerous man; he was aware that he was over head and ears in debt, and that he had already entangled young Lord Lufton in some pecuniary embarrassment; his conscience did tell him that it would be well for him, as one of Christ’s soldiers, to look out for companions of a different stamp. But nevertheless he went to Chaldicotes, not satisfied with himself indeed, but repeating to himself a great many arguments why he should be so satisfied.

He was shown into the drawing-room at once, and there he found Mrs. Harold Smith, with Mrs. and Miss Proudie, and a lady whom he had never before seen, and whose name he did not at first hear mentioned.

“Is that Mr. Robarts?” said Mrs. Harold Smith, getting up to greet him, and screening her pretended ignorance under the veil of the darkness. “And have you really driven over four-and-twenty miles of Barsetshire roads on such a day as this to assist us in our little difficulties? Well, we can promise you gratitude at any rate.”

And then the vicar shook hands with Mrs. Proudie, in that deferential manner which is due from a vicar to his bishop’s wife; and Mrs. Proudie returned the greeting with all that smiling condescension which a bishop’s wife should show to a vicar. Miss Proudie was not quite so civil. Had Mr. Robarts been still unmarried, she also could have smiled sweetly; but she had been exercising smiles on clergymen too long to waste them now on a married parish parson.

“And what are the difficulties, Mrs. Smith, in which I am to assist you?”

“We have six or seven gentlemen here, Mr. Robarts, and they always go out hunting before breakfast, and they never come back—I was going to say—till after dinner. I wish it were so, for then we should not have to wait for them.”

“Excepting Mr. Supplehouse, you know,” said the unknown lady, in a loud voice.

“And he is generally shut up in the library, writing articles.”

“He’d be better employed if he were trying to break his neck like the others,” said the unknown lady.

“Only he would never succeed,” said Mrs. Harold Smith. “But perhaps, Mr. Robarts, you are as bad as the rest; perhaps you, too, will be hunting to-morrow.”

“My dear Mrs. Smith!” said Mrs. Proudie, in a tone denoting slight reproach, and modified horror.

“Oh! I forgot. No, of course, you won’t be hunting, Mr. Robarts; you’ll only be wishing that you could.”

“Why can’t he?” said the lady with the loud voice.

“My dear Miss Dunstable! a clergyman hunt, while he is staying in the same house with the bishop? Think of the proprieties!”

“Oh—ah! The bishop wouldn’t like it—wouldn’t he? Now, do tell me, sir, what would the bishop do to you if you did hunt?”

“It would depend upon his mood at the time, madam,” said Mr. Robarts. “If that were very stern, he might perhaps have me beheaded before the palace gates.”

Mrs. Proudie drew herself up in her chair, showing that she did not like the tone of the conversation; and Miss Proudie fixed her eyes vehemently on her book, showing that Miss Dunstable and her conversation were both beneath her notice.

“If these gentlemen do not mean to break their necks to-night,” said Mrs. Harold Smith, “I wish they’d let us know it. It’s half-past six already.”

And then Mr. Robarts gave them to understand that no such catastrophe could be looked for that day, as Mr. Sowerby and the other sportsmen were within the stable-yard when he entered the door.

“Then, ladies, we may as well dress,” said Mrs. Harold Smith. But as she moved towards the door, it opened, and a short gentleman, with a slow, quiet step, entered the room; but was not yet to be distinguished through the dusk by the eyes of Mr. Robarts. “Oh! bishop, is that you?” said Mrs. Smith. “Here is one of the luminaries of your diocese.” And then the bishop, feeling through the dark, made his way up to the vicar and shook him cordially by the hand. “He was delighted to meet Mr. Robarts at Chaldicotes,” he said—“quite delighted. Was he not going to preach on behalf of the Papuan Mission next Sunday? Ah! so he, the bishop, had heard. It was a good work, an excellent work.” And then Dr. Proudie expressed himself as much grieved that he could not remain at Chaldicotes, and hear the sermon. It was plain that his bishop thought no ill of him on account of his intimacy with Mr. Sowerby. But then he felt in his own heart that he did not much regard his bishop’s opinion.

“Ah, Robarts, I’m delighted to see you,” said Mr. Sowerby, when they met on the drawing-room rug before dinner. “You know Harold Smith? Yes, of course you do. Well, who else is there? Oh! Supplehouse. Mr. Supplehouse, allow me to introduce to you my friend Mr. Robarts. It is he who will extract the five-pound note out of your pocket next Sunday for these poor Papuans whom we are going to Christianize. That is, if Harold Smith does not finish the work out of hand at his Saturday lecture. And, Robarts, you have seen the bishop, of course:” this he said in a whisper. “A fine thing to be a bishop, isn’t it? I wish I had half your chance. But, my dear fellow, I’ve made such a mistake; I haven’t got a bachelor parson for Miss Proudie. You must help me out, and take her in to dinner.” And then the great gong sounded, and off they went in pairs.

At dinner Mark found himself seated between Miss Proudie and the lady whom he had heard named as Miss Dunstable. Of the former he was not very fond, and, in spite of his host’s petition, was not inclined to play bachelor parson for her benefit. With the other lady he would willingly have chatted during the dinner, only that everybody else at table seemed to be intent on doing the same thing. She was neither young, nor beautiful, nor peculiarly ladylike; yet she seemed to enjoy a popularity which must have excited the envy of Mr. Supplehouse, and which certainly was not altogether to the taste of Mrs. Proudie—who, however, fêted her as much as did the others. So that our clergyman found himself unable to obtain more than an inconsiderable share of the lady’s attention.

“Bishop,” said she, speaking across the table, “we have missed you so all day! we have had no one on earth to say a word to us.”

“My dear Miss Dunstable, had I known that——But I really was engaged on business of some importance.”

“I don’t believe in business of importance; do you, Mrs. Smith?”

“Do I not?” said Mrs. Smith. “If you were married to Mr. Harold Smith for one week, you’d believe in it.”

“Should I, now? What a pity that I can’t have that chance of improving my faith. But you are a man of business, also, Mr. Supplehouse; so they tell me.” And she turned to her neighbour on her right hand.

“I cannot compare myself to Harold Smith,” said he. “But perhaps I may equal the bishop.”

“What does a man do, now, when he sets himself down to business? How does he set about it? What are his tools? A quire of blotting paper, I suppose, to begin with?”

“That depends, I should say, on his trade. A shoemaker begins by waxing his thread.”

“And Mr. Harold Smith——?”

“By counting up his yesterday’s figures, generally, I should say; or else by unrolling a ball of red tape. Well-docketed papers and statistical facts are his forte.”

“And what does a bishop do? Can you tell me that?”

“He sends forth to his clergy either blessings or blowings-up, according to the state of his digestive organs. But Mrs. Proudie can explain all that to you with the greatest accuracy.”

“Can she, now? I understand what you mean, but I don’t believe a word of it. The bishop manages his own affairs himself, quite as much as you do, or Mr. Harold Smith.”

“I, Miss Dunstable?”

“Yes, you.”

“But I, unluckily, have not a wife to manage them for me.”

“Then you should not laugh at those who have, for you don’t know what you may come to yourself, when you’re married.”

Mr. Supplehouse began to make a pretty speech, saying that he would be delighted to incur any danger in that respect to which he might be subjected by the companionship of Miss Dunstable. But before he was half through it, she had turned her back upon him, and began a conversation with Mark Robarts.

“Have you much work in your parish, Mr. Robarts?” she asked. Now, Mark was not aware that she knew his name, or the fact of his having a parish, and was rather surprised by the question. And he had not quite liked the tone in which she had seemed to speak of the bishop and his work. His desire for her further acquaintance was therefore somewhat moderated, and he was not prepared to answer her question with much zeal.

“All parish clergymen have plenty of work, if they choose to do it.”

“Ah, that is it; is it not, Mr. Robarts? If they choose to do it? A great many do—many that I know, do; and see what a result they have. But many neglect it—and see what a result they have. I think it ought to be the happiest life that a man can lead, that of a parish clergyman, with a wife and family, and a sufficient income.”

“I think it is,” said Mark Robarts, asking himself whether the contentment accruing to him from such blessings had made him satisfied at all points. He had all these things of which Miss Dunstable spoke, and yet he had told his wife, the other day, that he could not afford to neglect the acquaintance of a rising politician like Harold Smith.

“What I find fault with is this,” continued Miss Dunstable, “that we expect clergymen to do their duty, and don’t give them a sufficient income—give them hardly any income at all. Is it not a scandal, that an educated gentleman with a family should be made to work half his life, and perhaps the whole, for a pittance of seventy pounds a year?”

Mark said that it was a scandal, and thought of Mr. Evan Jones and his daughter;—and thought also of his own worth, and his own house, and his own nine hundred a year.

“And yet you clergymen are so proud—aristocratic would be the genteel word, I know—that you won’t take the money of common, ordinary poor people. You must be paid from land and endowments, from tithe and church property. You can’t bring yourself to work for what you earn, as lawyers and doctors do. It is better that curates should starve than undergo such ignominy as that.”

“It is a long subject, Miss Dunstable.”

“A very long one; and that means that I am not to say any more about it.”

“I did not mean that exactly.”

“Oh! but you did though, Mr. Robarts. And I can take a hint of that kind when I get it. You clergymen like to keep those long subjects for your sermons, when no one can answer you. Now if I have a longing heart’s desire for anything at all in this world, it is to be able to get up into a pulpit, and preach a sermon.”

“You can’t conceive how soon that appetite would pall upon you, after its first indulgence.”

“That would depend upon whether I could get people to listen to me. It does not pall upon Mr. Spurgeon, I suppose.” Then her attention was called away by some question from Mr. Sowerby, and Mark Robarts found himself bound to address his conversation to Miss Proudie. Miss Proudie, however, was not thankful, and gave him little but monosyllables for his pains.

“Of course you know Harold Smith is going to give us a lecture about these islanders,” Mr. Sowerby said to him, as they sat round the fire over their wine after dinner. Mark said that he had been so informed, and should be delighted to be one of the listeners.

“You are bound to do that, as he is going to listen to you the day afterwards—or, at any rate, to pretend to do so, which is as much as you will do for him. It’ll be a terrible bore—the lecture I mean, not the sermon.” And he spoke very low into his friend’s ear. “Fancy having to drive ten miles after dusk, and ten miles back, to hear Harold Smith talk for two hours about Borneo! One must do it, you know.”

“I daresay it will be very interesting.”

“My dear fellow, you haven’t undergone so many of these things as I have. But he’s right to do it. It’s his line of life; and when a man begins a thing he ought to go on with it. Where’s Lufton all this time?”

“In Scotland, when I last heard from him; but he’s probably at Melton now.”

“It’s deuced shabby of him, not hunting here in his own county. He escapes all the bore of going to lectures, and giving feeds to the neighbours; that’s why he treats us so. He has no idea of his duty, has he?”

“Lady Lufton does all that, you know.”

“I wish I’d a Mrs. Sowerby mère to do it for me. But then Lufton has no constituents to look after—lucky dog! By-the-by, has he spoken to you about selling that outlying bit of land of his in Oxfordshire? It belongs to the Lufton property, and yet it doesn’t. In my mind it gives more trouble than it’s worth.”

Lord Lufton had spoken to Mark about this sale, and had explained to him that such a sacrifice was absolutely necessary, in consequence of certain pecuniary transactions between him, Lord Lufton, and Mr. Sowerby. But it was found impracticable to complete the business without Lady Lufton’s knowledge, and her son had commissioned Mr. Robarts not only to inform her ladyship, but to talk her over, and to appease her wrath. This commission he had not yet attempted to execute, and it was probable that this visit to Chaldicotes would not do much to facilitate the business.

“They are the most magnificent islands under the sun,” said Harold Smith to the bishop.

“Are they, indeed?” said the bishop, opening his eyes wide, and assuming a look of intense interest.

“And the most intelligent people.”

“Dear me!” said the bishop.

“All they want is guidance, encouragement, instruction——”

“And Christianity,” suggested the bishop.

“And Christianity, of course,” said Mr. Smith, remembering that he was speaking to a dignitary of the Church. It was well to humour such people, Mr. Smith thought. But the Christianity was to be done in the Sunday sermon, and was not part of his work.

“And how do you intend to begin with them?” asked Mr. Supplehouse, the business of whose life it had been to suggest difficulties.

“Begin with them—oh—why—it’s very easy to begin with them. The difficulty is to go on with them, after the money is all spent. We’ll begin by explaining to them the benefits of civilization.”

“Capital plan!” said Mr. Supplehouse. “But how do you set about it, Smith?”

“How do we set about it? How did we set about it with Australia and America? It is very easy to criticize; but in such matters the great thing is to put one’s shoulder to the wheel.”

“We sent our felons to Australia,” said Supplehouse, “and they began the work for us. And as to America, we exterminated the people instead of civilizing them.”

“We did not exterminate the inhabitants of India,” said Harold Smith, angrily.

“Nor have we attempted to Christianize them, as the bishop so properly wishes to do with your islanders.”

“Supplehouse, you are not fair,” said Mr. Sowerby, “neither to Harold Smith nor to us;—you are making him rehearse his lecture, which is bad for him; and making us hear the rehearsal, which is bad for us.”

“Supplehouse belongs to a clique which monopolizes the wisdom of England,” said Harold Smith; “or, at any rate, thinks that it does. But the worst of them is that they are given to talk leading articles.”

“Better that, than talk articles which are not leading,” said Mr. Supplehouse. “Some first-class official men do that.”

“Shall I meet you at the duke’s next week, Mr. Robarts,” said the bishop to him, soon after they had gone into the drawing-room.

Meet him at the duke’s!—the established enemy of Barsetshire mankind, as Lady Lufton regarded his grace! No idea of going to the duke’s had ever entered our hero’s mind; nor had he been aware that the duke was about to entertain any one.

“No, my lord; I think not. Indeed, I have no acquaintance with his grace.”

“Oh—ah! I did not know. Because Mr. Sowerby is going; and so are the Harold Smiths, and, I think, Mr. Supplehouse. An excellent man is the duke;—that is, as regards all the county interests,” added the bishop, remembering that the moral character of his bachelor grace was not the very best in the world.

And then his lordship began to ask some questions about the church affairs of Framley, in which a little interest as to Framley Court was also mixed up, when he was interrupted by a rather sharp voice, to which he instantly attended.

“Bishop,” said the rather sharp voice; and the bishop trotted across the room to the back of the sofa, on which his wife was sitting.

“Miss Dunstable thinks that she will be able to come to us for a couple of days, after we leave the duke’s.”

“I shall be delighted above all things,” said the bishop, bowing low to the dominant lady of the day. For be it known to all men, that Miss Dunstable was the great heiress of that name.

“Mrs. Proudie is so very kind as to say that she will take me in, with my poodle, parrot, and pet old woman.”

“I tell Miss Dunstable, that we shall have quite room for any of her suite,” said Mrs. Proudie. “And that it will give us no trouble.”

“‘The labour we delight in physics pain,’” said the gallant bishop, bowing low, and putting his hand upon his heart.

In the meantime, Mr. Fothergill had got hold of Mark Robarts. Mr. Fothergill was a gentleman, and a magistrate of the county, but he occupied the position of managing man on the Duke of Omnium’s estates. He was not exactly his agent; that is to say, he did not receive his rents; but he “managed” for him, saw people, went about the county, wrote letters, supported the electioneering interest, did popularity when it was too much trouble for the duke to do it himself, and was, in fact, invaluable. People in West Barsetshire would often say that they did not know what on earth the duke would do, if it were not for Mr. Fothergill. Indeed, Mr. Fothergill was useful to the duke.

“Mr. Robarts,” he said, “I am very happy to have the pleasure of meeting you—very happy, indeed. I have often heard of you from our friend Sowerby.”

Mark bowed, and said that he was delighted to have the honour of making Mr. Fothergill’s acquaintance.

“I am commissioned by the Duke of Omnium,” continued Mr. Fothergill, “to say how glad he will be if you will join his grace’s party at Gatherum Castle, next week. The bishop will be there, and indeed nearly the whole set who are here now. The duke would have written when he heard that you were to be at Chaldicotes; but things were hardly quite arranged then, so his grace has left it for me to tell you how happy he will be to make your acquaintance in his own house. I have spoken to Sowerby,” continued Mr. Fothergill, “and he very much hopes that you will be able to join us.”

Mark felt that his face became red when this proposition was made to him. The party in the county to which he properly belonged—he and his wife, and all that made him happy and respectable—looked upon the Duke of Omnium with horror and amazement; and now he had absolutely received an invitation to the duke’s house! A proposition was made to him that he should be numbered among the duke’s friends!

And though in one sense he was sorry that the proposition was made to him, yet in another he was proud of it. It is not every young man, let his profession be what it may, who can receive overtures of friendship from dukes without some elation. Mark, too, had risen in the world, as far as he had yet risen, by knowing great people; and he certainly had an ambition to rise higher. I will not degrade him by calling him a tuft-hunter; but he undoubtedly had a feeling that the paths most pleasant for a clergyman’s feet were those which were trodden by the great ones of the earth.

Nevertheless, at the moment he declined the duke’s invitation. He was very much flattered, he said, but the duties of his parish would require him to return direct from Chaldicotes to Framley.

“You need not give me an answer to-night, you know,” said Mr. Fothergill. “Before the week is past, we will talk it over with Sowerby and the bishop. It will be a thousand pities, Mr. Robarts, if you will allow me to say so, that you should neglect such an opportunity of knowing his grace.”

When Mark went to bed, his mind was still set against going to the duke’s; but, nevertheless, he did feel that it was a pity that he should not do so. After all, was it necessary that he should obey Lady Lufton in all things?

---

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China, and questions of Chinese policy—which only two years ago were the battle-field of fierce political contention, the subject of debates which menaced a Ministry with downfall, dissolved a Parliament, violently agitated the whole community at home, and engaged the controversies of the whole civilized world—seemed again to have been delivered over to that neglect and oblivion with which remote countries and their concerns are ordinarily regarded; but after the lull and the slumber, come again the rousing and the excitement, and China occupies anew the columns of the periodical press, and awakens fresh interest in the public mind.

The startling events which have taken place on the Tien-tsin river in China—popularly, but erroneously, known by the name of the Pei-Ho[1]—have re-kindled such an amount of attention and inquiry, that we feel warranted in devoting some of our earliest pages to the consideration of a topic involving our relations with a people constituting more than one-third of the whole human family, and commercial interests even now of vast extent, and likely to become in their future development more important than those which connect us with any other nation or region of the world. A brief recapitulation of the events preceding this last manifestation of Chinese duplicity will enable the reader to understand the character and objects of the Chinese government in their dealings with other nations.

A series of successful military and naval operations led to the treaties with China of 1842. The arts and appliances of modern warfare—the civilization of a powerful western nation—were directed against armies and defenses which represented the unimproved strategy of the middle ages,[2] and against regions pacific in their social organization, yet disordered, and even dislocated by internecine dissensions, which the enfeebled imperial authority was wholly incompetent to subdue or to control. The reigning dynasty was little able to resist a shock so overwhelming to its stolid pride, and so unexpected to its ignorant shortsightedness. Its hold upon the people being rather that of traditional prestige than of physical domination, the humiliation felt was all the more intolerable because inflicted by those “barbarians,” who, according to Chinese estimate, are beyond “heaven’s canopy.” It is currently believed in China that our earlier intercourse with the “central land” had only been allowed by the gracious and pitying condescension of the “son of heaven” to supplications that China might be permitted, from her abounding superfluities, to provide for the urgent necessities of the “outer races,” which could not otherwise be supplied. “How,” said the benevolent councillors of the Great Bright Dynasty, “how, without the rhubarb of the Celestial dominions, can the diseases of the red-haired races be cured? how can their existence be supported without our fragrant tea? how can their persons be adorned, unless your sacred Majesty will allow their traders to purchase and to convey to them our beautiful silk? Think how far they come—how patiently they wait—how humbly they supplicate for a single ray from the lustrous presence. Let not their hearts be made disconsolate by being sent empty away.”

Even after the severe lessons which the Chinese received in the war, and the sad exhibitions of their utter inability to offer any effectual resistance to our forces, the reports made by Keying, the negotiator of our first treaty, as to the proper manner of dealing with “barbarians,” are equally amusing and characteristic. These reports were honoured with the autograph approval of the emperor Taou-Kwang, written with “the vermilion pencil,”[3] and were found at Canton among the papers of Commissioner Yeh, to whom they had been sent for his guidance and instruction. In the end they proved fatal to the venerable diplomatist; for he having been sent down from the capital to Tien-tsin in order to meet the foreign ambassadors, and there to give practical evidence that he knew how to “manage and pacify” the Western barbarians, the documents which proved his own earlier treacheries were produced; he was put to open shame, and the poor old man, though a member of the Imperial family, was condemned to be publicly executed: a sentence which the emperor, in consideration for his high rank and extreme age, commuted into a permission, or rather a mandate, that he should commit suicide. Keying gratefully accepted this last favour from his sovereign, and so terminated his long and most memorable career.

It is withal not the less true that these reports represent the concentrated wisdom of the sages of China, and are fair and reasonable commentaries upon the teachings of the ancient books in reference to the proper mode of subduing or taming the “outside nations;” and as they throw much light upon the course of the mandarins, and give us the key by which their policy may be generally interpreted, some account of them will be neither superfluous nor uninstructive.

After stating that the English “barbarians” had been “pacified” in 1842, and the American and French “barbarians” in 1844, Keying goes on to report that it had been necessary to “shift ground,” and change the measures by which they were to be “tethered.” “Of course,” he says, they must be dealt with “justly,” and their “feelings consulted;” but they cannot be restrained without “stratagems”—and thus he explains his “stratagems.” Sometimes they must be “ordered” (to obey), and “no reason given;” sometimes there must be “demonstrations” to disarm their “restlessness” and “suspicions;” sometimes they must be placed on a footing of “equality,” to make them “pleased” and “grateful;” their “falsehoods must be blinked,” and their “facts” not too closely examined. Being “born beyond” (heaven’s canopy), the barbarians “cannot perfectly understand the administration of the Celestial dynasty,” nor the promulgation of the “silken sounds” (imperial decrees) by the “Great Council.” Keying excuses himself for having, in order “to gain their good-will,” eaten and drunk with “the barbarians in their residences and ships;” but he was most embarrassed by the consideration shown by the barbarians towards “their women,”[4] whom they constantly introduced; but he did not deem it becoming “to break out in rebuke,” which would “not clear their barbarian dulness.” He urges, however, the increasing necessity of “keeping them off, and shutting them out.” He takes great credit for refusing the “barbarians’ gifts,” the receipt of which might, he says, have exposed him to the penalties of the law. He did accept some trifles; but, giving effect to the Confucian maxim of “receiving little and returning much,” he gave the barbarians in return “snuff-bottles, purses,” and a “copy of his insignificant portrait.”

He says the “barbarians” have “filched Chinese titles for their rulers:” thus “assuming the airs of great authority,” which he acknowledges to be “no concern of ours;” but they will not accept any designation denoting dependency, nor adopt the lunar calendar, nor acknowledge patents of royalty from the “son of heaven.” They are so “uncivilized,” so “blindly ignorant” of propriety, that to require them to recognize becoming “inferiority” and “superiority,” would “lead to fierce altercation;” and after all, he recommends disregarding these “minor details,” in order to carry out “an important policy.” He presents to the “sacred intelligence” this hasty outline of the “rough settlement of the barbarian business.”[5] On the general character of the official papers seized in Yeh’s yamun, Mr. Wade reports:—

There were grave omissions in Sir Henry Pottinger’s treaty of 1842. It left the shipping and commercial relations of the British colony of Hong Kong in a very unsatisfactory state, encumbering them with regulations to which it was found impossible to give effect; and the trade emancipated itself by its own irresistible energies to the common advantage of China and Great Britain. The treaty contained no clause declaring the British text to be the true reading, and the consequence was, various and embarrassing interpretations of the intentions of the negotiators; the Chinese naturally enough contending for the accuracy of their version, while, quite as naturally, our merchants would abide only by the English reading.[6] There is no condition providing for the revision of the treaty, and it is only under “the most favoured nation” clause, which concedes to us everything conceded to other powers, that we have a claim to a revision; but we cannot demand such revision, unless and until it is granted to the French or the Americans.

But the most fatal mistake of all was that which fixed on Canton as the seat of our diplomatic relations with China. It removed our influence from the capital to the remotest part of the empire—to a province always looked upon with apprehension and distrust by the supreme authorities at Peking, and among a population remarkable alike for their unruly disposition and their intense and openly proclaimed hatred to foreigners. It had been Keying’s calculation (and his assurances were most welcome to the court) that the emperor would thus get rid of all annoyance from Western “barbarians,” who would be kept in order by the indomitable spirit of the Cantonese. No provision was made for personal access to the high commissioner charged with the conduct of “barbarian affairs,” still less for communication, even by correspondence, with the capital. This was the first great triumph of Chinese policy, and has been fertile in producing fruits of mischief and misery.

Sir Henry Pottinger never visited Canton; he never examined the ground on which he placed the future representatives of Great Britain; he listened to the declarations of Keying, that the difficulties in the way of a becoming reception there were then insuperable; that they would be removed by time, which might render the turbulent Cantonese population more reasonable; he relied on the assurance that everything would be done to prepare the way for a happier state of things. No doubt there were difficulties; but they were not invincible: they ought, then and there, to have been surmounted. Pottinger little knew with what a faithless element he had to deal, and little dreamed that delay would be taken advantage of, not to lessen, but increase the resistance; that it would be employed not to facilitate, but to thwart our object—not to soothe, but to exasperate the people. Pottinger deemed his treaty a bridge to aid—Keying meant it to be a barrier to resist—our entrance into China. But Sir Henry, before his death, acknowledged his error, and deeply lamented that his confidence had been misplaced. Abundant evidence has since been furnished that the treaty was signed, not with the purpose of honestly giving effect to its conditions, but to get rid of the “barbarian” pressure, and to bide the time, when the treaty obligations could be got rid of altogether.

Proofs were not wanting of this dishonest purpose, and, in consequence, after some hesitation, it was deemed necessary by the British Government to remind the Chinese that their obligation to admit her Majesty’s subjects into Canton had not been fulfilled; and they were advised that the Island of Chusan, which we held as a guarantee, would not be surrendered until security was given for the compliance with the treaty stipulation. A short delay was asked by the Chinese, and the assurance, under the authority of the “vermilion pencil,” was renewed, that arrangements would be made for our having access to the city. Chusan was in consequence given up to the Chinese authorities; but no steps were taken to prepare the “public mind” to receive us as friends and allies within the walls of Canton. On the contrary, incendiary placards, breathing the utmost enmity to foreigners, continued to be promulgated and pasted on the walls. In 1847, Sir John Davis, naturally impatient at Keying’s procrastination and subterfuges, determined to capture the Bogue forts, to move with military forces upon Canton, and to threaten the city into compliance with obligations so long trifled with and disregarded. Keying asked for time, and entered into a formal written engagement that the city should be opened in April, 1849. When the time was at hand, Sir George Bonham, who had succeeded to the governorship of Hong Kong, sought an interview with Seu, who had replaced Keying as imperial commissioner. Seu did not hesitate to say that the ministers had been engaged in a common purpose of deception—that the Chinese and British were both aware the gates were not to be opened—that each had avoided the responsibility of bringing the matter to issue, and had left it to their successors. Seu said he would refer the question to the emperor. The emperor’s reply was the stereotyped instruction to all mandarins, who have any relations with foreigners: “Keep the barbarians at a distance if you can—but above all things keep the peace.” Now, though we had a large fleet at Hong Kong, the imperial commissioner had undoubtedly obtained information, from some quarter or other, that the fleet would not be employed hostilely, and that he might “resist the barbarian” without compromising the public tranquillity. So he negatived the demands of the British.

That our forbearance was a grievous mistake there can be little hesitation in affirming. But the importance of the concession then made was little understood, except by the Chinese, and to it may be attributed the embarrassments which have since entangled our negotiations with China. As the British Government determined to leave the Canton question in a state of abeyance, Sir George Bonham prohibited the Queen’s subjects from attempting to enter the city—a prohibition which was taken immediate advantage of by the mandarins, who proclaimed that our right to enter the city had been finally and for ever withdrawn. By the orders of the emperor, who wrote to the high commissioner that he had read “with tears of joy” the report, which showed with what sagacity and courage he had, without the employment of force, thwarted “the seditious demands of the barbarians,” six triumphal arches were erected at the various entrances of the city of Canton, to celebrate the wisdom and valour of the authorities; and the names of all the distinguished Cantonese who had contributed to so glorious a consummation were ordered to be inscribed upon the monuments for immortal commemoration, while dignities and honours were showered down upon the principal actors. A grand religious ceremonial, in which all the high authorities took part, was also ordered to be celebrated in the Temple of Potoo, which is dedicated to a foreign deified idol, who is supposed to control the affairs of “Western barbarians.” These triumphal arches—magnificently built of granite—were blown up by the Allies after the capture of the city.

It had indeed been long evident that it was the fixed purpose of the Chinese authorities to escape from treaty obligations as soon as they fancied that they were menaced by nothing more than a remote and uncertain danger; the bow returned to its original bent as the tightness of the string was relaxed. It was only while the pressure of our presence was felt that any disposition was shown to respect imperial engagements. The consuls of the United States and of France had at first been received becomingly in Canton, by the viceroy; but, in 1849, on the arrival of Consul Bowring, very subordinate mandarins were appointed to visit him: the imperial commissioner altogether refused any interview at any place. No official reception was therefore given by the high mandarins to the British consular authorities, who were utterly excluded from personal intercourse with them. The stipulation of the treaty that the mandarins should, in conjunction with the foreign authorities, assist in the arrangement of differences between Chinese and British subjects, was absolutely a dead letter; and the obligation on the part of the mandarins to aid officially in the recovery of debts due to foreigners was utterly disregarded, when the Chinese debtor was in a condition to bribe the native functionaries.

The alienation and repulsion which had become the system and the rule of the Chinese authorities, had been productive of consequences most detrimental to their amicable relations with foreigners. Personal intercourse affords the greatest facilities for the arrangement of difficulties; and, even had the correspondence with the mandarins been of the most frank and friendly character, the settlement of all questions would have been greatly aided by frequent interviews. But these were always avoided, and often on pleas the most untenable: sometimes it was said that the weight of administrative business prevented the granting an audience—sometimes that the viceroy was preparing to attack the rebels, and might be visiting the interior—sometimes that an auspicious day must be waited for. Replies were sometimes long delayed; sometimes never given; and it was seldom that an answer was otherwise than evasive or unsatisfactory. There were many occasions on which the cabinets of the treaty powers directed their representatives to make communications, through the imperial commissioner, to the court of Peking; but only one instance occurred of any attention being paid to such communications: it was that connected with our entrance into the city, and the imperial reply was such as to encourage the viceroy in his perverse and perilous policy. The impossibility of obtaining personal access to the imperial commissioner was, in fact, not only a great grievance in itself, but it was the cause of the non-redress of every other grievance. It is not in the field of diplomatic controversy that European functionaries can have any fair chance with those who, preserving all the forms of courtesy, will deny facts, or invent falsehoods to suit the purposes of the moment.

