\ Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015 https://archive.org/details/cartesdevisiteOOwynt ! December i, 1869 Frontispiece to Good Wohd i fot \ *' Jvrst) too vis aw toovili nutclt ;tni vest little.”- gjuitvi. ARTHUR HUGHES, F. A. FRASER, JOHN LEIGHTON, J. MAHONE1 FRANCIS WALKER, T. GREEN, AND OTHERS STRAHAN & CO., MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS 56, LUDGATE HILL, LONDON Good Words, Dec. x, 1869.] INDEX. v INDEX. PAGE Aerial Blue, On the Colour of. By Sir George Hairey, Pres. R.S.A. : . . .620 America, Impressions of. By W. Forsyth, Q.C. . . . 213 Blind Inventor, A. By the Rev. B. G. Johns .... 466 Breaths, The Two, A Lecture to Ladies. By the Rev. Charles Kingsley . . . . . 498 Christmas Carols. By L. IT. . 851 Debenham’s Vow. By Amelia B. Edwards, Author of “Barbara’s History ” — Chap. I. At Hildegarde the Martyr . . 1 II. A Day’s Work . 8 III. A Pair of Friends . 11 IV. The Hardwickes . 14 V. The Party at Stra- thellan House . 15 VI. Miss Hardwicke . 81 VII. At Flome in Canon- bury . . .84 VIII. On the ~Wye . . 87 IX. In the Porch . . 90 , X. Mr. Alleyne . . 92 'XI. Musical andAisthe- tic . . . 153 XII. “ For the First Time” ■ . . 156 ' XIII. The Church among the Hills . . 158 XIV. The Vox Humana 160 XV. Archie Disappears 164 XVI. The Tryst by the River . . . 165 XVII. What Debenham found at the Post- office . . . 233 XVIII. Mrs. Debenham’s Letter . . 235 XIX. Benhampton . .237 XX. The Tablet in the Church . . 238 XXI. Cost what it May 242 XXII. Money v> Fame . 246 XXIII. “ He Loves and he Rides Away ” . 305 XXIV. The First Plunge . 309 XXV. By Land and Sea . 313 XXVI. De Benham makes himself Master of the Situation .316 , XXVII. Philistines and Fig- trees . . .377 XXVIII. Past and Present . 378 XXIX. Had she Forgotten ? 381 XXX. Brother and Sister at Home . . 384 XXXI. The Rising of the Tide . . .387- XXXII. Mr. Hardwicke’s Temptation . 388 XXXIII. The Stormy Petrel 391 XXXIV. “The. Athens of Pericles ” . . 449 , XXXV. Running the Block- aae . . .451 XXXVI. The First Nugget . 453 XXXVII. Not a Bad Bargain 455 XXXVIII. Lord Stockbridge . 458 XXXIX. Senator Shirley speeds the Part- ing Guest . . 462 XL. Letters from Home 521 XLI. How theWorld went Round . . 524 ,XLII. The Sabina meets the Stormy Petrel 527 XLIII. Perils on Shore . 531 <2 PAGE Chap.XLIV. The Fortune of War 593 XLV. In Durance Vile . 597 XLVI. The Case of Ma- deira . . . 599 XLVII. The Perils and Dan- gers of the Deep . 604 XLVIII. “ Home, Sweet Home” . . 665 XLIX. A Passage of Arms 668 L. In the Library . 672 LI. A Business Inter- view . . . 676 LII. A House of Mourn- ing . . . 679 LIII. How Archie walked into it . . . 737 LIV. A Waif from the Far West . . 740 LV. AMomentousQues- tion . 742 LVI. Miss Hardwicke’s Offers ... . 747 LVII. The Sooner the Bet- ter . . . 752 LVIII. De Benham makes his Will . . 754 LIX. Something Mys- terious . . . 809 LX. An Invalid’s Whim 813 LXI. Ante-Nuptial . . 815 LXII. A Marriage in High Life . . .818 LXIII. Man and Wife . 822 LXIV. Lady de Benham assumes the Du- ties ofher Position 824 LXV. At the Hotel Tete de Boeuf . . 827 LXVI. Nigh unto Death . 830 LXVII. Too Late . . 833 ITeroes of Hebrew History. By the Bishop of Oxford — I. Elijah . . . . .59 II. Elisha ..... 122 . III. Micaiah,the Son of Imla . 208 IV. The Man of God who came out of Judah . 289 V. Abraham . ... • 337 VI. Jacob . . . ' . 402 VII. Joseph • 505 VIII. Moses . 626 IX. Joshua . 714 X. Samson the Judge • 785 XI. Samuel the Prophet . . 863 House-hunting. By E. A. Helps 764 Hudson’s Bay Company, The. By William Forsyth, Q.C. . 358, 394 Huss Festival at Prague, The. By W. R. S. Ralston . . .839 Iona. By the Duke of Argyll 535? 614, 708 Jerusalem, The History of the Fall of, as Illustrative of the Evi- dences for the Truth of Christi- anity. By the Archbishop of Canterbury .... 188 Laughter : A Contribution to the Morals of the Subject. By the Hon. and Rev. W. H. Lyttel- ton 482 Musical Pitch Question, The. By John Hullah .... 266 Noblesse Oblige An English Story of To-day. By the Author of “ Citoyenne Jacqueline ” — Chap. I. Town and Castle . 66 II. Phoebe’s Walk to the Castle . . 69 III . Lady Dorothea’s Boudoir . . 71 PAGE Chap. IV. The Latimer Family 78 V. Barty Woolermakes a Suggestion . 140 VI. Mrs. Wooler re- ceives her Guests . 144 VII. After Tea . . 147 VIII. The Walk toWooers’ Alley . . .222 IX. In the Painting- Room . . . 223 X. Surpiised and Mys- tified . . . 226 XI. Lord Wriothesley at Home . . . 295 XII. “ A Bold Step and Blunt ” . . 297 XIII. A DisagreeableDuty 299 XIV. A Love Tale . . 301 XV. “As Others See us ” ... . 303 XVI. The Cloud disperses 365 XVII. An Unexpected Plea- sure . . . 367 XVIII. Wellfield in its Glory . . . 173 XIX. On the Course . 439 XX. Lord Wriothesley’s Colours . . 442 XXI. Conscience-stricken 444 XXII. Not to be Beaten . 446 XXIII. Phoebe makes her Debut . . .512 XXIV.- The Tableaux Vi- vants . . . 516 XXV. Lady Louisa’s Con- fidences . .518 XXVI. A Dilemma . . 520 XXVII. A Drawback . . 581 XXVIII. Inopportune . . 583 XXIX. Gossip and More . 585 • XXX. A Lull . . .58 7 XXXI. Lord Wriothesley’s Appeal . ' . 589 XXXII. Friends speak their Minds . . 591 XXXIII. A Dawning Suspi- cion . . . 650 XXXIV. Mrs. Paston reviews the Situation . 652 XXXV. Notes of Warning . 655 XXXVI. A Surprise . . 658 XXXVII. Another Ordeal . 660 XXXVIII. A Family Confe- rence . . .721 XXXIX. Trials on the Way . 722 XL. A Confidence . 724 XLI. “ Follows Him like his Shadow” . . 727 XLII. Delicate Commis- sions . . . 730 XLIII. A Friend in Need . 732 XLIV. “Dust to Dust” . 735 XLV. A Change of Scene 793 XLVI. Under her Cross . 794 XLVII. In Folksb ridge . 795 XLVIII. Glimpses of Rest . 798 XLIX. Foreshadowings . 799 L. Change upon Change . . . 805 LI. A Feather in Barty ’s Cap . . . 806 LII. A Sudden Summons 870 All. A Heavy Heart makes a Long Road . . . 872 LIV. A Beaten Man . 873 LV. The True Elixir . 876 LVI. “ Throwing Herself Away” . . 880 LVII. Mrs. Wooler’s Am- bition . . . 880 LVIII. Forty-six . and Twenty-six . 884 vi INDEX. [Good Words, Dec. i, 1869, PAGE Pain, The Man who couldn’t Feel : a Legend of the Harz Moun- tains. By William Gilbert .' 53 Pamphlets for the People. By the Dean of Canterbury — I. The Wants of Man in the Matter of Religion . . 18 II. The Reasonableness of the Christian Life . . 108 III. Mosaism and Christianity 274 IV. Right Views of Life . . 430 V. Romanism and Protes- tantism .... 563 VI. Things which need to be Reformed . . . 770 Peeps at the Far Last. By the Editor — I. Outward Bound . . .22 II. First Impressions of Bom- bay 94 III. Bombay — Poona . 1 . 178 IV. Colgaum — The Caves of Karli — Return to Bom- bay 249 V. From Bombay to Madras . 324 VI. Missions in South India — Conjeveram . . . 407 VII. Vellore and Bangalore . 550 VIII. In Madras . . . .640 PAGE Agnes Jones, Epitaph on. By the Bishop of Derry .... 769 Captain’s Wife, The. By Florence Fields 64 Carmina Nuptialia. By Gerald Massey .... 624, 686 Choice : a Dramatic Sketch. By the Author of “ Lady Grace ” . 424 Girl’s Faith, A. By L. C. S. . 870 Good and Bad. By the Rev. Philip Hale 128 Hapless Love. By William Morris 264 PAGE IX. Calcutta .... 689 X. Calcutta ( continued) . . 776 XI. Calcutta ( continued ) . . 855 Perceiving without Seeing : A Romance in Astronomy. By the Rev. Charles Pritchard, late President of the Royal Astrono- mical Society . . . *45 Raja Brooke, The Last Days of . 572 Short Essays. By the Author of “Friends in Council” 114, 202, 281, 3i9, 434, 545, 634, 082 Speech, The Christian Rule of. By A. P. Stanley, D.D., Dean of Westminster .... 578 Stars and Lights ; or, The Struc- ture of the Sidereal Heavens. By the Rev. C. Pritchard, late Pre- sident of the Royal Astronomi- cal Society — Chap. I. The Education of the Discoverer . . 353 II. The First Discovery . 356 III. The Discovery of the Georgium Sidus . 418 IV. Recognition and Eman- cipation . . . 421 POETRY. PAGE Holyhead Breakwater. ByMenella B. Smedley . . . .783 Love maketh Fair. By the Rev. John S. B. Monsell, LL.D. . 563 Machaerus, A Burial at. By the Rev. E. H. Plumptre . . . 351 Music. By G. A. Simcox . . 112 Old Manor-house, The. By Ada Cambridge 847 Palms, Under the. By L. C. S. . 200 Passing Pleasures. ByA.L.Waring 401 Poor People. (From Victor Hugo.) By L. C. S 278 PAGE V. The Arrival of Hers- chel’s Faithful As- sistant . . . 609 Thrift : A Lecture to Ladies. By the Rev. Charles Kingsley . 343 Toiling and Moiling: Some Ac- count of our Working People, and how they Live. By “ Good Words ” Commissioner — I. The Merthyr Iron-Worker 35 II. The Connaught Cotter . 129 III. The Staffordshire Potter . 168 IV. The Buckinghamshire La- bourer .... 489 V. The Banffshire Fisherman 699 VI. The Northampton Shoe- maker .... 758 Workhouse Girl, The. By Mrs. de Morgan 284 Young Men, The Self-Education of : A Village Sermon. By the Rev. Charles Kingsley . . 138 Youngest Colonel in the Service, The : A Memorial of Alexander Roberts Dunn, V.C. By the Rev. Patrick Beaton . . . 470 PAGE Sailor Boy, The. By one of the Authors of “Child-World ” . 480 Sonnets, Four. By Jean Ingelow 176 Spring, The Spirit of the. By Ed- ward Capern .... 273 Spring Flowers. By D. Laing Purves 120 War, A Ballad of. By Menella B. Smedley 32 Way, The. By B. B. B. . 496 Widow and the Priest, The. By the late Robert Leighton . . 543 Wife’s Wonder, A. ByL. C.S. .870 ILLUSTRATIONS. Debenham’s Vow. Illustrations . Peeps at the Far East. Sixty- one Illustrations. . A Ballad of War. Three Illus- trations The Merthyr Iron -Worker. Seven Illustrations .... The Captain’s Wife “ Noblesse Oblige.” Thirty-five Illustrations .... PAGE " Frontispiece 1, 9, I 3i 81, 89, 9i, 153, 158, 161, 233, 234, 241, 305, Thirty -five ) r * r 312, 316,377, \F.A. Fraser i 385, 390, 449, 45i,457, 5 2 L 528, 593, 594, 601, 665, 672, 6 73, 737, 742, 745, 809, 817 "22, 24, 25,96, 97, 104, 105, 184, 185, 249, 250, 256^ 257, 259, 261, 264, 327, 328, 329, 330, 332, 333, 334, 408, 409, 416, 417, 55 1 , 552, 556, 560, 561, 641, 648, 689, 696, 697, -777, 856, 857 From ", Photographs F. A . Fraser 7‘. Dalziel • 32, 33, 34 f 36, 37, 38, 40, ( 4i, 42, 43 • 65 f66, 7i, 73, 140, 144, 149, 222, 224, 226, 295, 297, 30i, „ . „ 365, 368, 439, Jr. A. Fraser 440, 442, 512, ' 5i3, 581, 584, 587, 650, 656, 661, 721, 728, 729, 793, 800, ,806, 870, 872 Music. Two Illustrations . Spring Flowers .... The Connaught Cotter. Nine ) Illustrations . . . . ) The Staffordshire Potter. Five ) Illustrations . . . . ) Four Sonnets. Four Illustrations j Under the Palms. Two Illustra- ) tions J The Spirit of the Spring Poor People .... A Buoial at Machaerus Passing Pleasures , Choice . . . S . Colonel A. R. Dunn . . The Sailor Boy .... The Way j Iona. Five Illustrations The Widow and the Priest . The Last Days ®f Raja Brooke. ) Two Illustrations . . . ] Carmina Nuptialia. Two Illus- ) trations j The Northampton Shoemaker. \ Three Illustrations . . ) House-hunting. Two Illustra- tions Epitaph on Agnes Jones . Holyhead Breakwater The Huss Festival at Prague. Three Illustrations The Old Manor-house PAGE 7’. Dalziel . . 112, 113 E. C. Dalziel . . 121 Eras. Walker . j 12g > x 3 6 » J. Mahoney . j ^ \]°^ T. Dalziel ) A E. C. Dalziel) ' I/6 > 177 T. Snlman . . 200, 201 F. A. Fraser .273 F. A. Fraser . .280 Fras. Walker . . 352 T. Snlman . . . 401 F. A. Fraser . . 424 From a Photograph . 472 F. A. Fraser . . 4S1 E. C. Dalziel ) , H. Herkomer ) 49 , 497 Duke of Argyll j gp^ 1 ^ T. Green . ’ . 544 From Photographs 576,577 Arthur Hughes .625,688 7 • Mahoney . 760, 761 ► 7 ■ Barnard . 764, 768 7 . Leighton . . 769 Fras. Walker . . 784 ■ From Photographs 840, 841 W: Small . . . 849 DEBENHAM’S VOW. By AMELIA B. EDWARDS, Author of “ Barbara’s History.” twilight. Neither spoke. In the house all was silent. There were no drovers at the tap, no wayfarers in the parlour, no wheels upon the road. The coach has passed long since, bringing neither passengers nor let- ters ; and save a monotonous dull sound of wood-chopping in some yard close by, and now and then the bark of a sheep-dog far away, no token of life was audible about the place. It was a low, large room, fronting west; the ceiling intersected by one heavy, black beam ; the window lozenge-paned ; the floor sunken and uneven. A four-post bedstead, from which the hangings had been removed, stood in one corner, and near it a smaller bed for the child. A few varnished prints in black frames hung over the mantelpiece. A dilapi- dated easy-chair, a huge Elizabethan chest with ponderous clasps and handles, a small square of faded carpet in the middle of the floor, some rush-bottomed chairs and a rickety Pembroke table, made up the total of the furniture. Poor as it was — and it could not well be poorer — this lodging might by no means be classed with “ the worst inn’s worst room.” The remoter Welsh hostelries are sufficiently comfortless to this day, but ______ j ^ they lagged still farther in the rear of English big arm-chair beside the half-opened window, progress some twenty or thirty years ago. A watching the changing mists and thickening ! landlord who stammered a dozen words of cessant drifting as she listening his every of some FKUJLOGUE A.D. IO42. N a tiny way- side inn at the head of one of the wildest passes of the Snowdon range, a tra- veller lay dying. An in- valid on his first arrival there some six or eight weeks before, he had been slowly fading ever since ; and now, towards jjjfjPlD dusk, to the low wailing of ^0* the wind, and the soft in- patter of the rain, was passively away. His wife sat by his pillow, had been sitting since mid-day, in an agony of apprehension for ' breath. His child, a tall pale boy eiphf- vears of ncrp Da t rnilprl in a DEBENHAM’S VOW. [Good Words, Jan. 1, I860. Sassenach, a landlady acquainted with the properties of bohea, a bedroom which the traveller was not called upon to share with some stranger whose tongue was as unintel- ligible to him, and whose habits were as bar- barous, as those of a South _ Sea islander, were then people and conditions not only rare to find, but, in certain mountain districts, wholly unknown. The room, in short, was an exceptionally good room, and the inn an exceptionally good inn, as those times went ;. and the occupants thereof, being provided with the actual necessaries of life, had reason to be well satisfied. Something was there for grace, however, as well as for necessity — a large dish filled with wild flowers and mosses ; a few well-worn but richly bound books ; and an antique silver inkstand, elaborately chased. These, appa- rently, were the property of the travellers ; for the dish was of the rarest Gubbio ware, lustrous with gold and purple, and the book- plate in the book, and the lid of the inkstand, were engraved alike with a stately coat of arms. Theirs also were the boxes and port- manteaus piled together in a distant corner ; the garments hanging on the door ; the song- bird silent in his cage. To a practised observer, certain of these trifles might have told a whole history of well- born poverty and homeless wandering. Only the dwellers in tents carry their household gods from camp to camp. Such was the interior of the room, growing momently dimmer in the coming dusk. The scene without was scarcely less gloomy. It had been raining for several days without in- termission, and the water lay in troubled pools about the road and yard. The sky was low and leaden, and hung like a dense curtain over the mountains which here closed round in every direction, leaving only their lower slopes obscurely visible. The wind came and went with long sighs, like the breath of one in pain. A few last leaves fluttered shiver- ingly down now and then from the solitary ash tree at the door. In the air was a con- fused murmur, as of the rushing of many torrents ; and the barren, boulder-strewn flats which stretched away from the head of the pass to the brink of the little heron-haunted tarn some three-quarters of a mile farther up, were almost wholly under water. And all this time the rain poured on, beat- ing a monotonous measure on the roof of the inn, and dripping mournfully from the eaves above the sick man’s window. Presently, for the _ first time in several hours, he uttered a faint moan. It was little more than a sigh, and scarcely audible; but it thrilled both listeners like a trumpet call. The boy started to his feet, pale and shivering. The mother held' up a trembling finger. “ Hush !” she whispered. “ His lips move — he may speak.” They knew that he was dying. They knew also that hope was past. The doctor, who came all the way from Corwen, and was anxious to spare both his pony and his time, had dismissed himself the night before, bluntly declaring that the patient had not a dozen hours to live. But twenty hours had dragged by since then, and still with half-closed eyes and parted lips, and a pulse growing feebler with every passing minute, he lingered. Again he moaned. Again his lips stirred feebly. The boy crept to his mother’s knee. She, watching that white unconscious face with a passionate eagerness that might almost have called it back to life, wiped the damp brow, put aside the scattered locks, and waited breathlessly. Such a young face as it was, too, to have death written on it so legibly ! Prematurely worn, and lined, and grey; but still young, still handsome, still instinct with a sort of pathetic dignity that not even approaching death had power to efface. He was only thirty-three years of age, and had been sickly from boyhood. Disappointment, reverse of fortune, exile, privation, were alike familiar to him. Young as he was, he had suffered bit- terly; but the time for suffering was now almost gone by, and everlasting peace was at hand. “ If it were but one word — only one !” It was as though her supplication were answered. A faint shiver swept over the pallid face. The languid hand became sud- denly contracted. He looked up, and, not so much uttering the word as shaping it with his lips, asked for “water.” She gave it to him steadily, tearlessly. Her hand did not even tremble. And yet she had thought never to see those lips move or those eyes open again. Then she asked if he had slept. “Yes,” he murmured, faintly, “I have slept — and dreamed.” “ Dreamed, my dear love ? ” . He closed his eyes affirmatively. “ Of — of the old place,” he said. “Of Benhampton?” “ Ay — of Benhampton. I seemed to see it so plainly.” She looked in his face with a wan smile. ! ! Good Words, Jan. 1, 18C0.] DEBENHAM’S VOW. 3. ! “ Benhampton is but a name to me,” she said ; “ and yet I seem to see it plainly, too —when you speak of it.” He sighed, and relapsed, apparently, into unconsciousness. Blow like death he looked and lay ! How faint and far between was the coming of each feeble respiration ! The wife hung over him, daring neither to speak ! nor stir. The boy stood by, weeping silently, j And still the rain dripped, dripped, dripped ; from the eaves outside the window, like minute drops from a clepsydra, pitilessly | telling off the last moments of a life con- demned. He presently spoke again. “ You remember?” he whispered. “ I remember, Reginald.” “ In the chapel — at Benhampton — under the north window.” “Yes, dearest, yes.” He pressed her hand. His strength was ebbing fast, and his voice became each mo- ment less articulate. “Tell me — once more,” he faltered. “Do you forgive ? ” “ Forgive ! Oh, my dear love, what have I to forgive ?. Nothing — nothing — nothing !” He looked at her, and a strange light, as 1 1 of a smile in which the lips had no part, ! came upon his face like a glory. “ God bless you ! ” he said, brokenly. “ God bless you — wife and child !” The light faded ; the breath died away ; the clasped fingers fell apart. What next ? He must surely move, look up, speak again ! There was no change within the last few seconds ? Nothing was gone — nothing was hushed ? It could not be that his heart had ceased from beating ! Was it the dusk only, or had a cold grey tint stolen sud- denly upon his features like a veil ? Gracious heaven ! was this the end ? Was this death? Seized by a nameless terror, the child broke all at once into a passion of sobs. “Take me away!” he cried. “Oh, take me away ! ” But his mother, instead of taking him away, drew his head to her bosom, kissed him, wept over him, clung to him. He was her all, now. In the whole wide world she had nothing to love, nothing to hope for, nothing to rejoice in, to serve, to suffer for, but this one fragile, fatherless boy. She knelt down beside the bed, still hold- ing him fast locked within her arms, and prayed aloud— a poor, broken, artless sup- plication, which he, in his childish way, re- peated sentence by sentence. Then came those words, whose very cadence echoes with the sorrow of ages — “ Thy will be done.” “ Thy will be done!” Only four words; and yet what a history is theirs ! Alas ! what scars they cover ! What tears they conse- crate ! What broken hearts, and darkened lives, and ruined homes they grow over and sanctify, like sweet flowers over graves ! Can resignation, humility, fortitude, go farther than this ? What heroic phrase of all the olden time, what golden saying of patriot, philosopher, or poet, breathes such high courage ? What more has heaven to ask, or man to give ? CHAPTER I. — -ST. HILDEGARDE THE MARTYR. I Far east of Temple Bar, beyond St. Paul’s, beyond the Mansion House, beyond the Bank, beyond the uttermost landmark entered in Belgravian charts, stands, and has stood for nearly a thousand years, the ancient church of St. Hildegarde the Martyr. Buried deep in the heart of that intricate quarter where streets are narrowest, traffic densest, population scantiest, this tiny building is only remarkable in so far as it is one of the smallest churches in one of the smallest parishes of the City of London. Other fame or interest it has none. It is neither curious, nor beautiful, nor historical. It is enriched by no stately monuments, by no wealth of sculptured stone, carved oak, or painted glass. It is simply very small arid very old — a church without a congregation in a parish without inhabitants. So hidden is it in a network of byways, that one might pass daily within a dozen yards of St. Hildegarde the Martyr without so much as suspecting its existence. Huge warehouses hem it in on every side. Round and about it from dawn till dusk a sluggish, thunderous tide of heavy traffic ebbs and flows. One window, crusted with the grime of centuries, looks upon a narrow thoroughfare leading dock- wards ; the rest stare blankly into a court surrounded by stores and counting-houses, where in summer no sunbeam ever penetrates, and in winter the gas burns all day long. Through this court, by means of a passage tunnelled under the warehouses, the church j of St. Hildegarde is approached from the busy world without. A quaint, out-of-the- j way nook ; populous by day ; a desert when j business hours are past — now vibrating to The rush and roll of wheels, traversed by innumerable feet, and echoing to the discords of many voices — now wrapped in a Sabbath- like stillness ; every door locked, every win- ; i DEBENH AM’S VOW. [Good Words, Jan. 1. 1*59. 4 dow shuttered up, every clerk and porter gone. Entering it thus on a summer’s even- ing, when the sky is yet full of light, and the far-away parks are at their gayest, and the river close by is all alive with steamers, the solitude of the place has in it something both strange and solemn. It is as if one had come upon a city of the dead. On such a summer evening, in the pleasant month of June, in the year of our Lord i860, one of the church windows being partly open and the church door standing ajar, the little court, then at its stillest, was filled with an irregular sound of chanting — a sound as of hymns begun, broken off, repeated ; re- sponses continuously sung, and canticles from both services indiscriminately succeed- ing each other. This lasted for perhaps three- quarters of an hour. Then came a pause ; then a pattering and scrambling, as of little feet heavily shod ; and then the door was dragged suddenly open, and an impatient flock of school children came trooping out. They were about a score in number. Some of the boys wore quaint little grey coats turned up with dirty yellow, and muffin caps of the same ; but both boys and girls, for the most part, were dressed in their home clothes, and looked untidy enough. Crowding toge- ther for a moment on the threshold, they paused and looked back. “ At half-past ten, then, on Sunday morn- ing,' ” said a voice within. “Yes, sir; half-past ten, sir,” replied some six or eight shrill voices. “Not one minute later, remember.” “ No, sir. Oh, no, sir ! ” And with this, being finally dismissed, they broke loose into the court, laughing, halloo- ing, flinging caps into the air, chasing each other into corners, and vanishing presently under the dark arch leading to the world of streets beyond. When the last straggler had disappeared, and the last shout had died away, a young man came to the threshold ; stood there for a moment, bareheaded, with the cavernous gloom of the doorway behind him and the evening light upon his face ; drank in a deep breath of cool air ; cast a wistful glance towards the glowing patch of sky over the housetops ; and then, half-reluctantly, turned back into the church. He shut the door and locked it from the inside, waking a desolate echo through the empty nave. Within, all was twilight : except | where twilight deepened into profound I shadow. The topmost leaves of a solitary tree close outside the east window showed like bronze against the sky. Here and there, making the darkness darker as it were by contrast, a faint gleam stole along the walls, rested on altar rail and pulpit, and glanced upon the pipes of the tiny organ standing back in an obscure corner by the vestry door. Unsightly and insignificant without, the church of St. Hildegarde was no less un- lovely within. It measured, perhaps, a hun- dred feet in length by about forty in width ; and, excepting only a certain unmistakable look of age, resembled nothing so nearly as a plain, ill-lighted lecture-hall or corn-exchange in a provincial town. The bare stone walls, unskilfully daubed with bands of rough colour, were blotched with mildew, and hung in places with common illuminated cards. Rows of rush-bottomed prie-dieu chairs filled the body of the church. The ceiling just above the communion-table was painted blue, and stuck over with little stars of cut paper, most of which had fallen away, while the rest, half detached, hung fluttering overhead. A gilt heart and a few wreaths and crosses of immortelles were suspended over the altar ; and in an antique-looking piscina close by lay a scrap of crochet work, on which stood a small glass jug crusted with dregs of sacra- mental wine. A dismal place to be alone in towards dusk. Dismal for its silence — dismal for its solitude— dismal, above all, for the poverty that betrayed itself in every shabby fitting and tawdry decoration. The young man who had just locked him- self in there, however, with the gathering shadows was used to the little church, and indifferent to its dreariness. For him it was neither silent nor solitary — for him it echoed to noble sounds, and was peopled with the spirits of Handel and Beethoven and Mozart. He was a musician — very young, very poor, very much in love with his art, and paro-* chial organist, with a salary of twenty-five pounds a-year. Considering that he lived at Islington, a good three miles from St. Hildegarde the Martyr ; that his rector was an Oxford man, with High-Church proclivities ; and that, be- sides the orthodox three services on Sunday, he had to play an early service every morn- ing, and an extra eleven o’clock service on saints’ days and fast days, it must be admitted that this young man was not overpaid with twenty-five pounds a-year. He was not dis- satisfied, however. He was even contented. Granted that the salary was light, he was none the less willing that the duty should be heavy. He looked upon it as “ good prac- Good Words, Jan.l, i860.] DEBENHAM’S VOW. tice,” and upon himself as a particularly for- tunate fellow in being able to command it. And so he was, perhaps, V argent apart. Musical talent is not at a premium, and young organists are plentiful in the market. When the situation fell vacant some eighteen months before, Temple Debenham, then just returned from the famous collegiate academy of Zollenstrasse-am-Main, and armed with a double first-class certificate countersigned by the Grand Duke himself, carried off the prize from more than thirty competitors. It was quite a triumph, as far as it went ; and the salary, translated into florins, sounded suffi- ciently imposing when written about to fel- low-students on the other side of the Channel. What wonder, then, that a clever, ambitious, inexperienced young fellow, who had never owned a spare thaler in his life, and who be- lieved in his fellow-creatures as implicitly as he believed in himself, should mistake this very small victory for a brilliant omen, and fancy himself on the high road to fame and fortune with twenty-five pounds a year ? Twenty-five pounds a year ! Pshaw ! it was not the pay that he valued ; it was the position. Was it nothing to hold a responsi- ble situation in a London church ? Was it nothing to step at once into a ready-made connection? Was it nothing to be able to write “ Organist of St. Hildegarde the Martyr” after one’s name ? Fancy it in print, on the title-page of that prize cantata that gained such glory at Zollenstrasse the summer be- fore last ! I have already said that Temple Deben- ham had been a disciple of the famous Grand Ducal Academy, and as his early history is comprised in half-a-dozen sentences, it may as well be told, and dismissed at once. He was the only son of a widow, and a musician born. Like baby Mozart, he spelt out har- monies upon every instrument that came within his reach before he had arrived at words of three syllables, and scrawled cro- chets and quavers long enough ere his little hands had mastered the mysteries of pot- hooks and hangers. The gift grew with his growth and strengthened with his strength. It developed itself without culture, without opportunity, and in the face of a thousand difficulties. At length his vocation became so manifest that the widow began to cast about for some means of providing him with a sound musical education. It chanced, however, that Mrs. Debenham was both poor and proud — so poor that, be- cause food and lodging might there be had at less cost than in most other places, she lived with her boy in a tiny cottage in a tiny fish- ing village on the coast of the Isle of Angle- j sea ; and so proud that, although she might have made acquaintances when she first came to St. Owen’s, she did not know a soul in the neighbourhood. Politely, but firmly, the j widow declined to visit. She lived for her child alone. To watch over him, to amuse him, to work for him, to educate him, was her one absorbing occupation. He was her only companion, she his only playfellow. With him she toiled through the arid wastes of the Eton Latin Grammar; for him did battle with Euclid and Lempriere, and pur- sued with fainting steps the steep and difficult ways of the Gradus ad Parnassian. By-and- by, as the boy’s vocation became more dis- j tinctly manifest, his mother fell into a very ; wilderness of hopes, doubts, and perplexities. | That he, her child, should be gifted with a [ special gift .... she could scarcely believe ! it. She scarcely dared think of it. It made j her heart beat, and not wholly with joy. ! There was fear in it, and anxiety, and perhaps | a little — a very little — disappointment. It I may be that Mrs. Debenham was not alto- j gether fitted by previous training to take the j loftiest view of an artistic career. It may be that, poor as she was, she had dreamt some dream of how her son might win his way to an university education, and so, ultimately, to the Church. For, of course, he was to be clever; that was only to be expected. He was to be very clever, and to achieve distinc- tion in some way ; but that he should be a genius, a heaven-born genius, was another matter. Mrs. Debenham had not been accus- tomed to geniuses, and was disposed to be somewhat afraid of them. Was not a musi- cian a sort of gifted madman? Could a painter by any possibility be a gentleman ? Might a gentleman, without loss of dignity, write poetry, unless in Greek or Latin? Was it quite certain that Shakespeare and Handel and Sir Joshua Reynolds paid their rent and j went to church like other people ? These were grave questions, and cost Mrs. Deben- ham many a tear and many a wakeful hour ; but she was neither experienced enough, nor clever enough, to solve them. In the meanwhile, the boy’s talent waxed daily. He loved his mother’s little old qua- vering piano as other lads love the playground or the cricket-match. To compose was as natural to him as to breathe, and to write what he composed was as easy as to play it. For him, as for all true musicians, sign and soundKvere one ; and melody sprang from his pen as readily as from his fingers. At first he DEBENHAM’S VOW. [Good Word-3, Jan. 1.1SW. , was not conscious of his gift. It came to him 1 .spontaneously, like song to a young bird, and he revelled in it with no thought beyond the gladness of the moment. But this could not go on for ever ; and his mother, who watched , the rapid growing of his wings, trembled to think how he must some day discover his strength, and soar away into regions whither she would have no power to follow. And so I it was. With time came the sense of power, , and with the sense of power the dawn of pur- pose. Before he was twelve years of age, he had determined to become a musician ; and she, reluctantly, tremblingly, but with some- thing of pride and wonder as well as of re- luctance and trembling, had yielded to his wish. Then it came to pass that Mrs. Debenham, while making such inquiry as was practicable in so remote a spot as St. Owen’s, chanced j to catch some far away echo of the fame of I the great Academy at Zollenstrasse-am-Main. I Here was an institution where an industrious . student might make his prizes almost cover the cost of his college terms ; where he would get not only a thorough professional training, but a good general education ; and where, as an out-student, he might enjoy all these 'ad- vantages without leaving the shelter of his mother’s roof. And at Zollenstrasse, too, one might live even more cheaply than at St. ; Owen’s. At Zollenstrasse, it was confidently ' reported, a shilling would go farther than eighteenpence in Wales. At Zollenstrasse ' | one might buy excellent wine for about seven- | pence the bottle ; meat for something like threepence halfpenny a pound ; fish, fruit, vegetables, milk, on almost nominal terms ; | and grapes in the vintage season at some such price as might have been asked by the pro- prietors of the Bottle Imp. To this land of pro- mise, then, after much calculation of ways and | means, and many hesitations, did the widow | repair at last ; and there resided with her son I I for a period extending over some eleven years, I during which time the youth grew and pros- pered, became a capital German scholar, j acquired something more than a smattering | of the classics, and went in for everything that the Academy had to offer in the way of j musical advantages. Now it happened that | music was the strong point, par excellence , at j Zollenstrasse-am-Main. There were classes j and masters for counterpoint; for orchestra- tion; for singing; for every instrument under the sun, including, doubtless, the sackbut and shawm, had one been minded to learn them. A man, in short, who really meant work might, do anything at Zollenstrasse, and the student who failed to become thorough master of his profession had only himself to thank for his j shortcomings. But Temple Debenham did mean work, j It was the one thing he had been hungering j after at St. Owen’s ; and he flung himself into j it with all the energy of a strong will and a j j resolute nature. He went under masters for the organ, the violin, and the piano. He I joined the choral classes. He familiarised j himself with the compass and resources of [ every instrument in the orchestra. He de- j veloped an insatiable curiosity for all the pro- founder secrets of the art ; and, not content with acquiring harmony upon the Zollen- strasse system only, went back for himself to j the earlier sources of the science— to the j works of Martini, Tartini, Albrechtsberger, j Pepusch, and other half-forgotten authors j whose dusty volumes were rarely disturbed | upon the shelves of the Academic Library, j And the boy’s indomitable industry flourished i and bore fruit. At the end of his third j year he took two medals ; at the end of the j fourth, a prize of two hundred florins, which ! was equivalent to about sixteen pounds of j English money, and more than paid the fees j of his fifth year. In the course of the fifth, he carried off the second gold medal ; and 1 in the sixth, a three-years’ scholarship. By j the time the scholarship had expired, he j was senior student of music ; and for the j last two years of his college life held the i rank of sub-professor of counterpoint, and second violin in the Grand Duke’s private band. When at length Temple Debenham had spent eleven years at Zollenstrasse, he sud- denly announced his determination to go | back to England. His friends and colleagues j were aghast. The professors remonstrated ; his fellow-students remonstrated ; his mother remonstrated. It was impossible that he could mean it. The thing was simply suicidal. His plain and obvious course was to throw his fortunes in with those of the Academy, and settle at Zollenstrasse for life. Would he not be a full professor ere long, with apart- ments in the college and eight hundred florins a year? Were not the professors allowed to take pupils, and would it not be easy for him to get as much teaching as he pleased in the season? Then, too, the Duke’s kapellmeister was getting almost past his work, and Deben- ham was thought so well of up at the school that he might fairly throw in the possibility of that succession among his other prospects. And what a possibility ! A thousand florins : per annum, a “Von” before one’s name, and \ Good Words, Jan. 1, 1869.] DEBENHAM’S VOW. in one’s button-hole the green ribbon of the order of the Golden Pigtail. But the young man was to be tempted by none of these considerations. He had weighed the matter quite fully, and, having made up his mind, could by no means be brought to change it. He was twenty-four years of age, and old enough, he conceived, to judge what was best for himself. He was not disposed to wed the Academy for better or for worse. He must have a wider berth — more breathing space- — some footing in that field where the race was really to the swift and the battle to the strong, and a man might give and take such blows as fell to his share. Zollenstrasse was well enough in its way. Zollenstrasse had given him his education, and he was attached to the place to a certain extent and in a certain way ; but he was not going to identify himself with it for ever and aye. The idea of remaining a mere German professor nil the days of his life was intolerable to him. He was weary already of the etiquette, the gossip, the aesthetic teas, and the thousand and one petty jealousies and interests of a tenth-rate German capital. He was not in the least ambitious of becoming the next grand ducal kapellmeister , and he did not care one kreutzer for the order of the Golden Pigtail. So Temple Debenham’s advisers threw their remonstrances away, and ended by taking offence at his obstinacy. If he would be deaf to counsel and blind to his own in- terests, it was at least no fault of theirs. They had done what they could to save him from a fatal error, and if, after all, he chose to ruin himself, he must do so. Even his mother (who, to do her justice, cared no more than himself for the order of the Golden Pigtail) was by no means convinced of the wisdom of her son’s resolve. She reminded him that he was giving up certainty for uncertainty, substance for shadow ; that it was possible to live in Germany for at least two-thirds less expense than in England ; that he was already somebody in Zollenstrasse, but that he would find himself nobody in London ; and a great deal more to the same effect. But all was in vain. “ It is of no use, mother,” he said ; “ Zol- lenstrasse is not the place for me. I am made for something better. I may not suc- ceed in getting that something better ; but, at all events, I mean to try. So, please don’t let us talk any more about it.” Now, when Temple Debenham said he meant to do a thing he invariably did it ; and the widow, knowing that she might as well acquiesce at once, opposed her son’s deter- mination no longer. So he resigned his sub- professorship and his seat in the grand ducal, orchestra, packed up his music and his medals, received his double first-class certifi- cate with all its seals, formulas, and flourishes, and bade a long farewell to the little capital which had been his home for nearly twelve years. Thus armed, he exchanged Zollenstrasse for London, and with his mother, took a modest lodging overlooking a nursery-ground, somewhere near Canonbury, at Islington. And now, in accordance with that curious law by which a novice pretty surely wins at the first throw, Temple Debenham began with a success. Before he had been three | weeks in London, the advertising columns of the Times announced that an organist was re- I quired for the parish church of St. Hildegarde the Martyr. He at once entered himself for the competition, and, thanks to his fine play- ing and his “ double first-class” certificate, might almost be said to have walked over the ! course. It was his first prize in the great lottery of London life ; but, as time went on, it seemed j destined also to be his last. We have already ! seen how sanguine were his hopes, and how, | in the first flush of his first success, he over- | rated not only his position, but his prospects. : This, however, was before he had found out ! that the regular congregation of St. Hilde- I garde’s consisted of some fourteen persons, | exclusive of the pew-opener and the clerk. ! Eighteen months had gone by since then, and his enthusiasm had had time to cool. The parish had brought him no connection, j and his efforts to make himself known as a ! composer had all ended in disappointment. There, for instance, was the cantata — what pains he had lavished on that neatly-wTitten score, and with what a beating heart he had left it at the door of a certain committee-room at Exeter Hall ! But publishers are coy, and choral societies difficult, and the opus magnus, again and again rejected, was still unknown to fame. He had written a symphony since then, and was at work now upon an opera. His zeal, poor fellow, was yet unabated ; his confidence in his own genius unimpaired. Thorough master of his subject, skilled in all the resources of his art, rich in ideas, in honest ambition, in hope, how should he not be conscious of the power that was in him ? That he should feel bitter mortification when that ill-starred packet came back from the j honorary secretary of this and that society I was only natural. He may even have swal- DEBENHAM’S VOW. [Good Words, Jan. 1, l%a lowed down a tear “upon occasion but he bore his defeats gallantly enough for the most part, and as soon as one venture miscarried, was ready to put forth another. Seneca was not too heavy, nor Plautus too light for him. If the cantata was unlucky, the. sym- phony might prove more fortunate; if the symphony missed fire, there was his pet mass in G minor ; and, failing all these, an exhaust- less mine of Leider Ohne TVorte , chamber songs, madrigals, duets, trios, quartettes, and the like. Was not his brain full of them — full to overflowing ? And was not he gifted with an invincible determination to succeed — somehow ? CHAPTER II. A day’s WORK. When Temple Debenham turned back and locked himself in among the gathering shadows, it was with a conscious reluctance against which his pride of industry rose in prompt rebellion. He was weary, and would not confess that he was weary. He was even angry with himself for the instinctive yearn- ing that drew him to the outer sunlight. It was his pleasure to stay ; his day’s work was done ; his time was his own. He could have gone away if he preferred it ; he had but to lock himself out of St. Hildegarde’s instead of locking himself in, and turn to the river or the parks, as might seem pleasantest to him. But he chose to stay behind in the little dark church, when the school practice was over, and the school children were gone, and he could enjoy the organ for as many hours as he chose without fear of interruption. To do this was one of the privileges of his situa- tion. It was a privilege that he valued more than his twenty-five pounds a-year ; for he had no piano of his own, and, of course, no organ, and to play upon some kind of instru- ment was about as necessary to him as food or sleep. Besides, he was always composing ; and to go on day after day pouring out one’s thoughts upon mere paper and ink— “ piping,” as it were, “to the spirit-ditties of no tone ” — would have been dull work indeed. So Temple Debenham set great store by his rights and privileges, and exercised them freely. It chanced, however, on this especial even- ing that he was really fagged, and wanted rest. His day had been a hard one, and had begun early. He had risen, in the first place, at five, and seating himself, as he was wont to do, at his bedroom window, had worked for two hours at one of the choruses of his opera. It was a double chorus sung by monks and soldiers, with a strange old Gregorian chant cunningly interwoven among the parts, and a march in the accom- paniment — a very grand affair, “ full of sound and fury,” winding up to a tremendous climax with rolling of drums, clashing of cym- bals, and all manner of stormy orchestral effects ; but produced noiselessly enough with a stumpy pencil and a few sheets of music-paper. And yet, to the young musi- cian sitting at his open window in the clear cool morning light, now staring abstractedly over the nursery-gardens, now humming softly to himself, now scribbling a bar or two of complicated score, all those combinations, all the clashing of those cymbals and the rolling of those drums, were distinctly audible. He heard them as vividly as if the orchestra and chorus were drawn up under his window y ay, and he saw the stage too — all the march- ing to and fro, all the waving plumes, the flashing armour, the crosses and banners, and the scenic background with its deep blue sky. For the mind is gifted with ear as well as eye, and the mental tympanum of the musician is as mysteriously capable as the mental retina of the painter. The painter standing before the blank canvas sees his picture already complete— sees it by an effort, as it were, but quite distinctly, with all its light and shadow, its outline, its play of colour. He does not merely fancy that he sees it. He is under no illusion. He makes use of no figure of speech. He sees, and sees so literally that physiologists have more than once questioned whether images thus vividly created by the imagination may not be actually reflected on the retina of the eye. So, too, the musician. Given a complicated edifice of staves built up one above the other like the storigs of a Chinese pagoda, violins or voices at the top, drums at the bottom, and all imaginable stringed and brazen instruments piled up be- tween, he can run his eye along the whole — mass the column together in his brain — hear the crash with which the performers lead off — mark the flitting of the melody as it lights first on one instrument and then upon an- other — trace the airy flights of the violins, the cooing of the clarionets, the surly com- ments of the basses — listen to every effect — ■ analyse every modulation — taste every subtle discord — hear the whole composition, in short, and hear it with a sense as perfect and mysterious as that by which the painter sees his future picture. A strange, half divine sort of power this ! A power granted to some in only a limited degree — from some altogether withheld ; but possessed by Temple Deben- L Good Words, Jan. 1, 1809.1 DEBENHAM’S VOW. 9 ham in all its fulness as he sat, morning after morning, pouring forth his dumb symphonies and choruses with as true an ear to their effect as if he had the resources of a Costa at command. Having written, then, for two hours, the young man swept his papers into a drawer, paused a moment at his mother’s door to say good-bye as he passed, hastily swallowed the customary cup of cold tea left for him on the parlour table, and started away for the City at a gallant pace. It was by this time nearly half-past seven. The tide of clerks and om- nibuses had not yet begun to flow eastward, and the shopkeepers along Islington Green were only just beginning to take down their shutters as he went by. Even the time- keeper’s stool was vacant at the “ Angel,” and the City Road, so busy an hour or two later, was as yet scarcely awake. Punc- tual, however, as the High-Church incum- bent himself, the organist was at his post by five minutes before eight, and the early ser- vice was performed to a congregation of five. This done, he betook himself to a certain dreaiy corner house in Finsbury Square, where “ His mother drew his head to her hosom, kissed him, wept over him, clung to him.” he administered piano lessons twice a week to the infant daughters of one of his church- wardens. To Temple Debenham these les- sons were sources of exquisite misery — the bitterest drop in his cup — the heaviest penalty that poverty called on him to pay. The churchwarden was a meat salesman some- where in the City. His wife weighed eighteen stone. They were excellent people ; vulgar ; ostentatious • good-natured ; utterly distasteful to the luckless organist whose fate it was to be brought into contact with them. Their well-meant hospitality irritated him. Their j English made him shudder. Their guineas weighed him down with a crushing sense of j humiliation. He endured his disgust, how- | ever, in silence, and breathed no word of it to his mother, who would have suffered more than himself in knowing it. By the time the Finsbury Square ordeal was over, it was mid-day— broiling, glaring, dusty mid-day; and Temple Debenham was due at the Crystal Palace at two o’clock, | where, for no pecuniary consideration what- ever, but in the mere hope of becoming known as a performer, he played every other afternoon for two hours on Messrs. Stumpf and Hammerfest’s new grand double-action pianoforte. Few listened to him. Nobody appreciated him. He never gained a stiver by the transaction; and, being too poor to afford the omnibus fare, wore out in three months as many pairs of boots as would have lasted him for a year at Zollenstrasse-am- Main. Still, a dogged sort of persistence being one of the strong points of this young man’s character, he held to the faint chance, such as it was, and tramped the weary Syden- | ham road in wind, rain, dust, and sunshine, j thrice a week. Drier, dustier, sunnier, longer, than ever seemed the miles, duller than ever I the British public, more than ever intolerable the .great glass palace, this hot June day. Temple Debenham struggled, oh, how wearily ! through his appointed task. He loathed J Messrs. Stumpf and Hammerfest’s new double- action grand. He abhorred the young lady j with light eyes who said “How pretty !” after ! the Sonata Pathetique, and asked him for the | Post Horn -Galop. He hated the people in | open carriages, the people on horseback, the | very costermongers and omnibus conductors ' j who passed him on the road as he toiled back j to town. And then, having partaken of a I stale roll and a cup of muddy coffee at a dreary little shop in the Borough, he found himself : | once again at St. Hildegarde’s. Here the : school children were assembled for their I weekly drill ; and so, after an hour of chant- | iug and psalm singing, his day’s work came i to a close. And a tolerably hard one it had been, too, extending over some fourteen j hours., and including no interval of rest. He | might well feel languid. He might well sigh | for the quiet breath of the summer evening, j But he put the impulse aside as if it were i | treasonable ; and, forcing his thoughts back I into the old musical groove, returned to his j seat -at the organ. It was a poor little organ enough, built of stained deal, ornamented with a graduated row of plain zinc pipes, and standing about eight feet high. It looked like an overgrown set of Pandean pipes, such as might have fitted the “ capacious mouth ” of Sicilian Polyphemus. Small as it was, however, it did not want for tone, and had no less than fifteen stops, be- sides an octave and a half of pedals. “ If you please, sir,” said a shrill voice from the back, “ am I to begin to blow ?” Whereupon Temple Debenham took a tumbled roll of manuscript from his pocket ; swooped down upon the whole fifteen stops at once 5 said, “ Yes, blow away, Timothy !” and began. It was his chorus — his chorus of monks and soldiers, with the march accompaniment, which he had been at work upon in the morn- ing. Well might he desire Timothy to “ blow away,” and well might Timothy — a tiny fellow in canary-coloured shorts — fling himself upon the bellows like a charity boy possessed. The whole power of the organ was on, and Temple Debenham, thundering away with his trumpet stops and diapasons, gave that luckless blower more than enough to do. Higher and higher rose the defiance of the soldiers, deeper and deeper rolled the warning antistrophe of the monks, and still the exertions of the small boy at the back kept pace with the inspira- tion of the player. At length, when be had blown himself almost off his legs and utterly out of breath, the performance came to an end. The wind went out with a gasp.. The blower dropped upon his bench exhausted. The composer pulled out a pencil, and scrawled notes on the margin of his manu- script. It was the lull following the tempest ; and in the midst of it, startling the echoes after quite another fashion, came a tremen- dous thumping and rattling at the church door. Temple Debenham bit bis lips, settled himself in his seat, and went on pencilling. “Please, sir,” said Timothy, peeping .cau- tiously round the corner, “ there’s somebody at the door.” “ Somebody is welcome to stay there. Blow again, my man.” So Timothy went back to his blowing, and Debenham to his chorus, and the applicant outside remained unanswered. No sooner, however, was the organ again silent than the knocking began more vigorously than ever. Timothy ventured once more to the rescue. “Please, sir,” he said, “shan’t I go?” “No..” “ But— I think ids Mr. Blyth, -sirA “ Who gave you leave to think at all? ” “ Please, sir, I — I don’t know,” stammered Timothy, abashed. “Your business here is to blow — not to think,” continued the organist, with severity. “Be so good, Timothy, as to remember that fact for the future.” Whereupon the small boy slunk away, pro- foundly depressed, and Temple Debenham, having jotted down another bar or two, rose very leisurely, and went towards the door. The “cannoneer without” had, in the mean- while, continued to knock in the most cheer- ful and untiring manner, delivering his blows in volleys, and showering them down upon the stout old panels with the greatest pre- Good Words, Jail. 1, 1SC9 ] DEBENHAM'S VOW. 1 1 cision and brilliancy. He was in the midst of a rattling fantasia, when the door suddenly opened and brought his operations to a close. CHAPTER III. A PAIR OF FRIENDS. The door fell back, and the two who there found themselves face to face shook hands over the threshold. They were about the same age. They were as nearly as possible about the same height. And yet it would have been difficult in the course of a long morning’s walk to find two young men who in I every other particular, whether of mind or | person, were more curiously dissimilar than i Temple Debenham and Archibald Blyth. They were familiar acquaintances. They called themselves friends. But they had scarcely a taste, scarcely a topic in common. They must, one would fancy, have been drawn to each other by some law entirely the reverse of that to which chemists give the name of elective affinity. The one was essentially an artist ; contem- plative, reserved, indifferent for the most part to those things by which the passions and prejudices of the majority are chiefly swayed, and, like all who dwell in a world of their own creation, somewhat unsympathetic in his relations with his fellow-men. The other, on the contrary, was a “ City man ” born and bred ; interested in business matters and business gossip, active, light-hearted, facile, easily pleased, easily persuaded, and given to the lavish exercise of a wit, which was, in truth, of the smallest calibre. To Temple Debenham, on the contrary, were given an iron will, a patent strength of pur- pose, and a profound energy of character which wore too often the outward aspect of sullenness or scorn. Nor did the contrast end here. It went beyond diversity of dis- position, of pursuits, of mental culture, and extended to mere personal appearance. They were to the full as unlike each other in style and feature as in all the rest. . The portrait of Archibald Blyth may be sketched in a dozen words. He was fair and boyish-looking ; had frank, bright eyes, rather blue than grey; a dimple in his chin; and the most good-natured smile in the world. He cultivated his whiskers after the latest stock- exchange fashion. He delighted in a white hat and a blue cravat. And he had a weak- ness for jewellery. He dressed, in short, with that “City” smartness which, however diffi- cult to define, is distinctly characteristic of the class to which it belongs. Of that class the organist's friend might fairly be taken as a type. One may see dozens of Archibald Blyths more or less jewelled, white-hatted, and blue cravated, flitting to and fro about Mark Lane, Leadenhall Street, and Cheap- side, any sunshiny morning between March and October. Adequately to transfer to paper the outward man of Temple Debenham is a less easy matter ; and this chiefly, perhaps, because in him the outward was for the most part but an indication of the inward. As the jagged out- lines of a mountain summit betray the secret of its formation, so in his face was every line, in some sense, a graven hieroglyphic, and in his general bearing, each wonted gesture of special signification. He was not handsome. He was not even what is called “ striking- looking ” at first sight, because the expression of power that would have made him so to a merely casual observer was controlled, almost concealed, by habitual reserve. His brow was broad rather than lofty ; prominent and overhanging above the eyes, as was the brow of Handel, of Beethoven, of most famous musicians. His eyes were dark, deep-set, luminous ; seeming, however, to lose their light at times, as if it were turned inward — and then blazing out again, like a beacon on the sea. The chin and jaw were square cut, strong, yet delicate ; the lips, on the other hand, were thin, flexible, somewhat com- pressed, as if to keep down their involuntary play of expression ; and, though capable of lighting up into a smile singularly grave and sweet, were not wholly free from a lurking suspicion of sarcasm about the corners. He was tall, nearly six feet in height ; sparely yet strongly built ; lengthy of limb ; light and swift of step ; with something resolute and eager-looking in the very stoop of his head and shoulders — -for it was a stoop that told neither of indolence nor weakness, but of onwardness, as if life were literally a race, and he were for ever pressing forward. He wore his hair long, after the fashion of German students in general ; and upon his upper lip a heavy, drooping, brown moustache, which he was wont to gnaw furiously when he was playing. And his hands were long, slender, supple, with nerves and muscles of steel be- neath their delicate surface; and his com- plexion was pale ; and his voice was grave and clear; — and when all these things are said, we have no portrait of the man after all ; but only a catalogue raisonne of his inches, colour, and so forth ; the which conveys no more idea of his personality than a map con- veys of the scenery of Switzerland. Here, we say, is a lake — there a valley — between these mountains a pass. The mountains DEBENHAM’S VOW. [Good Words, Jail. 1, 1SC9. stand so many thousand feet high. The pass is so many thousand feet above the level of the sea. “Words — words — words!” What have these measurements to tell us of the glory of the everlasting peaks, of the scented gloom of the pine forest, of the rose-flush on the snow-field, of the gentian shivering on the brink of the glacier? The poorest sketch ever committed to paper were in this case more effectual than the best map that money could purchase; as the commonest photo- graph of Temple Debenham would here be worth more than a volume of elaborate de- scription. Such as it is, however, the portrait must stand — in default of a better. And these were the two who shook hands that summer evening over the threshold of St. Hildegarde the Martyr. “ Sorry to interrupt you,” said Debenham, grimly. The new comer flung away the end of his cigar, and stepped in without waiting for an invitation. “ My dear fellow/’ he said, “ don’t men- tion it. I am charmed to exchange any occu- pation, however instructive or entertaining, for your society.” The organist shrugged his shoulders and re-locked the door. “ Go on,” he said ; “ you know the way. What a diabolical vacarme you have been making !” “ You recognised the ‘ Huntsmen’s Cho- rus ?’ ” “ Not I.” “Then, Orestes, the delicate susceptibili- ties of thy Pylades are wounded. Methought that soul-stirring strain, albeit performed with no more capable instrument than the prosaic walking-stick of daily life, would have waked a familiar echo to thine ear.” “ I thought you would have battered the door in,” replied Debenham. “And I — horrible suspicion! — I feared my friend was stricken with deafness.” Temple Debenham, who had by this time resumed his place at the organ, muttered some not very intelligible apology, and sug- gested that his visitor should be seated. “What if I take one of those not too luxu- rious prie-dieu chairs — will it be sacrilege, O my Orestes?” “ If you could be rational for only five minutes, Archie, I should be so much obliged to you.” The new comer took out his watch. “ It wants precisely four minutes to eight,” he said, gravely. “ I promise to be unexcep- tionally rational till one minute past the hour. Accept the effort, my dear fellow, as a tribute to friendship.” The organist struck an impatient chord or two. “Where do you come from?” he asked presently. “ What have you been doing all day ? ” “Ask me, rather, why I am here now?” “ I should hardly be so uncivil.” “ Is it possible ?” “ Besides, I can guess. You have nothing better to do.” “ Not a bit of it. I have a good deal that is better to do.” “Then why . . . . ?” “Exactly so. Why— not being born for the express purpose of blushing unseen — should I waste my sweetness, and so forth ? Because I have been over to the Regent’s Park this afternoon, and seen the Hard- wickes.” “ Qiiest ce que cela me fait ? The Hard- wickes are nothing to me.” “ Pardon me. The Hardwickes, my Orestes, are something to you. Josiah Hardwicke is an undoubted something to you. Does not the whole parish, such as it is, belong to him?” “ What of that ? I am not a part of the parish.” “ You belong to it — you, and the parson, the clerk, the beadle, and the charity chil- dren. You are his loyal subjects, every one of you. There, don’t look fierce. I am not asking you to do him homage. I am only reminding you that he is the father of his people, and that it’s better worth your while to have him for a friend than an enemy.” “ I am not aware,” said Debenham, haugh- tily, “ that Mr. Hardwicke is called upon to be either my friend or my enemy.” Archibald Blyth uttered a subdued groan, and for a few moments there was silence. Then, looking down and fidgeting with his cane, he said : — - “ Now, Debenham, look here ! Let us talk sense. Your name turned up to-day at Strathellan House — and — and the oppor- tunity occurring, I — I .... by Jove, I’m afraid to tell you.” “Afraid?” “Well, you’re so impracticable, you know. But I thought it might pave the way to some- thing better, and — and money is money The organist faced suddenly round. “ Confound you, Archie,” he said, almost angrily, “what folly have you been com- mitting in my name ? Out with it !” Hood Words. ‘ DEBENHAM’S VOW. ! Good Words, Jan. 1, 1869.1 DEBENHAM’S VOW. I “Well, Hardwicke gives one of his great parties to-morrow night, and they had en- gaged Thalberg to play — they always engage some musical star for their great gatherings, you know.” “ Yes, yes; I have heard you say so. Go on.” “ This afternoon, however, Thalberg tele- graphs to say that he is detained in Paris by a command from the Tuileries, and cannot keep his engagement. Pylades being present when the telegram is delivered, at once pro- poses Orestes. I, Pylades, undertake that you, Orestes, shall take Thalbergs place. The Hardwickes commission me to offer you ten guineas for the evening, and — me void /” A shadow passed over Temple Deben- ham’ s face. “ How do they know that I am competent to take Thalbergs place?” he said. “ Because I told them all about you.” ' “ Indeed ! And may I ask what that was ?” “ Oh, I said, what a wonderful musician you were ; and how you composed ; and that you had taken a musical degree at that place in Germany . . . .” “ I took nothing of the kind. The Aca- demy has no power to confer degrees. It is not an university.” “ Then what is that parchment affair that you once showed me, with all the seals and flourishes ?” “ Pooh ! — my certificate.” “ Well, it’s much the same thing. I en- gaged, at all events, that you should play as well as Thalberg, if not better ; and here I am, the bearer of their offer.” The organist looked down uneasily. “ It is a very liberal offer,” he said : “ but “You are not going to decline it?” Debenham hesitated. “ No,” he said. “That is, I am not sure. I cannot afford to decline it.” “ Then why hesitate ?” “ Because — well, I have played, of course, at the Grand Duke’s parties ; but then in Germany the social position of the artist is so different ; and — and he was the Grand Duke, after all. It is not quite the same thing, Archie.” “ My cousin is not a German grand duke, if that is what you mean. But he is an English merchant, and a gentleman.” “ I don’t doubt that Mr. Hardwicke is a gentleman,” replied the organist, hastily; “but, then, in what light would he regard me ? As an inferior?” “No, no, of course not ! As my friend — as an artist.” “Are you sure of that?” “ Beyond a doubt. But — but then there’s Claudia.” “Who is Claudia?” “ Hardwicke’s sister — mistress of his house — handsome — horribly proud — not a pleasant person, I admit. A sort of Edith Dombey, you know. Frightens a fellow out of his senses at the first glance.” “ I don’t think she would frighten me,” said Debenham, smiling. “ Ah, you don’t know her,” replied Mr. Blyth, with a prolonged shake of the head. “ She’s a beautiful refrigerator, my Orestes. However, if you are not daunted . . . .” “ Neither by her beauty nor her pride,” said the organist. “ I cannot afford to be afraid of a lady.” “ Then I may say that you accept ?” “ Yes. At what hour ?” “Ten o’clock precisely. They have con- descended to invite me this time. Shall we go together, or do you prefer to go alone?” “ I think I will go alone, if you don’t mind, Archie. And now, having disposed of that matter, shall I play to you?” “ Do — always provided that you play down to my level. I can’t stand Bach.” “ The Gloria from Mozart’s £ Twelfth Mass,’ then?” “ I had rather hear the prayer from ‘ Masa- niello.’ ” “ As Christopher Sly, when he might have quaffed sack, called for ‘ a pot o’ the smallest ale.’ Oh, Archie, Archie, are you not ashamed of your taste ?” With this protest, Temple Debenham turned again to his organ, and, having played the prayer “by desire,” glided thence into a stream of extemporaneous composition, down which, unconscious of the deepening twilight, he suf- fered his fancy to float as it listed — a stream that followed every capricious twist and turn of his wandering thoughts ; now sparkling in sunshine — now darkling in shadow- — now lin- gering tenderly about some little phrase of melody, sweet and wild as water-side blos- soms ; now breaking away, and eddying on from key to key in a tumult of strange modu- lations ; now falling into a sudden trance of calm, tender and lulling as though the breath of the lotus were being wafted upon the face of the waters ; and at last, after many a hin- drance and many a “ winding bout,” flowing on to a close in one majestic strain, like a tidal river widening to the sea. Long before he came to his journey’s end, however, Temple DEBEN HAM’S VOW. [Good Words, Jan.],lS09 Debenham lost all remembrance of the list- ener for whose entertainment he was supposed to be playing, and left off at last to find the church all darkness, and Archibald Blyth as profoundly asleep as Bedreddin Hassan at the gate of Damascus. ■ CHAPTER IV. THE HARDWICKES. Josiah Hardwicke, Esquire, of Strathel- I lan House, Regent’s Park, Hardwicke Hall, | Kent, and the parish of St. Hildegarde the j Martyr, situate within the liberties of the City of London, in the county of Middlesex, was a man of very considerable wealth, and much respected in the commercial world. He was a merchant, and he came of a family of mer- chants, many of whom had been City mag- nates in their day — none, by the way, more notable than his uncle, the well-known Sir Thomas Hardwicke, Knt., forty-four years alderman, and, like Dick Whittington, thrice Lord Mayor of London. For himself, how- ever, Mr. Hardwicke placed but slight value on civic dignities. He had, indeed, declined them so often that his fellow-citizens had at length grown weary of pressing them upon him. Neither the robe of the Common Councilman, nor the Aldermanic gown, nor the golden collar of the Mayor, possessed any kind of attraction for him. Being elected Sheriff, he paid the fine sooner than accept the office. He objected even to be chair- man of a board, or to preside at a public dinner. It was, in short,, his peculiarity — perhaps his pride — lightly to esteem those things which most City men covet. To know that his signature was “good” on any Ex- change in Europe, that his agents were to be found in all great commercial ports, and his ships on every ocean highway, was all the distinction he professed to value. Mr. Hardwicke was one of those portly, suave, middle-aged, and somewhat pompous bachelors, of whom one is ready to predict at first sight that they will remain bachelors to the end of the chapter. His features were good, his complexion florid, his hair iron grey, curling, and abundant. Pardonably vain of a handsome foot and hand, he was scrupulous in the matter of boots and gloves; and, indeed, generally solicitous respecting the adornment of his outward man. With regard to what Anthony a Wood would have styled “his intellectuals,” Mr. Hardwicke was a man of good average edu- cation, and more than average capacity. He had gone to school at Harrow, and stayed there longer than most lads destined for the City. He had travelled. He spoke French with fluency and refinement ; and -he had some taste for art — a taste sound enough as far as it went, but neither sufficiently deep i ! nor sufficiently cultivated to lead him beyond j the precincts of the French Salon or the English Academy. Of the merits of a Giotto, | i a Perugino, a John Bellini, he had no per- ception whatever. He tried to relish Raf- faelle, but entertained a secret preference for Carlo Dolce ; and he esteemed Meissonier above every other painter, living or dead. j Still, he did care for pictures, and he not only cared for them, but bought them ; and as his taste was essentially modern, and as the pictures he bought were really good, it followed that Mr. Hardwick e’s money went for the encouragement of living art, and the sup- port of the living painter, and so did more positive service than if he had been imbued with the strictest classicism from his youth upwards. A man’s house, however, must be to some extent a reflection of himself. Granted that the upholsterer and decorator supply both taste and furniture, enough must always re- main to indicate something of the culture and proclivities of the possessor. By means of the pictures on his walls, and the books, or absence of books, on his table — by his dogs, : his birds, his flowers — nay, even by his walk- ! ing-stick and umbrella, one may draw many a shrewd inference, and supply many a lacuna. In like manner, had a practised observer been set down within the precincts of Strathellan House, he would have found on every side indications, slight but certain, on which to found his estimate of the master of the esta- blishment. It was a very big house to begin with, — one of the biggest and finest houses in the Regent’s Park, furnished throughout with the biggest and finest furniture. It had a front like a Grecian temple ; a Gothic | lodge ; a handsome carriage drive ; huge j conservatories ; a built-out ballroom forty feet 1 in length ; and gardens planned in the Italian I style, sloping down to the ornamental water j at the back. It was, in short, just such a ! house as it seems impossible to describe j without falling into the style of one of Messrs. | j Christie and Manson’s advertisements. There | j was the entrance-hall, like the hall of a club- ! house, with busts of the twelve Csesars stand- ; ing on Scagliola pillars round the walls. | There was the spacious staircase carpeted with the richest and softest velvet pile car- peting, up which Mr. Hardwicke’s guests might have walked six abreast. There was the suite of reception rooms, three in num- ber — the yellow damask room, the blue satin Good Words, Jan. 1, 1SC9.] DEBENHAM’S VOW. unless in the scorning of all wealth amassed room, and the crimson velvet room — all panelled with enormous looking-glasses, lit by chandeliers like pendant fountains, and crowded with gilded furniture, pictures in heavy Italian frames, tables of Florentine mosaic, cabinets in buhl and marqueterie, ormolu clocks, and expensive trifles from all quarters of the globe. Here was nothing antique — nothing rare, save for its costliness. Here were no old masters, no priceless pieces of majolica, no Cellini caskets, no enamels, no intagli, no Etruscan tazze, or Pompeian relics : but in their place great vases of the finest modern Sevres, paintings by Frith, Maclise, Stanfield, Meissonier, and David Roberts, bronzes by Barbedienne, Chinese ivory carvings, and wonderful clockwork toys from Geneva. The malachite table in the boudoir came from the International Exhibi- tion of 1851 ; the marble group in the alcove at the end of the third drawing-room was by Marochetti ; the Gobelin tapestries were among the latest products of the Imperial looms. Money, in short, was there omni- present — money in abundance 1 and even taste. But not taste of the highest order. Not that highly trained taste which seems to “run” in certain classes of society, like handsome hands or fine complexions. Mr. Hardwicke, however, had no claim to this kind of hereditary culture. He sprang from no aristocratic stock. His childhood had not been spent in the midst of old family Hol- beins and Vandykes, or under the shade of ancestral oaks. Born within hearing of Bow bells, brought up to regard the City as his destiny, transferred from Harrow to the count- ing-house at nineteen years of age, and living ever since in an atmosphere of trade, it was, on the whole, extremely creditable to him that he should know and care as much as he did about the graceful things of life. In all these matters, however, Miss Hardwicke’s taste and influence should be taken into ac- count, — and Miss Hardwicke s influence was paramount in Mr. Hardwicke’s house. She was his youngest and only surviving sister — a handsome, haughty, stately woman, who ruled the merchant’s household after a queen-like fashion, and had so ruled it since the day when she first came home from the continental boarding-school at which her edu- cation had been finished. Rich by the in- heritance of two separate fortunes, the one coming to her under her mother’s marriage settlement, the other under the will of her uncle, the ex-lord mayor and alderman — proud with a pride that was in no -wise con- cerned with either her wealth or her beauty, m trade, and of all beauty that had not its source in noble blood— ambitious in her. I secret heart of hearts, passionately ambitious j of rank, of social distinction, of power in any | shape — cold in manner — colder still in speech —a silent hostess, and an indifferent guest, Claudia Hardwicke enjoyed the honour oi j being very cordially disliked by the bulk of i her brother’s acquaintances. Towards City j | men, their wives, daughters, entertainments, j conversation, society, and all therewith con- ! | nected, she cherished a profound distaste ; j and this distaste she was at no pains to con- ceal. She would talk French and German across Mrs. Alderman Butterworth throughout j a long City dinner, bestowing no more notice | upon that superb matron than if she were a j j lay figure in velvet and diamonds. At her j j own receptions she would studiously ignore j the musical acquirements of the Jenkinson i girls (though they sang really well, and had I seventy thousand pounds apiece), and made j a point of engaging what Archibald Blyth j called a “ musical star ” for the evening. At | certain state parties, where the great City dames vied with each other in splendour, she | would appear in the simplest toilet that good i taste and a first-class dressmaker could devise, I without an ornament of any description. And I because she did these and a thousand other ! things of the same kind, and because, being a I woman, and a clever one, she knew precisely how and where to plant every banderilla that j a scornful wit could suggest, Miss Hardwicke j counted her foes by the score, and rejoiced in ! her unpopularity. But with all her magnificent scorn of men and things, Miss Hardwicke was mortal and | had her failings. There was something great about her pride, but there was also some- thing small. Truth to tell, she “ dearly loved a lord.” Title, precedence, a coronet on her j carriage panels, a footing in the grande monde — these were the glories for which she sighed. She held them to be not shadows, but sub- stantial things ; and she was destined, per- haps, to find out some day that they were but shadows after all. CHAPTER V. THE PARTY AT STRATHELLAN HOUSE. Wrapt in some sort of loose German j overcoat adorned in the orthodox German- j student fashion, with braid and buttons in abundance, Temple Debenham made his way up the avenue and into the hall of Strath- ellan House. The night outside was in- tensely dark; the hall a blaze of light; so j j(5 DEBENHAM’S VOW. [Good Words, Jan. MS60. that he was for a moment almost dazzled to find himself in the presence of the twelve Caesars and Mr. Hardwicke’s footmen. He came on foot, and the dust on his boots be- trayed him. He carried a roll of music in his hand. And he waited in the hall to put on his white gloves before going up-stairs. The I twelve Caesars and the twin giants in livery | looked on contemptuously. They had seen j the sort of thing before, and they knew what jj it meant. j “Come to play the piano,” whispered I Thomas to John. | “Look's poor enough, too,” responded i John. “But then there’s poor and rich, the j same as in everything else. The last we had came in his private brougham, like a gentle- : )) man. And then a carriage full of ladies drove ! up, and the organist went up-stairs and pre- j sented himself at the door of the first draw- I ing-room, unannounced. It was a very splendid room, gorgeously furnished, but almost empty. A little group of gentlemen about the fireplace and a young lady turning over a volume of engravings at a side-table, were its only occupants. There was a sound of many voices in the reception- rooms beyond, but the young man did not like to venture farther. The damsel at the side-table looked up for a moment ; but the gentlemen at the fireplace, eager in discussion, ■seemed not even to observe that another guest was present. So Temple Debenham, after lingering for a few minutes near the door, wandered over to the table, and, keep- ing as far as possible from the young lady already in possession, took refuge also in a book. Because he had not yet been received, he would not take a seat ; but, still holding his roll of music in one hand, stooped over the volume, chafing inwardly. He had seen the ladies who arrived after him ushered into a ground-floor room where tea and coffee were served. Why had he not been shown there also ? Why, at least, had neither of the big footmen conducted him up-stairs, and an- nounced his name at the door ? Did they know who he was ? Had they been instructed beforehand to treat him with indignity ? He told himself if it were so — if he could be sure it were so— he would straightway walk down-stairs, and never enter the house again. _ At this moment appeared one of the twin giants at the drawing-room door, vociferating with all the power of his lungs the names of “Mrs. Blower, Miss Blower, Miss Juliana Blower, Miss Bianca Blower j ” and in sailed the four ladies whom the organist had en- countered in the hall. At almost the same moment Mr. Hardwicke came forward from the adjoining room to re-ceive them. He shook hands with Mrs. Blower; he bowed to each of Mrs. Blower’s daughters ; he inquired solicitously after the health of various absent Blowers. Then he gave his arm to Mrs. Blower, and led her and hers into those more distant rooms where the company seemed mostly to have congregated. The cloud on Debenham’s brow deepened. He fancied that Mr. Hardwicke’s eye had lighted on him as he turned away ; and to be seen and not welcomed was even worse than to be neither seen nor welcomed. “ If he saw me at all,” thought he, “ he must have known me ; and if he knew me, he is bound to welcome me to his house.” And then he remembered having asked Archie Blyth how he should be treated if he came, and Archie had protested that he would be received and regarded as a guest — a guest pur et simple. But surely he had been a fool to take Archie’s word in the matter. He might have known how it would be. He might have known that, having con- sented to come to this man’s house for money — for ten miserable guineas — he had, as it were, sold himself for the time being, and become, in a certain sense, the man’s inferior. “ He has hired me,” he muttered, as he bent still lower over the album with which he was pretending to be occupied. “ I am his servant to-night, and he treats me as his servant.” And reflecting thus, Temple Debenham contrived so to aggravate himself that he was on the point of shutting up the book and shaking the dust of Mr. Hardwicke’s house from off his feet, when a hand was suddenly laid upon his shoulder, and a fami- liar voice said close to his ear : — “ Well, ol_d fellow, do you think it like ? ” “ Like ! ” he echoed. “Do I think what like ? ” “ Why, that, to be sure.” And Archibald Blyth, scented, curled, gloved, and gorgeous with jewellery, laid his finger on a certain carte de visite inserted in the page over which his friend happened to be bending. “ Is it meant for you?” asked Debenham, who, intently as he had seemed to be looking, had not seen a photograph in the book till this moment. “ Most people think it a capital likeness. It’s one of Silvy’s.” Good Words, Jan. 1.1S69.] DEBENLIAM’S VOW. 1 'J “And this?" “ Horatio Slawkins, son of Sir Obadiah Slawkins, who was Lord Mayor a few years ago, and got knighted — Eve no notion why. The whole tribe of Slawkins will be here to- night, I suppose. Are the other rooms pretty full ?” “ I do not know,” replied Debenham. “ I have not been into them.” “You’ve seen my cousins?” “ Mr. Hardwicke came through just now, to receive some ladies. I should not know Miss Hardwicke, if I were to see her.” “ Here’s her portrait — not half handsome enough, of course ; but like her.” “Not handsome at all, to my mind,” said the organist, who was in no mood just then to admire anything. “ Ah, you won’t say that when you see the original. Her features are perfect, and she has the air of a queen.” “ Of a tragedy queen, I should say.” “ No, there’s no pretence about her; it’s all pride, and the pride is real enough. She has about as much heart, you know, as a cricket-ball.” The guests by this time were arriving rapidly, passing for the most part direct into the farther drawing-rooms, and thence, by degrees, overflowing back again into the first. Of these the majority were merchants, stock- brokers, aldermen, and so forth, with their wives and families ; with here and there a West-end banker, or an aristocratic railway director with a handle to his name. Archibald Blyth, not a little proud of his wealthy kinsfolk and the splendours of Strath- ellan House, stayed by his friend, pointing out most of the guests by name, bowing to some, being spoken to by others, and stealing a side-glance now and then at the musician’s face to measure the extent of his admiration. “ That’s old Lady Tuke,” he whispered eagerly, “wife of Sir Sloman Tuke, the mem- ber for Jogglebury ; and that little dark man now talking to her is Abrahams — Japhet Abrahams, you know, of the firm of Abra- hams and Gabriel — a man worth his two millions and a half, if he’s worth a penny. The couple now coming in are Sheriff Bid- dles and his wife. He will be the next Lord Mayor ; she was the widow of Alderman Sharpies. Immensely rich — fine woman — knows how to dress. Don’t see such diamonds every day, do we, my Orestes ? Ah, here comes Mr. Choake — your parson, old fellow. Why don’t you bow to him?” “ He is the vicar of St. Hildegarde’s — I am only the organist,” replied Debenham, draw- X — 2 ing himself to his full height. “ Let him bow to me, if he is so disposed.” But the Reverend Tobias Choake — a tall, pallid, lank-haired young man, who fasted on Fridays and saints’ days, advocated auricular confession, and was suspected of wearing a hair-shirt under his patent Eureka — passed on with an air of the deepest abstraction, recognising no one. “There goes a fellow who would give anything if he might be allowed to shave a little round place on the top of his head,” said Archie, laughing. “ By Jove ! here’s Wash- ington Flack. Wonderful man ! — Yankee — writes for the Transatlantic Exter??iinator — goes everywhere— knows everything about everybody. Shall I introduce you?” Debenham, however, had no wish to be- come acquainted with the man who knew everything about everybody ; and that illus- trious American having recognised Archibald Blyth by a passing salutation, was swept on by the stream. An hour — more than an hour — had now gone by, and Temple Debenham had not yet penetrated beyond the outer room. But the outer room was by this time almost as full as the others, and quite as noisy. The guests seemed, for the most part, to be acquainted, and talked familiarly, as City people talk whose interests, occupations, and topics are alike. The young man stood apart, scan- ning somewhat curiously, perhaps also some- what critically, this gallery of bourgeois heads. Scraps of a hundred conversations buzzed about his ears — greetings, gossip, the news of the day, the price of shares, the bank rate of discount, the Greek loan, the state of the money market, the stoppage of the Anglo- Abyssinian Bank, the rumoured failure of Clint and Clutterbuck, the aspect of American politics, the prospects of the cotton trade. It was money, money, money; on all sides, money ; on every lip the same song; in every mind the one prevailing idea. “ Come, Debenham,” said his friend, se- cretly disappointed by the indifference with which the musician was looking on, “ did you ever see anything like this down at that place in Germany?” “ Like this ?” repeated Debenham, with a curious emphasis on the pronoun. “ Such diamonds, you know — such dresses — such wealth ? Why, there must be over three hundred people here already, and I don’t suppose there are fifty out of the num- ber who are not rich — very rich, indeed.” “ I understand. Money is here what rank was at Zollenstrasse. A case of purse versus 1 8 THE WANTS 01* MAN fGoodWords, J:m. 1 , 1S89. pedigree — the ‘gowd’s’ the ‘ man,’ and his banker’s book is his patent of nobility. A la bonne hcure ! Autre temps , autre moeursT “I’d sooner be a rich English merchant than a beggarly German duke, any day,” re- torted the City man, half angrily. At this moment a voice, almost at Deben- ham’s shoulder, said, not loudly, but with singular distinctness : — “It is time we had some music. Does any one know where this paragon of Archie’s is to be found ?” He turned, and found himself face to face with Mr. Hardwicke and a lady. PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. By the DEAN OF CANTERBURY. I. — THE WANTS OF MAN IN THE MATTER OF RELIGION. Why is not an attempt made to get rid of ! religion ? Men of the world must find it a great plague. It robs them of one day in the week, as far as outward business is con- cerned. It obliges them to submit to, and j bear part in, a great deal of what they must j feel to be atrocious humbug. It keeps them in bondage, both in words and acts, to a cumbrous etiquette, borrowed from days whose habits and rules have passed away. And, considered as furnishing a means of investment, its returns are but capricious, and, on an average, pitiably small. Why, then, is it not got rid of? It would appear as if nothing could be easier. Let a compact society be formed, of men well to do in the world, who shall agree to drop it, as far as by the law they may : to proceed, in their words and acts, as if there were no such thing. The trouble saved would be so great, the additional profit and luxury so evident, that they surely would be veiy soon joined by numbers more, and thence the association would spread into other ranks and strata of society : the world would at length awake to its real interests, superstition and bigotry would disappear, and the conversion of mankind to common sense would be complete. . It is really strange that nothing of the kind is done. And all the more strange, because it is continually beginning to be done. Every few years, some man comes forward, and proves to us that all religion is ; a fiction out of men’s own heads. There is a great sensation for a time. Men meet together, and talk about forming the associa- tion for getting rid of religion. Sometimes, even the preliminary machinery is arranged. An organization is set on feet. A press is established. Convincing and triumphant pamphlets are issued, one after another ; and at last religion is announced as altogether demolished. But somehow, the movement never gets any further. Propaganda after propaganda passes away, and the association never fairly sets about its work. The question then recurs, Why do not men get rid of religion ? And the answer is a very simple one, deduced from the facts of the case : Because they cannot do without it. The course of things is very much this. Up to a certain time, the bold face is worn, the anti-religious movement goes on ; the press works triumphantly, in the estimation of him. who evokes it. And then — a blow falls, and all is at an end, as far as the prime agent is- concerned. A face and a voice are missing from his family circle, or a frail integument of life has given away within him, and the end of life looms up before him — and fare- well propaganda ! Could you look within that curtained window, there he sits with his Bible. Now, the result of this peep is very much in his favour ; but it is not at all in favour of the association for getting rid of religion. We seem to see that it will never live to do its great work. Member after member drops away to the enemy. It is like the old story of the man who tried to teach his horse to do' without eating. Just as he was beginning to succeed, the horse died. Mankind, then, cannot do without religion. But again, Why ? And we may answer this last question directly and indirectly. Directly, by giving the immediate reason which drives the stricken champion of - the un-faith to his Bible. Indirectly, by searching out other conditions which must be fulfilled in order for the object, for which he goes to his Bible, to be attained. The former of these will lead to the latter. What does he want with his Bible ? Has he not over and over again proved that Gospel History, which I see him now' so anxiously turning, to be a tissue of inconsis- tent exaggerations ? It seems to me that he is examining somewhere about that eleventh Good Words, Jan. 1, 1869. 1 IN THE MATTER OF RELIGION. *9 chapter of St. John, which I remember was one of his especial objects of aversion. I think he claimed to have demonstrated that the great miracle, if it ever took place at all, was a collusion, to impose on the J ews and the disciples. And yet, what do I see ? He searches for his pencil, and he underlines some particular words, and he turns down the leaf, and lies back in his chair, and folds his hands, thinking. What has he found ? He has found comfort. All was dim and dreary before him. In a few weeks, the machine must be taken down ; and then ? Or, the beloved presence was gone from him — and lie searched earth and sky, and his own books, and his own thoughts — all were empty, and would give him no news of the missing one. And upon these blanks of humanity came a voice : — I am the resur- rection and the iiFE. One bright streak laces the mist : what wonder that he loves to look upon it ? And thus much is shown us in the picture we have been contemplating : that one, and in very many cases, the principal reason why mankind cannot do without religion, is, that a time is coming for every one when we shall need comfort, and that of a kind which, from the very nature of the case, nothing about us here can furnish. So that it must be sought elsewhere than here. And that “ elsewhere ” can only be in things believed to exist, out of the range of our earthly senses. And that is the realm of religion. But this is plainly a very low and inade- quate view of the matter. God grant that our friend of the un-faith may really find and keep his comfort ! Because it seems to us that he has a good deal to undo, and a good deal to do, before this comes about. In that want of comfort are wrapped up other wants, which perhaps at this present moment he does not feel, but which he will feel, before his comfort is many days old. Let it be observed, that I am at present on very wide and general ground. I merely notice, that words have come across the misty desert of grief and death, from one who has tidings of resurrection and life. And without pursuing the answer so as to identify Him whom Christians love, I put what surely is a necessary question : Who, what sort of a person speaks ? Or, if even this be at pre- sent too pointed, — whence, from what kind | of a place, do such words of comfort come ? | Must we not say, that he who speaks i them is of necessity a Being of Power, and of necessity • a Being holding in his hand the destinies of man, and of necessity a Being willing that man should fulfil his highest | destinies ? Or if we take the vaguer form [ of the question, must we not even then say, j that the source of such words and hopes, be it where it will, is one from which flow also 1 other streams, besides this one of comfort- only? A streak of light, we said, laces the mist. Where does that light come from ? A streak of light in a mist is an evidence of a body of 1 light somewhere ; a token -that beyond that mist there is clearness. When we see it, we say, “ It is clearing.”. ' What is the body of light, and where ? A j question of immense import. Is it altogether of another world ? Is it a light entirely new, casting a spectrum of unaccustomed colours ? j Beyond the mist, is light. But is not the j mist itself, in which we live and move, lighted | by the same ? The Being who speaks these words of com- fort, the place from whence their sound comes, ; is of necessity pure, spotless, happy, holy. Do we never hear anything of these qualities S down here? Nay, to come to the point, is there not in every man's bosom a witness to them, a witness that they ought to be the attributes of his own' character ? Now what I want to say is this : that this champion of the un-faith, — that any man among the sons of men, — when he is stricken down and needs comfort, and when he goes to his Bible and sees comfort written there in such words as those we have been quoting, — if he have a brain capable of putting two ideas together, and if he have a heart sus- ceptible of any of the nobler feelings, cannot take to himself the comfort thus brought into his view, without feeling safe about the con- gruity between himself, his own character and qualities, and the Being who spoke these words, or the place from whence they issued. If he who spoke is the resurrection and the life, then in order for me to call that resurrection and life mine, I must be very , clear about my relation to him. If from some pure and holy place such a message has come, then for me to be gathered into that j place, I must be pure and holy too. I submit j that such thoughts as these are no fiction of mine, but do . exist and find a place in j every one of us under the circumstances sup- j posed. If a man wants to find comfort in prospect of his own dissolution,- — if he wants j to find comfort under -any manner of afflic- | tion, it is utterly impossible for him to keep that search for comfort separate from a con- sideration of his own moral qualities and position. And I further say, that such a considera- 20 THE WANTS OF MAN [Good Word*, Jan. 1,!'69. tion cannot be carried many steps beyond its beginning, without bringing up at least two more wants — two more reasons why he can- not do without religion. Let us see. Suppose you and I, my friend, sit down together, looking each into the other’s face, and begin to consider this moral state of ours. I don’t mean that we could conveniently thus do it ; only I like to imagine another looking on, because it helps one to be honest. Let a quarter of an hour be supposed thus to pass. Well, what is the result as yet ? Can we pretend to say that it is anything but deep dissatisfaction? First comes the verdict, in less than two minutes, if the man be true, — “not what I ought to be.” But there lurks within the fallacy, “Yes, but we know that none of us can be what we ought to be.” And this may induce a certain calm of satisfaction for a few minutes. But the enquiry goes on, and as it goes on, another verdict begins to sound in the ears, — “not what I might have been.” The work is not done yet. “Yes, but circumstances have been against me.” And so, compunction is deadened, and a kind of satisfaction again supervenes, for a few minutes more. And as those few minutes more are given to the work, searching acts and words, and unveiling opportunities, and stripping naked one’s carefully clothed up motives, what do we hear, ringing clearer and clearer till it becomes the voice of the whole soul, — what but this, — “Guilty, guilty:” guilty, against granted powers, in spite of favourable opportunities ; guilty of evil act sprung from evil motive,— guilty of evil words sprung out of evil affections, — guilty, even to the undeniable proofs of a state out of all congruity to any Being who could be the Resurrection and the Life, and to any place from which the light could come which shines through the mist. Well then, what are the two wants which result from this discovery ? Clearly the first of them is, the want of deliverance from guilt. When I try to claim comfort from religion, I discover that it is not for me. Now I am not writing theology. Some of you may say, “ O, here’s the cloven foot. Now we are going to hear all the old story, about atone- ment, and so forth.” Whether you will hear that or not, depends not on me, but on the course of my argument. If that brings it in, why you must be content to hear the old story, even though it be old. But we are' not come to it at present. We are come to this. Any comfort that religion can give me as to these great matters in question must depend on my moral purity, truth, justice. I am not pure, I am not true, I am not just. I might have been all these to a far greater extent than I am. Instead of comfort, I see discomfort — instead of hope, fear. For if there be such a Being and such a place, then (and I cannot get rid of this thought) not only is He not, and is it not, for me, but something else must be for me. If there is in Him, if there is there, all this light and comfort, is there nothing else ? Is there no justice also for man? Even put- ting this in its lowest and mildest aspect, is there no fear that the guilt I have incurred here may abide on me there ? And then, if I can now, with all these fallacies hanging about me, see so much cause for shame and self-reproach in it, how will this be there, when, the world’s influence having fallen off from me, I shall see things even more in their true light ? Can I be unclean here and pure there ? What is to make the difference ? And if, by any chance, that is going to be my final state, to which this one is but intro- ducing me, this present short life on earth must necessarily be a considerable element and component of the final and long life there. This unworthy conduct of mine, this neglect of opportunities for good, how is it to drop off from me and be as if it had not been, — if, that is, justice is to rule proceedings there, which my conscience tells me it will ? So then it is obvious that this overpower- ing sense of guilt must be somehow got rid of, if our friend whom we detected sitting with his Bible is to derive real comfort from it. We will not, at this moment, say any- thing about the requisites for accomplishing this ; we will only observe that all the prin- cipal religions in the world have taken this matter into account, and have provided some way, whatever may by us be thought of the way proposed, whereby the sense of guilt may be got rid of. But when we have said this, we have also said more. If a man simply wants to get rid of the sense of guilt, without also getting rid of the source of guilt, he is not a religious, but a merely selfish man. If mankind wants thus much of religion, that it supply comfort in prospect of the next world, and that in order to that comfort being ministered, it supply also a means of relieving the guilty conscience, then, unless we are to recognise a very low and degraded estimate of man- kind, religion must be called on to supply very much more, — even the means of getting rid of guilt through life ; in other words, the means of living purely, and justly, and Good Words, Jai 1.1,1869.1 IN THE MATTER OF RELIGION. - 21 1 hdlily. That which should supply the means of getting rid of the sense of guilt and fear of its consequences, without also furnishing some means of getting rid of guilt itself, would be no boon, but a curse to men : a mere para- lyzer of their noblest faculty, the conscience. The only possible way, whereby I can roll off from my mind a sense that I am guilty and have no right to the comfort set forth in my Bible, must be some provision whereby I can be made to share the qualities of them who speak that comfort, and to put on the character of that place from whence the tidings of it come. And if a man be good for anything — be anything more than a selfish and sensual creature, this want also emerges sooner or later in his mind : the want of being better than he is. Now we have been taking hitherto an ex- treme case. Our champion of the un-faith might be supposed capable of doing without religion, if ever anybody could. And so we took him, as showing how the case lies with the most unfavourable instance we could produce. But the generality of men are not cham- pions of un-faith. They are ordinary human creatures, gifted with common sense and the power of detecting falsehood : not very likely, at least in this wide-awake country of ours, to be led by the nose for the profit or plea- sure of a few whose interest it is to lead them. And what is their verdict on the subject? They form the bulk of our community. What says our community about being able to do without religion ? The verdict of that com- munity on this matter is very striking. First of all, in ruder days, it was convinced that the nation ought to have a religion, and it ex- acted that it should have a religion, and that that religion should be one and the same for all who dwelt within its frontiers, and partook of its rights. This was some evidence, but it was of necessity imperfect, because thus the want of religion might be not a real one springing out of the depths of man’s heart, but one artificially induced by the will of rulers. But in the course of time, as light and knowledge increased, it became plain that such was not the way for a nation to have a religion ; that the way for a nation to have a religion was for the individual men in that nation to have a religion, and then to group themselves into bodies according to their several religious feelings and convictions. And now came the true evidence, as to what average men of common sense think about the necessity of religion for man. As the chains were taken oft' Englishmen, one after another timid person trembled : there would be no religion left; the State ivould become unchristian ; immorality and unbelief would swamp us all. What was the result ? Why, that there was ten times more religion than ever ; that the State, which had never done a Christian act in all its history, for the first time in its life became Christian, and proved its faith by its works. I once heard the late Dr. Conolly (of blessed memory, if ever man was) relate an incident connected with his establishment of the kindly treatment in the Hanwell Asylum. A pauper patient was brought up to the gate in a strait-waistcoat, struggling and kicking. “ Take that off,” said the doctor ; “we allow no such thing here.” “ Bless’e, sir, he’d fly at your throat.” “ Take it off, I say, or take him away.” It was taken off, the man gazing in astonishment. He was led into the porter’s lodge, and set down to a plentiful meal. The man covered his face with his hands, and burst into tears ; and from that moment be- came tractable and kindly. Now, what was done in this case? Just this : the disease was not removed, but its true treatment was discovered. The depths of the human heart were first sounded ; and power over evil was educed, which none had suspected before. Even so has our com- munity, since its emancipation from com- pulsory conformity, shewn what is in the depths of the heart of man with regard to Being set free, the nature did not It then first truly disco- vered that it wanted religion. And the consequences of the discovery are becoming more momentous every day. The standard of right and wrong in the public mind is slowly, but surely, rising ; the rever- ence for things pure and of good report is steadily on the increase ; and there probably would be found, if the search were to be made, in spite of all the ferment of conflict- ing opinions, a greater consensus in favour of the great foundation doctrines of religion now, than at any former period of our history. From all which things, private and public, we infer that the association for getting rid of religion is never likely to prosper among men ; that the wants of our nature which lead it to have recourse to religion are not artificially created, but inborn and inevitable. The fear of death, the burden of guilt, the aspiration after good, — these are facts, the existence and the effect of which will be manifested whenever the fountains of our nature are stirred, and as long as mankind exists on the earth. religion do without religion OUTWARD BOUND. : Good Words, J&s. 1, !$«>. PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. By the EDITOR. I. — OUTWARD BOUND. S it all a dream? A few months ago was I not in this same the braes of Lochaber, pre- paring to go to India? Did I not take my departure on a fine summer evening as the glory left by the sun was fading in the darkness, ex- cept where a slanting ray re- vealed some glistening rock or heathery knoll, while the great bare scitirs of Glencoe looked like kings with golden crowns? Were not the waves blue and crisp under a gentle breeze, and were not thousands of sea-birds wheeling and screeching over shoals of fish? And did not “a timid voice ask in whispers,” and keep on asking, whether I should ever again see these old hills, and return to my nest among the braes ? f Gazing out as I do now on the huge dark precipice of Glencoe, with the old lights and shadows upon it — recognising in my walks through the glens the same tufts of heather and masses of green fern, hearing the same dear springs babble their highland songs, and, best of all, beholding the old familiar faces more blithe than ever, it really seems impossible to believe that all I have gone through in the brief interval is not a dream ! I ask myself, have I in reality sailed the Red Sea, and some thousands of miles of the Indian Ocean ; have I had a real peep at old India ; have I trod her endless plains ; been shadowed by her tall feathery palms and matchless foliage ; mingled with her teeming crowd of naked, turbaned, cotton-dressed, degraded, stupid, elegant, learned, black- This was written m the summer, with the intention of the senes being commenced then ; but as the articles could not all appear m the volume for 1868, it was thought better in accordance with our rule that all series should be completed W 86 m ' VOlume ’ t0 delay the P ublica tion of the papers till j eyed, white-teethed men, women, and children ! of every race and caste and rank, — Brahmins ! and Suddras, Yojies and Rajahs ? Have I | actually seen men of wit and learning, great j in metaphysics, pundits in theologies old as the flood, worshipping Brahmah, Shiva, and Vishnu, in grand temples, sacred to baboons ? Have I drunk of the sacred | Ganges and Indus, and trod the courts of | holy Benares, and had the privilege of being shown its holy bulls and holy monkeys ? Have I beheld the glory of the Taj, and the marble splendours of Agra and Delhi ? Have I stood with beating heart by the well at Cawnpore ; walked among the ruins of the residency at Lucknow ; paced along the Marathon ridge of Delhi, and everywhere communed with men who amid unparalleled difficulties saved India to the British crown ? When I ask such questions, and add to them many others touching places nearer home, that make strange chords vibrate, — Malta, Sicily, Naples, Amalfi, Pompeii, Rome, — and then look out again at Glencoe, and the sombre braes of Lochaber, I resume my catechism in spite of myself, and ask again, Is it possible that the natives of India are still bathing in the Ganges, as I saw them “ in clear dream or waking vision,” and are at this moment crowding temples doing fiugia, with those strange monsters called gods, and that all the great world of India, with its Hindoos, Mohammedans, Jains, Parsees, and innumerable others, who eat and drink, and suffer and die, is going on as it has done for thousands of years, totally ignorant of Glencoe or Bennevis, of the Established Church, Episcopal Church, Irish Church, or any other Church, and wholly j indifferent as to who shall be returned to parliament at the next election? nay, very probably ignorant of the very existence of | this great country called Scotland ! I re- j member long ago, when proceeding at early j mom to Niagara, a friend beside me asked, J “ Has this fall been going on all night? j Has this great ocean been pouring on at this rate since I was at school?” So am I ! disposed to ask regarding the greater ocean of Indian society, 1 and to return to my first question — Is my contact with it all a dream ? All the names of places which I have written down recall pictures too real to be ■tioodWortla, Jan. 1 , 1860.3 OUTWARD BOUND. 23 _ ~ mistaken for fancies even in the land of Ossian. And as mere dreamers evince a remarkable and very persistent determination to tell others, to their great annoyance, what they saw and heard during their night-like adventures, so I must tell my Indian ex- periences. But those who do not wish to be bored with them can, I am glad to think, easily escape the infliction. I call my visit to India by the mild and well-known name of “ a peep,” chiefly to indicate its very transitory character, and to avoid all comparison between my superficial jottings', and the accounts given by those who have been gazing at India and its people for years from under their suntopee. Still, as a few peeps only are necessary to produce photographs when the light falls on the pre- pared slips, so have I received impressions that can never perish from under that bright eastern sun, — impressions which I should much like to transfer to paper, even with the coarse pen and ink effect of the non- professional artist. When four years ago I sailed “ eastward ” for the first time, I went for mere pleasure, if by such a holiday phrase one can allude to a tour in Palestine. I said, when telling my story to fireside travellers in “ Good Words,” that I did not go in gown and bands, with official responsibility, or with any weighty matters on hand to compel me to “ mark, learn, and inwardly digest,” as I pur- sued my journey. But it was far otherwise on this occasion. Nothing, I feel, could have induced me to go to India on a tour of mere pleasure. As the grounds for this feeling however, are wholly personal, arising out of many peculiar circumstances, they do not concern the reader, and need not be stated. | Pie must not suppose, however, that I con- sider India as being unworthy of a visit by the traveller for its own sake. Enough to state here that my Church did me the honour to request me to visit India, to inquire into 1 1 the true state and prospects of Christian mis- sions there, with special reference to those of the Church of Scotland, and that I felt it to 1 be my duty, at all hazards, to accept the com- mission. Dr. Watson, an old and dear friend, was my fellow deputy, and we sailed together from Marseilles on the 6th of November, 1867. Just one word more of a semi-personal nature. I give these sketches, not in the formal character of the deputy from a Church, but in the less dignified, although much more easy and untrammelled, character of the mere traveller. The weightier results of the tour, with details bearing on missions, have been given in other forms.* Nevertheless, the subject which most engaged my attention will naturally be touched upon now and again in these papers. Having said this much, we can now proceed on our outward j ourney. We chose the over- land passage, and at Marseilles joined the Tan- jore for Malta. I feel that justice is scarcely done to the beauties of this route. It is looked upon very much as a mere drudgery to be got over as speedily and as sulkily as possible. No doubt the journey to Marseilles is a long and tiresome one, but the scenery j is extremely beautiful between Avignon and Marseilles, where, ever and anon, there are delightful glimpses of the Rhone, and views of the enclosing hills. Again, on nearing Marseilles, the coast scenery towards Toulon is very fine, with the wild bare islands scattered, broken, and worn into strangest shapes by the. ceaseless attacks of winds and waves. And farther on, the Straits of Bonifacio are themselves worth a visit. Corsica reminded me of Arran in its general character. Both it and Sardinia, in their - rugged boldness, their jagged peaks, and the broken fantastic forms of their sky- line, are not surpassed by anything in our western highlands. I enjoyed the scene immensely, and not the less so from getting an excellent view of Caprera, and of Gari- baldi’s home. It is a lonely spot, but I gazed on it with affectionate interest, and with as much respect as on any palace upon earth. He was absent, seeking to gain Rome for Italy. Whether the Eternal City shall ever be freed from popedom I know not, but when this chapter of the long history of Italy comes to be read by future genera- tions, I venture to think that no man now in Rome, be he priest or abbot, Monsignor, cardinal, or Pope, will excite as much interest or inspire as much respect as the exile of ! Caprera. We passed Sicily with all sails . set, and followed by a delicious breeze. Here again was a coast view of great beauty, with fine mountains, whose green sides, as well as the plains at their foot, were dotted with white hamlets, and villages. Several islands broke the ocean line seawards. Sailing in mild weather amid such scenes of beauty, with a large number of cheerful passengers to share the enjoyment, the over- land journey is not the dull monotonous 1 affair which people going abroad for the first * “ Address on Indian Missions.” Blackwood and Sons. is. Unpublished Report made to the Foreign Mission Com- mittee of the Church of Scotland. ADEN, ENTRANCE TO BOMBAY HARBOUR. j 26 OUTWARD BOUND. 1 OVrod Words, Jan. — time assume it to be. It must be confessed, however, that our steamer was a wonderful adept in rolling, and this was not by any means agreeable to the miserable minority subject to sea-sickness. Nor was it less trying to myself or to my friend when we preached on deck upon Sunday. To be , obliged suddenly to pause and to embrace the capstan, or if not this, to roll in one’s canonicals under the lee bulwarks — looks un- dignified to a landsman. But at sea it excites ' only a good-natured smile of sympathy, and ; does not lessen the seriousness which I think almost every one feels during a Sunday service on shipboard. As is my habit when at sea, I preached in the forecastle to the Jacks, whom I had 1 all to myself, and whom I always delight in as an audience. One needs to know Jack thoroughly to understand him. There is a singular tenderness under his apparently rough nature. Our boatswain, an old man- of-war’s man, was a fair specimen of his class. Of between forty and fifty years of age, he was short, round, and strong, like the stump of a mainmast. He had grizzly locks, and ! a voice which I believe would be heard above the loudest storm just as well as his shrill | twittering whistle would. From the way in which he issued the simplest orders to the crew, one would have supposed him to be in a constant passion. To slack or haul in a brace or to set a fore-topsail, seemed to inspire him with a wrath which nothing could j appease. Indeed, a novice might have con- jectured that the crew were ticket-of-leave men. But one day when he was in the midst of what seemed ungovernable fury, I j noticed that as he passed the goat, he paused, : and, catching its white beard, stroked its I face, with a gentle “ chucky, chucky, old 1 Nan !” On another occasion I saw him ! rolling along the deck, each arm moving like a turtle’s fin, when a little child, carried in a nurse’s arms, not only arrested him, but i seemed to avert all his choler, while he smiled j and cooed to the “ little darling !” This is Jack all over. We had a little excitement in passing the j bar at . Alexandria, always a disagreeable bit ; of navigation with a south-west wind? One | vessel, we heard afterwards, had been sunk, and another water-logged upon it the previous j night. . But danger there was none, except of j our being kept out at sea idly poking about until it should calm. Our captain, glass in hand, with the Arab pilot beside him, and with four men at the wheel, besides half-a- dozen at each of the relieving tackles, steered cautiously down, “just to take a look at the bar, and smell it.” Perceiving nothing vicious, we j threaded our way along the narrow passage, swinging, as a screw boat alone can swing, and receiving on board a few tops of the seas, to the great amusement of all — save the sufferers ; and we were soon at anchor in smooth waters. We were received by the usual shoals of boats, with their motley screaming crews, who certainly did not seem to have improved in sweetness of voice or in gentleness of manner since I had paid them my first visit. The love of dramatic attitudinising in these excited Easterns is singularly ludicrous when contemplated quietly from the taffrails. The helmsman will remove his hands from the tiller to brandish them about, or lift them over his head. He will then clench his fist, or point his finger to the bellowing crew, — with whom he is arguing in hard guttural agony, — as if to conduct towards them the electricity which he has generated, and which he knows would explode himself unless it were somehow discharged. We remained in the harbour for twenty-four hours ! Why, no one could tell, except that so willed the railway officials. The mails and passengers could have been landed with per- fect ease, as many small boats, with two bars, took on shore the passengers for Alexandria. The steamer from India had, moreover, arrived at Suez ; nevertheless the mails, not to speak of the passengers, were detained all this time, to the great annoyance of the captain. And what a picture of stupid incapacity was be- held next day in the boarding and landing by the harbour steamer and its Egyptian crew ! It is yet an .unexplained mystery how it hap- pens that, in spite of all their experience, the Egyptians handle their craft in a way of which freshwater schoolboys would be ashamed. But the whole transit, from tire custom-house in Alexandria to Suez — rails, carriages, stations, guards, and all — in spite of the influence of such a man as Betts Bey, with all his talent and courtesy, is unworthy of the high road between East and West. In going from Cairo to Suez, for example, we fancied, from sundry disagreeable noises and gratings under the floor of our carriage, that there was “ a screw loose,” or a wheel threat- ening mischief. But there was no one in charge who could speak English, and the at- tempt to get any explanations from Turks rushing about with lanterns at night was impos- sible. So we had to go on in faith and patience . — two virtues exceedingly difficult for one to practise among Easterns. If the link which unites India to the European world consists i Good Words, -Jan. 1.1S69.] OUTWARD BOUND. of two threads of iron rails — and if along these threads thousands of our people an- nually travel — governors of provinces, magis- trates and judges, officers, brides and bride- | grooms, to say nothing of the mails and com- j petition Wallahs, — these rails, carriages, and | 1 all who attend them, ought to be of the best, | and not of such a shaky and uncomfortable ! character as any side-shunting in England would be ashamed of. A little wholesome j ; pressure in this direction might work won- j| ders. If England, or the Peninsular and I j Oriental Company, had sufficient influence to ji get even one sober, steady, and intelligent j . English guard attached to each train, it would j add greatly to the comfort of Mr. and Mrs. I ! Bull in transitu . | Among other old acquaintances whom I had the pleasure of meeting at Alexandria was my Palestine dragoman, Hadji Ali Abu Halaua. The pleasure, I was glad to see, was i mutual. He is now the cavass of Colonel | Staunton, our excellent consul in Egypt. On I asking Hadji about our old servants, I was I I glad to learn that some advices which I had j j given in my notes on Palestine, as to the im- || portance of travellers examining the backs of j j horses and mules before engaging them, had ! j not been wholly without effect ; nay, had 1 been so conscientiously acted upon in the j case of our old rascally mule-driven Meeki, that he had to give up his impositions and take to another trade. Whatever was the real cause of this change, travellers must be bene- fited by it. It was a pleasing whiff of the olden time, to talk with Hadji over those I happy days of travel — every feature, from his j nose to his boots, recalling the journey. | Passing at once to Suez — for of Alexandria, j Cairo, the Pyramids, the Nile, the Desert, I need not again write — we found the steamer j full to the brim. Our sail of 1,200 miles down the Red Sea was, on the whole, very agreeable,, as far as heat was concerned. From all I could learn- about the dangers of this pas- sage, they seem to me to be exaggerated. The weather here, as well as everywhere else, varies much even at the same sea- son. On my return in March, for exam- | pie, when it was intensely hot in Ceylon, and j when I expected to be broiled in the Red Sea, the temperature was so low as to compel me for the first time to put on warm clothing. Some people never care what month they sail up or down it. As for the officers and' crews of the steamers, they, as a matter of course, do so at all seasons without any special danger. The fact is, any man in robust health, and with care, can endure any kind of travel. It is only invalids from India, or those with weak or exhausted constitu- tions, who cannot stand the Red Sea, any more than anything else which makes de- mands on their physical powers or nervous energies. In the months between October and March this passage is often very agree- able, the average heat in my cabin having been only about 8o°. No doubt days, and even weeks, do occasionally occur when it is well-nigh intolerable and certainly disagree- ! able, and when the strongest can do little j more than submit and evaporate. I must j confess indeed that I did not feel it cool | when preaching on Sunday to the large j assemblage on deck ; when the thermometer | was about 90 0 , and when I had to speak j with force enough to be heard above the | noise of waves, steam, and screw, to an j audience of, I suppose, 150. I appreciated j a few caraffes of iced water which were poured j over my head afterwards. Nor did my plucky j fellow-deputy find it much more bearable when preaching in the evening. The society one meets with in these Indian steamers during “ the season ” is as agreeable as is to be found anywhere. Almost every passenger occupies some position, either civil or military, implying superior education; while not a few have acquired eminence in their professions, and from their peculiar experi- ence are full of accurate information with due store of interesting anecdote and inci- - dent. Here are men who served during j the Mutiny, sharing in the weary marches, j the exciting adventures and hair-breadth i escapes of that memorable time ; others who played a part in the relief of Lucknow, stood to arms at the siege of Delhi, or poured over its breach with Nicholson. Here is one, an engineer, who has seen much of life in con- nection with the laying of the telegraph through Persia. Here are civilians who have governed provinces with a population as large as that of Scotland, or led for years a strange half-tent, half-horseback life among out-of-the- way tribes, as strange to us as the inhabitants of another sphere. Here are pious missionaries and missionaries’ wives, who have laboured long and nobly among the heathen, whom they seem to love as their own souls. Here are keen observers, politicians, critics, whose i sword is the pen and whose bullets are printers’ j types, and who keep alive the tardy public, | otherwise disposed to slumber or to forget that j “our” eye is upon them. Here also are young aspirants, both male and female, full of bright hopes as they pursue their course 28 OUTWARD BOUND. [Hood Words, Jan. 1, T$Ti9. to tin unknown land, wondering what they will do or be, ere they sail over the Red Sea again, — some with medals, some with bairns, some with pensions, and all, it is to be hoped, with sound livers, and none with those sad faces and dresses which tell a tale often, alas ! to be repeated in India. And here are young officers on their way to Magdala. They are full of spirit and energy, without pretence or display, and, I doubt not, have all the dash of our noble army. We have also re- presentatives of high church, low church, broad church, every church, and no church — of Zoroaster and of Nothing. But one man there is, who can be classed with none else. Who is he with his leathern jacket? Some say he is a great Nimrod, whose adventures are marvellous ; others that he is essential to the success of the Abyssinian expedition. He himself evidently feels his importance. He tells us that he expects a government steamer to be in waiting near the island of Peirim, “ to take me to Massowa and then he adds, with becoming humility — “ and also the mails !” The scene each evening was particularly pleasing. As every one knows, there is no twilight in the East, none of that witching hour in Scotland called “ gloaming,” and in Germany by as sweet and poetic a word “ dammerung.” “ At one stride comes the dark.” So it is a long night from six till six, especially as after ten all the lights are extinguished. One requires a good con- science and a weary brain to get through these idle hours satisfactorily, and in oblivion of the existence of the screw and the heat. The awning which covers the quarter-deck conceals the glorious stars. But as a substitute for these, lamps are hung from the awning roof, which serve to reveal indistinct groups in the most favourable condition for talking. And beyond this nothing can be done, except — and the exception forms the delightful rule of these evenings — listening to music and singing. Thus the ladies, like the brilliant and beautiful stars, come out at night, or like the nightingale, “ sing darkling.” With a good pianoforte on deck, and many admirable voices, both male and female, our evening ! concerts were excellent, and received “ well- ; merited applause ” from the unseen audience. | Anyhow, no one who wants amusement or instruction need spend a listless hour on •-board such a steamer, were the voyage to continue for months instead of weeks. He can choose his companion as he can a book and read him, and learn from him ] for every one is courteous and communicative when properly approached. 1 am glad to record my grateful and happy remembrance of our pleasant company. I never spent happier days among strangers than on this voyage. And here I cannot resist the desire — let the reader call it vanity if he will — to record what to us was most pleasing and encourag- ing. My friend and I, before landing, were very unexpectedly honoured by being pre- sented with an address, signed by all the passengers, to encourage us in our mission, and to acknowledge our small services on the Sundays. I here take the liberty of noticing the strange way in which, as I afterwards found, the Indian society in the steamer represented India society in general, in the vast variety of opinion held by its members on the same topics. There was hardly a subject of im- portance on which we desired information, about which we did not receive the most — dare I call them ? — contradictory opinions, each man moreover holding with remarkable tenacity to his own, so that even at this stage, I began to despair of ever being able to come to any conclusion on any great Indian topic. It struck me then, as it did subsequently, that this is much more charac- teristic of India than of England. Not only is there a wider divergence of opinion among intelligent, thoroughly well - informed and honest gentlemen, on 'the same subject, but there is a more unhesitating, and may I say ? dogmatic determination on the part of each to hold his own. This may be accounted for, possibly, by the vastness of the circle required to embrace Indian questions, and the impossibility of any one man being able from his isolated position to observe any more than a portion of the circle ; — the want too of a well-founded public opinion expressing through the press results gathered up, not from a few sources, as in India, but from sources innumerable, as in England. To these causes must be added the official reserve of the local governments, and the absence of parliamentary discussion to ascertain and sift out the truth. Still more, the comparative ignorance of Europeans in general as to the views and opinions of the immense multitude of the governed body on any one subject whatever. But I cannot enter on such general questions here. I only further remark that even the phases of religious opinion among Europeans in India were also truly represented in the steamer, which, in this respect as well as in others, serves as a link to connect the two countries — exporting to ITindostan not only OUTWARD BOUND. 29 .iuod Words, Jan. 1, 1 >i&. 1 all Christian truth, but also every raving of theological mania found in England, and in return importing into England every similar specimen of the latter Indian product. But I am forgetting that I am only outward bound ! No. 1. The sail from Suez to Ras Mohammed, at the Gulf of Akaba, is full of interest. We had a magnificent view, in the clear atmo- sphere, of the land on both sides. The most imposing sight on the Egyptian shore is No Mount Akrab, about 10,000 feet high, which is of the form given in the rough sketch, No. 1. The range of the Sinai Peninsula is also very grand. Sinai itself cannot be seen from any part of the Red Sea tra- versed by the steamers; and only at one spot along the shore is a portion of the summit visible. The general outline of the range opposite the town of Tur, seen at sunrise, is somewhat like No. 2. The rocks wore that red-brown look, when seen at sunset, which is given with such marvellous j fidelity in Herbert’s splendid fresco of the j Desert in the House of Lords. We saw | in many places the plain of sand, stretching j for about fifteen miles between the sea and | the mountains. Its very look made one hot | and thirsty, at the mere thought of oscillating like a pendulum, perched high on a camel’s back — the said camel pacing with noiseless step along the burning sands, beneath the furnace glare, and accompanied by the mum- mified Bedouins, with their filthy Caffias, and long guns and spears. For young aspirants, such a life has its joys ; but for the venerable and sedate, the Peninsular and Oriental steamer is to be preferred. And yet even a luxurious steamer has its trials, against some of which I beg to warn all voyagers. Beginning with the least : there is the impossibility of recovering any articles left on deck at night. I have, for example, to deplore the loss of a large ivory paper cutter, and a dear old travelling friend, a Turkish fez. They disappeared, and in spite of advertisements on the companion- stair, and the honest agency, I assume, of the stewards, they never were restored, nor was any hope held out of their ever being so. The Lascars, or some of the Oriental crew, got the blame, as usual. A very pretty collection must thus be made by somebody, for sale at the termination of each voyage. Now, might not something be done by the Company, to warn the pas- sengers that everything left on deck at night ; ! is likely to be stolen? Possibly also a few better police arrangements might be made to detect the pilferers. For grievance No. 2 : a No. 3. remarkable arrangement, or rather, want of j arrangement, in the Peninsular and Oriental ; steamers, which it has defied my curiosity or OUTWARD BOUND. [Good Words, Jan.l, 1 S 09 . ingenuity to account for, is -the necessity laid upon every passenger who wishes to have a comfortable seat on deck, to purchase his own chair at Marseilles, and convey it with him to India. Why this ? I can understand all chairs being prohibited because of lumbering the decks, but, every passenger being per- mitted to bring his chair, I cannot understand j why a great company should not provide thoroughly comfortable ones, and in sufficient number. They might as well insist upon each person bringing his own bedding, or his own crockery. And now for “grievance” No. 3 : I warn all voyagers to prepare as best they can for much indigestible food between Suez and Calcutta. The menu of the steamers is magnificent. One actually stares at the variety and prodigality of the programme. But a few days’ experience, alas ! teaches the great fact that the food is, with the exception possibly of one or two dishes, tough and indigestible, — so at least we found it. There are some people, I am aware, who seem to be provided by Nature with a gizzard, or a muscular apparatus approaching the power of nutcrackers. All food consigned to this kind of mill is equally acceptable because equally easily ground. But others are compelled to depend upon ordinary organs, and these often weak, and made still weaker by a hot climate. Woe be to all such, male or female, old or young, in a steamer on the Indian Ocean ! Hunger will prove only a snare to lead them more eagerly into the trap. No doubt this may be so fhr accounted for by the fact of the climate making it im- possible to keep meat till it is tender, and rendering it necessary that the bleating sheep and gobbling ducks of to-day should appear as roast or boil to-morrow ; and it may be that in spite even of preserved meats there is no adequate remedy for this death amidst life ; but all persons should be warned of the fact, so that they may make such arrange- ments as in their wisdom they deem most expedient. ; Children, at least, should have crisp biscuits, and such other dainties as can be easily carried, provided for them. And let me here give a friendly hint to the stewards, if this should ever meet their eye : it is to assure them that they would not be less agreeable or obliging if, when arranging the saloon in the morning, they talked and laughed a little less ; to beg them to remember that every word they speak — all their bantering, joking, and chaffing — is heard by dozens of passengers, who are tossing . in berths, using every means to get a little sleep, and who, moreover, have not the taste to relish their early morning exercises. Being veiy anxious to see that great sign i of the tropics, the Southern Cross, and having | been told that it was visible about three in the morning from the forecastle, I managed to awake about that time. Dressed in a white Damascus camel-hair dressing-gown, the ori- ginal of the surplice, and therefore appro- priate, I clambered on deck. It is strange [ to contemplate a native crew lying asleep. I They are all covered up, including their j heads, in the sacks used for loading the I ship, and they lie side by side in rows, j as if dead. Their dreams, if they have any, must have some ethnographical, and j in the case of the Africans especially, geo- ; graphical interest. I carefully picked my steps between the rows, and with difficulty ascended the fore-deck. I reached the heel of ! ‘the bowsprit as the ship was pitching against a head sea. I discovered the Cross, but was rather disappointed with it as a constellation when compared with many others, glittering with brilliancy in the depths of that unfathom- able sky; and I hope those who are most ! sensitive to symptoms of provincialism, will i excuse me for preferring the great Bear of i the North to any constellations in the Southern i sky. Having satisfied my curiosity, I staggered j back to the ladder. Just as I reached its j top, I heard the well-known thud and whush of a sea breaking over the bow, which quick- ened my steps. But before I could get to the main deck, 't poured down like a pic- turesque waterfall on my shoulders, drenching and blinding me. Rushing along the deck, it roused up the whole congregation of black sleepers, who woke with a cry, while I,' doubtless looking to them like a dripping ghost, made for my cabin. But the sea had been before me. Pouring down the hatch- ways, it flooded the deck, on which were stretched some mattresses occupied by ladies and children, with sundry respectable gentle- men. Ruthlessly it swept into the neigh- bouring cabins, floating boots and shoes, ! and whatever could swim. As there was not the slightest danger, the scene became in- j tensely ludicrous, 'owing to the sudden con- j trast presented between the deep silence (in- terrupted only by snores) of a few minutes I before, and the wide-awake energy displayed ! j now. On another occasion, I most irnpru- 1 j dently opened my cabin port for light and ventilation while reading beside it. A spark- ling green wave, as if in fun, suddenly rushed through, and taking my breath away as it poured down upon me, sent a whole fleet of Good 'Word)?, .lan.1, 1S09.J V - OUTWARD BOUND. 