So great had been the disposition of the Chinese authorities to bring back matters to their position anterior to the treaties of 1812, that in Foochow Foo, the only other provincial city to which we had a right of access, and in which a viceregal government exists, the high authorities had refused all personal intercourse with the representatives of Great Britain, though the consular offices are established within the city walls. The superior officers of the great provincial cities have the right of direct intercourse with the court of Peking and with the emperor himself,—a right not possessed by any of the functionaries in the ports of Shanghae, Ningpo, or Amoy, but confined to those of Canton and Foochow, the one being the capital of the province of Kwantung, the other of the province of Fookien. The importance of our being in direct communication with those through whom alone we can communicate with the ministers, or the sovereign, at Peking, can hardly be over-estimated. Sir John Bowring visited Foochow, in 1853, in a ship of war, and after much resistance from the viceroy, was finally and officially received by him with every mark of distinction; and the result of that friendly reception was the amicable and satisfactory arrangement of every question—and there were many—then pending between British and Chinese subjects in the Fookien province. It is true that on more than one occasion the viceroy of Canton offered to receive the British plenipotentiary, not in his official yamun, but in a “packhouse” belonging to Howqua; and there were those who held that Sir John Bowring should have been satisfied with such condescension on the part of the Chinese commissioner. It should be remembered that in all the treaties with foreigners, the emperor has engaged that the same attentions shall be shown to foreign functionaries which can be claimed and are invariably shown to mandarins of similar rank. It was always a part of the policy of the Chinese to maintain in the eyes of the people that superiority of position which national pride and vanity had for ages rendered habitual; and the recognition of the right of foreign authorities to be elevated to the same height was one of the most important of the treaty concessions. But it was a treaty concession, and ought never to be allowed to become a dead letter. In our relations with Oriental governments, the only security for the observance of treaty engagements, is to be found in their rigid, but quiet and determined enforcement. To be considerate as to what you exact, is the dictate alike of prudence and of policy; but the attempt to disregard or violate any formal treaty stipulation should be resisted at its very earliest demonstration.

Whatever grounds of complaint the British authorities might have against the Chinese, nothing was left undone to conciliate the good opinion of the mandarins. In 1854 an application was made by Yeh to this effect: he feared a rupture of the public peace, and feeling himself too weak to protect Canton from the invasion of the rebels, he asked for the assistance of the naval forces of the treaty powers. Sir John Bowring accompanied the admiral and the British fleet to the neighbourhood of that city, and in co-operation with the Americans, took such effectual measures for its security, that the intended attack was abandoned, and general tranquillity remained uninterrupted. This intervention was gratefully acknowledged by the people of Canton; but there is every reason to believe that the commissioner represented our amicable intervention as an act of vassalage, and the assistance rendered as having been in obedience to orders issued by imperial authority. Notwithstanding this and many other evidences of friendly sentiment and useful aid on our part, Yeh did not hesitate to represent to the court that the rebels and Western “barbarians” were acting in union, and he expressed his conviction that his policy would lead to the extermination of both.

No one, in fact, who had attended to the progress of public events, could be unaware of the insecure position of our relations with the Chinese. Lord Palmerston said, in 1854:—

Wearied with so many evasions, difficulties and delays, the ministers of the treaty powers, in 1854, determined to approach the capital, in order to represent to the court the unsatisfactory state of foreign relations with the imperial commissioner at Canton, and the necessity of redressing the many grievances of which they had to complain, and thus putting an end to a policy essentially unfriendly, which could not but lead to a fatal crisis, and which imperilled alike the interests of China and of all the nations who came into contact with her. It was hoped that the strong and united representations of the three ministers might alarm the emperor, or at all events obtain his serious attention to the dangers with which he was menaced. The attempt failed.[8] It could not but fail, through the incredible misrepresentations made to the Chinese court by the commissioners who were sent down by the emperor to meet the foreign envoys. As regards the outward forms of courtesy, the latter had perhaps no special ground of complaint. Tents were erected for their reception in the neighbourhood of the Takoo forts; and they were invited to a repast, in which, it may be worth notice, there was a display of ancient European steel knives and forks, with handsome porcelain handles, apparently of the age of Louis XIV. They were met on terms of equality, and the posts of honour were graciously conceded to them. But the urbane manners of the mandarins did not mislead the foreign ministers, who left them with the declaration that they were insuring for their country days of future sorrow. On the subject of their reports to the court of Peking, Mr. Reed says: “They illustrate the habitual faithlessness of Chinese officials.... They were certainly the most painful revelations of the mendacity and treacherous habits of the high officials of this empire ever given to the world. They cannot be read without contemptuous resentment.”[9]

There was only one possible termination to a state of things so obviously unsatisfactory, menacing, and untenable. Everything that could be said or done, in the shape of friendly counsel, had been exhausted. The American commissioner, Mr. M‘Lane, reports to his government,[10] that on leaving China, he addressed to Keih,[11] the governor of Kiangsoo, the following memorable warning:—

The personal character of Yeh tended greatly to complicate every international question. He represented the pride, presumption, and ignorance of a high mandarin, without the restraints which fear of imperial displeasure generally places upon Chinese functionaries. He was the instrument, and for some time the successful instrument, for carrying out the imperial policy as regarded foreign nations. He had a great reputation for learning, had won the most eminent literary grades, was a distinguished member of the highest college (the Hanlin), and the guardian of the heir apparent—indeed, on one occasion he called himself the fourth personage of the empire. Moreover, his despatches were much admired for their perspicuity and purity of language. He was strangely unacquainted with the geography, institutions, and policy of remote nations, and even made his ignorance a ground for self-congratulation. When questions of commercial interest were brought before him, he treated them as altogether below his notice, and on one occasion abruptly terminated a conversation by saying, “You speak to me as if I were a merchant, and not a mandarin.” He devoted himself to the study of necromancy, and relied on his “fortunate star;” believing that the city of Canton was impregnable, he made no serious arrangements for its defence.

What Ke-ying preached, Yeh-ming practised; but Ke was a man of a gentle, Yeh of a ferocious nature; and the cautious cunning which often marked the course of the one was wholly wanting to the other. Yeh, armed as he was with powers of life and death, exercised them with a recklessness of which there is no equal example in history. He turned the execution-ground at Canton into a huge lake of blood; hundreds of rebels were beheaded daily. When he was asked whether he had really caused seventy thousand men to be decapitated, he boastingly replied that the number exceeded a hundred thousand; and to an inquiry whether he had inflicted upon women the horrible punishment called the cutting into ten thousand pieces, he answered, “Ay! they were worse than the men.”[12]

It was the affair of the Arrow which brought about the inevitable crisis. The question of Sir John Bowring’s action on that occasion was entangled with the party politics of the day, and little more need now be said than that the verdict of the country reversed the condemnatory decision of the House of Commons. Certain it is that the very build of a lorcha, so altogether unlike any Chinese junk in its external appearance, ought to have led the local authorities in Canton to be very cautious in their interference with her crew; and that the fact of her papers being in the hands of the British consul, and not of the Chinese custom-house, was primâ facie evidence of her nationality. Since the brutal character of ex-Commissioner Yeh has been better understood, even those most forward to censure Sir John Bowring, for refusing to deliver over to that savage and sanguinary personage men who at all events believed themselves to be entitled to the protection of British authority,[13] cannot but have felt that they ought to have been more indulgent to his hesitation. That he carried with him the sympathy of the representatives of the treaty powers,—that Yeh’s policy was condemned by his colleagues and by the people in general,[14]—and that Yeh himself was finally degraded and disgraced by his own sovereign for his proceedings, are matters of historical record. Yeh, there is little doubt, would have been publicly executed, had he returned to China, notwithstanding the efforts of his father, who betook himself to Peking with a very large sum of money, hoping to be able—but failing—to propitiate the court.[15]

The war was carried on by the Chinese according to their usual mode of dealing with foreign nations.[16] They had no chance of success in open combat, so they had recourse to the ordinary stratagems adopted by uncivilized races. An “anti-barbarian committee” was formed among them, under the auspices of the mandarins. They offered premiums from 100 up to 100,000 ounces of silver for assassinations of “the barbarians,” according to the gradation of rank, and similar graduated rewards for the capture of vessels, for acts of incendiarism, for denouncing those who sent provisions to Hong Kong. Intercourse was prohibited under pain of death; and provision was promised to be made for the families of those who might perish in any desperate enterprise against the “foreign devils.” But so well was the government of Hong Kong served, that only one of many attempts to injure the colony had any success. In this, however, 360 persons of all nations were poisoned; but, happily, from the excess of arsenic employed, which led to an immediate perception of the danger, very few lost their lives. No less than 25,000 of the inhabitants fled to the mainland in consequence of the menaces of the mandarins; yet, though there were not 400 effective men in the garrison, such was the efficiency of the naval department, so active the police, and so well-disposed the mass of the Chinese population, that scarcely any damage was inflicted on the colony.

Canton was taken on the 29th of December. The resistance was ridiculous.[17] The walls were scaled by a handful of men, and Yeh, who had concealed himself, was captured. Why British authority, which would have been welcomed by the respectable part of the population, was not established under military law, and the whole administration of the public revenues taken into our hands, it is very difficult to explain. But at the meeting in which the English and French ambassadors informed the high Chinese authorities that the city had been captured and was held by the allied forces, both the governor of Kwang-tung and the Tartar general were allowed to be seated on the same elevation with the foreign ambassadors, and above the positions occupied by the naval and military commanders-in-chief who were left in charge of the city. Subordinate to these, an hermaphrodite government was created, called “the Allied Commissioners,” who were to be consulted on all occasions by the mandarins charged to carry on the administration of public affairs.

A grand opportunity was thus lost of exhibiting to the Cantonese the benefits of a just and honest, however severe, administration: they could not but have been struck with the difference between the humane and equitable laws of foreigners, as contrasted with the corrupt and cruel dealings of the mandarins. The Elgin Papers throw little light upon the atrocities which were perpetrated by the Chinese, long after our possession of the city. The prisons continued to be scenes of horrible tortures. It was thought necessary to destroy whole streets, in order to convey terror into districts where assassinations of the subjects of allied powers had taken place: all the eastern suburb of the city was razed to the ground, and not a respectable inhabitant was left amidst the desolation. There can be no doubt that Governor Pehkwei considered himself invested with supreme authority over Chinese subjects. He complains bitterly, in a despatch to Lord Elgin, of 31st January, 1858, of Consul Parkes’ interference—of his “overbearing” and unreasonably oppressive “conduct in disposing of Chinamen confined in the gaols of Canton. I ask, whether Chinese officers would be tolerated in their interference with British subjects confined in British gaols?” Lord Elgin does not, in his reply, assert British jurisdiction over the prisons in Canton; but says, Pehkwei will be required to release all prisoners entitled to the benefits of the amnesty; and in another despatch (p. 178), distinctly throws upon Pehkwei the responsibility of preserving the public peace. This anomalous state of matters awakened the attention of our Government at home: a despatch of Lord Malmesbury (14th June, 1858), says: “It will be a disgrace to the allied powers if they do not prevent such enormities as are practised in the prisons of Canton.” ... The “British name must be relieved from the disgrace and guilt of having connived at a state of things so monstrous and revolting.” As to the mixed authority of native mandarins and allied commissioners, Lord Malmesbury says: “It is wholly inefficient for all objects of administration and policy, and should be replaced by a military government acting under the rules of martial law.” He recommended that the allies should take possession of the custom-house revenues, and hold the balance after the payment of the local expenses. It is much to be regretted that these measures were not adopted. Undoubtedly, Lord Elgin exercised a sound discretion in not proceeding to Peking until “a lesson” had been given to Yeh’s obstinacy. Had he gone to the North it would have been deemed a confession that he had been foiled in the South, and compelled to appeal to the emperor, in order to relieve himself from the difficulties in which Yeh had placed him; for Yeh—who had chosen to represent the English “barbarians” as making common cause with the rebels, and in fact, being themselves in a state of rebellion against imperial authority—gave the court the assurance that, as he had been so successful in breaking up the native insurrection, so he would not fail “to drive the foreign ‘barbarians’ into the sea.” In short, there could be little doubt, that had his calculations proved correct, a hostile policy would have pursued us in all the other parts of China, and our immense interests there have been placed in jeopardy.

For some time the court ventured to dream that by Yeh’s indomitable bravery China might be wholly rid of the presence of the intrusive strangers.[18] It is known that the emperor was much displeased with a mandarin, who, having lived in Canton, and being acquainted with the power of the English, ventured to express doubts as to the trustworthiness of Yeh’s representations that he could bridle and extirpate the English barbarians;[19] and nothing less than the taking the Takoo forts by the allied forces, and an advance upon the capital (even after Yeh’s capture and humiliation) was likely to bring the court of Peking to a sense of its own weakness, and the necessity of listening to our representations and remonstrances.

Every effort had been made to obstruct the progress of the allied ambassadors towards Peking; but they wisely determined not to delay their voyage to the Gulf of Pecheli, and, on the 24th April, they announced to the Chinese prime minister their arrival, at the mouth of the Tien-tsin river. The usual evasions were brought into play; and it was soon discovered that the commissioners sent down had no sufficient powers. On the 18th May, therefore, after consultation with the admirals, it was determined to “take the forts,” and to “proceed pacifically up the river;” on the 19th, notice was given to the Chinese, and on the 20th, the forts were in the hands of the Allies. On the 29th, the ambassadors reached Tien-tsin. On the same day they were advised that “the chief secretary of state,” and the president of one of the imperial boards, were ordered to proceed without delay “to investigate and despatch business.” After many discussions the Treaty was signed on the 26th June.

The progress and the result of these negotiations only demonstrate that where our policy has failed, and where it will always fail in China, is in placing confidence in the Chinese. Our distrust must be the groundwork: it is the only sound foundation of our security. When the four ambassadors were at Tien-tsin, and had extorted from the fears of the Chinese treaties more or less humiliating to Chinese pride, according to the amount of pressure employed, it should have been foreseen that on the removal of that pressure the Chinese mind would resume its natural obstinacy. A treaty with China will always be waste paper, unless some security is obtained for giving it due effect. It is, therefore, greatly to be regretted that the ambassadors should have left the most difficult of questions, one most wounding to Chinese pride—the reception of foreign ministers at Peking, and the initiation of their constant residence at court—to be settled by their successors, who had neither the same high diplomatic position, nor the same large naval and military forces at their disposal. It may, indeed, be a question whether it was desirable to force upon the Chinese the recognition of our right to have an ambassador permanently fixed at the capital; but if we thought fit to insist on such recognition, there should certainly have been no vacillation—no disposition shown to surrender in any shape or on any terms the right which had been conceded. We could not plead want of experience, for we had abundant evidence of the determination of the Chinese to repudiate and deny every concession, the enjoyment of which was either rediscussed or deferred. We should have avoided, above all things, the transfer of the Canton question to Peking. Our right to enter Canton was incontestable. Shufflings and subterfuges on the part of the Chinese, hesitation and an erroneous estimate of the importance of the question on the part of the British Government and the British functionaries in China, led to one delay after another, and ended by an absolute denial of our treaty right, and an arming of the Chinese population to enforce that denial, accompanied at the same time by a Chinese proclamation mendaciously averring that we had withdrawn our claims. A similar course has been pursued at Peking. The Chinese, who have no notion—what Oriental has?—of privileges possessed and not exercised, saw in the willingness to give way to their representations, not, as we might have supposed, a consideration for their repugnancy, and a magnanimity in refraining from the enjoyment of a privilege distasteful to them, but an infirmity of purpose—a confession that we had asked for something we did not want, and which they felt to be a degradation needlessly and gratuitously imposed upon them. There is, in fact, neither safety nor dignity in any course but the stern, steady persistence in the assertion and enforcement of whatever conditions are the subject of imperial engagements.

Lord Elgin returned to England, and Mr. Bruce was appointed his successor. It was at first announced that he had been furnished with ambassadorial powers, but as such powers would have entitled him to demand a personal reception by the emperor, it was, on reconsideration, very judiciously thought better to avoid a question which might lead to great embarrassments, and he was accredited as Minister Plenipotentiary to the Peking court. To our judgment it appears the instructions of Lord Malmesbury were too peremptory as to the course Mr. Bruce was to pursue; and if that course was to be insisted on, most inadequate means were provided.[20] It is but another example of those in the distance imagining they see more clearly than those who are near, and assuming an acquaintance with local circumstances—subject every hour to change—which, without the attributes of omnipresence and omniscience, it is impossible they should possess. Whatever may have been the views of the Cabinet at home, it is obvious that the forces which accompanied Mr. Bruce were as superfluous for peace as they were insufficient for war, and that he was placed in the embarrassing dilemma either of disobeying his orders, or of incurring great risk in the attempt to execute them. That the Admiral singularly overrated his own force, and under-estimated that of the Chinese, admits now of no controversy. But an indulgent judgment should be awarded to one so personally brave and self-sacrificing, and who was entitled to confide in the indomitable bravery of those he commanded; whose experience, too, of the general character of Chinese warfare was not likely to teach them prudence or caution.

The first and the most natural inquiry is, what is likely to be the result of these disastrous events? If negotiations are wisely conducted, the probability is that the emperor will throw the blame on the local authorities, attribute to the misrepresentations which have been made any approval he may have given to those who attacked the Allies, and repudiate any intended complicity in the mismanagement of foreign relations. For it has hitherto been the invariable policy of the Chinese government to localize every quarrel, and to avoid any general war. There is no scruple about sacrificing any mandarin whose proceedings, though lauded and recompensed at first, have in the sequel proved injudicious or injurious.

We cannot look forward, however, without apprehension—apprehension not from the possible defeat of our arms—they will be too strong, too efficient for defeat by any Chinese forces—but from their successful advance and overthrow of all resistance. Nothing can arrest their course to Peking, nor prevent the capture of that vast capital; but its possession may prove our great embarrassment. If the emperor, accompanied by his court, should retreat into Manchuria—if Peking be deserted, as Canton was, by all that is respectable and opulent—the Allies may find themselves amidst vacant streets, abandoned houses, a wandering, a starving population, too poor to migrate with their betters. Winter will come—the cruel, bitter winter of northern China; the rivers will be frozen, communications cut off; and with no war-ship in the Gulf of Pecheli, supplies must be inaccessible. Peking may even prove another Moscow to its conquerors.

The condition of the French and Spanish expedition in Cochin China is full of present instruction. They are acting against a miserable and despised enemy. They have been for more than a year in possession of Turon, the principal harbour of the country; but they have not ventured to attack the adjacent capital. Disease has thinned their ranks; victories have brought no results, but ever new disappointment: every calculation of success having been thwarted by a patient but stubborn “no surrender.” It is a resistance that cannot be reached by strength of arms, nor dealt with by the cunning of diplomacy. May it serve as a warning in that wider field upon which we are entering in China!

How is the social edifice to be constructed out of crumbling ruins? To overthrow the existing dynasty of China may be easy enough; indeed, the difficulty, as with that of Turkey, is its maintenance and preservation: its very feebleness cries to us for pity and mercy. It may yet totter on for generations, if not harshly shaken; but if it—fall—fall amidst its wrecked institutions—China, inviting as it is to foreign ambition and the lust of conquest, may become the battle-field of contending interests. Russia, moving steadily and stealthily forward in its march of territorial aggression; France, charged with what she fancies herself specially called upon to represent—the missionary propagand, with the Catholic world behind her; England, with those vast concerns which involve about one-ninth of the imperial and Indian revenues, and an invested capital exceeding forty millions sterling; and the United States, whose commerce may be deemed about one-third of that of Great Britain, to say nothing of Holland and Spain, who are not a little concerned, through their eastern colonies, in the well-being of China;—will then be engaged in a struggle for power, if not territory, the result of which cannot be anticipated; indeed we scarcely venture to contemplate such portentous complications.

No thoughtful man will deny the necessity of teaching the Chinese that treaties must be respected, and perfidy punished. Duty and interest alike require this at our hands; but this is but one of many duties—one of many interests; and we would most emphatically say, Respice finem—look beyond—look to the end. The destruction of hundreds of thousands of Chinese, the ravaging of their great cities, may fail to accomplish the object we have in view. They have been but too much accustomed to such calamities, and their influences soon pass away from a nation so reckless of life. But it may be possible to exact penalties in a shape which will be more sensible to them, and more beneficial to us: for example, the administration of their custom-house revenues in Shanghae and Canton, and the payment out of these of all the expenses of the war.

But is there nothing to hope from the Taiping movement? Nothing. It has become little better than dacoity: its progress has been everywhere marked by wreck and ruin; it destroys cities, but builds none; consumes wealth, and produces none; supersedes one despotism by another more crushing and grievous; subverts a rude religion by the introduction of another full of the vilest frauds and the boldest blasphemies. It has cast off none of the proud, insolent, and ignorant formulas of imperial rule; but, claiming to be a divine revelation, exacts the same homage and demands the same tribute from Western nations, to which the government of Peking pretended in the days of its highest and most widely recognized authority.

We cannot afford to overthrow the government of China. Bad as it is, anarchy will track its downfall, and the few elements of order which yet remain will be whelmed in a convulsive desolation.

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The Bachelor of Beak Street.

Who shall be the hero of this tale? Not I who write it. I am but the Chorus of the Play. I make remarks on the conduct of the characters: I narrate their simple story. There is love and marriage in it: there is grief and disappointment: the scene is in the parlour, and the region beneath the parlour. No: it may be the parlour and kitchen, in this instance, are on the same level. There is no high life, unless, to be sure, you call a baronet’s widow a lady in high life; and some ladies may be, while some certainly are not. I don’t think there’s a villain in the whole performance. There is an abominable selfish old woman, certainly: an old highway robber; an old sponger on other people’s kindness; an old haunter of Bath and Cheltenham boarding-houses (about which how can I know anything, never having been in a boarding-house at Bath or Cheltenham in my life?); an old swindler of tradesmen, tyrant of servants, bully of the poor—who, to be sure, might do duty for a villain, but she considers herself as virtuous a woman as ever was born. The heroine is not faultless (ah! that will be a great relief to some folks, for many writers’ good women are, you know, so very insipid). The principal personage you may very likely think to be no better than a muff. But is many a respectable man of our acquaintance much better? and do muffs know that they are what they are, or, knowing it, are they unhappy? Do girls decline to marry one if he is rich? Do we refuse to dine with one? I listened to one at Church last Sunday, with all the women crying and sobbing; and, oh, dear me! how finely he preached! Don’t we give him great credit for wisdom and eloquence in the House of Commons? Don’t we give him important commands in the army? Can you, or can you not, point out one who has been made a peer? Doesn’t your wife call one in the moment any of the children are ill? Don’t we read his dear poems, or even novels? Yes; perhaps even this one is read and written by—Well? Quid rides? Do you mean that I am painting a portrait which hangs before me every morning in the looking-glass when I am shaving? Après? Do you suppose that I suppose that I have not infirmities like my neighbours? Am I weak? It is notorious to all my friends there is a certain dish I can’t resist; no, not if I have already eaten twice too much at dinner. So, dear sir, or madam, have you your weakness—your irresistible dish of temptation? (or if you don’t know it, your friends do). No, dear friend, the chances are that you and I are not people of the highest intellect, of the largest fortune, of the most ancient family, of the most consummate virtue, of the most faultless beauty in face and figure. We are no heroes nor angels; neither are we fiends from abodes unmentionable, black assassins, treacherous Iagos, familiar with stabbing and poison—murder our amusement, daggers our playthings, arsenic our daily bread, lies our conversation, and forgery our common handwriting. No, we are not monsters of crime, or angels walking the earth—at least I know one of us who isn’t, as can be shown any day at home if the knife won’t cut or the mutton comes up raw. But we are not altogether brutal and unkind, and a few folks like us. Our poetry is not as good as Alfred Tennyson’s, but we can turn a couplet for Miss Fanny’s album: our jokes are not always first-rate, but Mary and her mother smile very kindly when papa tells his story or makes his pun. We have many weaknesses, but we are not ruffians of crime. No more was my friend Lovel. On the contrary, he was as harmless and kindly a fellow as ever lived when I first knew him. At present, with his changed position, he is, perhaps, rather fine (and certainly I am not asked to his best dinner-parties as I used to be, where you hardly see a commoner—but stay! I am advancing matters). At the time when this story begins, I say, Lovel had his faults—which of us has not? He had buried his wife, having notoriously been henpecked by her. How many men and brethren are like him! He had a good fortune—I wish I had as much—though I daresay many people are ten times as rich. He was a good-looking fellow enough; though that depends, ladies, upon whether you like a fair man or a dark one. He had a country house, but it was only at Putney. In fact, he was in business in the city, and being a hospitable man, and having three or four spare bed-rooms, some of his friends were always welcome at Shrublands, especially after Mrs. Lovel’s death, who liked me pretty well at the period of her early marriage with my friend, but got to dislike me at last and to show me the cold shoulder. That is a joint I never could like (though I have known fellows who persist in dining off it year after year, who cling hold of it, and refuse to be separated from it). I say, when Lovel’s wife began to show me that she was tired of my company, I made myself scarce: used to pretend to be engaged when Fred faintly asked me to Shrublands; to accept his meek apologies, proposals to dine en garçon at Greenwich, the club, and so forth; and never visit upon him my wrath at his wife’s indifference—for after all, he had been my friend at many a pinch: he never stinted at Hart’s or Lovegrove’s, and always made a point of having the wine I liked, never mind what the price was. As for his wife, there was, assuredly, no love lost between us—I thought her a lean, scraggy, lackadaisical, egotistical, consequential, insipid creature: and as for his mother-in-law, who stayed at Fred’s as long and as often as her daughter would endure her, has anyone who ever knew that notorious old Lady Baker at Bath, at Cheltenham, at Brighton,—wherever trumps and frumps were found together; wherever scandal was cackled; wherever fly-blown reputations were assembled, and dowagers with damaged titles trod over each other for the pas;—who, I say, ever had a good word for that old woman? What party was not bored where she appeared? What tradesman was not done with whom she dealt? I wish with all my heart I was about to narrate a story with a good mother-in-law for a character; but then you know, my dear madam, all good women in novels are insipid. This woman certainly was not. She was not only not insipid, but exceedingly bad tasted. She had a foul, loud tongue, a stupid head, a bad temper, an immense pride and arrogance, an extravagant son, and very little money. Can I say much more of a woman than this? Aha! my good Lady Baker! I was a mauvais sujèt, was I?—I was leading Fred into smoking, drinking, and low bachelor habits, was I? I, his old friend, who have borrowed money from him any time these twenty years, was not fit company for you and your precious daughter? Indeed! I paid the money I borrowed from him like a man; but did you ever pay him, I should like to know? When Mrs. Lovel was in the first column of The Times, then Fred and I used to go off to Greenwich and Blackwall, as I said; then his kind old heart was allowed to feel for his friend; then we could have the other bottle of claret without the appearance of Bedford and the coffee, which in Mrs. L.’s time used to be sent in to us before we could ring for a second bottle, although she and Lady Baker had had three glasses each out of the first. Three full glasses each, I give you my word! No, madam, it was your turn to bully me once—now it is mine, and I use it. No, you old Catamaran, though you pretend you never read novels, some of your confounded good-natured friends will let you know of this one. Here you are, do you hear? Here you shall be shown up. And so I intend to show up other women and other men who have offended me. Is one to be subject to slights and scorn, and not have revenge? Kindnesses are easily forgotten; but injuries!—what worthy man does not keep those in mind?

Before entering upon the present narrative, may I take leave to inform a candid public, that though it is all true, there is not a word of truth in it; that though Lovel is alive and prosperous, and you very likely have met him, yet I defy you to point him out; that his wife (for he is Lovel the Widower no more) is not the lady you imagine her to be, when you say (as you will persist in doing), “Oh, that character is intended for Mrs. Thingamy, or was notoriously drawn from Lady So-and-so.” No. You are utterly mistaken. Why, even the advertising-puffers have almost given up that stale stratagem of announcing “Revelations from High Life.—The beau monde will be startled at recognizing the portraits of some of its brilliant leaders in Miss Wiggins’s forthcoming Roman de Société.” Or, “We suspect a certain ducal house will be puzzled to guess how the pitiless author of May Fair Mysteries has become acquainted with (and exposed with a fearless hand) certain family secrets which were thought only to be known to a few of the very highest members of the aristocracy.” No, I say; these silly baits to catch an unsuspecting public shall not be our arts. If you choose to occupy yourself with trying to ascertain if a certain cap fits one amongst ever so many thousand heads, you may possibly pop it on the right one: but the cap-maker will perish before he tells you; unless, of course, he has some private pique to avenge, or malice to wreak, upon some individual who can’t by any possibility hit again;—then, indeed, he will come boldly forward and seize upon his victim—(a bishop, say, or a woman without coarse, quarrelsome male relatives, will be best)—and clap on him, or her, such a cap, with such ears, that all the world shall laugh at the poor wretch, shuddering, and blushing beet-root red, and whimpering deserved tears of rage and vexation at being made the common butt of society. Besides, I dine at Lovel’s still; his company and cuisine are amongst the best in London. If they suspected I was taking them off, he and his wife would leave off inviting me. Would any man of a generous disposition lose such a valued friend for a joke, or be so foolish as to show him up in a story? All persons with a decent knowledge of the world will at once banish the thought, as not merely base, but absurd. I am invited to his house one day next week: vous concevez I can’t mention the very day, for then he would find me out—and of course there would be no more cards for his old friend. He would not like appearing, as it must be owned he does in this memoir, as a man of not very strong mind. He believes himself to be a most determined, resolute person. He is quick in speech, wears a fierce beard, speaks with asperity to his servants (who liken him to a—to that before-named sable or ermine contrivance, in which ladies insert their hands in winter), and takes his wife to task so smartly, that I believe she believes he believes he is the master of the house. “Elizabeth, my love, he must mean A, or B, or D,” I fancy I hear Lovel say; and she says, “Yes; oh! it is certainly D—his very image!” “D to a T,” says Lovel (who is a neat wit). She may know that I mean to depict her husband in the above unpretending lines: but she will never let me know of her knowledge except by a little extra courtesy; except (may I make this pleasing exception?) by a few more invitations; except by a look of those unfathomable eyes (gracious goodness! to think she wore spectacles ever so long, and put a lid over them as it were!), into which, when you gaze sometimes, you may gaze so deep, and deep, and deep, that I defy you to plumb half-way down into their mystery.