3i things washing around my bed. I found my waterproof bath, with its inflated sides, an excellent lifeboat on the occasion for saving ! property from destruction. These are some j of the gentle adventures one meets with when j outward bound, and it gives some idea of the j safety and monotony of the voyage, when I trifles like these afford such amusement. ! Early one morning, on looking out of my | port, I descried near us a weird, barren island, whose summit was fashioned like No. 3. It was one of the volcanic groups close by Aden. Soon we dropped anchor in that ! famous half-way house. But as I spent more i time at Aden on my way home, I shall defer j notice of it until then, remarking only that I I think it extremely interesting, and, as they say, “ well worth seeing.” We had a delight- ful run of 700 miles to Bombay, each day, as far as I remember, being a dead calm. A gun fired one morning at sunrise an- nounced our arrival at Bombay. This signal had been so often renewed in the experience of the officers of the steamer, that it had as j little romance to them as has the steam whistle I which announces the near end of the day’s J| journey to the guard of a train. On some j “old stagers” on board it hardly made a ! 1 deeper impression. But to a new comer, j ; like myself, it was very different ; for not ] without very peculiar emotions did I ascend ; ■ the deck to look for the first time on that ! | great country, associated with so much to stir S 1 the imagination of every British subject, and i most of all of every Christian minister. The j ! scene which meets the eye when entering the harbour is one of the most striking and lovely in the world. Every other thought is for the moment lost in a . sense of its beauty. | The forests of ' palm trees which, in the hot ! and motionless air, repose on the lower j hills, along the margin of the shore, at once I attract attention, as being thoroughly charac- teristic of eastern climes. The islands as they unfold themselves, with their masses of ver- dure, and the bays, and vanishings of the sea into distant river-like reaches, lost in a soft bright haze, above which singular hills — i I rounded, obelisked, terraced — lift themselves ! i up, all combine to form a complete picture, I I framed by the gleaming blue sea below, l ; and by the cloudless sky above, full of j intense heat and light of burnished bright- .ness. Looking nearer, one notices the ships from every clime, and of every size and kind, i fixed in a sunny mist on a molten sea — | ships at anchor — ships crowding their masts near the wharves, and boats without num- ber, with their large matting sails and i covered poop, dipping their oars in silver j light, all going on their own errands, and a ; goodly number making for our steamer. ; Beyond the ships and masts, white houses ; among trees, and here and there a steeple, | indicating the long land line of the Colaba j Point, tell us where the famous city of Bom- ! bay lies, with its worshippers of fire and of fine gold. We would have lingered long in the con- | temptation of such a scene, were it not for the necessity of looking after luggage, set- i tling with stewards, bidding farewell to fellow- j passengers, and nervously watching for the j dropping of the anchor and the friends | who are to receive us. That moment soon comes, and with it the usual scene of noise j and confusion from roaring steam and roaring | crews within and without, the rushing to and j fro, the frantic and impetuous pressing and j thrusting hither and thither — a state of things to be surpassed only by the tumult at the j breach of a beleaguered fortress. In due time we were landed by my good I friend Walter Crum, in a nice picturesque j boat, itself a touch of a new country. On 1 landing, we saw many things which we expected to see, and which did not therefore surprise us : — a busy multitude of Coolies — so called, I presume, from their coolness — at least I may be excused for thinking so in the circumstances, — whose dress, as made by art, was as economical as could be conceived, and, as made by nature, was a beautifully exact .fit of tanned skin over singularly lanky limbs. As we hurry along during the next half- hour, I receive my first impressions of India, I — impressions, first, of the Irish or gipsy-like squalor of the native town ; then, in driving to Malabar Hill, of the palm-tree woods ; j then of temples where human beings in the | nineteenth century, and under Christian Britain, and in civilised Bombay, worship idols ; and then, all along the way, vivid impressions of what is facetiously termed the j “ cool season ” in India ; and finally, at the | end of my journey to my host’s bungalow, ! most pleasing impressions of the peculiarities ! and luxuries of an Indian home. Beaten j ylown by all this whirl and" heat and excite- i ment, I very soon lose all impressions what- soever in a half-apoplectic nap within mos- quito-curtains, from which I hope to awake before chapter two is required. A BALLAD [Grood Words, Jaa. 1, 13fi9. A BALLAD. « Oh ! were you at war in the red Eastern land ? What did you hear, and what did you see ? Saw you my son, with his sword in his hand ? Sent he, by you, any dear word to me ? ” 11 1 come from red war, in that dire Eastern land ; Three deeds saw I done one might well die to see ; But I know not your son, with his sword in his hand ; 1 1 If you would hear of him, paint him to me/' Oh, he is as gentle as south winds in May !” “ 'Tis not a gentle place wdiere I have been.” “ Oh, he has a smile like the outbreak of day !” “Where men are dying fast, smiles are not seen/’ I j “Tell me the mightiest deeds that were done. Deeds of chief honour, you said you saw three ; You said you saw three — I am sure he did one. • | My heart shall discern him, and cry, 4 This is he !’” “ I saw a man scaling a tower of despair, | And he went up alone, and the hosts shouted loud.” “ That was my son 1 Had he streams of fair hair?” “ Nay ; it was black as the blackest night-cloud.” i “ Did he live?” “ No ; he died : but the fortress w r as won. And they said it was grand for a man to die 90 .” “ Alas, for his mother ! He was not my son. Was there no fair-haidd soldier who humbled the foe?” <3ood Words, Jan. 1, 1800.] A BALLAD. 33 “ I saw a man cnarging in front of his rank, Thirty yards on, in a hurry to die ; Straight as an arrow hurl’d into the flank Of a huge desert-beast, ere the hunter draws nigh.” “ Did he live ?” “ No ; he died : but the battle was won, And the conquest-cry carried his name through the air. Be comforted, mother ; he was not thy son : Worn was his forehead, and grey was his hair.” “ Oh ! the brow of my son is as smooth as a rose ; I kissed it last night in my dream. I have heard Two legends of fame from the land of our foes ; But you said there were three : you must tell me the third.” “ I saw a man flash from the trenches and fly In a battery’s face ; but it was not to slay : A poor little drummer had dropp’d down to die, With his ankle shot through, in the place where he lay. £,: He carried the boy like a babe through the rain, The death-pouring torrent of grape-shot and shell ; And he walked at a foot’s pace because of the pain, Laid his burden down gently, smiled once, and then fell.” X-3 34 A BALLAD. [Good Words, Jan. 1, 1869. “ Did he live ?” “ No ; he died : but he rescued the boy. Such a death Is more noble than life (so they said). He had streams of fair hair, and a face full of joy. And his name ” — “ Speak it not ! Tis my son ! He is dead l “ Oh, dig him a grave by the red rowan tree, Where the spring moss grows softer than fringes of foam ; And lay his bed smoothly, and leave room for me, For I shall be ready before he comes home. “ And carve on his tombstone a name and a wreath, And a tale to touch hearts through the slow-spreading years— How he died his noble and beautiful death, And his mother, who longed for him, died of her tears. “ But what is this face shining in at the door, With its old smile of peace, and its flow of fair hair ? Are you come, blessed ghost, from the far heavenly shore ? Do not go back alone ! — let me follow you there !” “ Oh ! clasp me, dear mother. I come to remain ; I come to your heart, and God answers your prayer. Your son is alive from the hosts of the slain, And the Cross of our Queen on his breast glitters fair !” MEN ELLA BUTE SMEDLEY, uood Words, Jan. 1, 1869.] THE MERTHYR IRON WORKER. 35 TOILING AND MOILING. Some gimrwnf of xmr SEorHng jihopk, mtb pofo ijirg gfike. By “ GOOD WORDS ” COMMISSIONER. I. THE MERTHYR IRON WORKER. Bound to Merthyr Tydfil, via Hereford, the Englishman feels himself in Wales as soon as he has passed Pontrilas. In spite of its proximity to the Principality, Here- fordshire is a thoroughly English-looking county. Its big, brown-and-white, dew-lapped, curly cattle ; its chocolate-coloured fallows ; its hop-poles stacked into wigwams above long rows of cabbages as plump as the Herefordshire lasses ; its old orchards, dotted with remnant crimson apples, that glow like railway rear-lamps on the black, crooked branches, and bushed with dull-green mistle- toe ; its red brick cottages, so multitudinously cross-beamed with cracked, hoary timber that they look like patchwork quilts worn white and gaping at the seams : all these are English in their aspect. But Monmouth- shire, though legally English, is so Welsh in its scenery, the names of its places, and the look and talk of its inhabitants, that you run through it into Glamorganshire without knowing when you have crossed the border. Some of the Glamorganshire people, by-the- bye, have the odd notion that England annexes a Welsh county every fifty years. It is vain to point out that England and Wales are, politically, but one kingdom, and that Monmouthshire — the proof appealed to j —has . ceased to be Gwent, and taken its j place in the Oxford Circuit, for a good deal ! more than fifty years. The Welsh patriots 1 cannot be persuaded that England is not ! bent on gobbling up their country by cruel right of might. In whatever circuit it may figure, how- ever, Monmouthshire, as I have said, is still an unmistakably Cambrian county. The men, women, and children who storm the close, smudged, colliers’-forecastle-like third-class carriages at Pontypool are all jabbering Welsh. It sounds very much like, a pebbly mountain-stream — plaintively liquid music jagged with guttural dis- cords. It is queer to hear the grimy small boys rolling and rattling out the Celtic sounds so readily. Every now and then they grin as they glance slyly from their companions in the carriage to the stranger on the platform ; of course they are making fun of the Cockney, and chuckling at the thought that they can call him to his face all kinds of uncomplimentary names without being brought to book. The men have a | surly, suspicious, shut-up look, and, as they ! talk, glance over their shoulders like con- spirators. Some of them are connected in one way or another with the mines, and rush to the windows to exchange gruff shouts with the men on the black mineral-trains that rumble past. But all the women seem good-tempered. Perhaps, in spite of their clear, friendly eyes and laughing mouths, they are not very pretty, as a rule ; but, at any rate, their bronzed faces look picturesque as they peep out of the checked woollen kerchiefs that hood their hats and bonnets. Nearly all of them wear checked woollen shawls, and are in charge of market-baskets as big as clothes-baskets, which they lug about as merrily as if they were mere reticules. From window to window the stranger oscillates, like the donkey between the two bundles of hay, throughout that striking west-country ride. Here is a little church perched, like a twelfth-cake ornament, on a mound to which there seems to be no thoroughfare but meadow-paths ; and there in the valley is a low grey nave, with a box- like chancel at one end, and a tiny square | tower at the other, all blotted with the black I pyramids of the surrounding yews. On both hands hills high enough to be called moun- tains interfold ; some plumed with fiery fern, littered with limestone, and heaped and patched with coal-dust ; some clad from base to summit with feathery dim-golden foliage ; and others tree-less, shaggy-grassed, rush- 1 dotted, with a few wild-looking sheep, and | ponies, and cattle browsing on the coarse j herbage, low green and grey stone walls crawling, up their sides like great caterpillars, |j and solitary cottages dropped on them far | away like specks of whitewash. At the foot j of the mountains there is a patchwork of j i sloping polygonal closes, and here and there a slovenly little white farmstead with glossy j j ivy on the gable of its church-like bam. j Above mossy tumble-down stone walls, with j tufts of crinkled primrose-leaves in every moist cranny, rise the weedy gables of mined cottages, and the chimney stalks of forsaken 3 6 THE MERTHYR IRON WORKER. [flood Words, Jan. 1 , If j works lean back in clumps of red and yellow | wood, like fallen obelisks in a deserted city which the forest has revindicated. But on all sides there are signs of still active mineral industry. Miners’ cottages stand in terraces on the hill-sides, pure white cottages, streaky- white, yellow, grey, brown, and black, with staring white borders to the window-frames and doorways ; and down the hill-sides, cut- ting through the variegated woods and scarring the green grass, steep black tramways are ruled straight like penmarks. The Rail is as ubiquitous as Paul Pry in this coal-and-iron district — Paul Pry without his apology. It pushes itself wherever it pleases in an un- compromising fashion that shows that it con- siders anything that gets in its way as the intruder. It steers straight from the moun- tain-top, at a white village scattered on a river’s broken bank, as if it meant to run sheer down the chimneys. It straddles across the green landscape on stone bridges almost as black as the coal that rattles over them. It spans a valley on a long viaduct so lofty and so fragile-looking that the brain swims when the eye falls on the river and the rails be- neath. It is almost impossible to lose sight of switches, signal-posts, locomotives, big trucks, little trucks, and — on trams to match — trucks so very little that they look like bakers’ baskets which a sweep has borrowed. # At Quaker’s Yard— a little hill-side sta- tion-carriages are changed for Merthyr; a flight of steps leading down to a lower line. The name of the station is suggestive, and I asked its meaning of an old Welshman, with whom I foregathered there— a most genial old Welshman. He had a theory that we ought to be grateful for everything that hap- pens except elections, which, he said, in Wales had caused feuds that dozens of years could not heal. Whilst he spoke a trainful of redcoats were landing a few miles farther up the line to cow the fierce “ hill-folk ” who had risen round Blaenavon. He carried off the entire staff of the Quaker’s Yard station in file, like stalking geese, to imbibe warm beverages at his expense at a lonely little “hotel” on the hill-side. And when we parted, after a fifteen minutes’ acquaintance, he almost wrung my arm out of the socket, as he pumped away at my hand and ex- pressed his fervent wishes that we might speedily meet again. In spite of what I have said of the surly, suspicious look of Welshmen, they thaw rapidly to an English- man who takes an interest in their country, and is not asinine enough to sneer at every- thing Welsh as half-barbarian, as too many ignorant Englishmen, both of the tourist and the bagman species, are fond of doing. But I was talking of the etymology of Quaker’s Yard. My friend could only tell me that the name in Welsh was Quaker’s Grave- yard, that the Welsh for Quaker was Quacker (the Welsh being too brave a nation to have a native name for quaking), and that there were scarcely any Quakers in Wales. This information was somewhat of the “ Snakes in Iceland ” type, but my informant told me something more interesting about the station that intervenes between Quaker’s Yard and Merthyr. “ Troedyrrhiew” he in- terpreted as meaning “ this is the thorough- fare and said that his mother could remem- ber the time when the place — with mines and iron-works encircling it now — was simply a short cut from lonely farm to farm. The line from Quaker’s Yard to Merthyr is a tan- gent to the curves of the Taff. In the lower reaches there are pools of dark water, with ivy-clad trunks dipping golden-leaved branches into them ; but, as the valley rises to the mountain — except in time of flood — the Taff is often only represented by a slop- ing bed of stones. The nearer the train gets to Merthyr, the grimmer the country be- comes. The iron-smelting metropolis is a dirty, straggling town, sprawling up barren mountains, like a bundle of dirty rags spread out in faintest hope of their bleaching, with belching furnaces, and black table-lands of rubbish all around. Little more than a century ago, Merthyr was a village dozing in the hollow of the hills ; and to this day it retains the village type. It is a village stretched a good deal each way, with modern patches on the strained THE MERTHYR ancient cloth. It has banks, 'buses, and barracks, plate-glass shop-fronts, hansoms, and a huge poor-house — satirically built on a rubbish-heap ; but the streets are narrow and winding, dark and dirty. A great many of the houses are mere cottages, with slovenly rough-walled gardens raised above the road, or sunk below the road ; and some of them in the side lanes poke their noses, so to speak, into one another’s faces as intrusively as the hovels of any London court. Off a main thoroughfare there is a sloping piece of waste ground, littered with big stones, that looks as wild as the bottom of a mountain watercourse. Merthyr has Turkish baths, but it has also Turkish mal-odours. It is a very interesting place to visit, but scarcely the place which a lover of the comfortable would select as a residence. The better class of houses — comparatively very few — all look as if they were cross at not being able to keep their faces clean. The abundance of places of worship, and the far greater abundance of public-houses, are two of the social fea- tures of Merthyr which obtrude themselves on the stranger’s notice. I should weary my readers, if I were to write out its list of Sions, Carmels, Elims, Capel Nazareths, &c. ; and as to the publics, they are “thick as thieves,” in some places clustering by the three and four together. The police, who wear tunics and helmets like City constables, and, in proportion to the population they have to look after, are a numerically weak force, must have anything but a sinecure in a town that needs so many fountains to quench its thirst. Of places of worship and publics, however, I shall have to speak again presently. To get an introduction to the underground iron workers of Merthyr, I started for the offices of the Plymouth Iron Works, about a mile from the parish church. I passed houses black, white, and grey, yellow, and mouse- coloured ; a piebald house, too — brick accen- tuating the chimney-vents like swollen veins in its stone walls, and blocking up what had once been its windows. In raised gardens of what looked like blacksmiths’ small coal, “ fenced ” from the road with very intermit- tent boulders, a few bony cabbage-stalks were shamming to grow, and a more plentiful crop of groundsel was comparatively flourishing. A little boy sat resting on a low, roadside wall, with a block of coal as big as a double- quartern loaf beside him. Muddy streamlets were cascading from the hill-side ; a stream of cheap-coffee-house coffee, creamed with scummy bubbles, rushed along in a water- IRON WORKER. course. Rails, and dingy railway -bridges, and flat-topped sloping piles of black rubbish, like huge inchoate railway-embankments of black- lead, ran and rose on the right hand and the left. Notwithstanding these surroundings, and the gaunt, black wheels and dirty-drab chimney- stalks that tower above them, the offices have an oddly home-like look. They are a cluster of low, old, mellow buildings, with moss and ivy, lichen, and stone-leek on them. A woman comes out of them dangling a pound of dumpy candles in her hand, just as if she had been making her purchase in a village- shop begirt with elms and corn-fields. An official obligingly comes out also, to see if he can find any one to guide me to a pit where I may come across the coal-agent. No one happening to be at hand, he advises me to follow a man he points out in the distance, and speak to the men at the mouth of the first pit I come to. There is something funny in hearing pits spoken of as if they were as plentiful as hips and haws. My path leads past a great embankment of cinders, still smoulder- ing, as the lazily - curling white smoke- wreaths show ; past great blocks of slag that look like the shell - and - pebble - plummed boulders of clay found on our eastern sea- coast; across a tramway, whose ballasting, save where it is frozen in the shade, seems made of very sticky blacking ; up a steep bank of damp coal-dust ; over a little wall ; and along another line of rails, as filthy as the former, which curves out of a low, goblinish tunnel-opening in the hill-side, and i whose metals are being freed from the vis- j cous mud that clings to them by a bent j old man, and a girl in semi-masculine cos- j tume, and with a most unfeminine face. On j 3» THE MERTHYR IRON WORKER. [Good Words, Jan. 1, 1 one side, the lambent tongues of the Plymouth furnaces — pale-pink in the bright daylight — are flickering above gushing and billowing steam ; on the other, are one or two yellow residences that rank, I suppose, as cottages orn'ees in Merthyr — the ornament of one being a great slab of coal set up upon its lawn ; low heaps of iron-ore stacked like stone to be broken for road-mending, and each block marked with its miner’s number, letter, or distinctive cross; seven or eight young women in coarse, sleeved pinafores, handkerchiefs tightly bound over their heads, battered hats, bristling with frayed feathers, blue stockings, and, in some instances, mascu- line overalls — some helping to unload the trucks that come up the shaft, and others pottering with shovels about the “tip;” a little hovel at the pit-mouth ; a wooden frame above it, gibbeting two great wheels, with broad, flat, glossy bands, that look like magnified figs of negro-head tobacco; and at the foot of the tip, where more girls and a boy or two are shovelling coal, an engine- house to which access is obtained by a nar- row plank uncomfortably near to a hot pipe. This .is an iron-mine proper — a “ mine-pit,” as.it is called in the neighbourhood, “ mine” being the Glamorganshire miner’s equivalent for “ore.” The engine-man negotiates with the banksman to become my cicerone, and invites me into the engine-room, to perform my underground toilette. When I have tied a handkerchief round my head, and plastered the engineer’s Jim Crow down upon it, but- toned myself into his greasy monkey-jacket, and tucked my trousers into my boots, he tells me with a chuckle that my wife wouldn’t know me now, and turns me o’ut for the in- spection of the tip girls, whose reception is fuller of fun than of flattery. My guide is a short, civil fellow, with a bronzed, ruddy face like a sailor’s. Fifteen shillings a-week, he says, he gets ; the overman getting 30J. ; and the engine-man 2s. 6 d. a-day. The miners, working by the ton, must be “ good men,” he adds, to average 20.5-. a-week. We step on to a kind of cage, open at two sides ; the wheels begin to revolve, slowly at first, more rapidly soon, and in less than half-a-minute we have dropped to the bottom of the downcast. When men are going up or down, the engine does not work quite so fast as when laden or empty trucks are the only freight. The cavernous walls of the shaft drip on us as we go down, and when the cage grounds there is a splash of water as if we had been lowered into a well. W e are two. hundred feet nearer the centre of the earth, moreover, than we were twenty-five seconds before ; but, other- wise, the descent is very much like going down in an hotel luggage-lift. It is a very miry, murky cellar we have got down into, however. We sink almost up to the calves in mud, and were it no,t for the banksman’s lamp, when we have moved a few feet from the bottom of the shaft, we should be in total darkness. A shout comes out of it, and we have to squeeze ourselves against the rough side of the low vault, to make room for a horse that stumbles by, drawing a laden truck. The mine slopes, until we are between three and four hundred yards beneath the surface, and have colliers working in another pit above our heads. In the “ heading,” or main thoroughfare, the walking is very slushy, and unseen waters gurgle by with an eerie sound ; but the “ stalls ” are dry enough. A long back here, however, must crook itself into a sickle, and the foothold is loose shingle. These stalls are divergences from the head- ing, which are like circumflex accents when first commenced, and elongate into the shape of horse-shoes and magnets. One man works in each arm, and they build up a “gob,” or partition-wall, of “ shell,” or rubbish, between them. The ore, according to its quality, or the way in which it “proves,” has various names — “ riders,” “black pin,” “haulingpin,” “spotted , vein,” and “blue vein,” the last making the ! best foundty iron. The miner hammers a long chisel into the rock, and when he has made 1 his hole, pours in his blasting powder, and ; lights his fuse ; running into a neighbouring stall for shelter until the explosion takes ' place. If the “ mine ” is blown out in too j Good Words, Jan.l, i860.] THE MERTHYR IRON WORKER. 39 large blocks for convenient carriage, he splits it up with his pick. Between the entrances to each stall, in order that a current of air may sweep round it, a wooden door or a curtain of sacking stretches across the head- ing. In some places the walls of the heading are mortared to “ keep the air right,” and in others there are narrow side air-channels, like mill- streams, which my guide calls “braddishes.” He is very sorry that he cannot show me any “gas,” but as the next best thing to it, points out where the ceiling of the vault was broken by an explosion two days before. Now and then an arch of masonry spans the heading, and sometimes we walk beneath crossed timbers. The banksman carries a flaring oil- lamp which he has borrowed of the engine- man, and several of the miners are smoking. They are quite satisfied with the inspection which the two firemen made in the early morn- ing before any of the miners were allowed to come down. As they are underground nearly twelve hours, however, and the leaving open of •one of the heading-doors might fill a stall with gas, it seems strange that they should look so secure. We go into the fireman’s lodge, a gloomy little cave, with safety-lamps hung against the w r all, and a pale lean man rubbing away at one of them in silence like a magi- cian in a nursery legend. The great chain on the great winch that rumbles round as laden trucks run down, and empty trucks rush up a steep incline, looms through the dusk like a boa coiled round a fallen tree trunk. We hear a stamping of hoofs and a ■champing of fodder; “ Wo-ho !” cries the banksman ; and we grope our way past the heels of half-a-dozen cart-horses, that never see sun-light, eating their dreary dinner in utter darkness. In spite of their lights, the miners whom we pass at dinner do not look more cheerful picknickers. They squat on the hard stones, munching a little bread and cheese, and washing it down with cold tea. It is odd as we splash along to see every now and then a light twinkling like a glow-worm, and to hear wild Welsh words wandering towards us from no visible speaker. The banksman flings back a Welsh answer, and 1 on we flounder through the gloom. As we mount to daylight once more— after calling our steam coachman’s attention to our wish to start, by three or four tugs at his cord check- string — the pit-lads give me a final taste of mine diablerie. A bevy of them are going down as we are coming up, and when the cages cross, they raise a yell which rings round and round the great, dark jagged well like the enviously despairing lamentations of lost spirits. Whilst I was resuming my own garments in the engine-room, the engine-man favoured me with his views on Church and State. Nine people out of ten were Nonconformists in Wales — they didn’t want no church. He had voted for Henry Richard partly because the j master was for him, but chiefly because he j was a Nonconformist — yes, sure. A miner’s ! wife of whom I asked the secret of Mr. Richard’s popularity, informed me that it was because he was a “ real Welshman.” The mining population of South Wales appear to j be very enthusiastic politicians. Thousands assembled in the Merthyr Market Square, and j sang, “ Land of my fathers,” after the late i declaration of the poll. During my visit bunches of evergreens, adorned with party- rosettes, were still hanging over some of the doors, and little toddlers, that could hardly talk, were lisping, “ Fothergill for ever,” and chanting rhymes about “ the Bruce.” The satire of these political nursery rhymes would j not seem to be very caustic if a stanza I picked up may be taken as an average sample : — “ There was an ex-butcher named Morgan, Who possessed an old barrel organ, And the more that he played, The more people prayed To be relieved of him and his jargon.” Having seen ironstone mined, I started next to Dowlais to see it worked. On the ! right in the valley are the disused Penydarran Works, now under repair, but still presenting a very dismantled appearance. The work- j bell rusts in its turret. The clock stands still at a quarter to eleven. Chimney stalks send out no smoke, furnace-mouths vomit no flame. Roofless walls stretch along like ruined ’ cloisters. Black wheels sulk motionless at • the top of their high scaffolds. The ground : is covered with a dismal litter of rusty moulds and black boilers like blasted asteroids. The dark stream that rushes past out of the arched hill-side seems to flout the iron works out of work. In strange contrast to that silent place brawls on for ever the deafening hubbub of huge E>owlais — the largest iron works in ' the world. It employs 9,000 hands, 4,000 under and 5,000 above ground. Its vast mounds of smouldering rubbish, on which trucks are tilting still, have been rising for a hundred years, and hem the works in like Salisbury Crags of soot. It seems as if they : must soon overtop the bare mountains behind, where long-tailed, wild-eyed black ponies, feeding amongst rushes and ponds and out- cropping limestone, stare with the supercilious glance of freemen on slaves at the big horse THE MERTHYR IRON WORKER. r^ood words, Jan. 1, isoa. that trots by between the trams, dragging a train of trucks, and at the tip-women who jump into them as they jog on, and settle themselves down in a heap to enjoy a quiet pipe before they get to work. A little town, or rather very big village, of course, has grown on to the Works : a dirty, slovenly, big village, in which “ the clartier, the cosier ” seems to be a very common motto. There are a great many mud-splashed ducks in it, and a great many draggletailed mothers of six about to become mothers of seven in the paulopostfuture. Typhus, also, is no stranger at Dowlais. But a re- spectable per centage of the cottages, never- theless, have tidy living-rooms, and almost all, whether tidy or untidy, have a warm, fully-furnished look that is very different from the pinched, bare, hungry aspect of the rooms to be seen in many parts of the East- end of London, for instance. Money is plainly made here, and if a good deal of it is lavished upon beer, some of it, at any rate, is left for food and furniture. Every cottage- door stands wide open in Dowlais, and therefore the stranger can observe its domes- ticities without the least intrusion. He sees good fires (coals in Dowlais are 8 s. or 9^. a ton), and tea-trays brought out at abnormal hours in English estimation. He sniffs the fumes of oleaginous cookery. In cottage after cottage, too, he sees a handsome, old- fashioned eight-day clock, sometimes a good sofa, and almost universally either a dresser or a chest of drawers, and a table, set out with glass and crockery. I should add that the Dowlais Iron Company has built schools in which nearly 2,000 children are educated, and whose architecture contrasts queerly with that of the pupils’ homes ; and that it sup- ports a reading-room. Native Indians used to be astonished at the dinginess of the old heavy house in Leadenhall Street which once governed their country, and a stranger is likely to feel a somewhat analogous astonishment at first sight of the shoulder-rubbed offices of the Dowlais Company. Dowlais is a place, however, in which dirt is coined into gold, and therefore its magnates, with small exercise of philosophy, can transact their business in a building which looks as if it had never heard of painters, whitewashers, and charwomen. The press does not seem to find much favour at Dow- lais, on account of wild legends which it has set afloat anent the Works. One, concerning “ Lady Guest and her Book-keeper,” the cour- teous manager informs me, has been tossing in the papers for the last twenty years, al- though there is not an atom of fact to buoy it up. I promise not to exercise my “ myth- opceic” faculty, and am speedily furnished with a pass, which, in the course of my wan- derings, I am only once challenged to pro- duce. A stranger’s first feeling, on being turned adrift in Dowlais, is one of utter be- wilderment. He hears a sighing roar like that of ocean, a hiss of steam, a clank of iron, a whir of wheels ; sulphurous smoke and a spray of grit choke his nostrils ; he sees round keeps and angular bastions, with fire leaping from their summit and glowing at their base ; a forest of chimney-stalks ; a jumble of mys- terious buildings, of all shapes and sizes ; a maze of muddy rails, mounds of coal and lime, piles of metal, timber, and white brick ; an army of men, women, and children, whose diverse garments are turned into a uniform by their unvarying grime-facings. The slush on the ground is black as ink and sticky as tar, and men and girls are shovelling it up by truck-loads. Wherever the dazed visitor seeks rest for the sole of his foot, a tram- horse trots right at him. It is at first a be- wildering nightmare vision merely — that lurid Valley of the Shadow of Tips. But presently there comes a glimpse of cosmos in the chaos. Those huge, red-brown, ringed structures, at the head of the valley — rooks for Titans’ chess — bannered with flame, galleried like lighthouses, and with gaping caves of fire at the bottom, must be the blast-furnaces. Those arched-brick boilers, with regulators perking above them, like pawn- brokers’ signs minus a ball, slides like box- iron doors, and fussy puffs of steam, must have something to do in generating the blast. Those huge pipes, that cross the valley like Good Words, Jan. 1, THE MERTHYR IRON WORKER. 4i tubular bridges for trains of well-grown Lilli- putians, must convey it. To see the blast- furnaces fed, you ascend to the higher ground by narrow, zigzag steps, like cliff-side stairs ; and, if you shut your eyes, the sighing roar of the furnaces might make you fancy yourself, indeed, at the sea-shore. Again you plunge into apparent chaos : embankments, cul- verts, and locomotives coming in “promis- cuous-like ” from the wild country round ; more trucks, more viscous mud, more pina- fored girls — very dirty, very bold-eyed, and yet squalidly picturesque, with their cheap ear-rings and their coloured kerchiefs, now and then giving a hint of a concealed mild chignon. They ply their shovels like navvies, and lift blocks of stone and coal that make your arms ache as you fancy yourself lifting them. One of them, red from head to foot, stands in a truck, shaping a load of rusty grist that runs in from a rough mill with a black beam bobbing above : coarse cocoa is what the grist looks like. You see more piles of lime and sand and coal, with curved, many- pronged forks, like strays from a devil’s set, lying beside them ; and heaps and truck-loads The Merthyr Iron Forges by night.. of ironstone, rust-red, clay-yellow, and flinty grey. “ This is Welsh-mine-Dowlais,” says an old fellow, pointing to a smoking cairn, “and yonder’s Northampton. We mix the iron as if we was making a pudding.” You trip over great iron mushrooms with the stalk run through the cap, and your hot feet tell you presently that you are walking on an iron i pavement. Just off the furnace-galleries old men sit in low hovels, watching their younger mates as they wheel their loads of furnace- fodder on to the clanking weighing-machine. “ Every charge that goes in is weighed,” says your old man — “ there’s so much plunder.” The flames leap up and roar like caged lions, longing to get out as one man turns the wheel that lifts or lowers the beam that hangs over the furnace-mouth ; and then, merely putting on a thick waistcoat to save his shirt, his fel- low wheels his barrow-load of fuel to the burn- ing pit and tilts it in (whilst the red fire-tongues seem to lick right round him) as coolly as a railway porter trundling trunks to a luggage- van. It is a strange scene to see sparrows hopping about in, and a tidy woman and a clean-faced little girl coming along with “father’s dinner.” Once more at the foot of a blast furnace THE MERTHYR IRON WORKER. [Good Words, Jan. 1, 1809. you see the molten metal running out of a spout into an iron-truck in a fire-fall so appa- rently motionless, that it looks far more like a fixed heated bar. A man goes up to the wheeled cauldron, dips his spade into it like a spoon into a jar of treacle, and examines what he brings out just as if he was going to taste it. Another man wants to light his pipe, and so he dips a rod into the molten metal, and applies the glowing button he fishes up to his pipe-bowl as ordinary smokers use a commonplace Vesuvian. Presently you see what looks very much like a piece of infernal irrigation. An oblong black bed is ploughed in ridge and furrow. With a spray of fire, and blistering like toasted cheese the farther it gets from the furnace, a red-hot stream flows along the side of the bed : aided by a long, lean, black-bearded gardener in turning the corners. Flamelets flicker over the black mould ; whilst the side-current is still rich red, the cross streams begin to turn grey ; .and when the grim gardener has squirted water over his plot, you find that it is pig-iron he has been making. In the ruinously-roofed plots behind the squatter refining-furnaces, the iron is run into flat cakes. When the cakes have cooled, a man and a woman — the woman doing the harder work — hook them on to a two-wheeled frame, and haul them out, to be smashed by a hammer so heavy that its two handles, sticking out like horns, have to be wielded by two men. The chimney^ of the puddling forges bristle lower down like bulrushes, with raised covers like black college-caps above them. The puddlers in blue-checked skull-caps and shirts, dirty white trousers, and red shoes, bend down to the white squares in the black furnaces behind the chimneys, and u stir up with a long pole ” the glowing mass inside as if they wore asbestos masks. It makes inex- perienced eyes smart to look even from a distance at the openings of those burning, fiery furnaces. The puddler is popularly re- ported to be able to drink “ gallons of beer ” per diem without getting drunk. You do not wonder at the report when you see him at his work. The beer must go off in per- spiration long before it can affect his brain. Presently he hooks out with a pair of giant’s sugar-nippers a loaf-like lump of white and red hot iron, poises it on a wheeled ring which a little boy has ready, and off the little fellow trots with it to the rollers, in iron-roofed sheds, whirring with vertical and horizontal wheels. Beneath the seemingly soft taps of an oscillating beam the loaf is crushed like putty into a long rough twist, and then dragged backwards and forwards be- tween restless, variously grooved rollers, until the white-red crusty mass has become a flat blue bar. You ask a roller what he gets for his twelve hours’ “shift.” “25^. a week, but the rail-rollers down below can make 40^., and I’ve to pay my boy 4^. a day.” And the puddlers ? “ Oh, about the same as us now, but they might make 2&s. We’re all paid by the ton.” Does he belong to a union ? u No, we was have a union once, but the young man run away with the money. Yes, indeed, but the new Parlia- ment, I dare say, will make that all right. You’ll let me drink your health, sir?” “ Down below,” you can see iron manipu- lated as easily as a cook rolls out her dough, adds one piece to another, cuts it into strips, and twists it into pipes ; boys running along with red rails, which make every log of wood they are dragged over flare out in flame, rails that look cold still passing over rollers, rails finishing off under hammer-taps, and rails stacked and littered about like cannon in an arsenal. Turn to a Gazetteer sixty years old, and under the head of Merthyr Tydfil you read, “ It is surrounded with numerous iron forges, at Cynfarfat, Dewlain, Plymouth, and Pen-y- Darsan, and it is supposed that there are forged weekly upwards of 250 tons of iron, with a consumption of as many tons of coal.” What now are the statistics of the “ forges,” whose names, when Welsh, the Gazetteer so j comically misspells? About 1,000 tons of coal a-day are consumed at Dowlais, and its score of blast furnaces turn out each some 80 or 100 tons of pig iron per week. Cyf- arthfa, the property of those iron Croesuses, the Crawshays, employs 5,000 hands, and Plymouth, once the property of the same family, 4,000. All round about Merthyr, also, to say nothing of Monmouthshire, the fur- naces are flaring. Within the memory of not THE MERTHYR very old inhabitants, Aberdare has sprung up from a still smaller village than Merthyr into a far more civilised-looking town. Its elegant modern churches, its commodious modern houses, contrast far more strikingly than any- thing of the same kind in Merthyr with its village nucleus — the white-washed old church with one bell in its gable, and coffin-shaped parterres of homely flowers ; the thatched or stone-roofed white and yellow cottages, over whose stepped stone stiles young Evan Evans chases Griffith Griffiths. Walk up the moun- tain side from Aberdare to the Abernant station on a faintly moonlit night, and you can see a blending of the natural arid the artificial picturesque that will pay you for your trouble. Beneath the crescent moon | the hills lie dimly interfolded all around, i Impish collier boys, loudly larking, and silent grown-up colliers, taking surly stock of the stranger, pass you on their road home from pits that send up their 1,000 tons per diem. On both hands there are works, with their grimly grand jumble of snowy vapour, belch- ing flame, black buildings blotched with gas- light, pitchy tips illuminated with flickering variegated fires, and beams, and wheels, and chimney-stalks rising with phantom-like lack of anything to stand upon, out of the cross- lighted, surging chaos. As the train runs on to Merthyr, too, you see more works in the valley of the Cynon, burning like Cities of the Plain, and flushing the sky with a pulsing, rosy-brassy glow. It is a relief in such a world of whirling- wheels to feel that Sunday is drawing near. Then, as on other days, the insatiable blast furnaces must be fed by night and day as j they have been fed — still roaring out “ Give, give/’ whilst babies have grown up into men j and women, with babies of their own. But the puddlers, and the rollers, and most of the iron-works labourers, and almost all the miners I and the colliers, will get a rest. On Saturday | ! afternoon and evening the Merthyr market is I a busy Bourse, and the Carmarthenshire j women, in their Mother Hubbard hats, full- j bordered caps, checked shawls and scarlet whittles, who preside over the dairy-produce stalls, give a piquantly foreign eye-spice to the scene. There are other hats in the market that have a still droller appearance — black coal-scuttles, without ' back, or top, or ; handle, upside down, bound on with a ker- j chief, and sticking out in front like a duck’s j bill. Caps and widows’ caps are sold in the j market ; loaves, plum-buns, plum-cakes ; pats ; of butter, cylinders of butter a foot across, and more than a foot high ; big cheeses, seg- IRON WORKER. ments of the same, and little cheeses like tea- cakes; eggs in baskets; boots and shoes; crockery ; sweeties ; geese ; bacon ; vege- tables, amongst which the leek figures largely ; herrings ; red-cheeked apples in barrels lighted with candles ; and Welsh music and periodical literature, in the midst of whose double d’s and l’s Reynolds’s News- paper and the News of the World peep out somewhat incongruously. The meat-market is held in an aisle off the main building ; the latticed stalls being provided with snug fires, over which the salesmen and saleswomen gossip and take their tea in a very free and easy fashion. Beyond the unusual num- ber of men and hobby dehoys in low-crowned hats and comforters, pea-jackets, and loose, patched, flannel garments, with faces smudged like slaveys’, who loaf purposelessly, or lark boisterously about, there is nothing very strik- ing in Merthyr High Street on a Saturday night. Newsboys shout Telegraph and Express j just as they do in London (but these are local journals) ; choirs of sham-shivering beggars chant dismal ditties; boxes of fusees are pushed under your nose in metropolitan style; and an old man never wearies of croaking, “A new almanac, one penny-— a pair of strong leather laces, one penny.” Later on in the night, however, merry-making miners tramp home four abreast, singing part-songs in very creditable time and harmony. To see what hold the Establishment had on the miners, I went to the Welsh service [ in the parish church on Sunday morning. It ! is named after the martyr Tydfil, who has given her name also to the town — a district THE MERTHYR IRON WORKER. [Good words, church having been erected in modern times near the well at which the “ pagan Saxons murdered her on account of her Christian faith. St. Tydfil would marvel at the mani- fold developments into which her country- men’s Christianity has branched out if she could see her church now. It has a dimly- illuminated clock, but that is the only thing bright about it. It seems to be mouldering away in its green churchyard, as the bibles painted on some of the tombstones are scaling off from the green slabs. The flags are as damp as the bricks of a cellar. When the clergyman goes to the communion- table, he is quite exiled from his sparse con- gregation. There were between forty and fifty persons present on the morning I attended. The faded organ seemed to be shivering up in the chilly gallery ; and when the thin old clerk, in wig and spectacles and long-skirted coat, took round the pewter-plate, he looked like the last of his race. It was worth while going to church, however, if only to hear the Litany read in Welsh. It was a sea-like piece of music. The animated sermon, also, sounded ever and anon exactly like a chant. It was the odder that the singing proper should have been dismally nasal and out of tune. In the evening, I went to a well-filled miners’ chapel, and there I heard hearty and harmo- nious singing ; but the sermon at first did not sound half so spirited as the rector’s to his depressingly small congregation. The preacher prosed on without a tone of music in his voice, and his hearers listened in languid silence. The liveliest member of the congregation was a fair-haired little Welshwoman, in a pinafore and without a bonnet, who was playing all kinds of pranks upon her mother’s knee. (In some of the Welsh chapels, I am told, chil- dren are allowed to run about during service.) But presently a sound like a paviour’s grunt was heard from one of the pews, and the preacher grew more energetic. It was repeated, it was echoed ; it culminated in a chorus of heartily approving ha’s / The preacher then put off all his prose, and throughout the rest of his discourse chanted like the clergyman ; a run- ning fire of ahmeens punctuating every sentence. The High Street was thronged with the congregations that poured out from the differ- ent places of worship in the evening, and some of the worshippers instantly adjourned to the public-house. I overheard this con- versation in a bar. “ Was you at chapel ? ” “ No, but I was at Sunday school." “ Was you ever at church, John Jones ? " “ Yes, indeed, but they was give me no book.’’ “ They knew you couldn’t read." “ I can read, yes, sure, but I never go to church again till I was married." “Ah, then yo»u was bound to go." The most superficial observation proves | that an enormous amount of drirfk must be consumed in Merthyr, and when you make inquiries as to what the iron workers live on, the first answer you always get is “beer." Their consumption of solids is said to be Falstaffian in its comparative proportion. The puddlers and other close familiars of the furnaces, however, are very fond of radishes and all kinds of cooling vegetables. When maddened with drink, the miners fight long and furiously. They turn out into the street, strip to the waist, and not content with blind- ing one another with their sledge-hammer blows, they fasten their teeth in one another’s ears and shoulders, and worry the flesh like dogs. Although there are a good many Irishmen in the iron districts, and they are bellicose enough amongst themselves, it is rare for an Irishman and a Welshman to have a stand-up fight. The Irish are said, as a rule, greatly to prefer above to underground employment, and are therefore found more numerously as labourers in the iron works than as miners in the pits. The noisiest night in Merthyr is what is called Dydd-Llu?i-dechrdr-mis, or “ Monday the beginning of the month." Up to about mid-day on the previous Saturday the men have been working like horses that they may have as much as possible to take on the fol- lowing Saturday, which is pay-day — a week being needed to calculate the month’s work. Having done so, they hold revel, especially on this Monday, and some of them scarcely go back to work during the rest of the week. At all the works there is a “draw" every week, and on the Saturday after pay-day, which is called “ big draw," almost as much money is drawn as on pay-day. Most of the works pay once a month, but at Dowlais, owing to the unavoidable complication of accounts in such a huge concern, there are generally three-months pays. Perhaps the most painful features in the South Welsh mineral districts are the hard- ness of the work which the girls and women have to perform, and its unsexing nature. It is strange to see them so merry over it. But if they threw it up, they could only take their choice between farm labour and domestic service, neither of which is remunerative in Wales. A servant, in every respect as handy and as useful as many who are getting or y£ 12 a year in London, can be hired for 5 s - the lunar month in Merthyr. Good Words, Jan. 1, 1«C9 ] PERCEIVING WITHOUT SEEING. 45 PERCEIVING WITHOUT SEEING. A ROMANCE IN ASTRONOMY. To see without perceiving, is among the commonest of all things. Simply to see, is often an involuntary and always a mechanical act; to perceive, implies often the intention, and always the intelligence, of a prepared mind. Thousands before Galileo, had seen the stately swing of the great chandelier in the Duomo at Pisa, yet none but the young philosopher perceived that each of the swings, whether great or small, was performed in the same period of time. To this percep- tion we owe the invention of the pendulum clock. Thousands had seen the fall of many an apple, but it was reserved for Newton to perceive the relation which such a fall might bear to the motion of the moon. To this perception we owe the knowledge of the longitude at sea. Many before Darwin had seen the bees flitting among the orchids, with pollen on their noses, and among the loosestrifes, with pollen on their breasts also, and on their thighs ; yet none before Darwin perceived the object of the strange motions of the former pollen, or of the triple posi- tions of the latter. To this perception by the intelligence of a prepared mind, we owe our knowledge of some of the most beautiful interadaptations in the whole realm of nature. The foregoing are instances of perceiving after seeing ; but the remarkable tales which we shall now proceed to tell owe their origin to that strangest and most prophetic of the human faculties, whereby man is not seldom enabled to perceive before he sees. The per- ception of the planet Neptune in the minds of the great English and French astronomers, before they had taught their German col- league the precise region where to find him, beyond the presumed boundary of the solar system, is so familiar an instance of the phe- nomenon before us, as to require no further allusion. The bright star Sirius is another case in point, philosophically quite as remarkable, though not generally so well known, as that of Neptune. There are certain small but teasing vagaries in the motions of this bright- est of the stars, which induced Bessel to suspect the existence of some, as yet unseen, companion sun, whose disturbing influence might account for the unusual displacements. For a long time, this hypothetical body was called “ The Dark Companion.” Auwers, another astronomer, calculated some of the probable elements of this unseen disturbing mass. Ultimately, the Dark Companion was revealed as a speck of light to Alvan Clark, in a telescope of admirable quality, con- structed by himself. A new sun had thus been perceived by the human mind before he had been seen by the human eye. But the scientific tales which we now pur- pose to narrate, are not taken from the abstrusest, and, in some respects, the least interesting, of the multiform phases of astro- nomical research. On the contrary, they are drawn from among the recent discoveries in the physics of the universe, which, on account of their unexpectedness and their brilliance, have invested some portions of modern astro- nomy with the air of a romance. I suppose that before the year 1866, it was not con- ceived possible to detect the motions of the so-called fixed stars by means of the analysis of the light which they emit ; neither, in fact, was it possible with any instruments which had then been devised. Since that time, our knowledge of the constitution of light has become so vastly increased, and so minutely accurate, that the elementary composition of a substance may often be detected by the examination of the light which it emits when in a state of incandescence. In fact, what is termed spectrum analysis, under its ruder forms, has become a scientific amusement, and the spectroscope now takes its place among many other philosophical toys. Mr. Huggins, in May last, announced to the Royal Society that he had at length success- fully applied an improved form of this instru- ment to the measurement of the motion of at least one star, viz., Sirius, to whose minute but eccentric displacements in the heavens we have already referred. We shall proceed to give the outline of the principle and the method which Mr. Huggins employed, but we must warn our readers that, simple and in- telligible as is the whole affair, we must, nevertheless, somewhat tax their attention, if they desire to catch the thought which is at the bottom of the beautiful process we are about to explain. We must commence with an illustration gathered from certain elementary principles in the propagation of sound, with which, we doubt not, all our readers are sufficiently familiar. It is well known that the pitch of a musical note depends entirely on the num- ber of pulsations which strike the drum of the ear in a given time. If this number be in- PERCEIVING WITHOUT SEEING. 46 [Good Words, Jan. 1, 1 SCO. creased, — that is, if these pulsations succeed each other with a greater rapidity,— -then the acuteness of the musical note is increased ; if this rapidity be diminished, then there is to the ear the sensation of a graver tone. Now, suppose the whistle of a railway locomotive- engine to be so constructed as to emit the sound of middle C on an ordinary piano- forte. This note is produced by the succes- sion of 528 pulsations beating uniformly on the drum of the ear in every succeeding second of time, — that is to say, the interval between two successive beats is the 5 i 8 th part of a second. Now, suppose such a sounding body, in this case the whistle of the locomotive, to be at a distance from the ear of the observer. If, at the moment of the emission of the first of the 528 aerial pulsa- tions, the locomotive commences a rapid motion towards the observer, then the second pulsation is now emitted at a less distance from the observer than was the first ; conse- quently, it has now a less distance to travel than while at rest, and it will now meet the ear in a shorter interval of time after the first than the 5 i 8 th part of a second; and, if the locomotive continues to move uniformly, more than 528 pulsations will strike the ear in a second of time,- and there will be the perception of an acuter sound than that of middle C. Moreover, the more rapid the motion of the locomotive, the acuter is the sound which reaches the ear. If, on the contrary, the locomotive is receding from the ear, then any second pulsation starts from a greater distance from the ear than when the engine was at rest, and consequently there is a greater interval of time between two succes- sive pulsations of the drum of the ear than the 5 i 8 th part of a second, and the percep- tion of a graver note than middle C ensues. Any of our readers may try the experiment, by observing how much more acute is the sound of a railway whistle while the train to which it is attached is approaching, than after it has passed the train where the observer sits. It is obvious that a knowledge of the alteration in the pitch of the sound will enable us to ascertain the rate at which the sounding body is moving at the time. We must now transfer these observations on the propagation of sound to similar phe- nomena in the propagation of light. It was ascertained . about eight years ago x (so recent and so rapid has been the progress of our knowledge), that the stars in general are surrounded, like our sun, with gaseous atmospheres in a state of strong incandes- cence. Among these gases is hydrogen. This gas, when heated sufficiently, emits about 600 millions of millions of pulsations in every second of time with extreme regu- larity. Besides these, there are other sets of pulsations with which at present we have nothing to do. These pulsations are propa- gated to the eye with a velocity of about 185 millions of miles in a second, and being communicated to the retina, convey to the mind the sensation of a very definite thin line of blue light , when properly viewed through a prism or a spectroscope. If the number of pulsations meeting the eye in a second of time be ever so slightly altered, the position of the blue line of light becomes altered in the spectroscope. Now it is possible, by certain ingenious contrivances, to view the light of heated terrestrial hydrogen simultaneously with the light of the hydrogen emitted by a star. This corresponds to listening to the note of a sta- tionary whistle simultaneously with the note of a precisely similar whistle in motion. If the stellar hydrogen is in motion, then the number of pulsations meeting the eye in a second will be different from those of the terrestrial hydrogen ; more numerous if the star be relatively moving towards the earth, and vice versa. Mr. Huggins, after very long and elaborate preparations, made the experiment upon the bright star Sirius, and with his beautifully- contrived spectroscope, he observed — what a memorable epoch in the life of a philo- sopher ! — he observed a want of exact coin- cidence of the hydrogen line of the star with the line of incandescent hydrogen close to his telescope. From the amount of this dis- placement, microscopically minute as it was, he was enabled, without any very elaborate calculation, to determine the number of pul- sations gained or lost in a second by the mo- tion of the stellar light. In the case of Sirius, he found the number of pulsations lost in a second to be about the five-thousandth of the total number ; and from this loss he was able to conclude with certainty, that Sirius and the Earth were moving away from each other, in the direction of the line of vision, at about 41 miles per second ! But, inasmuch as the Earth itself was then moving away from Sirius at the rate of 1 2 miles per second, it follows that the rate of motion of Sirius itself away from the Earth amounted to 29 miles per second. By similar methods, no doubt in due time that part of the motions of all the brighter stars which is in the direc- tion of the line of sight will become known to us. Astronomers already possess, or are Good Words, Jan. 1, 1809.] PERCEIVING WITHOUT SEEING. 47 in course of obtaining, the means of discover- ing those parts of the motions which are transverse ; and thus, at length, the whole proper motions of many stars (perhaps of all) will be ascertained. It is very little, indeed, to say of this great discovery, that it is an instance of perceiving without seeing. It is little, indeed, to say that the mere numbers — millions of miles ! millions of millions of pulsations ! — are more than enough to bewilder us ; the numbers themselves are utterly inconceivable, and so are the distances ; yet they are facts as certain as any palpable facts passing before our eyes. But what shall we say of the human mind thus endowed with a genius capable of inventing such instruments, thus reaching into the in- finite, and with a capacity and a patience wherewith it manipulates things so inconceiv- ably small and numbers so inconceivably great ? It is here on earth one moment, and in the next among the stars, or “ dwelling in the light of setting suns.” Better and nobler still, its affections are one moment burning here, and the next they are busy in a loving adoration before the throne of God. Our next instance of perception without sight affords at the same time a remarkable exemplification of the necessity of previously knowing what to look for , lest the very object before our eyes escape our notice. The readers of Good Words, and they are legion, may possibly remember the de- scription given by the author in September, 1867, of the wonderful phenomena of a Total Solar Eclipse. At the moment when the sun’s face is just entirely covered by the black patch of the moon, and not before, instantly, and as at the command of magic, there starts forth round the dark orb now hanging in mid air, and ominously near, a corona of glory, startling the spectator, not only by the sud- denness, but by the beauty of the apparition. In its brightness it extends to more than half the sun’s diameter beyond it, while streams of a paler light, and of various shapes, dart to a far greater extent into the atmosphere. Close to the dark round patch there are small tongues of coloured flame of various hues and fantastic shapes scattered about the circum- ference, and some observers have seen a thin, undulating, rosy band, extending almost, if not wholly, round it. The rose-coloured flames may extend to an eighth or a tenth of the sun’s diameter beyond it, but, re- member, this tenth means eighty thousand miles. The object of the scientific expedition to Spain in i860 was to determine finally whether these flames truly belong to the sun or not. The question was finally determined in the affirmative, mainly by means of certain photographs admirably taken, and still more admirably discussed by Mr. Warren de la Rue. There can be no doubt that the corona, and these tongues of coloured light, indicate the existence of an atmosphere of vast extent surrounding the sun. As to the tongues of light themselves, they may be clouds of vapour floating in the solar atmosphere, and lighted from below, or they may be self- luminous from their own incandescence. Which are they ? and what? Again, the corona also may be self-luminous, or it may become luminous from light proceeding from the body of the sun, and then scattered throughout its material, as is the case with the scattered light of our own atmosphere. Which is it ? It was to determine these interesting points — questions, moreover, which, if settled, would lead to an improvement of our know- ledge of the constitution of the sun — that two scientific expeditions were organized in Eng- land to observe the total solar eclipse, which was visible in August last throughout a large tract of the British dominions in India. One of these expeditions was fitted out at the instance of the Royal Society, and placed under the direction of Lieutenant Herschel, R.E. ; the other was directed by Major Ten- nant, R.E., and equipped at the instance of the Royal Astronomical Society. Now, it must be premised that our means of ascertaining with accuracy the nature of a substance by observations made with the spectroscope on the light which proceeds from its vapour when incandescent, dates from a period just subsequent to the total eclipse of i860. Kirchhoff, in that same year, taught us that the elementary substances, such as oxygen, carbon, and the metals, when in a state of incandescent vapour, are very easily and very certainly distinguishable from each other by certain definite peculiarities in their spectra when viewed through a prism. In order, therefore, to determine the true source of the light in the coloured flames round the sun, all that it was necessary to do was to view them through a prism or a spectroscope. If the spectrum coincided with the spectrum of ordinary solar light, then they either re- flected that light, or they might be constituted just as the sun itself is; if otherwise, then the nature of the spectrum would probably disclose the nature of the incandescent ma- terial. Again, light reflected from a cloud undergoes a certain modification, which at all times it is possible to detect with the polari- 48 PERCEIVING WITHOUT SEEING. [Good Words, Jan. 1, 1869. scope, but into this subject there is no neces- sity for us now to enter. A question will here arise, and it materially concerns what we shall soon have to say, why is it necessary to wait for a solar eclipse in order to catch a sight of these rosy protuber- ances round the sun ? Why cannot we shut out the body of the sun itself, and then patiently and at our leisure look round its edge, and see what is there ? The attempt has been made. The sun’s image has been often thrown into a darkened chamber, and the image itself received as it were into a black bag, while the light round its circum- ference has been carefully scrutinised, but heretofore without success. The light which is scattered by the sun throughout our atmo- sphere, and which inevitably mixes itself with the light coming from beyond the edge of the sun, overpowers and obliterates the feebler light of the rosy flames. Many other well- devised attempts have been made, such as the use of absorbing media of various coloured glasses, and of minute holes ; but all without avail, until a sheer accident, yet not an ac- cident, disclosed the means. Immediately after the eclipse in August last, Major Tennant and Lieutenant Herschel tele- graphed to England that notwithstanding cer- tain drawbacks, their expeditions had so far succeeded that they had to a great extent ascer- tained the nature of the rosy flames. They were self-lui?iinons. They proceeded from gases or vapours in a state of incandescence. These spectra consisted of three bright lines , two of them indicating hydrogen, and one of them sodium ! Moreover, the light of the corona was light reflected. There are therefore float- ing above the body of the sun, and changing in form from day to day as our clouds change, huge masses of incandescent hydrogen ex- tending through tens of thousands of miles ! When the existence of these three bright lines had been telegraphed to England, it set other heads and other eyes to work. They now kneiu what to look for . But how to see them in the absence of an eclipse? That was the question, which heretofore had re- ceived no solution. Strange to say, Mr. Huggins, . that same philosopher to whom we are indebted for the great discovery referred to in this article, had already devised the means, and had adopted it, but without success. In that same valuable paper in which that discovery was communicated to the Royal Society on April 23rd of this year, he says : “I hoped to obtain a view of the red prominences visible during a solar eclipse, by reducing the light from our atmo- sphere by dispersion ; for under these circum- stances, if the red prominences give a spectrum of bright lines, these lines would remain but little diminished in brightness, and might become visible. My observations in this direction have been hitherto unsuccessful.” Now it is highly probable that Mr. Huggins may actually have seen this object of his search, and would have perceived it, had he known precisely what to look for. It is all but certain that had his health and his en- gagements permitted him to look so soon as he heard from India exactly whereabouts the three bright lines were, he would at once have found them. As it was, the honour of the discovery, and it is great, was reserved for Mr. Lockyer, another gentleman who had already successfully applied the spectroscope to the examination of the constitution of the sun. He too, like Mr. Huggins, had hoped to detect, and had endeavoured to detect, these red prominences by the very same means. In a paper which he communicated to the Royal Society on October nth, 1866, he says : “ May not the spectroscope afford us evidence of the existence of the red flames which total eclipses have revealed to us in the sun’s atmosphere, although they escape all other methods of observation at other times ? And if so, may we not learn something from this of the recent outbursts of the star in corona ? ” The curious thing is, that Mr. Lockyer for two years scrutinised the border of the sun like Mr. Huggins without success, and it is almost certain that he may actually have seen and would have perceived the object had he precisely known what to look for. When he did know it, then, as we shall see, he imme- diately found it. But here we think it right to explain to our readers wherein the facilities and the difficul- ties presented by the spectroscope in such a research consist. On the spectroscope, or on the prism (for it is nothing more), when directed to the border of the sun, there falls the light coming not only from just beyond the border itself, but mixed with it there is, as we have already said, the scattered light of the atmosphere. The light from the rose- coloured flame is fortunately for this purpose homogeneous, or nearly so, and the prism con- centrates that into three bright narrow lines. On the contrary, the scattered light of the atmo- sphere being not homogeneous, is diffused into a long ribbon of therefore much diluted and feebler light ; consequently, it no longer masks the three bright lines, and they thus become visible to the eye. As soon, then, as Mr. Lockyer heard by Good Words, Jan. 1, 1869.] PERCEIVING WITHOUT SEEING. 