When I was a young man, I had lodgings in Beak Street, Regent Street (I no more have lived in Beak Street than in Belgrave Square: but I choose to say so, and no gentleman will be so rude as to contradict another)—I had lodgings, I say, in Beak Street, Regent Street. Mrs. Prior was the landlady’s name. She had seen better days—landladies frequently have. Her husband—he could not be called the landlord, for Mrs. P. was manager of the place,—had been, in happier times, captain or lieutenant in the militia; then of Diss, in Norfolk, of no profession; then of Norwich Castle, a prisoner for debt; then of Southampton Buildings, London, law-writer; then of the Bom-Retiro Cacadores, in the service of H. M. the Queen of Portugal, lieutenant and paymaster; then of Melina Place, St. George’s Fields, &c.—I forbear to give the particulars of an existence which a legal biographer has traced step by step, and which has more than once been the subject of judicial investigation by certain commissioners in Lincoln’s-inn Fields. Well, Prior, at this time, swimming out of a hundred shipwrecks, had clambered on to a lighter, as it were, and was clerk to a coal-merchant, by the river-side. “You conceive, sir,” he would say, “my employment is only temporary—the fortune of war, the fortune of war!” He smattered words in not a few foreign languages. His person was profusely scented with tobacco. Bearded individuals, padding the muddy hoof in the neighbouring Regent Street, would call sometimes of an evening, and ask for “the captain.” He was known at many neighbouring billiard-tables, and, I imagine, not respected. You will not see enough of Captain Prior to be very weary of him and his coarse swagger, to be disgusted by his repeated requests for small money-loans, or to deplore his loss, which you will please to suppose has happened before the curtain of our present drama draws up. I think two people in the world were sorry for him: his wife, who still loved the memory of the handsome young man who had wooed and won her; his daughter Elizabeth, whom for the last few months of his life, and up to his fatal illness, he every evening conducted to what he called her “academy.” You are right. Elizabeth is the principal character in this story. When I knew her, a thin, freckled girl of fifteen, with a lean frock, and hair of a reddish hue, she used to borrow my books, and play on the First Floor’s piano, when he was from home—Slumley his name was. He was editor of the Swell, a newspaper then published; author of a great number of popular songs, a friend of several music-selling houses; and it was by Mr. Slumley’s interest that Elizabeth was received as a pupil at what the family called “the academy.”

Captain Prior then used to conduct his girl to the Academy, but she often had to conduct him home again. Having to wait about the premises for two, or three, or five hours sometimes, whilst Elizabeth was doing her lessons, he would naturally desire to shelter himself from the cold at some neighbouring house of entertainment. Every Friday, a prize of a golden medal, nay, I believe sometimes of twenty-five silver medals, was awarded to Miss Bellenden and other young ladies for their good conduct and assiduity at this academy. Miss Bellenden gave her gold medal to her mother, only keeping five shillings for herself, with which the poor child bought gloves, shoes, and her humble articles of millinery.

Once or twice the captain succeeded in intercepting that piece of gold, and I daresay treated some of his whiskered friends, the clinking trampers of the Quadrant pavement. He was a free-handed fellow when he had anybody’s money in his pocket. It was owing to differences regarding the settlement of accounts that he quarrelled with the coal-merchant, his very last employer. Bessy, after yielding once or twice to his importunity, and trying to believe his solemn promises of repayment, had strength of mind to refuse her father the pound which he would have taken. Her five shillings—her poor little slender pocket-money, the representative of her charities and kindnesses to the little brothers and sisters, of her little toilette ornaments, nay necessities; of those well-mended gloves, of those oft-darned stockings, of those poor boots, which had to walk many a weary mile after midnight; of those little knicknacks, in the shape of brooch or bracelet, with which the poor child adorned her homely robe or sleeve—her poor five shillings, out of which Mary sometimes found a pair of shoes, or Tommy a flannel jacket, and little Bill a coach and horse—this wretched sum, this mite, which Bessy administered among so many poor—I very much fear her father sometimes confiscated. I charged the child with the fact, and she could not deny me. I vowed a tremendous vow, that if ever I heard of her giving Prior money again, I would quit the lodgings, and never give those children lolly-pop, nor peg-top, nor sixpence; nor the pungent marmalade, nor the biting gingerbread-nut, nor the theatre-characters, nor the paint-box to illuminate the same; nor the discarded clothes, which became smaller clothes upon the persons of little Tommy and little Bill, for whom Mrs. Prior, and Bessy, and the little maid, cut, clipped, altered, ironed, darned, mangled, with the greatest ingenuity. I say, considering what had passed between me and the Priors—considering those money transactions, and those clothes, and my kindness to the children—it was rather hard that my jam-pots were poached, and my brandy-bottles leaked. And then to frighten her brother with the story of the inexorable creditor—oh, Mrs. Prior!—oh, fie, Mrs. P.!

So Bessy went to her school in a shabby shawl, a faded bonnet, and a poor little lean dress flounced with the mud and dust of all weathers, whereas there were some other young ladies, fellow-pupils of hers, who laid out their gold medals to much greater advantage. Miss Delamere, with her eighteen shillings a week (calling them “silver medals,” was only my wit, you see), had twenty new bonnets, silk and satin dresses for all seasons, feathers in abundance, swansdown muffs and tippets, lovely pocket handkerchiefs and trinkets, and many and many a half-crown mould of jelly, bottle of sherry, blanket, or what not, for a poor fellow-pupil in distress; and as for Miss Montanville, who had exactly the same sal—well, who had a scholarship of exactly the same value, viz. about fifty pounds yearly—she kept an elegant little cottage in the Regent’s Park, a brougham with a horse all over brass harness, and a groom with a prodigious gold lace hat-band, who was treated with frightful contumely at the neighbouring cab-stand: an aunt or a mother, I don’t know which (I hope it was only an aunt), always comfortably dressed, and who looked after Montanville: and she herself had bracelets, brooches, and velvet pelisses of the very richest description. But then Miss Montanville was a good economist. She was never known to help a poor friend in distress, or give a fainting brother and sister a crust or a glass of wine. She allowed ten shillings a week to her father, whose name was Boskinson, said to be clerk to a chapel in Paddington; but she would never see him—no, not when he was in hospital, where he was so ill; and though she certainly lent Miss Wilder thirteen pounds, she had Wilder arrested upon her promissory note for twenty-four, and sold up every stick of Wilder’s furniture, so that the whole academy cried shame! Well, an accident occurred to Miss Montanville, for which those may be sorry who choose. On the evening of the 26th of December, Eighteen hundred and something, when the conductors of the academy were giving their grand annual Christmas Pant—I should say examination of the Academy pupils before their numerous friends—Montanville, who happened to be present, not in her brougham this time, but in an aërial chariot of splendour drawn by doves, fell off a rainbow, and through the roof of the Revolving Shrine of the Amaranthine Queen, thereby very nearly damaging Bellenden, who was occupying the shrine, attired in a light-blue spangled dress, waving a wand, and uttering some idiotic verses composed for her by the Professor of Literature attached to the academy. As for Montanville, let her go shrieking down that trap-door, break her leg, be taken home, and never more be character of ours. She never could speak. Her voice was as hoarse as a fishwoman’s. Can that immense stout old box-keeper at the —— theatre, who limps up to ladies on the first tier, and offers that horrible footstool, which everybody stumbles over, and makes a clumsy curtsey, and looks so knowing and hard, as if she recognized an acquaintance in the splendid lady who enters the box—can that old female be the once brilliant Emily Montanville? I am told there are no lady box-keepers in the English theatres. This, I submit, is a proof of my consummate care and artifice in rescuing from a prurient curiosity the individual personages from whom the characters of the present story are taken. Montanville is not a box-opener. She may, under another name, keep a trinket-shop in the Burlington Arcade, for what you know: but this secret no torture shall induce me to divulge. Life has its rises and its downfalls, and you have had yours, you hobbling old creature. Montanville, indeed! Go thy ways! Here is a shilling for thee. (Thank you, sir.) Take away that confounded footstool, and never let us see thee more!

Now the fairy Amarantha was like a certain dear young lady of whom we have read in early youth. Up to twelve o’clock, attired in sparkling raiment, she leads the dance with the prince (Gradini, known as Grady in his days of banishment at the T. R. Dublin). At supper, she takes her place by the prince’s royal father (who is alive now, and still reigns occasionally, so that we will not mention his revered name). She makes believe to drink from the gilded pasteboard, and to eat of the mighty pudding. She smiles as the good old irascible monarch knocks the prime minister and the cooks about: she blazes in splendour: she beams with a thousand jewels, in comparison with which the Koh-i-noor is a wretched lustreless little pebble: she disappears in a chariot, such as a Lord Mayor never rode in:—and at midnight, who is that young woman tripping homeward through the wet streets in a battered bonnet, a cotton shawl, and a lean frock fringed with the dreary winter flounces?

Our Cinderella is up early in the morning: she does no little portion of the house-work: she dresses her sisters and brothers: she prepares papa’s breakfast. On days when she has not to go to morning lessons at her academy, she helps with the dinner. Heaven help us! She has often brought mine when I have dined at home, and owns to having made that famous mutton-broth when I had a cold. Foreigners come to the house—professional gentlemen—to see Slumley on the first floor; exiled captains of Spain and Portugal, companions of the warrior her father. It is surprising how she has learned their accents, and has picked up French and Italian, too. And she played the piano in Mr. Slumley’s room sometimes, as I have said; but refrained from that presently, and from visiting him altogether. I suspect he was not a man of principle. His Paper used to make direful attacks upon individual reputations; and you would find theatre and opera people most curiously praised and assaulted in the Swell. I recollect meeting him, several years after, in the lobby of the opera, in a very noisy frame of mind, when he heard a certain lady’s carriage called, and cried out with exceeding strong language, which need not be accurately reported, “Look at that woman! Confound her! I made her, sir! Got her an engagement when the family was starving, sir! Did you see her, sir! She wouldn’t even look at me!” Nor indeed was Mr. S. at that moment a very agreeable object to behold.

Then I remembered that there had been some quarrel with this man, when we lodged in Beak Street together. If difficulty there was, it was solved ambulando. He quitted the lodgings, leaving an excellent and costly piano as security for a heavy bill which he owed to Mrs. Prior, and the instrument was presently fetched away by the music-sellers, its owners. But regarding Mr. S.’s valuable biography, let us speak very gently. You see it is “an insult to literature” to say that there are disreputable and dishonest persons who write in newspapers.

Nothing, dear friend, escapes your penetration: if a joke is made in your company, you are down upon it instanter, and your smile rewards the wag who amuses you: so you knew at once, whilst I was talking of Elizabeth and her academy, that a theatre was meant, where the poor child danced for a guinea, or five-and-twenty shillings per week. Nay, she must have had not a little skill and merit to advance to the quarter of a hundred; for she was not pretty at this time, only a rough, tawny-haired filly of a girl, with great eyes. Dolphin, the manager, did not think much of her, and she passed before him in his regiment of Sea-nymphs, or Bayadères, or Fairies, or Mazurka maidens (with their fluttering lances and little scarlet slyboots!) scarcely more noticed than private Jones standing under arms in his company when his Royal Highness the Field-marshal gallops by. There were no dramatic triumphs for Miss Bellenden: no bouquets were flung at her feet: no cunning Mephistopheles—the emissary of some philandering Faustus outside—corrupted her duenna, or brought her caskets of diamonds. Had there been any such admirer for Bellenden, Dolphin would not only not have been shocked, but he would very likely have raised her salary. As it was, though himself, I fear, a person of loose morals, he respected better things. “That Bellenden’s a good hhonest gurl,” he said to the present writer: “works hard: gives her money to her family: father a shy old cove. Very good family, I hear they are!” and he passes on to some other of the innumerable subjects which engage a manager.

Now, why should a poor lodging-house keeper make such a mighty secret of having a daughter earning an honest guinea by dancing at a theatre? Why persist in calling the theatre an academy? Why did Mrs. Prior speak of it as such, to me who knew what the truth was, and to whom Elizabeth herself made no mystery of her calling?

There are actions and events in its life over which decent Poverty often chooses to cast a veil that is not unbecoming wear. We can all, if we are minded, peer through this poor flimsy screen: often there is no shame behind it:—only empty platters, poor scraps, and other threadbare evidence of want and cold. And who is called on to show his rags to the public, and cry out his hunger in the street? At this time (her character has developed itself not so amiably since), Mrs. Prior was outwardly respectable; and yet, as I have said, my groceries were consumed with remarkable rapidity; my wine and brandy bottles were all leaky, until they were excluded from air under a patent lock;—my Morel’s raspberry jam, of which I was passionately fond, if exposed on the table for a few hours, was always eaten by the cat, or that wonderful little wretch of a maid-of-all-work, so active, yet so patient, so kind, so dirty, so obliging. Was it the maid who took those groceries? I have seen the Gazza Ladra, and know that poor little maids are sometimes wrongfully accused; and besides, in my particular case, I own I don’t care who the culprit was. At the year’s end, a single man is not much poorer for this house-tax which he pays. One Sunday evening, being confined with a cold, and partaking of that mutton broth which Elizabeth made so well, and which she brought me, I entreated her to bring from the cupboard, of which I gave her the key, a certain brandy-bottle. She saw my face when I looked at her: there was no mistaking its agony. There was scarce any brandy left: it had all leaked away: and it was Sunday, and no good brandy was to be bought that evening.

Elizabeth, I say, saw my grief. She put down the bottle, and she cried: she tried to prevent herself from doing so at first, but she fairly burst into tears.

“My dear—dear child,” says I, seizing her hand, “you don’t suppose I fancy you——”

“No—no!” she says, drawing the large hand over her eyes. “No—no! but I saw it when you and Mr. Warrington last ’ad some. Oh! do have a patting lock!”

“A patent lock, my dear?” I remarked. “How odd that you, who have learned to pronounce Italian and French words so well, should make such strange slips in English? Your mother speaks well enough.”

“She was born a lady. She was not sent to be a milliner’s girl, as I was, and then among those noisy girls at that—oh! that place!” cries Bessy, in a sort of desperation clenching her hand.

Here the bells of St. Beak’s began to ring quite cheerily for evening service. I heard “Elizabeth!” cried out from lower regions by Mrs. Prior’s cracked voice. And the maiden went her way to Church, which she and her mother never missed of a Sunday; and I daresay I slept just as well without the brandy-and-water.

Slumley being gone, Mrs. Prior came to me rather wistfully one day, and wanted to know whether I would object to Madame Bentivoglio, the opera-singer, having the first floor? This was too much, indeed! How was my work to go on with that woman practising all day and roaring underneath me? But after sending away so good a customer, I could not refuse to lend the Priors a little more money; and Prior insisted upon treating me to a new stamp, and making out a new and handsome bill for an amount nearly twice as great as the last: which he had no doubt under heaven, and which he pledged his honour as an officer and a gentleman that he would meet. Let me see: That was how many years ago?—Thirteen, fourteen, twenty? Never mind. My fair Elizabeth, I think if you saw your poor old father’s signature now, you would pay it. I came upon it lately in an old box I haven’t opened these fifteen years, along with some letters written—never mind by whom—and an old glove that I used to set an absurd value by; and that emerald-green tabinet waistcoat which kind old Mrs. Macmanus gave me, and which I wore at the L—d L—t—nt’s ball, Ph-n-x Park, Dublin, once, when I danced with her there! Lord!—Lord! It would no more meet round my waist now than round Daniel Lambert’s. How we outgrow things!

But as I never presented this united bill of 43l. odd (the first portion of 23l., &c. was advanced by me in order to pay an execution out of the house),—as I never expected to have it paid any more than I did to be Lord Mayor of London,—I say it was a little hard that Mrs. Prior should write off to her brother (she writes a capital letter), blessing Providence that had given him a noble income, promising him the benefit of her prayers, in order that he should long live to enjoy his large salary, and informing him that an obdurate creditor, who shall be nameless (meaning me), who had Captain Prior in his power (as if being in possession of that dingy scrawl, I should have known what to do with it), who held Mr. Prior’s acceptance for 43l. 14s. 4d. due on the 3rd July (my bill), would infallibly bring their family to RUIN, unless a part of the money was paid up. When I went up to my old college, and called on Sargent, at Boniface Lodge, he treated me as civilly as if I had been an undergraduate; scarcely spoke to me in hall, where, of course, I dined at the Fellows’ table; and only asked me to one of Mrs. Sargent’s confounded tea-parties during the whole time of my stay. Now it was by this man’s entreaty that I went to lodge at Prior’s; he talked to me after dinner one day, he hummed, he ha’d, he blushed, he prated in his pompous way, about an unfortunate sister in London—fatal early marriage—husband, Captain Prior, Knight of the Swan with two Necks of Portugal, most distinguished officer, but imprudent speculator—advantageous lodgings in the centre of London, quiet, though near the Clubs—if I was ill (I am a confirmed invalid), Mrs. Prior, his sister, would nurse me like a mother. So, in a word, I went to Prior’s: I took the rooms: I was attracted by some children: Amelia Jane (that little dirty maid before mentioned) dragging a go-cart, containing a little dirty pair; another marching by them, carrying a fourth well nigh as big as himself. These little folks, having threaded the mighty flood of Regent Street, debouched into the quiet creek of Beak Street, just as I happened to follow them. And the door at which the small caravan halted,—the very door I was in search of,—was opened by Elizabeth, then only just emerging from childhood, with tawny hair falling into her solemn eyes.

The aspect of these little people, which would have deterred many, happened to attract me. I am a lonely man. I may have been ill-treated by some one once, but that is neither here nor there. If I had had children of my own, I think I should have been good to them. I thought Prior a dreadful vulgar wretch, and his wife a scheming, greedy little woman. But the children amused me: and I took the rooms, liking to hear overhead in the morning the patter of their little feet. The person I mean has several;—husband, judge in the West Indies. Allons! now you know how I came to live at Mrs. Prior’s.

Though I am now a steady, a confirmed old bachelor (I shall call myself Mr. Batchelor, if you please, in this story; and there is some one far—far away who knows why I will NEVER take another title), I was a gay young fellow enough once. I was not above the pleasures of youth: in fact, I learned quadrilles on purpose to dance with her that long vacation when I went to read with my young friend Lord Viscount Poldoody at Dub—psha! Be still, thou foolish heart! Perhaps I mis-spent my time as an undergraduate. Perhaps I read too many novels, occupied myself too much with “elegant literature” (that used to be our phrase), and spoke too often at the Union, where I had a considerable reputation. But those fine words got me no college prizes: I missed my fellowship: was rather in disgrace with my relations afterwards, but had a small independence of my own, which I eked out by taking a few pupils for little goes and the common degree. At length, a relation dying, and leaving me a farther small income, I left the university, and came to reside in London.

Now, in my third year at college, there came to St. Boniface a young gentleman, who was one of the few gentlemen-pensioners of our society. His popularity speedily was great. A kindly and simple youth, he would have been liked, I daresay, even though he had been no richer than the rest of us; but this is certain, that flattery, worldliness, mammon-worship, are vices as well known to young as to old boys; and a rich lad at school or college has his followers, tuft-hunters, led-captains, little courts, just as much as any elderly millionary of Pall-Mall, who gazes round his club to see whom he shall take home to dinner, while humble trencher-men wait anxiously, thinking—Ah! will he take me this time? or will he ask that abominable sneak and toady Henchman again? Well—well! this is an old story about parasites and flatterers. My dear good sir, I am not for a moment going to say that you ever were one; and I daresay it was very base and mean of us to like a man chiefly on account of his money. “I know”—Tom Lovel used to say—“I know fellows come to my rooms because I have a large allowance, and plenty of my poor old governor’s wine, and give good dinners: I am not deceived; but, at least, it is pleasanter to come to me and have good dinners, and good wine, than to go to Jack Highson’s dreary tea and turnout, or to Ned Roper’s abominable Oxbridge port.” And so I admit at once that Lovel’s parties were more agreeable than most men’s in the college. Perhaps the goodness of the fare, by pleasing the guests, made them more pleasant. A dinner in hall, and a pewter-plate is all very well, and I can say grace before it with all my heart; but a dinner with fish from London, game, and two or three nice little entrées, is better—and there was no better cook in the university than ours at St. Boniface, and ah, me! there were appetites then, and digestions which rendered the good dinner doubly good.

Between me and young Lovel a friendship sprang up, which, I trust, even the publication of this story will not diminish. There is a period, immediately after the taking of his bachelor’s degree, when many a university-man finds himself embarrassed. The tradesmen rather rudely press for a settlement of their accounts. Those prints we ordered calidi juventâ; those shirt-studs and pins which the jewellers would persist in thrusting into our artless bosoms; those fine coats we would insist on having for our books, as well as ourselves; all these have to be paid for by the graduate. And my father, who was then alive, refusing to meet these demands, under the—I own—just plea, that my allowance had been ample, and that my half-sisters ought not to be mulcted of their slender portions, in consequence of my extravagance, I should have been subject to very serious inconvenience—nay, possibly, to personal incarceration, had not Lovel, at the risk of rustication, rushed up to London to his mother (who then had especial reasons for being very gracious with her son), obtained a supply of money from her, and brought it to me at Mr. Shackell’s horrible hotel, where I was lodged. He had tears in his kind eyes; he grasped my hand a hundred and hundred times as he flung the notes into my lap; and the recording tutor (Sargent was only tutor then) who was going to bring him up before the Master for breach of discipline, dashed away a drop from his own lid, when, with a moving eloquence, I told what had happened, and blotted out the transaction with some particular old 1811 Port, of which we freely partook in his private rooms that evening. By laborious instalments, I had the happiness to pay Lovel back. I took pupils, as I said; I engaged in literary pursuits: I became connected with a literary periodical, and I am ashamed to say, I imposed myself upon the public as a good classical scholar. I was not thought the less learned, when my relative dying, I found myself in possession of a small independency; and my Translations from the Greek, my Poems by Beta, and my articles in the paper of which I was part proprietor for several years, have had their little success in their day.

Indeed at Oxbridge, if I did not obtain university honours, at least I showed literary tastes. I got the prize essay one year at Boniface, and plead guilty to having written essays, poems, and a tragedy. My college friends had a joke at my expense (a very small joke serves to amuse those port-wine-bibbing fogies, and keeps them laughing for ever so long a time)—they are welcome, I say, to make merry at my charges—in respect of a certain bargain which I made on coming to London, and in which, had I been Moses Primrose purchasing green spectacles, I could scarcely have been more taken in. My Jenkinson was an old college acquaintance, whom I was idiot enough to imagine a respectable man: the fellow had a very smooth tongue, and sleek, sanctified exterior. He was rather a popular preacher, and used to cry a good deal in the pulpit. He, and a queer wine-merchant and bill-discounter, Sherrick by name, had somehow got possession of that neat little literary paper, the Museum, which, perhaps, you remember; and this eligible literary property my friend Honeyman, with his wheedling tongue, induced me to purchase. I bear no malice: the fellow is in India now, where I trust he pays his butcher and baker. He was in dreadful straits for money when he sold me the Museum. He began crying when I told him some short time afterwards that he was a swindler, and from behind his pocket-handkerchief sobbed a prayer that I should one day think better of him; whereas my remarks to the same effect produced an exactly contrary impression upon his accomplice, Sherrick, who burst out laughing in my face, and said, “The more fool you.” Mr. Sherrick was right. He was a fool, without mistake, who had any money-dealing with him; and poor Honeyman was right, too; I don’t think so badly of him as I did. A fellow so hardly pinched for money could not resist the temptation of extracting it from such a greenhorn. I daresay I gave myself airs as editor of that confounded Museum, and proposed to educate the public taste, to diffuse morality and sound literature throughout the nation, and to pocket a liberal salary in return for my services. I daresay I printed my own sonnets, my own tragedy, my own verses (to a Being who shall be nameless, but whose conduct has caused a faithful heart to bleed not a little). I daresay I wrote satirical articles, in which I piqued myself upon the fineness of my wit, and criticisms, got up for the nonce, out of encyclopædias and biographical dictionaries; so that I would be actually astounded at my own knowledge. I daresay I made a gaby of myself to the world: pray, my good friend, hast thou never done likewise? If thou hast never been a fool, be sure thou wilt never be a wise man.

I think it was my brilliant confrère on the first floor (he had pecuniary transactions with Sherrick, and visited two or three of her Majesty’s metropolitan prisons at that gentleman’s suit) who first showed me how grievously I had been cheated in the newspaper matter. Slumley wrote for a paper printed at our office. The same boy often brought proofs to both of us—a little bit of a puny bright-eyed chap, who looked scarce twelve years old, when he was sixteen; who in wit was a man, when in stature he was a child,—like many other children of the poor.

This little Dick Bedford used to sit many hours asleep on my landing-place or Slumley’s, whilst we were preparing our invaluable compositions within our respective apartments. S. was a good-natured reprobate, and gave the child of his meat and his drink. I used to like to help the little man from my breakfast, and see him enjoy the meal. As he sate, with his bag on his knees, his head sunk in sleep, his little high-lows scarce reaching the floor, Dick made a touching little picture. The whole house was fond of him. The tipsy captain nodded him a welcome as he swaggered down stairs, stock, and coat, and waistcoat in hand, to his worship’s toilette in the back kitchen. The children and Dick were good friends; and Elizabeth patronized him, and talked with him now and again, in her grave way. You know Clancy, the composer?—know him better, perhaps, under his name of Friedrich Donner? Donner used to write music to Slumley’s words, or vice versâ; and would come now and again to Beak Street, where he and his poet would try their joint work at the piano. At the sound of that music, little Dick’s eyes used to kindle. “Oh, it’s prime!” said the young enthusiast. And I will say, that good-natured miscreant of a Slumley not only gave the child pence, but tickets for the play, concerts, and so forth. Dick had a neat little suit of clothes at home; his mother made him a very nice little waistcoat out of my undergraduate’s gown; and he and she, a decent woman, when in their best raiment, looked respectable enough for any theatre-pit in England.

Amongst other places of public amusement which he attended, Mr. Dick frequented the academy where Miss Bellenden danced, and whence poor Elizabeth Prior issued forth after midnight in her shabby frock. And once, the captain, Elizabeth’s father and protector, being unable to walk very accurately, and noisy and incoherent in his speech, so that the attention of Messieurs of the police was directed towards him, Dick came up, placed Elizabeth and her father in a cab, paid the fare with his own money, and brought the whole party home in triumph, himself sitting on the box of the vehicle. I chanced to be coming home myself (from one of Mrs. Wateringham’s elegant tea soirées, in Dorset Square), and reached my door just at the arrival of Dick and his caravan. “Here, cabby!” says Dick, handing out the fare, and looking with his brightest eyes. It is pleasanter to look at that beaming little face, than at the captain yonder, reeling into his house, supported by his daughter. Dick cried, Elizabeth told me, when, a week afterwards, she wanted to pay him back his shilling; and she said he was a strange child, that he was.

I revert to my friend Lovel. I was coaching Lovel for his degree (which, between ourselves, I think he never would have attained), when he suddenly announced to me, from Weymouth, where he was passing the vacation, his intention to quit the university, and to travel abroad. “Events have happened, dear friend,” he wrote, “which will make my mother’s home miserable to me (I little knew when I went to town about your business, what caused her wonderful complaisance to me). She would have broken my heart, Charles (my Christian name is Charles), but its wounds have found a consoler!”

Now, in this little chapter, there are some little mysteries propounded, upon which, were I not above any such artifice, I might easily leave the reader to ponder for a month.

1. Why did Mrs. Prior, at the lodgings, persist in calling the theatre at which her daughter danced the Academy?

2. What were the special reasons why Mrs. Lovel should be very gracious with her son, and give him 150l. as soon as he asked for the money?

3. Why was Fred Lovel’s heart nearly broken? and 4. Who was his consoler?

I answer these at once, and without the slightest attempt at delay or circumlocution. 1. Mrs. Prior, who had repeatedly received money from her brother, John Erasmus Sargent, D.D., Master of St. Boniface College, knew perfectly well that if the Master (whom she already pestered out of his life) heard that she had sent a niece of his on the stage, he would never give her another shilling.

2. The reason why Emma, widow of the late Adolphus Loeffel, of Whitechapel Road, sugar-baker, was so particularly gracious to her son, Adolphus Frederic Lovel, Esq., of St. Boniface College, Oxbridge, and principal partner in the house of Loeffel aforesaid, an infant, was that she, Emma, was about to contract a second marriage with the Rev. Samuel Bonnington.

3. Fred Lovel’s heart was so very much broken by this intelligence, that he gave himself airs of Hamlet, dressed in black, wore his long fair hair over his eyes, and exhibited a hundred signs of grief and desperation: until—

4. Louisa (widow of the late Sir Popham Baker, of Bakerstown, Co. Kilkenny, Baronet,) induced Mr. Lovel to take a trip on the Rhine with her and Cecilia, fourth and only unmarried daughter of the aforesaid Sir Popham Baker, deceased.

My opinion of Cecilia I have candidly given in a previous page. I adhere to that opinion. I shall not repeat it. The subject is disagreeable to me, as the woman herself was in life. What Fred found in her to admire, I cannot tell: lucky for us all that tastes, men, women, vary. You will never see her alive in this history. That is her picture, painted by the late Mr. Gandish. She stands fingering that harp with which she has often driven me half mad with her Tara’s Halls and her Poor Marianne. She used to bully Fred so, and be so rude to his guests, that in order to pacify her, he would meanly say, “Do, my love, let us have a little music!” and thrumpty—thrumpty, off would go her gloves, and Tara’s Halls would begin. “The harp that once” indeed! the accursed catgut scarce knew any other music, and “once” was a hundred times at least in my hearing. Then came the period when I was treated to the cold joint which I have mentioned; and, not liking it, I gave up going to Shrublands.

So, too, did my Lady Baker, but not of her own free will, mind you. She did not quit the premises because her reception was too cold, but because the house was made a great deal too hot for her. I remember Fred coming to me in high spirits, and describing to me, with no little humour, a great battle between Cecilia and Lady Baker, and her ladyship’s defeat and flight. She fled, however, only as far as Putney village, where she formed again, as it were, and fortified herself in a lodging. Next day she made a desperate and feeble attack, presenting herself at Shrublands lodge-gate, and threatening that she and sorrow would sit down before it; and that all the world should know how a daughter treated her mother. But the gate was locked, and Barnet, the gardener, appeared behind it, saying, “Since you are come, my lady, perhaps you will pay my missis the four-and-twenty shillings you borrowed of her.” And he grinned at her through the bars, until she fled before him, cowering. Lovel paid the little forgotten account; the best four-and-twenty shillings he had ever laid out, he said.

Eight years passed away; during the last four of which I scarce saw my old friend, except at clubs and taverns, where we met privily, and renewed, not old warmth and hilarity, but old kindness. One winter he took his family abroad; Cecilia’s health was delicate, Lovel told me, and the doctor had advised that she should spend a winter in the south. He did not stay with them: he had pressing affairs at home; he had embarked in many businesses besides the paternal sugar-bakery; was concerned in companies, a director of a joint-stock bank, a man in whose fire were many irons. A faithful governess was with the children; a faithful man and maid were in attendance on the invalid; and Lovel, adoring his wife, as he certainly did, yet supported her absence with great equanimity.

In the spring I was not a little scared to read amongst the deaths in the newspaper:—“At Naples, of scarlet fever, on the 25th ult., Cecilia, wife of Frederick Lovel Esq., and daughter of the late Sir Popham Baker, Bart.” I knew what my friend’s grief would be. He had hurried abroad at the news of her illness; he did not reach Naples in time to receive the last words of his poor Cecilia.

Some months after the catastrophe, I had a note from Shrublands. Lovel wrote quite in the old affectionate tone. He begged his dear old friend to go to him, and console him in his solitude. Would I come to dinner that evening?

Of course I went off to him straightway. I found him in deep sables in the drawing-room with his children, and I confess I was not astonished to see my Lady Baker once more in that room.

“You seem surprised to see me here, Mr. Batchelor!” says her ladyship, with that grace and good breeding which she generally exhibited; for if she accepted benefits, she took care to insult those from whom she received them.

“Indeed, no,” said I, looking at Lovel, who piteously hung down his head. He had his little Cecy at his knee: he was sitting under the portrait of the defunct musician, whose harp, now muffled in leather, stood dimly in the corner of the room.

“I am here not at my own wish, but from a feeling of duty towards that—departed—angel!” says Lady Baker, pointing to the picture.

“I am sure when mamma was here, you were always quarrelling,” says little Popham, with a scowl.

“This is the way those innocent children have been taught to regard me,” cries grandmamma.

“Silence Pop!” says papa, “and don’t be a rude boy.”

“Isn’t Pop a rude boy?” echoes Cecy.

“Silence, Pop,” continues papa, “or you must go up to Miss Prior.”

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Omnipresence of Life—The Microscope—An Opalina and its wonders—The uses of Cilia—How our lungs are protected from dust and filings—Feeding without a mouth or stomach—What is an organ?—How a complex organism arises—Early stages of a frog and a philosopher—How the plants feed—Parasites of the frog—Metamorphoses and migrations of Parasites—Life within life—The budding of animals—A steady bore—Philosophy of the infinitely little.

Come with me, and lovingly study Nature, as she breathes, palpitates, and works under myriad forms of Life—forms unseen, unsuspected, or unheeded by the mass of ordinary men. Our course may be through park and meadow, garden and lane, over the swelling hills and spacious heaths, beside the running and sequestered streams, along the tawny coast, out on the dark and dangerous reefs, or under dripping caves and slippery ledges. It matters little where we go: everywhere—in the air above, the earth beneath, and waters under the earth—we are surrounded with Life. Avert your eyes awhile from our human world, with its ceaseless anxieties, its noble sorrow, poignant, yet sublime, of conscious imperfection aspiring to higher states, and contemplate the calmer activities of that other world with which we are so mysteriously related. I hear you exclaim,—

“The proper study of mankind is man;”

nor will I pretend, as some enthusiastic students seem to think, that

“The proper study of mankind is cells;”

but agreeing with you, that man is the noblest study, I would suggest that under the noblest there are other problems which we must not neglect. Man himself is imperfectly known, because the laws of universal Life are imperfectly known. His Life forms but one grand illustration of Biology—the science of Life,[21] as he forms but the apex of the animal world.

Our studies here will be of Life, and chiefly of those minuter, or obscurer forms, which seldom attract attention. In the air we breathe, in the water we drink, in the earth we tread on, Life is everywhere. Nature lives: every pore is bursting with Life; every death is only a new birth, every grave a cradle. And of this we know so little, think so little! Around us, above us, beneath us, that great mystic drama of creation is being enacted, and we will not even consent to be spectators! Unless animals are obviously useful, or obviously hurtful to us, we disregard them. Yet they are not alien, but akin. The Life that stirs within us, stirs within them. We are all “parts of one transcendent whole.” The scales fall from our eyes when we think of this; it is as if a new sense had been vouchsafed to us; and we learn to look at Nature with a more intimate and personal love.

Life everywhere! The air is crowded with birds—beautiful, tender, intelligent birds, to whom life is a song and a thrilling anxiety, the anxiety of love. The air is swarming with insects—those little animated miracles. The waters are peopled with innumerable forms, from the animalcule, so small that one hundred and fifty millions of them would not weigh a grain, to the whale, so large that it seems an island as it sleeps upon the waves. The bed of the seas is alive with polypes, crabs, star-fishes, and with sand-numerous shell-animalcules. The rugged face of rocks is scarred by the silent boring of soft creatures; and blackened with countless mussels, barnacles, and limpets.

Life everywhere! on the earth, in the earth, crawling, creeping, burrowing, boring, leaping, running. If the sequestered coolness of the wood tempt us to saunter into its chequered shade, we are saluted by the murmurous din of insects, the twitter of birds, the scrambling of squirrels, the startled rush of unseen beasts, all telling how populous is this seeming solitude. If we pause before a tree, or shrub, or plant, our cursory and half-abstracted glance detects a colony of various inhabitants. We pluck a flower, and in its bosom we see many a charming insect busy at its appointed labour. We pick up a fallen leaf, and if nothing is visible on it, there is probably the trace of an insect larva hidden in its tissue, and awaiting there development. The drop of dew upon this leaf will probably contain its animals, visible under the microscope. This same microscope reveals that the blood-rain suddenly appearing on bread, and awakening superstitious terrors, is nothing but a collection of minute animals (Monas prodigiosa); and that the vast tracts of snow which are reddened in a single night, owe their colour to the marvellous rapidity in reproduction of a minute plant (Protococcus nivalis). The very mould which covers our cheese, our bread, our jam, or our ink, and disfigures our damp walls; is nothing but a collection of plants. The many-coloured fire which sparkles on the surface of a summer sea at night, as the vessel ploughs her way, or which drips from the oars in lines of jewelled light, is produced by millions of minute animals.

Nor does the vast procession end here. Our very mother-earth is formed of the débris of life. Plants and animals which have been, build up its solid fabric.[22] We dig downwards, thousands of feet below the surface, and discover with surprise the skeletons of strange, uncouth animals, which roamed the fens and struggled through the woods before man was. Our surprise is heightened when we learn that the very quarry itself is mainly composed of the skeletons of microscopic animals; the flints which grate beneath our carriage wheels are but the remains of countless skeletons. The Apennines and Cordilleras, the chalk cliffs so dear to homeward-nearing eyes—these are the pyramids of bygone generations of atomies. Ages ago, these tiny architects secreted the tiny shells, which were their palaces; from the ruins of these palaces we build our Parthenons, our St. Peters, and our Louvres. So revolves the luminous orb of Life! Generations follow generations; and the Present becomes the matrix of the Future, as the Past was of the Present: the Life of one epoch forming the prelude to a higher Life.

When we have thus ranged air, earth, and water, finding everywhere a prodigality of living forms, visible and invisible, it might seem as if the survey were complete. And yet it is not so. Life cradles within Life. The bodies of animals are little worlds, having their own animals and plants. A celebrated Frenchman has published a thick octavo volume devoted to the classification and description of “The Plants which grow on Men and Animals;”[23] and many Germans have described the immense variety of animals which grow on and in men and animals; so that science can now boast of a parasitic Flora and Fauna. In the fluids and tissues, in the eye, in the liver, in the stomach, in the brain, in the muscles, parasites are found; and these parasites have often their parasites living in them!

We have thus taken a bird’s-eye view of the field in which we may labour. It is truly inexhaustible. We may begin where we please, we shall never come to an end; our curiosity will never slacken.

As a beginning, get a microscope. If you cannot borrow, boldly buy one. Few purchases will yield you so much pleasure; and while you are about it, do, if possible, get a good one. Spend as little money as you can on accessory apparatus and expensive fittings, but get a good stand and good glasses. Having got your instrument, bear in mind these two important trifles—work by daylight, seldom or never by lamplight; and keep the unoccupied eye open. With these precautions you may work daily for hours without serious fatigue to the eye.

Now where shall we begin? Anywhere will do. This dead frog, for example, that has already been made the subject of experiments, and is now awaiting the removal of its spinal cord, will serve us as a text from which profitable lessons may be drawn. We snip out a portion of its digestive tube, which from its emptiness seems to promise little; but a drop of the liquid we find in it is placed on a glass slide, covered with a small piece of very thin glass, and brought under the microscope. Now look. There are several things which might occupy your attention; but disregard them now to watch that animalcule which you observe swimming about. What is it? It is one of the largest of the Infusoria, and is named Opalina. When I call this an Infusorium I am using the language of text-books; but there seems to be a growing belief among zoologists that the Opalina is not an Infusorium, but the infantile condition of some worm (Distoma?). However, it will not grow into a mature worm as long as it inhabits the frog; it waits till some pike, or bird, has devoured the frog, and then, in the stomach of its new captor, it will develop into its mature form: then, and not till then. This surprises you? And well it may; but thereby hangs a tale, which to unfold—for the present, however, it must be postponed, because the Opalina itself needs all our notice.

Observe how transparent it is, and with what easy, undulating grace it swims about; yet this swimmer has no arms, no legs, no tail, no backbone to serve as a fulcrum to moving muscles: nay, it has no muscles to move with. ’Tis a creature of the most absolute abnegations: sans eyes, sans teeth, sans everything;—no, not sans everything, for as we look attentively we see certain currents produced in the liquid, and on applying a higher magnifying power we detect how these currents are produced. All over the surface of the Opalina there are delicate hairs, in incessant vibration: these are the cilia.[24] They lash the water, and the animal is propelled by their strokes, as a galley by its hundred oars. This is your first sight of that ciliary action of which you have so often read, and which you will henceforth find performing some important service in almost every animal you examine. Sometimes the cilia act as instruments of locomotion; sometimes as instruments of respiration, by continually renewing the current of water; sometimes as the means of drawing in food—for which purpose they surround the mouth, and by their incessant action produce a small whirlpool into which the food is sucked. An example of this is seen in the Vorticella (Fig. 2).

Having studied the action of these cilia in microscopic animals, you will be prepared to understand their office in your own organism. The lining membrane of your air-passages is covered with cilia; which may be observed by following the directions of Professor Sharpey, to whom science is indebted for a very exhaustive description of these organs. “To see them in motion, a portion of the ciliated mucous membrane may be taken from a recently-killed quadruped. The piece of membrane is to be folded with its free, or ciliated, surface outwards, placed on a slip of glass, with a little water or serum of blood, and covered with thin glass or mica. When it is now viewed with a power of 200 diameters, or upwards, a very obvious agitation will be perceived on the edge of the fold, and this appearance is caused by the moving cilia with which the surface of the membrane is covered. Being set close together, and moving simultaneously or in quick succession, the cilia, when in brisk action, give rise to the appearance of a bright transparent fringe along the fold of the membrane, agitated by such a rapid and incessant motion that the single threads which compose it cannot be perceived. The motion here meant is that of the cilia themselves; but they also set in motion the adjoining fluid, driving it along the ciliated surface, as is indicated by the agitation of any little particles that may accidentally float in it. The fact of the conveyance of fluids and other matters along the ciliated surface, as well as the direction in which they are impelled, may also be made manifest by immersing the membrane in fluid, and dropping on it some finely-pulverized substance (such as charcoal in fine powder), which will be slowly but steadily carried along in a constant and determinate direction.”[25]

It is an interesting fact, that while the direction in which the cilia propel fluids and particles is generally towards the interior of the organism, it is sometimes reversed; and, instead of beating the particles inwards, the cilia energetically beat them back, if they attempt to enter. Fatal results would ensue if this were not so. Our air-passages would no longer protect the lungs from particles of sand, coal-dust, and filings, flying about the atmosphere; on the contrary, the lashing hairs which cover the surface of these passages would catch up every particle, and drive it onwards into the lungs. Fortunately for us, the direction of the cilia is reversed, and they act as vigilant janitors, driving back all vagrant particles with a stern “No admittance—even on business!” In vain does the whirlwind dash a column of dust in our faces—in vain does the air, darkened with coal-dust, impetuously rush up the nostrils: the air is allowed to pass on, but the dust is inexorably driven back. Were it not so, how could miners, millers, iron-workers, and all the modern Tubal Cains contrive to live in their loaded atmospheres? In a week, their lungs would be choked up.

Perhaps, you will tell me that this is the case: that manufacturers of iron and steel are very subject to consumption; and that there is a peculiar discoloration of the lungs which has often been observed in coal miners, examined after death.

Not being a physician, and not intending to trouble you with medical questions, I must still place before you three considerations, which will show how untenable this notion is. First, although consumption may be frequent among the Sheffield workmen, the cause is not to be sought in their breathing filings, but in the sedentary and unwholesome confinement incidental to their occupation. Miners and coal-heavers are not troubled with consumption. Moreover, if the filings were the cause, all the artisans would suffer, when all breathe the same atmosphere. Secondly, while it is true that discoloured lungs have been observed in some miners, it has not been observed in all, or in many; whereas, it has been observed in men not miners, not exposed to any unusual amount of coal-dust. Thirdly, and most conclusively, experiment has shown that the coal-dust cannot penetrate to the lungs. Claude Bernard, the brilliant experimenter, tied a bladder, containing a quantity of powdered charcoal, to the muzzle of a rabbit. Whenever the animal breathed, the powder within the bladder was seen to be agitated. Except during feeding time, the bladder was kept constantly on, so that the animal breathed only this dusty air. If the powder could have escaped the vigilance of the cilia, and got into the lungs, this was a good occasion. But when the rabbit was killed and opened, many days afterwards, no powder whatever was found in the lungs, or bronchial tubes; several patches were collected about the nostrils and throat; but the cilia had acted as a strainer, keeping all particles from the air-tubes.

The swimming apparatus of the Opalina has led us far away from the little animal, who has been feeding while we have been lecturing. At the mention of feeding, you naturally look for the food that is eaten, the mouth and stomach that eat. But I hinted just now that this ethereal creature dispenses with a stomach, as too gross for its nature; and of course, by a similar refinement, dispenses with a mouth. Indeed, it has no organs whatever, except the cilia just spoken of. The same is true of several of the Infusoria; for you must know that naturalists no longer recognize the complex organization which Ehrenberg fancied he had detected in these microscopic beings. If it pains you to relinquish the piquant notion of a microscopic animalcule having a structure equal in complexity to that of the elephant, there will be ample compensation in the notion which replaces it, the notion of an ascending series of animal organisms, rising from the structureless amœba to the complex frame of a mammal. On a future occasion we shall see that, great as Ehrenberg’s services have been, his interpretations of what he saw have one by one been replaced by truer notions. His immense class of Infusoria has been, and is constantly being, diminished; many of his animals turn out to be plants; many of them embryos of worms; and some of them belong to the same divisions of the animal kingdom as the oyster and the shrimp: that is to say, they range with the Molluscs and Crustaceans. In these, of course, there is a complex organization; but in the Infusoria, as now understood, the organization is extremely simple. No one now believes the clear spaces visible in their substance to be stomachs, as Ehrenberg believed; and the idea of the Polygastrica, or many-stomached Infusoria, is abandoned. No one believes the coloured specs to be eyes; because, not to mention the difficulty of conceiving eyes where there is no nervous system, it has been found that even the spores of some plants have these coloured specs; and they are assuredly not eyes. If, then, we exclude the highly-organized Rotifera, or “Wheel Animalcules,” which are genuine Crustacea, we may say that all Infusoria, whether they be the young of worms or not, are of very simple organization.

And this leads us to consider what biologists mean by an organ: it is a particular portion of the body set apart for the performance of some particular function. The whole process of development is this setting apart for special purposes. The starting-point of Life is a single cell—that is to say, a microscopic sac, filled with liquid and granules, and having within it a nucleus, or smaller sac. Paley has somewhere remarked, that in the early stages, there is no difference discernible between a frog and a philosopher. It is very true; truer than he conceived. In the earliest stage of all, both the Batrachian and the Philosopher are nothing but single cells; although the one cell will develop into an Aristotle or a Newton, and the other will get no higher than the cold, damp, croaking animal which boys will pelt, anatomists dissect, and Frenchmen eat. From the starting-point of a single cell, this is the course taken: the cell divides itself into two, the two become four, the four eight, and so on, till a mass of cells is formed, not unlike the shape of a mulberry. This mulberry-mass then becomes a sac, with double envelopes, or walls: the inner wall, turned towards the yelk, or food, becomes the assimilating surface for the whole; the outer wall, turned towards the surrounding medium, becomes the surface which is to bring frog and philosopher into contact and relation with the external world—the Non-Ego, as the philosopher, in after life, will call it. Here we perceive the first grand “setting apart,” or differentiation, has taken place: the embryo having an assimilating surface, which has little to do with the external world; and a sensitive, contractile surface, which has little to do with the preparation and transport of food. The embryo is no longer a mass of similar cells; it is already become dissimilar, different, as respects its inner and outer envelope. But these envelopes are at present uniform; one part of each is exactly like the rest. Let us, therefore, follow the history of Development, and we shall find that the inner wall gradually becomes unlike itself in various parts; and that certain organs, constituting a very complex apparatus of Digestion, Secretion, and Excretion, are all one by one wrought out of it, by a series of metamorphoses, or differentiations. The inner wall thus passes from a simple assimilating surface to a complex apparatus serving the functions of vegetative life.

Now glance at the outer wall: from it also various organs have gradually been wrought: it has developed into muscles, nerves, bones, organs of sense, and brain: all these from a simple homogeneous membrane!

With this bird’s-eye view of the course of Development, you will be able to appreciate the grand law first clearly enunciated by Goethe and Von Baer, as the law of animal life, namely, that Development is always from the general to the special, from the simple to the complex, from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous; and this by a gradual series of differentiations.[26] Or to put it into the music of our deeply meditative Tennyson:—

You are now familiarized with the words “differentiation” and “development,” so often met with in modern writers; and have gained a distinct idea of what an “organ” is; so that on hearing of an animal without organs, you will at once conclude that in such an animal there has been no setting apart of any portion of the body for special purposes, but that all parts serve all purposes indiscriminately. Here is our Opalina, for example, without mouth, or stomach, or any other organ. It is an assimilating surface in every part; in every part a breathing, sensitive surface. Living on liquid food, it does not need a mouth to seize, or a stomach to digest, such food. The liquid, or gas, passes through the Opalina’s delicate skin, by a process which is called endosmosis; it there serves as food; and the refuse passes out again by a similar process, called exosmosis. This is the way in which many animals and all plants are nourished. The cell at the end of a rootlet, which the plant sends burrowing through the earth, has no mouth to seize, no open pores to admit the liquid that it needs; nevertheless the liquid passes into the cell, through its delicate cell-wall, and passes from this cell to other cells, upwards from the rootlet to the bud. It is in this way, also, that the Opalina feeds: it is all-mouth, no-mouth; all-stomach, no-stomach. Every part of its body performs the functions which in more complex animals are performed by organs specially set apart. It feeds without mouth, breathes without lungs, and moves without muscles.

The Opalina, as I said, is a parasite. It may be found in various animals, and almost always in the frog. You will, perhaps, ask why it should be considered a parasite; why may it not have been swallowed by the frog in a gulp of water? Certainly, nothing would have been easier. But to remove your doubts, I open the skull of this frog, and carefully remove a drop of the liquid found inside, which, on being brought under the microscope, we shall most probably find containing some animalcules, especially those named Monads. These were not swallowed. They live in the cerebro-spinal fluid, as the Opalina lives in the digestive tube. Nay, if we extend our researches, we shall find that various organs have their various parasites. Here, for instance, is a parasitic worm from the frog’s bladder. Place it under the microscope, with a high power, and behold! It is called Polystomum—many-mouthed, or, more properly, many-suckered. You are looking at the under side, and will observe six large suckers with their starlike clasps (e), and the horny instrument (f), with which the animal bores its way. At a there is another sucker, which serves also as a mouth; at b you perceive the rudiment of a gullet, and at d the reproductive organs. But pay attention to the pretty branchings of the digestive tube (c) which ramifies through the body like a blood-vessel.

This arrangement of the digestive tube is found in many animals, and is often mistaken for a system of blood-vessels. In one sense this is correct; for these branching tubes are carriers of nutriment, and the only circulating vessels such animals possess; but the nutriment is chyme, not blood: these simple animals have not arrived at the dignity of blood, which is a higher elaboration of the food, fitted for higher organisms.

Thus may our frog, besides its own marvels, afford us many “authentic tidings of invisible things,” and is itself a little colony of Life. Nature is economic as well as prodigal of space. She fills the illimitable heavens with planetary and starry grandeurs, and the tiny atoms moving over the crust of earth she makes the homes of the infinitely little. Far as the mightiest telescope can reach, it detects worlds in clusters, like pebbles on the shore of Infinitude; deep as the microscope can penetrate, it detects Life within Life, generation within generation; as if the very Universe itself were not vast enough for the energies of Life!

That phrase, generation within generation, was not a careless phrase; it is exact. Take the tiny insect (Aphis) which, with its companions, crowds your rose-tree; open it, in a solution of sugar-water, under your microscope, and you will find in it a young insect nearly formed; open that young insect with care, and you will find in it, also, another young one, less advanced in its development, but perfectly recognizable to the experienced eye; and beside this embryo you will find many eggs, which would in time become insects!

Or take that lazy water-snail (Paludina vivipara), first made known to science by the great Swammerdamm, the incarnation of patience and exactness, and you will find, as he found, forty or fifty young snails, in various stages of development; and you will also find, as he found, some tiny worms, which, if you cut them open, will suffer three or four infusoria to escape from the opening.[27] In your astonishment you will ask, Where is this to end?

The observation recorded by Swammerdamm, like so many others of this noble worker, fell into neglect; but modern investigators have made it the starting-point of a very curious inquiry. The worms he found within the snail are now called Cercaria-sacs, because they contain the Cercariæ, once classed as Infusoria, and which are now known to be the early forms of parasitic worms inhabiting the digestive tube, and other cavities, of higher animals. These Cercariæ have vigorous tails, with which they swim through the water like tadpoles, and like tadpoles, they lose their tails in after life. But how, think you, did these sacs containing Cercariæ get into the water-snails? “By spontaneous generation,” formerly said the upholders of that hypothesis; and those who condemned the hypothesis were forced to admit they had no better explanation. It was a mystery, which they preferred leaving unexplained, rather than fly to spontaneous generation. And they were right. The mystery has at length been cleared up.[28] I will endeavour to bring together the scattered details, and narrate the curious story.

Under the eyelids of geese and ducks may be constantly found a parasitic worm (of the Trematode order), which naturalists have christened Monostomum mutabile—Single-mouth, Changeable. This worm brings forth living young, in the likeness of active Infusoria, which, being covered with cilia, swim about in the water, as we saw the Opalina swim. Here is a portrait of one. (Fig. 4.)

Each of these animalcules develops a sac in its interior. The sac you may notice in the engraving. Having managed to get into the body of the water-snail, the animalcule’s part in the drama is at an end. It dies, and in dying liberates the sac, which is very comfortably housed and fed by the snail. If you examine this sac (Fig. 5), you will observe that it has a mouth and digestive tube, and is, therefore, very far from being, what its name imports, a mere receptacle; it is an independent animal, and lives an independent life. It feeds generously on the juices of the snail, and having fed, thinks generously of the coming generations. It was born inside the animalcule; why should it not in turn give birth to children of its own? To found a dynasty, to scatter progeny over the bounteous earth, is a worthy ambition. The mysterious agency of Reproduction begins in this sac-animal; and in a short while a brood of Cercariæ move within it. The sac bursts, and the brood escapes. But how is this? The children are by no means the “very image” of their parent. They are not sacs, nor in the least resembling sacs, as you see. (Fig. 6.)

They have tails, and suckers, and sharp boring instruments, with other organs which their parent was without. To look at them you would as soon suspect a shrimp to be the progeny of an oyster, as these to be the progeny of the sac-animal. And what makes the paradox more paradoxical is, that not only are the Cercariæ unlike their parent, but their parent was equally unlike its parent the embryo of Monostomum (compare fig. 4). However, if we pursue this family history, we shall find the genealogy rights itself at last, and that this Cercaria will develop in the body of some bird into a Monostomum mutabile like its ancestor. Thus the worm produces an animalcule, which produces a sac-animal, which produces a Cercaria, which becomes a worm exactly resembling its great-grandfather.

One peculiarity in this history is that while the Monostomum produces its young in the usual way, the two intermediate forms are produced by a process of budding, analogous to that observed in plants. Plants, as you know, are reproduced in two ways, from the seed, and from the bud. For seed-reproduction, peculiar organs are necessary; for bud-reproduction, there is no such differentiation needed: it is simply an out-growth. The same is true of many animals: they also bud like plants, and produce seeds (eggs) like plants. I have elsewhere argued that the two processes are essentially identical; and that both are but special forms of growth.[29] Not, however, to discuss so abstruse a question here, let us merely note that the Monostomum, into which the Cercaria will develop, produces eggs, from which young will issue; the second generation is not produced from eggs, but by internal budding; the third generation is likewise budded internally; but it, on acquiring maturity, will produce eggs. For this maturity, it is indispensable that the Cercaria should be swallowed by some bird or animal; only in the digestive tube can it acquire its egg-producing condition. How is it to get there? The ways are many; let us witness one:—

In this watchglass of water we have several Cercariæ swimming about. To them we add three or four of those darting, twittering insects which you have seen in every vase of pond-water, and have learned to be the larvæ, or early forms, of the Ephemeron. The Cercariæ cease flapping the water with their impatient tails, and commence a severe scrutiny of the strangers. When Odry, in the riotous farce, Les Saltimbanques, finds a portmanteau, he exclaims, “Une malle! ce doit être à moi!” (“Surely this must belong to me!”) This seems to be the theory of property adopted by the Cercaria: “An insect! surely this belongs to me!” Accordingly every one begins creeping over the bodies of the Ephemera, giving an interrogatory poke with the spine, which will pierce the first soft place it can detect. Between the segments of the insect’s armour a soft and pierceable spot is found; and now, lads, to work! Onwards they bore, never relaxing in their efforts till a hole is made large enough for them to slip in by elongating their bodies. Once in, they dismiss their tails as useless appendages; and begin what is called the process of encysting—that is, of rolling themselves up into a ball, and secreting a mucus from their surface, which hardens round them like a shell. Thus they remain snugly ensconced in the body of the insect, which in time develops into a fly, hovers over the pond, and is swallowed by some bird. The fly is digested, and the liberated Cercaria finds itself in comfortable quarters, its shell is broken, and its progress to maturity is rapid.

Von Siebold’s description of another form of emigration he has observed in parasites will be read with interest. “For a long time,” he says, “the origin of the threadworm, known as Filaria insectorum, that lives in the cavity of the bodies of adult and larval insects, could not be accounted for. Shut up within the abdominal cavity of caterpillars, grasshoppers, beetles, and other insects, these parasites were supposed to originate by spontaneous generation, under the influence of wet weather or from decayed food. Helminthologists (students of parasitic worms) were obliged to content themselves with this explanation, since they were unable to find a better. Those who dissected these threadworms and submitted them to a careful inspection, could not deny the probability, since it was clear that they contained no trace of sexual organs. But on directing my attention to these entozoa, I became aware of the fact that they were not true Filariæ at all, but belonged to a peculiar family of threadworms, embracing the genera of Gordius and Mermis. Furthermore, I convinced myself that these parasites wander away when full-grown, boring their way from within through any soft place in the body of their host, and creeping out through the opening. These parasites do not emigrate because they are uneasy, or because the caterpillar is sickly; but from that same internal necessity which constrains the horsefly to leave the stomach of the horse where he has been reared, or which moves the gadfly to work its way out through the skin of the oxen. The larvæ of both these insects creep forth in order to become chrysalises, and thence to proceed to their higher and perfect condition. I have demonstrated that the perfect, full-grown, but sexless threadworms of insects are in like manner moved by their desire to wander out of their previous homes, in order to enter upon a new period of their lives, which ends in the development of their sex. As they leave the bodies of their hosts they fall to the ground, and crawl away into the deeper and moister parts of the soil. Threadworms found in the damp earth, in digging up gardens and cutting ditches, have often been brought to me, which presented no external distinctions from the threadworms of insects. This suggested to me that the wandering threadworms of insects might instinctively bury themselves in damp ground, and I therefore instituted a series of experiments by placing the newly-emigrated worms in flower-pots filled with damp earth. To my delight I soon perceived that they began to bore with their heads into the earth, and by degrees drew themselves entirely in. For many months I kept the earth in the flower-pots moderately moist, and on examining the worms from time to time I found they had gradually attained their sex-development, and eggs were deposited in hundreds. Towards the conclusion of winter I could succeed in detecting the commencing development of the embryos in these eggs. By the end of spring they were fully formed, and many of them having left their shells were to be seen creeping about the earth. I now conjectured that these young worms would be impelled by their instincts to pursue a parasitic existence, and to seek out an animal to inhabit and to grow to maturity in; and it seemed not improbable that the brood I had reared would, like their parents, thrive best in the caterpillar. In order, therefore, to induce my young brood to immigrate, I procured a number of very small caterpillars which the first spring sunshine had just called into life. For the purpose of my experiment I filled a watch-glass with damp earth, taking it from amongst the flower-pots where the threadworms had wintered. Upon this I placed several of the young caterpillars.” The result was as he expected; the caterpillars were soon bored into by the worms, and served them at once as food and home.[30]

Frogs and parasites, worms and infusoria—are these worth the attention of a serious man? They have a less imposing appearance than planets and asteroids, I admit, but they are nearer to us, and admit of being more intimately known; and because they are thus accessible, they become more important to us. The life that stirs within us is also the life within them. It is for this reason, as I said at the outset, that although man’s noblest study must always be man, there are other studies less noble, yet not therefore ignoble, which must be pursued, even if only with a view to the perfection of the noblest. Many men, and those not always the ignorant, whose scorn of what they do not understand is always ready, despise the labours which do not obviously and directly tend to moral or political advancement. Others there are, who, fascinated by the grandeur of Astronomy and Geology, or by the immediate practical results of Physics and Chemistry, disregard all microscopic research as little better than dilettante curiosity. But I cannot think any serious study is without its serious value to the human race; and I know that the great problem of Life can never be solved while we are in ignorance of its simpler forms. Nor can anything be more unwise than the attempt to limit the sphere of human inquiry, especially by applying the test of immediate utility. All truths are related; and however remote from our daily needs some particular truth may seem, the time will surely come when its value will be felt. To the majority of our countrymen during the Revolution, when the conduct of James seemed of incalculable importance, there would have seemed something ludicrously absurd in the assertion that the newly-discovered differential calculus was infinitely more important to England and to Europe than the fate of all the dynasties; and few things could have seemed more remote from any useful end than this product of mathematical genius; yet it is now clear to every one that the conduct of James was supremely insignificant in comparison with this discovery. I do not say that men were unwise to throw themselves body and soul into the Revolution; I only say they would have been unwise to condemn the researches of mathematicians.