49 the telegrams from India that the spectro- scopic appearance of a red prominence con- sisted of the three bright lines of hydrogen and sodium, he knew precisely what to look for, and on patiently groping round the edge of the sun with a mind and an eye prepared, he perceived what he had long searched for, and to his great and enviable joy, cried, tvprjKa. ITe could not indeed actually see the forms of the prominences themselves ; but by moving his spectroscope hither and thither, and thus following the places of the three bright lines, he could with certainty detect the shape of that which in fact he could not see. And these shapes, we are informed, changed like a waving flame almost from hour to hour. One obvious but enormous advantage de- rived from this method of procedure arises from the leisureness with which the obser- vations can be made, compared with the excitement of mind which must more or less ensue when the phenomena to be ob- served are so transient and so rare as those of a total solar eclipse. Already, new fruit has been gathered, inasmuch as Mr. Lockyer has detected round the entire edge of the sun a narrow border, affording the same sort of spectrum as that presented by the rose- coloured flames. Some suspicions of the existence of such a border have presented themselves during eclipses. If this be the fact, as we doubt not it is, then there exists an atmo- sphere of hydrogen close to the photosphere, and extending some seven or eight thousand miles above it, from whence are thrown out gigantic gushes of the incandescent gas for tens of thousands of miles into some other atmosphere, of which at present we know not the extent or the exact constitution. The mind becomes lost in such contemplations. We have already spoken of the skill and prescience and patience of the observer. He reaps the high reward of contributing through all ages to the intellectual delight of his fellow-creatures, and a meed of fame for him- self. But we think that in the record of all such cases, there is a duty owed to the skilful artist who constructs, and in most cases partly devises, the exquisite instruments, without which such observations cannot be made. In this instance, Mr. Browning of the Minories deserves all praise. We have not yet concluded our scientific tale ; a little episode which may fairly be called romantic still remains to be told. When M. Jannsen, the director of the French ex- pedition, was observing the eclipse at Gun- toor, in India, on August 19, he too saw the same three bright lines in the spectrum of a X-4 solar protuberance, which had been observed by Major Tennant and Lieutenant Herschel. Fortunately he did not remove his eye from the spectroscope when the first streak of light from the sun destroyed all the peculiar grandeur of the scene. The three lines still continued visible for many minutes, but the form of the protuberance was gone ; but if visible for ten minutes in the midst of the light of day, why not for ten hours, why not always ? So M. Jannsen, like a true philoso- pher, persevered, and (as he wrote to the French Institute) he enjoyed the chief phe- nomenon of a total solar eclipse during the period of seventeen days.* Mr. Lockyer made his own discovery on October 20, but by a most curious coincidence, the two letters of M. Jannsen and Mr. Lockyer, announcing what each had separately accomplished, were read on the same day to the philosophers who adorn the Institute of France. Each was the independent discoverer of the same new fact. A great French astronomer (M. Faye), in his address to his colleagues of the Insti- tute, on the occasion of the announcement of what the Englishman and the Frenchman had separately and independently done, said with great eloquence and force, “ Instead of seeking to divide and therefore to diminish the merit of the discovery, will it not be better to assign the honour of it to each of these two scientific men, without distinction ? Each of them by himself, and separated from the other by many thousands of miles, had the happiness of grasping the intangible and the invisible, by a method which is perhaps the most astonishing that the genius of ob- servation has ever conceived.” Our next, and, for the present, our last- tale, refers to an important error, which in the first instance, and in principle, arose from seeing without perceiving, and which was ultimately corrected by perceiving without seeing. The error we allude to is that which for a long time existed in what is termed the sun’s parallax, or less technically, in the dis- tance of the sun from the earth, naturally one of the most important elements of the solar system. For a long time, in books on astro- nomy, this distance has been set down roundly as ninety-five millions of miles : well-instructed astronomers themselves have all along been perfectly aware that the amount of this element * “Depuis ce jour (Aug. i^), jusqu’au 4 Septembre, j’ai constamment etudie le Soleil a ce point de vue. J’ai dressfi des cartes des protuberances, qui montrent avec quelle rapidite (souvent en quelques minutes) ces immenses masses gazeuses se deferment et se deplacent. Enfin, pendant cette periode, qui a ete comme une eclipse de dix-sept jours, j’ai recueilli un grand nombre de faits, qui s’offraient comme d’eux-memes, sur la constitution physique du Soleil.” 5 ° perceiving without seeing. [Goo3 Words, Jan. 1, 1809. rested upon an extremely insecure foundation; moreover, theyperfectlyunderstood the source of the error, and had long been waiting for the opportunity (always a rare one) of obtaining a value on which greater reliance could be placed. The world at large, indeed, are wont to suppose that planetary masses, and dis- tances, and dimensions are all determined with rigorous exactness ; those who are them- selves practically busy about the facts, and the methods of reaching them, know well enough that they are after all approximations only, wonderfully close approximations, but which admit of, and will receive, corrections from time to time, so long as astronomical science exists. In the case of the sun’s distance from the earth, the quantity actually obtained, from the processes themselves, is the angle which the earth’s radius subtends when viewed from the sun ; this angle, technically called the sun’s parallax, was estimated in the “ Nautical Almanack,” up to the year 1870, at 8"*5 776, and from this angle the distance of the sun from the earth was deduced, namely, about ninety-five millions of miles. A very few years ago, many circumstances, some of which we shall proceed to detail, indicated that this angle and (consequently) this distance were in error, and at present reasons exist for cor- recting the angle to 8”*95, and the distance to about ninety-one millions of miles. But what a sad blunder for the astronomers to make ! Here is an acknowledged error of actually four millions of miles, in one of the cardinal elements of a science which is pre- eminently remarkable for its exactness : what reliance, then, can we have upon any of the sciences ? There was many a grave shake of the head when the error was discovered, and great self-congratulations among certain not very broad-minded persons, who encourage themselves and one another in the dread of the extension of human knowledge. Neverthe- less, in the sequel, our readers will probably come to the true conclusion, that the correc- tion of this error, or rather the obtaining of a more correct measure of the sun’s parallax, is among the very grandest products of human genius. Astronomers are not wont to lift up their voices in the streets; nevertheless Astronomy is justified of all her children. But before we proceed it may be well to put our readers into a proper position for the comprehension of what this small angle really is, which is so difficult and yet so important to obtain with exactness. What is meant by the angle of a second l It will convey but little idea to our readers, if we say it is the 324 thousandth of a right angle, for the very numbers confuse the mind. But what then is a second ? It is equivalent to the angle subtended by a ring one inch in diameter viewed at the distance of three miles and a third. The correction to be made to the- sun’s parallax is just one-third of this ; that is to say, it is the error which a rifleman would make who shot at the right-hand edge of a sovereign placed twelve miles off, and who hit it by mischance just on the left edge ! It is what a human hair would appear to be, if viewed at the distance of above 150 feet! Such are the quantities with which astronomy of necessity deals, and such is the error which it has been the province of astronomical science recently to correct. No process has yet been devised, and pro- bably never will be devised, for obtaining the distance of the sun from the earth, which is not beset with complications oil' every side. The simplest and the most exact of them all is by observing the time which the planet Venus takes to traverse the sun’s disc, on the extremely rare occasions when such a pheno- menon occurs. The observations must be made simultaneously by at least two observers situated as far asunder as is practicable, but at known places and at known distances from each other; and then through very complicated and elaborate calculations, the differences of the durations of the passages of the planet over the sun’s disc, as seen at the two places, lead ultimately to the determination of the distance of the sun from the earth. It is not by any means easy to put our readers in possession of the principles of the method pursued ; some notion of it may be gathered if we illustrate it by the analogy of the illumination of the wall of a darkened room by a bull’s-eye lantern held at a dis- tance from it. The bull’s-eye lens may represent the earth. The top and bottom of the lens may represent two bbservers; the point where the rays of light from the top and bottom of the lens (i.e., the focus of it) inter- sect may represent Venus ; in this case the top of the circular disc of light thrown upon the wall will represent where the lower ob- server sees the planet on the sun’s face, while the bottom of the disc of light will be the spot on the sun where the upper observer sees the planet. Now it is perfectly clear that the further the lantern (in this case representing the earth) is from the wall (which in this case represents the sun), the larger will be the patch of light thrown upon it ; that is to say, the further apart will be the two little black spots formed by Venus on the sun, as seen by the two observers. The further apart these PERCEIVING WITHOUT SEEING. Good Words, Jan. 1, 1S09.1 5 1 spots on the sun are, the more different will be the paths of Venus across it, and therefore the more different will be the two durations of the transit as reckoned by the tv/o observers. We have therefore, we hope, established in the minds of our readers the existence of a certain relation between the difference of the durations of the transit of Venus as observed at two different places on the earth, and the distance of the earth from the sun, and that is all we can here pretend to do. We can only commend our readers to the use of a pencil, and to the perusal of the proper treatises if they desire farther information on this subject, which, however interesting, is assuredly not easy. But to proceed. In the year 1769 the celebrated Captain (then Lieutenant) Cook,of H.M.S .Endeavour, and Mr. Green, formerly assistant at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, were de- spatched to Otaheite, in the southern Pacific, to observe the transit of Venus, which was to occur on the 2nd of June in that year. At the same time various European governments commissioned other observers to other places, notably Father Hell, an Austrian Jesuit, was sent for the same purpose to Wardhus, at the extremity of Norway. The business of these observers was simply to observe the exact duration of the transit of the planet over the sun’s disc at the two places. No doubt this appears, as described on paper, to be a very simple and easy operation. What can be easier, for instance, than to observe when the sun’s limb is just notched by the little round planet, or when there re-appears, after the notch, the first thread of light between it and the sun’s limb ? Just so. But our readers will in due time understand that, practically, these apparently simple observations are attended with a variety of complicated phenomena which Cook and Hell, and the observers of that day, were in a condition neither to anticipate nor to correctly inter- pret. In fact, it has been reserved for the genius of Mr. Stone, the first assistant astro- nomer at Greenwich, to unravel those intricate appearances which just one century ago per- plexed his predecessor, Mr. Green, at Otaheite. Suffice it to say, that when the results of all the observations were laid before the various astronomers in Europe, extreme diffi- culty was found in the interpretation of what the several observers had really seen. Ulti- mately, to add to the complication, the great astronomer, Encke, who years after the event i endeavoured to reduce the observations with | greater exactness than his predecessors, con- | sidered that he had detected a certain amount I of forgery or alteration of the figures in the observation made by Father Hell at Wardhus. Making, however, the best of the case, Encke determined the most probable value of the sun’s parallax to be S' / *5 776, as we have al- ready stated ; and this was provisionally , but of necessity, accepted by astronomers as the amount of this very important element. Here, again, some of our readers may shake their heads and say, What blunderers those observers must have been ! We counsel them to wait awhile. In process of time, that is to say, about eight or ten years ago, M. Hansen reinvestigated with remarkable ability the theory of the mooiis motion, and thereupon constructed a set of numerical tables which represent and predict the places of our satellite with a mar- vellous and almost unhoped-for degree of accuracy. So accurate indeed are these tables that it was at one time stated on au- thority, that the tabular errors were even less than the unavoidable errors of the instru- ments and the observers themselves ! But this remarkable accuracy could only be at- tained by making an alteration on the amount of the pull wherewith the sun displaces the moon in her orbit : this necessary alteration amounted virtually to an alteration of the sun’s distance from the earth, whereby it was brought nearer to us by above three millions of miles. About the same time, certain new and very accurate observations of the planet Mars had been made with new instruments of vast capa- city and accuracy at Greenwich and at the Cape of Good Hope. From these observa- tions, the distance of Mars from the sun was obtained with a closer degree of approxima- tion than had before existed. But the dis- tance of the Earth from the sun can be ob- tained from the distance of Mars from that luminary by the well-known law discovered by Kepler, viz., that the squares of the periodic times of the planets round the sun are as the cubes of their distances from it. Now, these periods are accurately known. Hansen’s al- teration of the sun’s distance was thus confirmed by these observations on the planet Mars. But observe how strange it is that we should thus get at the sun’s distance by measuring the disturbing pull of the sun upon the moon, and again by calculating the distance of Mars. Again, M. Leverrier found that he could not account for the observed motions either ol Venus or of the earth itself, unless he altered the sun’s distance by just the same amount as that indicated by the motions of the moon ! Finally, M. Foucault, by means of certain most delicate measures with rapidly-revolving mir- rors, ascertained that the accepted velocity of PERCEIVING WITHOUT SEEING. [Good Words, Jan. urn light must be altered, and this alteration neces- sarily involved an equivalent alteration in the accepted distance of the earth from the sun ; the amount of alteration again, as before, , was about the same — three orfour millions of miles. I Thus, all these circumstances combined — ! viz., the displacement of the moon in her I orbit by the action of the sun, the distance of I Mars, the displacement of Venus by the action | of the earth, the displacement of the earth ! itself by the action of the moon, the velocity ; of light as experimentally determined by Feu- 'S cauit — all conspired to one result, viz., that | the sun’s parallax must be about 8"'95 in- stead of 8^*58, as heretofore accepted from the transit of Venus in 1769. How strange that all the foregoing apparently unconnected | causes — causes apparently so remote — should conspire to one result respecting an alteration | of the distance of the sun from the earth ! We doubt if, in the annals of human know- ledge — we doubt if, in the records of the achievements of human genius, there can be a parallel to this wonderful consilience of un- expected suggestions. But after all, what was it that was in fault respecting the transit of Venus? The prevailing opinion seems to have been that Father Hell had tampered with the results of his observations. Happily Mr. Stone has vindicated the memory and i the fame of this observer, and has demon- | strated the great accuracy of the observations j of 1769. We proceed at length to explain the causes of all the trouble : it will be seen that they do not lie at the door of astro- nomy: they are physical, and not astronomical. In order to understand the sources of the difficulty in observing the transit of a planet I such as Venus across the sun’s disc, it is necessary to remark that the sun has two discs, — an actual and physical disc, and an optical or visible disc, somewhat larger than the former. The cause of this apparent en- largement of the visible disc over the actual, is assigned to the indefinite word Irradiation. The true cause probably lies in that curious , action of the waves of light upon each other, whereby, in a telescope , a star which otherwise ought to appear as a point, is diffused into a little bright circular disc, surrounded with coloured rings. This spurious disc and its rings become smaller in the exact proportion that the aperture of the telescope is larger . Just in the same way, then, the edge of the | sun which, in this point of view, may be con- sidered as a number of stars, will, when viewed through a telescope, be diffused into a bright border, extending to a sensible dis- tance beyond the actual edge of the sun’s limb. This enlargement is physical and inevi- table. It arises from the nature and the interaction of light, and is an actual calculable quantity. Now, here lay the cause of all the trouble relative to the transit of Venus, as observed by Captain Cook at Otaheite, Father Hell at Wardhus, and other excellent ob- servers. To explain it a little more fully. Suppose r s to be the real edge of the sun. Then the visible or irradiation edge will ex- tend slightly beyond it, viz., to p q. The effect probably arises, as we have said, from the interference of the waves of light with each other, which proceed from the sun’s true edge, producing thereby in the telescope a false or spurious border of light between r s and p Q. The little planet is first seen in the telescope to touch the irradiation edge p q at a, and the observer would note the time, and would expect to see a fine thread of light so soon as the planet gets within the edge; but no such thing, the planet swells out into a pear-shaped patch, as at b, and so continues in a distorted shape until, unknown to the observer, it reaches the true edge of the sun, as at c, when he sees the formation of a black thread c d. So soon as the planet is disentangled from the sun’s true edge , then there appears the apparition of a thin thread of sunlight at e, and the planet thenceforth sails slowly and majestically across the sun with no unexpected phenomena, until at length all the strange distortions are repeated in reverse order on the opposite border.* Now the several observers themselves re- corded these perplexing phenomena, not as we have done now that we understand them, but in their own language, and with a mani- fest perplexity as to their meaning or their * The reader must not suppose the planet hops about as in the figure. It moves in reality in one straight line ; but for the purposes of illustration, we have placed the phases of the phenomena under each other. THE MAN WHO COULDN’T FEEL PAIN. (jood Words, Jan. 1, ;S69.] 53 cause. For a longtime they were assigned .to the imperfections of the telescope employed ! When the astronomers, such as Encke, came to discuss the phenomena presented to them in the reports of the various observers, and not clearly understanding either the de- scriptions or the causes of the phenomena, they were unable to ascertain the precise times of the contacts required ; they almost unavoidably compared and mixed up dis- similar phenomena, and consequently arrived at erroneous and discordant results. It is to Mr. Stone, the first assistant at Greenwich, who for some time had busied himself in the discussion of the spurious discs of stars formed in the focus of tele- scopes, that we owe this clear and full expla- nation of the difficulties of the case. Upon disentangling the phenomena, and comparing like with like, he has deduced from this transit of Venus very much the same amount of the solar parallax which had already been obtained from so many other independent sources. He has shown, moreover, that the observations of Captain Cook, Father Hell, and other observers, are, when properly inter- preted, beautifully accordant with each other. Thus all now has become clear in this very intricate question. We will not say thus has been removed the opprobrium from astro- nomy, for to astronomy it was never in reality an opprobrium. The physical circumstances attending the passage of a dark body over a very bright one, and then viewed through a telescope, were not understood at the time when the observations were made, and it was these which produced, not the astro- nomical error, but the then inextricable dif- ficulties of the case. The error arose from the observers of the transit seeing without perceiving, and it has been most successfully removed by Mr. Stone, who perceived the meaning of the phenomena without seeing them. Charles Pritchard. THE MAN WHO COULDN’T FEEL PAIN. A LEGEND OF THE HARZ MOUNTAINS. In the village of Thorwald, which is situated in a secluded valley in the Harz Mountains, resided a man of the name of Hans Muller, with his wife and two children. Hans was well to do in the world ; he was a stout, well-built fellow, fond of his family, and very industrious. But here ended the list of his good qualities. On the other side of the account we must set down the vice of intense selfishness, habitual discon- tent (although his circumstances were much better than those of his neighbours), and great indifference in religious matters. Honourable in his conduct, his integrity was not very dis- interested. He knew that the law punished fraud severely ; and, being by no means defi- cient in natural shrewdness, he had learnt that “ honesty was the best policy.” Hans Muller’s worldly possessions con- sisted in a moderate-sized, well-stocked farm ; an inn, to which was attached a stable for post-horses ; and a farrier’s shop. At this last, as it was the only one within a radius of five miles, he did a very respectable bit of work. Frau Muller was stout and good-natured, industriously looking after her husband’s affairs, and smoothing down the differences which not unfrequently arose between Hans and his neighbours. She also watched over the interests of the inn, as well as over the dairy at the farm, Hans taking the post- office and the farrier’s shop under his own especial control. Gretchen’s many occupa- tions did not divert her attention from her children. She watched over them with great care and solicitude • and, young as they were, — for one was but four and the other six, — she had been diligent in instructing them in the principles of religion. All that need be said of them is, that they were healthy and good-tempered, — in this respect taking far more after their mother than their father. On a certain day in the winter of no mat- ter what year, Hans Muller was particularly out of humour. Several circumstances com- bined to cause this most undesirable result. In the first place, there had been for some time a sharp frost, which was succeeded by a heavy fall of snow, so that all farm opera- tions had come to a stand-still. Hans con- sequently had to maintain his labourers while they were doing no work. His farrier’s shop had also been a loss to him, for, with the exception of the government mail, there had been no traffic on the roads, which were so bad as to cause great fatigue to his horses. As he horsed the mail by contract, this caused great loss to him. For the inn, it had had no visitors during the previous fortnight except a company of twenty soldiers, who had been billeted on Hans. In consequence of the bad state of the roads, they had remained in the house till the morning of the day of which I am speaking. The amount paid by THE MAN WHO COULDN’T FEEL PAIN. [Good words, 54 the government for their maintenance being somewhat less than one-half of what it cost, Hans’s satisfaction at seeing them depart may be conceived. About four in the afternoon, Hans was standing at' his door watching for the mail. Presently it made its appearance, and he ordered the stable-man to bring out the horses fpr the relay. In a few minutes the mail drew up. The courier gave Hans the solitary letter for the district, and then took a seat by the fire to warm himself, while fresh horses were being put-to. As the first horse was taken out of the carriage, the stable-man said, “ I say, master, this horse has lost a shoe.” Hans merely gave a growl at this, and the man proceeded to unharness the other horse. “ I say, master,” said the man again, “ this horse is lamed ; he’s had a blow on the hock.” Hans now stepped down and examined the horse. Finding that the man was right, he entered the house, and accused the courier of having driven carelessly, at the same time threatening to report him. “ Please yourself, I don’t care what you report,” said the courier. “ But understand this — that I also intend to report your negli- gence to the Postmaster-General. You haven’t half horses enough to work the road. The return courier will be here about eight o’clock, and you’ve no other horses in the stable than those I have brought. One of them is lame, you say, and the other must have a shoe on before it can go out again ; besides, the beast’s pretty well knocked up now.” So saying, the courier rose, and entering the carriage, drove off, leaving Hans in a state of great anger. Hans now remained at the door for some time in a moody frame of mind. Then he remembered that a shoe must be put on the horse before the evening. The farrier he employed had been allowed to go away for a few days’ holiday, Hans calculating that, during the man’s absence, he should save his keep as well as his wages. The stable-man was of course quite unable to shoe the horse, so Hans, who understood the farrier’s art, resolved to do it himself. The fire was lighted in the smithy, and the horse brought in. The fire in the forge was blown by the stable-man, who had charge of the bellows. Hans exa- mined the horse’s foot, which he began to prepare for the shoe being placed on it. This he did with some difficulty, as he had a whit- low on the fore-finger of his left hand. It gave him considerable pain, and prevented him from going on with the work as skilfully as he could have wished. Presently the horse —probably impatient under its uneasy posi- tion — jerked its foot away from him, thus freeing itself and tearing open the whit- low. This caused Hans considerable pain. In a passion he threw down the instru- ment used for paring the hoof, and savagely turning on the poor stable-man, as if he had been the cause of the injury, told him, with an oath, not to make a fool of himself any longer, but to take the horse back to the stable. Then, quitting the smithy, Hans re- turned to the hotel. He cried to Gretchen to bring him some rags to put round his finger. Like an experienced matron, his wife first examined the wound, and finding that it was somewhat severe, she told her husband to remain quiet for a few moments whilst she made a poultice. He made no re- mark, but sullenly seating himself in a chair by the fire, watched Gretchen making the poultice, angrily ordering her to be quicker, as his finger pained him greatly. At last, the poultice being ready, she put it on her husband’s finger, and wrapped a rag carefully about it. Then, tying a handkerchief round his neck, so that his arm might rest slingwise in it, she disappeared, wishing to be out of his way as much as possible till he should somewhat recover his temper. Hans Muller now considered what course he had better pursue. The return courier would arrive in less than two hours, and he had not a horse fit to leave the stables. No means of escape presented themselves to his mind, and he determined to get rid of the consequences in the best way he could. The courier who was expected was a very passion- ate man. Being an old soldier and a strict disciplinarian, he was in the habit of expressing himself with the utmost candour when the post-horses were not in readiness for him. At last an ingenious idea presented itself to Han s’s imagination. The snow had now, on ac- count of the frost, acquired some sort of con- sistency. He would quit the village, and not return till some two or three hours after the courier’s arrival, leaving the poor stable-man to bear the brunt of that functionary’s dis- pleasure. He could do this the more easily as night was fast closing in. He did not meet a soul on his way, and plunged into the forest, resolving not to return home till he was out of all danger of meeting the courier. Night now set in. It was dark and gloomy — so dark, indeed, that the snow on the ground was hardly perceptible under the thick fir-trees. Hans in a short time lost his way. This, however, 'he did not much mind, his sole object being to pass away the time. After some hours he began to think Good words, Jan. 1, 1869.1 THE MAN WHO COULDN'T FEEL PAIN. 55 that the courier must now have left the village. As the cold of the night was intense, and his finger still pained him considerably, he re- solved to try and find his way back. But the darkness prevented him from seeing any of the usual landmarks. At length he calculated that it must be near midnight, and he began to be greatly alarmed lest he should be obliged to pass the night in the forest. But still he walked on, more, however, for the sake of maintaining warmth than anything else. Fatigue now began to weigh on him so heavily that he could hardly drag one leg after the other. Had it not been that he dreaded being frozen to death if he fell asleep, he would have thrown himself down upon the ground. When almost in despair, he fancied he saw, through a break in the trees, the light of a distant fire. Believing himself to be near the village, he now set off in the direction of the light, and at last succeeded in reaching it. But he found that the rays did not proceed, as he had imagined, from the houses in the village, but from a fire which seemed about to go out. It was in the centre of a small amphitheatre, which had been formed by the trees being cleared away for some twenty or thirty paces round it. Though disappointed at not being nearer home, Hans approached the fire to warm himself. In a few moments, he looked round to see if any one was at hand of whom he could ask his way; but nobody was visible. He stood for some time warm- ing himself, and at last resolved to stay by the fire till morning. He then began to look for wood to make up the fire, so that it should last till daybreak. Pre- sently he perceived, near the trees, a quan- tity of fagots piled together. As he could i only use one arm, he took up the largest | fagot he could find, and, having thrown 1 1 it upon the fire, went back to procure j I another. When he returned with the second, 1 1 he found the first, somewhat to his sur- 1 1 prise, already blazing up ; for when he had I thrown it on the fire, it was damp, and j covered with snow. He did not, however, j| stop to reason on the subject, but threw on j s the second fagot. It immediately blazed up, j brilliantly lighting the whole scene around j him. He was on the point of going for a j third fagot when he noticed that a remark- I I ably tall, powerful man stood on the other j! side of the fire, dressed somewhat in the | costume of a charcoal-burner, and holding ! j in his hand a long pole shod with iron, with | which he was stirring up the wood. | Hans gazed at him for a moment in silence. Although his appearance was little different from that of the ordinary charcoal-burner, there seemed something strange about him which Hans could not understand. On look- ing more attentively, he perceived that the stranger cast no shadow on the ground behind him, although the fire was burning with intense brightness. Though naturally courageous, he was somewhat puzzled at the apparition, for certainly it was not there when he first reached the spot. At last, Hans determined to speak; but before he could do so, the figure drew the pole from the fire, and, leaning on it, said, in a good-humoured tone — “Thanks, my son, for this visit. I have long wished that we should become intimate, although I have not had the power to com- mence an acquaintanceship.” “You know me then ?” said Hans, greatly surprised. “ Perfectly well. You are a man after my own heart, and I am pleased to number you among my friends. Your sacrifice, I can assure you, has rejoiced me greatly.” “ My sacrifice !” said Hans, astonished. “What do you mean?” “ Oh, the fagots you threw upon the fire. That fire is my altar,” he went on, pointing to it with his pole, “ and those who feed it become my subjects.” “I intended offering no sacrifice,” said Hans ; “ I merely threw the wood on the fire to warm myself.” “ No matter,” said the figure, “ the thing is done, and I shall now look upon you as my son. Tell me, therefore, in what way I j can serve you. I have great power in my ! hands, and I will do anything you wish.” Flans seemed puzzled for a moment, as if he doubted what to ask. “ Come,” said the phantom, “ don’t hesi- tate ; I think I know your wishes. You would like your business to become more flourishing, so that you might grow wealthy ; and, moreover, you would like to be relieved from the pain you now feel in your hand. j I have not only the power to grant both re- quests, but, if you wish it, can ensure you against feeling pain for the future.” Hans seemed perfectly astonished that the j stranger should so quickly divine his thoughts, and was about to reply, when, with a gesture of command, the phantom said — ■ “ There is no occasion for further remark. I think we understand each other. If you are willing to become my subject, all you have to do is to sacrifice a third time by throwing on another fagot, or as many more as you like. At midnight, on the same day 5 6 THE MAN WHO COULDN T FEEL PAIN. [Good words. Jan. 1, isca. next year, meet me here, and let me know what more I can do for you.” Hans went to the pile, and drew forth another fagot, which he threw into the flame. To his great surprise, he found the stranger was no longer present. He now determined to make up the fire so as to ensure its burning till the morning. He again went to the fagot stack, and, pulling one out, saw that several others were on the point of falling. To pre- vent this, Hans mechanically drew his left hand from the sling, forgetting for the in- stant the wound on his finger. At this moment he became conscious that his finger pained him no longer ; and, taking up a whole bundle of the fagots, he carried them to the fire, and threw them on until at last the flames burned like a volcano. Then, placing a fagot for a pillow, he threw himself on the ground close by the fire. Although it burned fiercely, it did not throw out more than an agreeable warmth, and in a few moments Hans was fast asleep. When he awoke next morning he found it was broad daylight. To his great surprise the fire had burned out, and nothing remained but a few embers. He now rose from the ground, singularly enough without feeling the least cold, though a considerable quantity of snow had fallen, and had partially covered him. Shaking off the snow, he easily found the path to his own house, which he reached about eight o’clock. His wife was over- joyed, for she had been in a state of intense anxiety at his absence. Gretchen now pre- pared his breakfast, while he went to refresh himself by some toilet operations. _ He had seated himself at the table, and his wife was just on the point of asking whether his finger was better, when to her surprise she ob- served that there was a large blister on his right cheek, and another on his hand. Hans had not noticed this, and looked somewhat sur- prised that neither his face nor his hand gave him any pain, and that even the whitlow had ceased to annoy him. After he had finished his breakfast, Gretchen took the poultice from his finger, and gave a low cry of alarm when she saw that the wound was so much worse. She proposed to prepare another poultice, but he stopped her by saying that he felt no inconvenience, and did not want to be bothered with anything of the kind. Hans now left the house, and proceeded to the stable. Finding the stable-man, he inquired what the courier had said the even- ing before. He heard, as he had expected, that the courier had got into a great passion, and, not finding horses ready for him, had continued his way, threatening td complain at head-quarters. Hans, however, cared little for the threat, having full confidence in the bargain he had made with the mysterious charcoal-burner. He now told the stable- man to bring the horse that wanted shoeing into the smithy, and, although his finger was in a very bad condition, he contrived to put on the shoe without any difficulty. When the courier arrived in the afternoon he brought with him a letter addressed to Hans. It contained an order on a bank in Frankfort for a considerable sum of money, in liquidation of a debt which had for many years been owing to Hans’s father. Hans was overjoyed. The sum was sufficient not only to allow him to get four excellent horses, but also to purchase some rich meadows be- side his farm, which would enable him to conduct his posting business most satisfac- torily. So rejoiced was he at this news, that he would not listen to Gretchen’s advice to have his wounds dressed. Next day he went to a person’s house at some miles’ distance to see some excellent horses which were for sale. He purchased four, and returned with them to the inn. Hans now conducted the posting affairs so excellently as to receive warm commendations from the postmaster ; and a further and very lucrative contract was offered him, which he accepted. Things went on satisfactorily with him, and he was daily increasing in wealth and importance. But a singular change had taken place in his manner and behaviour to his wife and family. Formerly, he treated them with con- siderable kindness; and, as far as was possible with such a selfish temper, he was fond of them. But now he showed little affection towards them, and if he received the slightest annoyance, treated them with great severity. His eldest child, who was his favourite, fell ill ; and the malady being a painful one, the little fellow became very fractious. Gretchen nursed him with the greatest kindness, but Hans had no patience with him. Incapable of feeling pain himself, he had not the slightest sympathy with the poor boy, but attributed his cries to ill-humour, for which the only remedy he could suggest was a good flogging. Gretchen’s love, on the contrary, became greater the more she saw the poor child suffer ; and the boy’s affection for his mother increased in proportion to the kindness she lavished upon him. As he grew worse, his mother’s uneasiness increased ; but Ilans became more and more impatient. Indeed, it was only by the intervention of Gretchen that Good Words, Jan. 1, 1869.] THE MAN WHO COULDN’T FEEL PAIN. he was prevented from inflicting personal chastisement. The child died, and Gretchen exhibited the greatest sorrow ; but Hans did not shed one tear ; and the evening after the funeral he was as absorbed in his business as if nothing had occurred. Hans’s affairs continued to be successful, and he was already looked upon as the richest man in the neighbourhood. But sorrow was in store for him. Although the wounds on his cheek and right hand had healed, the whitlow on his finger, though trifling at first, had by continual abrasion become of a se- rious character. Inflammation extended up the palm of the hand, and matter was evi- dently forming in it. But Hans, feeling no pain, paid no attention to it, and treated the ! remonstrances of his wife on the subject with | : contempt. The inflammation soon extended up the arm, which swelled greatly. It was only when its swollen state became such that he found some difficulty in getting on his coat, that he thought of applying to a surgeon. The man of science, after carefully examin- ing the arm, asked if he felt much pain in it. “ None whatever,” said Hans. “ That’s certainly extraordinary,” said the surgeon. “ Your arm is in a very serious state, and I must candidly tell you that it is not a case on which I should like to act on my own judgment. I am by no means cer- tain that amputation will not be necessary.” “ Nonsense,” said Hans roughly ; “ how can I do without my arm?” “That’s hardly a subject for my considera- | tion,” said the surgeon. “ At the same time, ! I tell you that, without other advice, I must | decline undertaking your case.” “ Oh, very well,” said Hans ; “ then I shall quietly return home. Gretchen can easily make a larger sleeve to my coat ; and it will be much better for me to keep my arm i even as it is than to be without an arm alto- gether. I wish you good morning.” Hans returned home, and next morning Gretchen herself went to the surgeon. As she had now command of more money than she used to have, she requested him to call with the other doctor of whom he had spoken, saying that she would be answerable for their fees, as she was convinced her husband was in a worse state than he ima- gined. Two days after this the doctors arrived. Although Hans at first sho-wed great displea- sure at their visit, they at last succeeded in | persuading him to allow them to see his j arm. The doctor who accompanied the sur- ] 57 geon, after examining it quietly, emphatically said to Hans — “ Your life is in your own hands, my dear sir, and you can do what you please with it ; but, at the same time, we have a duty to per- form. I tell you candidly that mortification has already commenced ; and, if you do not allow your arm to be amputated, you will in- fallibly be a corpse in a few days.” Hans looked earnestly in the surgeon’s face for some moments; and observing a very serious expression on it, declared himself willing to submit to the operation, which was successfully performed two days afterwards. It was some weeks before Hans had suffi- ciently recovered to allow him to leave his room, and when he did so he was strangely changed for the worse in appearance. His health had been gradually falling off since the night of his interview with the stranger. So far from any inability to feel pain being advantageous to the constitution, it seemed in Hans’s case to be exactly the reverse. But great as the change had been before the opera- tion, it was comparatively trifling to that which had taken place since. Instead of the bluff, healthy appearance for which he had formerly been remarkable, Hans was now miserably attenuated, and so weak that he could hardly walk. His face had also become so pallid and gaunt that when he looked in the mirror after getting out of bed, he easily under- stood the necessity for taking greater care of himself. He became exceedingly quarrel- some and fractious with Gretchen, who had attended him with the greatest solicitude dur- ing the time he -was confined to his bed, but without eliciting the slightest gratitude in return. Becoming alarmed now at the pre- carious condition he was in, he drew so largely on his wife’s exertions, that she had hardly any time left to look after the inn and the busi- ness generally, all of which had fallen to her charge during her husband’s illness. Hans succeeded at last in gaining a little strength. Ever since the amputation of his arm, and the lesson it had taught him, he had been exceedingly careful not to put him- self in the way of the most trifling danger ; and frequently, when he had merely received a slight blow or shock, he would return to the house to see whether he had not been wounded. For more than a month things thus went on, Hans gaining strength, though very slowly. At last, however, he considered himself sufficiently recovered to undertake some portion of the superintendence of the business, and went into the smithy to see THE MAN WHO COULDN'T FEEL PAIN. [Geod Words, Jan.1,1869. the farrier shoeing a horse. The man was absent at the moment. Till he should return Hans amused himself by looking round the smithy, and grumbling at its disorder. By way of setting his servant an example of order and neatness, he occupied himself in placing the tools against the wall, and collecting together the horse-shoes which were scattered on the floor. Two horses were now brought in to be shod, and Hans stood quietly by watching the man at work, till he received a message from Gretchen, telling him that dinner was ready. He returned to the inn, and was on the point of sitting down at the table, when, to his great surprise, he found, on looking at the palm of his remaining hand, an enormous blister. He thought for a moment what could have caused it, and concluded that one of the horse’s shoes which he had taken from the ground in the smithy, must have been nearly red-hot. Alarmed at this, he screamed loudly for Gretchen, who rushed into the room. She immediately prepared what domestic remedies were at hand, and then making a sling for him, she commenced to feed him with a spoon, as if he had been a child. Still Hans, as he had no pain, felt little gratitude to Gretchen for her loving attentions ; his mind, in fact, was totally absorbed by the dangers of his own position. He remained for some days in an almost helpless condition, having again fallen off in health, owing to the effects of his wound. His men now paid little regard to him, as they looked to his wife for their orders, — a circumstance which annoyed him very much. From habit, he often found himself on the point of using his right hand (which healed but very slowly, if at all), being unwarned by the sense of pain that it would be injurious to him to do so. One day, when he had gone out, he ordered a farm-boy to move some wood from one place , to another. The boy refused, under the plea that his mistress had told him the day before that the wood was not to be shifted. Infu- riated at the boy’s disobedience and his wife’s interference, Hans unthinkingly drew his hand from the sling, and gave the boy a sound box on the ear, and then seizing a stick, beat him severely. The boy at last con- trived to escape, and Hans returned to the house so weak from the exertions he had made that lie could hardly walk, although at the same time he felt no fatigue, the loss of that sense having been included in the gift he had received from the phantom. On seating himself in the inn, he remembered that he had used his hand. He glanced at it, and to his terror found that the slight, new-formed skin had been completely rubbed off by the blows he had given, and that it was evidently in a very inflamed condition. He called on 'Gretchen, who came to his assistance. With tears in her eyes — for which, by-the-bye, she was scolded by her husband, as they - somewhat impeded her movements — she applied a poultice to his hand, and then replaced it in the sling. But the wound in the hand not only refused to heal, but daily became worse ; and, with the exception of his being able to move feebly about, he was almost as helpless as an infant. Twelve months had now elapsed since Hans’s interview with the phantom, of which, it may be' mentioned, he hhd never told Gretchen. Lie now resolved to keep the appointment he had made, and to im- plore the phantom to take from him the terrible gift he had received, even at the risk of his again losing the worldly possessions with which it was joined. Keeping his in- tention a secret from Gretchen, and first for- tifying himself for the trial with a draught of wine, he left home about ten o’clock to pro- ceed to the wood. After walking for about two hours, he saw in the distance the glimmer of a fire, and gave a sigh of relief, as he considered that the time had almost arrived when he should be able to relinquish the ter- rible gift he had received. On reaching the amphitheatre, he found the fire nearly extin- guished as before ; but the phantom was not there. He remembered that it was necessary for him to offer up a sacrifice by throwing on a fagot. Taking his arm from the sling, he carried one of the largest, and threw it on the flames. It burned up brightly • but no phan- tom appeared. He took a second from the stack, and threw that on likewise ; but still no phantom. He then took another, a fourth, a fifth, and so on till the number had reached a score, all of which he threw on the fire ; but, singularly enough, until the last was thrown on, none but the first burnt. Hans now turned round to procure more fagots, when he saw the phantom charcoal-burner, with his pole, standing before the pile. “ Welcome, my son,” he said ; “ what more do you wish from me ? ” “To take from me the gift you gave me, and let me be as I was before I made your acquaintance,” said Hans. “That is beyond my power,” said the phantom. “ I know but one way of relieving you from the condition you are in. The very exertion you have put forth in throw- Good Words, Jan. 1, 1869.1 ELIJAH. 59 ing the fagots on the fire has done so much injury to your wounded arm, that you can never recover the use of it. There is but one way to relieve you from your troubles, and that I will use on your behalf.” The phantom vanished, the fagots which had hitherto remained unburnt now blazed out furiously, and the flames consumed the wretched innkeeper on the same spot on which he had stood when a year before he had received the terrible gift from the phan- tom. WILLIAM GILBERT. HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. By the BISHOP OF OXFORD. I.— ELIJAH. The rise at all critical times of the world’s history, of men eminently suited for the work they have to do, is a result, and therefore a proof, of the two great truths — (i.) That whilst the race of men, like other races of animals, is physically subject to the ordinary law of inherited life, yet that every soul is a separate creation, gifted, apart from all others, with its separate individuality ; (2.) That the whole race is subject to a continually-acting superintending Providence. For, if there were no such individual differences, if all men, like the lower animals, were but passive representatives of the same idea, — as any one honey-bee is like every other honey-bee, gathers the same honey, makes the same cell in which to store it, — there could be no true kings of men. There might be in a man some instinctive power of gathering others round one, as there is a clustering of the swarm around its queen bee, but there could be no true kingship ; no power in one man of directing or fashioning his generation by the intellectual, moral, or spiritual power which, as it is, his individuality enables him to exert over them. And again, if there were no superintending Providence governing the affairs of men, there would be no security for the right man appearing at the right time. Blind nature, not administered by a God, might produce a great poet when a great general was wanted ; give a wonderful financier to a horde of savages, and set down upon the Stock Exchange the gallant, brave, and frank gentleman who could have wielded as a single soul a motley clan of Highlanders. Now, instead of this unseasonableness of production, the world’s history shows that the man the age needed has continually been given to the age. And, as we might expect, from the relation of the people of Israel to all other nations, this (which profane history exhibits in its measure) is seen as in a pattern type in the history of the chosen people. Nowhere is this more distinctly traceable than in the life of the great prophet Elijah. Sixty-five years had passed since the ten tribes had revolted from the house of David, and Jeroboam had mounted the vacant throne and reigned over them “ according to all that his soul desired.” Chequered years they had been : marked on the whole by much temporal prosperity, but clouded ever deeper and deeper with the dark shadows of spiritual evil. Jeroboam’s reign began with all the vigour of a new dynasty ; but ended in loss, disgrace, and untimely death. Abijah, the son of Rehoboam, though he “ walked in all the sins of his father which he had done before him,” and though “ his heart was not perfect with the Lord his God,” was yet as to power of mind and personal prowess a very different man from the feeble, boasting Rehoboam. He “' set his battle in array with an army of valiant men of war;” he routed the force of the ten tribes. He “waxed mighty;” and he was wise in dis- course as well as strong of aim ; for “ his ways and his sayings ” were “ written in the story of the prophet Iddo.” He was the scourge of the usurper through all Jero- boam’s later days. “ Neither,” is the sacred record of his chastisement, “ did Jeroboam recover strength again in the days of Abijah ; and the Lord struck him, and he died.”** The short reign of his son Nadab lasted but for two uneventful years ; that of Baasha, the son of Ahijah, who succeeded to the throne of the master against whom he had conspired, and whom he had smitten, lasted for twenty- four years, and was, through his “ might,” a time of military glory for the ten tribes. Baasha’s provocations of the God who had “ exalted him out of the dust, and made him a prince over Israel,” brought extermination on his house and his supporters. His son was murdered after a feeble two years’ reign, and the throne given by the army to Omri, the captain of the host. During his twelve years’ reign, he bought the far-famed hill of Shemer, and built on it the city of Samaria ; setting * 2 Chron. xiii. 20. r 60 ELIJAH. [Good Words, Jan. 1, 1869.. up there the throne of his dynasty. There his son Ahab reigned after him for two-and- twenty years. He was what the world would call a great king. Its historians might de- scribe him as taking up and carrying further I the wise policy of the mighty Solomon. . In- stead of allowing his people to remain a mere agricultural or pastoral race, hemmed in by the narrow limits of their mountainous country, cultivating for themselves alone its rich valleys, and feeding only for themselves their cattle upon the upland slopes, he carried on the project which the wise king had formed, and had begun to accomplish, of I making them a commercial people, and en- I riching them with the traffic of the earth. As Solomon had married the daughter of Pharaoh and formed a commercial treaty with Egypt, so did Ahab ally himself with the king of the Zidonians, intending, no doubt, to share with that queenly city the merchandise of the world ; and he made for himself streets in the great trading capital of | Damascus. Magnificence reigned throughout his days in Samaria ; art was encouraged, and the increasing population better and more safely housed. In the book of the Chronicles of the kings of Israel is written the catalogue of the cities which he built, and the record of the ivory house which the success of his distant commerce enabled him to make. He was, too, successful in war, as well as great in the arts of peace. Twice he overthrew signally the forces of Benhadad ; and recovered the cities which the forces of Syria had taken from his warlike prede- cessor, Baasha; and he fell as other brave men have fallen, in battle, heading an aggres- sive and invading army against the enemies of Israel. But this worldly success was ac- companied by an amount of wickedness un- known before even to the evil kings of the separated tribes. His father, Omri, the founder of the dynasty, had done so much “ worse than all that were before him,” that two hundred years afterwards the prophet Micah* set it before Israel as their special sin that “the statutes of Omri are kept.” But worse even than that of Omri was the course of Ahab. “He did evil in the sight of all that were before him ; and as if it was a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam, he went and served Baal, and worshipped him; and he raised up an altar for Baal, in the house of Baal which he had built in Samaria; and did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that we re before him ”f * Micah vi. 16. t i Kings xvi. 30 — 33. This introduction of the worship of Baal was a new and separate kind of sin from the iniquity of Jeroboam. His golden calves, abominable as they were, had themselves been intended to signify to a sensuous genera- tion a local and special presence of their fathers’ God. They were the instruments of a forbidden mode of worshipping Him; but still they were meant for His worship. What the temple at Jerusalem, with its altars, and its courts, and its sacrifice, was to the two tribes as God’s special resting-place, that the golden calves of Bethel and of Dan, with their adapted ritual and their imitated priest- hood, were to be to the ten. But to worship Baal was to introduce not only new rites, but a new god. To provoke Jehovah, not only by drawing nigh to Him with self-invented and forbidden ritual, but audaciously to set up against Him another god. In Baal and in Ashtaroth, the great Phoenician male and female deities, were gathered up for the more polished tribes surrounding Israel the worship of the Heathendom. Baal was, under different forms and appellations, the god of natural power, the god of light, the god of increase. Ashtaroth was the female corresponding deity. In many of these temples, in that of Baal- Peor especially, and generally in those of Ashtaroth, the rites of worship were defiled by the wildest sensual license ; and all that could pollute and degrade humanity was prac- tised in honour of these devil gods. It was this which Ahab had imported into Israel. Nor was the establishment of this hideous worship all his sin. The Zidonian sharer of his bed and of his throne, whose very presence was a crime against the God of Israel, was not only zealous for the heathen god whose name her father bore, but, as a true daughter of Eth-Baal, was fierce against the rival honour of Jehovah. The great gift of prophecy yet lingered with retiring foot- steps, as though unwilling to withdraw itself, amongst the separated tribes. God’s grace, through the ministry of the prophets of the Lord, had still kept faithful to Him amidst the growing apostacy, seven thousand secretly faithful ones, whose knees had not bowed to Baal, and whose mouth had not kissed him. Against these prophets Jezebel had raged. It was not enough for her to main- tain as her opposing spiritual army four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and four hundred prophets of the grove, and to feed them as the chaplains of her house of idols at her own royal table, but beyond this she must exterminate the prophets of the God whom she hated. In her, as in other women of her ELIJAH. Good Words, Jan. 1, 18 9. 