Let all who have a longing to study Nature in any of her manifold aspects, do so without regard to the sneers or objections of men whose tastes and faculties are directed elsewhere. From the illumination of many minds on many points, Truth must finally emerge. Man is, in Bacon’s noble phrase, the minister and interpreter of Nature; let him be careful lest he suffer this ministry to sink into a priesthood, and this interpretation to degenerate into an immovable dogma. The suggestions of apathy, and the prejudices of ignorance, have at all times inspired the wish to close the temple against new comers. Let us be vigilant against such suggestions, and keep the door of the temple ever open.

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TO THE AUTHOR OF “VANITY FAIR.”

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I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

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The French nation has indisputably the most warlike propensities of any in the world. Other countries make warlike preparations in self-defence, for the maintenance of their own rights and possessions, and to prevent any other power, or combination of powers, obtaining a position menacing to their safety, or injurious to their liberties. Their governments, when there are valid grounds for alarm, instil these apprehensions into the minds of the people, who are soon roused to meet the threatened danger. But the unremitting pursuit of the French nation is military glory: no government of that country can exist without ministering to it. France is now armed to the teeth, and ready to do battle for any cause—even “for an idea.”

England is the nation which, perhaps sooner than any other, may be called upon to check her in the indulgence of this propensity; and this country also offers more points against which aggressive operations can be carried out. Hence it is natural that the preparations of France should be made chiefly with reference to a contest with Great Britain; and these preparations have now arrived at such formidable proportions that it would be infatuation in us to neglect the means of resistance.

The strongest evidence in support of this hypothesis is to be found in the fact that the most extraordinary preparations which have been gradually but rapidly made by the French Government, at a vast expense—namely, its naval and coast armaments—can be directed against no other power but England. It does not necessarily follow that any aggressive measures are positively contemplated; but it is not the less essential for us to maintain a corresponding force, available not only against invasion, should it be attempted, but strong enough to protect our commerce by securing the freedom of the seas, and thus preventing this country from being reduced to a subordinate power.

British statesmen know and declare, and the nation feels, that it is essential to the maintenance of our possessions, our commerce, and our influence, that we should have a preponderating naval force. Other governments may demur to this, and may even be disposed to dispute the point, as France appears to be now preparing to do. It then becomes a question of national power and resources. This is an unfortunate alternative, but it is one which will not admit of compromise or arbitration: we consider an absolute superiority on the seas essential to the safety of our shores, the prosperity of our commerce, and the security of our colonies; they manifest a determination to contest our maritime supremacy, and to create a force which shall give them even a preponderating influence.

Let us put the case in what may be deemed the legitimate view, repudiating altogether any feeling of national animosity or prejudice. Whatever may be the result of the impending struggle for naval superiority—which does not altogether depend upon numerical force, but may be greatly influenced by the proficiency of either side in employing the newly-invented implements and modes of warfare—it must be conceded that we cannot expect our superiority will be so absolute as to enable us to trust entirely to our “wooden walls,” or to defensive armaments afloat: we must have an ample array of land forces to protect our homes, if menaced by the vast armies of France, which are constantly maintained in a state of full equipment and readiness.

Large armaments maintained during times of peace are repugnant to the feelings and good sense of the English nation; and yet if other nations, less strongly animated by industrial impulses and the principles of political economy, will accumulate immense powers of aggression, we must, in self-defence, maintain efficient means of resisting them. Patriotic feeling and high spirit in the population, even though aided by abundance of arms and ammunition, will not now, as in olden times, suffice. Soldiership is become a scientific profession; and an apprenticeship to the art of war, with skill and experience in every branch of it, are absolutely necessary to oppose with success a well-trained and disciplined force.

Our difficulties in the way of self-preservation are materially increased by the nature of our institutions and our feelings of personal independence. All other great nations in Europe have a power of compulsory enlistment; we have not: if we had, our standing forces for army and navy might be more moderate,—if we only retained efficacious means of rapid organization and equipment. According to our system, however, it is so long before we can procure the necessary number of men for the war establishment, that our only safety must consist in a much greater amount of permanent forces. In short, our purse must pay for our pride.

The volunteer system, however, tends, in some degree, to remedy this disadvantage, and will become more and more valuable in proportion as it shall conform itself gradually to such arrangements as will make our volunteers efficient for acting with our regular forces.

The first and prevalent idea from which the volunteer system sprang was of a levée en masse; that every man animated by British pluck and spirit (and they would number hundreds of thousands) should be well practised in the use of the rifle, and, in case of invasion, should turn out to oppose the enemy, to line the hedges, hang upon the flank and rear of the invading force, and cut it to pieces.

That our volunteers, who have nobly come forward spontaneously, without any prompting from government, would be ready to devote their lives, as they are devoting their time and energies, to the defence of their country against invasion, no one who appreciates the English character will doubt; but that such a heterogeneous body of men, if opposed to a highly-trained and disciplined force of veteran soldiers, would be able to repel the attack of an army, is now generally admitted to be a fallacy; and it would be doing injustice to the intelligence and good sense of Englishmen to blink the truth, which must be obvious to every soldier who has had experience of actual warfare.

Bodies of civilians, however courageous and well drilled, would be ill calculated to bear the hardships and fatigues of a soldier’s life; nor could they be relied upon, even as a matter of numbers: a rainy night or two in the open fields, and occasional short supplies of food, would thin their ranks prodigiously. It cannot be supposed that men of any class or nation, however brave, suddenly leaving comfortable homes and in-door pursuits, could endure that exposure and privation which is required of soldiers—men selected for their hardy constitutions and well-knit frames, and trained to implicit obedience, and habituated to act together. Composed of men of different descriptions and habits, without military discipline and organization, they would be wanting in cohesion and unity of action; or if each man or small party acted on individual impulse, their efforts would be unavailing to arrest the progress of an army advancing in solid masses, like some vast and complex machine animated by life and motion. Panics would be rife amongst them, and but few of the bravest even would stand when they heard the action gaining on their flanks and rear. Moreover, no general would know how to deal with numbers of them under his command, for fear of his dispositions being deranged by their proceedings; nor could any commissariat or other department be prepared to provide for so uncertain and fluctuating a body.

A confidence in the efficiency of an armed population to resist the invasion of their country by regular armies has been created by reference to history; and the examples of the United States, of the Tyrol, of Spain, and others, have been triumphantly quoted; but an investigation into the circumstances of each case will show how greatly they all differ from such circumstances as would attend an attack upon England. In the cases cited, either the country was wild and mountainous, without communications and resources, the invading army small, or the contest greatly prolonged: rarely, if ever, has the invader been thoroughly checked in his first progress; but when forced to break into detachments and to act in small bodies, he has, by a spirited and energetic population, been harassed beyond his strength, and thus eventually forced to abandon the attempt.

It being evident, then, that a mere rising in mass of the population would be unavailing, and even mischievous, leading to a lamentable waste of life, and encouraging the invaders in proportion as the defenders were discomfited, we have now to consider the best means of utilizing the present volunteer movement, which assumes for its basis some degree of organization and training.

Government prudently abstained from any interference with the movement, or from involving itself in any undertaking to organize the volunteers; for that would have led, not only to great and indefinite expenses, but to the abstracting of available resources from the established forces of the country, and also to other inconveniences, without, as yet, any reliable and adequate advantages in prospect. The movement being thus left to its own impulses, a large number of gentlemen, and others in sufficiently easy circumstances, determined to enrol themselves, in different localities, into self-supporting corps of riflemen. Their determination was most spirited and praiseworthy, and government, without pledging itself to any fixed or great amount of support, now affords, in many ways, aid and direction to the movement, without too minute an interference in its essentially voluntary arrangements.

Thus we have already many thousands of stout hearts, constituting an impromptu armed force, at little cost to government, advancing in organization and exercises, having arms and accoutrements, and above all, making preparation for thoroughly practising with the rifle—their strongest desire being to become first-rate shots. Here is a mass of most superb material; but we would earnestly impress upon the volunteers, and upon the country, not to rely too much upon stout hearts and good shots: much else is needful. It is quite a mistake to suppose that mere perfection in firing at a mark will make a good rifleman for the field. Volunteers, to be efficient in action, must form a component part of an army. Every part of an army in the field must be well in hand of the generals in command—light infantry and riflemen must be equal to all movements, in compact as well as dispersed order, and in the several combinations of the two. By this alone will they be really formidable, and by this alone will they acquire a confidence and steadiness which mere innate courage can never give.

In order to act as riflemen and light infantry conjointly with regular troops, volunteers will require the highest possible training as soldiers. Ordinary infantry are put together and kept together, and—unlike those who must act more independently and with greater skill—are always under the eye and hand of the officer who directs the movement. In the confusion of action, and amidst inequalities of ground and varying circumstances, light troops are very much at a loss, until, by practice, they acquire a steadiness which is the result of a thorough knowledge of the business and of active exercise in it. By the term “acting as light infantry and riflemen” is not meant a system of irregular or guerilla warfare, for which it may be readily conceived that a volunteer force of citizens is entirely unfit.

It is to be hoped that our volunteers will not listen to their flatterers who would persuade them that they will make efficient irregulars. No one who considers the composition of these bodies, and the habits and pursuits of the classes from which they spring, can seriously suppose that they would make anything of the kind. Neither the nature of this country, nor the occupations of its inhabitants, are favourable for an irregular system of warfare; nor would the rapid field operations consequent upon an invasion afford much opportunity for bringing irregular forces into play, even if we possessed the best in the world.

In opposition to these views, it will be said that the universal employment of the rifle has effected a revolution in warfare, and that our riflemen, sheltered at a distance behind hedges and trees, would annihilate the enemy’s artillery and paralyze his operations. To this it may be answered that the enemy will employ riflemen for the same purpose, who will cover his artillery and produce an equal effect upon our own; that new systems of warfare are met with new systems of tactics, and that the advantage is always left with the highest-trained troops. In whatever order numbers of men may be brought into action, success will always attend that party which, cæteris paribus, brings the greatest number to bear upon a given point; and this can be effected only by the organization and discipline of regular troops.

Let us hope, then, that the volunteers will earnestly practise those more complicated exercises which render light infantry the highest-trained body in an army. For this purpose they should, after being pretty well grounded in their business, give themselves up for a few weeks’ consecutive service at one of the great camps; this would give them a much better insight into the nature of the service, by which men of their intelligence would greatly profit. It is probable that many individuals in each corps would not be able to attend for such a long period; still, if there were a large party present, a tone of information on the real duties of a campaign would be instilled into the body as a whole, which would be most serviceable.

Another advantage which would attend this occasional service of the volunteers at the camps would consist in their gradually habituating themselves to long marches, and to carrying a knapsack; both of which are matters of deep importance for rendering efficient service in the field: for, as Marshal Saxe truly remarks, the success of an army depends more upon the judicious use made of the legs than of the arms of the soldiers.

Apprehensions have been entertained that our volunteers, composed, as they will be, of men accustomed to the comforts and conveniences of life, would, however animated by daring for fight, be disgusted not merely with the hardships, but (as compared with their usual habits) the indignities of a common soldier’s life, such as the hard fare, the necessary but menial occupations of cooking, the care and cleaning of their clothes and arms, and the discomfort of being huddled together in masses in tents, or houses, if they have the good fortune to obtain either. But they will, it is to be hoped, have well considered that such disagreeables are inevitable, and have made up their minds to bear with what will be, probably, the hardest task for them; considering, also, that it would hardly be for any long duration. They will recollect that on many parts of the Continent, young men of the easiest circumstances, and of rank and station in society, serve an apprenticeship in the regular army as privates, and submit to many of the discomforts of a private soldier’s life, even without the excitement of a state of warfare. There is more danger of the volunteers failing through want of physical hardihood to endure the fatigue of long marches, exposure to the weather, and the casualties of service in the field; and, therefore, preparatory service in a camp would be needful, not only to make them good soldiers, but to test their powers of endurance: for it should be borne in mind that a robust frame and strong constitution are essential to the efficiency of the soldier; and wanting these physical requisites, the best shot would soon become incapacitated, and consequently an incumbrance to the service.

In some districts, the subscriptions raised for the general expenses of the volunteer corps are allowed to extend to aid the equipment of men of insufficient means to provide for themselves. This will have a most beneficial effect; for such men will mostly be of a hardy class and accustomed to muscular activity or out-door occupations; they will be selected because they possess the proper qualifications; and many of them subsequently, with all their military acquirements, may join the established army. In proportion as this system shall be extended, will the advantages resulting from the volunteer system be increased.

Another very beneficial effect might be produced—and will probably arise out of the spirit of the rifle corps—in the establishment of rifle clubs for the practice of rifle-shooting as a recreation, with other out-door sports and games; more especially if these can be encouraged, so as to become general among that class of young men from which recruits are obtained for the army. Whatever may have been said against too much faith being placed in good marksmen, as the only essential attribute for our defenders, most indisputably that army which, equally well regulated in other points, shall be much superior generally in the art of rifle-shooting, will have an enormous advantage over its opponent; and even in a greater degree than is usually supposed.

There is one class of volunteers, the formation of which will be attended with unexceptionable advantages; and that is localized bodies on the coast for service near their own homes. These may be either artillery or infantry, or better still, both combined: that is, infantry accustomed to exercise in the service of guns in battery. They will be always at their homes, and at their habitual occupations, till the period of action shall arrive; and a very few hours of occasional evening exercise will be sufficient, particularly during peace time, to afford a basis of organization for bodies which may be then rapidly made very efficient during war. As their service will be chiefly in batteries, or in fortified posts—or if in the open field, only in greatly superior numbers, and within confined limits, to oppose desultory landings—they will not need the field equipment, nor that refined knowledge and practice so necessary in every part of an army in a campaign. Their dress may be of a plain description, such as an artisan’s or gamekeeper’s jacket, and a foraging cap, which, though of some uniform pattern, may be suitable for ordinary wear. By such means, our coasts may be powerfully protected from any but very formidable efforts against them, at the smallest expense and waste of resources; and at the same time, these bodies will supply the place of regular troops, for which they will form an efficient substitute.

In advocating the expediency of rendering the volunteer system attractive among the labouring classes, as, generally speaking, the most robust and hardy portion of the population, we must not be considered as implying any doubt of their thorough good feeling in the cause; it is absolutely necessary to stimulate, by some substantial recompence or boon, the exertions of those who are living, as it were, from hand to mouth, and on the smallest means. The inducement may be very moderate; still it should be such as to make the service in some degree popular and advantageous, and cause men who may be rejected or discharged to feel it as a punishment or misfortune.

Whatever may be said in the way of general considerations affecting the volunteer system, will admit of exceptions. Thus many of the difficulties in the way of the efficiency of volunteer corps for service in the field will be greatly lessened in the case of those which may be chiefly composed of young men of active habits, and not yet settled in life: such as university corps, who would, without doubt, display a degree of hardihood, spirit, and intelligence not to be surpassed by any troops. And so with regard to the local bodies. Such corps as the dockyard volunteers, at all those great establishments, public and private, should be replaced on an improved system;—a system which should avoid expense and encroachment on a valuable part of their time, which were the failings of their original organization, and occasioned their being broken up.

The noble spirit which originated the volunteer movement is one of which the nation may justly feel proud; it exhibits and fosters a patriotic and military spirit in the country, which will render us more fit than any other people to cope with a powerful enemy. The moral effect of this national movement will influence other countries; it will dissipate the erroneous idea that the English are only a trading, and not a warlike people, and make them more cautious of attacking us.

In actual service, the volunteers will be valuable behind works; thus releasing a corresponding number of the regular troops from garrison service: but it cannot be too strongly impressed upon them, that unless they will submit to the necessary training as soldiers, and are complete in organization as infantry, no general in the world will have any confidence in them as a field force. The occasional embodiment of our volunteers at some of the great camps, as before recommended, would appear the most available means of training them for general service. It would also have another good effect, by demonstrating to many who are now carried away by their enthusiasm, how far they may be really calculated or prepared for the necessary trials and sacrifices incidental upon taking the field in the emergency. It will then be perceived by many that their age, want of physical stamina, or inability to dispense with habitual comforts which may be absolutely necessary to them, would render them totally unequal to the task they would willingly undertake. It would be far better that these should be weeded from the field corps of volunteers, and not remain to give a false appearance of their strength for actual service.

Lastly, there may be some who, on reflection, must be aware that certain family ties, or private concerns, may imperatively forbid their joining the service at the last moment, and it would be far better that they should withdraw betimes from the engagement. For it should be borne in mind that these bodies are volunteers, in the strictest sense of the term; their presence or continuance in the field cannot be constrained. The effort to bear all the trials and hardships of a campaign requires a patience and endurance which will yield, even where there is thorough ardour in the cause, and great personal courage, unless supported by physical strength. The Volunteer Corps is a service in which the country must trust entirely to the honour of the individuals composing it; and certainly, those who shall stand the test will be peculiarly entitled to the gratitude of the nation.

But while deprecating the employment in the field of any volunteers who are not hardy and trained soldiers, or who have households to protect and business to attend to, we must not be supposed to recommend the withdrawal from the ranks of all who are not available for actual service with regular troops: far from it. There is not a man who has been drilled as a volunteer but may be serviceable to the community in a variety of ways at home, by supplying the place of regular soldiers in mounting guard as sentries, acting as “orderlies” for transmitting orders between the government officers and head-quarters, as assistants in the hospital service, as extra clerks in the commissariat and other departments, and in serving as a military police. Indeed good service might be rendered to the country by gentlemen of character, ability, and intelligence, sufficiently au fait to the business of a soldier to execute with military precision and promptitude such duties as would not involve any greater amount of fatigue and exposure than a man of average health and strength could sustain without injury: they would form a bodyguard, composed of fathers of families and the younger and less robust of the volunteers, for the protection of their homes and maintaining the peace of cities and towns; and competent to fill offices of trust in connection with the military and civil authorities. The country would thus derive the full benefit of the services of every volunteer in the kingdom; and no man who had entered the ranks but would have the satisfaction of knowing that he was serving his Queen and Country in the most effective way.

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There are fashions in books, as there are in the cut of clothes, or the building of houses; and if from the great library of our race we take down the representative volumes, we shall find that successive ages differ almost as much as the several countries of the world. The one half of the century scarcely knows what the other half has done, save through its lasting works, among which books alone possess the gift of speech. Yet the guild of literature properly knows no bounds of space or time. If the tricks of craft like those of society belong to the passing day, literature has been, beyond all other human influences, enduring and continuous in the main current of its spirit; and each period has been the stronger if it has recognized so much of its possessions as was inherited from its predecessor, including the power to conquer more. A powerful sense of brotherhood clings to all the veritable members of the fraternity, whose highest diploma is posthumous; and we cannot see the lingering representatives of a past day depart, without feeling that one of the great family has gone. A writer whom we have lost in the year just closed peculiarly associated past and present, by his own hopeful work for “progress” towards the future, and his affectionate lingering with the past, and above all by the strong personal feeling which he brought to his work. Leigh Hunt belonged essentially to the earlier portion of the nineteenth century; but, born in the year when Samuel Johnson died, living among the old poets, and labouring to draw forth the spirit which the first half has breathed into the latter half of the century, he may be said to have been one of those true servitors of the library who unite all ages with the one we live in. The representative man of a school gone by, in his history we read the introduction to our own.

Isaac, the father of Leigh Hunt, was the descendant of one of the oldest settlers in luxurious Barbadoes. He was sent to develop better fortunes by studying at college in Philadelphia, where he unsettled in life; for, having obtained some repute as an advocate, and married the daughter of the stern merchant, Stephen Shewell, against her father’s pleasure, Isaac contumaciously opposed the sovereign people by espousing the side of royalty, and fled with broken fortunes to England. Here he found not much royal gratitude, much popularity as a preacher in holy orders—taken as a refuge from want,—but no preferment. With tutorships, and help from relatives, he managed to rub on; he sent Leigh, the first of his sons born in England, to the school of Christ Hospital, and he lived long enough to see him an established writer. Isaac was a man rather under than above the middle stature, fair in complexion, smoothly handsome, so engaging in address as to be readily and undeservedly suspected of insincerity, and in most things utterly unlike his son. His wife, Mary Shewell, a tall, slender woman, with Quaker breeding, a dark thoughtful complexion, a heart tender beyond the wont of the world, and a conscience tenderer still, contributed more than the father to mould the habits and feelings of the son. School and books did the rest. His earlier days, save during the long semi-monastic confinement of the Blue-coat School, were passed in uncertain alternations between the care-stricken home and the more luxurious houses of wealthier relatives and friends. In his time Christ Hospital was the very nursery for a scholarly scholar. It was divided into the commercial, the nautical, and the grammar schools; in all, the scholars had hard fare, and much church service; and in the grammar school plenty of Greek and Latin. Leigh’s antecedents and school training destined him for the church; a habit of stammering, which disappeared as he grew up, was among the adverse accidents which reserved him for the vocation to which he was born—Literature. But before he left the unsettled roof of his parents, the youth had been to other schools besides Christ Hospital. His father had been a royalist flying from infuriated republicans, and doomed to learn in the metropolitan country the common mistrust of kings. He left America a lawyer, to become a clergyman here; and entered the pulpit a Church of England-man, to become, after the mild example of his wife, a Universalist. Born after his mother had suffered from the terrors of the revolution, and a severe attack of jaundice, Leigh inherited an anxious, speculative temperament; to be the sport of unimaginative brothers, who terrified him by personating the hideous “Mantichora,” about which he had tremblingly read and talked, and of schoolfellows, with their ghostly traditions and rough, summary, practical satire. He had been made acquainted with poverty, yet familiarized to the sight of ease and refined luxury. His father, if “socially” inclined, yet read eloquently and critically; his mother read earnestly, piously, and charitably; reading was the business of his school, reading was his recreation; and at the age of fifteen, he threw off his blue coat, a tall stripling, with West Indian blood, a Quaker conscience, and a fancy excited rather than disciplined by his scholastic studies, to put on the lax costume of the day, and be tried in the dubious ordeal of its laxer customs.

His severest trial arose from the vanities, rather than the vices to which such a youth would be exposed. He had already been sufficiently “in love,”—now with the anonymous sister of a schoolfellow, next with his fair cousin Fanny, then with the enchanting Almeria,—to be shielded from the worst seductions that can beset a youth; and he was early engaged to the lady whom he married in 1809. But the vanities beset him in a shape of unwonted power. The stripling, whose essays the terrible Boyer, of the Blue-coat School, had crumpled up, became the popular young author of published poems, and not much later the stern critic of the News, whose castigations made actors wince and playwrights launch prologues at him. Thenceforward the vicissitudes of his life, save in the inevitable vicissitudes of mortality, were professional rather than personal; though he always threw his personality into his profession. He tried a clerkship under his brother Stephen, an attorney; and a clerkship in the War Office, under the patronage of the dignified Mr. Addington; but finally he left the desk, legal or official, for the desk literary, to devote himself to the Examiner, set up in 1808 with his brother John. He went to prison for two years in 1813, rather than forfeit his consistency as a political writer. It was as a vindicator of liberal principles in politics, sociology (word then unused), and art, that he attracted the friendship of Byron and Shelley; it was to accomplish the literary speculation of the Liberal that he set out for Italy in 1821; it was to study Italy and the Italians, with a view to “improve” that and other “subjects,” that he stopped in Italy till the autumn of 1825. He returned to England to try his fortune with books in prose and verse, in periodicals of his own or others’; and it was in the midst of unrelinquished work that he placidly laid himself down to sleep in August, 1859,—his last words of anxiety being for Italy and her enlarging hopes, his latest breath uttering inquiries and messages of affection. This is essentially a literary life; but it is given to a literature in which there is life,—for Leigh Hunt, although he dwelled and passed his days in the library, was no “book-worm,” divorced from human existence, its natural instincts and affections. On the contrary, he carried into his study a large heart and a strong pulse; to him the books spoke in the voice of his fellow-men, audible from the earliest ages, and he loved to be followed into his retreat by friends from the outer world.

Leigh Hunt certainly was not driven to this little-broken retirement by the want of qualities which are attractive in society, or by the tastes that render society attractive; but under the force of remarkable contradictions in his character, he was often fain to waive what he desired and could easily have—“letting I would not wait upon I may,” with an apparent caprice most exasperating to the bystander. He professed readiness for “whatever is going forward,” seemed eager to meet any approaching pleasure; and then hung back with a coy, reluctant, anxious delay, that forbore its own satisfaction altogether. Probably this apparent contradiction may be traced to his origin and nurture. According to all evidence respecting his immediate progenitors, he was little of a Hunt, save in his gaiety and avowed love of “the pleasurable.” His natural energy, which showed itself in a robust frame, a powerful voice, a great capacity for endurance, and a strong will, seems to have been inherited from Stephen Shewell, the stern, headstrong, and implacable. From the Bickleys, possibly—the gallant Knight Banneret of King William’s Irish wars will pardon the doubt—his mother transmitted her own material tendency to an over-conscientious, reflective, hesitating temperament, which drew back from any action not manifestly and imperatively dictated by duty. The son showed all these contradictory traits even in his aspect and bearing.

He was tall rather than otherwise,—five feet ten inches and a half when measured for the St. James’s Volunteers; though, in common with men whose length is in the body rather than the legs, his height diminished as he advanced in life. He was remarkably straight and upright in his carriage, with a short, firm step, and a cheerful, almost dashing approach,—smiling, breathing, and making his voice heard in little inarticulate ejaculations as he met a friend, in an irrepressible satisfaction at the encounter that not unfrequently conveyed high gratification to the arriver who was thus greeted. He had straight black hair, which he wore parted in the centre; a dark but not pale complexion; features compounded between length and a certain irregularity of outline, characteristic of the American mould; black eyebrows, firmly marking the edge of a brow, over which was a singularly upright, flat, white forehead, and under which beamed a pair of eyes dark, brilliant, reflecting, gay, and kind, with a certain look of observant humour, that suggested an idea of what is called slyness when it is applied to children or girls; for he had not the aspect given to him in one of his portraits, of which he said that “the fellow looked as if he had stolen a tankard.” He had a head massive and tall, and larger than most men’s,—Byron, Shelley, and Keats wore hats which he could not put on; but it was not out of proportion to the figure, its outlines being peculiarly smooth and devoid of “bumps.” His upper lip was long, his mouth large and hard in the flesh; his chin retreating and gentle like a woman’s. His sloping shoulders, not very wide, almost concealed the ample proportions of his chest; though that was of a compass which not every pair of arms could span. He looked like a man cut out for action,—a soldier; but he shrank from physical contest, telling you that his sight was short, and that he was “timid.” We shall understand that mistaken candour better when we have examined his character a little further. Yet he did shrink from using his vigorous faculties, even in many ways. Nature had gifted him with an intense dramatic perception, an exquisite ear for music, and a voice of extraordinary compass, power, flexibility, and beauty. It extended from the C below the line to the F sharp above: there were no “passages” that he could not execute; the quality was sweet, clear, and ringing: he would equally have sung the music of Don Giovanni or Sarastro, of Oroveso or Maometto Secondo. Yet nature had not endowed him with some of the qualities needed for the practical musician,—he had no aptitude for mechanical contrivance, but faint enjoyment of power for its own sake. He dabbled on the pianoforte; delighted to repeat airs pleasing or plaintive; and if he would occasionally fling himself into the audacious revels of Don Giovanni, he preferred to be Lindoro or Don Ottavio; and still more, by the help of his falsetto, to dally with the tender treble of the Countess in Figaro, or Polly in Beggars’ Opera. This waiving of the potential, this preference for the lightsome and tender, ran through all his character,—save when duty bade him draw upon his sterner resources; and then out came the inflexibility of the Shewell and the unyielding determination of the Hunts. But as soon as the occasion passed, the manner passed with it; and the man whose solemn, clear-voiced indignation had made the very floor and walls vibrate was seen tenderly and blandly extenuating the error of his persecutor and gaily confessing to a community of mistake.

While he was yet at school, Hunt was pronounced by one of his schoolfellows a “fool for refining”—that is, one who was a fool in his judgment through a hair-splitting anxiety to be precise. A boy all his life, this leading foible of his boyhood attended him throughout. He has been likened to Hamlet,—only it was a Hamlet who was not a prince, but a hard-working man. The defect was increased in Leigh Hunt, as it evidently was in the prince, by a certain imperfection in understanding, appreciating, or thoroughly mastering the material, tangible, physical part of nature. This, again, is inconsistent with his own account of himself, but it will be confirmed by a close critical scrutiny of his writings. Over-sensitive, he was exquisitely conscious of such physical perceptions as he had. He was passionately fond of music, which he took to as we have seen. He was keenly impressed by painting and by colours,—which he defined with uncertainty, unless they were, what he liked them to be, very intense. He revelled in the aspect of the country,—but needed literary, poetic, or personal association, or habit, to help the appreciation of the landscape. His animation, his striking appearance, his manly voice, its sweetness and flexibility, the exhaustless fancy to which it gave utterance, his almost breathlessly tender manner in saying tender things, his eyes deep, bright, and genial, with a dash of cunning, his delicate yet emphatic homage,—all made him a “dangerous” man among women;—and he shrank back from the danger, the quickest to take alarm; confessing that “to err is human,” as if he had erred in any but the most theoretical or imaginative sense! Remind him of his practical virtue, and, to disprove your too favourable construction, he would give you a sermon on the sins of the fancy, hallowed by quotations from the Bible—of which he was as much master as any clergyman—and illustrated by endless quotations from the poets in all languages, with innumerable biographical anecdotes of the said poets, to prove the fearful peril of the first step; and also to prove that, though men, they were not bad men;—that it is not for us to cast the first stone, and that, probably, if they had been different, their poetry would have suffered, to the grievous loss of the library and mankind.

He inculcated the study of minor pleasures with so much industry, that his writings have caused him to be taken for a minor voluptuary. His special apparatus for the luxury consisted in some old cloak to put about his shoulders when cold—which he allowed to slip off while reading or writing; in a fire—“to toast his feet”—which he let out many times in the day, with as many apologies to the servant for the trouble; and in a bill of fare, which he preposterously restricted for a fancied delicacy of stomach, and a fancied poison in everything agreeable, and which he could scarcely taste for a natural dulness of palate. Unable to perceive the smell of flowers, he habitually strove to imagine it. The Epicurean in theory was something like a Stoic in practice; and he would break off an “article” on the pleasures of feasting to ease his hunger, literally, with a supper of bread; turning round to enjoy by proxy, on report, the daintier food which he had provided for others. Eyeing the meat in another’s plate, he would quote Peter Pindar—

but would still, with the relish of Lazarillo de Tormes, stick to his own “staff of life,” and quaff his water, jovially repeating after Armstrong, “Nought like the simple element dilutes.”

Now, most excellent reader, are you in something of a condition to understand the man’s account of his own failings—his “improvidence” and his “timidity.” He had no grasp of things material; but exaggerating his own defects, he so hesitated at any arithmetical effort, that he could scarcely count. He has been seen unable to find 3s. 6d. in a drawer full of half-crowns and shillings, since he could not see the “sixpence.” Hence his stewardship was all performed by others. He laboured enormously,—making fresh work out of everything he did; for he would not mention anything, however parenthetically, without “verifying” it. Hence it is true that he had scarcely time for stewardship, unless he had neglected his work and wages as a master-workman. He saw nothing until it had presented itself to him in a sort of literary, theoretical aspect, and hence endowed his friends, all round, with fictitious characters founded on fact. One was the thrifty housewife, another the steady man of business, a third the poetic enthusiast—and so on. And he acted on these estimates, until sometimes he found out his mistake, and confessed that he “had been deceived.” The discovery was sometimes as imaginary as the original estimate, and friends, whose sterling qualities he could not overrate, have seen him, for the discovery of his mistake in regard to some fancied grace, avert his eye in cold “disappointment.” He made the same supposititious discoveries and estimates with himself. His mother had the jaundice before he was born; he had unquestionably a tendency to bilious affections; in the Greek poet’s account of Hercules and the Serpents, the more timid, because mortal, child, who is aghast at the horrid visitors sent by the relentless Juno, is called, as Leigh Hunt translated the oft-repeated quotation, “the extremely bilious Iphiclus;” and being bilious, Leigh Hunt set himself down as “timid.” He had probably felt his heart beat at the approach of danger, been startled by a sudden noise, or hesitated “to snuff a candle with his fingers,” which Charles the Fifth said would make any man know fear. Yet he had braved persecution in the refusal to fag at school; was an undaunted though not skilful rider; a swimmer not unacquainted with drowning risks; undismayed, except for others, when passing the roaring torrent at the broad ford,—when braving shipwreck in the British Channel, or the thunder-hurricane in the Mediterranean; he instantly confronted the rustic boors who challenged him on the Thames, or in the Apennines, and stood unmoved to face the sentence of a criminal court, though the sentence was to be the punishment he most dreaded—the prison.

Such was the character of the man who came from school to be the critic, first of the drama, then of literature and politics; and then to be a workman in the schools where he had criticized. He brought to his labours great powers, often left latent, and used only in their superficial action; a defective perception of the tangible part of the subject; an imagination active, but overrating its own share in the business; an impulsive will, checked by an over-scrupulous, over-conscientious habit of “refining;” a nice taste, and an overwhelming sympathy with every form and aspect of human enjoyment, suffering, or aspiration. His public conduct, his devotion to “truth,” whether in politics or art, won him admiration and illustrious friendships. In a society of many severed circles he formed one centre, around which were gathered Lamb, Ollier, Barnes, Mitchell, Shelley, Keats, Byron, Hazlitt, Blanchard, Forster, Carlyle, and many more, departed or still living; some of them centres of circles in which Leigh Hunt was a wanderer, but all of them, in one degree or other, attesting their substantial value for his character. They influenced him, he influenced them, and through them the literature and politics of the century, more largely, perhaps, than any one of them alone. Let us see, then, what it was that he did.

Even in the News of 1805, when he was barely of age, and when he wrote with the dashing confidence of a youth wielding the combined ideas of Sam Johnson and Voltaire, the “damned boy,” as Kemble called him, established a repute for cultivation, consistency, taste, and independence; and he originated a style of contemporary criticism unknown to the newspaper press. In other words, he brought the standards of criticism which had before been confined to the lecture of academies or the library, into the daily literature which aids in shaping men’s judgments as they rise.

We have seen how, under a name borrowed from the Tory party, the Examiner was established, with little premeditation, a literary ambition, and the hope of realizing a modest wage for the work done. It found literature, poetry especially, sunk to the feeblest, tamest, and most artificial of graces,—the reaction upon the long-felt influence left by the debauchery of the Stuarts and the vulgarer coarseness of the early Georges. It found English monarchs and statesmen again forgetting the great lessons of the British constitution, with the press slavishly acquiescing. In 1808, an Irish Major had a “case” against the Horse Guards, of most corrupt and illicit favouritism: the Examiner published the case, and sustained it. In 1809, a change of ministry was announced: the Examiner hailed “the crowd of blessings that might be involved in such a change;” adding, “Of all monarchs, indeed, since the Revolution, the successor of George the Third will have the finest opportunity of becoming nobly popular.” In 1812, on St. Patrick’s day, a loyal band of guests significantly abstained from paying the usual courtesy to the toast of the Prince Regent, and coughed down Mr. Sheridan, who tried to speak up for his royal and forgetful friend. A writer in a morning paper supplied the omitted homage in a poem more ludicrous for its wretched verse than for the fulsome strain in which it called the Prince the “Protector of the Arts,” the “Mæcenas of the Age,” the “Glory of the People,” a “Great Prince,” attended by Pleasure, Honour, Virtue, Truth, and other illustrious vassals. The Examiner showed up this folly by simply turning it into English, and in plain language describing the position and popular estimate of the Prince. For all these various acts the Examiner was prosecuted, with various fortunes; but in the last case it was fined 1,000l., and its editor and publisher, the brothers Leigh and John Hunt, were sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. The Examiner was no extravagant or violent paper; its writing was pretty nearly of the standard that would be required now for style, tone, and sentiment; but what would now be a matter of course in cultivated style, elevated tone, and independent sentiment, was then supposed to be not open to writers unprotected by privilege of Parliament. Not that the paper stood alone. Other writers, both in town and country, vied with it in independence; it excelled chiefly, perhaps, in the literary finish which Leigh Hunt imparted to journalism; but it was the more conspicuous for that finish. Its boldness won it high esteem. Offers came from “distinguished” quarters, on the one side, to bribe its silence for the Royal Horse Guards and its peccadilloes; on the other, to supply the proprietors with subscription, support, and retaliatory evidence. The Examiner equally declined all encroachments on its complete independence, which was carried to a pitch of exclusiveness. This conduct told. The journal was thought dangerous to the régime—it was prosecuted, and its success was only the greater. The Court ceased to be what it had been, and the political system changed: the press of England became generally what the Examiner was.

The Reflector was a quarterly journal, based on the Examiner and its corps. Its more literary portion in its turn laid the basis for the Indicator, in which Leigh Hunt designed, with due deference, to revive the essays of the old Spectator and Tatler. The grand distinction was, that in lieu of mere literary recreation, like the illustrious work of Addison, Steele, and Swift, it more directly proposed to indicate the sources of pleasurable association and æsthetical improvement. In the Reflector, the Indicator, Tatler, and subsequent works of the same class, Leigh Hunt was assisted by Lamb, Barnes [afterwards editor of the Times], Aikin, Mitchell [Aristophanes], Keats, Shelley, Hazlitt, and Egerton Webbe,—the last cut short in a career rendered certain by his accomplishments, his music, his wit, and his extraordinary command of language as an instrument of thought. As in Robin Hood’s band, each man could beat his master at some one art, or perhaps more; but none excelled him in telling short stories, with a simplicity, a pathos, and a force that had their prototype less in the tales of Steele and Addison, than in the romantic poets of Italy. Few essayists have equalled, or approached, Leigh Hunt in the combined versatility, invention, and finish of his miscellaneous prose writings; and few, indeed, have brought such varied sympathies to call forth the sympathies of the reader—and always to good purpose,—in favour of kindness, of reflection, of natural pleasures, of culture, and of using the available resources of life. He used to boast that the Indicator laid the foundation for the “two-penny trash” which assumed a more practical and widely popular form under Charles Knight’s enterprise. It has had a host of imitators, but is still special, and keeps its place in the library.

Of his one novel, Sir Ralph Esher, suffice it to say, that he had desired to make it a sort of historical literary essay,—a species of unconcealed forgery, after the manner of a more cultivated and critical Pepys; and that the bookseller persuaded him to make it a novel:—of his dramatic works,—although he had an ambition to be counted among British dramatists, and had a discriminating dramatic taste,—that he combined, with the imperfect grasp of the tangible, a positive indifference to dramatic literature. The dramatic work which is reputed to be the most interesting of his compositions in this style, the Prince’s Marriage, is still unacted and unpublished.

But in regard to the veritable British Parnassus, he had solid work to do, and he did it. Poetry amongst us had sunk to the lowest grade. Leigh Hunt found the mild Hayley, and the mechanical Darwin, occupying the field, Pope the accredited model, and he revolted against the copybook versification, the complacent subserviency and mean moralities of the muse in possession. He had read earnestly and extensively in the classics, ancient and English; he carried with him to prison the Parnaso Italiano, a fine collection of Italian poetical writers, in fifty-two volumes; and he was deeply imbued with the spirit which he found common to the poetical republic of all ages. He selected the episode of Paolo and Francesca, whom Dante places in the Inferno, and whose history was diligently hunted up to tell in the Story of Rimini. In it Leigh Hunt insisted on breaking the set cadence for which Pope was the professed authority, as he broke through the set morals which had followed in reaction upon the licence of many reigns. He shocked the world with colloquialisms in the heroic measure, and with extenuations of the fault committed by the two lovers against the law matrimonial. The offence, too, was perpetrated by a writer condemned to prison for bearding the constituted authorities. The poem and its fate were characteristic of the man and his position in poetical literature. The work was designed as a picture of Italy, and a tale of the natural affections rebelling against a tyranny more corrupt than the licence which it claimed to check. But when he wrote it, the poet had not been in Italy; and afterwards, with habitual anxiety to be “right,” he corrected many mistakes in the scenery—such as “the smoke goes dancing from the cottage trees,” where there are no such cottages as he imagined, and smoke is no feature in the landscape. He also restored the true historical conclusion, and instead of a gentlemanly duel, comme il faut, made the tale end in the fierce double murder by the husband. In its original shape, the Story of Rimini touched many a heart, and created more sensation for its bolder verse and nature than others which followed it; in its amended form it gained in truth to art and fact, and in force of verse and colouring. Leigh Hunt had not the sustained melody and pulpit morals of the Lake School; but he gave the example and encouragement to writers of still greater force and beauty. He vindicated human right against official wrong, and suffered imprisonment, and denunciation more bitter than that poured on Shelley, whose political vindications burst forth with such a torrent of eloquence and imagination in the Revolt of Islam. Leigh Hunt asserted the beauty of natural passion,—but he did it tenderly and obliquely, himself returning from the slightest taste of passion to “the domesticities,” half begging pardon for his hardihood, and thus by implication confessing his naughtiness; and all the while hinting at the delicate subject of his tale by circumstance, rather than following it to its full inspirations. The greater part of the Story of Rimini is scene-painting, as if it were told by some bystander in the street, or some topographical visitor of the place. In the scene where the lovers so dangerously and fatally fall to reading “Launcelot of the Lake,”—“quel giorno non legemmo più avanti”—the larger portion of the canto is devoted to a description of the garden. Leigh Hunt does not, as Keats did, describe the sickening passion that gave the Lamia so ghastly a sense of her own hated form,—nor does he, as in the Lamia, pursue the couple to the place where Love

If pharisaical critics discovered objectionable “tendencies” in passages—almost in the omitted passages of his writings—they could find no such impetuous and sublime argument as that to which the Revolt of Islam rises in the canto where “the meteor to its far morass returned;” nor such lines as show that a fair authoress, whose book has been “the rage” at Mudie’s, had been among the myriads of Shelley’s readers. But although hesitating himself to plunge into the impetuous torrent of passion, like the fowl mistrustful of its own fitness for so stormy waters, Leigh Hunt was the friend, instigator, and encourager of that rebellion of letters which in the earlier half of our age produced Keats and Shelley, and the poetical literature of the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Others improved upon the example, no doubt, and bore away the “honores.” At a late day, Lord John Russell obtained for Leigh Hunt a royal pension of £200 a year—a most welcome and gratefully acknowledged compensation of time and money torn from him in early years.

Leigh Hunt’s miscellaneous poems extend over a great variety of subjects, from the classic legend of Hero and Leander, to the mediæval fabliau of the Gentle Armour, and the satirical critique of the Feast of the Poets. This last was published early in the author’s maturer career; it is “in his second manner,” and he afterwards revised many of the dicta on contemporary writers which he placed in the mouth of the chairman on that festive occasion, Apollo. But it helped to loosen the trammels of conventionalism in verse. The Gentle Armour, although true to a modern refinement, is also true to the spirit of the days of chivalry; it relates, in straightforward language, how a knight who had refused the bidding of his mistress to defend a falsehood—not her own—is punished by receiving the most feminine of garments as his cognizance at a tournament; and how, wearing that alone, he takes in his own person a bloody and reproving vengeance for the slight, in the end winning both fight and lady. The subject was thought “indelicate” by some who were less refined than the author—some descendants, perchance, of the proverbial Peeping Tom. The Hero and Leander is a flowing and vivid recital of the ancient tale. The three works form good specimens of the spirit as well as execution of Leigh Hunt’s poetical writings. Of some of his smaller pieces it may be said that they had become classic in his lifetime—such as the reverential sonnet “On the Lock of Milton’s Hair” which he possessed; the exquisite parental tenderness of the lines “To T. L. H., in Sickness;” and the grandly Christian exaltation of charity in his Abou-ben-Adhem.

As few men brought their personality more thoroughly into their writings, so few men, out of the bookworm pale aforesaid, were more thoroughly saturated with literature. He saw everything through books, or saw it dimly. Speaking of his return from Italy, he writes:—“I seemed more at home in England, even with Arcadian idealisms, than I had been in the land nearer their birthplace; for it was in England I first found them in books, and with England even my Italian books were more associated than with Italy itself.” And speaking of the Parnaso Italiano, he goes on:—“This book aided Spenser himself in filling my English walks with visions of gods and nymphs,—of enchantresses and magicians; for the reader might be surprised to know to what a literal extent such was the case.” He used to “envy” the “household waggon that one meets with in sequestered lanes” for its wanderings, but was daunted at the bare imagination of “parish objections” and raffish society; and so he ever recurred to “the stationary domesticities.” He failed in practical life, because he was not guided in it by literature. He could only apprehend so much of it as he found in the cyclopædia. On the other hand, he could render all that literature could give. His memory was marvellous; and to try him in history, biography, bibliography, or topography, was to draw forth an oral “article” on the topic in question. Ask him where was the Ouse, and he would tell you of all the rivers so called; what were the books on a given subject, and you had the list; “who was Colonel O’Kelly?” and you had a sketch of the colonel, of the horse “Eclipse,” of Epsom, and of horse-racing in general, as distinguished from the racing of the ancients or the modern riderless races of Italy—where, as in Florence, may still be seen a specimen of the biga sweeping round the meta “fervidis evitata rotis.” His conversation was an exhaustless Curiosities of Literature. The delighted visitor read his host,—but it was from a talking book, with cordial voice naturally pitched to every change of subject, animated gesture, sparkling eyes, and overflowing sympathy. In society Leigh Hunt was ever the perfect gentleman, not in the fashion, but always the scholar and the noble-minded man. But his diffidence was disguised, rather than removed, by his desire to agree with those around him, and to fall in with the humour of the hour. He was better known to his reader, either in his books, or, best of all, in his home, where familiarity tested his unfailing courtesy, daily intercourse brought forth the persevering goodness of his heart and conscience, and poverty did but fetch out the thorough-going generosity that not only “would share,” but did share the last crust.

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(FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNAL OF AN OFFICER OF THE “FOX”)

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The last of the Government expeditions in search of Franklin returned in 1854, without bringing further intelligence than had been previously ascertained, namely, that the missing ships had spent their first winter, 1845-46, at Beechey Island, and had departed thence without leaving a single record to say whence they came or in what direction they intended to explore in the following season.

The war with Russia engrossed the public attention, and the Admiralty determined that nothing more could be done for our missing sailors.

Franklin and his companions were pronounced to be dead, and the search to be closed. But many Arctic officers and private persons thought otherwise. By the extraordinary exertions of the previous expeditions the country to be searched had been reduced to a limited area in which the ships must be, if above water, and through which the crews must have travelled when they left their ships. Every other retreat from the Arctic Seas had been explored, and the Great Fish River alone remained unexamined.

Later in the same year (1854), Dr. Rae, the celebrated traveller for the Hudson Bay Company, who was endeavouring to ascertain the northern extreme of America, brought home intelligence, which he had obtained from the Esquimaux of Boothia, of forty white people having been seen upon the west coast of King William Land in the spring of 1850: that they were travelling southward, and that later in the same year it was supposed they had all died in the estuary of a large river, which Dr. Rae conjectured to be the Great Fish River.

In 1855, the Hudson Bay Company, at the request of the Admiralty, sent an expedition, conducted by Mr. Anderson, to explore the Fish River. Mr. Anderson returned, having ascertained that a portion of the missing crews had been on Montreal Island, in the mouth of that river; but Mr. Anderson, without an interpreter, or the means of going beyond the island, could only gather the most meagre information by signs from the Esquimaux, and by a few relics found upon the land. Where the ships had been left, or what had become of the people, seemed as great a mystery as ever.

It was then that Lady Franklin (who had already sent out three expeditions) urged again that the search should be continued, and that our countrymen should not thus be left to their fate; but although her appeal was backed by the most competent officers, the season of 1856 passed away without endeavours to clear up the mystery; and determining that another year should not be lost in vain entreaties, Lady Franklin once more undertook the responsibilities and the expenses of a final effort to rescue our long-lost sailors from their perhaps living death among the Esquimaux, or to follow up their footsteps in their last journey upon earth, and to give to the world the scientific results of the expedition for which those gallant men had given up their lives.

In the spring of 1857 Lady Franklin commenced preparations for the contemplated expedition. She was supported by some of the most distinguished Arctic officers and scientific men, and the friends of Sir John Franklin, among whom were Sir Roderick Murchison, General Sabine, Captain Collinson, and many others.

To Captain M‘Clintock was offered the command; and he who had served in three previous expeditions, and to whom are principally due the results of the extraordinary journeys over the ice that have been made during the search for Franklin, cheerfully accepted the appointment, as, in his own words, being the post of honour.

The next thing was to seek a suitable vessel, and fortunately the Fox was in the market. Built for a yacht of some 180 tons register, with auxiliary steam-power applied to a lifting screw, the Fox appeared in every way adapted for the service. She was at once purchased, and the necessary alterations and fortifying commenced; and such was the feeling of confidence in Captain M‘Clintock’s sincerity of purpose, his daring and determination, combined with eminent talent, and every qualification for command, that numbers sought the honour of serving with him. The few who were so fortunate as to be selected were soon appointed in their different capacities, and by the exertions of Lady Franklin and Captain M‘Clintock everything that could possibly conduce to the comfort or recreation of the ship’s company was supplied, and the Fox was ready for sea by the end of June.

We intended first to touch at some of the Danish settlements in Greenland, to purchase sledge-dogs; then to proceed to Beechey Island, and there to fill up stores from the depôt left by Sir E. Belcher. We were next to endeavour to sail down Peel Sound (supposed to be a strait), but failing by that channel, to try down Regent’s Inlet, and by the supposed Bellot Straits to reach the neighbourhood of the Great Fish River; and having in the summer of 1857 and following spring searched the adjacent country, we should return home either westward by Behring’s Straits, or by our outward route, according to circumstances. If we failed to reach King William Land or the Fish River, it was our intention to winter as near the desired position as possible, and by means of sledge journeys over the ice, to complete the search in the following spring. We hoped to finish the work in one year; but in this we were to be disappointed, as the narrative will show.

We left Aberdeen on July 1, 1857; and after a favourable run across the Atlantic, we made our first acquaintance with the Arctic Seas when near the meridian of Cape Farewell, by falling in with the drift-wood annually brought from Arctic Asia by the great current known as the Spitzbergen current—the shattered and mangled state of these pine logs bearing evidence of their long water-and-ice-borne drift. This great Arctic current brings masses of ice from the Spitzbergen seas, at seasons completely filling up the fiords, harbours, and indentations on the south coast of Greenland, and often in a pack extending for 100 miles southward of Cape Farewell. A whole fleet of whale ships were, in June, 1777, beset in lat. 76° north, and nearly in the meridian of Spitzbergen, and were drifted southward by the current, until one by one they were crushed. The last and only surviving ship arrived in October, in latitude 61°, in Davis’ Straits, and the crew escaped to the land near Cape Farewell, 116 in number, out of 450 men, who only a few short months before were looking forward to a happy return to their homes.

Late in the summer, the weather mild and the nights short, and with steam-power at command, we had no occasion for much anxiety about this ice, but determined to push direct for Frederickshaab, and with a fair wind we steered to pass within sight of Cape Farewell. On the night of the 13th July, we were becalmed, and on the following day we steamed slowly to the north-westward, amidst countless numbers of sea-birds. At daylight the coast of Greenland showed out in all its wild magnificence. Cape Farewell bore north 45° east, distant twenty-five miles; but from the peculiar formation of the adjacent land the actual cape is difficult to distinguish. Hitherto we had not seen the Spitzbergen ice; and we hoped that we might follow the coast round to Frederickshaab without obstruction; but in the course of the forenoon a sudden fall in the temperature of the sea, with a haziness in the atmosphere to the northward, indicated our approach to ice. Straggling and water-washed pieces were soon met with, and in the evening the distant murmur of the sea, as it broke upon the edge of ice-floes, warned us of our being near to a pack.

We made but little progress during the two following days, the winds being from the northward, and a dense ice-fog rolling down from the pack. On the 17th, Frederickshaab bearing N. 28° E., distant fifty miles, we determined upon endeavouring to push through the pack; and after being at times completely beset, and with a constant thick fog, we escaped into the inshore water, with a few slight rubs, having been carried by the drifting body of ice nearly thirty miles northward of our port. We sounded upon the Tallert bank; and on the fog lifting, the great glacier of Frederickshaab was revealed to us, and we bore away for the harbour, which we reached on the 19th. We had a little difficulty at first in making out the entrance to Frederickshaab; but a native kyack coming out to meet us, we were soon escorted in by a fleet of these small canoes.

We found the natives busily breaking up the wreck of an abandoned timber ship, which had drifted to their harbour, with a few of the lower tiers of cargo still in her; and another wreck was said to be lying upon the Tallert bank—the same wreck, it is said, which Prince Napoleon had boarded on his homeward passage in the Atlantic the previous year, and had left a record on her to prove the currents round Cape Farewell.

The Danish authorities, ever ready to assist vessels entering the Greenland ports, supplied us with everything in their power, and after purchasing some cod-fish from the natives, we proceeded on our voyage. On leaving Frederickshaab, we experienced strong north winds, and had to beat up between the pack and the land, until off the settlement of Fiskernaas, on July 23rd. The temperature of the sea then rose from 35° to 46° Fahrenheit; and seeing no ice, we considered that we were past the limits of the Spitzbergen stream. Finding that our foretop masthead was sprung, we ran into Fiskernaas, to repair it. We purchased more cod-fish at Fiskernaas, at an almost nominal price. These fish are very plentiful, and the Danish authorities annually collect about 30,000 from the Esquimaux, to be dried, and again served out to them in the winter, the habits of the natives being so improvident, that they will not make this provision for themselves. Having made a few magnetic and other observations, we sailed for Godhaab to procure a passage home for one of our seamen, who, it was feared, was too ill in health to stand the rigours of an Arctic winter. We met the Danish schooner coming out, and the captain kindly received our invalid on board, and took our letters for home. Outside Godhaab lie the Koku Islands, upon which Egede first landed in 1721, and commenced recolonizing Greenland. The mainland here is divided into four fiords, the largest being Godhaab Fiord (or Baal’s River on old charts), which extends up to the inland ice, and upon the shores of which are still to be seen many ruins of the ancient Scandinavians. Upon the Koku Islands we were near leaving the Fox, for in coming out, the wind fell suddenly calm, and the steam being down, we were drifting with a strong tide fast upon the rocks, and we only just towed the ship clear with all our boats. We now steered for Diskoe, and after passing some magnificent icebergs, one of which we found by measurement to be 270 feet above the sea, we saw the precipitous cliffs of the island, entered the harbour of Godhavn at night, and sailed on the following day for the beautiful fiord of Diskoe, where a smart young Esquimaux, Christian, by name, was received on board, as dog-driver to the expedition. We had not time to examine this fine fiord, which has never been explored, and which is thought to be of great extent; nor had we time to visit the Salmon River; but our guide brought us a few fish, and with salmon-trout and ptarmigan for breakfast, and a bouquet of flowers from the ladies of Godhavn upon the gun-room table, we had no cause to complain of the Arctic regions so far.

We next steered for the Waigat Straits, intending to take in coals from the mines there. As we passed Godhavn, the Esquimaux guide seated himself in his kyack on the deck, and, notwithstanding a rough sea, he was launched out of the gangway at his own request; a feat wonderful to us, but evidently not strange to him, as he paddled away to the shore without further notice. The native kyack is so small and crank, that the natives cannot get in or out of it alongside a ship; but are generally pulled up or lowered with it in the bight of two ropes’ ends.

As we approached the Waigat, thousands of eider ducks covered the water, and we shot many of the younger ones, but the old birds were too crafty for us, and kept out of range. We now never lost an opportunity of adding to our stock of fresh provisions, which already began to make a show in the rigging, where we could feast our eyes upon salmon, eider ducks, looms, cod-fish, ptarmigan, and seal beef, besides two old goats, that we had purchased at Frederickshaab. We entered the Waigat on August 3rd, on a beautiful day; and for wild and desolate grandeur, I suppose these straits have no equal—lofty, rugged mountains here abruptly facing the sea, or there presenting a sloping moss-covered declivity—mountain torrents, and the small streams, which, leaping over the very summits, at an elevation of 3,000 to 4,000 feet, appear from beneath like threads of spun glass. In some places may be seen the foot of a glacier high up a ravine, as if there arrested in its course, or not yet grown sufficiently to fill up the valley, and bring its blight down to the sea; in other places beautiful valleys, green and grass-clothed, where the hare and ptarmigan love to pass their short summer with their young broods. The sea itself is scarcely less picturesque than the land; for thousands of icebergs, of every size and fantastic form, cast off from the ice-streams of the mainland, sail continually in these beautiful straits.

We found the coal mine without difficulty, the seams of coal cropping out of the cliffs under which we anchored. It was a very exposed position, and the ground hard; the only safe way to lie would be by making fast to a piece of grounded ice, if one can be found, as anchors will not hold.

In the early spring the ice-foot forms a natural wharf, and the coals may be collected, and at high water the boats can go alongside to receive the sacks. Now that steam has been introduced into the whale fishery, these coal mines must sooner or later become much frequented, and it is to be hoped that so valuable a resource will be taken advantage of. If moorings could be laid down, and natives from the opposite settlement of Atenadluk employed to collect coals in readiness for embarkation, a ship might readily fill up in a few hours.

We had scarcely completed our coaling, when the weather began to threaten, the barometer fell, and shortly after noon it blew almost a gale from the southward. Our anchors soon began to jump over the ground, and the drift ice to set in. Steam was immediately got ready, and we ran through the straits to the north-westward. Passing the magnificent headland of Swarten Huk, we touched at the settlement of Proven to purchase dogs and seal-beef, and then bore away for Upernavik, steering close along the coast, and intending to attack the breeding-place of looms, at Saunderson’s Hope; but a strong south-west wind and high sea prevented our sending in the boats. Arrived off Upernavik, we obtained more dogs, and having left our last letters for home, we bore away, on the afternoon of August 6, to try to cross Baffin’s Bay.

We were now fairly away from the civilized world, and all that we could look forward to, or hope for, was a speedy passage through the middle pack of Baffin’s Bay, a satisfactory finish of the work before us on the other side, and a return the following year to England. We had a fine ship and a fine crew, all eager to commence the more active duties of sledge travelling; and, indeed, on looking at our thirty large and ravenous dogs that crowded our decks, we could not but think that our sledge parties would solve, in the following spring, the extraordinary mystery of Franklin’s fate. How these hopes were to be disappointed that year the sequel will show. It is well for us that we cannot know what the morrow may bring forth. During August 7 and 8, we steered out due west from Upernavik to try to cross in that parallel of latitude; but on the evening of the latter day, the keenness of the air, the ice-blink ahead, and the fast increasing number of bergs, prepared us for seeing the Middle Pack. In the evening and during that night we passed streams of loose sailing ice, and on the morning of the 8th further progress was stopped by impenetrable floes. This was in lat. 72° 40′ north, long. 59° 50′ west.

Getting clear of the loose ice in the pack edge, we steered to the northward, to look for an opening in any place where we could attempt a passage. The ice, however, presented an impenetrable line, and having reached, on August 12, latitude 75° 10′ north, longitude 58° west, we made fast to an iceberg aground under the glacier. It was a lovely evening; the sky bright and clear, and the thermometer standing at 36° in the shade. Seals were playing about the ship, and we added to our stock of beef. But a dreary prospect rather damped our pleasure. The ice extended in one unbroken mass right into the land, and pressed hard upon the very coast; not a drop of water could be seen from the masthead, in the direction in which we desired to go. The southerly winds, before which we had been running, appeared to have driven the whole pack into the head of Melville Bay. The season was passing away, and without an early change to wind and a continuance of it from the northward, we were almost without a hope.