1 6 1 class, under the painted cheek and tired head there lay concealed the cruel soul of the murderess; she “cutoff” the prophets of the Lord, and would have destroyed them all if the courage of one who “ feared the Lord greatly ” had not, at the risk of his own life, hid the remnant in unsuspected caves, and fed them there with bread and water till the bloody days were passed. In the full darkness of these evil days, the bright light of Elij ah’s prophetic ministry breaks upon us in the sacred record with the startling suddenness of a meteor’s blaze in the black- ness of the night. Fatherless and motherless, with no record of his earlier days, with no hint of his training, he stands singly forth in a lone- liness which is itself terrible. He is “ Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead.” From the recesses of that moun- tain land, nursed amidst its distant fastnesses, nourished by the bracing winds which swept over its lofty plateau ; practised, as were all the Gadites by their border situation, and the frequent assaults of their neighbours, in all the resources, physical and intellectual, of the ever-watchful, ever-active Bedouin, he, a child of the desert, is, untracked, unexpected, and unwelcomed, suddenly, in the midst of the civilisation of Samaria and its court. At his first appearing, he is the stern threatener of judgment on the wicked king in the very height of his prosperity. He “ said unto Ahab, As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word.” And the judgment announced, the prophet disappeared. It is like the flash of the lightning, sharp as a blazing sword in its sudden vividness ; but not tarrying for a moment; revealing everything, and gone as it reveals it. This first message is a sample of his whole ministry. To him was committed a dispensation of severity and judgment. All his meetings with the king bear the same impress. When the threatened judgment had run its course, and God’s command to him is, “ Go, show thyself unto Ahab,” even in releasing the kingdom from its plague there is the same tone of severe rebuke. “ Art thou he that troubleth Israel ? ” asks the king, with the peremptory challenge of one used, even in receiving favours, “to an absolute sub- mission.” The prophet, who stands before the Lord answers him in words which must have broken with a strange ruggedness upon ears used only to courtly flattery, “ I have not troubled Israel, but thou and thy father’s house.” Once again the prophet and the monarch meet ; and again it is with the suddenness, j and almost with the crash of the thunder- | bolt, that the presence of the man of God j breaks upon the king’s sight. He has just | triumphed in his wickedness. The obsti- j nacy of Naboth had been overcome by his j murder, and the king’s heaviness of heart at being refused the vineyard which he j coveted had been washed away in the blood j of his liegeman. He rises up to take pos- j session : he enters the longed-for posses- j sion : it is his own : his heart swells with the | triumph. But what is that dark, threatening j form, almost like the dead man’s spirit ? whose | that voice heard before, and once heard never to be forgotten ? The proud countenance of the earth king drops before the higher majesty. “Thussaith the Lord,” is the terrible utterance, “ Hast thou killed and also taken possession ? In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine.” Ahab’s answer, which comes back almost like the stifled growl of a crouching beast of prey, “ Hast thou found me, O mine enemy ?” only wakes up again the severe and un- alterable sentence, “ I have found thee, be- cause thou hast sold thyself to work evil in ! the sight of the Lord. Behold, I will bring j evil upon thee, and will take away thy pos- terity, and make thy house like the house of j Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, and like the i house of Baasha, the son of Ahijah, for the j provocation wherewith thou hast provoked me to anger, and made Israel to sin ; and the dogs shall eat Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel.” i For the time even that proud heart was humbled by the awfulness of the message, and the terrible severity of the messenger. And so they parted to meet no more. Once again we read of the man of God standing in the presence of the king of Israel : and still it is with a like burden of threaten- ing and of woe. Ahaziah had mounted his father’s throne ; and with his father’s crown inherited his father’s sins. “He did evil in the sight of the Lord, and walked in the way | of his father, and in the way of his mother.” I He falls down through a lattice, and, suffer- ing from consequent illness, sends to Baal Ekron to inquire concerning the issue of his j sickness. God intercepts the message, and sends to answer it the man who was his father’s terror. The messengers return, not with the flatter- ing ambiguities with which, oracle-like, we may suppose that the priests of Baal would have allayed the fears and kindled the hopes I of the heir of him who had made the worship j of their god the religion of his court and \ 62 ELIJAH. [Good Wards, Jan. l, 1S8S.. people, but as men overawed and forced against their will to do the bidding of a mightier than themselves. They return with the strange tidings of their being met by one before whose imperious voice even the king’s message had died in their mouths y by “a man who said unto us, Go turn again unto the king that sent you, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord, Is it not because there is not a God of Israel that thou sendest to inquire of Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron ? Therefore thou shalt not come down from that bed on which thou art gone up, but shalt surely die” (2 Kings i. 6). Hereditary impulses of hatred and terror seize on the diseased king, and he asks eagerly of the messenger the lineaments of this daring in- terrupter of the royal embassy. The reply, that he was “a hairy man, and girt with a girdle of leather about his loins,” is answer enough. It may well be that the Zidonian queen had stamped upon the imagination of her son those detested features ; it may be that his words of doom, which waited twelve years for their accomplish- ment, kept alive within her breast a deadly hatred for their utterer. For three, or per- haps four, years he had vanished from sight. Perchance he was dead ; perhaps hidden amongst the mountains of Gilead, or buried in the caverns of Horeb. And now again, with a suddenness startling as of old, he stood beside them, again denouncing evil on the seed of Ahab. This time, at least, he shall not escape ; and the captain of fifty with his fifty is sent to secure the lonely wanderer. The very number speaks the awe with which his wild strength and terrible vigour had impressed the court ; and as it seems not in vain : for, on the captain of fifty and his fifty, and on a second like company, the destroying fire falls from heaven. The third messenger, in humble guise, implores for him- self and for his men mercy of the man of God, and is spared; and with them, on God’s bidding, free and fearless, the prophet of the wilderness strides into the king’s chamber, speaks again his sentence of dismay, and leaves it at his will unfettered and un- harmed. There was no other meeting between the man of God and the house of Ahab : though, just before, or at this time, Jehoram, king of Judah, who had married Ahab’s daughter and learned the customs of that evil house, received his fearful sentence in a “ writing ” couched in the stern sentences of the prophet of Gilead, “With a great plague will the Lord smite thy people, and thy children, and thy wives, and all thy goods ” (2 Chron. xxi. 14). Nor is it only with the royal house that the ministry of Elijah is thus marked as a dis- pensation of vengeance. . By the priests of Jehovah’s rival in his people’s worship he is known as the unsparing avenger. There is no dramatic record sublimer in its grand simplicity than the meeting of Israel and Elijah on the Mount Carmel. The World-God of nature and of strength is challenged before the assembled people to a trial with Jehovah. On Baal’s side are the majesty of the crowned king, with his guards, his chariots, and his horses ; the proud display of Jezebel’s court and following, ready to maintain the cause of the heathen queen ; her four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal, and her four hundred of Ashtaroth, with all their pomp of dress and elaborate ritual and innumerable victims and intensity of sensual devotion. There are around the multitude of people, the gathering of all Israel in ranks upon the mountain-side, watch- ing with eager curiosity for that which is for ever to decide their halting opinion. In the midst of these cohorts of world prophets — gazed on with fear by the excited crowd, alone, silent, unmoved, obscure, like the dark mountain brow, wreathed with the thunder cloud — stands the prophet of Jehovah, with his rough and scanty clothing, his massive limbs, his untrimmed hair, as though witnessing for, and communing with, the invisible God, before whom their fathers had bowed. Through all the laborious preparations of the Baal prophets he is sternly silent, until he breaks in with awful irony upon their ineffectual in- cantations. And then, when his turn is come, deliberately, and with careful accuracy, he builds up, as though with parabolic significance of what he knew to be his mission, Jehovah’s long-ruined altar, and then that deep voice is heard by every ear, whilst it shakes every conscience, commercing with the Almighty. The fire of heaven attests its servant’s truth ; and with unsparing hand the prophet of the dispensation of severity himself, as it seems, puts to death the whole licentious crew who served in the polluted temples of Baal and of Ashtaroth. But though Elijah’s ministry was one of terror and severity, and though the aspect, garb, and habits of the prophet were all moulded into fitness for this special call, we shall altogether err if we picture him to our- selves as nothing more than a rock of the wilderness — a hard and obdurate avenger of iniquity. Such never are Jehovah’s witnesses. ELIJAH. Good Words, Jan. 1, 18690 63 Such never can, whatever terror they may , strike, reach down into the depths of a nation’s heart. It is in the union of these dark lineaments of massive strength and awful severity, with all the tenderness of a human heart, that the power of such a character consists. And these are eminently combined in Elijah. What can be more touching than the almost woman’s cry which breaks from that great soul over the dead son of the widow of Zarephath, “ O Lord my God, hast thou also brought evil upon the widow with whom I sojourn by slaying her son?” Is it not enough that I dwell a lonely man upon this populous earth, that no home voices ever break in on the stillness of my spirit’s solitude, that no son ever clasps my knees, but that, for ever companionless, I bear Thy awful message ; but must it be that my pre- sence inflicts this loneliness on others ? Is it not enough that I speak thy threatenings to the obdurate ? Must my dwelling in a house darken it with the shadow of death ? What an insight have we here into the deep tender sympathies of the prophet of severity ! How, again, does the same inner human heart reveal itself when he is driven of the Spirit into the wilderness of Sinai; when he sits down under the juniper tree and requests that he may die ; when, the triumphs of Mount Carmel accomplished, the majesty of Jehovah avenged, the repentance of the people awakened, when he, the doer of these mighty works, finds out that he is not better than his fathers, cries for release from the long-borne burden of his loneliness — “ I, even I, only am left !” What a relief it is, as we gaze on the stern rugged features of his giant daring, to see melt like the mists of the rising sun over the rock of the wilderness this haze of human gentleness around the other- wise almost Titanic features of his greatness ! It was doubtless by this matchless com- bination of the sternness of his prophetic dis- pensation with the inner tenderness of his spirit, that the wisdom of God fitted him for his peculiar work amongst the separated tribes. For that ministry he was moulded in the form of strength which stands before us at every turn of his mission; for that he was trained in the rocky mountain heights of his native Gilead ; for that the rough sheep-skin mantle and the rude leathern girdle were the fittest dress ; for that the long Nazarite locks of this (as the original has it) Lord of Hair hung down on his broad shoulders ; for that this mighty solitary spirit was taught to know a woman’s clinging grasp for sympathy and fellowship ; for that in all the majesty of his strength he was lured into the silence of the desert and taught by the hurricane, the light- ning, and the earthquake, that not in might, but in weakness ; not in action, but in Waiting ; not in the battle cry or the shout of victory, but in the still small voice of childlike submission was manifest, the power, the pre- sence, and the greatness of Jehovah. What his mission was 4t may perhaps specially, at this day, be most profitable for us to trace. For the ten tribes separated through their fathers’ rebellion from the temple and its covenanted services at Jeru- salem, all the various offices of the priest- hood were gathered into the single person of the prophet.. For this reason, as we might expect, it is in the ministry of the ten tribes, and not of the two, that the prophetic office finds its grandest development. Judah can nowhere show such men of God as Elijah and Elisha. And for what was this perfect instrument thus fashioned by the Spirit of the Lord ? It was not to bring back the ten tribes to unity with the two. It does not seem that it was immediately to recall them to worship at Jerusalem. This might have lain behind as a hidden purpose of God’s further mercy if the first call of prophecy had been received. But that first call was to an immediate purification of the life in which they found themselves, not to an exchange of it for another. That state was indeed the fruit of a past rebellion and an earlier sin ; but it had grown to be their normal state, and, as such, God accepted it. What he did call on them to do was to purify it of the giant corruptions which had grown up within it. The Baal prophets must be slain ; Baal worship must be rooted out; Jeroboam’s golden calves must be ground into powder ; Jehovah must be worshipped in sincerity and truth ; and then He would open for them his further will. This, then, is the echo of Elijah’s voice : Cast away the present sin, purify the system in which thou art from Baal and from Ashtaroth, from world worship, sensuality, and pride. Fall thou on this thy Carmel upon thy face, and let thy soul cry out, “The Lord, He is the God ! The Lord, He is the God ! ” and thy spirits’ drought shall leave thee, showers of grace refresh thee, heaven be open to thee. Live in this present life with God, and He, when it is his will, in his own time, will lead thee in other paths which thou knowest not, and set before thee, when hou hast been fitted to dwell within them, larger rooms of more perfect service. THE CAPTAIN’S WIFE. [Good Words, Jan. 1, ISfiU. 64 THE CAPTAIN’S WIFE. The wind was blowing up from the west On the eve of a stormy day, And she saw the ship that she loved the best Veering across the bay. The sails were ragged, and old, and worn, And they flapped to and fro in the blast, like the wings of a spent and wounded bird When the foot of the hunter hath past. And it’s oh ship ! brave ship ! safe may your voyage be ; And it’s oh for the dawn of to-morrow’s morn ! and it’s oh for a rippling sea ! The wind had sobbed itself to rest, Like a weary, wayward child ; And she lay with her babe asleep on her breast, And dreamed of the ship, and smiled. She smiled as she thought in her happy sleep That the long, long parting was o’er ; But she did not hear how the storm awoke, And the breakers dashed on the shore. And it’s 0I1 ship ! brave ship ! she could not sleep, if she Had dreamt of the crash, and had seen the flash which lighted the boiling sea. She did not wake though the wind was high, But turned in her dream with a start, And her sleeping lips framed the well-known cry, Which dropped from the full, full heart, As water falls from a shaken cup Suddenly over the brim : “ Lord, keep my captain safe to-night, And all at sea with him !”. And it’s oh ship ! brave ship ! but where will your captain be ? And it’s oh ! it was well there was none to tell, it was well there was none to see! They are striving now to reach the shore, The captain and all his men : And still that fond prayer is murmured o’er Again, and again, and again. The waves are high, the rocks are hid, And none can see the land ; But the captain stands himself at the helm, And steers with a steady hand. And it’s 0I1 ship ! brave ship ! and how can it ever be 1 hat. you clear the rocks, and weather the shocks of that tearing, roaring sea? The night is dark, the storm is high, But the ship lies safe in a creek, And the captain stands with a light in his eye, And a flush on his sun-browned cheek. And the captain’s wife sleeps sound and still Through the wild and angry blast, For the morn shall rise on a peaceful bay, And her captain home at last. And it’s oh ship ! brave ship ! brave and strong you may be, But was it your strength that saved you at length from the might of the cruel sea ? FLORENCE FIELDS. 66 NOBLESSE OBLIGE. [Good Words, Jan. 1, “NOBLESSE OBLIGE.” (ffnglxsjf Stoxg of IT-bag. By the AUTHOR OF “ CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. I PRELUDE. tall stooping gentleman strolled in, and Mr. Paston immediately stopped his work to at- tend to him. The circumstance took hold of Phoebe’s mind, for her father was not given to pay heed to visitors, and, indeed, pushed his absorption in his labours to the extent of making Mrs. Paston feel cruelly injured. The gentleman did not wear a velvet coat, J or a star on his breast, or anything fine, save a very bright ring, which flashed on his finger and dazzled Phcebe as lie pointed here and there at the pictures. The child was struck, and stopped her play as her father had stop- ped his work, remaining very quiet watching the stranger. At last he noticed her, and in- I quired, “ Is this hazel-eyed little woman vour girl, Paston?’’ “ She is. Her mother is glad to have her in safe keeping, and she is proud to come up here with me.” “No doubt. So this is my little girl’s god- daughter. Why she is twice as browm and stout as the other. Come with me, little one —what do they call you? You will be a treat to Lady Dorothea, and we shall see if we cannot find something to please you in return.” Phoebe appeared anything but inclined to leave her father and go away alone with the grand stranger, through the labyrinth of cor- ridors and saloons ; but her father looked so shocked at her contumacy, that the poor little thing submitted unconditionally. Lord Ex- moor took her chubby hand in his long, fingers, and speaking to her a careless en- couraging word now and then, led her, trou- bled and bewildered, along what appeared to the child’s imagination miles on miles of carpet, marble, and polished oak. On they went, past more pictures, rows and rows of portraits of gay ladies with whole sweet pots of flowers on their heads and bosoms — ladies with very low necks and very long curls — ■ ladies with jewelled stomachers and stiff ruffs — ladies in close cambric caps, and swathed in shawls, like superannuated babies, — and ladies studded round with babies’ heads like spots on a peacock’s tail. All these portraits of ladies were flanked by portraits of gentle- men, like papa’s Don Quixote — like the figure on the tomb in the church of St. Basil- — like the virger of the church — like the jockeys who rode at the Wellfield races. At last, when Phoebe had been dumbfounded, and nearly driven out of her small wits, Lord Ex- moor opened a door into a large, light, warm saloon, and dropped her hand. It was a room no less wonderful than those they had passed through. There was a fire, with a curious high fender, and before it a little white, silken-haired, black-eyed dog, in a dog-basket lined with blue. There were green, red, and yellow birds flying and hop- j ping to and fro in a large cage in one of the j windows ; there was a globe full of gold and j silver fish ; there were screens covered with paper pictures ; there was a spotted wooden horse, like one of Lady Exmoor’s piebald ponies, with a real mane and tail ; there was a tiny house, with the front somewhat want- ing, thus laying bare dining-room and drawing- room, bedrooms and kitchen, furnished with every convenience for the natives of Lilliput j there was a glass cabinet stuffed with large and small wax dolls of both sexes, of every variety of complexion and attire, and at every stage of doll or human life — flaxen-tressed dolls and raven-haired dolls, dolls in court dress ready to be presented to her Majesty, and dolls, setting privacy and propriety at defiance, prepared to retire to rest in the pre- sence of other dolls in full military and naval uniform. )RE than a dozen years ago, Mr. Pas- ton, of Well- field, was in the habit of taking his little daughter Phoebe in his hand to Brock- cotes, where he was engaged in painting a series of pic- tures for the Protector’s Gallery. One day as the child was playing beside her father, a Good Wo-rds, Jan. 1, 18C9 ] NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 67 This room was occupied by a comely elderly lady in a lace cap, a white apron over her spotless chintz calicot, and a silk shawl round her shoulders. She sat in one of the windows sewing by the aid of gold-rimmed spectacles. She rose on Lord Exmoor’s en- trance, and curtseying to him a little, in the style of his noble grandmother, remained waiting his commands. There was another occupant, who sat still at a table in the middle of the room, and merely gave a calm little nod, uttering an ab- stracted “Good-morning, papa,” as she looked up on the first opening of the door. This was a little girl, spare and slight, with a pre- cocious air of mingled dignity and acuteness. She was dressed in a white frock, and had her long, black hair delicately divided, and hanging down on her shoulders, in striking contrast to Phoebe’s short, thick, broken ring- lets, little darker than a hazel-nut, which were massed and crushed against her brown, poppy- tinged cheeks, as they had been left by her old-fashioned bonnet. The little girl of Brockcotes was engaged over a small china dinner-service, by the help of which she was rehearsing a dinner-party with great precision and decorum. She did not desist immediately on the intrusion upon her company, but continued her manoeuvres of the plates and dishes, accompanying them with little audible speeches delivered in clear treble tones, at once easy and emphatic. “ Duchess, will you try the haunch of venison ? ” “ Lady Mary, I can recommend the Lafitte ; ” merely glancing the while at the intruders, from be- neath her long eyelashes, with her large limpid grey eyes, the pupil a violet black, the iris a clear, pearly grey. “ Dorothea, I have brought you a little friend come and speak to her,” the Earl interrupted his daughter. “ I beg your pardon ; presently, papa,” Lady Dorothea excused herself, till she had dismissed her viewless company with the formal adjournment, “ Duchess, shall we go to the drawing-room?” Then she came down directly from her chair, and walked straight to Phoebe and the Earl. “ Papa, you have forgotten to present us,” she reminded him, still refraining from letting her eyes rest on Phoebe. “ Is it one of the Godolphins or the Needhams?” naming two of the county families, without the pretence of a stage whisper. “ No ; it is Mr. Paston’s little girl, to whom you stood godmother, Dolly. Of course, you don’t remember it, because you were a baby yourself at the time.” “ I do remember, papa,-— I mean I have been told of it, — and shall send her a ‘ Chris- tian Year’ and a ‘Child’s Companion’ next Easter. How do you do, Mr. Paston’s little girl, my god-daughter?” — coming close to Phoebe, and looking her all over now, with bright, meditative, friendly eyes. “ Keep her with you, Dorothea. Let the children have a romp together, Dykes,” directed the Earl, turning away. “ You hear what my Lord says,” repeated Lady Dorothea, with vivacious impressiveness. “You are tb stay with me, my little god- daughter ; and, since I need not be on cere- mony with a little Wellfield girl, I may tell you that I should like you to show, me how the town girls get up their dolls’ wash- ings. Dykes will find us tubs, lines, and irons ; only, in case Dykes hurt herself, we will not have the irons hot. Do you know, Mr. Paston’s little girl, I held one to my cheek once as I had seen Mrs. Chenevix at the Wellfield Lodge do, and I had to go in afterwards to the Countess with a blistered face ! Dykes was dreadfully vexed about it but little girls ought to learn everything, in case of riots and revolutions and things, and that they may not grow up shockingly igno- rant, and their children’s children after them. Oh, I forgot, if you do not like to show me your way of doing washing or keeping shop,. — you must know how to keep shop, and I am sadly afraid I keep it all wrong,” put in Lady Dorothea, wistfully, — “we will have cards, or dinners, or whatever you prefer,, because you have come to visit me here at Brockcotes, and it is my duty to entertain you.” CHAPTER I. TOWN AND CASTLE. Wellfield was a quiet-going, old-fashioned little town, shone upon, not shadowed by, Lord Exmoor’s great seat of Brockcotes. Once upon a time it had been a mere de- pendency of the old castle — a cluster of thatched houses, with a square-towered little church, occupied by the vassals of the Latimer family ; now it was dignified, demure, and, as a rule, too respectable to be picturesque. It accommodated a population of eight thousand, who had not preserved an olive-tinted thatch roof or an umber-brown wooden house among them all, save in holes and comers. Wooers’ Alley was the most picturesque quarter of unpicturesque Wellfield, and was not unsuited to be the habitation of poet or painter. It was a by-way, as all your lovers’ lanes and wooers’ alleys are. Odd and irre- gular, it still had gable ends facing the road, 63 NOBLESSE OBLIGE. [Good Words, Jan. 1,1869. and presented here and there a wide gateway, with lamps like Chinese lanterns suspended between old elm and ash trees, though they led to nothing more imposing than a market- garden, a wood-yard, or a laundress’s green. Wooers’ Alley did not limit its line to one gradient, but ascended and descended, and indulged in the sharpest angles, to the aggra- vation of the old and the lazy. Some of its houses looked as if they had been built on a level with the tops of other houses, and had their pleasure-grounds parallel to their neigh- bours’ roofs. Others again were sunk after the fashion of a well, and were contemplated over garden walls in hollows twenty feet below the path. Wooers’ Alley was more exclusive even than those squares and ter- races in London, which refuse to lend themselves to any carriages but private ones. A wheel-barrow could not have under- gone the inequalities and eccentricities of W ooers’ Alley without risk. The most aris- tocratic visitors were therefore forced to come on foot or not at all. The market-place was encumbered by a statue of the late Lord Exmoor, in a stone facsimile of the regimentals — very high at the neck and short in the waist — which he had worn when he fought for his king and country in the Peninsula. The principal entrance to the town was embellished with a fountain, guarded by four greyhounds, seated on their granite haunches (the supporters of the Brockcotes’ coat-of-arms), presented to the town by the reigning Countess when Lady Wriothesley, and called the Wriothesley Fountain. The great privilege of the town consisted in the right to provide the supplies and fur- nish the service of the Earl, and of the outer public who flocked at particular seasons to visit Brockcotes; while a chief part of its relaxation lay in the old use and wont of walking in Brockcotes Park, and in being entertained by the Latimers,— going through the form of entertaining them, in return, — at every era of birth, marriage, or accession in their history. Brockcotes was not more than half a mile irom Wellfield, though its park stretched some miles, in another direction. The mass of building on the height, relieved by its great clumps of wood, was not only conspicuous from Wellfield, but its quadrangle and portico, broken lines of roof, towers, and turrets, formed a more imposing representation of a town than Wellfield itself. Brockcotes was the show-place of the county, and Wellfield might well cherish a little satisfaction in the proximity, which was both profitable and pleasurable to it. The Exmoor family, on their part, took a pride in keeping up what guide-books and county histories call a baronial residence, and in commonly residing in it from autumn till Easter, in spite of the many self-sacrifices and inconveniences in- volved in the circumstance. One of the gates of Brockcotes— a species of undress gate in plain iron, with a porter’s lodge no better than a suburban Swiss cottage — opened at about a hundred yards distance from the point where the High Street of Wellfield terminated in the park wall of Brockcotes, and where the street was slant- ingly cut in two by the dogmatic, brusque flight of Wooers’ Alley. This gate, known as the Wellfield gate, was open to the towns- people from seven in the morning till nine in the evening. Any attempt to close it would have been the most likely thing to produce a rebellion of the Wellfield lieges, unless it were the enormity of the family’s ceasing to be the staple customer of the Wellfield butchers, bakers, grocers, and linen-drapers, and having its stores supplied by contract from tradesmen in the capital, with the aid of the railway, after the fashion of the old cos- mopolitan army contractor, Mr. Coke. The oldest resident could not remember a time when the Wellfield children were not free to run among the shadows of the leaves, play at hide-and-seek round the tree boles, gather periwinkles and primroses at the tree-roots, and gaze in wondering admiration at the fallow deer and Scotch cattle which strayed about ; when the Wellfield lovers could not saunter and smell the hawthorn and the roses, and listen to the nightingale ; when the old Wellfield gossips could not find shelter from sun and wind to put their nod- ding heads together under the boughs ; or when the careful wives and rosy daughters of working men engaged at the castle, could not carry pitchers and covered plates to their bread-winners at breakfast and dinner hours. The Wellfield avenue had its tide, always welling more or less full, of common humanity and its kindly joys and sorrows, to temper the retirement and repose of the great Lati- mers of Brockcotes. Strolling through the grounds, one came on patches of bracken, pale gold in their first sereness, set off by the deep, clear malachite green of clumps of laurels ; on huge bushes of sycamores and great larches bending to the ground, and sweeping it with their branches. These led to the American Garden beyond, | between breaks of rhododendrons and azaleas. Good Words, Jan. 1, 18C9 ] NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 6 9 As the visitor ascended terrace after terrace, and gazed round on the wealth of trees in the park, wide as a chase, the monotony broken by the silver sheet of the mere, covering its seventy acres, and on the domed and turreted kennels — a smaller Brockcotes on a rising ground — his eye then wandering far away to the fields on fields of stubble and green crop, pasture and coppice, with bountiful country houses, snug villages, and towers and spires of parish churches, all on the Brockcotes estates, he could scarce help thinking the scene the grander for anything he had wit- nessed elsewhere. He saw but a section of the great facade of the castle, but that was enough. It had taken six centuries to com- plete, and it represented about as many styles of English architecture. There was the Norman keep, solid, grim, and slit-holed, with wallflower and frog’s-mouth tufting the clefts of the massive walls which had one day bristled with cloth-yard shafts ; there were Tudor windows and clock-towers ; Inigo Jones colonnades and gateways; Sir John Vanbrugh suites of rooms — Gibbs, Burling- ton, and Kent having each had a hand in making and marring the whole. It was a princely polyglot of a building, harmonized, fused, and mellowed by its gradual growth, and by the histories which had been lived in it, and which gave to each distinct portion not only a real individuality, but, as it were, the lingering breath of a soul. CHAPTER II. — PHCEBE’s WALK TO THE CASTLE. Phoebe Paston had just returned to her father’s house in Wooers’ Alley. She had been away eighteen months, finishing her education with her cousins the Halls, at Folksbridge, the trading seaport in the east of the county ; and taking a flying trip to the Continent under her uncle and aunt’s wing. She was now walking up to Brockcotes to report herself, and to pay her homage to her godmother and friend, Lady Dorothea, as duly and undoubtingly as if the two had lived in the middle ages. It is true that the Brockcotes family had a particular claim on the Pastons, — the present Earl having what is significantly termed “made” Mr. Paston five-and-twenty years before, and having never tired of employing and backing him since. Lady Dorothea and Phoebe, too, as children, had got up washings and dinners and shopkeepings with such zest, that the games had brought a faint colour into Lady Dorothea’s thin white face; and as a consequence, Mr. Paston’s little girl was summoned over and over again to repeat the charm, until the children became regular play-fellows and attached companions. The association was renewed every time the family returned to Brockcotes, and continued with- out a break till Phoebe had left to go to her cousins. The child’s play had become girl’s lessons and chatter, and in place of exhibiting her dolls’ dresses, it had been her confirma- tion dress, and the dress thought of for her first drawing-room, which Lady Dorothea had latterly shown and talked of to the sympa- thising Wellfield girl. Withal, the intimacy had been maintained within bounds, and con- ducted with discretion by the ruling powers. The intercourse had been held chiefly in the nurseries, school-rooms, gardens, and park; or in the Pastons’ house at Wooers’ Alley. Phoebe had not been placed in the false posi- tion of a humble companion in the Brockcotes drawing-rooms, neither had she been suffered i to sink into the housekeeper’s-room, though ; she had a well-merited respect and regard j for Mrs. Bald and Miss Thorpe, the house- j keeper and the Countess’s maid, who shared i it between them when there was no company. And when mentioning these two, not only highly respectable, but tremendously respon- sible and authoritative personages, one should not omit to add that they occasionally drank tea with Mrs. Paston at Wooers’ Alley. It had been managed by Lady Dorothea’s mother and Phoebe’s father — alike in being eminently sensible individuals in their dif- ferent walks — that Phoebe should keep her own place in her experience of high life. As I for Lady Dorothea, it is the privilege of Lady Dorotheas that no honest company can de- grade them. When they stoop, it is to confer j distinction. Yet though Phoebe Paston was in a special I sense a retainer of the Latimers, any girl in / Wellfield, up to Miss Adelaide Coke — the daughter of old Mr. Coke, the retired army agent at the White House — who was per- mitted to attend, not merely the ball at Brockcotes in the race week, which was open to all the town’s people who could establish the most distant pretensions to being in the middle class, but the county ball, where she ; sometimes danced in the same quadrille with Lady Dorothea — any girl in Wellfield would 1 1 have been exalted in her own estimation and in that of her neighbours, by being called j upon to go up to Brockcotes and be admitted 1 to familiar intercourse with Lady Dorothea. Phoebe dispensed with no punctilio, there- j fore, when she entered the gateway without saying “ By your leave,” and merely stopped for old acquaintance-sake to exchange a greet- 7° NOBLESSE OBLIGE. [Good Words, Jan.!, X8CB. ing with the lodge-keeper, — a. little cricket of t an elderly woman, contrasting strongly with the i deliberate, taciturn porter at the great gate, i “ Going up to see Lady Dorothea,. Miss , Paston? You’ve stepped in before without i being unmannerly, as true enough, it was not I like that you, a young lady and a travelled I lady, would be, sew-er-ly. But her ladyship was through here just yesterday, riding Colts- foot, and she said she would be back again to-day, and would stop then and look at the prairie hens ; ‘ for do you know, Mrs. Chene- i vix,’ says she, ‘ Mr. Paston’s daughter is corned home, and I must arrange to get down [| to Wooers’ Alley at wunst to see her?’” i “ Ah, how good of her!” Thoebe just \ managed to edge in. “ Goodness gracious me, how thick her little Ladyship and you were wont to be, when you came to play in the south nurseries and the cloistered walk, and how you have kep’ it up until you are a pair of sightly young women, so as it sounds by all the world like the constancy of lovers.” A laugh here broke from Phoebe, who was just about to say something when the little woman rattled on again : “ Hay, 111 wager my last pheasant’s hatch- ing that our Lady Dorothea — world’s worth ■ j of sense and cleverness though she do be — don’t look half so sweet yet on meeting my ! Lord Marquis as on meeting you. Only what mun be mun be; and more by token it is certain to happen with ‘them great folk up at the top of the tree, where the shade and the i shelter are the first thing thought on, poor ! souls ! of which the cedars in Earl Heneage’s walk is nothing to them.” | “I don’t know anything about it, Mrs. Chenevix,” Phoebe answered the somewhat enigmatical speech, taking refuge in her ignorance ; “ I have been a stranger so long.” Proceeding on her walk, Phoebe could not help recalling to mind the appeals of her cousins, the Halls, who had attempted to draw her into an admission eveiy time they got am addition to the greenhouses at Garnet Lodge, or received a buhl table or an ormolu timepiece from London, or displayed the bits of Dresden and Sevres china which $iey had picked up abroad, that Garnet Lodge was a rival to Brockcotes ; and that the mer- I chant, standing alone upon his wealth, was able at least to compete with the great landed peer and his roll of buried ancestors. This came before her now in all its ludi- crousness. It was not that the Halls could not command luxuries and comparative splen- dours. They had been accustomed to them, at all events Mrs. Hall had, for she was a daughter of one of the first merchants in Folksbridge. But even if Mrs. Hall had been able to monopolize and preserve all the cedar-wood, ivory, spices,- and Dutch pictures on which she delighted to expatiate, and though there had been joined to them the upholsterer’s and the jeweller’s glories of purple velvet, amber satin, rococo chairs, and Parian marble statues, up to gold toilet plate, —what could these count weighed against the treasures of Brockcotes? Nay, though nectar and ambrosia had been added, soup a la Julienne , haunches of venison, lobster pates, whole pyramids of pines, and glaciers of vanilla ices, with Burgundy, lachryma Chris tee, and Tokay to the utmost bounds of the imaginations of sensuous novelists who have not studied le grand simple , what in- finitely higher food there was for the gods at Brockcotes ! Phoebe knew well there were things which money could not buy, far other than dancing-masters’ graces and bastard By- ronisms. They might be illusions, too, it is true, but they were dear next to household . charities, and sacred after Divine sacraments. For what in themselves were family jewels, armour, shields, stained glass, the whole ulti- mata of the Horace Walpoles, to the musty, worm-eaten, state banqueting room where one Latimer had spent his rents for a year and a day on a loyal feast to a king in adversity ; or to the shabby business room in which another Latimer had pledged lands and life to save his country and maintain the integrity of its halting but high-reaching laws ; or to the faded state bed on which had lain the coffin of a hero, resting from his last fight, with the tattered, soiled banner spread over it which was afterwards to form the grandest relic of the old guard-room ? The diamonds and Milanese mail were overborne by the cracked delft flower-pot, in which a brave dame had once hidden the title-deeds of her children’s inheritance from the house’s enemy. Why, every step in this house led to a hoary record of history, wrought in by some member of a family which, for a score of generations, had held in trust for the people a great stake in the country. Phoebe did not enter Brockcotes by the great gateway. The Earl himself did not think of doing this, except on great occasions. It would have involved a progress through the guard-room, the armoury, the old hall, the Elizabethan saloon, the white drawing-room, with the Queen Anne closet, and the great picture gallery, before the inhabited quarters of the house could have been reached. Good Woids 1 j January I, I860. “NOBLESSE OBLIGE.’’ Good Words, Jan. 1, 1S69-] NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 7 1 Phoebe had made the round with unilagging interest many a time, and hoped to make it again in triumph, with her cousins; but it would take half a day. For the needs of private and ordinary intercourse there were side doors in every direction, which the family had learnt to use as they had learnt to occupy graciously a house which was not theirs alone, but the country’s — liable to be invaded three days a week, in all its ancient and splendid localities, by a hydra-headed, gaping, finger- ing, enthusiastic monster, whose convenience 1 they had to consult, and who was mortally 1 jealous of so much as a terrace, a garden, a row of windows, a suite of rooms kept back from it and retained for private ends. Phoebe did not require the aid of the ser- vant who conducted her up the side-stair to Lady Dorothea’s room. She was sure that she knew the way better than he did, for he was not one of the old servants. She had all her life been acquainted with them — Mr. Clarges the butler, Mr. Simmons my Lord’s man, Mr. Richardson the groom of the cham- bers, Mr. Finlay the Scotch gardener — though by one of those subtle distinctions which affect men and women in the same rank and family, the men servants never dined with Mr. Paston, as Mrs. Bald and Miss Thorpe drank tea with Mrs. Paston. But Phoebe knew they were all very superior, well- informed, elderly men. The present John Thomas, though he had the misfortune of having seen only five years or so of service in the Exmoor family, manifested the advan- tage of good company and good government by doing his spiriting gently. With a fine instinct for the feelings of the family, he showed Phoebe to Lady Dorothea’s room very respectfully, bestowing on her a delicate reflection of his courteous, deeply interested manner. Altogether this simple sprig of the servants’ hall at Brockcotes was a mightily different specimen of the genus plush from the dreadful boy in buttons whom Phoebe’s Aunt Hall affected ; or even from the men hired to wait at parties at Garnet Lodge, who got drunk, broke the diamond-cut frosted water jug, and were so intolerably saucy and insolent to Olive Hall when she corrected them, that she had to call upon her brother Frank to order them out of the house. CHAPTER III.- — LADY DOROTHEA’S BOUDOIR. Lady Dorothea recognised Phoebe the moment the door was opened. She rose in an instant, without disturbing any of her sur- roundings, and came towards her friend with both her hands outstretched. “My dear Phoebe, I am so glad to see you. I always want to see my friends, and you are my gossip — there is no modern word for it,” she added, coming up to her, and kissing her heartily. Phoebe liked to feel the close caress, though she rather received than returned it ; and her heart grew warmer at the conviction that Lady Dorothea, after a season and a half in town — a season and a half nearer the supreme dignity of the Marchioness' of Fairchester— had not forgotten her. “ We have so many things to tell each other, Phoebe. First, you are looking very well, and I hope you do not think me gone off.” “ Not at all, Lady Dorothea,” Phoebe assured her friend sincerely. “ Ah ! you know it is of some conse- quence, and I am nervous about our degene- rating physically. There is so little of me,” her Ladyship went on, with perfect gravity, “ and there is not much more of Wriothesley. If febrile nervousness were to set in now, nothing more could be made of us ; and it would be a sure sign that the race was dying out, though it might linger with coddling and padding for a few more generations. I have been toiling to get through with my work, to have the Countess set me down at your door after luncheon, and have the carriage pick me up again, which would have saved time, if you hadn’t done belter. I had only got as far as ‘ Joy is a transitory possession,’ ” read- ing from the last of a heap of school copy lines ; “ and I’ll tell you what, Phoebe, I don’t call that a satisfactory moral precept. Do you ?” “ Scarcely, I fear ; but I have not yet had time to test it,” answered Phoebe. “ But you see Mr. Gilbert has set it, and it is not my place to dictate to Mr. Gilbert,” continued her Ladyship. “The comfort is that none of the children will understand ‘ transitory.’ I was going on to ‘Man is made to mourn,’ was it?” peering at her list of precepts. “Surely no, something more cheerful for the children — ‘ Man is made to work.’ Dear ! I am afraid the boys and girls who are not surfeited with playing at hockey and keeping houses, and who don’t experience the spur of having work which must be done, will think that sentence equally dismal. But I am getting dismal myself over the thought of my work, for the copies are a light task compared to the demands of one post,” pro- tested Lady Dorothea, looking askance at a pile of elegantly turned letters on her other side. “ It’s almost as bad as being called upon NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 72 [Good Words, Jan. 1, 1S69. to entertain people who will not be enter- tained, she went on, “ to have to answer letters which contain nothing but wire-woven compliments and fine phrases. I don’t count scientific, antiquarian, clerical, or social- economic letters under the same head. How- ever troublesome, one may take kindly to the trouble in their case, for there is something more or less real and positive in them. But as to the mass of letters, the fact is, news- papers have destroyed our vocation where they are concerned. I do envy the time when every wonderful story did for a letter to a country cousin.” “ I hope I’m not in your way,” interposed Phoebe, with more of certainty than hope in her tone. “ My dear child,” besought Lady Dorothea, emphatically, “ don’t you be wire-woven and hypocritical. You know I shall contrive to get rid of my share of the family correspond- ence by economizing my tea and toilet, or by coming up here after dinner, if mamma can spare me, or, should all other resources fail, by tearing the letters into little bits, and flinging them out of the window, with the world none the poorer, or myself a bit peni- tent.” “ I don’t believe that,” asserted Phoebe ; “you never treated my letters so, and instead of your not thinking of such havoc, I don’t know who would mind it more.” “Ah! you always thought a great deal better of me than I deserved. But you are quite a travelled lady yourself now, Phoebe. I want to hear all about your travels and adventures, as well as to tell you mine ; and remember, we have only an hour to do it in, before the luncheon bell rings. You must take luncheon with us, and pay your respects to the Countess. Of course, that is settled.” Lady Dorothea’s room adj oined the southern nurseries, where Phoebe and she had first met. Phoebe was sure that Lady Dorothea would not have vacated it for another, or changed any of its salient features. It was not the fashion at Brockcotes for the inhabitants to flit from perch to perch, or to dismantle and refurnish their nests. There was the strongest element of conservatism in the great house. Lady Dorothea’s room and Lord Wriothesley’s room were chambers intact and established beyond recall, and would continue without fail what their names implied till Lady Doro- thea became Marchioness of Fairchester, and Lord Wriothesley succeeded his father as Earl of Exmoor. The boudoir was decidedly plain, spacious, and wonderfully convenient. The pale, French-grey walls were without relief of watered paper or gilt cornicing ; and all the adornment they had was from some chalk drawings and water-colour sketches of Lady Dorothea’s — not always in the best perspective, nor with the most perfect touch — and photo- graphs of members of the family and the household, including favourite horses and dogs. The carpet was Turkey indeed, but it was worn threadbare, and the cheval mirror was encased in an out-of-date, tarnished, black and gold frame. The wood was maple, the hangings chintz, the porcelain common white and gilt-edged china. The aristocratic element lay in the ample provision for every possible requirement of the occupant. The toilet service was full, though it was not of silver or silver-gilt, but of tortoise shell and alabaster. There was a reading-table, a writ- ing-table, a portable book-case, a flower stand, a cabinet, a desk, a work-basket, a night lamp, a day lamp, and chairs, couches, and footstools for all the phases of industry and idleness, notwithstanding the principal lounge had no more expensive cover than white dimity. ‘Supposing Brockcotes subjected to a siege, Lady Dorothea’s room would have afforded her occupation and entertainment during every month of the twelve. The bedroom beyond, with the door ajar, was even less costly, in its light iron bed- stead, serviceable chests of drawers and ward- robes, with only the delicacy of its linen, its complete provision for warmth in winter and air at all times, and the enamel tiles of its lavatory, to distinguish it from any ordinary, unpretending bedroom of the upper class. But there was one detail unattainable, save in such quarters : the windows belonging to these rooms commanded three separate vistas of the park, each of them a long sylvan alley, with its striking suggestive termination — the first being the great gate; the second, the Brockcotes’ obelisk, raised to commemorate slave emancipation, in which the Latimers of Brockcotes had played their part; and the third, the group of Scotch firs, planted as a record of the family of Countess Jean — a waving tree for each weeping baby that had grown into a man or a woman, and was now dead and mouldering into dust within the walls of the Brockcotes’ mausoleum, or in strange lands, or in the depths of the sea. Lady Dorothea was as far removed from extravagance in dress as her rooms were from extravagance in furniture. There was no such distinction now between the morn- ing dresses of the friends as there had been between those of little Lady Doro- NOBLESSE OBLIGE. Good Words, Jan. 1, 1869.1 id thea and Mr. Paston’s little girl. Lady Dorothea’s cambric muslin was hardly finer than Phoebe’s: and although hers was freshly put on for the morning, and Phoebe’s for the week, that of the aristocratic lady, because less care was called for, perhaps was the more crumpled and flecked of the two. Another change in their personal attributes was that Lady Dorothea was at the present moment the more tanned and freckled of the two, with those small, clear, dark freckles, like spots on the lip of a shell, which only come out on very fine skins. Mr. Finlay, the Scotch gardener, and his subordinates could have given a reason. Lady Dorothea had a passion for working in the green-houses with her own hands, and when it was hot there, unless the opinion of the Countess occurred “Lady Exmoor greeted Pncebe willingly, but with an effort.’ to her, she would throw off her hat and gloves without the least concern for her complexion ; besides, she had taken Lord Wriothesley’s dogs under her special care during his absence, and the kennels were at a quarter of a mile’s distance from the house, in the most exposed situation as to sun and wind in the park. In addition still, Lady Dorothea rode with the Earl as well as drove with the Countess, and did an j amazing amount of family, poor, and parish work at odd times on the estate. Except one hour before luncheon, and another be- fore dinner, when she read and wrote in her own room, she was good to be found some- where or other out of doors all through the spring and autumn days. Indeed, she was half as much time in the open air as a field- worker, and ten times as much as a home- staying, embroidering, housekeeping young ^ NOBLESSE OBLIGE. rc-cott words, jan. i, iseo. lady in the rank of Phoebe Paston. As _ to Lady Dorothea s head, the fine hair of which had been so treasured and cultivated by nurse and maid, she would, in her perfectly cultivated womanhood, as soon have thought of coming down to the breakfast-room with a diamond coronet on her temples, or a wreath of artificial flowers and flower-sprays hanging down her back, as have descended to her world showing anything but the quietest little mouse-black head, its natural ornament dis- posed of, in these days of chignons, in some mysteriously simple manner. She left friz- zling, plaiting, bandeauing, and resetting, to her Abigail, “ Thorpie,” the Countess’s maid, and Thorpie’s coquettish little niece. Lady Dorothea was slight, pale, and under the middle size, as every and the first im- pression made by her on a stranger might be one of momentary disappointment that “ the daughter of a hundred earls” should appear a trifle insignificant. It required a second look, and a second thought, to appreciate the fineness of the traits, of the very contrast between the dark hair and the naturally satin- white skin; to discover, how pure, subtle, and tender — in the French sense — would be the blush of rose which animation or emotion would call into the cheek. Once sensible of the true beauty of a high-born woman, and there is an inclination to regard every other style of beauty as coarse and clumsy in com- parison. Yet Lady Dorothea, thanks to her open-air life and active, well-balanced mind, was not intrinsically fragile, hectic, or softly weak-looking. There were in her carriage and gestures the nerve and elasticity of both health and breeding, to carry her, if neces- sary, over mountains of tribulation and seas of difficulties. In place of being languid or statuesque, her face was espiegle and mobile to a fault — open, indeed, to the charge of never | being seen in a state of repose, j Phoebe Paston was lithely round, and seve- ral inches taller than Lady Dorothea. She was in face softly brown, with a warm, not a swarthy brownness, answering to eyes having an olive tint in their hazel irises, and a’ blue- ness in the white of their balls. Dimples came and went in her cheeks ; and her mouth, a little too full, preserved an archness and capacity for expanding into a rich straight line of intent enthusiasm or sobriety, which altogether redeemed it. It was saying a good deal for Phoebe Paston’ s face and figure that they could bear to be looked at beside Lady Dorothea’s fine black and white traits — be- side the thin nostril, the flexible mouth, with the transparent teeth glancing through the perpetually varying curves, the arched neck and arched foot. What was most amiss in Phoebe was, that she wore her hair German fashion, so that the wave and ripple back from the low, square forehead, appeared some- thing smart beside Lady Dorothea’s smooth little morning head, the shape of a grey- hound’s ; and that her hands — though she had no passion for working in green-houses, no obligation to feed dogs, and was particular in wearing gloves when she tied up her roses and carnations — were one or two degrees larger, and of heavier mould and material, than Lady Dorothea’s. Of course, Phoebe exaggerated the defect, and called her hands bear’s paws and mason’s mallets beside those of her Ladyship, and thus escaped all conceit where those members were concerned. Lady Dorothea marshalled Phoebe to one of the window seats* and they sat down together like Hermia and Helena, “ both on one cushion,” and commenced a brisk fire of questions. “ First, about the cousins at Folksb ridge, whom you knew so little of, and have lived a year and a half with — are they nice people?” “ Very nice, and two of them so clever,” replied Phoebe, promptly. “ I know one is the only son — the journal- ist in town — whom Wriothesley met on the Danube, swore a friendship to, and praises up to the skies. But you are not going to marry him, as I once predicted ?” “ No, indeed,” Phoetre negatived, deci- sively, with a laugh indicative of the clearest of consciences, and without a shade of a blush. “That would never do. My aunt and my uncle would not like it, and, what is more to the purpose, Frank and I did not for one moment think of each other in that way, though I have a great regard for him as a cousin, and I hope he has some cousinly re- gard for me. He knows everything, and can do everything, and is very amusing, Lady Dorothea ; but he and his set think too much , of themselves ; he smokes too much, and he is ugly. I should not like to marry an ugly man, if I could help myself,” speculated Phoebe ; “ though I daresay I should get accustomed to his ugliness.” “ I daresay you would, you stupid Phoebe, as well as take down his conceit, and set bounds to his smoking — so much the better for him. Of what count is ugliness in a hus- band, or in any man, or in any reasonable creature, for that matter ? But I know your taste, Phoebe — a muscular Christian, a north- ern Levangro, a stalwart comely person enough, with a look as if he could not be — — — ~ — 1 — . . — Good Words, Jan.], 1SG9.] NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 75 angered fairly, and yet with that queer spice of perversity in his nature which makes many a sober Englishman fly off at a tangent, and be guilty of a disinterested recklessness at the crisis of his career — recklessness of which a feather-headed, spasmodic Frenchman or Italian would be, not to say dreadfully ashamed, but sheerly incapable. I suppose he cannot help what constitutes him a sort of puritan vagabond. It is the old Danish pirate in his blood rising against the other element of the Dutch shopkeeper.” Phoebe said not a word in reply to Lady Dorothea’s particular definition of her taste, and ignored any special allusions it contained, while her cheeks were tingling with provoca- tion under it, and with dread lest she had not heard the last of this. No more came just then. Lady Dorothea went off to something very different. “ Are your cousins very fond of garnets, Phoebe, that they call their house Garnet Lodge?” “ I fancy they would prefer rubies,” cor- rected Phcebe, the least bit in the world offended. “ They did not christen the place, it was named by the former owner.” “ Oh, then they are not responsible for the name,” admitted Lady Dorothea, taking pains to make amends for her indiscretion. “And that is one advantage of stepping into strangers’ shoes. I am sure some of our names do our forefathers no credit. There is Swinely. Although a spade is a spade, and I have no desire to hide it, could they not have hit upon a prettier association ? Swine are very well in their own way, but why have to drag them | into one’s mouth twenty times a day when we are in Dorsetshire ? And what did you think of foreign lands, you little W ellfield native ? You were lucky. They must have made an impression on you. Now, by dint of being taken abroad when I was ten and the Earl had the first touch of the gout, and then when I was thirteen and the Countess was attacked by neuralgia, and again when I was fifteen and Wriothesley had to be re- covered from hay fever, the beginning of my impression was so indefinite, and it was so frittered away by repetition, that I cannot remember having had any. At what points on your route did you stay longest, and what places did you admire most?” It had still been the grand tour to Phoebe, perfect in its six weeks’ shortness, and she had seen everything with such vivid percep- tion and lively appreciation, that she had not time to tell Lady Dorothea one-half of what her Ladyship would have liked to have heard, as she sat listening with her keen analytical faculty, and the half-pensive weight of expe- rience looking out of her bright, pellucid eyes, and playing about her transparent face. In Phoebe’s description, one place chased another. Every now and then she called herself back with an “ Oh ! I forgot, Lady Dorothea,” and darted off again to a string of other localities and attractions, till she stopped breathless. , Lady Dorothea nodded her approval. “ I see you have enjoyed it. I am glad you had such a holiday. So you stopped at that little place beyond Coblentz. You were more for- tunate there than we were. We wanted to “ do it,” but we could not manage this, for we could not find accommodation for our party. We were once driven out of Lausanne for the same reason. You wouldn’t believe, Phcebe, the trouble and the heartburning that diffi- culty often occasioned. Clarges was as good as most couriers, but the little strength and leisure left for seeing sights, and the constant aggravation of witnessing the number of in- dulgences and amusements which other people commanded, and which were not per- mitted to us, were enough to counterbalance all our pleasure. You may count the heavy penalties incident to travelling as an English milord, among the sorrows of the aristocracy.” Phcebe thought she understood them as well as an outsider could, and condoled with Lady Dorothea accordingly. “ But you would rather not want the penalties,” she finished, with ready brusqueness. “ No,” Lady Dorothea laughed frankly, “ we are to the manner born.” She took up her gold pen and twisted it about in her fingers, as, with a suspicion of wistfulness in her resolute, unhesitating tones, she said, “ I don’t imagine you came across the Fairchester family ! ” No, Phcebe had not come across the most distant relation of the Marquis — not even in the shape of an autograph in a visitors’ book. “ We missed meeting them in town after Easter,” said Lady Dorothea, choosing to grapple with the subject, notwithstanding there being an increasing consciousness, neither awkward nor yet entirely pleasurable, in the significance of her next observation. “ It is odd how we have contrived to miss each other ; but Lord Fairchester had to go abroad again to fetch home his sisters, who had been spending the winter with their aunt, Lady Camilla Tollemache, at Nice. He and his sisters are coming here to meet Wriothes- ley on his return for the race week. It is such a comfort that we are to have Wriothes- ley home at last,” continued Lady Dorothea, NOBLESSE OBLIGE. [Good Words, Jail. 1, 1S69. 76 taking up the present theme gratefully, though she had not flinched from the other. “We expected nothing less than that he would be off to the Rocky Mountains, where we could not spare him, because he is the only son we have ; besides, that is not exactly the way in which we want Wriothesley to dis- tinguish himself/’ “ I heard something from Frank Hall of Lord Wriothesley having taken honours at Oxford,” put in Phoebe. “ I was not sur- prised to hear it.” “ Yes ; but I don’t know that a peer is en- titled to take away so much Latin and Greek from his college. I don’t know that it is not a mistake — that a more moderate quantity might not serve his turn. We must be sparing of Wriothesley, when he is remarkably clever, and when we have been waiting for him these two hundred years ! ” At this Phoebe opened her eyes, and was about to offer some modest deprecation, when Lady Dorothea, anticipating her, went on — “ Nay, you need not stare, Phoebe. Only think, we have been no more than great land- lords and country noblemen since the Ben- tincks and the Kepples came in with Dutch William’s revolution, while other families have been marshalling armies, leading navies, procuring treaties of peace, and preventing national bankruptcy. We have even allowed ourselves to be beaten in gardens and packs of hounds. It may be a matter of thankful- ness that we have not grown to be infamous for divorces and gambling debts, roum and light women. But it is high time that we did something more than abstain from great shining vices • yet women can do nothing beyond forming alliances — and I must say we have always married well,” “ I should think that would be hard enough work sometimes,” broke from Phoebe, in a half-rebellious undertone. “ It has often been arranged for us before- hand,” stated Lady Dorothea, quietly. “ How- ever, the question is, what Wriothesley is to do ? Parliament is his natural and ultimate field ; but, between ourselves, the Earl does not care to trust him with a borough at pre- sent.” > “ But Lord Wriothesley is so clever.” “Still, you know, there is an attraction in reverses ; and Wriothesley’s opinions, like those of many generous young men of rank and parts, who have opinions to speak of, are unsettled, and incline to demo- cracy. He might compromise himself just now — take up the paupers more outrageously than Lord Ingestre, or propose vote by bal- lot, like Mr. Berkeley. Then, in Parliament, reform seems to belong to the Russells and the Greys ; it is like poaching and plagiarism to meddle with it. I fancy he must rather begin with some great scheme of railways or harbourage, of mining or draining — some- thing that will cost hundreds of thousands of pounds, cripple our exchequer for genera- tions in the name of honour, and afford work and prosperity to as many thousands of men.” “Your confidence in Lord Wriothesley is charming, Lady Dorothea.” “ I confess I could not bear Wriothesley’s descending to found a museum, far less his basing his hopes of fame on giving his name to a barouche or a pair of breeches,” con- tinued her Ladyship. “ He might go on the turf and improve the breed of horses. We think no harm of that, when we can afford it ; but the Latimers have always confined their taste in this matter to the Wellfield race week, and left the larger doings to the Gre- villes. Besides, Wriothesley has no bent in this direction. He can ride a deal better than Lord Fairchester, who sits like a sack, they say,” explained Lady Dorothea, coolly ; “ but his short sight is against him in com- peting with his groom. That defect is be- coming serious,” lamented Lady Dorothea, full of care, “ when you consider that Earl Evelyn had it as far back as the battle of Tewkesbury, when it caused him to miss his Lancastrian enemy, and fall a victim himself. Old Father Ambrosius, our chaplain then, has the fatal accident and its cause fully set down in black and white in his Latin chroni- cle. I have all but escaped the infliction, but it has come out in Wriothesley, and I am not sure that it is not more alarming than the Dugdale deafness, which is so painfully evi- dent in poor mamma. With the immense importance of Wriothesley’s eyesight, and the fate of poor Lord Lewston and the Duke of Leominster’s son before him, it is what I call astonishingly wrong-headed and wilful in Wriothesley to go on pottering at his amateur painting and writing.” Phoebe allowing her scepticism to be mani- fest, Lady Dorothea added, “ I know that you will not misunderstand me, Phoebe, when I say that I don’t reckon that Wriothesley’s line, any more than scholarship or philo- sophy. I don’t underrate art and learning ; but what noblemen are here to do seems to me to be, not to paint, or construe, or speculate, but to live.” “ I think you are right, Lady Dorothea,”. Phoebe corroborated shrewdly ; “I am sure NOBLESSE OBLIGE. Good Words, Jan. ], lSdO.] 77 it would not have suited papa at all if the Earl had thought fit to paint his own walls with his own hands, instead of giving a com- mission, which, papa has often said, was the making of him as a professional artist.” “It is very good in your father to say so, and, I imagine, no more than just. There are patrons whose province it is to give their thousands of pounds for Raphaels; and there are painters whose province it is to paint Madonna di San Sistas and Leo Tenths. I never saw an advantage gained by confound- ing provinces. Wriothesley might do some- thing with the press. I don’t deny that ; but men like your cousin, Frank Hall, have always had a monopoly of it, though a Lord Strangford may cut in occasionally. Alto- gether, I don’t know that he could make much of it, without the entire confidence of the public on party questions, — to expect which would be the next thing to hoping for a prodigy.” “ But Lord Wriothesley has already gained the confidence of all,” suggested Phoebe. “ Perhaps in Wellfield ; but that’s not the whole world, Phoebe,” her Ladyship resumed. “And now that Wriothesley is of age, he ought to marry soon ; but I am afraid he is crotchety on that point also. There is no- body spoken of for him but our cousin, Miss Dugdale of Summerley. You know, Sum- merley might go in with the Dorsetshire estates ; and Lady Anna Maria Dudley suc- ceeds to her maternal grandfather’s Glouces- tershire property. Of course, this is in con- fidence. But come, Phoebe, I must hear more of your concerns. What is that story about Mr. Wooler ? I am not going to let you off with telling me nothing of it, when I have told you nearly all the news, the plans, and the hopes of Brockcotes. I heard of it when we were down at Richmond for Easter, and everybody approved of it. I was very happy on your account ; only I thought, Phoebe, when we were such friends, it would have been no more than my due if I had got the first hint of it from yourself.” Phoebe had made up her mind that the conversation would come to this, and had braced herself to endure it. The Brockcotes family held it as their undeniable privilege that they should receive all the Wellfield gossip, seeing that it concerned their town, which, like Louis the Great’s States-General, was themselves ; and they usually had it fresher and fuller than it was to be had in the market on the market day, or over the bank counters, or in Miss Manning’s worsted shop, or in the Medlars’ dining-room, or in Miss Rowe’s drawing-room. Still, it was ex- ceedingly vexatious to Phoebe Paston to have this foolish, false report brought up against her the very third day after her return to Wellfield, and cast in her face by Lady Doro- thea at Brockcotes. “ There is no story, Lady Dorothea,” Phoebe maintained, flushing deeply : “ no- thing but a bit of tattle from Folksbridge, and the idle repetition of some silly, mischievous jesting of my cousins.” “ So they have time to tattle — the busy, solid traders of Folksbridge, and the cousins are not out-and-out nice. I am bad enough to take a little comfort from this, because you belong, by right, to Wellfield and Brockcotes ; and I don’t wish you to be prematurely suborned away from us by the terribly push- ing, irresistible Folksbridge people. When you have married a Wellfield man, it will be soon enough — eh, Phoebe? I must say the match sounded everything that was desirable. A painter like your father, his old friend, a native of Wellfield, and, at the same time, with the prospect of rendering you one of the richest women in great, rising Folksbridge — perhaps the mayor’s wife. What would you have more?” “ Lady Dorothea, I wonder to hear you !” exclaimed Phoebe, indignantly. “ Do you call it fair to class me with a man twenty years older than myself — old enough to have been papa’s friend and contemporary, yet a man who cannot settle, who has never ended what the Germans call his Wandcrlehre , -I believe never will end it, with an old mother who calls me a presumptuous interloping chit, and looks down on me, though she her- self was nothing better than a yeoman’s daughter ; — a man that I never thought of or spoke to, except as an old Wellfield friend, meeting him, as I did, at Folksbridge; — a painter, too, and an old friend of papa’s ! I did not think that you would speak as if you were mercenary, Lady Dorothea ; and it is a great shame of any person either to tell or hear such stories.” “ My dear Thoebe, you go on piling up your wrath so furiously that — if you will ex- cuse me — it is enough of itself to make one suspicious,” argued Lady Dorothea, with pro- voking intrepidity and candour. “ What does it matter that you haven’t thought of the man till you were asked to think of him ? It is the man’s part to think of you, and they say he has done it to ^purpose. I wonder the connection has not been suggested before; but marriage is more of an accident with you than where there are other than private in- NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 78 [Good Words, Jan. 1, 1S69 terests to weigh and account for.. You are going to marry the man, and not his mother , and although it would be vastly more becom- ing and agreeable if she were thoroughly content and cordial, no doubt her son, whose business it is, will succeed in bringing her round in a little time.” “ I protest, Lady Dorothea. You are cruel in thus teasing me about one so much older than myself,” was all Phoebe could say. “ My child,” her Ladyship went on, un- flinchingly, “to speak of a man’s being too old to be a husband and the head of a family at forty ! We don’t call fifty old ; and Mrs. Bald, who is never mistaken, calculated Mr. Wooler’s age to be ten years less. It is more absurd than making a man’s ugliness an ob- jection to marrying him. I should make my husband’s ugliness my ugliness, and either never see it or grow vain of it ; and I should prefer an interval of twenty years or so be- tween me and the man I was to call lord and master, that I might be the better able to reverence him.” Phoebe was speechless in antagonism, while she pondered the flippancy of her own objec- tion. “ But, Lady Dorothea,” she said at length, “you will allow that, according to Debrett , Lord Fairchester is no more than twenty-seven, and I have heard, not worse looking than a heavy-featured peer.” Here a step was heard in the corridor. CHAPTER IV. THE LATIMER FAMILY. “ It is the Earl,” Lady Dorothea explained ; “he has just returned from quarter-sessions, and from making up his book for the races. He is coming to show his book to me. The Countess tries to understand it, but cannot quite make it out • it is not in her way. No, don’t think of running away, Phoebe. He will like to meet you, and to inquire for Mr. Paston ; but you must put up with being mis- taken in the first place for every one of the half-dozen young ladies round Brockcotes.” Lord Exmoor tapped sharply, and followed on the back of his tap. “ Well, Dorothea, here I am back again — but you have a visitor. Good morning, Miss Maude — I beg your pardon, Lady Anne Maria. By Jove, I’m mistaken a second time. How do you do, Mrs. Llobhouse?” “ Papa,” remonstrated Lady Dorothea, “ it was only the young ladies that I engaged Phcebe Paston to submit to be mistaken for ; if you are to go on blundering through all the matrons of your acquaintance, I have done with you. You must be provided with your own apologies.” The Earl was now considerably over fifty, tall, with a stoop, rendered worse by the family short-sightedness which Lady Doro- thea had deplored, and by a fancy for peer- ing through the world without spectacles, only sticking his glass into his eye on an extremity. Lie had thin, dark hair, which, both on his head and his cheeks, looked as if it had not stamina enough in it to undergo a change to iron grey, but would “ wede away” with years. He had a protruding forehead, sunken, blink- ing eyes, the lower part of the face being slightly projecting, owing to the full, loosish lips, and round chin. It was an inquisitive, rather than an intellectual face — kindly, some- what sensuous, yet not without elements of mingled weakness and stubbornness in it. And his figure was by no means commanding. Indeed, had the face or the figure belonged to an ordinary man — had not both had legibly written on them, “I am Charles Aubrey Latimer, Earl of Exmoor, gifted with great territorial sway for good or evil, capable of mending or marring in some degree, the