In the evening we visited the glacier, but the débris of shattered ice, and the innumerable bergs and floe pieces, prevented our getting close to its base. It was a beautifully calm night; not a sound to be heard, save the crashing of some enormous mass rent from the face of the glacier, or distant rumbling of the vast inland ice, as it moved slowly down towards the sea. Far away over the continent, nothing but the surface of glacier could be seen, excepting here or there a mountain peak, showing up through the ice; and the bright glare of the ice-blink shot up into the sky, giving a yellow tinge to the otherwise deep blue vault of heaven. Flights of ducks winged their way to the southward, reminding us that it was the season when those desolate regions were deserted, and that we should be left alone. Our distant ship was lying so surrounded with huge and lofty bergs, that only her masthead could be seen through an opening; and a low melancholy howling (such as an Esquimaux dog alone knows how to make) occasionally broke upon the ear—for our dogs had all gone up to the very top of a lofty berg, and were thus expressing their home-sick longings, and, perhaps, a foreboding of the unhappy fate that awaited many of them.

We lay secured to the iceberg until the 16th August, when the wind changed to the north-eastward, and the floes began to move off the land and to separate. Now or never were we to get through; for to lose this opportunity would have shut us out from crossing that year, and have left us no other resource than to return to Greenland for the winter. M‘Clintock was not the man to turn back from his work, but would rather risk everything than leave a chance of our thus passing an inactive winter. The Fox was therefore steered into a promising lead or lane of water, and all sail made to the breeze. We were in high spirits, and talked of getting into the west water on the morrow. But at night a dense fog came on, the wind shifted to the southward, and the floes again began to close upon and around us. There was no help for us—we were beset, and it appeared hopelessly so; for the season was fast passing away, and the new ice beginning to form. On the 17th the wind increased, and the weather was dark and dreary. We struggled on for a few ship’s lengths by the power of steam and canvas, and at night we unshipped the rudder, and lifted the screw, in anticipation of a squeeze.

During the three weeks following we lay in this position, endeavouring, by every means, to move the ship towards any visible pool or lane of water. Once only did our hopes revive. On September 7, the wind had again been from the north-westward; the ice had slackened, and we made a final and desperate attempt to reach some water seen to the northward of us. We were blasting with gunpowder, heaving, and warping during the whole day, but at night the floes again closed. We had not now even a retreat; the tinker had come round, as the seamen say, and soldered us in; and from that time until the 17th of April, 1858, we never moved, excepting at the mercy of the ice, and drifted by the winds and currents. We had lost all command over the ship, and were freezing in the moving pack.

Preparations for the winter were now made in earnest. We had thirty large dogs to feed besides ourselves, and we lost no opportunity of shooting seals. The sea-birds had all left for the southward; and the bears, which occasionally came to look at the ship, we could not chase, from the yet broken state of the ice. Provisions were got up upon deck, sledges and travelling equipages prepared, boats’ crews told off, and every arrangement made by the Captain in the event of our being turned out of the ship. As the winter advanced, the ship was housed over with canvas, and covered with snow; and we had made up our minds for a winter in the pack and a drift—whither? This we could not tell, but we argued from the known constant set to the southward, out of Baffin’s Sea and Davis’ Straits, that if our little ship survived through the winter, we should be released in the southern part of Davis’ Straits during the following summer.

We were then in latitude 75° 24′ north, longitude 64° 31′ west, and westward of us could be seen a formidable line of grounded bergs, towards which, by our observations, we were driving. Our next eight months were passed in a manner that would be neither interesting to read nor to relate; but a few extracts from a private journal will show our mode of life.

Sept. 16.—We passed the grounded bergs last night, after considerable anxiety, for we feared we might be driven against them. We saw the floes opening and tearing up as sod before the plough; and had we come in contact with them, the ship must have been instantly destroyed. We are out all day long, by the sides of the water-pools, with our rifles, and shoot the seals in the head when they come up to breathe; they are now getting fat, and do not sink so readily as in the summer.

Oct. 17.—We obtained good observations, and found that we have drifted north-west 65 miles, since the 15th inst. It has been blowing hard from the south-eastward, and we consider that we have thus been carried helplessly along by the effect of a single gale.

Nov. 2.—A bear came to look at the ship at night, and our dogs soon chased him on to some thin ice, through which he broke. All hands turned out to see the sport, and notwithstanding the intense cold many of the people did not wait to put on their extra clothes. The bear was dispatched with our rifles, after making some resistance, and maiming several of the dogs. We have not seen the sun to-day; he has now taken his final departure from these latitudes. It is getting almost too dark to shoot seals, and we employ ourselves with such astronomical observations as are necessary to fix our position, and to calculate our drift, with observations upon the thermometer, barometer, and meteorology generally.

Nov. 28.—After a zigzag drift out to the westward, until the 24th inst., into latitude 75° 1′ N., longitude 70° W., we have commenced a southern drift, and we trust now to progress gradually out of the straits, until released in the spring. We have had considerable commotion and ruptures in the ice-floes lately, but fortunately the nips have not come too close to us. We ascend the masthead, to the crow’s-nest, every morning, to look out for water, for our dogs are getting ravenous, and we want food for them.

December 4.—Poor Scott died last night, and was buried through the floe this evening, all hands drawing his earthly remains upon a sledge, and the officers walking by the side. It was a bitterly cold night, the temperature 35° below zero, with a fresh wind, and the beautiful paraselene (ominous of a coming gale) lighting us on our way. The ice has been more quiet lately, and we are becoming more reconciled to our imprisonment.

A reading, writing, and navigation school has commenced, and our Captain loses no opportunity of attending to the amusement and recreation of the men, so necessary in this dreary life. Besides the ordinary duties of cleaning the ship, the men are exercised in building snow houses, and preparing travelling equipage.

December 21.—The winter solstice. We have about half an hour’s partial daylight, by which the type of The Times newspaper may be just distinguished on a board facing the south, where, near noon, a slight glimmer of light is refracted above the horizon, while in the zenith and northward the stars are shining brilliantly. In the absence of light and shade we cannot see to walk over the ice, for the hummocks can scarcely be distinguished from the floe; all presents a uniform level surface, and, in walking, one constantly falls into the fissures, or runs full butt against the blocks of ice. We must now, therefore, be content with an hour or two’s tramp alongside, or on our snow-covered deck under housing; and, during the remainder of the day, we sit below in our little cabin, which has now crystallized by the breath condensing and freezing on the bulkheads, and we endeavour to read and talk away the time. But our subjects of conversation are miserably worn out; our stories are old and oft-repeated; we start impossible theories, and we bet upon the results of our new observations as to our progress, as we unconsciously drift and drift before the gale. At night we retire to our beds, thankful that another day has passed; a deathlike stillness reigns around, broken only by the ravings of some sleep-talker, the tramp of the watch upon deck, a passing bear causing a general rousing of our dogs, or a simultaneous rush of these poor ravenous creatures at our cherished stores of seal-beef in the shrouds; and, as we listen to the distant groaning and sighing of the ice, we thank God that we have still a home in these terrible wastes.

December 28.—During Divine service yesterday, the wind increased, and towards the afternoon we had a gale from the north-westward, attended with an unusual rise of temperature; to-day the gale continues, with a warm wind from the N.N.W.

“The Danish settlers at Upernavik, in North Greenland, are at times startled by a similar sudden rise of temperature. During the depth of winter, when all nature has been long frozen, and the sound of falling water almost forgotten, rain will fall in torrents; and as rain in such a climate is attended with every discomfort, this is looked upon as a most unwelcome phenomenon. It is called the Warm South-east Wind. Now, if the Greenlanders at Upernavik are astonished at a warm South-east Wind, how much rather must the seamen, frozen up in the pack, be astonished at a warm North-west Wind. Various theories have been started to account for this phenomenon; but it appears most probable that a rotatory gale passes over the place, and that the rise in temperature is due to the direction from which the whole mass of air may come, viz. from the southward, and not to the direction of wind at the time.”

Let us now return to the narrative, for our days were now becoming mere repetitions of each other. We saw no change, nor did we hope for any until the spring. Gale followed gale; and an occasional alarm of a disruption in the ice, a bear or seal hunt, formed our only excitement; indeed, we sometimes hoped for some crisis, were it only to break the dreadful monotony of our lives. Our walks abroad afforded us no recreation; on the contrary, it was really a trying task to spin out the time necessary for exercise. Talk of a dull turnpike-road at home! Are not the larks singing and the farm boys whistling? But with us what a contrast! Our walks were without an object; one had literally nothing to see or hear; turn north, south, east, or west, still snow and hummocks. You see a little black mark waving in the air: walk to it—it is a crack in a hummock. You think a berg is close to you; go to it—still a hummock, refracted through the gloom. The only thing to do is to walk to windward, so as to be certain of returning safe and not frostbitten, to pick out a smooth place, and form imaginary patterns with your footprints. Philosophers would bid us think and reflect; but if philosophers were shut up with us amid the silence and darkness of an Arctic winter, they would probably do as we did—endeavour to get away from their thoughts.

By the 29th of January, we had drifted into latitude 72° 46′ north, longitude 62° west, and by the aid of refraction we saw the sun for the first time since November 2. We ought indeed to have greeted him on a meridian far westward of our present position, but it had been out of power to do more this year, and we could only hope for more success in the next. The weather had now become intensely cold, the mercury was frozen, and the spirit thermometer registered 46° below zero. We had great difficulty in clearing our bed-places of ice, and our blankets froze nightly to the ship’s side; but we had the sun to shine upon us, and that made amends for all. What a different world was now before our eyes! Even in those dreary regions where nothing moves, and no sounds are heard save the rustling of the snowdrift, the effects of the bright sun are so exhilarating that a walk was now quite enjoyable. If any one doubt how necessary light is for our existence, just let him shut himself up for three months in the coal-cellar, with an underground passage into the ice-house, where he may go for a change of air, and see if he will be in as good health and spirits at the end of the experiment as before. At all events, he will have obtained the best idea one can form at home of an Arctic winter in a small vessel, save that the temperature of the Arctic ice-house is -40°, instead of +32°, as at home; only 72° difference!

On the 14th of February some of us walked out to where the ice was opening to the northward, and saw a solitary dovekie in winter plumage. These beautiful little birds appear to winter on the ice. The water, appearing deep black from the long absence of any relief from the eternal snow, was rippled by a strong wind, and the little waves, so small as to be compared to those of the Serpentine at home, sending forth to us a new, and, consequently, joyous sound, induced us to linger long by the side of the small lake—so long, that we were only reminded, by our faces beginning to freeze, that we were at least three miles from the ship, a gale blowing with thick snow-drift—besides no chance of getting anything for the pot.

A memorable day was the 26th of February, when we opened the skylight and let in daylight below, where we had been living for four months by the light of our solitary dips. The change was indeed wonderful, and at first uncomfortable, for it exposed the manner in which we had been content to live. With proper clothing you may laugh at the climate, if not exposed too long without food. It is not the cold outside that is to be feared, but the damp, and plague-engendering state of things below. This can only be guarded against by having good fires and plenty of light.

Towards the latter end of March, the ice was getting very unquiet, and we had frequent disruptions close to the ship. On the night of the 25th of March, a wide fissure, which had been opening and closing during the previous fortnight, closed with such force as to pile up tons and tons of ice within forty yards of the ship, and shattered our old floe in a line with our deck. The nipping continued, and on the following night a huge block was hurled within thirty yards from us. Another such a night and the little Fox would have been knocked into lucifer matches, and we should have been turned out upon the floe.

April was ushered in with a continuance of heavy northerly gales; we were constantly struggling with the ice. We were three times adrift, and expecting to see our ship destroyed; and on the night of the 5th, the floes opened, and as their edges again came together, they threatened to tear everything up. We were on deck throughout the night; our boats and dogs were cut off from us, but with great exertion we managed to save the dogs, although we nearly lost some of our men who went in search of them. We that night secured the ship by the bower chains, and we afterwards had a few days’ quiet. On the 10th we saw the mountain peaks about Cape Dyer, on the west side of Davis’ Straits, the first land seen since the previous October. We had drifted into lat. 66° 5′ N., and long. 58° 41′ W.; and we hoped that after passing Cape Walsingham, the pack would open out.

On April 17, in a heavy storm, a general breaking-up of the ice took place, and we were turned completely out of our winter dock, and into an apparently open sea. A scene of wild confusion ensued; the floes were driving against each other in all directions, and the whole ocean of ice appeared in commotion, while a blinding snow-drift distorted and magnified every surrounding object. Our first care was to save our dogs; but as an Esquimaux dog always expects either a thrashing or to be put in harness when approached by a man, and the poor creatures were terror-stricken with the storm, they ran wildly about over the ice, and many of them were obliged to be abandoned to their fate, after sharing the perils of the winter with us. On board the ship, preparations were made to get her under command; for we were driving down upon the lee, and into loose ice, where our men could not have rejoined us with the boats. We shipped the rudder, and soon got some canvas upon the vessel, and having got the men and boats safely on board, we steered to the eastward, and really thought that we were released. A dark water-sky hung over the eastern horizon, and we thought that we were not far from the open ocean. But we had not proceeded more than some seventeen miles, when at midnight we came to a stoppage. It was fearfully dark and cold, and with the greatest difficulty we cleared the masses of ice. The water space in which we worked the ship became gradually less and less; we flew from side to side of this fast decreasing lake, until at last we had not room to stay the vessel. By 4 A.M. we were again beset.

We now commenced a second drift with the pack, which took us down to latitude 64° north, and longitude 57° west, on the 25th April, when, towards midnight, a swell entered into the pack, and gradually increased, until the ice commenced churning up around the vessel, and dashing against her sides. These violent shocks continued throughout the morning, and really seemed as if they would soon destroy the ship. However, by the power of steam, we got the vessel’s head towards the swell, and with a strong fair wind, we commenced pushing out. After many narrow escapes from contact with the icebergs, we were by night in comparatively open water. We were free! and steered a course for the settlement of Holsteinborg, in Greenland, to recruit, and to prepare for another attempt. What a change on the following morning! Not a piece of ice could be seen, save a few distant bergs. We once more had our little vessel dancing under us upon the waters, innumerable sea-birds flew around us, and the very sea, in contrast to its late frozen surface, appeared alive with seals and whales. All nature seemed alive, and we felt as if we had risen from the dead! In the evening, the snow-covered peaks of Sukkertoppen were seen, and on the 28th of April, we moored in Holsteinborg harbour. Our anchors had not been down, nor had our feet touched the land since the 3rd of August. Ice-bound and imprisoned, we had drifted upwards of 1,200 miles. Need it be added how thankful we were to that kind Providence who had watched over us, and under Him to our gallant Captain, to whose unremitting attentions to our comforts and safety we owed our health and deliverance!

The winter in Greenland had been very severe, and the country was still snow-covered, and without an indication of spring. The natives were scarcely aroused from their winter’s sleep, and all our expectations of venison and ptarmigan feasts soon vanished. Very few reindeer had yet been taken, the season not commencing before July, when the hunters go up the fiords and kill them by thousands for the sake of their skins alone, leaving their carcasses to be devoured by the wolves.

Our men, however, were bent upon enjoying themselves, and as Jack’s wants are few, with the aid of a couple of fiddlers and some bottles of grog, they kept up one continuous ball—patronized by all the fair Esquimaux damsels—in the dance-house on shore. The whole population had turned out to meet us. We were entertained by the kind-hearted dames upon stockfish and seal-beef, and such luxuries as they could afford, with a hearty welcome to their neat and cleanly houses; and we in our turn endeavoured to do the hospitalities on board the Fox with pickled pork and preserved cabbage. It was new life to us, who had been confined so long in our little den, thus to mingle with these friendly people. Never was sympathy more needed. We arrived hungry and unshaven, our faces begrimed with oil-smoke, our clothes in tatters; the good women of Holsteinborg worked and washed for us, repaired our sadly disreputable wardrobes, danced for us, sang to us, and parted from us with tears and a few little presents by way of souvenirs, as if we could ever forget them. We wrote a few hasty letters, hoping that they would reach home in the autumn, and sailed once more upon our voyage.

We wished to call at Godhavn for another Esquimaux and some more dogs, besides a few stores, of which we stood in need; so, sailing up the coast, we arrived off the harbour on the night of May 10, but an impenetrable stream of loose ice blockaded the entrance. It was a wild night, and snowing heavily; sea, air, ice islands and icebergs seemed all mingled in one common haze. We endeavoured to haul off the land, and near midnight we narrowly escaped destruction upon an island, which, seen suddenly on the lee-beam, was at first taken for a berg. We all thought our ship must be dashed upon the rocks, and we were only saved by the presence of mind and seamanship of our Captain, who never left the deck, and wore the ship within a few yards of the shore. We anchored next day at the Whale-fish Islands, and fell in there with the Jane and Heroine whalers, whose captains gave us a true Scotch welcome, and ransacked their ships to find some little comforts for us. We again tasted the roast beef of old England. From the islands, we crossed to Godhavn, where finding the harbour still full of ice, we hauled into a rocky creek outside, a perfect little dock just capable of holding the ship, but exposed to southerly winds.

By the 25th of May we were prepared for another and final attempt to accomplish our mission, and to try our fortunes in the ice. We were certainly sobered down considerably by our late severe lesson; but although less confident in our own powers, a steady determination to do our best prevailed throughout the ship. Passing again through the Waigat, we stopped at the coal-deposits to fill up with fuel, and we shot a few ptarmigan while thus detained. We next stopped at Saunderson’s Hope, “the Cape where the fowls do breed,” but it was yet too early for eggs, and as the looms had no young to protect, they flew away in thousands at every discharge of a gun; we got but few of these, in our opinion, delicious birds. On the 31st, we made fast to an iceberg off Upernavik, to await the breaking up of the ice in Melville Bay. When we were in these latitudes the previous year, all things living were migrating southward, but now constant flights of sea-birds streamed northward, night and day, towards their breeding-places and feeding-grounds, and by sitting on the rocky points, and shooting them as they passed, we could generally make a fair bag. We were now almost subsisting on eider ducks and looms.

On June the 6th, we commenced our ice-struggles in Melville Bay, endeavouring, according to the usual mode of navigation, to push up, between the main pack and the ice still attached to the land, on all occasions when the winds moved the pack out, and left a space or lane of water. While thus following up the coast, on the 7th, we ran upon a reef of sunken and unknown rocks, and, on the tide falling, we lay over in such a manner as to threaten to fill upon the water again rising. We succeeded, however, in heaving off without damage.

After many escapes from being squeezed by the ice closing upon the land, and after three weeks of intense labour, we reached Cape York on June 26th. We there communicated with the natives who had so much assisted Dr. Kane, when he wintered in Smith Sound. These poor creatures live upon the flesh of the bear, seal, and walrus, which they kill upon the ice with bone spears. They are, perhaps, the only people in the world living upon a sea-coast without boats of any kind, and are so completely isolated, that, previous to their being first visited in 1818, they considered themselves to be the only people in the world. Dr. Kane left among them a Greenland Esquimaux, “Hans,” with his canoe. They told us that Hans was married, and was well, but that they had eaten the boat, besides many of their dogs, when hungry, during the last winter. We invited them on board, and they saw all our treasures of wood and iron; but they appeared to covet more than all, our dogs, and a few light pieces of wood, fit for spear-handles. We sent them away rejoicing over a few presents of long knives and needles, and they continued to dance and brandish the knives over their heads until we were out of sight.

Passing Cape Dudley Diggs, we landed at a breeding-place of rotges (little auks); the birds were sitting in myriads upon the ledges of the cliffs, and we shot a great many; but our time was too precious to wait long, even for fresh food, and so we bore away. We were considerably baffled with ice-floes in crossing over towards Lancaster Sound, and we did not reach that side until July 12.

Near Cape Horsburgh we found a small and enterprising family of natives, who had crossed over to this barren land from Pond’s Bay, two years previously, in search of better hunting ground. These poor people could give us no information of the missing ships; so we merely stopped to give them a few presents; we then steered for Pond’s Bay, from whence we had heard rumours of wrecks and wreck-wood being in the possession of the natives. In crossing Lancaster Sound, we were completely beset in the pack, and were even threatened with another drift out to sea like that of last year; we fortunately escaped, however, from the grip of the ice, after being carried for seven days in a helpless state, and as far as Cape Bathurst, before we could regain command over our ship.

At the entrance to Pond’s Bay, we found an old woman and a boy living in a skin tent, their tribe being some twenty-five miles up the inlet, at a village on the north side. This village, called Kapawroktolik, could not be reached by land, on account of the precipitous cliffs facing the sea. The inlet was, however, yet full of ice, and Captain M‘Clintock endeavoured to reach the natives by sledge. In the meantime, we on board were employed in collecting sea-birds from the neighbouring breeding cliffs of Cape Grahame Moore. We also frequently visited the land to collect cochlearia, or scurvy-grass, which grew luxuriantly about the old Esquimaux encampments. A trade was commenced with the old lady on shore; for we found that, concealed among the stones, she had a number of narwhales’ horns, teeth, and blades of whalebone, of which she would only produce one at a time, by way of enhancing the value by its apparent scarcity. Around her tent were snares set in all directions for catching birds, and she had a large quantity of putrid blubber lying en cache, which was her principal food and fuel. The boy brought us a hare, which he had shot with his bow and arrow. Captain M‘Clintock having failed to reach the village, owing to the ice being all adrift in the inlet, he determined to take the ship there if possible, and to take the old woman as pilot.

We ran alongside her tent, which she soon packed up with all her worldly riches, and came on board thoroughly drenched with the rain, which had poured in torrents all day. Our people managed to rig her out in some dry clothes; the poor boy was made snug in the engine room, and the old lady voluntarily took her station as pilot upon the deck throughout the night, and was very anxious to point out the beauties of her country, and the “pleasant sleeping places.”

We could only get within eight miles of the village, owing to there being fast ice in the inlet; so, securing the ship to it, the Captain and Hobson started over the ice. On board the ship we hoped to have a quiet Sunday, but a number of right-whales playing round the vessel, and pushing their backs under the ice, constantly broke away the rotten edge to which we lay. We were thus kept constantly beating up again to it; and in the evening, about six or seven miles of the ice coming away in one floe, and turning round upon us, we were forced upon the south shore of the inlet, and momentarily expected being driven upon the rocks; but after blasting the ice with gunpowder for nearly two hours, in order to gain every inch, we got clear just as we were touching the ground.

The next morning (August 2) the Captain and party returned. They had a most interesting trip, and described the village as situated in a most romantic spot, close upon the shore, at the foot of a deep valley filled with a glacier, which completely overhung the settlement, and threw jets of water almost to the tents. The natives were delighted to see them, and, in answer to the inquiries through the interpreter (Mr. Petersen), they said that two old wrecks were lying four days’ journey southward of Cape Bowen—probably in Scot’s Inlet. These two ships came on shore together many years ago. They also confirmed an account from our lady pilot of an old wreck lying to the northward in Lancaster Sound, one day’s journey from Cape Hay, or, as they call it, Appak (breeding-place of birds). The wood in their possession was now accounted for, as also their great anxiety to procure saws, which they always asked for in barter. These wrecks were not those we sought, and we had no occasion to delay our voyage by looking at them. The natives drew a rough chart of the interior of this unknown country. They especially pointed out the salmon rivers, and the hunting and sleeping places, and gave a few general ideas of the profile of the land, and the main directions of the different channels which intersect it; describing North Devon as an island, and showing a water communication with Igloolik, where Parry wintered. We had now set at rest all rumours of Franklin’s ships being in the neighbourhood of Pond’s Bay; and having made a few observations for the survey of the place, we departed for Beechey Island, regretting that the whaleships had not been with us to profit by the number of fish we had seen. As we entered Lancaster Sound, five huge bears sat watching a dead whale; they sat upon different pieces of ice, apparently taking turns to feed, and evidently afraid of each other. We shot a couple of them, but one escaped over the ice after a long chase, although desperately wounded.

The next morning (August 7) the wind increased to a perfect storm from the eastward; the fog was, as seamen say, as thick as pease-soup; we could see nothing; and compasses being here useless, we had to trust to our luck rather than good guidance for keeping in the fairway. We saw very little ice, but the sea ran so high upon the 8th, that we thought it prudent to lie-to for some hours. On the 10th, a herd of walrus was seen off Cape Felfoot, upon a piece of sailing ice, and lying so close as to completely cover it. The ship was run close alongside, and several were shot, but we did not succeed in getting one; for, unless instantaneously killed, they always wriggle off the ice and sink. The only practical method of getting a walrus is with a gun-harpoon from a boat; as yet we had shot only one during our voyage. Steering round Cape Hurd in a thick fog, we struck on an unknown shoal, but soon backed off again, and let go the anchor, as we could not see our position. About midnight the fog lifted, and we proceeded. A large bear was seen swimming round a point, and was shot; and shortly after, one of the men fell overboard: he was picked up rather exhausted with his cold bath, and perhaps a little alarmed at bathing in company with polar bears. We anchored next day off Cape Riley, where the Bredalbane was lost, after Captain Inglefield had landed some of her stores and coals. We found that the bears had been amusing themselves with the provisions, and had eaten out the bilges between the hoops of many of the casks. They evidently had a particular relish for chocolate and salt pork (we hoped they liked it), and had taken the greatest trouble to throw everything about. We visited the stores at Beechey; they had been stored and housed with extreme care. A violent gale had passed over the place, for the door of the house was blown in and the entrance full of snow, but nothing was damaged excepting some biscuit. We also visited the graves, so often described, yet ever interesting, of the poor fellows who died in Franklin’s first winter quarters, and whose comrades we were now seeking.

Our coaling from Cape Riley was completed by the 15th, and we were glad to leave that exposed and dangerous place. We had been considerably troubled with drift ice, and on the 13th we drove half across the bay, with both anchors down, and had to moor to a piece of ice grounded close to the ship. We crossed to the house at Beechey, and there landed a handsome tombstone (sent out by Lady Franklin), in memorial of Sir John Franklin and his companions. It was placed close to the monument erected by their shipmates to the memory of poor Bellot and those who had died in the previous searching expeditions. Taking in such stores as were actually necessary, and having repaired the house, we crossed over to Cape Hotham for a boat (left there by Penny), to replace one of ours which had been crushed by the ice. Wellington Channel appeared to be clear of ice, and a jumping sea, from the southward, gave us promise of clear water in that direction. On the 17th, we were sailing down Peel Sound with a fresh wind, and carrying every rag of canvas. Passing Limestone Island and Cape Granite, we began to think that we should go right through, for as yet no ice could be seen ahead; but the southern sky looked bright and icy, while, in contrast, a dark gloom hung over the waters we had left in the northward. Still we sailed on merrily, and were already talking of passing the winter near the Fish River, and returning the following year by Behring’s Straits, when “Ice ahead!” was reported from the crow’s-nest; and there it certainly was, a long low white barrier, of that peculiar concave form always indicating fast-ice. The Straits had not broken up this season, and we could not pass that way. We were bitterly disappointed, but not disheartened, for we had yet another chance of getting to our longed-for destination by way of Bellot Straits. Not an hour was to be lost; the season was passing away; and thither our captain determined to go at once. We reluctantly ran out of this promising channel, and sailed close along the north shores of Somerset, without seeing any ice of consequence. The night of the 18th set in dark and squally, but in the absence of ice we were quite at our ease. We steamed close under the magnificent castellated cliffs of Cape Clarence, and entered Leopold Harbour to land a boat, in the event of our having to abandon our ship and fall back this way.

We found Regent’s Inlet clear, excepting a few streams of loose ice, through which we easily sailed. We passed Elwin and Batty Bays, and everything, as an old quartermaster expressed it, looked “werry prosperious.” Poor fellow! he knew that every mile sailed in the right direction would save him a hard pull at the sledge ropes.

On the 20th, we passed close to Fury Beach, where the Fury was lost in 1825; but the pace was too good to stop to visit even this most interesting spot. We came on with a fair wind and clear water to the latitude of Bellot Straits. Our excitement now became intense. The existence of the strait had been disputed, and upon it depended all our hopes. Running into Brentford Bay, we thought we saw ice streaming out, as if through some channel from the westward, but as yet we could see no opening; and being unable to get farther that night, we anchored in a little nook discovered on the north side of the bay. A look-out was set upon the highest hill, to watch the movements of the ice, and on the next day we made our first attempt to sail through. We started with a strong western tide, and under both steam and canvas, and, after proceeding about three miles, we were delighted to find that a passage really existed; but we had not got half way through when, the tide changing, a furious current came from the westward, bringing down upon us such masses of ice that we were carried helplessly away, and were nearly dashed upon huge pieces of grounded ice and reefs of rocks, over which the floes were running, and would have immediately capsized the little Fox had she touched. This current ran at least seven knots an hour, and was more like a bore in the Hooghly than any ordinary tide. Struggling clear, after some considerable anxiety, and carried out of the straits, we reluctantly went back to the anchorage we had left. Night and day we now earnestly watched Bellot Straits, but they remained choked with the ice, which apparently drove backwards and forwards with the stream. We made another desperate attempt on the 25th August, and hung on, at imminent risk, in a small indentation about two-thirds through, and close under the precipitous cliffs. We were soon driven out of this again by the ice; yet so determined was our Captain to get through, that he then thought of pushing the ship into the pack, and driving with it into the western sea. We found, however, that the western entrance must be blocked, for the ice did not move fast in that direction. We could now do nothing but wait a change; and to employ the time, we sailed down the east coast of Boothia for some forty miles, to land a depôt of provisions, in case we should require, in the following winter, to communicate with the natives about Port Elizabeth. Navigation was now very cold and dreary work: we struggled back to Bellot Straits against strong north winds, sleet, and snow, and without compass, chart, or celestial objects to guide us. The Captain next went away in a boat, determining, when stopped, to travel over land to the western sea to examine the actual state of things there; and Young was sent to the southward for five days with boat and sledge, to ascertain if another passage existed where a promising break in the land had been seen.

The Captain returned to the ship on the 31st, bringing with him a fine fat buck; he had reached Cape Bird by water and land, and brought us a favourable report of Victoria Straits. Our hopes of getting through were again raised. Young returned unsuccessful from the south; no other strait existed, but only an inlet, extending some six miles in, and a chain of lakes thence into the interior to the south-westward. Young saw only one deer, but many bears were roaming about the coast.

On the 6th September we made another dash at the straits, and this time succeeded in reaching a rocky islet, two miles outside the western entrance; but a barrier of fast ice, over which we could see a dark water-sky, here stopped us. Moored to the ice, we employed ourselves in killing seals, hunting for bears, and making preparations for travelling. Young was sent to an island eight miles to the south-west, to look around; and on ascending the land, he was astonished to see water as far as the visible horizon to the southward in Victoria Straits. While sitting down, taking some angles with the sextant, he luckily turned round just in time to see a large bear crawling up the rocks to give him a pat on the head. He seized his rifle and shot him through the body, but the beast struggled down and died out of reach, in the water, and thus a good depôt of beef was lost. Hobson, who, for some days, had been employed carrying provisions on to this island, started on the 25th with a party of seven men and two dog-sledges to carry depôts as far as possible to the southward, and the Captain placed a boat on the islet close to the ship, in case we should have to leave for winter quarters before Hobson’s return.

The winter now set in rapidly, new ice was fast increasing, and the weather very severe; all navigation was at an end, and the barrier outside of us had never moved. We had now no hopes of getting further, and as no harbour existed where we were, we had nothing for it but to seek our winter home in Bellot Straits, and finish our work in the following winter and spring. So leaving Hobson to find his way to us, we ran back through Bellot Straits towards a harbour that we had discovered and named Port Kennedy. The straits were already covered with scum, and almost unnavigable, but we reached the harbour at midnight on the 27th, and ran the ship as far as possible into the new ice which now filled it. The Fox had done her work until the following summer. No opportunity was now lost of procuring fresh food. The deer were migrating southward and a few were shot as they passed. But the hunting was very precarious; the deer were travelling, and did not stop much to feed; there was no cover whatever, and stalking over the rugged hills and snow-filled valleys was most laborious. A few ptarmigan and hares were also shot, but we were altogether disappointed in the resources of the country. We had, however, a fair stock of bear and seal flesh for our dogs and ourselves to begin upon.

On the 6th October Hobson returned, having reached some fifty miles down the west coast of Boothia, but was there stopped by the yet broken-up state of the ice. Finding that we had left Cape Bird, and that Bellot Straits were impassable for the boat, he travelled back to the ship over the mountains. The people were now clearing out the ship, landing all superfluous stores, and building magnetic observatories of snow and ice, besides hunting for the pot. We once more buried the ship with snow.

On the 24th, Hobson again started for the south-westward, to follow up his last track, and to endeavour to push his depôts further on. He returned to the ship on November 6, having experienced most severe weather, and great dangers from the unquiet state of the ice. When encamped near the shore, in latitude 70° 21′, the ice broke suddenly away from the land and drifted out to sea before the gale, carrying them off with it. They were perched upon a small floe piece, and a wide crack separated the two tents. Dense snow-drift heightened the darkness of the night, and they could not possibly tell in which direction they were driving. The next morning they found themselves fifteen miles from where they had pitched the previous evening. By the mercy of Providence a calm succeeded, and they escaped to the land over the ice which immediately formed. So thin was this new ice, that they momentarily expected to break through. By great exertion Hobson saved the depôt; and finding it impossible to do any more, he landed the provisions and returned to the ship. Our autumn travelling was now brought to a close. A depôt of provisions was to have been carried by Young across Victoria Straits, but this was given up as evidently impracticable. We sat down for the winter, praying that we might be spared to finish our work in the spring. The whole ship’s company marched in funeral procession to the shore on the 10th November, bearing upon a sledge the mortal remains of poor Mr. Bland (our chief engineer), who was found dead in his bed on the 7th. The burial service having been read, he was deposited in his frozen tomb, on which the wild flowers will never grow, and over which his relations can never mourn. We were all on board almost as one family, and any one taken from us was missed as one from the fireside at home. It was long before this sorrowful feeling throughout the ship could be shaken off. On the 14th the sun disappeared, and we were left in darkness; our skylights had long been covered over with snow, and by the light of our solitary dip we tried to pass the weary hours by reading, sleeping, and smoking. We were frozen in, in a fine harbour, surrounded by lofty granite hills, and on these were occasionally found a few ptarmigan, hares, and wild foxes; whenever the weather permitted, or we could at all see our way, we wandered over these dreary hills in search of a fresh mess. We varied our exercise with excursions on the ice in search of bears. But although exercise was so necessary for our existence, yet from the winds drawing through the straits and down our harbour as through a funnel, there were many days, and even weeks, when we could scarcely leave the ship. The men set fox-traps in all directions, and Mr. Petersen set seal-nets under the ice. The nets were not successful, but the traps gave an object for a walk. Magnetic observations were carried on throughout the winter;—the reading of one instrument, placed in a snow-house some 200 yards from the ship, being registered every hour night and day. On some of the wild winter nights, there was some risk in going even that distance from the ship. Christmas and New Year’s days were spent with such rejoicing as in our situation we could make, and we entered upon the year 1859 with good health and spirits. Our dogs, upon which so much depended, were also in first-rate condition, and not one of them had died.

The sun returned to us on January 26th; the daylight soon began to increase; and by February 10th, we were all ready to start upon our first winter journey. Bad weather detained us until the 17th, when Captain M‘Clintock and Young both left the ship; the Captain, with only two companions, Mr. Petersen (interpreter) and Thompson as dog-driver, to travel down the west coast of Boothia, to endeavour to obtain information, preparatory to the long spring journeys, from some natives supposed to live near the magnetic pole. Young was to cross Victoria Straits with a depôt of provisions, to enable him in the spring to search the coast of Prince of Wales Land, wherever it might trend. He returned on March 5.

The Captain’s party hove in sight on the 14th, and we all ran out to meet him. He had found a tribe of natives at Cape Victoria, near the magnetic pole, and from them he learnt that some years ago a large ship was crushed by the ice, off the north-west coast of King William Land; that the people had come to the land, and had travelled down that coast to the estuary of the Great Fish River where they had died upon an island (Montreal Island); the natives had spears, bows and arrows, and other implements made of wood, besides a quantity of silver spoons and forks, which they said they had procured on the island (more probably by barter from other tribes). It was now evident that we were on the right track, and with this important information Captain M‘Clintock returned to the ship.

Our winter travelling was thus ended, fortunately without any mishap.

Those only who know what it is to be exposed to a temperature of frozen mercury accompanied with wind, can form any idea of the discomforts of dragging a sledge over the ice, upon an unknown track, day after day, and for eight or ten consecutive hours, without a meal or drink, the hands and face constantly frostbitten, and your very boots full of ice; to be attacked with snow blindness; to encamp and start in the dark, and spend sixteen hours upon the snow, in a brown-holland tent, or the hastily erected snow-house, listening to the wind, the snow-drift, and the howling of the dogs outside, and trying to wrap the frozen blanket closer round the shivering frame. The exhaustion to the system is so great, and the thirst so intense, that the evening pannikin of tea and the allowanced pound of pemmican would not be given up were it possible to receive the whole world in exchange; and woe to the unlucky cook if he capsized the kettle!

On the 18th March, Young again started for Fury Beach, distant seventy-five miles, to get some of the sugar left there by Parry in 1825, and now considered necessary for the health of our men by the surgeon. This journey occupied until the 28th, one sledge having broken down, and the whole weight—about 1200 lbs.—having to be worked back piecemeal with one sledge, by a sort of fox-and-goose calculation. Dr. Walker, who had also volunteered to go down for the provisions left on the east coast in the autumn, and now not required there, returned about the same time. With the information already obtained, and which only accounted for one ship, Captain M‘Clintock saw no reason for changing the original plan of search, viz., that he should trace the Montreal Island and round King William Land; that Hobson should cross from the magnetic pole to Collinson’s farthest on Victoria Land, and follow up that coast; and that Young should cross Victoria Straits and connect the coast of Prince of Wales Land with either Collinson’s farthest on Victoria Island or Osborne’s farthest on the west coast of Prince of Wales Land, according as he might discover the land to trend. Young was also to connect the coast with Browne’s farthest in Peel Sound, and explore the coast of North Somerset from Sir James Ross’s farthest (Four River Bay) to Bellot Straits. This would complete the examination of the whole unexplored country.

The travelling parties were each to consist of four men drawing one sledge, and six dogs with a second sledge, besides the officer in charge, and the dog-driver. By the aid of depôts, already carried out, and from the extreme care with which Captain M‘Clintock had prepared the travelling equipment, and had reduced every ounce of unnecessary weight, we expected to be able to be absent from the ship, and without any other resource, for periods of from seventy to eighty days, and if necessary even longer. The Captain and Hobson both started on the 2nd April, and Young got away upon the 7th. The Fox was left in charge of Dr. Walker (surgeon), and three or four invalids, who were unfit for the fatigues of travelling.

Although we all felt much excited at the real commencement of our active work, and interested in these departures, this was perhaps the most painful period of our voyage. We had hitherto acted in concert, and all the dangers of our voyage had been shared together. We were now to be separated, and for three months to travel in detached parties over the ice, without an opportunity of hearing of each other until our return. It was like the breaking up of a happy family, and our only consolation lay in the hope that when we again met it would be to rejoice over the discovery of the lost ships. Nothing of interest occurred on board during our absence; but one of the invalids, poor Blackwell, had been getting gradually worse, and died of scurvy on June 14, the very day on which Hobson returned.

The Captain and Hobson travelled together as far as Cape Victoria. There they learnt the additional news that another ship had drifted on shore on the west coast of King William Land in the autumn of the same year in which the first ship was crushed. Captain M‘Clintock, now knowing that both ships had been seen off that coast, and that on it the traces must be found, most generously resigned to Hobson the first opportunity of searching there, instead of crossing to Victoria Land, as originally intended. Captain M‘Clintock then went down the east side towards the Fish River. Near Cape Norton, he found a tribe of some thirty or forty natives, who appeared much pleased to meet the strange white people. They answered readily any inquiries, and concealed nothing. They produced silver spoons and forks, and other relics from the lost ships, and readily bartered them for knives or needles. They were acquainted with the wreck, which they said was over the land (on the south-west coast), and for years they had collected wood and valuables from it, but they had not visited it for a long time. They had seen Franklin’s people on their march southward, but had not molested them. They said that they had seen one human skeleton in the ship. Proceeding on his route, Captain M‘Clintock next found a native family at Point Booth, near the south-east extreme of King William Land; these natives gave him the additional information that the remains of some of the lost people would be found on Montreal Island. Having searched Montreal Island and main land in the neighbourhood without finding other traces than a few pieces of copper and iron, and now having connected the search from the north with Anderson’s from the south, Captain M‘Clintock proceeded to examine the shores of Dease and Simpson Straits, and the southern shore of King William Land.

Near Cape Herschel, the Captain’s party found a human skeleton upon the beach as the man had fallen down and died, with his face to the ground; and a pocket-book, containing letters in German which have not yet been deciphered, was found close by.

The large cairn, originally built by Simpson, at Cape Herschel, had been pulled down, probably by the natives, and if any record or document had ever been placed therein by Franklin’s people, they were now lost, for none could be found within or around the cairn. Passing Cape Herschel, Captain M‘Clintock travelled along the hitherto unknown shore, and discovered it to extend out as far as the meridian of 100° West. There all traces of the natives ceased,[31] and it appeared as if they had not for many years lived or hunted beyond that point which was named Cape Crozier (after Captain Crozier, Franklin’s second in command).

The land then trended to the north-eastward, and about twenty miles from Cape Crozier, M‘Clintock found a boat, which had only a few days previously been examined by Hobson from the north, and in it a note left by Hobson to say that he had discovered the records of the Erebus and Terror, and after travelling nearly to Cape Herschel without finding further traces, had returned towards the Fox. Captain M‘Clintock, from the south, had now connected his discoveries with those of Lieutenant Hobson, to whose very successful journey we will now turn.

Parting from the Captain at Cape Victoria, Hobson crossed to Cape Felix, and near that point he found a cairn, around which were quantities of clothing, blankets, and other indications of Franklin’s people having visited that spot, and probably formed a depôt there, in the event of their abandoning their ships. Anxiously searching among these interesting relics without finding any record, Hobson continued along the shore to Cape Victoria, where, on May 6, he discovered a large cairn, and in it the first authentic account ever obtained of the history of the lost expedition. It was to the following effect:—That the Erebus and Terror had ascended Wellington Channel to latitude 77° north, and had returned west of Cornwallis Island to Beechey Island, where they spent their first winter, 1845-46. Sailing thence in the following season, they were beset, on September 12, 1846, in latitude 70° 5′ north, longitude 98° 23′ west. Sir John Franklin died on June 11, 1847; and on the 22nd of April, 1848, having, up to that date, lost by death nine officers and fifteen men, both ships were abandoned in the ice, five leagues north north-west of Point Victory. The survivors, 106 in number, had landed, under the command of Captain Crozier, on the 25th April, at Point Victory, and would start on the morrow (April 26) for the Great Fish River. Another record was also found, stating that previously, on the 24th May, 1847, Lieutenant Grahame Gore and Mr. Charles DesVœux, mate, had landed from the ship, with a party of six men. The record did not state for what reason they had landed; but from the number who finally abandoned the ships, this party must have returned on board, and it is probable that they merely landed to examine the coast.

Quantities of clothing, cooking, and working implements were scattered about near Point Victory, and a sextant, on which was engraved the name of Frederick Hornby, was found among the débris. Collecting a few of the most interesting of these relics to take with him upon his return, Hobson then pushed on to the southward, and when near Cape Crozier he discovered the boat above mentioned, by a small stanchion just showing up above the snow. Clearing away the snow, he found in the bottom of the boat two human skeletons, one of which was under a heap of clothing. There were also watches, chronometers, silver spoons, money, &c., besides a number of Bibles, prayer and other religious books; and although one of the Bibles was underlined in almost every verse, yet not a single writing was found to throw further light upon the history of the retreating parties. There were two guns, one barrel of each being loaded and cocked, as if these poor fellows had been anxiously longing for a passing bear or fox to save them from starving; for nothing edible was found, save some chocolate and tea, neither of which could support life in such a climate. Lieutenant Hobson, having searched the coast beyond Cape Crozier, returned to the ship on June 14, in a very exhausted state. He had been suffering severely from scurvy, and was so reduced in strength that he could not stand. He had been for more than forty days upon his sledge, carried in and out of the tent by his brave companions, and his sufferings must have been beyond description. Throughout his journey he had only killed one bear and a few ptarmigan.

Captain M‘Clintock returned on board the Fox on June 19, having been absent eighty days. He brought with him a number of relics, and had minutely examined every cairn and the whole coast of King William. He supposes that the wreck of the ship, unless upon some off-lying island, has been run over by the ice, and has disappeared; as he saw nothing of it. He made most valuable discoveries in geography, and surveyed the coast from Bellot Straits to the magnetic pole, besides having travelled completely round King William Island, and filled up its unknown coasts. Besides his other instruments, he carried with him a dip circle, weighing 40 lbs., with which he also made most valuable observations.

Young had crossed Victoria Straits (now Franklin Straits), discovered M‘Clintock Channel, and proved Prince of Wales Land to be an island; having reached the point which Captain Sherard Osborn came to from the north. Owing to the very heavy character of the ice, he had failed in crossing M‘Clintock Channel, and returned to the ship on June 8, for a day or two’s rest. He had again started, on June 10, to recross Victoria Straits, and to complete the search to the northward upon Prince of Wales Land, and the unknown land of North Somerset, and was now absent; and although the ice was fast breaking up, and the floes already knee-deep with water, Captain M‘Clintock, notwithstanding his late severe journey, fearing that something might be wrong, most kindly started immediately, with only one man and a dog-sledge, to look for him. He found Young perched up out of the water upon the top of the islet, off Cape Bird, and they returned together to the ship on June 28. We were now all on board, and once more together. We were in fair health, although some of us were a little touched with scurvy. We passed our time in shooting, eating, and sleeping, and then eating again: our craving for fresh food, or, as the sailors call it, blood-meat, was excessive; seal and bear flesh, foxes, gulls, or ducks, went indiscriminately into the pot. We rejoiced whenever we got a fresh mess of any sort.

The summer burst upon us; water was pouring down all the ravines, and flooding the ice in the harbour, and with extreme satisfaction we saw the snow houses and ice hummocks fast melting away in the now never-setting sun. A joyous feeling existed throughout the ship, for our work was done, and we had only to look forward to an early release, and a return to our families and homes.

Over and over again we told our adventures, and we never tired of listening to the one all-absorbing, though melancholy subject, of the discovery of the fate of Sir John Franklin and his companions.

We had been prepared by the report brought from the Esquimaux in February to find that all hopes of survivors were at an end, and that the expedition had met with some fatal and overwhelming casualty; but we were scarcely prepared to know, nor could we even have realized the manner, in which they spent their last days upon earth, so fearful a sojourn must it have been. Beset and surrounded with wastes of snow and ice, they passed two more terrible winters drifting slowly to the southward at the rate of one mile in the month, hoping each summer that the ice would open, and determined not to abandon their ships until every hope was gone. In nineteen months they had only moved some eighteen miles, their provisions daily lessening, and their strength fast failing. They had at last left their ships for the Fish River at least two months before the river could break up and allow them to proceed, and in the then imperfect knowledge of ice travelling they could not have carried with them more than forty days’ provisions. Exhausted by scurvy and starvation, “they dropped as they walked along,”[32] and those few who reached Montreal Island must all have perished there; and but for their having travelled over the frozen sea we should have found the remains of these gallant men as they fell by the way, and but for the land being covered deeply with snow, more relics of those who had struggled to the beach to die would have been seen. They all perished, and, in dying in the cause of their country, their dearest consolation must have been to feel that Englishmen would not rest until they had followed up their footsteps, and had given to the world what they could not then give—the grand result of their dreadful voyage—their Discovery of the North-West Passage. They had sailed down Peel and Victoria Straits, now appropriately named Franklin Straits, and the poor human skeletons lying upon the shores of the waters in which Dease and Simpson had sailed from the westward bore melancholy evidence of their success.

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By the middle of July the dark blue stream rolled again through Bellot Straits, but yet not a drop of water could be seen in Regent Inlet. Our ship was refitted, the stores all on board, and we were quite prepared for sea. Our engineers were both lost to us, but the Captain soon got the engines into working order, and determined to drive them himself, for without steam we could reckon upon nothing.

July passed away, and during the first week in August we could still see one unbroken surface of ice in Regent Inlet; from the highest hill not a spoonful of water could be made out. We were getting rather anxious, for had we been detained another winter, we must have abandoned the ship in the following spring and trusted to our fortunes over the ice. However, a gale of wind on the 7th and 8th of August caused some disruption in the inlet, for on the morning of the 9th a report came down from the hills that a lead of water was seen under the land to the northward. Steam was immediately made, and pushing close past the islands, we were enabled to work up the coast in a narrow lane of water between it and the pack.

We reached the north side of Creswell Bay on the following day, but, the wind changing, we saw the pack setting rapidly in upon the land, and it had already closed upon Fury Beach. Our only chance was now to seek a grounded mass of ice, and to hang on to it. We were indeed glad to get a little rest, and especially for our captain, who had not left the engines for twenty-four hours. But we lay in a most exposed position on an open coast without an indentation, the pack closing in rapidly before the wind and threatening us with the same fate as befell the Fury when she was driven on the shore about seven miles from our present position. Hanging on to this piece of ice with every hawser, we saw it gradually melting and breaking away, and at spring tides it began to float. On the 15th the gale shifted to the westward, and blew off the land; we watched the ice gradually easing off, and directly that we had room, we cast off under storm-sails, and succeeded in getting out of Regent Inlet and into Lancaster Sound on the following day. We entered Godhavn, in Greenland, on the night of August 26, and not having heard from our friends for more than two years, we did not even wait for daylight for our expected letters. The authorities on shore kindly sent all they had for us at once to the ship, and I suppose that letters from home were never opened with more anxiety.

Having a few repairs to do, especially to our rudder, which, with the spare one, had been smashed by the ice, we remained a day or two to patch it up for the passage home. Then leaving Godhavn on the 1st September, although the nights were extremely dark, and the weather stormy, with many bergs drifting about, we passed down Davis Strait without incident, and, rounding Cape Farewell on the 13th, we ran across the Atlantic with strong, fair winds. Captain M‘Clintock landed at the Isle of Wight on the 20th, and on the 23rd the Fox entered the docks at Blackwall.

Our happy cruise was at an end, and by the mercy of Providence we were permitted to land again in England.

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ON A LAZY IDLE BOY.

I had occasion to pass a week in the autumn in the little old town of Coire or Chur, in the Grisons, where lies buried that very ancient British king, saint, and martyr, Lucius,[33] who founded the Church of St. Peter, which stands opposite the house No. 65, Cornhill. Few people note the church now-a-days, and fewer ever heard of the saint. In the cathedral at Chur, his statue appears surrounded by other sainted persons of his family. With tight red breeches, a Roman habit, a curly brown beard, and a neat little gilt crown and sceptre, he stands, a very comely and cheerful image: and, from what I may call his peculiar position with regard to No. 65, Cornhill, I beheld this figure of St. Lucius with more interest than I should have bestowed upon personages who, hierarchically, are, I daresay, his superiors.

The pretty little city stands, so to speak, at the end of the world—of the world of to-day, the world of rapid motion, and rushing railways, and the commerce and intercourse of men. From the northern gate, the iron road stretches away to Zürich, to Basel, to Paris, to home. From the old southern barriers, before which a little river rushes, and around which stretch the crumbling battlements of the ancient town, the road bears the slow diligence or lagging vetturino by the shallow Rhine, through the awful gorges of the Via Mala, and presently over the Splügen to the shores of Como.

I have seldom seen a place more quaint, pretty, calm, and pastoral, than this remote little Chur. What need have the inhabitants for walls and ramparts, except to build summer-houses, to trail vines, and hang clothes to dry? No enemies approach the great mouldering gates: only at morn and even, the cows come lowing past them, the village maidens chatter merrily round the fountains, and babble like the ever-voluble stream that flows under the old walls. The schoolboys, with book and satchel, in smart uniforms, march up to the gymnasium, and return thence at their stated time. There is one coffee-house in the town, and I see one old gentleman goes to it. There are shops with no customers seemingly, and the lazy tradesmen look out of their little windows at the single stranger sauntering by. There is a stall with baskets of queer little black grapes and apples, and a pretty brisk trade with half a dozen urchins standing round. But, beyond this, there is scarce any talk or movement in the street. There’s nobody at the book-shop. “If you will have the goodness to come again in an hour,” says the banker, with his mouthful of dinner at one o’clock, “you can have the money.” There is nobody at the hotel, save the good landlady, the kind waiters, the brisk young cook who ministers to you. Nobody is in the Protestant church—(oh! strange sight, the two confessions are here at peace!)—nobody in the Catholic church: until the sacristan, from his snug abode in the cathedral close, espies the traveller eyeing the monsters and pillars before the old shark-toothed arch of his cathedral, and comes out (with a view to remuneration possibly) and opens the gate, and shows you the venerable church, and the queer old relics in the sacristy, and the ancient vestments (a black velvet cope, amongst other robes, as fresh as yesterday, and presented by that notorious “pervert,” Henry of Navarre and France), and the statue of St. Lucius, who built St. Peter’s Church, opposite No. 65, Cornhill.

What a quiet, kind, quaint, pleasant, pretty old town! Has it been asleep these hundreds and hundreds of years, and is the brisk young Prince of the Sidereal Realms in his screaming car drawn by his snorting steel elephant coming to waken it? Time was when there must have been life and bustle and commerce here. Those vast, venerable walls were not made to keep out cows, but men-at-arms led by fierce captains, who prowled about the gates, and robbed the traders us they passed in and out with their bales, their goods, their pack-horses, and their wains. Is the place so dead that even the clergy of the different denominations can’t quarrel? Why, seven or eight, or a dozen, or fifteen hundred years ago (they haven’t the register, over the way, up to that remote period. I daresay it was burnt in the fire of London)—a dozen hundred years ago, when there was some life in the town, St. Lucius was stoned here on account of theological differences, after founding our church in Cornhill.

There was a sweet pretty river walk we used to take in the evening, and mark the mountains round glooming with a deeper purple; the shades creeping up the golden walls; the river brawling, the cattle calling, the maids and chatterboxes round the fountains babbling and bawling; and several times in the course of our sober walks, we overtook a lazy slouching boy, or hobbledehoy, with a rusty coat, and trousers not too long, and big feet trailing lazily one after the other, and large lazy hands dawdling from out the tight sleeves, and in the lazy hands a little book, which my lad held up to his face, and which I daresay so charmed and ravished him, that he was blind to the beautiful sights around him; unmindful, I would venture to lay any wager, of the lessons he had to learn for to-morrow; forgetful of mother waiting supper, and father preparing a scolding;—absorbed utterly and entirely in his book.

What was it that so fascinated the young student, as he stood by the river shore? Not the Pons Asinorum. What book so delighted him, and blinded him to all the rest of the world, so that he did not care to see the apple-woman with her fruit, or (more tempting still to sons of Eve) the pretty girls with their apple cheeks, who laughed and prattled round the fountain? What was the book? Do you suppose it was Livy, or the Greek grammar? No; it was a Novel that you were reading, you lazy, not very clean, good-for-nothing, sensible boy! It was D’Artagnan locking up General Monk in a box, or almost succeeding in keeping Charles the First’s head on. It was the prisoner of the Château d’If cutting himself out of the sack fifty feet under water (I mention the novels I like best myself—novels without love or talking, or any of that sort of nonsense, but containing plenty of fighting, escaping, robbery, and rescuing)—cutting himself out of the sack, and swimming to the Island of Montecristo. O Dumas! O thou brave, kind, gallant old Alexandre! I hereby offer thee homage, and give thee thanks for many pleasant hours. I have read thee (being sick in bed) for thirteen hours of a happy day, and had the ladies of the house fighting for the volumes. Be assured that lazy boy was reading Dumas (or I will go so far as to let the reader here pronounce the eulogium, or insert the name of his favourite author); and as for the anger, or it may be, the reverberations of his schoolmaster, or the remonstrances of his father, or the tender pleadings of his mother that he should not let the supper grow cold—I don’t believe the scapegrace cared one fig. No! Figs are sweet, but fictions are sweeter.

Have you ever seen a score of white-bearded, white-robed warriors, or grave seniors of the city, seated at the gate of Jaffa or Beyrout, and listening to the story-teller reciting his marvels out of Antar or the Arabian Nights? I was once present when a young gentleman at table put a tart away from him, and said to his neighbour, the Younger Son (with rather a fatuous air), “I never eat sweets.”

“Not eat sweets! and do you know why?” says T.

“Because I am past that kind of thing,” says the young gentleman.

“Because you are a glutton and a sot!” cries the elder (and Juvenis winces a little). “All people who have natural, healthy appetites, love sweets; all children, all women, all Eastern people, whose tastes are not corrupted by gluttony and strong drink.” And a plateful of raspberries and cream disappeared before the philosopher.

You take the allegory? Novels are sweets. All people with healthy literary appetites love them—almost all women;—a vast number of clever, hard-headed men. Why, one of the most learned physicians in England said to me only yesterday, “I have just read So-and-So for the second time” (naming one of Jones’s exquisite fictions). Judges, bishops, chancellors, mathematicians are notorious novel readers; as well as young boys and sweet girls, and their kind, tender mothers. Who has not read about Eldon, and how he cried over novels every night when he was not at whist?

As for that lazy naughty boy at Chur, I doubt whether he will like novels when he is thirty years of age. He is taking too great a glut of them now. He is eating jelly until he will be sick. He will know most plots by the time he is twenty, so that he will never be surprised when the Stranger turns out to be the rightful earl,—when the old waterman, throwing off his beggarly gabardine, shows his stars and the collars of his various orders, and clasping Antonia to his bosom, proves himself to be the prince, her long-lost father. He will recognize the novelists’ same characters, though they appear in red-heeled pumps and ailes-de-pigeon, or the garb of the nineteenth century. He will get weary of sweets, as boys of private schools grow (or used to grow, for I have done growing some little time myself, and the practice may have ended too)—as private schoolboys used to grow tired of the pudding before their mutton at dinner.

And pray what is the moral of this apologue? The moral I take to be this: the appetite for novels extending to the end of the world;—far away in the frozen deep, the sailors reading them to one another during the endless night;—far away under the Syrian stars, the solemn sheikhs and elders hearkening to the poet as he recites his tales;—far away in the Indian camps, where the soldiers listen to ——’s tales, or ——’s, after the hot day’s march;—far away in little Chur yonder, where the lazy boy pores over the fond volume, and drinks it in with all his eyes;—the demand being what we know it is, the merchant must supply it, as he will supply saddles and pale ale for Bombay or Calcutta.

But as surely as the cadet drinks too much pale ale, it will disagree with him; and so surely, dear youth, will too much novels cloy on thee. I wonder, do novel writers themselves read many novels? If you go into Gunter’s, you don’t see those charming young ladies (to whom I present my most respectful compliments) eating tarts and ices, but at the proper evening-tide they have good plain wholesome tea and bread-and-butter. Can anybody tell me does the author of the Tale of two Cities read novels? does the author of the Tower of London devour romances? does the dashing Harry Lorrequer delight in Plain or Ringlets or Sponge’s Sporting Tour? Does the veteran, from whose flowing pen we had the books which delighted our young days, Darnley, and Richelieu, and Delorme[34] relish the works of Alexandre the Great, and thrill over the Three Musqueteers? Does the accomplished author of the Caxtons read the other tales in Blackwood? (For example, that ghost-story printed last August, and which for my part, though I read it in the public reading-room at the Pavilion Hotel at Folkestone, I protest frightened me so that I scarce dared look over my shoulder.) Does Uncle Tom admire Adam Bede; and does the author of the Vicar of Wrexhill laugh over the Warden and the Three Clerks? Dear youth of ingenuous countenance and ingenuous pudor! I make no doubt that the eminent parties above named all partake of novels in moderation—eat jellies—but mainly nourish themselves upon wholesome roast and boiled.

Here, dear youth aforesaid! our Cornhill Magazine owners strive to provide thee with facts as well as fiction; and though it does not become them to brag of their Ordinary, at least they invite thee to a table where thou shall sit in good company. That story of the Fox was written by one of the gallant seamen who sought for poor Franklin under the awful Arctic Night: that account of China is told by the man of all the empire most likely to know of what he speaks: those pages regarding Volunteers come from an honoured hand that has borne the sword in a hundred famous fields, and pointed the British guns in the greatest siege in the world.

Shall we point out others? We are fellow-travellers, and shall make acquaintance as the voyage proceeds. In the Atlantic steamers, on the first day out (and on high and holidays subsequently), the jellies set down on table are richly ornamented; medioque in fonte leporum rise the American and British flags nobly emblazoned in tin. As the passengers remark this pleasing phenomenon, the Captain no doubt improves the occasion by expressing a hope, to his right and left, that the flag of Mr. Bull and his younger Brother may always float side by side in friendly emulation. Novels having been previously compared to jellies—here are two (one perhaps not entirely saccharine, and flavoured with an amari aliquid very distasteful to some palates)—two novels under two flags, the one that ancient ensign which has hung before the well-known booth of Vanity Fair; the other that fresh and handsome standard which has lately been hoisted on Barchester Towers. Pray, sir, or madam, to which dish will you be helped?

So have I seen my friends Captain Lang and Captain Comstock press their guests to partake of the fare on that memorable “First day out,” when there is no man, I think, who sits down but asks a blessing on his voyage, and the good ship dips over the bar, and bounds away into the blue water.

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