well-being and happiness of thousands of my fellow-creatures,” he would not have stood conspicuously out from the multitude. As it was, the consciousness of his position, with the culture of birth and breeding, gave an air of ease and power to the good-natured, well- disposed nobleman, which sat not ungrace- fully upon him. But Lady Dorothea had not spoken of the family history without her host. Lord Ex- moor had been content to stand in the first rank of country gentlemen, because he had not felt himself qualified for anything greater. The Latimers, like the Grosvenors, the Fitz- williams, and the domestic branch of the Spensers (according to recent authority), had been, upon the whole, notably virtuous, while they had fallen far short of the scornful mag- nificence of the Cavendishes, the killing wit of the Stanhopes, and the industry and aplomb of the Russells. Still, there had been no want of family devotion and ambition in the race ; and it had been unostentatiously fostered and developed until the great man who, according to Lady Dorothea, had been waited for during “two hundred years,” had become the craving and the necessity of the house. “ Miss Paston, I declare, I should not have known you,” averred the Earl. “So grown — what, not grown, Dorothea ? then it must be improved, solely and wholly im- proved. I am glad to see you home again, I am always glad to see all the Wellfield young people about the place when I am NOBLESSE OBLIGE. Good Words, Jail. 1, 1S09.J down ; looks more like home to a family ! man, eh? But, Miss Easton, you are going j to show all the young ladies the example of taking flight from Wellfield, — my Lady here among the rest, although she has the advan- tage of you by a few months, and is your godmother to boot. Fie ! irreverence to godmothers is clean against the Catechism, and if I were you, Dolly, I should look sharp and pull caps with her at least, not to be left in the lurch in this improper fashion. But it is all right when it is a Wellfield man that is concerned/’ his Lordship changed his tone and took to encouragement of his towns- woman, but in his serious commendation, as in his jesting banter, equally unobservant of Phoebe’s burning cheeks. “ Good painter, they tell me. Remember when he was quite a young man, and the question was whether it was he or Paston who should render us famous. Wooler had the start then, but your father won the race, married at twenty or so, and stuck in while Wooler had two strings to his bow — not a bad thing for peace of mind and enjoyment, but, as I have heard, spoils a man for a profession. How- ever, better late than never ; and we will see what a score of years and the study of a dozen schools and countries have done. , What* is Paston about just now, nymphs or milkmaids, old men or babies, classic English or rowdy-towdyism ?” “ He is busy with a Belinda , my Lord,” Phoebe hastened to inform the Earl. “Well, Miss Paston, I’ll look in and see him one of these days, and I’ll bring a pur- chaser to him when Lord Fairchester comes. He has not got his galleries full again. The late Marquis — not to mince matters — brought a whole lot of Van Somers and Canalettos to the hammer when he happened to be more than commonly out of spare cash, leaving — bare walls behind him. Wriothesley, with his dilettantism, is savage when he speaks of it, not considering, clever boy as he is, that it is an ill wind which blows nobody good, espe- cially after the savings of a long minority. Oh ! by-the-by, Wriothesley hob-nobbed with a cousin of yours, a newspaper fellow, on the Danube. Dangerous fellows the newspaper fellows now-a-days, much more so than for- merly. Owls are more birds of prey than rooks, I take it. You know, rooks, solemn and harmless if you don’t spite ’em, used to be the only birds that sought an airing in Grub Street. Better speak the owls fair if you want peace either at your own fireside, or in the hunting-field, or the house, Miss I Paston. But that is not the reason why we 79 are to have Mr. Hall down here ; upon my honour it is not,” protested the Earl, looking a little sheepish — at his own blunder. “ Lord Wriothesley was very much taken with him, and very much indebted to him when his boat came to grief somewhere between this j and the Isle of Serpents. The Countess and I are grateful, I hope, and are delighted to show our gratitude, in addition to the high 1 regard which we have always entertained for Paston, which, in fact, he is entitled to look for at our hands, and which we have great pleasure in extending to Wooler and every one connected with your father. Permit me j to assure you of this, Miss Paston.” As for Phoebe : sitting before Lord Ex- moor, she was too hurt and angry at heart, at the perpetual recurrence of allusions to Mr. Wooler, to attempt to contradict the Earl, prepossessed as he seemed to be in favour of the connection. It was a greater relief than Phoebe could have imagined when the gong sounded for luncheon, and she had to go with Lady Dorothea to the Countess, certain that the latter would not assail her with Barty Wooler. The Countess was the unpopular member of the Exmoor family. She had been an heiress — the Latimers having married heir- esses, more or less, for centuries. It was a provision made incumbent on them by their hereditary liberality, which was not lavish- ness, because there was no prodigality in their blood. But the Latimers had a tradi- tional mode of doing business, which was rather peculiar to them. They were not pro- digal, but open-handed — an expensive cha- racteristic, perhaps more so than the other, when there is a rebound to miserliness every now and then as a stop-gap. At the same time there had been no corresponding large- ness of sagacity and enterprise in opening up new sources of wealth. The family had not been statesmen, accumulating uncounted trea- sure by their venality; nor had they grown richer and richer by allowing wealth to have its outlet in trade, in addition to breadth of terri- tory or length of pedigree. The Latimers, not showing these faculties, had no resource but to marry heiresses. It was from the Countess that Lady Doro- thea and Lord Wriothesley inherited their low stature. The Earl was only inclined to be weak and shaky on the legs, and, when he did not hold himself upright, to be shambling in his gait. The Countess was a withered little woman of middle age, looking as if she might have been put away in a bandbox, although when she was in high dress she made good NOBLESSE OBLIGE. •So her right to wear the renowned Exmoor neck- lace of brilliants. She was naturally reserved, and her defective hearing rendered her still quieter. The Wellfield people had a theory that she was inordinately proud. Though Phoebe had gone to Brockcotes from her childhood, she could not say anything for or against the theory. All that she was sure of was, that the Countess had an unfortunate and unenviable power of holding people who did not belong to her immediate family circle at arm’s length — dangling them, as it were, by the very tips of the fingers, and contriving to pour upon them at the same time, quite unintentionally, a depressing shower of cold water. Phoebe had got over her own childish terror of the Countess, and fully believed that Lady Exmoor wished well, in a repressed, self-contained way, to her and all the world. But she could not get over feeling stiff, stupid, and uncomfortable in the Countess’s com- pany. On the other hand, and as if to com- pensate for the public slight, Lady Exmoor’s family were excessively attached to her, and owned her influence to an overweening ex- tent. Such men as the Earl are good hus- bands, both from principle and inclination ; but he consulted the Countess constantly, and adopted her views before those of any other person, even of the cherished son and heir, who had a vested interest in his father’s more important undertakings. Lord Wrioth- esley had relinquished his proposed adven- tures at the Antipodes, largely to satisfy the Countess; and every one who knew them was aware that Lady Dorothea, with her quaint sententiousness and indefatigable spirit, was devoted to her mother. Phoebe found the Countess engaged in needlework. Lady Exmoor, besides a talent for silence, had a talent for embroidery, which, with its demands on patient application and elaborate design and execution, is out of keep- ing with a hurrying distraught age. She had taken up as a congenial task what Lady Doro- thea was tempted to compare to weaving ropes of sand — the great Exmoor Countess’s draw- ing-room hangings, which had been in process from the date of the South-Sea scheme. Learned embroideresses still living could tell, by tracing the new stitches and the substitu- tions of new flowers — such as hollyhocks for tiger lilies — when each countess had taken the vanguard as a blooming bride, and when she had relinquished the dilatory needle as a faded dowager. Lady Dorothea thanked her stars that she would never be Countoss of Exmoor, to be forced to put her hand to the [Good Words, Jan. 1, 1SS9. work, and drop it wearily, unfinished to her successor. Phoebe had associated these shroud-like folds of silk and unfading flowers with the Countess ever since she was first in- troduced to the great lady’s presence; and although she had seen the Gobelin tapestry and the achievements of Flemish weavers in the interval, she continued to respect the Countess’s hangings almost as much as the peeress’s coronet which Lady Exmoor had worn when she walked at the Queen’s coro- nation. Yet Phoebe no more expected to witness the Countess’s hangings finished and in common use, than she expected to see the Countess in her coronet and necklace, driving her ponies along the streets of Wellfield. Lady Exmoor greeted Phoebe willingly, but with an effort, which made itself so felt as to render it difficult for Phoebe to reply to her. Her Ladyship invited Phoebe to accom- pany the party to luncheon with a still greater effort, and saw that the girl was made com- fortable with such a crowning effort that it became a great trial for Phoebe to swallow a morsel. Indeed it was a marvel to her that Lord Exmoor and Lady Dorothea could eat their mutton and chicken, asparagus, Stilton cheese, and Queen Claudes, and drink their Madeira and milk with so much equanimity. Phoebe was not sorry to take leave, and traverse again the W ellfield avenue, pondering on the Exmoor reading of marrying well ; on the family understanding which had des- tined Lady Dorothea for the Marquis of Fairchester, although the couple had hardly met since they were children; on the great things Lord Wriothesley was to do ; and, above all, on the trouble of her youth — : how hard it was, because Barty Wooler, a Bohemian bachelor, chose to be impertinent and foolish, that everybody, including her father and Lady Dorothea, should be so in- fatuated and cruel as to take notice of the absurd extravagance, and look upon it as an excellent match in prospect. It was a sorry end to the pleasant days of her first inter- course with the artist in Folksbridge. But there is many a sorry end to a fair beginning, as Phcebe ruefully realised when the tangle of her maiden meditation refused to be dissipated even by the sight of the fallow deer — attractive and graceful beyond com- parison to those who do not know the wild, startled nobility of the antlered heads of the red deer, as they look out of the mist on the mountain sides, and show themselves for a moment before their fleet hoofs spurn, the heather. Good Words, Feb. x, 1869.] DEBENHAM’S V OW. 8 1 DEBENHA By AMELIA B. EDWARDS, Ai CHAPTER VI. MISS HARDWICKE. 'V’ was correct enough. Her features were ‘‘perfect,” and she had “the air of a queen.” She was not, how- ever, as he had once said, like Edith Dombey ■ — the flashing-eyed, raven-haired, theatrical Edith Dombey of the illustrations we all know so well. Not in the least. Her beauty was of a far loftier and rarer order — classic, stately, serene. Not classic according to that current acceptation of the phrase, which | limits the classicism of beauty to the Greek ideal, and takes for its universal standard some such familiar model as the Clytie of the Townley marbles ; but classic after the Roman type — a type essentially real ; ma- jestic rather than alluring ; intellectual rather than sensuous ; expressive in the highest de- gree of purpose, of gravity, of command ; a type, in short, which, however influenced by Greek taste and modified by Greek artists, retained from first to last, in its decadence as in its prime, the stately and impressive cha- racteristics of Etruscan origin. Essentially classical, then, but essentially of the Roman school, was the beauty of Claudia Hardwicke. Turned suddenly to stone by the wand of a malicious enchanter, she would have passed for a noble specimen of the art of the Augustan period. The shape and pose of her head, the somewhat massive throat, the stately sweep of the shoulders, the full and faultless modelling of the ample bust, would have borne to be transferred direct to X— 6 M’S VOW. qthor of “Barbara’s History.” marble, nor have needed any refining touches from the chisel of the sculptor. As for her hand and arm, they were simply perfect. Giulia Grisi in the first splendour of her youth had not a more perfect arm. Those who had lived long enough to compare the impressions of some thirty and odd years ago with the impressions of to-day, averred that Miss Hardwicke’s arm was the more beautiful of the two. Like Grisi’s, it was white, rounded, dimpled at the elbow, dimpled at the wrist, almost infantile in the exquisite softness of the curves, yet suggestive of none of the feebleness of infancy — suggestive, on the contrary, of more than ordinary womanly strength. Like Grisi’s, too, it was somewhat fuller than is, perhaps, prescribed by the strict canons of art. Here, however, the re- semblance ceased. Miss Hardwicke’s hand was not in the least like the hand of the great prima donna. It was not a small hand; neither was it a large hand ; but it was as large a hand as might pertain to a finely pro- portioned woman. White was it, but not too j white ; soft, but not too soft ; pleasant to j hold ; firm to clasp ; with just an indication of dimples across the knuckles in repose, and a blush of rose-pink on the palm. And the fingers of this charming hand were not taper — for your taper finger, we take it, deserves only to be regarded as an elegant deformity, and may be cast into the same scale with small waists and arched eyebrows, and all such doubtful perfections — but they were rounded at the tips and curved upwards against the nails, which is far more beautiful. It was the sort of hand that looks best un- adorned, and is almost disfigured by rings. It was the sort of hand that painters and sculptors love. Michael Angelo would have modelled it again and again — would have filled pages of one of his wonderful note- books with sketches of it in every position and from every point of view. To say this, however, is to sum up the foregoing descrip- tion in a single line. We all know what kind of hand it was that Michael Angelo loved, j He would as soon have fashioned a Cleopatra ; or a Zenobia with a wasp-like waist as with tiny hands or taper fingers. So much, then, ' for Miss Hardwicke 7 s statuesque beauty of j form. Justly to describe the beauty of her j face is more difficult ; and here again recourse 1 must be had to that Roman type already made use of. Her features. “ perfect ” as , ' J| g 2 DEBENHAM’S VOW. [Good Words, Feb. i, 1869. they were, had nothing in common with those of the Niobe or the Venus of Milo ; still less with those of the Clytie of the Townley mar- bles. But she did strikingly resemble one of the finest specimens of Roman art in the gal- lery of the Louvre — namely, the statue of that Julia, known as Julia Domna, who was the wife of Septimus Severus. A more ma- jestic portrait was never shaped in marble. Beautiful with an imperial kind of beauty be- | fitting the wife and mother of emperors, she stands with her head bent slightly forward, as in the act of graciously listening. With one hand she seems to have just drawn aside her veil ; the other hand and all the rest of the figure are closely draped. She is tall — taller than the generality of tall women. Her brow is neither low nor lofty ; but it is lofty enough to be intellectual, and it perfects the oval of her face. The nose, small, refined, and deli- cately cut, just departs sufficiently from the severe line of the Greek ideal to belong to the Roman type. The eyes are long and serious. The mouth, exquisitely modelled, but sharper in its curves than the Greek, is indicative both of sweetness and firmness ; chiefly, however, of firmness. The chin, though small, is prominent, and indented with a tiny cleft. An indescribable air of dignity, of modesty, of serenity, of reserve, is ! expressed in all the contours of this admir- | able piece of art ; in the turn of the head ; in j the position of the hands ; in the arrange- j ment of the hair ; in the foot half withdrawn; in eveiy clinging fold of the voluminous dra- pery. Above all, it is patrician through and through. The very marble is, as it were, in- formed with the subtlest element of aristo- | cracy. | And to this statue — this statue of a Roman 1 empress, who reigned, sinned, died, some six- teen centuries and more ago — Miss Hard- wicke bore so singular a resemblance that any written description of the one must un- avoidably tally with any written description of the other. The two profiles were identical. The features of both seemed to have been cast in the same mould. There must, of course, have been minor points of divergence, and could the lady and the statue have been placed side by side, those points of diverg- j ence would probably have come into marked I re lief; but, taken apart, they were so slight | as to escape detection. Enough that the like- j ness was true, marked and unmistakable | —so marked, so unmistakable, that Miss ; Hardwicke’s bust (done by a Florentine sculptor, and enthroned in a niche hung with J ruby velvet curtains at the upper end of the dining-room at Strathellan House) might well have been taken for a copy of the head and bust of the Julia Domna of the Louvre. The same royal look was there, and even more than the same pride. Not, however, the same sweetness. In Miss Hardwicke, the gracious air of the marble empress was altogether wanting. That which showed as dignity in the one became hauteur in the other ; reserve hardened into scorn ; serenity into icy cold- ness. She moved, spoke, smiled, as if no man born of woman were worthy to touch so much as the hem of her garment. She might have sprung from a line of empresses, or, like Csesar, have claimed descent from a goddess, so imperial was her beauty and her bearing. And yet the Hardwickes had not one drop of blue blood in their veins. They had been merchants and tradesmen, and had inter- married with the sons and daughters of merchants and tradesmen for four genera- tions. Beyond that point all was chaos. Miss Hardwicke knew that her grandfather was a saddler, that he had been a member of the Worshipful Gompany of Stationers, and that he succeeded his father, Amos Hard- wicke, in the saddlery business. But who the said Amos Hardwicke had married, whence his parents came, and where he was buried, were facts respecting which not even a tradi- tion remained in the family. With this ancestor the Hardwicke pedigree came to an abrupt conclusion; and even he, Amos Hard- wicke, was but a name — a mere phantom hovering dimly about the confines of the eighteenth century, with chaos behind him. Where nothing is known, however, anything is possible — at all events in the way of genealogy — and the haughty Claudia, who would have given all her fortune for a noble name, may have descended from Danish Vikings, or have owed her dower of supreme beauty to Roman ancestors, when the Romans ruled in Britain. But these were mere chaotic possibilities, 'only to be dreamed of now and then “ hwixt sleep and wake : ” — to be dreamed of, and trampled upon, and cast scornfully back into that same chaos whence they came. And this was the Claudia Hardwicke with whom Temple Debenham, turning at the sound of her voice, found himself quite suddenly face to face. She wore a dress of some delicate shade of grey velvet; soft, and lustrous, and pearly, like the inside of a shell, and trimmed with massive old Veronese lace about the sleeves and bosom. A single diamond star flashed Good Words, Feb. i, 1869.] DEBENHAM’S VOW. 83 in the folds of her hair. It was brown hair — rich, crisp brown hair, with a dash of gold upon it. In her hand she held a gorgeous Oriental fan of crimson feathers. That dia- mond star was her only ornament, that fan her only point of colour. It was a dress that would have been infinitely trying to any woman of doubtful complexion ; but to Claudia Hardwicke no colour was trying. She could wear literally what she pleased ; and this because she was herself almost colourless — like marble with the warmth of life in it. All this, and infinitely more than all this, flashed upon Debenham at a glance. The pale, proud beauty, the classic grace, the scarcely concealed air of weariness and scorn, the half contemptuous tone — he observed and noted all. “It is quite time we had some music. Does any one know where this paragon of Archie’s is to be found ? ” These, spoken in that low ringing voice which he then heard for the first time, were the words that caused him to turn and look at her ; and in the words themselves, as well as in the tone, there was something that dis- pleased him. “ Here is Archie,” said Mr. Hardwicke, graciously shaking hands with his cousin. “And Mr. Debenham, whom I have had the pleasure of meeting before.” The organist bowed. “ My sister was just enquiring for you, Mr. Debenham,” continued the merchant, with his blandest manner. “ Our friends would no doubt be gratified to hear some music. You will find a piano in the middle room.” “We have heard much of Mr. Debenham’s talent,” added the lady. But the words were pronounced with just that degree of indifference that robs a civil speech of its civility. The organist bowed again — this time so profoundly that only a superficial observer could have mistaken such exaggerated defer- ence for the deference of humility. “To be over-estimated,” he said, “is a misfortune. Mr. Blyth’s opinion must, I fear, be taken rather as the measure of his regard than of my merit.” Slowly and haughtily Miss Hardwicke lifted her eyes and surveyed this hired musician who presumed to let it be seen that he appraised her speech at its value. As slowly, as haughtily, he gave back the look. No word was uttered, but the dialogue was unmistakable. The one said — “ I have con- descended to patronise you ; it is your place to accept the patronage unquestioningly.” The other replied — “ I recognise in you no right of patronage, and I decline to accept it.” This episode occupied but a moment. Miss Hardwicke just looked at him, froze into unconsciousness, and passed on. Mr. Hardwicke, already in the midst of another conversation, observed nothing. But Archie Blyth saw it all, and became supremely un- comfortable. “Come and play, Debenham,” he said, nervously. “ That is better than talking about it.” Then, as they made their way to the middle room, he added : — “Now then, old fellow, I want you to astonish them.” He could scarcely have made a more ill- advised speech. Irritable, sensitive, easily thrown out of tune with his surroundings, Temple Debenham was precisely one of those who can do nothing to order. A speech of this kind would at any time have put him out of sympathy with his audience, but coming at this unlucky moment, it placed him in direct antagonism to them. He looked round at the crowd whom he was brought there to entertain, and he told himself that he would as soon have performed before a select society of owls. He felt that he had not a taste or sentiment in common with any one of the number. He must play to them. He was bound to play to them; but — he was not bound to please them. “Astonish them?” he repeated. “ Oh, yes —I will astonish them.” And so he did. He played a pianoforte prelude and fugue by his old master, Professor Schwartz of the Zollenstrasse Academy- — a marvellous composition of its kind ; a miracle of learning ; crabbed ; scholastic ; involved to the last degree, and a very curiosity of | manual difficulties. This piece he played, | and played superbly ; but he confounded his j hearers. For the first two minutes they were j silent. Towards the beginning of the third j minute they became restless. Then they j began to whisper; and long before the middle ! of the fourth minute the confusion of tongues j was again at its height. Archie was aghast. “ My dear friend,” he said, when it was once j fairly over, “ that’s the most hideous thing I ever heard. How could you play it ? ” “ I played it on purpose,” said Debenham. “ But nobody liked it.” “ Are you sure of that?” “ I watched their faces, and they looked ;; ’ ’“Bored?” j DEBENHAM’S VOW. 84 [Good Words, Feb. 1, 1869. “ Well, yes — bored to death.” “ I meant them to be bored,” replied the organist, with grim complacency. “I am delighted to know that they were bored. I mean to bore them again presently. My only regret is that, in order to bore them quite thoroughly, one must feed them with pearls.” “ You don’t call that thing a pearl,” said Archie. “ A pearl of great price — a pearl of pearls — a marvellous achievement. There is no man living, except Schwartz of Zollenstrasse, who could have written it.” “ Then,” said Archie, “ let us pray that Schwartz of Zollenstrasse may speedily be gathered to his fathers, and leave no suc- cessor. One such masterpiece is enough.” “ Nevertheless, I shall give you another of them by-and-by.” But Miss Hardwicke was too experienced a hostess to permit anything of the kind. She knew quite enough of the German school to apprehend something of the merits of the performance, but she also knew that such music was wholly unsuited to the occasion. “ It is clever enough,” she said, taking her brother aside, “ but no one understands it. Another piece of that kind would spoil the evening. Tell him to play Thalberg.” And Mr. Hardwicke, who obeyed his sister in everything, went up to the piano accord- ingly, and requested Mr. Debenham to favour him with one of Thalberg’s fantasias. “ So few persons,” he said apologetically, “are capable of rising to the level of such music as you have just been so good as to play to us. May I ask, Mr. Debenham, whether that — that sonata .... Am I right in calling it a sonata?” “ It is a fugue,” replied the organist, stiffly. “Just so— a fugue. May I, then, ask whether that fugue is one of your own com- positions ?* “It is by Professor Schwartz, of Zollen- strasse-am-Main,” said Debenham ; “ the pro- foundest of living musicians, and one of the few surviving pupils of Beethoven.” “ Professor Schwartz ! I do not remember the name.” “ Probably not. He is very little known in this country.” “And why so?” “ Perhaps because the English standard of taste is not sufficiently elevated.” “ Ah ! precisely, precisely : caviare, no doubt caviare to the general. And now, Mr. Debenham, will you favour us with some- thing by Thalberg ?” The musician had no resource but to comply, and so Mr. Hardwicke’s guests es- caped their second dose of pearls. He played Thalberg, and they listened ; then a melange of popular airs with showy variations, which was not only listened to, but applauded. And thus it happened that Temple Debenham made a success in spite of himself. At a little after midnight, he stole from the rooms and made his way down-stairs ; but was overtaken in the hall by Archibald Blyth. “ Not going?” exclaimed his friend. “ Why not ? I have played three times.” “ But there’s supper at half-past twelve 1” The organist shook his head. “ I hope to be almost home by then,” he said. “ Nonsense, you don’t know what you miss. Hardwicke’s suppers are princely. Be per- suaded, my dear fellow, and take your share of what is going.” “ Not if Lucullus were host.” “ But you haven’t said good-night?” “ No : I depute you to say it for me. Speak the speech, I pray you, trippingly on the tongue.” “ Has any one affronted you ?” “ Not particularly.” “ Haven’t you enjoyed yourself?” “Not particularly.” “ But why ? What has happened ? What’s, wrong?” “ My dear Pylades,” said Debenham, pre- paring to be gone, “ you are gifted by Pro- vidence with an enquiring mind, and an enquiring mind is the index to a lively under- standing. Judiciously cultivated, it will be a credit and a comfort to you throughout the term of your natural life. Good-night. Accept my blessing.” And so, having buttoned the frogged over- coat up to his chin, and stowed away his music in one of its many pockets, he nodded a laughing farewell, ran down the steps, and, turning his back upon the splendours of Strathellan House, ^plunged into the outer darkness of the Regent’s Park. Undecided whether to follow his friend or stay for supper, Archie lingered for a moment in the hall and listened to Debenham’s retreating footsteps. Then appetite prevailed over friendship, and he went up-stairs again. CHAPTER VII. AT HOME IN CANONBURY. Debenham went striding, meanwhile, along the umbrageous roadways of the Regent’s Park, emerging over against the York and Albany, and striking off northwards through a maze of still swarming thoroughfares. Thus DEBENHAM’S VOW. Good Words, Feb. i, 1869.] ^5 he left behind him Camden Town, Somers Town, and the terra incognita adjacent to the Caledonian Road, and, coming upon higher ground at every step, arrived by-and-by upon the borders of that metropolitan Oberland which begins at Islington and thence reaches away to the uppermost regions of Highgate and Hampstead. But his home lay not very far within the boundaries of this high-level district. Canonbury was soon gained, and the line of market-gardens, and the modest little terrace where, in one tiny parlour win- dow, a welcoming light was shining for him like a beacon. Seeing that light, he sprang forward, cleared the bit of front garden at a bound, and open- ing the door with his latch key, was in the room almost before she who sat there watch- ing had recognised his footfall on the gravel. “Ah, Mutter ,” he said, tenderly, “naughty Mutter! Did I not entreat you to go to bed?” And then he kissed her, in German fashion, on both cheeks. “ My darling, I should only have lain awake till you came home. You look tired.” “ Not tired, Mutter — only hungry. There was a grand supper in preparation up yonder; but I would not stay for it.” “ That is just as I thought it would be, my son,” replied Mrs. Debenham ; “ and your supper is ready for you. Hush ! not another word till you have eaten something.” Then, moving about him in sweet motherly fashion, she took his coat, placed his plate and tumbler, and waited upon him while he ate. “ Is the house very splendid ? ” she asked presently. “Yes — after a roturier style.” “And the people? ” “ Redolent of pounds, shillings, and pence.” She smiled, and, standing beside his chair, passed her hand lovingly through his hair. “ Was Mr. Blyth there ?” she asked. “Indeed, yes — produced in the highest style of art — 'edition de luxe — all gloves and jewellery — lost in admiration of the aider- men’s wives.” “ Poor Mr. Blyth ! Were there many guests ? ” “ About four hundred. All City people — the men made of money and the women of millinery.” “ Did you converse with any of them ? ” “ Merci. I heard them talking to each other, and that was more than enough. They had but one topic — money, money, money. St. Chrysostom was not more golden- mouthed.” “ And you saw no one whom you knew ? ” “The virtuous and reverend Choake — look- ing like a canonized undertaker.” “ Did he make any remark about your application for a month’s holiday ? ” “ None. I am not sure that he saw me. He was in a state of ghostly abstraction whenever I chanced to be in his neighbour- hood.” “ But how long is it since you wrote to him ? ” “ About a fortnight.” “ And though he has seen you daily ever since, he has never even alluded to the letter?” The young man shrugged his shoulders, and went on with his supper. “ He is extremely ill-mannered,” said Mrs. Debenham, warmly. “ Dearest Mittter, I must not expect courteous treatment at the hands of the sainted Choake,” replied her son, bitterly. “It is not as if I were a gentleman, you know — I am only an organist.” A faint flush rose to Mrs. Debenham’s wasted cheek. She seemed about to speak ; but checked herself, and sat down with a sigh. “ I have been looking up routes to-day,” said the young man, presently, “ and I find I must give up the Highlands. For a walking i tourist with only a month at command, the j distance is altogether too great. I should | consume half my vacation in the journey to j and fro.” “ There is the railway, my son,” said Mrs. j I Debenham ; “ and with the ten guineas you | j have earned to-night . . . .” “No, no, Mutterchen. We have no guineas to fling away. Besides, there are plenty of other places quite as interesting and more j accessible. I have almost decided for the j Wye, if Archie approves of it.” “ For the Wye !” repeated Mrs. Debenham, j ; in a low, tremulous voice. “ Yes — it’s such a practicable tour. We j could do a bit of third class, you know, part | of the way between London and Bristol; |L walk the rest ; take the boat across to i Chepstow ; and fish our way the whole j length of the Wye between Chepstow and Ross. I’m not sure that I don’t prefer it to | the Scotch scheme, after all.” “ The Wye !” “ Why not, Mutter , dear ? You repeat the name as if you objected to it.” “Oh, no!” DEBENHAM’S VOW. 86 [Good Words, Feb. x, 1869. u You think Scotland more bracing?” “ I was not thinking of that.” “ Of what, then ? ” “ Of — of a Monmouthshire family . . But the point in question is your holiday, my son. The Wye runs through a beautiful country.” “ You have been there, mother ? ” “ No, I have not been there.” And again Mrs. Debenham sighed heavily. “ It is very cheap all about Monmouth- shire,” said the young man. “ No doubt.” “ And I should not be nearly so far away from you as in the Highlands.” “ That is true. I only wish . . . .” “ That you were going too ? So do I, Mutter , with all my heart.” “ No, not that, dear, because I know it is impossible. But I wish you had a more suitable companion.” “ The two first requisites in a brother pedestrian are good legs and a good temper,” said Debenham, smiling ; “ and a more cheerful and enduring fellow than poor Archie is not to be found in the three king- doms.” “ I believe Mr. Blyth to be an excellent person, ’ replied Mrs. Debenham ; “but he is in every way your inferior.” “ Indeed, he is nothing of the kind. He is far more unselfish, more good-natured, better tempered than myself ; he is . . . .” “ He is all that I admitted him to be,” interrupted Mrs. Debenham, somewhat coldly. “ An excellent person — not a gentleman, and ! therefore an unsuitable companion for my I son.” ! The young man pushed his plate away, and ] rose from table. “ Alas ! mother,” he said, impatiently, “ what better society need I hope for? My father, you tell me, was a gentleman ; but what am I ? An obscure musician, thankful to earn a wretched pittance by teaching tradesmen’s children, and playing at trades- i men’s parties ! Of what use, then, to look back ? Of what use to shape the sordid present upon the ruined past ? Let that dead past bury its dead. Better, far better for me, ]| had I never inherited a pride beyond my station. How much less I should have had j to endure ! What tortures of conscious humiliation I should have been spared ! ” Mrs. Debenham pressed her hand upon her side, as if in pain. “ Oh, Temple !” she said, “'you suffer, and I do not know that you suffer !” He stooped quickly, and kissed her brow. Already ashamed of his impatience, he would have given much to recall those last few words — at all events, to efface them. “ I have to bear a trifling mortification now and then,” he said ; “ but what of that? We must both take and give blows in the battle of life, you know.” “You should neither take nor give them, if I could help it,” said his mother. “ But an occasional buffet is good for one’s moral health. I am a fool to be fretted by these nothings, and a worse fool to speak of them.” “ But what are these nothings ? ” “ Pshaw ! mere intangibilities — shadows — trifles light as air — petty slights, petty omis- sions, petty exactions — things that vanish away when one attempts to define them.” “ My own boy ! ” “ Nay, I will not be pitied. I should become an intolerable prig, if the conceit were not taken out of me now and then.” “ When you were a little child, I would not let the winds of heaven visit your cheek too roughly. I could protect you then. Now I am helpless.” And as she said this, Mrs. Debenham’s eyes were filled with tears. The young man bent over her, and took her hand between both his own. “You will make me hate myself, Mutter , if you talk like that,” he said. “You are not helpless. You are stronger than ever to help and to comfort. What should I be without you ? Is it not for you, and through you, that I am what I am ? But for you, should I have worked as I have worked ? But for you, should I hope for riches, or dream of fame ? Helpless, indeed ! Why, when I become a great man, it will be you, Mutter , who will have made me so.” The mother smiled faintly. She was com- forted, but not reassured. “ And in the meanwhile,” she replied, “ even the great men of the future are but 'mortal. They must sleep. They cannot work all day and wake all night. It is just two o’clock.” “ You ought to have been in bed, Mutter , three hours ago.” I. I “ And you, my son, have to be at St. Hildegarde’s by eight.” “ Ah, but I need so little sleep,” said Debenham. And then he lit his mother’s chamber candle, held the door' open for her to pass, and followed her up-stairs. At her bed-room door, he paused to say good-night. “You have not told me,” said she, “whether Miss Hardwicke is so handsome, after all?” DEBENHAM’S VOW. Good Words, Feb. i, 1869.] 87 “Yes,” he replied coldly. “She is hand- some.” And with that he kissed her, and ran quickly up to his own little room, sons les toits. CHAPTER VIII. ON THE WYE. Scene — a river among wooded hills ; a broad, swift river broken up here and there into swirling rapids, and making at this point so deep a bend that the hills seem to close it in on every side. At the deepest point of the bend, a low wall, built of shingle and rough stones, reaching some sixteen or twenty feet into the bed of the river. No expert needs to be told that this wall, carried out as it is at an abrupt angle, is a kind of salmon trap, or rather salmon barrier, designed to keep the fish from going too far down stream. In the foreground (following the windings of the river, but half hidden by the trees which here grow so thickly as to form a | natural avenue), a lonely turnpike road. Between this road and the river, a narrow slip j of meadow flat sprinkled here and there with clumps of alder bushes. In the shade of one 1 of these clumps of alder bushes, extended at ! full length on the grass, two young men, | apparently both asleep, with their fishing- | tackle lying beside them on the grass and | their knapsacks under their heads. In the sky, not a cloud j on the road, not a wheel ; in the air, not a sound. Time, some twenty minutes past four o’clock on a fiery August afternoon. Thermometer, eighty in the shade. Place, the pleasant river Wye, somewhere about halfway between Tintern and Mon- mouth. Characters, Temple Debenham and Archibald Blyth. It was the fourth day of their tour. They had travelled down to Bristol by rail, crossed the Severn in a little Bristol steamer, and begun their pedestrian work at Chepstow. At Chepstow they had climbed the Windcliff, seen the town and the ruins, and done all that Black’s Guide demands from the con- scientious tourist. From Chepstow they had walked to Tintern, and at Tintern had spent one clear day and two nights, sketch- ing, fishing, exploring the neighbourhood, and getting the beautiful old abbey off by heart. This brought them to the morning of the fourth day. On the afternoon of that fourth day, however (having lingered at Tintern till the sun was already high, and being as yet not well broken in to their work), the un- wonted heat and the unwonted exercise began to tell upon them. As the day advanced, the miles seemed to grow longer, and their knap- , sacks heavier. At length they fairly gave in, and, although they had already voted half-an- hour for luncheon, were fain to call a second halt at four, and lie down in the first shady nook they could find by the way. Here they fell asleep to the pleasant music of the river • or rather Archie slept, while Deben- ham, lying with closed eyes, inhaling the fragrance of the unmown grass, and listening to the cool lapsing of the current among the rushes hard by, suffered his thoughts to drift on vaguely towards the border land of dreams. Whither they so drifted, what frag- - mentary recollections of the happy student- life left behind in Germany, what half-defined hopes and plans for the uncertain future, what subtle threads of melody, what passing pictures of places and people, what echoes of wild studenten lieder , what rhymes and fancies and caprices flitted, shadow-like, across his mind, he could not himself have remembered when once the mood was past and the reverie broken. Rousing himself at length by an effort, he brought out a pipe from the depths of one of his pockets, filled it, lit it, and, leaning on his elbow, smoked contemplatively. It was a regular student’s pipe — such a pipe as one sees by hundreds in the streets of Heidelberg and Bonn — a pipe with a flexible tube, and a long china bowl capped with a metal lid and chain, and adorned with a painting of the inevitable German madche?i peeping out from a wreath of vine-leaves. It was a shabby old pipe — a dear old pipe — the friend of years. It had been given to him by a brother-student at Zollenstrasse long, long ago, when the brother-student went away to fill a musical professorship in some Austrian college \ and he had kept it ever since. Only the smoker knows how true and intimate a friend a pipe may become. Only Debenham himself knew to what good resolutions, to what brave aspirations, to what dreamy and pathetic melodies that shabby old pipe had given birth. And now, as he lit and smoked it, looking up to the blue sky and the green leaves overhead, and listening to the hum of insect life in the deep grass round about, there came upon him a delicious sense of rest and thankfulness. The struggles and annoyances, the poverty and privation of the last eighteen months seemed to vanish away “ into thin air.” He felt once more free — free from the daily drudgery of St. Hilde- garde, and the spiritual rule of the Rev. Tobias Choake ; from the dull round of suburban teaching ; and, above all, from Messrs. Stumpf and Hammerfest’s new patent , double-action grand. Here were a hundred DEBENHAM’S VOW. [Good Words, Feb. i, : and thirty — more than a hundred and thirty miles, and the breadth of the Bristol Channel, between himself and London. East, west, north, south, were alike open to him. He had but to shoulder his knapsack, set his face to whichever point of the compass he pleased, walk where he pleased, halt where he pleased, sleep where he pleased. The world was all before him where to choose — for six weeks. Yes, for six whole, delightful weeks. He had applied for only a month ; but in Mr. Choake’s reply, which came the very day after the Strathellan House entertainment, he begged to inform Mr. Debenham that the parish church of St. Iiildegarde-the-Martyr was about to be closed during the space of six weeks for purposes of repairing and whitewashing, and that he, Mr. De- benham, was therefore at liberty to absent himself during the whole or any part of that time according to his, Mr. Debenham’s, con- venience. The same post also brought Mr. Hardwicke’s cheque for “ ten pounds and ten shillings sterling;” so that both funds and holiday came together. Archie Blyth, who was employed in one of Mr. Hardwicke’s City offices, had in the meanwhile obtained his own annual furlough ; and here they now were, knapsacks, sketch-books, fishing rods, and all, in the fourth day of their tour. Debenham smoked his pipe out in quiet enjoyment, and then proceeded to refill it. “Archie,” he said, “Archie, do you mean to wake to-day ? ” An inarticulate murmur was Archie’s only reply. “ Because, if we are to sleep at Monmouth to-night, we have eight, if not ten miles yet to do — besides catching our fish for supper.” Another inarticulate murmur, of which the only intelligible word was “ chops.” “ Chops !” echoed the organist, in a burst of virtuous indignation. “ Who dares to utter the ignoble name of chops? Archie, I blush for you.” “Such a bore to do anything,” pleaded Archie ; “ and chops are cheap.” “ Base is the slave that pays !” “Besides, we were an hour and twenty minutes yesterday at Tintern, before we caught anything.” “ Sport, Archie — sport.” “ Hang sport ! Especially if it comes at the end of a long day’s work, when a fellow’s hot and hungry, and wants his dinner,” said Archie, with a tremendous yawn. “ Sordid, unfeeling reprobate — degraded, spiritless outcast,” quoted Debenham, with a flourish of his pipe. Archie sat up and rubbed his eyes. “ Gracious heavens !” said he. “ That’s powerful language. What a fortune you must have had spent on your education 1” Debenham laughed. “ Nay,” he said, “ the fortune — if fortune j and I are ever to come together — must be got out of my education, for it certainly was j never put into it. I don’t believe my college ; fees ever came to more than fifteen pounds j a-year.” • “ Fifteen pounds a-year !” “ Ay — and not even to that when I had once begun to go in for prizes and compe- titions, and so on. I was gaining money all the last two years at Zollenstrasse ; and j if I had stayed on, I should have been full i professor, perhaps kappelmeister , by this j time.” “Ah, but then you’re such a wonderful fellow !” said Archie, meditatively. “ Delighted to hear it.” “ You know such lots of things, I mean, j You can do anything you choose.” j “Can I, by Jove! I’ll trouble you to prove your proposition. I choose to earn a thousand a-year. Tell me how to do that, I i and I’ll be vastly obliged to you.” “You will never do it by music,” said ; Archie. “ I fear that’s true.” | j “ But then music is not your only resource. As I said just now, you know such lots of I things.” “ True, again, my friend. I know how to I eat saner-kraut and drink Lager beer; how to j make potatoe kiicken; how to sew on a but- i ton ; and how to sit through a German tea- | party without yawning oftener than once in 1 every quarter of an hour.” “ Nonsense, Debenham ; you know that’s not what I mean.” ! “ Then explain — not forgetting how lam : j to earn that thousand a-year.” “ You’ll never earn it by music, as I said j before ; but I don’t see why, with your educa- , tion, you should not earn it some other ' j way,” said Archie, sententiously. “ There are j mathematics, for instance, and languages — j why you know five or six languages, don’t \ you ?” i “ Thoroughly well, only two — namely, Ger- man and French. Italian and Spanish I read, j but that is all; and as for classics — well, I should never make a Heine nor a Bentley, though I were to give up my life to the work 1 as they did ; but I have as fair a share of ! Latin and Greek as most outsiders. But j why do you ask ? Would you have me turn Good Words, Feb. i, 1869.] DEBENHAM’S VOW. usher in a school, or tutor in a nobleman’s family ?” “ I’d have you take to commerce,” said Archie. Temple Debenham took his pipe from his lips, and half rose upon his elbow. “ Commerce !” he ejaculated. “ Well, you could scarcely have suggested anything for which I am in every way less suited.” “ How so ?” “ Because I detest trade — because I am so unfortunate as to have the tastes and pre- judices of a gentleman — because I have not received a commercial education — be- cause . . . .” “ Because, in fact, you know nothing about commerce,” said Archie, warmly ; “ not even the meaning of the word.” “ My dear fellow, I do know the meaning of the word. Commerce means capital, of which I have not a farthing. Commerce means book-keeping (double and single entry),, the mysteries of which are inscrutable to me. Commerce means iron, cotton, hides, indigo,, molasses. Good heavens ! what do I know,, or care to know, about iron, cotton, hides,. Page 87. indigo, or molasses? What is the use of indigo ? Does any one ever buy indigo ? Does any one eat molasses ?” “ If I knew German and French as well as I know English, and could read and answer a letter in Spanish or Italian,” said Archie, “ I should now be drawing six hundred a- year instead of two. And if, added to all that, I was a really clever man, and besides being a really clever man, was a skilled mathematician, classical scholar, and so forth, and had that broad way of thinking that comes of a liberal education, I should be worth — well, I scarcely know how much I should not be worth to my employer. A man of commanding abilities is as valuable in commerce as elsewhere, if only he devotes those abilities to his work.” “ Put Pegasus to the plough, in short, and he will excel Dobbin. Many thanks. I have no mind to supersede Dobbin.” “ You work harder than Dobbin as it is, my dear Pegasus,” said Archie. “ Possibly.” “And the labour is not all of the most celestial kind.” 9 ° DEBENHAM’S VOW. [Good Words, Feb. i, 1869. Debenham was silent. Presently a little lad came down from the high-road, driving a cow to water ; and the cow looked at the travellers with her large, placid brown eyes, and waded in among the rushes, close beside where they lay in the shade of the alder bushes. And then Deben- ham looked at his watch, and found that it was nearly six o’clock. So they got up, lazily enough, shouldered their knapsacks, and again followed the road, which still followed the river. The sun, though less oppressive than it had been some hours earlier, still glowed above the heights to their left, and the dusty road took the impress of their feet at every step. All was silent, ver- dant, monotonous. Here were none of those riven, fantastic rocks that castellate the banks of the Wye at Chepstow and crown them with precipices at Symond’s Yat; but only hills — rounded, undulating hills, partly wooded, partly cultivated, with here and there a mansion “bosom’d high in tufted trees,” or a boat-house down among the rushes. It was the scenery of Tintern, in short ; but Tintern without the abbey. Through this scenery, prolonged and reiter- ated mile after mile, league after league, the young men had been travelling all day ; but to them, weary of London and London work, it had not seemed monotonous. Laughing and chatting as they trudged along, they had enjoyed every foot of the way. Now, however, the gaiety and the travel- talk seemed suddenly to have evaporated from them. Debenham had become all at once moody and absorbed. He strode on in silence; his brows bent, his eyes fixed upon the ground. He was evidently revolving some painful subject in his mind. Once or twice he opened his lips as if to speak, but checked himself each time, and relapsed into a still gloomier silence. Now and then he quick- ened his pace impatiently. In the meanwhile Archie, observant of these signs and tokens, made no effort to re- new the conversation. Suddenly, however, having walked some three or four miles far- ther, they came to a bend in the road, and all was changed. The river widened out be- fore them, one sheet of molten gold. A pic- turesque hamlet lay clustered about the water’s edge, not an . eighth of a mile ahead. There were boats drawn up along the shelv- ing bank, and women standing on the thres- holds of their cottages with babies in their arms. The ferry was just crossing with a freight of cattle. A little knot of boatmen and labourers had gathered about the land- ing-place. There was a cart at the inn-door, waiting to cross at the next passage ; and the inn itself, a very bower of greenery, with all its windows winking in the sun, looked as if it had been put there by Birket Foster’s own hand. This sudden change from solitude to habi- tation — from silence to the stir and hum of life — was so cheerful and unexpected, that the young men uttered a simultaneous exclama- tion. “ I vote we go no farther to-night,” said Archie. “ Agreed.” “ Proposed, seconded, and carried, without a dissentient voice.” “ Provided always that we find accommo- dation,” added Debenham. “ Nothing to fear on that head,” said Archie, confidently. “ This is the sort of place where nobody stays. The tourists all go on to Mon- mouth.” Debenham shook his head, and pointed to a spot on the opposite side of the river. “ Not all,” said he. “ There’s an artist at work over yonder — regularly encamped, too —seems to have contrived some sort of tem- porary tent between the trees. He’s staying at the inn, depend on it ; and probably not alone. Painters run in packs at this time of the year — where you find one, you generally find more. I shall not be surprised if the place is full.” The place, however, was not full. The landlady, plump and smiling, hastened out to bid them welcome. Her two front bed-rooms were engaged, and her only sitting-room ; but she had two little bed-rooms at the back of the house ; and if the gentlemen would not mind eating their supper in the kitchen. . . . The gentlemen minded nothing. They engaged the rooms without even looking at them, left their knapsacks at the bar, asked a question or two about the fishing, and then, following the landlady’s instructions, went up the river to a point about half-a-mile above the ferry, to seek their supper. LI ere, in the course of some three-quarters of an hour, Debenham landed a plump salmon-trout weighing nearly four pounds. With this prize they returned, like Piscator and Venator, to their “ honest ale-house,” gave in their fish to be cooked, and were shown to their rooms — two tiny pigeon-holes at the back of the house, clean as convent cells, fragrant of lavender, and overlooking a cabbage-garden. CHAPTER IX. — IN THE PORCH. Having supped upon their salmon-trout— excellently cooked and smoking hot, albeit DEBENHAM’S VOW.” Page 91. Good Words, Feb. i, 1869.I DEBENHAM’S V 0 Y . 9 1 served in the kitchen upon wooden ware, and washed down by potations of cider from an “Uncle Toby” mug — the travellers went out to sit awhile under the porch, and smoke their pipes in the gloaming. The evening was supremely calm. The golden glow had not yet quite faded out of the sky ; but in the valley it was already night. All was silent. Here and there, a cold gleam on the river — here and there, a flickering light in some cottage window — now and then a distant bark — a footstep on the road — a passing “good-night.” In the shadows that mystery, in the leaves that whispering, in the air that living stillness which are the poetry of night. The young men sat in the porch, one at each side of the door, and both silent. To their right lay the kitchen, which was not only kitchen, but bar and tap-room as well ; to their left the parlour, now given up exclu- sively to the artist, whose encampment they had seen on the opposite bank some two or three hours before. His name was Alleyne. He was accompanied by his daughter, and they had already been more than three weeks in their present quarters. The name of the village was Cillingford — so-called because the Cilling, a small stream coming from the hills, there emptied itself into the -Wye. And the inn was known as “ The Silver Trout.” All these particulars they had learned from their landlady during supper. They sat there, it has been already said, in silence ; partly because the evening lay about them so still and sacred — partly, also, from a sense of restraint ; for the parlour window was wide open, and the room seemed full of light. The blind, however, was drawn down, and all within was profoundly quiet. Not a word, not a movement was audible. Not even a shadow moved across the blind. If any one had stirred or whispered, they must have heard it ; and yet they felt, somehow, that the room was not empty. Half-an-hour went by thus. Then Archie, unable to control his natural restlessness any longer, got up and went down to the river-side, where he amused himself by playing at ducks and drakes in the moonlight. At the same instant that he strode away, some one moved in the parlour, and a peevish voice said “ My dear child, what are you doing ? ” To which the silveriest and sweetest voice that Debenham had ever heard replied : — “ Nothing, father. I have not stirred.” “What waked me, then?” “ Footsteps outside, I think. Some person has been sitting in the porch, smoking, and has just gone away.” “Smoking, was he? Ay— I smell the tobacco. Common enough too. Faugh !” Debenham put out his pipe. Presently the man’s voice began again. “ How long have I slept?” “ About three quarters of an hour.” “ And you were reading. Let me see — what were you reading, my love?” “About the clouds, padre mio ; and you were so soon lost in them, that I closed the book before getting to the end of a single page. It was dreadfully tedious. It nearly sent me to sleep, too.” “Tedious, my dear? Oh, fie ! Ruskin is never tedious.” “ Ah, yes, I know that is treason,” laughed the girlish voice ; “ but how is it, then, that somebody always falls asleep when I take up a volume of ‘ Modern Painters’?” “ Because, my darling, you always take it up after dinner. You are not putting the wine away?” “ Indeed I am, sir, having just rung for tea. Besides, there is exactly enough left for to-morrow. Shall I draw up the blind?” “And fill the room with bats and moths? No, thank you. A little evening society would be pleasant enough; but not of that sort. Good heavens ! how dull this place is !” Here Debenham, who had leaned eagerly forward in the hope of seeing the window opened, heard a sound as of the pushing back of a chair, and of footsteps slowly pacing to and fro. “ It is quiet,” replied the sweet young voice, after a brief pause; “but then it is very beautiful. And you are not dull, dear, when you are at work. Besides, the picture is going on so well.” “I am not sure of that. I was strongly inclined to rip it across with my penknife this afternoon.” “And Lord Wyelands?” 1 “ Qiie le diable Vemporte 'l I hate commis- 1 sion pictures. I have never had the least satisfaction in painting one — never. I have heard Jasper Chrome say the same thing. The mere fact that the picture was already priced and purchased seemed, he said, to paralyse him. And it is quite true — and quite reasonable. The thing is never your own. You can’t even exhibit it without per- mission. There are no hopes or fears con- nected with it. You have only one man to i please instead of the whole public. Pshaw ! 1 I wish I had never undertaken it.” “ Dearest father, Mr. Chrome’s sentiments 92 DEBENHAM’S VOW. [Good Words, Feb. i, 1869. are the sentiments of a Bohemian. If he prefers uncertainty to certainty, it is be- cause he has all a gambler’s love of excite- ment.” The footsteps came to a sudden halt. “ Bohemian, indeed !” said the artist, irri- tably. “That is a ridiculous word, Juliet — a most ridiculous word. A mere scrap of French slang. I hope I shall never hear you make use of it again. Is that tea never coming ? ” “ I will ring again,” said the young lady, gently. And then Debenham heard the bell tinkle in the kitchen, and saw a shadow flit across the blind. He knew now that her name was Juliet — a sweet name linked to a still sweeter voice ! He longed to see her face. If she would but come to the window and look out upon the moonlight ! If even he could see her shadow more distinctly on the blind ! And still he sat there in the leafy porch, scarcely daring to breathe, glancing every now and then in the direction of the river, and dreading lest Archie should come back and break the spell. Then he heard the tea brought in ; and by-and-by, after some minutes of silence, the artist spoke again. “ Have you seen or heard anything of those two men who are putting up here to-night?” he asked, abruptly. “ Not since we caught that glimpse of them as they went up the river,” was the reply. “ Humph ! I wonder who and what they are.” “The tall one looked gentlemanly,” said the sweet voice. Debenham’s lips quivered with just the faintest smile of gratified self-love. “ If one could only have them in, and get up a rubber ! I would give anything to- night for a hand at whist.” Debenham’s thoughts reverted to his knap- sack. It contained, alas ! no evening suit ; but he remembered that he had a pair of black kid gloves and a black silk neck-tye, both new, in the compartment where he kept his papers. “ Will a game at chess do as well, padre mio ?” ‘‘Good heavens ! no. I am bored to death as it is ; but a game at chess By the way, Juliet, have you reminded the landlady to send into Monmouth for the curry-powder and olives?” “ Yes ; and for some books also. We have come almost to the end of our own, and Mrs. Jones’s library contains only Foxe’s ‘Mar- tyrs,’ Bunyan’s ‘ Pilgrim’s Progress,’ and Walton’s ‘ Angler,’ in addition to her Prayer- Book and family Bible.” “Then Mrs. Jones’s library does her infi- nite credit. Three excellent books, Juliet — standards, every one. I should not really have expected to find three such excellent books in a little river-side inn in Monmouth- shire. You may give me that volume of Balzac — the third to your right, my darling, at the end of the shelf.” “ You would not prefer me to borrow one of Mrs. Jones’s standards for you, sir?” “ Comme T esprit vient aux filles ! No, my little mocking-bird, certainly not. I am too old for Messrs. Foxe and Bunyan. As the cares of life press upon us, we want amuse- ment. Heavy reading for the young, light reading for the old ; that is my theory. So, you see, the levity of the one is corrected and the gravity of the other relieved. This tea is wretched stuff, my darling. If we are to stay here for another month, I must posi- tively send to London for something more drinkable.” “ Perhaps the second cup will be better.” “ Thanks, I do not care to try. I think I will go outside and smoke a cigar.” These last words sounded Debenham’s re- treat. As Mr. Alleyne opened the parlour door he stole noiselessly from the porch, and when that gentleman had lighted his cigar in the kitchen and emerged into the moonlight, Debenham was sauntering to and fro within a few yards of the house. CHAPTER X. — MR. ALLEYNE. Temple Debenham was not a sociable man. His manner was cold ; he disliked j strangers ; and strangers, for the most part, | disliked him ; yet he became acquainted with j Mr. Alleyne in the course of a few minutes. A passing salutation as their paths crossed in the moonlight — a remark, when it came to the next turn, on the beauty of the night — a halt on both sides— a word or two about fishing, and the thing was done. By the time that Archie, attracted by the sound of their voices, gave up his ducks and drakes and came up from the landing-place, he found his friend and Mr. Alleyne in active conversation. Seen by this imperfect light, Mr. Alleyne showed as a short, plump, fresh-coloured, pleasant-looking man, of about fifty-five years of age. His hair was almost white, but curling and abundant. He smiled a good deal, and his teeth were faultless. He was well, though somewhat carelessly, dressed. He wore a high collar, a frilled shirt-front, and a diamond ring on his little finger. His hands were par- Gjod Words, Ftb. i, 1869.] DEBENHAM’S VOW. 93 i ticularly white and well-shaped ; and he had ! the air of a bo?i vivant. No one would ever I have taken him for an artist. He indulged ! neither in long hair nor moustachios, nor ! velvet coats, nor gorgeous cravats, nor hats i of boundless brim. He looked, on the con- : trary, like a pleasant, gentlemanly, easy-going | diner-out of the old school, and was precisely i the sort of man whom one is accustomed to j encounter at “ the breathing time of day” along the shady side of Pall Mall, i “ A dull place,” he was saying, as Archie came up ; — “ a wretched place. I have been here three weeks, and am degenerating daily. ■ In three weeks more I shall become a savage j — a quadruped — a bete farouche. I shall browse. | I shall chew the cud. Fancy living one’s life j in such a wilderness !” ; “The Wye is very lovely about here,” said i Debenham, smiling. | “ But the accommodation abominable. Be- j lieve me, sir, the finest scenery in the world I is improved by a good hotel in the fore- | ground.” i “ Then you do not approve of the £ Silver Trout?’” Mr. Alleyne shrugged his shoulders, and shrugged them as a Frenchman does, signifi- cantly, yet almost imperceptibly. Before Debenham had spent an hour in his society, he discovered that Mr. Alleyne had many of the small habits of a Frenchman ; but then he performed them with all a Frenchman’s dexterity, so that even the shrug, which, as De Quincey says, is “ an odious gesture,” sat airily and almost gracefully upon him. “ Not so,” he replied. “ I cordially ap- ! prove of the ‘Silver Trout’ — for the fre- ! quenters of the £ Silver Trout.’ Voila tout.” “ You have had it pretty much to yourself I here, I suppose, sir,” said Archie, speaking ! for the first time. Mr. Alleyne turned his head sharply, as if | at once detecting the difference of tone and j address. ! ££ Yes,” he said, somewhat more distantly. : ££ We have had it entirely to ourselves. One is quite out of the world at Cillingford.” Then, turning again to Debenham, he added : — j “Your arrival is an unprecedented event, j No one comes here. I believe that no one | ever has come here since the beginning of time. The place is a terra incognita to the civilised world — known only to a few ancient Britons in coracles, and other outer barba- rians. Have you seen any coracles on the I river yet?” | Debenham had not yet seen any — con- 1 fessed, indeed, that he did not even know what a coracle was. “ If I seem to be very ignorant,” he said, “ I must plead that I have been brought up and educated abroad, and am almost a stranger in my own country.” “You might have lived all your life in England, and yet be as ignorant,” Mr. Alleyne replied. “A coracle is a sort of rude boat made of tarred hides and osier boughs — just the shape of a turtle-shell. Caesar describes them, you may remember, and says he learnt the use of them from the Britons. And here you find them on the Wye, and on most of the Welsh rivers, to this day. They are very curious. I mean to buy one, and take it home for a model. May I offer you a cigar?” Debenham, remembering what had been said of his own tobacco, declined ; but Archie accepted one, and even before he had lighted it, broke into praises of its fragrance. The artist received this tribute with easy complacency. “Yes,” he said, “ they are part of a case I shared the other day with a Portuguese friend. They come direct from Havana. You do not object to the perfume of Vanilla? I always keep a small piece of Vanilla in my cigar- case. A simple luxury — allow me to recom- mend it.” Chatting thus, they walked up and down for some twenty minutes or more, Mr. Alleyne leading the conversation ; Debenham putting in an observation here and there ; Archibald Blyth puffing away in serene enjoyment, and listening to all that the others were saying. Garrulous enough at most times, the City man felt, somehow or another, an “exposi- tion” of silence upon him in Mr. Alleyne’s presence. But he wanted his friend to play a more important part in the conversation, and was somewhat jealous that the stranger should have all the talk to himself. Mr. Alleyne, however, conversed like a man who was accustomed to have the talk to himself, and Debenham seemed willing enough to drop into the position of listener. The artist was amusing. He contrived, within the space of those twenty minutes, to touch upon a variety of topics. If he did not talk in epigrams like a light-comedy wit, there was, at all events, an epigrammatic flavour about what he said. His style was light and easy. His voice was agreeable. Perhaps he sprinkled his conversation too liberally with French phrases, scraps of quotation and the names of titled persons. Perhaps, like Chaucer’s serjeant of the law, who, though a busy man, seemed “ busier than he was,” Mr. Alleyne, 94 FIRST IMPRESSIONS. [Good Words, Feb. i, 1869. though a clever talker, had the art of saying things in a way that made them seem cleverer than they were. But, in any case, he was entertaining, and evidently a man of the world. At last, when Archie had reluctantly cast aside the stump of his cigar, Mr. Alleyne asked if they would go in and take tea. “ It is wretched stuff,” he said, “ and half cold by this time— and the room is a mere kennel, about twelve feet square. I am ashamed to ask you into it.” The young men looked at each other. Debenham hesitated. “ We are pedestrians,” he said, “ and carry our wardrobes on our shoulders. I fear we can scarcely present ourselves before a lady .... in the evening . . . .” Mr. Alleyne cut his apology short with a wave of the hand. “ Living as we live here, beyond the pale of civilisation,” he said, smiling, “we have almost forgotten that smockfrocks and high- lows are not de rigueur in the best circles. Pray dismiss every consideration of that kind, and only remember that we are living in the dreariest exile. Think what it would have been to Robinson Crusoe, had a couple of civilised strangers dropped in one evening to tea !” With this he led the way, and the young, men followed him. Temple Debenham had too early been brought face to face with the hard realities of life, to retain any of the mere timidity of youth. As a boy, indeed, he was more than commonly self-reliant, and as a young man he prided himself upon his habitual sang I froid. And yet at this moment, for no cause whatever, he felt his cheek flush and his breath come quicker. What was it? Why was it? But he had no time even to ask himself these questions ; much less to answer them. PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. By the EDITOR. II. — FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF BOMBAY. When I last parted from my “ courteous j reader ” — a pleasant old title indicative of a nervous desire on the writer’s part to create in the reader that charity which “ belie veth 1 all things,” and “ is not easily provoked ” — I had retired to rest within mosquito-curtains in the comfortable bungalow of my kind host, on Malabar Hill. How heartily at such times does one join in Sancho’s bless- ing on him who “ invented sleep ! ” And doubtless every one who has been in a hot climate, and who has accordingly “ paid attention to sleep,” as an Irishman once ex- pressed it, will appreciate the difficulty of finding repose even within mosquito-curtains. They can understand what it is, when hot, dusty, deliquescent, and weary, to hear the fearful sound of that tiny trumpet buzzing inside the curtains ! But where ? That is the question which excites the brain with a terrible intensity ! Now the sufferer is sure that the tormentor is at his ear, and with passionate energy comes down thud upon it, indifferent to any blow he may inflict on himself, if he can but slay the foe. Ah ! it must be dead now ! That stroke which makes the hand tingle, must have destroyed the aggres- sor. Thinking he hears its death struggles, he breathes with more freedom. But, alas ! the trumpet sounds again, with a more wicked blast of defiance ! The war rages. It is a long campaign ! In vain the candle is lighted. Who can, without a microscope and a long examination, detect the pin-point on the curtains in which insolence and cruelty are concentrated? And while he is searching, the curtains may take fire, or, worse still, dozens may rush in at every opening ! I know how frivolous all this may appear to the inhabitant of a northern clime. It seems out of all proportion to occupy a line about a mosquito, and a volume only on Hin- dostan. But such an impression has the wretch made upon me, that I could not go on until I had disburdened my mind as to this multum of torment in this parvo of size t When I opened my eyes, after having en- joyed a period of unbroken rest, consequent on the death of one brigand — others still roving in frenzy outside the curtains of my fortress — I was able to entertain the idea of being actually in India. My host being a bachelor (one of three indeed, all alike kind), I made my first observations very freely, that I might under- stand the general architectural structure and arrangements of an Indian abode. It was evi- dent at a glance that I had no upper stories to climb. This in itself was an agreeable dis- ; covery, even in the cool season, with the Good Words, Feb. i, 1869.] thermometer standing no higher than 78° in the shade; so I crept along the outside of what seemed to be a huge Swiss cottage or beehive, with a magnificent verandah, built on a platform raised about ten or twelve feet above the ground. This corridor opened into beautiful rooms, furnished as at home, but with access on all hands to every breeze which land or sea might contribute, and sur- rounded by flower-gardens, full of flowers and roses, large-leaved plants, eastern exotics, big butterflies, huge moths, and many sweet and piping birds, which ought, by the way, to have sung better from never having been troubled with sore throats. Servants there were, too, in great numbers — about forty in and out — all male, of course, and therefore the more easily rebuked by sensitive minds, when called upon to discharge this painful duty. These servants wore turbans and white cotton gar- ments. They went barefooted, moved about like ghosts, and salaamed or stood in that respectful silence so becoming towards our superior race. By day or by night, so far as I could judge, they replied with equal readiness to the shout of “ Boy!” or “Bhai !” which, they tell me, means “brother,” signi- fying, I presume, the relationship between native and European ; and their response of “ Sahib !” was as quick as a near echo. The division of labour in India seems to be carried even to fractions — almost as much so as if the man who fed the horse would not give him water, as if he who cleaned him would not harness him or drive him. So there is a “butler” — a great dignitary — and servants to wait at table, and servants to wash clothes, and servants to do this or that, nobody knows what. In particular there is a queer creature, like what I fancy a Brownie should be, called a “beestie” or “bhestie,” whose special calling is to fill the bath in that refreshing apartment of health and luxury attached to every Indian bed-room. The house, in short, like most gentlemen’s bunga- lows in India, was what a shopkeeper in a remote Highland village described his esta- blishment for nails, snuff, and tobacco — “a place in which there is everything a human being can reasonably desire.” My first drive through Bombay did not, I confess, excite great admiration in me. The fact is that such a “peep” of eastern life as Cairo affords, is much more strange than what he gets on landing in India. The streets of Cairo, I think, stand alone in their remarkable picturesqueness and oriental character. After seeing Damascus and Con- stantinople, and the famous Indian towns, I am more and more impressed with the truth of this. Its narrow thoroughfares with their quaint projecting balconies, and here and there the huge walls of a mosque whose minaret pierces the blue far up in the sky; the thronging, turbaned crowd, with every variety of strange costume and adornment; the camels with their silent tread, and heads lifted up as if whiffing the desert air from afar ; the bazaars and inner courts with their glowing colours flung from Persian rugs and carpets, lighted up by strong 'Sun-beams, piercing the sheltering awnings — all make up a picture, which, once seen, ill prepares the | j traveller to be struck by anything he beholds j I in Bombay. Here there are no buildings, temples, mosques, or churches, — no streets or public places, which in their architectural or general appearance impress one as being any- thing more than might naturally be looked for in a presidency town of such wealth. | Nor does one see camels or elephants, or j anything to suggest the feeling of being ! “further East” amid new and peculiar scenes, j I was struck with how little has been done j in an architectural point of view. Colaba Point or Malabar Hill, for instance, would tell much more on the scene, were they marked by a few minarets, or gilded domes, or some- thing to break the sky-line and lift the whole city out of the mediocre dead level in which it lies. Save for the surrounding scenery, Bombay would be an uninteresting j city to a traveller. To the merchant it is another Liverpool or Glasgow, with its long bazaars, piles of cotton, and counting-houses. True, there is one fine place or square in the city ; the public institution, the colleges, hos- pitals, and town-hall, too, are all very creditable to it, while the esplanade is a noble open space. | Yet I cannot but feel that Bombay deserves j more than it has received in this respect. | But who is to guarantee the money re- | quired for anything beyond the practical and j necessary ? The Europeans are only strangers and sojourners,. making money to take home to England with them, not to leave behind. The natives have no pride in the city as their | own ; and the government cannot be allowed to be generous at the expense of the tax- payers. In the exercise of princely hospi- tality, however, and in subscribing to useful institutions, there are no men more liberal than the merchants of Bombay. There is nothing very peculiar in the ap- pearance of the streets. Neat broughams and carriages of European build are common. Natives are to be seen riding in similar equi- pages, drawn by the best horses, with servants FIRST IMPRESSIONS. iGood Words, Feb. i, 1869. standing behind. Wooden cabs or garies with Venetian blinds, buggies, buffalo carts and waggons, and sometimes quaint native conveyances, generally crammed full, are everywhere met with. The crowds who walk along are chiefly made up of naked coolies, with legs like those of a crane ; of white-robed, soft-faced, large-eyed, material- looking Parsees, with white stockings and polished shoes ; of Hindoos, including some of the better sort even, with bare feet and probably bare chest, broad featured or fine featured, dark complexioned or olive com- plexioned, all in turbans, and many holding white umbrellas as they waddle along with their toes turned out. We saw no armed natives, no splendid dresses, but everywhere the commerce of a Europeanised city where every one is up to the ears in cotton. The very bazaars are full of “ dry goods ” and all sorts of goods, from the looms of England, with scarce anything more picturesque than calico. This is the impression Bombay makes on one who passes through its streets for the first time. Some of the houses, especially those of Our Bungalow. rich natives on Malabar Hill, are very handsome and even ostentatious. Many more look like huge Swiss cottages, each occupying a considerable space of ground, and nestling among trees, which generally conceal the one from the other ; but within all are arranged, as I have said, with the greatest comfort, and generally with the greatest elegance and luxury. Enormous sums are paid for the rent of such houses. The ex- pense of living in Bombay is thus far beyond that of any other town in India, or perhaps in Europe. It was with the view of reclaiming from the sea, and adding to the town, some hundreds, or possibly thousands, of acres, that the project was started of widening the famous “Back Bay,” the subject of the illustration in first paper, page 25. But this became such a huge gambling transaction in Bombay, that it caused the ruin of many, who were sud- denly plunged from the ideal position of mil- lionaires into the real position of bankrupts. As to the native town, no Irish village of the worst kind has a look of greater poverty, confusion, and utter discomfort. The low huts covered with palm leaves — the open Good Words, Feb. i, 1869 . 1 FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 97 drains — the naked children, with their naked fathers and miserable-looking mothers, toge- gether with the absence ot all attempt to give a decent look to the houses — present a most remarkable contrast to the wealth and luxury of the neighbouring city. But when I began to reflect on the climate in which these people live, my sympathy for their ap- parent poverty and its supposed accompanying sufferings was naturally lessened. What need is there of houses, except as mere umbrellas or tents ? The tall, lanky forms revel in the warmth of the sun. The children, round, plump, and shiny, like balls of polished ebony, or more properly, cherubs in bronze, gleam like rooks in a stubble field, and seem not to care for anything but warmth and fun. As for cloth- ing, nature provides it gratis — save what may be accepted as a kilt in embryo. As for food, a little rice, in addition to the heat contributed by the unwearied and generous sun, is sufficient to keep up the internal combustion. What is there, then, after all, in the outward condition of these Indian natives, to call forth much sympathy, in 'comparison with the lot of those who suffer from cold Bombay Town-hall. amid the mist and rain, the smoke and mud, which combine to make the homes of our poor so wretched. Yes, I fear the “ Saut Market” of Glasgow must yield, if not the palm, at least to the palm. Theoretically, one would expect these Eastern cities to be hotbeds of disease. I am not sure that they are so. The effect of heat in rapidly dis- posing of moisture must greatly modify causes which, in a climate like ours, would slay their thousands. I tremble, however, to approach statistics ! Turning away from man and looking X— 7 of Bombay This is the at nature, there is a feature which never ceases to please, glorious palm-trees ! Palms are so asso- ciated with the East in our thoughts, that we have heard of an artist introducing them into a picture of a scene up-country where no palm tree was ever seen, on the mere ground that “ the British public would expect them to adorn an Indian landscape.” I never felt weary looking at these trees. Their tall stems and picturesque heads cluster in the still air of the sunny sky, and they are always beautiful, whatever their species. They are FIRST IMPRESSIONS. fP&o9. one man by giving him an honour, you dis- oblige three or four persons who think that they have exactly similar claims. There is some truth in this, but it must be remem- bered that you keep all those three or four persons in a state of hopeful expectation that if they work on, they too will eventually gain the honour. There is no telling the quantity of good service that a government might get from people, if these people only saw that they had a fair chance of receiving honour for good service. And frequently there is no other way of paying them, for they do not want money. Now, as the tendency in modern times is to make government more and more difficult, it behoves government to husband all its resources, and to make the best use of them. I pass to another head of the subject. A state which has many colonies should seek to win its eminent colonists, and to knit the infant to the parent state by a careful distri- bution of honours in these colonies. When an eminent colonist can say, not merely civis Anglicanus sum , but eques A?iglicanus sum , ,' depend upon it, he is sure to become an attached citizen to the imperial govern- ment. The Privy Council of England should be enriched and enlightened by the introduc- tion into it of some of the most distinguished colonists, who, when in this country, should be able, as it were, to have some voice in the government. Now, to another branch of the subject. Why should we chiefly honour and dignify the members of one or two professions or callings, to the exclusion of the rest? Why should many lawyers and soldiers be promoted to honour, while doctors and surgeons, men of science, men of letters, great merchants, great employers of labour, distinguished civil servants, are for the most part left out in the cold ? In France they could have their Baron Dupuytren, while in England there is not an instance of a great medical man being raised to the peerage, though it is said Sir Astley Cooper much desired that honour. Again, as to men of science, art, and literature, people say it would be so difficult to found an order of merit for such men. I cannot see it. It appears to me that the world knows very well, or nearly well enough, who are the distinguished men in science, art, and literature. Some mistakes would of course be made ; but, upon the whole, the public would take care that the dispensers of honours to this class of men should not go far wrong. There is another very important point con- nected' with this subject, namely, that this just dispensation of honours would tend to correct the inordinate craving after wealth, which is the sin and sorrow of the present day. Moreover, it would tend to correct the frantic desire of getting into Parliament which besets so many men who are unfit for that vocation, but who discern in it the only way of arriving at personal honour and social dis- tinction. SPRING FLOWERS. “Non semper idem floribus est honor Vemis,” Horace. Last year’s flowers have fled, Last year’s leaves are dead, Last year’s glories gone from earth and sky : Now fresh flowerets blow, Green boughs bravely show, Spring resumes her gracious sovereignty. But there never came Flower or leaf the same As were dear in days for ever past : Tender thoughts of death Chill your sweetest breath, Flowers so like, yet so unlike, the last ! All that with them went, All the sweet event Of the household year : the loving ties That were bound or broken, All the love unspoken, All the grief suppressed, within us rise. Good Words, Feb. x, 1869.I SPRING FLOWERS. 121 “ Now fresh flowerets blow, Green boughs bravely show, Spring resumes her gracious sovereignty.” 322 ELISHA. [Good Words, Feb. i, 1869. Plucked by hands at rest • Worn upon the breast Now unheaving ; touched by lips of some Forlorn in climes afar, Or who past the bar Hate and shame have set, no more shall come. Never last year’s flowers, Never last year’s hours, Live again in flowers and hours of earth ; Spring must bring the pain Of longings felt in vain For the dear past that has no second birth. Yet ye are as fair, New-blown flowers, as e’er Charmed the happy sense in earlier summers : Upon you lies as yet No shadow of regret ; Hues of hope adorn the sweet new-comers. Hope to joy shall grow, Or be quenched in woe — Ye shall take the tint of each day’s story ; When ye too shall fade, Ever undecayed Our hearts shall cherish your memorial glory. But that last year’s died, Ne’er in vernal pride Had ye come, new-fraught with joy and pain ; So your death assures Later blooms than yours — - Life grows rich by wresting loss to gain. Happy who forgets All his vain regrets, Dries betimes his tears, and nobly lives, Richer for his loss, Stronger for his cross, Using well all hap Our Father gives ! D. LAING PURVES. HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. By the BISHOP OF OXFORD. II.— ELISHA. No two men are linked together more closely in Scripture history than Elijah and Elisha ; and no two are in character and the circumstances of their lives more sharply op- posed to each other. Elijah stands before us suddenly, without one note of preparation, in the fulness of the prophetic office as “ the Tishbite, of the inhabitants of Gilead; ’’startling Ahab in his pride of power as though called by the king’s sins out of the earth on which he stood ; and denouncing judgment on him in the name of “ the Lord God of Israel be- fore whom I stand.” We have no hint of the training for the prophet’s office which pre- ceded this its sudden development, though we may conjecture that his frame was hardened on the mountain ranges of Gilead, and his spirit attuned by solitary musings to the notes of power and judgment which marked all his prophetic utterances. Elisha, on the contrary, comes before us with a touch of circumstance which almost reveals to us the history of his youth. He is “Elisha the son of Shaphat, of Abel-meholah.” Good Words, Febk x, i86g.] ELISHA. 12^ Instead of the child of the desert, full of the wild strength bred of lonely wanderings amidst the ranges of Gilead, we have the child of a peaceful, wealthy agricultural home in the rich valley of the Jordan. His call to the prophet’s office finds him full of the employ- ments which belonged to such a life. Elijah’s homeward course from the marvels which had surrounded him at Horeb was ordered for him by the divine voice through the plain of Jordan. As he passes up it he reaches one of its pleasantest scenes, where the wood- tangled banks of Jordan, and the stern acacia groves open out into the rich arable plain, and the laughing brightness of a river- j bordered meadow. He is at Abel-meholah, the “ meadow of the dance,” well known to the dark-eyed daughters of Judah and its jocund [ sons in festal seasons of rejoicing. There, on his father’s lands, Elisha is superintending the ploughing of the fertile soil. The dark, awful form of the elder prophet rises suddenly on his view, and overshadows his soul with the awfulness of a spirit’s presence. He does not ask the errand on which the great messenger was bound; he does not venture to disturb the stride of that silent figure even with the congenial offer of an hospitable reception. But as Elijah passes by, still, as it seems, speechless, and as one borne onward by some divine impulse, he pauses for a moment, and the young man finds cast upon his own shoulders the well-known sheepskin mantle of the mighty Tishbite. Jehovah’s call even in the doing of that simple act subdues his whole spirit, and he leaves the oxen and runs after the prophet, saying, “ Let me, I pray thee, kiss my father and my mother, and I will follow thee.” Elijah, with that deep knowledge of the springs of human conduct which is bred in solitary spirits by the intro- verted gaze so familiar to their souls, does but fix the hook in the already captive will of him whom he has mystically summoned, by the seeming disavowal of his act in the words, “ Go back again, for what have I done unto thee ?” Elisha’s soul felt what he had done, and with no half-reverted, half-longing gaze after the sweetness of the home life which he knew was lost to him, but with the determi- nation of a settled purpose which needed not to fly from enticements which he had already in his strong will subdued, he returns back from the departing prophet, slays for a part- ing feast of consecration the oxen whom he should guide no more along the furrows of the familiar plain, and then, having bid adieu to his father and his mother, arises, and goes after Elijah, and ministers to him. Doubtless he forerast all, and it may be more than all, that this ministering implied ; for it was not as a mere attendant servant, such as afterwards Gehazi was to himself, but as his fellow, and as his successor in his prophetic ministry, that Elisha was called by Elijah to leave all and to follow him. So the divine command had run, “ Elisha the son of Shaphat, of Abel-meholah, shalt thou anoint to be pro- phet in thy room and so Elisha doubtless understood it. It needed no small share of courage and devotion to accept at his hands the fearful trust of such an office in degene- rate Israel. What a life had Elijah’s been ! How must it have shown to Elisha in the very aspect of him who now stood before him, and mystically claimed his life’s companionship ! As that awful figure passed on its lonely way, what impression must have rested on the mind of the home-loving, happy son of Abel- meholah ! In Elijah he saw what it was in Ahab’s days to be the prophet of Jehovah. He followed with his gaze the houseless, home- less, saddened, solitary man, with his grand, deep, capacious brow, even at this moment darkened with the thunder of Horeb, with his uncombed Nazarite locks falling thick upon his shoulders, with his half-clad, great limbs exhibiting the gaunt strength of one conver- sant with hungry, droughty marches, with toilsome days and sleepless nights, with the defiant stride of one whose life was ever in his hand, threatened alike by the impulsive violence of Ahab, and the more dangerous,, revengeful hatred of his Zidonian queen, and by the capricious impulses of a perverse people. But Jehovah’s call brought with it Jehovah’s strength, and he arose and minis- tered unto him. So definite was Elisha’s com- mission ; so different even in its distinctness from the dark mystery which hangs around the unknown summons which had first compelled Elijah to bow his iron neck to the prophetic yoke. Moreover, whereas Elijah’s training is as untraceable as his call, we have at least the outline .history of Elisha’s. He was known afterwards to one of the servants of Jehoshaphat the king of Israel as “ the son of Shaphat, which poured water on the hands of Elijah.” For seven years at least the companionship and the training seems to have lasted ; seven years which would stamp deeply on the receptive nature of the younger man many of the great outlines of the pro- phetic character of his master and his friend. And when at last he heard the fearful warn- ing, “Knowest thou not that the Lord will take thy master from thy head to-day?” and ELISHA. [Good Words, Feb. i, 1869. 124 felt that he was henceforth to bear alone all the heavy burden of the prophet’s office, we know as to Elisha the accompaniments as well as the essence of the full accomplish- ment of his call. The Spirit of God has recorded for us those unresting journeyings between Gilgal, Bethel, and Jericho, which preceded the ascent of the great Tishbite into heaven ; the last communings of the de- parting prophet with his successor ; the per- mission, “Ask what I shall do for thee before I be taken away from thee,” in which, as though conscious of his approaching audience with the mighty Lord of all, he offers to send back from the heavenly treasury whatever his faithful follower might know himself to need ; the “hard thing” which Elisha’s craving soul desired — the double portion — the eldest son’s inheritance — of his master’s spirit ; the doubtful grant of the bold petition, confirmed by the open vision of the ascension granted to his wondering eyes; the assumption of his master’s mantle by the widowed successor ; and the miraculous opening of his ministry, by the smiting and dividing with it of the Jordan waters. This diversity in the providential training of the two prophets in some degree prepares us for the broad distinction stamped from the very first upon their prophetic course. Elijah’s had been a dispensation of judgment; Elisha’s was a dispensation of gentleness. Elijah enters on his office with the denunciation of the fearful drought, which for three years and six months consumed the land of Israel; Elisha opens his by healing at Jericho the spring of waters which were naught, and in their flow made the land barren : “So the waters were healed unto this day,” says the sacred historian ; and still tradition, reaching from Josephus to the reports of our latest oriental travellers, prolongs unto the present time the “ this day” of the Bible chronicler. For still, above the present town breaks forth, on its north-western side, the healed spring, belting the arid plain with a band of verdure, and perpetuating to all time the remembrance of this pervading feature of Elisha’s miracles. Such in character, with exceptions which shall be noticed presently, they were throughout. Thus, Jo run rapidly through them, he delivers the kings of Israel, Judah, and Edom from the destruction which lay before them in their campaign against Moab ; he multiplies the supply of oil from the single barrel, which was the sole remaining property of the widow of the son of the prophets, whose two sons were about to be sold for debt ; he obtains for the childless “ great woman of Shunem” the coveted gift of a son, and, many years afterwards, miraculously restores him to life when the fatal stroke of the summer’s sun had brought him to the grave ; he heals the poi- j soiled food, which threatened at Gilgal the | lives of the company of the sons of the pro- phets; he multiplies the ears of corn to feed a needy crowd; he heals the leprosy of Naa- man ; he recovers the borrowed axe-head lost in the waters of the J ordan ; and, finally, the very touch of his bones, in the tomb in which his body had been honourably laid, brings back its life to the corpse which had been thrust hastily beside his mouldering remains. It is not possible to mistake the character of this series of miracles. From first to last they bear upon them all the attributes of visi- tations of mercy. They are the very opposite of the judicial inflictions with which, through Elijah, the power of God broke forth to punish evil and to overawe the guilty. Yet, as in the severe course of Elijah there is one touching scene of tenderness in the bringing back to life the son of the afflicted widow; so, as though to make the contrast complete, in the midst of the long list of Elisha’s miracles of mercy there occur two miracles of startling judgment, absolutely needful, probably, in the evil days on which he was cast, for the asser- tion of his true prophetic character, and so for his fulfilment of the work which he was set to do. The first of them belongs to the early part of his career. Going, at the be- ginning of his long ministry, from Jericho to Mount Carmel, he passes through the town of Bethel ; there, pre-eminently, the peculiar sin of Samaria had become inveterate, and had poisoned all the springs of reverence for Jehovah and His messengers. As he treads the hot ascent skirting the forest depths which had grown rankly over ruined Ai, the chil- dren of the idol worshippers, encouraged by their fathers’ sin, if not by their fathers’ actual presence, mocked the new representative of Jehovah’s Majesty. They had trembled, it would seem, before the personal presence of i the great Nazarite, and they ridiculed the I smaller stature and more ordinary aspect of ! Elisha. “ Go up, thou hair-cropped one, go up,” was the taunt of those who might have seen with something of awe in Elijah the likeness of their mighty Samson. But the message of the Lord was not to be despised, and there fell upon the prophet the inspira- tion of judgment ; and the curse which he ; pronounced on them, in the name of the j Lord, was forthwith executed on the mockers by the savage denizens of the neighbouring wood. Good Words, Feb. i, 1869.] ELISHA . I 2 5 The other miracle of judgment seems dictated by a like necessity of protecting the ministry committed to him from falling into a dangerous contempt. It was the bind- ing on Gehazi and his seed the leprosy of Naaman the Syrian. Great had been Gehazi’s sin ; it had dishonoured the God of Israel, in the person of his prophet, by representing him to the Syrian stranger as taking rewards for the exercise of his superhuman power; it was, too, an absolute setting at nought the divine insight granted to his master in the attempt to palm off upon him a simple false- hood. Again it was essential to vindicate God’s honour that the punishment should be sharp, immediate, and patent to all. There was the same necessity as that which dictated the interruption of the gifts of life and healing, which signalised the apostolic miracles by the sudden destruction of Ananias and Sapphira, when they, too, in their day, lied in the person of St. Peter unto God the Holy Ghost. It was a note like that utterance of St. Peter against Simon Magus, “ Thy money perish with thee.” But it was not only in the exercise of his miraculous gifts and the character of his miracles that this especial character of gentleness hung round the second great prophet of separated Israel, and distin- guished him from his great predecessor. There is the same difference running through the whole recorded stream of his life. There is in Elisha no retiring into unknown and undiscoverable solitudes; there is none of that lightning-like presence and disappear- ance which marks everywhere Elijah’s course. Elisha never dwelt in the lonely caverns of the range of Horeb ; he is never fed by ravens in the bed of the mountain brook Cherith. His very garb bespeaks the dif- ference between himself and the wild son of the mountains of Gilead. Instead of the scanty girdle and the sheepskin mantle, he wears the ordinary dress of those around him, so that, like them, in extreme sorrow he can “take hold of his own clothes and rend them in two pieces” (2 Kings ii. 12). He is the prophet of society, as Elijah was the prophet of solitude. He tarries with the sons of the prophets in their several haunts; he dwells in J ericho ; nay, we find from incidental notices that he was possessed of a house of his own. For when, at his bidding, Naaman, the Syrian leper, is sent to him for the cure which the King of Israel had despairingly pronounced himself unable to procure, the great stranger comes “ with his horses and his chariot, and stands at the door of the house of Elisha” (2 Kings v. 9). Another passage, too, sug- gests an inference as to the size of his dwell- ing, which seems to imply that the inheritance of the son of Shaphat had not been aban- doned by the prophet Elisha, for we read that “ Elisha sat in his house, and the elders sat with him” (2 Kings vi. 32). Nor was it only the elders whom his mansion was capa- cious enough to receive, for we find the king of Israel visiting him in it ; and the direction, “ Open the window eastward,” marks, from its possessing such an instrument almost of luxury, the character of the dwelling-place. From these passing incidents, we may with certainty infer that, whilst Elijah was in the habits of his life the counterpart of the Arab of the desert, Elisha was the example of the civilised denizen of the town. And as he lives he dies. For him no fiery chariot waits. Like ordinary men, he is “ sick of the sick- ness whereof he dies.” Round his death-bed friends gather ; the king hears of his illness, and visits the departing prophet ; the slow progresses of gradual decay accomplish their work ; he gathers up his feet into his bed, and dies ; and his honoured body is interred in a marked and well-known tomb. Without, indeed, a far more perfect know- ledge than we possess of all the particulars of their own lives, and of what was passing round them, we may be unable accurately to ascertain all the reasons which required this striking diversity ; yet some of the causes, perhaps, we may discover. The first great cause, doubtless, was one which may be traced everywhere, when we search deep enough to read the laws which are revealed concerning the hidden counsels of God in His dealings with His creatures. It is that law which Elijah, the prophet of visible power, so greatly needed to learn, and which he was taught in so marvellous a manner when he stood alone with God on Horeb, when, “ Behold the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord ; but the Lord was not in the wind : and after the wind, an earthquake ; but the Lord was not in the earthquake : and after the earthquake, a fire ; but the Lord was not in the fire : and after the fire, a still small voice.” (1 Kings xix. 11, 12). The crashing of the earth- quake proclaims God’s coming, but His presence is in the still small voice. It is the ever recurring lesson, “Not by power, nor by might ; but by my Spirit, saith the Lord.” Elijah’s mission was the mighty earthquake, Elisha’s the still small voice. The one broke up the fallow ground and prepared the earth 1 26 ELISHA. [Good Words, Feb. 1, 1869. for the seed, yea, and sowed it often broad- cast ; but the other gathered in the harvest. In many respects, moreover, we can see that circumstances round them differed widely, and required a corresponding difference in the Witness of Jehovah. Elijah had to defy in open fight, and make head against a great and suc- cessful king. Ahab and J ezebel, in their several spheres, were persons of strong will, _ of powerful minds, and of widespread popularity. They were the rocks which were to be broken in pieces before the Lord. Elijah’s ministry, therefore, was of the temper of the whirl- wind. Elisha lives comparatively speaking in the calm. Persecution was over. There was no more hiding of the Lord’s prophets by fifties in the cave, to save them from the death to which a cruel queen had doomed them ; and though the worship of Baal lingered on in the land, t yet that heathen “ lord of strength ” had after the solemn trial of Mount Carmel, and the execution of his priests, been forced to retire into the groves for the celebration of his rites, instead of openly proclaiming in the acknowledged worship of the court his triumph over Jehovah. To cope with such altered circum- stances Elisha’s character was fitter than Elijah’s. He could associate with the leaders of his own people ; could influence society as one who lives in the midst of it only can ; he could offer to “ speak ” for an applicant “ to the king or to the captain of the host ” (2 Kings iv. 13). He could visit Damascus not as the Bedouin of the desert, entering it suddenly, flashing out a word of fire, and then again leaving it as he came to find his safety amidst the untracked sands of the waste, before men had sufficiently recovered from the shock of his denunciations, to lay J hands upon him ; but as some great foreign potentate, on whom the general in chief j would wait in solemn visitation, bringing with him “ a present, even every good thing in Damascus, forty camels’ burden” (2 Kings viii. 9), and to whom, as the representative of his sovereign, he could say with the rever- ential tone in which Oriental suppleness allowed the king of men to address the ! messenger of God, “Thy son Benhadad, king of Syria, hath sent me to thee, saying, Shall I recover of this disease ? ” (2 Kings viii. 9.) Again, the schools of the sons of the pro- phets with whom lingered the true faith, and on whose safety and earnestness its maintenance mainly depended, needed for their support an Elisha rather than an Elijah. They required one who could live amongst them and raise their own habitual life, by the calm example and holy influence which distils dewlike round the man of God, in his ordinary life of devotion and obedience ; and which could not have been given to them by the earth- quake visitations of the terrible Nazarite. We must not, however, associate any idea of weakness with Elisha’s character. On the contrary, though there were more dramatic incidents of outward danger, and therefore more startling displays of courage and of strength in the career of his master ; and though his desert life, and wild ministry was of necessity fuller of picturesque lights and deep shadows, than that of the child of civilisation and society, yet Elisha’s was really the more perilous life to lead. The double portion of the Tishbite’s spirit was needed by him quite as much to uphold Jehovah’s witness in the greater temptations to which his easier life exposed him, as it was to enable him to work the larger abund- ance of miracles which were requisite as credentials of the prophetic character in one living as an ordinary man amongst his fellow-men. It was comparatively natural for those who only saw Elijah suddenly emerge from his unknown dwelling-place, and by some terrible denunciations strike dismay into the heart of Ahab, and then j retire again into the trackless haunt from which he had issued, to believe that he was the messenger of Him who had spoken to their fathers from the thick darkness amidst the thunders and the fires of Sinai. But to force upon them the conviction that one who lived amongst them apparently just as they lived, was yet as truly Jehovah’s witness, 1 needed that perpetual display of more than j human power which was so exceptionally j exuberant in Elisha’s ministry. And so for i the inner life of his own soul greater visi- j tations of the Divine Spirit were doubtless needed amidst the temptations of the court and the camp, and the town residence of Jericho and the 'country sojourning of Dothan, than when, as with Elijah, God and the soul were brought so awfully alone to- gether, in the destitution of all outer things, amidst the savage scenes of the wilderness. But with all this difference there is no trace of weakness in the outline of Elisha’s life and ministry. On the contrary, the sacred narrative seems studiously to record instances in which humanity, in all its strength of fire, of tenderness, and of daring, breaks out amidst the tamer features which surround the more civilised man. Thus as examples : In the record of Elisha’s great parallel miracle i — ■ i ; — ; Good Words, Feb. i, 1869.] ELISHA. I 2 7 to that of Elijah, in raising to life the widow’s son, there is a depth of tenderness which is not reached in the former history, touching as it is. The “ great woman ” of Shunem receives from the hot harvest field, with the cry of “ My head, my head !” the son so marvellously given to her longing embrace. The boy sits upon her knees till noon, and then dies (2 Kings iv.). The bereaved Shunammite, with all an Eastern mother’s love and inward resolution, speaks no word of sorrow; calmly tells her husband it shall be well, and mounts her ass, whilst with an eagerness which, for the first time, speaks an inward agony and purpose that will carry her through any toil, she bids her servant, “ Drive and go forward ; slack not thy riding for me except I bid thee.” In the heat of her spirit she comes to the man of God to Mount Carmel. He, accustomed to her coming “ at the new moon and the sab- bath,” as he worships amidst the shadows of the mountains, marks her distant approach, and waits for her until she comes to him on the hill-side, when she “caught him by the feet.” Then comes that answer of Elisha, which goes straight to every heart, as he reproached the servant who would have “ thrust her away “ Let her alone, for her soul is vexed within her, and the Lord hath hid it from me and hath not told me.” Again, what inward fire reveals itself as underlying the level outward crust of that calm character, in his words to the elders of Israel when King Jehoram sent to seize him, — “ See how this son of a murderer hath sent to take away my head!” (2 Kings vi. 32). Again, what holy daring is there in his answer to Jehoram when he came in his extremity of distress from the forces of Moab to seek counsel of the prophet of the Lord, — “ What have I to do with thee ? Get thee to the prophets of thy father, and to the prophets of thy mother. As the Lord of hosts liveth before whom I stand, if it were not that I regarded the presence of J ehoshaphat, the king of Judah, I would not look to thee or see thee” (2 Kings iii. 13, 14). It is well to note these indications of vast moral strength and purpose in Elisha, not only that we may form a true estimate of his actual character, but also to prepare us for considering the last reason to be here men- tioned why one so different from himself may have been chosen as the successor of Elijah. From first to last, all holy Scripture is full of Christ. In direct prediction, in type, in ex- ample, He is ever re-appearing. It is the perpetual presence of this one master-figure, the marvel that throughout the ten thousand mysterious characters which are inscribed upon that still unrolling scroll the same image ever recurs, which, to the eye of faith, makes up the mighty wholeness of the pro- phetic record. One great instance of such acted predic- tion appears in the succession of Elisha to Elijah. Our Master’s own express words have, in a manner, identified the prophet of Gilead with the Baptist. The resemblance is most striking : the desert home, the austere fare, the awakening message, the sinking of each great heart under the overwhelming pressure of disappointment and rejection, the cry of Elijah under the juniper tree of the wilderness echoed in the message of John from the dungeon, the scantiness of Elijah’s compared with Elisha’s miracles, set side by side with the fact that John did no miracles ; the one rebuking Ahab, the other Herod ; the persecution of Elijah by the king of Israel, 1 stirred up by his queen, driving him, as it were, for refuge to the fiery chariot,— that of John by Herod, stirred up by his brother Philip’s wife, ending John’s sufferings under the sword of the executioner, and sending him to his rest. Then, too, the unfinished work of each, left to be accomplished by his successor, stamp on each alike the marked description of “forerunner.” Nor when we turn from Elijah to Elisha can we fail to see the figure of the Son of man mysteriously veiled beneath the outward aspect of the second prophet. For in Elisha’s life in con- trast with Elijah’s is the very counterpart of that which tested and condemned the wilful unbelief of the Scribes and Pharisees. “John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He hath a devil ; the Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners.” Again, the solitary child of the desert was the forerunner of Him who sat at the Pharisee’s table and lived in the house of Mary and of Martha. Again, there is the same contrast between the moral characteristics as between the ac- cidents recorded of the forerunner and the follower in the history of the prophets of Israel, and in the records of the evangelists. There is the almost unrelieved severity of holiness of the one ; there is its entire compassionate- ness in the other. In both cases the biting blasts of the desert proclaim their rude con- trast to the soft breezes of Abel-meholah. There is the “ Let her alone ” of the prophet, when the servant would thrust away the I2S GOOD AND BAD. [Good Words, Feb. r, 1869. woman who caught him by the feet ; there is the “Let her alone” of the Lord when Mary anointed his feet and wiped them with her hair (i John xii. 3—7). There is the weeping for the evils coming on the chosen people when Elisha read in Hazael’s face the future woe, and when the Lord looked sadly on to the flight of the Roman eagle to J erusalem. There are the sons of the prophets looking up in all things to their master ; there are the twelve hanging on the Master’s words, and St. John leaning on His breast. There is in the pitifulness of Elisha a faint human copy of the all-embracing tenderness which breathed in those words of wonder, “ Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Again, the resemblance between the special miracles of our blessed Lord and those of Elisha is most marked. For Elisha feeds with the few ears of corn the hungry multi- tude; he cleanses the leper; he raises the dead to life; he multiplies the oil for the widow of the sons of the prophets, and says, “Go sell the oil and pay the debt,” as our Lord j puts forth his power to enable Peter to pay the tribute money. Nay, even in the last recorded miracle wrought at his tomb, when the dead man about to be buried is, by reason of the sudden incursion of the invading bands of Moabites, thrust with precipitation into Elisha’s tomb, and on touching the prophet’s bones rises and stands upon his feet, we have in the far back ages a wonderful picture of every Christian man’s death and rising again. For does not that caverned grave speak of the new tomb hewn in the rock wherein He lay who by death overcame death ; who by lying in the grave brought into it for every one of us the light of heaven and the companionship of angels? Does it not speak of that reviving and standing on his feet which shall befall every one who by faith does indeed touch the Lord’s body? and so is there not written as the interpreta- tion of a miracle, the like of which is not to be found recorded in either Testaments, and which is at first sight startling from this singularity, as the legend of the whole life of j the son of Shaphat, “ Behold, a greater than Elisha is here ?” Nor is it only of the Lord in His own person of whom Elisha is thus a type. He fore- shadowed in a most remarkable manner the Christ in His Church. “ All the law and the prophets prophesied until John.” (Matt. xi. 13.) In him the old dispensation passed away. After him, as Elisha after Elijah, came the Son of God in the Kingdom of Heaven, the Christ in His Church : with the double portion of the Spirit ; with far greater powers ; doing “ greater works ; ” with the Gospel gentleness instead of the thunders of the law ; with the pervading universal influence from the gift of Pentecost which was to leaven all society and spread through all empires, instead of being the witness of a solitary people in the wilderness of the world to the unity of the Godhead. Here is the last fulfilment of all that Elisha foreshadowed. No greater prophet than the mighty Tishbite had ever shaken the heart of Israel; yet his successor in the prophets’ office received a double portion of his master’s spirit ; and so, whilst of the great Baptist it has been declared, “ Amongst them that are born of women there hath not arisen a greater than John the Baptist,” it is added, “ Notwith- standing he that is least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he.” (Matt. xi. 11.) GOOD AND BAD: AN EPIGRAM ON “ECCE HOMO!” Whilst differing critics strive to find The object in the author’s mind, The book inversely works. Charmed by the beauty of the face, The sceptic feels the heavenly grace Behind the vail that lurks. But adoration cannot brook One least eclipse of that sweet look : Devotion takes alarm : And thus, however understood, No bad book ever did such good, No good one e’er such harm. PHILIP KALE. 'I Good Words, I'eb. x, 1869.] THE CONNAUGHT COTTER. TOILING AND MOILING. Horn* gimrant of our Horkittg Jropfr, unb fjofo f beg 2 THE CONNAUGHT COTTER. [Good Words, Feb. i, 1869. half-drowned, and sea-gulls are circling and screaming over the waves that the wild wind, rushing in from the Atlantic, rolls against the shores of the little lough. Out of the bog a black patch, that seems to have no road to it, has been cleared ; and else- where rows of as apparently inaccessible cabbages, with splashes of gold and crimson on their crinkled leaves, line the sombre waste of sooty green. All round about there is a jumble of furze, still blooming in De- cember ; fragments of tumble-down iron-grey and piebald wall, spotted with orange lichens, which begin and end in the most capricious fashion ; gate-posts without gates ; and hedge- banks without hedges, which bulge out of the ground like festered scratches. Not far off, there are two ruined cottages, with ivy grow- ing in bushy clumps upon the gables. Those are the deserted nests of birds that have found new homes in England and America, or, perhaps, more lasting ones in the grave- yard. A still inhabited hovel clings to one of them, as its inhabitants cling to the memory of the departed members of the friendly little colony. That and others in Connaught are less home-like looking homes even than our typical cotter’s. Some are of white-washed mud, with the mud showing through the whitewash in streaks and freckles ; some are of brown mud, pure and simple ; a few are of unmortared stone, windowless, chimney- less, with nothing but a bank of earth for their back wall — far less cosy “ homes ” than the queer little huts one sees perched on the sides of railway embankments in Eng- land. Looking out over the ineffably dreary bog — palled with unhealthy vegetation of the colour of a rifleman’s worn-out uniform, tus- socked with rusty rushes and jaundiced grass, blotted with turf-stacks like smoke-grimed chimney-stacks and wigwams, lined with dis- mal dykes flowing sluggishly between weeping banks of wet snuff and clotted ink — our typi- cal cotter’s home may seem a dismal resi- dence ; but it does not seem so to him. His dread is that he may be deprived of it — how- ever he may complain, as we shall see he does, of the hard fight he has to make for a living on his little farm. Members of four generations of his family are dwelling on it now. He is an old man, but his mother sits within the cabin — the shrivelled old woman, huddled up nose and knees in a faded red cloak, gazing dreamily from her low stool at the meal-like ash of the fragrant turf fire. The pretty, chubby, dirty little puss, with a crop of curls matted like a marsh colt’s mane, who makes a settee of her bare heels, as she looks up in the old woman’s face, in hope of another fairy or Rebellion story, is one of the old woman’s great grandchildren. The good- looking young woman, hanging out clothes to dry — beneath that ever-weeping sky — on bushes only a little darker and more ragged, and parenthetically washing her well-turned ankles in muddy puddles, is the wife of one of the old woman’s grandsons. An inventory might soon be made of the cabin’s furniture. The “ carpet-pattern” is a muddy maze of footmarks, more or less moist — human, porcine, anserine, gallinaceous. From a dark loft above, a rough ladder de- scends into the common room of the cabin — just as if it were a lighter’s cabin. It holds a big black pot, one or two little red-stained chairs, some tubs and baskets, and a low, lame little table against the wall, with its flap hanging from one hinge like a broken wing, and its top sparsely dotted with cracked crockery. There is no lack of courtesy, how- ever, in the cot. The cotter, — clad in fustian, and looking far more like a jobbing gardener in very poor practice than like a farmer, how- ever small, according to English notions, — at first glances suspiciously at his questioner, but, after a while, when pipes have been lighted on both sides, he chats away freely enough, and seems glad, indeed, to be able to give his view of the Irish Land Question. “ Yis, sir-r,” he says, “ my houldin’ is small, but there’s smaller. From four to forty acres is how the farrums run about here. Grass farrums — gintlemen’s farrums — run up to one hundred and fifty acres. The man who farrums eight acres down to two, might as well be in the workhouse. From tin to forty, he can do at prisent prices, if he has a bit of money. With a larruge family, a small farrumer can’t do at all at all. Is it altera- tions ye’re spakin’ of ? Sure I’m an ould man, an’ have seen altherations, but none for the betther of ould Ireland — divil a bit. There’s poor-rates 4 s. gd. in the pound, and county cess 2 s., paid half-yearly. The poor man has to pay what the gintlemen plaise — for roads, and dykes, and gas, if he’s within two miles of it. The Grand Jury lays on h-what it likes, do you see, and the gintlemen get their private improvements done that way for nothing ; the poor man has to pay for thim. Thim that pays the cess should have a voice in levying it. Do I think the Encumbered Estates Act has done good? No, sir-r, I think it has done a power of harrum to the j counthry. If the ould landlorruds was bad, the new ones is worse.” Good Words, Feb. i, 1869.] THE CONNAUGHT COTTER. 133 “ But haven’t they brought money into the country ? ” “ H-what’s the good of that, if they won’t let a man live ? I’ll show ye h-what I mane. A man was getting on under his ould land- lorrud, and had improved his farrum. The estate is sould, and a merchant, or some- thing like that, buys it. He has it revalued, and the farrumer’s rint is raised just because of his own improvements, and if he can’t pay, out he goes, without a penny of the money he has put into his farrum. There’s no denyin’ that Ireland is ill-thrated. All the money goes out, and none comes in. H-what counthryman are ye, sir-r ? ” “ An Englishman.” “ Are ye now? But ye won’t be insulted. We’ve a dale of dodgin’ among ourselves, but we niver insult a stranger. It’s the truth I’m tellin’ ye, sir-r. The landlorruds won’t give a poor man lave to live. Rint or land — that’s h-what they want. He mustn’t sub-let or sow the second crop.” “ Do you ever get a reduction of rent in bad times ? ” “ Reduction of rint ! Divil a bit. Pay or go — however could the wind may blow. They want the land for their sheep and their bulls — the poor man may go to the poor- house. And h-when he can pay his rint, they want to get him out.” “ But hasn’t a landlord a right to do as he likes with his own land ? ” “ Not at all. It’s bad enough that we should have to pay rint to thim that look down on us — the land was meant for thim that are born on it. But so long as a man pays his rint, no landlorrud has a right to turn him out.” “Were the tenants evicted from those cottages with the roofs off? ” “ No, sir-r. Connaught is the quietest part of Ireland. They couldn't live here — all gone, some to England and some to America. God feed them if they didn’t go — they’d ate one another, blood and bones.” “ Do your landlords help their tenants to emigrate ? ” “A few good landlorruds out by Dublin may, but that’s not the fashion here. They help a man to emigrate ! It’s American money, not Irish, has got the Irish out. My son is in America two years, and he has sent me ^24. I’ve twelve broders and broders- in-law in America. One brings out another, and then they two bring out two more ; that’s the way it’s done. The ouldest man would go if he could, and if he came home, he’d want to go back that day nixt week. I’ve seen ould men, stooped with age, go back.” “Where do most of the emigrants go from?” “ County Mayo, sir-r. Mayo’s the poorest county in Ireland, and Galway’s next — there’s good land in Roscommon. Spring and autumn is the great emigrating times. We put the pertaties in, do ye see, in April, and dig them in October, and thim’s the times when most of the emigrants go. Yis, we go over to England to harvest. How would we live without it? The few pounds we get helps to pay the rint. Men and women, too. Our women can rape, and sow, and cut turf as well as the men.” “ What are wages about here ? ” “ There’s bhoys, sir-r, workin’ for 6d. a- day, without food. A shilling a-day, or 5«r. a week certain, is the most they make in winter. If they’re hired by the day, do ye see, they may lose half a day through bad weather; is. 6d. a-day is the wages in spring time and harvest. A bhoy that is fed and lodged at the farrum gets £6 a-year. Is it meself ye want to hear about ? My houldin’ is tin acres, at a pound an acre. Land, half waste, fetches 30s. an acre sometimes. The tinant has to buy ivery thing, and do ivery- thing he wants. I’ve not laid out money on improvements — h-why would I ? I might be turned out without a penny for h-what I done. Threescore leases — that’s h-what we want ; so that a father may be sure that his son will have the farrum after him. No, my land can’t grow h-whait — yis, oats. Stock ? I’ve two cows and sivin sheep — yis, and a goat, and a bit of a donkey to carry turf, and a little poulthry. They help the pig to pay the rint. I’ve as purty a pig as iver you seen. Horses ? How could I kape thim, and h-what work would I have for thim ? We pay bhoys that kape horses to plough for us. H-what do we ate? We’re glad if we can get enough pertaties. No, I make no butther — only a big man can do that.” “ At any rate, you are well off for schools in Ireland ? ” “ Yis, sir-r, the schoolin’ is good and chape. The praists and the nuns is very good for that, and the national schools is good. We should be all ignorant if it wasn’t for the schools, and we’re fond of lamin’.” “ They use your national school books in the Australian schools.” “And in the same language, sir-r? Is it now ? Well, well.” About Roscommon, houses, arable, and pasture, have a neat English look, and sheep may be seen munching turnips in the dark- / l l T 34 THE CONNAUGHT COTTER. [Good Words, Feb. i, 1869. brown fields in English style. Let us supple- ment what our Galway cotter has told us by information derived from a dweller in this more favoured district. “ Sixpence a day! No, sir-r, the bhoys here get better wages than that. Thim that are fed at the farrums get £ 8 or £g a year.” “ How are they fed ?” “ They've pertaties, and butther, and eggs, and mate once or twice a week.* They will be fed well, because they know there's plinty of masters wanthm' them. A servant girl gets 3 or. or £2 a quarther now, and asks for her tay. If her misthress had drunk tay thirty years ago, she’d have been called a robber and an outlaw. There's a great change in the way that people dress, too. Thirty years ago a farrumer's daughter went to mass in a homespun cloak ; now she goes in a fine bonnet and skirruts like a balloon. That's how it is the farrumers have no money — it costs so much to clothe the childher.” “What would satisfy the small farmers here ? I mean about the land.” “Well, sir-r, they'd be contintwith a thirty years’ lease, and to give an average rint of 30 r. an acre, — the tinant, do ye see, appoint- ing his valuer as well as the landlorrud, and no arbithrary eviction. A man should be safe in his houldin’,so long as he pays his rint. That's h-what will satisfy us, - and we shan't be contint with less.” “ I suppose you don't take much interest in the Church Question ?” “Faith, Mr. Gladstone’s a tunderin’ nice fellow — the most popular English statesman that iver was in Ireland. But it’s the land we care for. We’re waitin’ to see h-what he'll do about that. Bright won't stay in the Cabinet, I’m thinking, if there’s any paltherin'. Ireland was niver quieter than it is now. We’re waitin’ to see if Mr. Gladstone will kape his promises. I mane h-whether we shall get justice about the land, h-when the Church business is settled.” “ On what terms are the Connaught tenant farmers with the clergy?” “ Sure, an Irishman would die for his praist. Och, is it the Prothestant clargy ye’re manin’ ? The couldest conceivable — though there's kind gintlemen amongst them, h-when they have the manes. Some of the livings is very poor.” “ What do Connaught Catholics think of the Protestant missions in the west ? ” * J n the west of Ireland mutton is 4^.. beef 6d. a pound : jood-sized goose sells for 2j. “ The soupers, ye mane. Faith, it’s dis- /zVable. Soup and thracts ! Thim as went over did it in the bad times, but they were Catholics in their harruts all the h-while, and the praist knew it. The soup was the only Prothestantism they swallowed. They did it just for the sake of the relafe, poor sowls, and small blame to thim, for they was starvin’.” Railway travelling in Ireland reminds one of children playing at trains — it is so free and easy in its time-keeping. The rooks do not fly from the fences- when the train lumbers past, but watch it quizzingly, as if they looked upon it as a joke. At a Connaught station our train pulls up for just about an hour. When the guard of the train that has delayed us quietly explains that the wrong staff was given him at the last station (the line is single), the excuse is accepted as perfectly satisfactory by those that have been detained. Whilst they wait, they show no signs of im- patience. A few look out of the windows now and then to see whether “ she” is coming : a few get out and stretch their legs upon the platform ; but most go on chatting in their carriages as merrily as if they were travelling a mile a minute. The robust Rufus who drives the engine descends from it, and gam- bols about the platform like a bottle-nosed whale. He lays hands on a little boy and girl who have come to see their friends off, and threatens to carry them to “ Dublun ” in the fire-box. He rolls up to the stranger with a familiar, “ Ah, how are ye ? Not know me? Well, then, ye ought to — give us your hand, man.” The priest, however, who is warming himself by walking as if for a wager from one end of the station to the other — his thin face, shaven as close as an actor’s, cleaving the keen air like a steam-boat’s cut-water- — seems a more profitable chance acquaintance to cultivate. In spite of his pinched face, he looks good-tempered. He has just stopped in his walk to chuck a penny to a beggar, who has lifted her head, hooded with her ragged gown-skirt, above the station wall ; and, apropos of that, one can venture to intrude upon his reverence’s meditations. “ What a sad number of beggars you seem to have in Ireland!” “ Ah, poor crathars. It’s a poor country is Ireland, for them that aren't beggars.” “Some people seem to make a good thing out of it, according to all accounts.” “That's thrue, but there’s Prothestant curates that hardly know how to live. All they get is from the rector — they get nothing from the people.” •Good Words, Feb. i, 1869.] THE CONNAUGHT COTTER. 135 “ That all goes to your Church ? ” “Because it’s their Church, do ye see? We’re the ould faith, and we belong to them.” “ I suppose you wouldn’t accept Govern- ment endowment?” “ Faith, the Bishops have settled that.” “And a charter for your University?” “ That’s safe — all our mimbers are pledged to’t.” “ But Mr. Gladstone hasn’t promised that.” “ H -whether or not, we believe in him. He’ll do justice to Ireland.” “ Don’t you think England has been trying 1 to do that lately ?” “ Small thanks to her- — she’s been forced. Stirring up revolution everywhere ilse, and ruling Ireland as she did ! All the Continent -and America has been cryin’ out shame upon her, and, because she isn’t so big as she used to be, she’s giving us a bit of our rights.” “ Is that the feeling of the people as well -as the priests ?” “It is, faith. We belong to them, I tell ye, and we can spake their falins.” “And what are their feelings about the land ? ” “ I’ll lave ye to ask them.” “ Well, what do you think will be the effect of disestablishment ?” “ Effect is it? The Prothestants will come ■over in dozens. There’s some of their clargy would come now, if it wasn’t for the State- pay they’re gettin’.” “ But the Maynooth Grant must go too.” “ Let it, and the Regium Donum on the back of it.” “You don’t seem much afraid of Clifden and Achill.” “ Afraid ! Have ye read Father Lavelle’s letters ? ” “You w.ere talking about Protestant clergy- men wanting to come over — have you got any Ritualists about here ?” “ Not here, but I’ve read about thim. It’s plain that the Prothestants can’t find rest for the sole of their /oot. They’re fluttherin’ about the old Church, wan thin’ to be tuk in. Pro- thestantism would be a fine aisy religion if there was only this worruld, but they’re findin’ out that it won’t do for the nixt. Catholics think a dael more than . Prothestants about the nixt worruld.” “ Well, but about this world — has Catholi- cism done much for Connaught ?” “And h-where will ye find a more moral people ? H-when they hear of the way your women live in your English towns, and coun- thry too, they think ye worms than haythen.” “ And is that because they are Catholics ?” “ H-what else would it be ? They leam when they’re young to mind their priest and come to confession, and that saves them from making baists of themselves.” “ But why won’t you let Protestant and Catholic children learn to spell together?” “ Because, I tell ye, we think more of religion than the Prothestants. This worruld is only a preparation for another, and ye can’t get your faith by taking a mouthful now and thin, as if ye was ashamed of it. Secular and religious — ye can’t siparate the tachin’. Ye’ve seen the fine college they’ve got at Galway ? Well, they can’t tache histhory or moral philosophy there— and, I ask ye, is that education ?” “ She ” arrived just in time to obviate the necessity for a reply. When the train starts again, the third-class passengers have got on the subject of Government purchase of the Irish railways. The project meets with unanimous approval. It will “ bring money into the counthry,” and it will enable the poor man to “ thravel chape.” A halfpenny a mile is the desiderated fare. Galway fishermen are not strictly speaking Connaught cotters, but, in order to give a glimpse of a curious cluster of Connaught cots, the term may be stretched to include those farmers of the sea. On the shore of grey Galway Bay — a sandy shore littered with dark boulders draped with dark sea-weed— I stands the Claddagh, or fishermen’s colony. Some of the rudest specimens of Connaught cots are huddled together there in little lanes and cross-lanes, and dropped singly or by twos and threes upon the strand. Moss and grass and weeds grow rankly on the sodden thatch, but a good many of the hovels have no roofs. Smoke-blackened fire-places, in which no fire will ever again be kindled, yawn dismally beneath the gaunt, dark, rafterless gables. The doorless doorways and windowless window-holes are partially blocked up with stones, in whose crannies mope drag- gle-tailed fowls. Some of the still roofed huts have no tenants : their shutters (when they have shutters) are kept to with stones. Here and there a canvas-swathed boat’s mast rots upon the ground, or a boat lies bottom up- wards, and patched with tarnished tin. In front of one of the cottages a stump four-post bedstead is put out in the rain, as if in osten- tatious proof that the colony possesses such a piece of furniture. Dwarf yellow candles, , that seem made of cheese, dangle in the tiny “ shop ” window ; a wisp of straw and a sod of turf dangle outside against the door-post. A few women, with their baskets at their Good Words, Feb. t, 1869.] THE CONNAUGHT COTTER. backs, are starting for the town; where they will wander in and out of the shops, wailing their sad “ Want any herrin’ ? ” beneath the crum- bling shields that still emboss the green-grey walls of old Spanistebuilt houses. A few others are washing clothes in the sea, and wringing them out on the soppy sand. Dis- pirited men, many of whom have pawned their tackle, stand in knots under the lee of the cottages, looking in moody silence at their boats rocking idle on the side. The trawlers, they say, catch all the fish in the bay, and kill the rest, except what they drive away. The Claddagh was an important place once, with its “ king,” who se- lected lucky days for his subjects to go out fishing on; but famine, fever, and emi- gration have sadly thinned its population. It still, however, proudly boasts that an illegitimate child was never born within its precincts. Wales is not famous for the accommodation of its domestic architecture, but, after a sojourn in the Irish bogs, an Englishman feels that he has dropped back into civilisation when he traverses Anglesey, Caernarvon- shire, Denbighshire, and Flintshire, on his return route. The cot- tages there, whitewash- ed even on the roof, may be, in some in- stances, so far as clean- liness is concerned, but whited sepulchres ; but, at least, they look habit- able by Christians, and have the substantial “makings” of homes in them, however little their tenants may avail themselves of the same. And yet — apt as we are to talk of the overruling omnipo- tence of circumstance —in those flimsy Irish pigsties, some of the brightest domestic vir- tues flourish luxuri- antly, as if, like choice flowers or fruit, they could be forced on filth. In family affec- tion and feminine chas- tity, Ireland can chal- lenge the wide world to equal her. THE SELF-EDUCATION OF YOUNG MEN. [Good words, Feb. I( 1869. THE SELF-EDUCATION OF YOUNG MEN. gc, fillagc ^.ermon. By the REV. C. KINGSLEY. Proverbs ii. 10 — 15. The Proverbs of Solomon remind young men of wisdom — what it is, and how we' may attain it. And this is a specially fit season for such recollections. The labours of the farm are lighter than they were in summer. The days are short, the evenings long, and labouring folk have time and leisure to think, to learn; to recollect that they have souls .and minds, as well as bodies, to be fed. Many a young working man has ere now, by regular study in the long winter evenings, made himself a scholar, even a man of science ; has fitted himself for the ministry, or for some other important improvement in his station of life. O that I could see some spending their winter evenings thus, in regular and earnest study ! How gladly would I help them, how gladly direct them ! Meanwhile, all I can do is, to follow Solo- mon’s method, and try, as he tries in this chapter, to stir up some of you to incline your ears to wisdom, and apply your hearts to understanding. All I can do is, my dear young men, to tell you what wisdom will do for you, and how you may get wisdom ; and to leave it to your own reason and your own conscience to judge whether or not you will tiy to be wise. And may God, who gives wisdom, give it to you. May He make your reason sound and your conscience clear, that you may see the right, and love the right ; ana may say, “I will choose wisdom, and not folly ; light, and not darkness ; right, and not wrong.” Now, what will wisdom do for you ? She will at least keep you from bad com- pany ; “ from the way of the evil man, from the man that speaketh froward things ; who leaves the paths of uprightness, to walk in the way of darkness ■" ■ and “ from the strange woman, the stranger who flattereth with her words, who forsaketh the guide of her youth, and forgetteth the covenant of her God.” And if any of you answer, “ I do not alto- gether wish for that. What harm will a little bad company (as you call it) do me now and then, provided I have not too much of it ? ” — ■ You thereby only show how much in want of wisdom you are. For if you were but wise, and used your eyes to see what is going on I round you, you would see that bad company I is the root of all manner of bad fruit. Bad company leads to bad ways, to bad language, to bad hours, to bad debts, to bad marriages, J to bad bringing up of children, to bad con- sciences, to bad luck, and to a bad end at last. But the reason why so many young men fall into bad company, and all the bad ways which spring from it, is not, I really believe, that ! they are bad-hearted. They do not go and j say to themselves deliberately, “ I will be bad, i and I will not be good.” They fall into bad | company ; sliding and stumbling downwards, j step by step, because they are, as Solomon j says, simple and ignorant. They are simple. They want discretion, to make them discreet, that they may discern the difference between right and wrong, between their true profit and their true loss, between their true and certain safety and their true and certain danger. They are ignorant ; they want knowledge. Their brains are empty of useful information. But no man’s brains can remain empty long. If they are empty of wisdom, they will get filled with folly. If they are empty of sense, they will get filled with nonsense. If they are empty of sound understanding about things as they really are, they will get filled with unsound fancies about things as they are not. If they are empty of light, they will be filled with darkness. But if your minds — the light which is in you — be darkness, what can you do save stumble and fall ? Nothing will preserve you but discretion, says Solo- mon. Nothing will keep you save under- standing. You begin life simple and igno- rant. That is no blame to you. So did I ; so must every human being. You cannot help being simple, till you have had experi- ence to teach you discretion. You cannot help being ignorant till you have had learn- ing to teach you understanding. But if you refuse to get them, you will end by being not merely simple and ignorant, you will end by being what Solomon calls fools ; and then it were better for you that you had never been born. Now, * how is discretion to be got? By letting wisdom enter into your heart. By longing to be wise. And how is understanding to be got ? By letting knowledge be pleasant to your soul. By longing to know. You must desire to improve your heart, and 'Good Wircis, Feb. -i, 1869.] THE SELF-EDUCATION OF YOUNG MEN. so become good. You must desire to improve your head, and so become well-informed. But you must desire first to become good. That is the first and great end of life. That is what God sent you into the world for. And that is to be got by diligent prayer. The only wisdom which will make you good men and women comes from the Holy Spirit of God. But it does and will come from Him, our Lord says. “If you, being no better than you should be, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to I them who ask Flim ! ” Therefore, if any of you wish to be truly wise, wise at heart, “ wise unto salvation,” as St. Paul calls it ; if you wish to know where you are, and what you are, and what is your duty to God ; if you wish to know who God is, and who Christ is, and what is his will to you; if you wish, in one word, to learn true religion and holiness, without which no man can see the Lord — then pray for it. Pray. I do not mean merely say your prayers ; but pray. Ask God to teach you, as you would ask your parent or your schoolmaster. Ask Him, beg of Him, regularly and earnestly, to make you wise. Ask for wisdom, and you shall receive it. ; Seek for wisdom, and you shall find it. Knock at the door of wisdom, and it shall be opened I I to you. But you need not merely wisdom to cure your simplicity : you need knowledge to cure j your ignorance. Therefore get useful infor- | mation. I verily believe that a great deal of bad company, drunkenness, and folly, and sin, comes from mere want of knowledge ; from : emptiness of head. A young man or young woman will not learn, will not read, and therefore they have nothing useful or profit- able to employ their leisure hours, nothing to I think of when they are not actually at work ; I and so they run off to vain and often wicked I amusements. Gambling — what does that I ruinous vice come from, save from idleness of head — from having nothing to amuse your minds with save cards and dice ? And so — “ The devil finds some mischief still For idle hands to do.” ; Therefore, if you want to keep your brain j and thoughts out of temptation, read and ! j learn ; get useful knowledge : and all know- ! ledge — I say all knowledge — must be useful, j I care little what you read, provided you do I not read wicked books ; or what you think of, provided you do not think of sin and folly. For all knowledge must be useful, be- cause it is knowledge of God’s works. No- thing lives upon earth but what God has made. Nothing happens on earth but what God has done. So, whatever you study, you may be certain that you are studying | God’s works and God’s laws ; and they must ! | always be worth the study of rational beings ' j and children of God. Learn what you like ; i only learn ; for you are in God’s world : and, j as long as you learn about God’s world, your ! time cannot be thrown away ; you are certain to get something more of that knowledge which is power ; of that wisdom which says, “ I Wisdom dwell with prudence, and find out the knowledge of witty inventions. Counsel is mine, and sound wisdom. I am understanding. I have strength. By me kings reign, and princes decree justice. By me princes rule ; and nobles, even all the judges of the earth. Riches and honour are with me ; yea, durable riches and righteous- ness.” And now, my dear young friends, if any of you say, “ Why do you bid us to be wise ? Why do you demand Of us that we should take all this trouble to educate ourselves, over and above our daily work ? ” — My dear young friends, it is not I who ask you : it is God Himself. For what says Solomon the Wise ? He does not say merely that you are to call after knowledge, and lift up your voice for understanding. He says that you are to do so, because they are calling already to you ; because the wisdom of God, the Spirit of God, condescends to call to you, and cry, “ How long, ye simple ones, will ye love sim- plicity ? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge? Turn you at my reproof. Behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you.” Because you are men, rational beings, children of God, therefore the Spirit of God calls to you, offering to give you your share of that wisdom by which the Lord hath founded the earth, and established the heavens; of that knowledge by which He breaks up the deep, and makes the clouds drop down dew. To teach you all things needful for your souls and bodies ; to teach you the laws of this visible world, which we call knowledge and science, and the laws of the invisible and heavenly world, which we call the Gospel o.f Jesus Christ; — this, and no less than this, does God offer. And dare you refuse the offer of God ? Will you turn away, as St. Paul asks, from Christ who speaks from heaven ? When Christ offers you light, will you choose darkness? When Christ offers you wisdom, will you NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 140 (Good Words, Feb. 1 , 1&59. choose folly ? To educate yourselves to the best of your power is your duty, not to your- selves only : it is your duty to God. Do not say, “ I have no time ; I have no opportuni- ties ; I am not clever, as some are ; I. have not talents, as some have.” Are you trying to use what you have ? Remember the parable of the talent : how the lazy servant, when he hid his one talent in the earth, instead of putting it out to interest, got only blame, as a wicked and slothful servant, and the little which he had at first was taken from him. Educate yourselves, then ; train yourselves ; teach yourselves ; lest, at the last day, Christ say to you, “ I gave thee a head ; I gave thee the experience of a whole life — fifty, sixty, seventy years — to fill that head with know- ledge. What is it like now ? As empty, for all useful purposes, as the day thou wast born. I gave thee a heart. I sowed in that heart the seeds cf gracious, pure, and noble feel- ings, even the grace of my Holy Spirit. What is it like now? Worse than empty; a garden overrun with foul weeds. Thou hast let foolish lusts and evil passions grow up in it, and choke the good seed which I sowed therein. Is this all that thou hast to show me, after fifty, sixty, seventy years of life ? Thou wicked and slothful servant ! ” O that but one person would take my words to heart ! O that but one would say to himself, or herself, once for all, “I will educate myself ; I will be something worth being ; I will know something worth knowing.” For the moment (so I believe) that you made that good resolution, Christ himself would answer (as it were) in hea- ven : “ Thou longest for wisdom? Then thou shalt have thy heart’s desire. Thou wishest to know? Then thou shalt know at last. Thou wishest to be wise? Then wisdom — slowly, perhaps, but surely — shall come to> thee. I will inform thee,” saith the Lord, “ and teach thee in the way in which thou shalt go ; and I will guide thee with mine eyes.” For whensoever any one begins to educate himself, God begins to educate him. Whosoever tries to teach himself, God begins to teach him. For the Lord giveth wisdom ; out of His mouth cometh knowledge and understanding. And if God himself be our teacher, what can we do but learn ? “NOBLESSE OBLIGE.” giit (ftitjjltslj Sforg of By the AUTHOR OF “ CITOYENNE JACQUELINE.” CHAPTER V. — BARTY WOOLER MAKES A SUGGESTION. OTHER, : should like yot to have Pas ton’s wife anc daughter hen while I am a home. Pastor never goes ou himself, anc I he is busy jus now, but th< women of th< family migh come, if yoi have no objec tion.” Barty Woo] er said thes words abrupt! as he walke< up and dowi within the narrow bounds of his mother’ parlour, which looked very much as if i were a cage, and he a creature half-tamed. Yet he was stout of limb, and fair of face — full of healthy, hardy philosophy and good humour. There was no womanish intolerance about him, although when driven to express himself in Dr. Johnson’s “Well no, sir,” he would set a face of iron to his opponents. “Pure in body, and noble in soul,” yet he had that peculiar restiveness of temper by which the best conditioned Saxon may be capable of showing his descent from the Sea Dogs. “ And why should I have that poor, fret- ting creature and her fine stuck-up miss of a daughter in my house at this time of day, son Barty? They haven’t asked my price all these years, and we owe them nothing. And what has come over Caleb Paston that he cannot go out ? I have no wish to see his lantern jaws ; but has he lost the use of his limbs or his wits, or is it only that my gentle- man has grown so mighty grand ?” Thus Mrs. Wooler directly questioned her son, with an overwhelming directness, that brooked no interruption. i NOBLESSE OBLIGE. Good Words, Feb. i, 1869.] 141 It was “ like son, like mother,” in their case. Only, the strong will and racy tongue which had enabled Judith Clay, the yeo- man’s daughter, to captivate Clerk Wooler, the delicate curate, were traits which in the son had been refined and mellowed by edu- cation and contact with the world. The mother was left unmistakably the yeoman’s daughter still, while the son, with his father’s aesthetic bent grafted on his mother’s vigorous constitution, was as unmistakably a profes- sional man and a gentleman. “Perhaps because I don’t care to bear malice, mother,” Barty replied to his mother’s first question, as he pulled his reddish beard. “ You haven’t borne malice, Barty Wooler; you’ve shown that plain enough, and long enough, already ; and if ever there was a dirty dog’s trick ” “ Hush, say no more about it, mother Barty interrupted her hastily. “You never mentioned the affair to any one in Wellfield?” he added in a more anxious tone. “ Now did you, mother ? Think, and tell me, for it’s im- portant I should know,” he insisted. “ Do you think I would go to mention such a thing, son Barty?” Mrs. Wooler promptly replied. “ Think ye I would tell how my boy had been fooled by a knave ? Little good that would do. I knew a trick worth two of it. I have waited to see how long cheatery would take to choke a man, and when pride would have a fall.”' “ Easy, mother, easy,” enjoined Barty, with a gleam of mingled vexation and humour. “You don’t think so little of what I’ve done, and what I’ve come to, as to be spiteful at this date, and against a man like Paston too. Why there was no great loss suffered. I tell you, I never could have submitted and deferred to my lord and patron as he has done. To a certainty I should have broken with Brockcotes, and been on the world within six months after my promotion.” “ There was great harm done. You need not think to come over me with silly non- sense,” Mrs. Wooler rejoined. “ The theft — for it was barefaced robbery, as well as deceit — did you a world of harm when there was never a thought but what was innocent in your head.” “Well, mother, if you’ll believe me, it’s wiser to let bygones be bygones.” But Mrs. Wooler would not be put down yet. “ ‘ Have in Caleb Paston, mother ; he’s an old charity school boy, and a deal poorer than me or, ‘ Let me halve uncle Jonathan’s paints with Caleb, for it is a cruel shame to see so clever a drawer working with such beastly colours,’ was your constant cry, my lad. He ought to have been banished, if not hanged and quartered, for the evil he returned you for good. It wrecked you, say what you will ; it unsettled you for many a year and day afterwards. Careless as you make yourself seem, it put ill-blood into your heart where your native place and your fellow-townsmen were concerned. Don’t your own mother know you ? don’t she know there’s more body of you for devilry once your blood is poisoned than in a sorry knave of a Caleb Paston ten times over? It was God’s mercy and a righteous upbringing, and coming of a good kind on both sides of the house, that kept you from devilry, Barty. But you have never halted from then till now ; you have never sat down doggedly to show folk what you were made of, but have kept roving over land and sea, a rolling stone for the best of your days, till it is too late ever to be at the top of the tree, where you ought to have been.” Here Mrs. Wooler paused through sheer breathlessness ; but as Barty did not speak, and only looked at her with rueful depreca- tion, she went on : — - “ Ay, I know it’s too late. Were it not for my old uncles, the Clays, and their fortune, that you never gained or helped to gain a penny of, my big man, you would have ended nothing but a poor, stuck-in-life, flighty fool of an artist, down to the very superscription on your gravestone.” “ Like enough, mother, like enough ; and where would have been the mighty misfor- tune ? ” argued Barty, with a little of the blus- ter occasioned by the taste of sour grapes between the teeth. “If I ever believed in such rubbish as fame and glory, it looks a whole hundred years back when I try to re- call it. If I have not done my duty as I ought, and have disappointed you, I hope that I may yet atone,” he added in a lower and sadder tone. “ I don’t complain, boy,” his mother con- tradicted him ; “ you’ve been a good son to me always, — no mistake about that. It goes against the grain for either you or me to care to stand in dead men’s shoes, but you’ll be the richest man in Folksbridge yet, that will you ; and then you may follow art after your own cranky, roaming fashion, and not be a loser in your pocket leastways. But to think that of your own free will you should cross that Haman’s threshold, as you told me you did last night, is what I term not natural, and what I don’t like.” “ Now, listen a moment, mother ” NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 142 [Good Words, Feb. 1, 1869. But, before Barty could say another word, his mother was off again : — “ I don’t care what you would persuade me, my 1-ad; it isn’t for nothing that you show yourself mean-spirited. But it’s hard ; looks as if you were given over to a strong delusion to believe a lie. I cannot un- derstand it; to be made a cat’s-paw and stepping-stone once was bad enough, but to be so a second time and at your age, Barty, and for a girl ! I declare her face is as brown as if I had smeared it out of my sugar-can, like they smear the mulattoes in the Indies ; and she mince, minces her words like any affected boarding-school miss. But she has come from the boarding-school, in course, or, as good as that, from her grand uncle’s at Folksbridge, whom the brothers Clay could buy up, lodge and carriage and all, and not know themselves a bit the poorer.” “ Fie, mother, I have scarce patience to hear you.” “ But I speak truth, son Barty,” Mrs. Wooler went on; “she turns back the wisps of her hair, that lass of Paston’s, and sets up her moon of a face, as if she had nothing better given her to copy than some trollop of an immodest, light-living play-actor. Lady Dorothy, up at Brockcotes, has spoilt the girl, that’s what it is. She has had her up as a humble companion and toad-eater, and has left her a miserable effigy of a great lady of her kind, or of a fool of a lady’s-maid like Anne Thorpe’s niece.” Barty had striven to carry out his resolu- tion of being easy under his mother’s rough and trying attack. So far he had vindicated a man’s provoking sense of cool superiority and command of temper. He had raised his eyebrows, shrugged his shoulders, and even laughed outright at the thought of the brown face smeared as “ they smear the mulattoes in the Indies.” But at last his own face, massive and bronzed by exposure and the extremes of climate, contracted and gloomed while he said slowly, as if it were a warning which he desired should be laid to heart, — “ This is too bad, mother ; you are going a great deal too far. If you do not wish to oblige me by inviting Mrs. and Miss Paston to your house, decline to do so. You are mistress here, and I shall take good care not to constrain and compel you. But I will have no evil-speaking where innocent people are concerned. Mark me, I will not stay to be a party to it ; and I must say, it isn’t like you to be guilty of it.” Mrs. Wooler groaned aloud at the delibe- rate expression “ innocent people.” But whether propitiated, or touched, or cowed, she all at once became meek as a lamb, smoothed her black apron, and asserted in a tone of injured virtue/ — “ No, son Barty, I am not mistress here to the exclusion of my son’s friends. You haven’t been here so often all these years ; and I haven’t had so many opportunities of entertaining strangers for you, as to be tired out yet. You shall have what company you like, though it should be chimney-sweeps, or the horsemanship-troop in the race week. If they be but honest at the present moment, we will not say a word about the past. You shan’t have it to say that your mother stood in your j way — not though it be over her head and j heart you’re going. I will put on my best | bonnet and shawl, and go and do myself the ! honour of calling for Mr. Caleb Paston’s wife and daughter. I hope I shall behave proper before such fine folk, though we remember when the head of the house was taken from the gutter or the charity school, only too glad to sit at our fireside and borrow your leav- ings. I suppose he thought them all your leavings, Barty ; we’ll give him the benefit of j the doubt ; and I hope I know what is due j both to their house and mine, as well as to j keep a civil tongue in my head when I’m among high gentry as I never was accus- tomed to, and not affront you on your old | mother’s account.” Mrs. Wooler was in a huff again, and j whisked out of the room in as great a heat as j her portly person and stiff joints could admit, j Barty Wooler looked after her with con- flicting feelings — amusement, annoyance, and the gratification of a point gained strug- | gling for mastery in his comely English face. But when the door was closed, there came over the kindly countenance the look it had worn I when the man was driven over land and sea, j and found no city to dwell in, no resting- I place where it was worth while to curb his j grudging, growling fastidiousness — that look of chronic doubt and dreary incredulity, of impatience and disgust, which once settled on an Englishman’s face, the palm is wrested from his sound judgment, and the patient islander becomes renowned among his conti- nental brethren as the most impracticably eccentric and splenetic of men. “ The old lady is right,” thought Barty Wooler moodily; “my schoolboy friendship for Caleb Paston, and what it led to, marred what I might have been. No great thing after all, I dare say ; we are all too fond of sound- ing jeremiads over what we might have been Good Words, Feb. i, 1869.] NOBLESSE OBLIGE. I 43 t Even Paston is not free from it, as I saw last night ; and what a spare, shy, morose ! subject he has shrunk and dried into, in | the midst of all his prosperity ! his wife, too, 1 a peevish cipher, like nothing in the world but a superannuated canary. — But Phoebe j is worth an unconditional surrender of arms in deadlier feuds than ours, and faint ! heart never won fair lady. Therefore I go in for my mother entertaining the Paston womankind as an overture in form. I can trust the old woman not to show the rising of her gorge too plainly. She will do the thing handsomely when she is to do it. I shall bring her round in time ; I have no fear of that, any more than that she will not be as fond of Phoebe for a daughter in reality, as she dislikes her for a daughter in prospect. If I did not credit this much, I could hardly take it upon me to go the length I am prepared to go, not even with the proverbial blindness of passion. And I conclude I am in love, with the desperate madness of an old stager, so that in one sense it is all up with me if I don't succeed.” Within her son's recollection, Mrs. Wooler had always lived in the same small house, built a little back from the High Street of Wellfield. It was separated from the street by a mouldy paved court, which was fenced by a low wall parapet and railing, and orna- mented with a single row of dropsical mil- dewed laburnums. In an artist's inspiration, Barty had improved matters by a free impor- tation of common ferns, which lent to the cellar-like court the cool depths of green and luxuriance of vegetation that belong to the neighbourhood of a woodland spring. Even a pleasant irregular innovation of this kind Mrs. Wooler would not have tolerated from any hand less privileged than her son’s. To a woman brought up as Mrs. Wooler had been, in the space and liberty of a great fann-house, her entrance into this little home at the commencement of the single year of Clerk WoolePs married life was an en- trance into genteel imprisonment; yet she had continued in it throughout her long widowhood, preserving the superiority of its slender claim to retirement. This she did at first by heroic motherly struggles for the child Barty's sake. To occupy a house capped and crowned even with a row of dwindling, pining trees, formed an important item in settling the scale of social rank at Wellfield. In other respects the trees were of no account to anybody, either in the way of beauty or of use. They only flowered in a sickly, straw-coloured fashion. They served as a noted resort for wasps in early autumn, while their poor leaves did not afford Mrs. Wooler a shelter from the profane gaze of the vulgar. Indeed, as long back as Barty's memory could retain images, it had held that of his mother seen through these branches, her head in its old-fashioned lace cap, elevated above the half Venetian blind. It was a high head, and a stiff neck of its kind, not the less so that a slight affection of palsy, dating from a considerable number of years back, gave it a tremulous motion, the vibration of which seemed to be controlled and kept down, as it were, by force of will. But her little infirmity did not impair the zest with which Mrs. Wooler pursued the sole ex- citement of her life. This was looking out for, catching in the act, and condemning to summary chastisement, the street boys who chalked her wall with offensive caricatures of “ pleece- men” and Mother Hubbards; or flung up their caps among her scanty boughs ; or, resting their message baskets on her parapet, swung upon her railings. It was not that Mrs. Wooler had an aversion to boys in the abstract, or that she could not put up with them better than with girls, or was otherwise than liberal to them in an aristocratical way. But she had grand ideas of discipline ; the daughter of a race of yeomen, she had as mortal a hatred to trespassers as ever was exhibited by the lords of the manor whose acres her father had tilled. The laburnums and the court, moreover, had all along been part of Mrs. Wooler’s cre- dentials. Having obtained these, she was minded not to part with them, but to hand them down intact to her child, notwithstand- ing that all the privilege which they had secured for her had been admittance to the borderland of the better society of Wellfield. She could not do more than keep her own in the earlier days of her possession, and she had been obliged for a period of years to eke out her means, by having the successors of Mr. Wooler as lodgers, and by working for her uncles the great linendrapers in Folks- bridge. Then she was relieved from the support of Barty, and received assistance from him instead of giving it to him. At last the old bachelor brothers Clay came round, after having been twice so deeply offended as to withdraw their favour — first, by the mar- riage of their blooming niece Judith to the sickly, scholarly curate, and again by Barty Wooler's taking it upon him to make his own choice of a profession, and fixing on what was wont to be considered the unthrifty, poverty- stricken profession of an artist. NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 144 [Good Words, Feb. 1, 1869. CHAPTER VI. — MRS. WOOLER RECEIVES HER GUESTS. It was a characteristic of Mrs. Wooler, that having once made up her mind, she never I lost time. So she at once made her way ! to Wooers’ Alley. Nor did she fail in her ! overture, which was accepted with only the I affectation of a demur from Mrs. Paston. Men and women are constantly finding themselves on the verge of situations which they never expected to fill. To the help- less chagrin of Phoebe, she saw that she would have to make her first appearance with her mother at an evening party, in the labur- num-supported house in the High Street, to the edification of the W ellfield world. Mrs. Wooler and her maid-servant, Becky, were engaged all the day in preparing for the party. The event was improved by the inauguration of a thorough cleansing of the house, from garret to cellar. It is doubtful whether this was done with a grim intention of making Barty pay a small instalment of the price of his folly, or as a practical example to Becky of the duty of avoiding whited sepulchres — a text on which Page 141. Mrs. Wooler was prone to hold forth. As she finished the new bag for the onions in the back kitchen, and as Becky completed the scouring beneath her bed, Mrs. Wooler ex- cused herself for any irrelevancy in her pre- sent preparations, by observing that nobody could tell what might happen. Thus she escaped all leisure for fretting, if she ever fretted over what was inevitable. | As for Becky, who was cast in a softer mould than her mistress, and could have prized a few minutes’ leisure, she had, simul- taneously with the first ring of the bell, to shake herself into her company gown with a gulp of haste, and to poise her cap behind her ears, her face glowing and shining from exercise and brown soap, in place of enjoying the doubtful liberty of sighing over her con- fiscated finery of glass ear-drops and immense crinoline. Notwithstanding Mrs. Wooler’s extensive preparations, nothing was done for partial effect. To Barty’s relief the two parlours remained in the state in which they always were. There was hardly a distinguishing mark between the two— unless the distinc- Cood Words, Feb. i, 1869.] NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 145 tion of colour which marked off the Vicar of Wakefield’s blue bed from his brown. There was nothing positive to indicate dining- room or drawing-room, — neither in sideboard nor lounging-chair, nor in the absence or the presence of ornament. The most definite marks were Mrs. Wooler’s utilitarian work- table, and an equally heavy, unpretending bow-pot, filled with a pot-pourri of rose leaves and lavender, smelling more of the fruit of cloves than of flower blossom. Even the terms “best” and “worst” became vague where everything was well preserved alike. Mrs. Wooler’s rooms resembled the old stage of the old theatre, where the character and the interest of each scene were to be derived from the occupants and their intercourse, the players and their play. Phoebe, in sp'ite of her prejudice, gave a kind of consent to this austerity of detail, on account of the unities being preserved. She was sensible that there was a greater like- ness between it and the stately propriety and unconsciousness of Brockcotes, than could be detected between the chambers of the castle and the theatrical artisticness of the painter’s house in Wooers’ Alley, or the heap of elegant but incongruous surroundings at Garnet Lodge. She was aware of a harmony, not displeasing to the eye, in the primitive, unpretending baldness of Mrs. Wooler’s par- lour. She felt it was like the bareness of an upland which caps the sky. But Phoebe’s perception was little better than a truthful instinct. There was not enough noblesse oblige in her class to enable her to get over the disadvantage of being the Woolers’ guest against her will. She knew that it would be a breach of fair convention- ality to behave otherwise than what her mother called “ prettily” to her enemy in her enemy’s own house. Beyond that trifle she contributed nothing which she could help to what should have been life in its higher and purer dramatic element in the Woolers’ unsophisticated sitting-room. It need not be wondered at, then, that no sooner had she passed between the laburnums, crossed the flags of the court and the threshold, been welcomed by Mrs. Wooler with stern courtesy, and by her son with what was in the circum- stances quite comprehensible but quite deli- cate cordiality, than Barty saw that he had taken another false step in dragging Phoebe to the house which owned him as master. But though Barty was notably rash and blundering, he had one superiority from his years. He was not tempted to throw up his chances for one false step more or less : he was X— 10 rather inclined to contest his chances inch by inch, and make the best or the worst of them. Phoebe behaved prettily, yet she was any- body but herself, as she sat there nailed to her mother’s side, mincing her words, as his mother had said she did. In such a position Mrs. Wooler in her day would have been either stonily silent or outrageously saucy. Mrs. Paston at her marriage had been a very pretty woman, as an artist’s bride is given to be. She had not been brown like Phoebe, but golden-haired, with hyacinth blue eyes and apple-blossom cheeks. But her beauty had not worn well ; her eyes had waxed weak ; her maiden blush had become what painters term “ streaky,” and her golden hair had become wonderfully like an orange wig under her blonde head-dress. After Mr. Paston had ceased to attire her as a lay figure, and to tell her what she ought to wear, she had adopted the utmost insipidity in the style of her dress. Now that Phoebe was grown up, Mrs. Paston had a daughter’s taste and conscience to appeal to; but she com- plained, inconsistently enough, that Phoebe had a mind of her own on these points. Mrs. Paston sat there with her . cap fallen back from her out-of-date orange head, and with her tintless, shapeless, - yet handsome gown dropping down about her flat body. But she did not look more out of place beside the strong, rasping life of Mrs. Wooler in her thick, black silk gown with its old- fashioned folds, than did Phoebe in her girlish labyrinth of pique and nervous affectation. Nor did Phoebe present a less broad contrast to four out of the eight Miss Medlars, who were present in exuberant health and spirits. The Miss Medlars were the daughters of the first attorney in Wellfield. They were all grown up, and all ready to marry. But not one of them had so much as entered on the necessary preliminary of being courted. The low and vulgar Wellfield wags had multiplied the number of the Miss Medlars to forty — “ the forty Miss Medlars.” Then, by a natural wicked association, they had changed the Miss Medlars into thieves, — “ the forty thieves,” innocent though they were of stealing men’s hearts. The Miss Medlars were tall, stout, passably good-looking girls. Their bane was plethora in constitution as well as in number. Few men could serenely contemplate a wife of eleven-stone weight, any more than thirty-nine sisters-in-law. The Miss Medlars had this evening armed themselves for conquest. They came in white grenadines with blue Swiss bands, and 1 46 NOBLESSE OBLIGE. [Good Words, Feb. 1, 1869. very short sleeves which they filled to over- flowing, as some children do. Like children too, their massive white arms and hands showed only dimples, where in a less generous formation bones would have been. They had huge chignons of abundant hair — a ruddier bronze in hue than Barty Wooler’s. Beside so much warmth of colour, Phoebe Paston’s hair took an olive hue like her eyes. Whether or not it was because Barty had never shown the slightest inclination towards any one of the forty, Mrs. Wooler maintained to herself that she would have been better pleased if he had sought to marry the whole forty open, dash- ing girls, than cast sheep’s eyes on a demure, deceitful minx like Phoebe Paston. Mrs. Wooler was somewhat less partial to the two Miss Staceys, whom she called in her old expressive vernacular “ dawlish young madams.” Not that they were not affable. They were only too affable for the daughters of a retired Folksbridge merchant, who had further refined his family by retiring from the world altogether, and leaving to a widow and co-heiresses a modest amount of fortune. This was, happily, sufficient to allow them to play at being country gentry in the fancy cottage of Exwood, about half a mile from Wellfield, where they kept a one-horse chaise, and hired, for mingled protection and service, one man-servant in addition to their maid-servants. This man-servant was a sort of Jehu and Adam in one, and it was princi- pally in right of the one-horse chaise and the Jehu- Adam, that the two Miss Staceys had arrived at the distinction of meeting Miss Adelaide Coke, on such occasions as choral practising, and sewing mornings at the Rectory, just as Miss Adelaide Coke met Lady Dorothea at county balls. The Miss Staceys were may-poles of girls, with every- thing about them elongated, even to their faces and hands— involving such tenuity that it reminded Barty Wooler of the uniform trait of the Virgin’s figure in the Byzantine pictures, and the far from exhilarating impres- sion of imbecility it conveyed. Miss Rowe, the only remaining lady, was “a well connected person,” as she would have specially insisted on describing herself. She had had a brother a major in the army, and an uncle a commodore in the navy. She was past the age of probable conquests, past the age even of forlorn hopes directed against the elderly bald-headed widower, Mr. Moss- j man, who kept Barty Wooler in countenance, j the only other man among so many women ; 1 but though past schemes and disappoint- j rnents, she was not past parties. She was in that happy tranquil St. Martin’s summer when an invitation meant an unmistakable opportunity to wear her moire, her rings and brooches. One of these last was a minute ship spun in filigree ; another a small model of a cannon. She wore an elaborate head- dress of feathers, flowers, and family lace. Her highest pleasure was to sit in a warm, well-lit room, with the covers off the furniture, and to eat and drink all the delicacies of the season ; play a few rubbers of good, serious whist; and receive and impart the most whetting scandals going in the neighbour- hood. At Miss Rowe’s age there was no disturbing chance of important conse- quences lurking behind an invitation, unless indeed it might be the risk of catching cold, and Miss Rowe could Jake precautions in wraps. She had reached ’the period of life when bosom friends are generally interpreted by tangible tough pieces of knitted wool, and when a prudence cap, an old velvet bonnet, and a thick veil, are more in request for an evening walk, than an airy, cashmere hood in the loveliest moonlight. Mrs. Wooler had some genuine respect and regard for Miss Rowe, but there was still a rivalry of ancient standing between the two, which had begun in the early preference of Clerk Wooler for Judith Clay. The weapons of the strife were, on the one hand, rigid yeo- man principles and great trade expectations ; and on the other, comparative laxity of tone, and superior birth and breeding. In moments of provocation, Mrs. Wooler, who relished Miss Rowe’s society well enough, was yet guilty of speaking of her to Barty as another Jezebel and Delilah up in years. Gentlemen were not, like ladies, to be picked up on a moment’s notice at Wellfield. Married men thought they discharged their duty fully, when they did the honours of their own houses. Young men, eligible partners either for an evening or for life, were so scarce that not more than one could be ex- pected to appear, and he was made much of on an ordinary occasion. It is not surprising, then, that Mrs. Wooler had been able to do no more than procure Mr. Mossman, the mildest, most inoffensive specimen of his kind. During his late wife’s lifetime he had depended on her fortune, and had found his chief employment in escorting her, and carry- ing her basket with her head-dress when she went out to tea. Perhaps it was because of this that he had inherited, along with his widower’s annuity, a free pass to all such parties. From long practice he was as well qualified to speak on the markets, the NOBLESSE OBLIGE. Good Words, Feb. i, 1869. 147 prospects of gardens, the health of children, the moral condition of servants, as any lady in the land. The ladies called him a great acquisition ; but the men groaned over him. Widow and maiden atoned to him, however, by chirping and twittering round him with antique airs and palpitations and subdued jealousies. Mrs. Woolerand Miss Rowe were two exceptions, — merely tolerating their ad- mirer ; for in the perversity of mankind, or in the fate which continued to pit the ancient women against each other, they were the forbidden fruit after which Mr. Mossman had a meek hankering. There was an absence of the Church ele- ment at Mrs. Wooler’s party. This, however, was not from any disrespect entertained by Mrs. Wooler towards the clergy. She had been brought up in the faith of Church and State. She had a lofty veneration for the very boards of her Prayer-book, and a tenderness half fond, half fierce, for the cloth to which Clerk Wooler had belonged. But to tell the truth, there was, owing to various I causes, an absence of the Church element, not to say of Christianity, in those walks of Wellfield society which did not include the dissenting interest. The vicar of St. Basil’s — a distant connexion of the Exmoor family — was an old bachelor, aristocratic, learned, and dry, who insisted on performing the duties of his parish himself, without the aid of a curate, except when he made use of Lady Dorothea. The rector of St. Mary’s was elderly, as well as dull-witted in his con- scientiousness — a man who employed slow, drudging curates like himself, and whose child- less wife was a bona fide invalid. There was not even a feud between St. Basil’s and St. Mary’s. Among the resolutely cheerful guests, Phoebe sat with her black dog on her back, irreconcilably hostile. She was intensely conscious of the fact that the Medlars and the Staceys were watching every tittle of her intercourse with Barty Wooler. She knew that the interest of a rumoured marriage between her and Barty, afforded their neighbours an absorbing study, with the added zest arising from disparity of years, as well as from great prospects on the one side, and all the coyness and reluctance of a spoilt girl on the other. Such lively speculations, in the midst of the envy they could not fail to excite, were a price- less treasure in the stagnation of Wellfield. Miss Rowe would pop them newly gathered into her scandal-bag, and make two or three additional cosy parties out of them. Had Phoebe been of a temper and an age for bland philosophy, this reflection ought to have consoled her; but it did not. Barty Wooler had causelessly brought upon her such mortification and confusion of face, that she felt she could not stop till she hated him. Mrs. Wooler, as she sat behind her tea-urn, took in the spectacle with a shade of ironical satisfaction. She had warned Barty, and he would not listen — see what came of it. Here was the pert, boarding-school miss, Caleb Paston’s daughter, turning up her fine nose, if not even losing her head, at this misplaced homage of her betters, whom she ought to serve humbly with all she has. Mrs. Wooler had a strong sentiment of justice, and a supreme faith in her own instincts, which greatly helped her to bear the sight of Barty’s discomfiture and a Paston’s heartless arro- gance. But she was somewhat enraged with the fool and baby of a girl, who at the outset, and before the world, scouted Barty, answered him in snappish monosyllables, and looked another way when she spoke to him. This was enough to make Barty’s old wound burn again. The lines round his mouth drew together and hardened with yearning and pain, although, it must be added, with a little tormenting sense of diversion, which would not have laughed out at him under similar provocation when he was twenty years younger. He was older by a lifetime than Phoebe, and could easily read her self-will. But it did not shake him in his reasonable conviction that he — a man in his strength — was a fit mate for her, could he but take her fancy. CHAPTER VII. — AFTER TEA. Barty Wooler had heaps of portfolios, and notwithstanding his being a professional man, he was not chary in vouchsafing their contents to his acquaintances for their inspec- tion. But he had a way of his own in doing it. He made light of his work, touching only on its defects. He went on turning it into ridicule, till the simple, matter-of-fact Well- field people did not know how to take such treatment. They were provoked, as at the exposure of an imposition vouchsafed by the impostor himself. “That group of muleteers is about the most meretricious of all the meretricious affairs I ever perpetrated,” Barty would con- fess candidly. Or he would explain, “ I painted these rocks when I was waiting for a ferry-boat, which came too soon in the end, and so you observe I threw into the water a monotonous bed of slate, like the seas of lava in the moon.” Or he would vary his NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 148 [Good Words, Feb. r, 1869. confession with, “ I hope you like my willow- tinted oak trees. I remember I was eager after the effect of a silvery green foliage against an opal sky, and you see my little liberty with one half of the oaks saved me the trouble of drawing a batch of willows.” This behaviour came from the bad side of Barty’s character; and Phoebe Paston, who was accustomed to hold his profession in honour, had thought so badly of his tone in speaking of it, that she had quarrelled with him about it when the two were free to dispute. “ You are ashamed of being a painter, sir,” she had said, “ as some writers are ashamed of being literary men.” “ No, Miss Paston,” he had soberly denied the charge ; “ I must let you have a glimpse into the real state of the case — I am ashamed of my own shortcomings.” Then Phoebe, having an idea how much had been expected of him, and how he had unaccountably fallen short of the goal, judged that he was self-condemned, and in the abund- ance of her youthful generosity was sorry for him. But to-night, when he tossed about his landscapes, — most of which Phoebe had seen before, — and scoffed at them, for the benefit or the bewilderment of his audience, he got no quarter from her. Certainly there was no lack of variety either in subject or in treatment. There were sketches of Italian pines and poplars ; Dutch summer-houses and ferry-boats ; Ger- man bits of forest and sandy road ; French vistas of trellised vines and cherry trees, with pepper-boxed chateaux at the end ; glimpses of Indian rice-fields, and bamboo planta- tions ; and South American baobabs, and wrought-out silver mines. Phoebe had heard her father speak in high terms of Wooler’s masterly sketches. She herself had sufficient familiarity with art, though without hereditary genius, to see that the drawing was bold and true, the colouring harmonious and vigorous, sometimes wonder- ful in its flashes of insight. But all were mere sketches, hardly studies even. They were slight, hasty, often unfinished. They showed nowhere brooding forethought, nor anxious care in design and execution. On the contrary, they betrayed sloth, trifling, recklessness, and careless sin against know- | ledge, with the corresponding vice of auda- j cious license in crowding figures, and massing | and contrasting tints to hide the absence of sterling qualities. Phoebe knew another sort of workman and another sort of art— an art so full of worship and lowliness, that each touch was a prayer ; an art pursued, too, with such longing and striving after the ideal, and against such baffling infirmities and obstacles, that the pursuit meant heavy toil and bitter pain. Yet, to him who followed it, it was dearer than anything else, unless it were the love of his only child — infinitely dearer than rest and ease, than peace and health. It was like a fire in the bones, — something to be looked at with an approach to awe, to be mourned for at times as if it were a possession, and to be gloried in because it constituted a noble career. Mr. Paston was not a very original painter. His inspiration was slow, his work plodding. He had the defects and the excel- lences which one expects to find in a rarely endowed and well-instructed woman. His genius was not creative but descriptive; still his work had a finish, a faithfulness, a delicacy, and a tenderness which no intelli- gent man or woman could fail to appreciate. To Phoebe it seemed that the result was produced by the draining of drop after drop of the artist’s life-blood. Well might Phoebe decline to have any- thing to do with what seemed to her a heart- less, light-minded exhibition. She had been offended before ; and she was as much affronted now as if she had listened to a scurrilous jest on a holy life. So far as numbers were concerned, Barty Wooler might not have missed Phoebe’s ap- proval. With the exception of Mrs. Wooler, who was still “on hospitable thoughts in- tent ; ” of Mrs. Paston, who was tired of the subject ; and of Miss Rowe, who was a little out of sorts at the loss of her whist, the company gathered round their host while he acted as showman. They elected him their painter, their hero, no matter how he might jeer and sneer. The Miss Staceys bent like willows over the table, giggled at the very graveyard of Scutari, wondered how he could do anything and everything — put in a tree or manage a stone. In their own eyes the Staceys were, without doubt, far above the social rank of artists ; but they had just enough sense and experience to guess that it would be extremely difficult for them to meet with husbands of what they considered their rank in life, since they had not such fortunes as would bribe needy officers or small sprigs of the aristocracy. They had learnt from Miss Coke that art was more genteel, although less remunerative, than trade. They believed, moreover, that Lord Wriothesley was an amateur artist, and mixed somewhat freely with professional men at . “ NOBLESSE OBLIGE.” Good Words, Feb. i, 1869.] NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 149 home and abroad. Barty Wooler himself might be classed as an amateur artist when once he had entered on the Messrs. Clay’s riches. Nay, he might then ignore the source of his funds, by sinking them in the purchase of an estate, and subsiding gracefully into a country gentleman with an elegant taste for the fine arts. The Miss Staceys had thus wit to contemplate possibilities. Neither did they neglect to take into account and give due weight to Barty Wooler’s handsome per- son and gentleman-like attributes. They had far more worldly wisdom than that brusque bundle of airs, Phoebe Paston. They were not many years older than her, yet they did not think Wooler a day too old for them, though they would never have ceased to feel that they were condescending to the painter, and would have been mortally ashamed, as well as mortally afraid, of the plain tart old woman, his mother. Milly Medlar, though she knew no more of pictures than the top from the bottom, deliberately sat down to the task of examin- ing every sketch. She went into the business hilariously and hopefully too, although she had done her hair, and shaken out an even- ing dress similar to this grenadine, a thousand and one times without producing any com- mensurate result. She praised right through the portfolios without a particle of discrimi- nation — accumulating a pile of rubbishy, false phrases of admiration. Dora Medlar sang second to her sister’s unqualified approval in a piano-pianissimo, which was almost refreshing, and sounded nearly sincere after what had gone before. As for Bella Medlar, her line was that of romping, quizzing coquetry. She made as flagrant pretences to criticism as Milly did to flattery, all with the object of making Barty exert himself to do what men are not usually slow to do — prove himself in the right, and her in the wrong. It was an ingenious, in- sinuating game, even when coarsely played ; and Bella, though the least comely and the least amiable of the Medlars, had been the most frequently on the verge of having a lover. “I am sure that square tower is askew, Mr. Wooler. I declare it gives me a crick in the neck to look at it,” cried Bella. “ Oh, Bella !” protested Milly and Dora, for Bella was the wit of the family. The tactics of the Medlar girls did not clash. However much they might have set their hearts on being parted and scattered to the four winds for the last dozen years, they were more united than the stuck-together Staceys. “ Do me the favour to look at my mother’s alabaster candlestick from the same point of view, Miss Bella, and tell me if it gives you another crick in the neck,” urged Barty, with his cynical humour. “ Good gracious ! the candlestick is awry now. Mr. Wooler, you are a wizard. Surely you must have learned the black art in your travels. Miss Clarissa Stacey, keep away from him ; he is what the Scotch call * no canny.’ I am dying with fright of him.” All this was like “idle tales” to Barty; al- though it did not irritate and exasperate him so much as it would have done Caleb Paston. But he felt the evening drag wearily, while Phoebe stood apart and said nothing — her brown face, which he had seen all aglow as only brown faces can glow, now cold and blank. “Why don’t you paint men and women, and not stocks and stones, Mr. Wooler?” in- quired Miss Rowe. “ Because I have not found men and women so safe and sure an investment, Miss Rowe.” Then, as the girls round him clamoured in opposition to this statement, he went on : “ They are not so kind in bestow- ing their best upon poor sinners of men and painters, though I dare say it is the fault of the men and painters as well as their mis- fortune. But I do paint men and women, if you please, Miss Rowe. Do you not call these fishermen and hop-gatherers men and women ? I hope so, for I do.” “ Ah, yes ; but I mean men and women doing something which tells a story plainly, as in Mr. Paston’s pictures — historical paint- ing and genre painting, as I think you call it.” “ So you would not call the figures in Nicolas Poussin’s and Rubens’s landscapes men and women?” persisted Wooler. “ I know nothing about Nicolas Poussin, and not much about Rubens, except that he was a great, gross, improper sort of fellow, whom I should not care to speak of before these girls,” Miss Rowe answered, in a loud aside, and with commendable strength of mind and coolness. “ I wonder the family up at Brockcotes are so fond of Rubens,” Miss Rowe re- sumed. “ Yet I must confess my brother the major, who was at Brussels — or Antwerp, was it ? — and acquainted with Rubens’s masterpieces, never would hear a word said against him : ‘ A free man with his brush, Mill,’ he used to allege — the major always contracted my name Mildred into Mill, telling me flatly, for he was an outspoken man the i5° NOBLESSE OBLIGE. [Good Words, Feb. i, 1869. major, that I was too plain-headed for a Milly, — ‘ a free man with his brush, but, Lord love you, a giant at his frolics/” “ Miss Paston knows more about the Brock- cotes galleries than any of us,” suggested Miss Stacey, inquisitively ; “ don’t you, Miss Pas- ton? It is in your way; at least, in Mr. Paston’s. Has he been painting any of his charming pictures for the Earl lately?” “ Papa is generally painting for the family one way or another,” answered Phoebe, quietly; “ taking portraits, or making duplicates for Swinely, when he isn’t doing anything ori- ginal.” “ Dear ! to think that Lord Exmoor keeps an artist !” exclaimed Lucy Stacey, in the very tone in which she would have announced her amazement at his Lordship’s keeping a dwarf or a jester ; “ and no doubt Mr. Paston will command the Marquis of Fairchester’s patronage. What a lucky man Mr. Paston has been !” “I don’t call it luck altogether,” Phoebe spoke up, stoutly, “ nor favour either. Papa gets a ready sale for his pictures when he sends them elsewhere.” “ Merit would be the right word, Miss Paston,” interposed Barty, decidedly. . But Phoebe was infatuated in her prejudice, and resented Barty’s freedom even in agreeing with her to applaud her father. “ Did you ever happen to see your papa’s first picture for Lord Exmoor?” inquired Miss Rowe, with some curiosity. “It was the picture of Lord Thomas, who was the greatest prodigal and the most gallant man I have heard of among the Latimers. He is represented as coming back to put down the Popish rioters, and buttoning his coat or knotting his cravat, I forget which, to hide the stain of his wound, until the fatted calf should be killed and eaten, — that is, till the great breakfast to the retainers and neigh- bours should be served, and all the toasts drunk, and thanks returned for the family de- liverance and reconciliation, — when he could call for his bed to be made, that he might lie down and sleep without the plague of waking. I remember the picture made a great noise at the time, because the subject was a grand in- cident in the Exmoor family history, although not very well known. People had been shy of alluding to it when it happened, I suppose, so it had dropped out of mind. Llowever, it w r on the entire approbation and support of the old Earl, one of your modish noblemen, who was keen on ancient tapestry and Dutch tiles and mosaics dug up at Pompeii, or any toy in vogue at the time. You must remem- ber something of the picture of Lord Thomas, Mr. Wooler, though you were little more than a boy when it was done?” Barty stooped over a portfolio, and waited for Phoebe to reply first to Miss Rowe’s double question. Mrs. Wooler sat bolt upright, sniffing the air, and twirling her thumbs. “Yes, I have seen the picture,” Phoebe affirmed, without the least reluctance. “Papa sets no store on it now, though it was of great consequence to him at the time ; it is crude, of course, but I like it.” Barty Wooler looked up quickly as if he were going to speak, but he changed his mind and said nothing. Miss Rowe, too, looked all round her, with an aroused comprehensive glance. She had not had malice aforethought, but now a recol- lection flashed upon her which she could not help coupling with the expression on the Wooler faces before her. There had been a pro- tracted coolness between the Woolers and the Pastons, long preceding the present extension of the olive branch. So far as Miss Rowe knew, there had never been a satisfactory explanation of the affair. As the great gossip of the town, Miss Rowe now felt it a duty which she had neglected too long, to sift the old quarrel to the bottom, notwithstanding that the parties most concerned seemed disposed to let it lapse into oblivion. It was really from a sense of duty, and from what might be called professional pride of character, that Miss Rowe was induced to prosecute the investi- gation. She was not a radically ill-natured woman. In spite of some rankling at the loss of her evening’s whist, and a distinct impression that Judith Clay and her |son, as well as the Pastons, — all alike upstarts in the Wellfield world, — would be none the worse of being taken down a peg or two in their own and the public’s estimation, she did not enter on the work maliciously. The way she went about it was to offer a gratuitous and hypo- critical apology for the questions she had been asking, which was a thousand times worse than the slip of the tongue which afforded the opportunity for making it. “ I beg your pardon, perhaps I ought not to have alluded to the Lord Thomas story on canvas. It has just occurred to me that the picture was done in competition for Lord Exmoor’s favour, and that Mr. Wooler’s name : was among those of the competitors. But what a boy you must have been then, sir, to make such an attempt ! ” “Not such a boy. I was nineteen; only Good words, Feb. i, 1869.] NOBLESSE OBLIGE^ 1 5 i some five * years younger than Paston, who was the successful competitor. But, perhaps, you are not aware, Miss Rowe, though you seem to remember so much, that I withdrew from the competition before the decision.” Phoebe’s eye and ear were quick to seize on the clouded brow and the asperity of the tone ; it pained her to receive a hint of her father’s friend having borne a grudge, and nourished a petty spite and vindictiveness against him all these years. She had heard of the loss of a college-prize wrecking a lad’s future career; but she could not think how defeat on a fair field should have so told on the frank, strong man who now stood before her. Inadvertently she stared at Barty until he looked up and directly met her gaze. He read its meaning, and with a fiery flush through his bronzed skin, seemed about to address her in indignant refutation of the unspoken accusation. But he changed his mind a second time the same moment, and diverted the current of conversation. “Do you go often to Brockcotes, Miss Paston? Isn’t it horribly irksome to be lifted up among the gods?” Phoebe, at once recovering herself, gave no other response than a shake of her head and a decided “ No.” Mrs. Paston here came to her help, answer- ing for her, with a half simpering, half peevish vanity, “ I don’t think it is at all irk- some to Phoebe, she is so well accustomed to it. I don’t care for it myself, because I never know exactly how to behave ; whether to offer to shake hands or to sit down before I am asked, or how to address the Earl and the Countess, — I mean how often I should say my Lord and my Lady, and if Lady Dorothea is as much entitled to be my-ladied as her mother. Won’t it be a confusion between my Lord the Earl and Lord Wriothesley when he comes home. You know, what with the university and his regiment, he has not lived here since he grew up. He was not even at home for the great fete and dinner when he came of age ; he was forced to be with his regiment at the camp in Ireland at the time. Only think how awkward it would have been if war had broken out, and the only son and heir of Lord Exmoor had got to go to it, and be killed among all the common soldiers ! No wonder the Earl has made him sell out on account of his duties and honours at home. When I go to Brockcotes I can never get rid of the idea that I shall do something wrong. Mr. Paston, he won’t take the trouble to show me beforehand, and Phoebe professes she don’t know neither what is to come. But she is used to it all, and don’t mind the grandeur. The Countess, for as proud a woman as she is, is quite kind to Phoebe.” “ For my part I shouldn’t fancy such un- equal intercourse agreeable,” Barty took up the subject; “not that I see such a pro- digious inequality except in territorial posses- sions, and any man with a heavy purse may attain to them.” “ Oh, Mr. Wooler ! ” at least two voices broke in. “ Now, you old Wellfield people, pray don’t set me down as leveller, chartist, socialist, if such ill-names yet exist among you,” Barty argued. “ I know you used to hang dogs with them an age ago when I was a young- ster, as Miss Rowe may remember. I should like to know what deed your oracular mediocre Earls of Exmoor and their im- perious Countesses have done to entitle them to immortality and boundless sway over men’s minds ?” This outburst took the company com- pletely by surprise. It fell like a bomb- shell, which did not hit anybody in particular, but raised a cloud of confusion and dismay. It struck at the very foundations of Wellfield society. Wooler enjoyed the sensation — it was a refreshment to him after having been worried and stung. His only doubt was whether he might not pay too dear for his pastime. But he was not too old for mis- chief, nor nearly too old for waxing dogged and defiant under injury. “Has the present Earl merged into the queer old fogie he threatened to be when he was Lord Wriothesley?” he questioned carelessly. “He had a habit of going a- fishing in a Quaker’s hat, and of sitting cross- legged to read his letters on the steps of that precious encumbrance of a statue to the man who, as I have heard tell, hunted over my grandfather’s farm in season and out of season, and at the same time hunted the poor old Methodist preachers out of the town. I can’t recall much about the present woman,” declared Barty deliberately — “ the Countess, I should say — save that she was a stunted fright, who brought a fresh property, and a fresh infirmity, to be handed down among the other venerable heir-looms. Have any of the young folk succeeded to the Dug- dale hardness of hearing, in addition to the blink of the Latimer eye?” “ Oh, fie, Mr. Wooler, you are too bad. How can you make such rude remarks?” was chorused in a wild flutter of half delicious terror at the profane criticism, — terror which NOBLESSE OBLIGE. i5 2 [Good Words, Feb. i, 1869. but served as a piquant encouragement from Barty’s parasites. And Barty rode his hobby hard even to hide the wound he was enduring from the undeserved scorn of Phoebe Paston, just as Lord Thomas did to hide the sudden rebellion of his sweet but hasty temper. And though in the heat of his momentary retaliation Barty was sensible that he was damaging his own cause, and hurting the girl he loved, he was only goaded on by the conviction. Phoebe, recognising the old right of patron in her father’s earliest employers, would have been single-heartedly loyal to the family at Brockcotes on that account; but the Latimers were her best friends, before even her kindred the Halls. Lady Dorothea had not merely been like a bright, particular star to her, but was something between her princess and her sister, from whom she had never swerved in her allegiance. She did not care if some people called her “ a snob ; ” but she could not bear to listen to Barty’s scornful sar- casms. There was one good thing, she did not think that when she had told her father what had been said, he would wish her to go to the Woolers’ house again to hear such words. But if men like Barty Wooler are born to fill opposition benches, women like Mrs. Wooler with yeoman blood in their veins, are born to live and die true conservatives. “ Son Barty,” said the old woman, impera- tively interrupting him, “ there is a text for- bidding to speak evil of dignities. Your father’s son ought to pay heed to what is in both collect and epistle.” “ What evil was I speaking ? Mayn’t a cat look at a king? are the patent defects of earls and countesses to be ignored ? I don’t call that, a compliment to their understand- ings, if indeed it be allowable to hint that they have understandings any more than that a queen has legs.” “ I tell you,” insisted Mrs. Wooler, not listening to him, “there are to be supe- riors and inferiors. The Bible and the Prayer-book say it, and Nature is clerk and says amen to them. I’ll have no railing, infidel speeches here, son Barty. Why, the very dogs might teach you a different lesson. Would you go to compare any mangy cur in Wellfield High Street to my father’s grey- hound Joan, that twice ran the course at Bridlepath in six minutes, and won the silver cup at Sheenbury against all the squires’ dogs in the county — old Joan did. I gave her a cup of well-creamed, strong green tea after it with my own hands, and she lapped it for her good, as wise-like as an old woman. If we are to have superiors, as is ordained, let us have them which have run the course, and for the most part gallantly, these hundreds of years, and not interlopers and whipper- snappers growing up, all along of full purses, in a night’s time like toadstools.” “ Commend me to women for bolstering up what is left of the feudal system, and the barbarous old world’s enormities and anoma- lies,” protested Barty. “And when women lay down the law on their own floors, of course men must lay down their arms.” Barty ended by submitting to necessity, not inconsiderately or untenderly, though there lurked in the tolerant kindness of his speech a grain of the contempt which so often lurks under the broad shield of protection and indulgence towards women and children. Phoebe picked up the noxious grain of stolidity and arrogance, while she utterly rejected the treasure of fondness that caused Barty Wooler to smooth his ruffled plumes and smile covertly at the solitary point of agreement between Phoebe and his mother. DEBENHAM’S VOW. Good Words, March i, 1869.] DEBENHAM’S VOW. 155 By AMELIA B. EDWARDS, Author of “ Barbara’s History.” CHAPTER XI. MUSICAL AND AESTHETIC. E Y found a little room poorly fur- nished, but brightly light- ed, the tea still upon the table, and a young lady standing by the fireplace reading. Her book lay open before her on the mantel- piece. She closed it when they came in, and received them courte- ously. Mr. Alleyne then tasted the tea, pronounced it undrinkable, rang for a fresh supply, produced a portfolio of sketches, and made his guests at home in a few moments. Archie, painfully conscious of his clump- soled boots, sat on the edge of his chair, silent and shy, lamenting the gorgeous shirt- fronts and resplendent waistcoats that he had left at home in his London lodgings. Debenham, feigning to be absorbed in the sketches, saw only Miss Alleyne. He thought he had never beheld so dainty a creature. He scarcely dared to look at her, and yet he could not keep his eyes away. She was small — very small — exquisitely pro- portioned, dark-haired, dark-eyed, with the slenderest throat, the tiniest hands, the sweet- est mouth imaginable. Her eyes were large, lustrous, “ changefulle as the winds or seas her complexion of that pure, glowing, trans- parent olive, which the French describe as the peau meridional , and which, when pale is the most pathetic, and when flushed, the most radiant in the world. But it was neither to the lustre of her eyes, nor the splendour of her skin, nor the supple grace of her figure, that Miss Alleyne owed the great charm of her beauty. It was to her smile. That smile was magical. Taken in repose, the face wore a thoughtful expression that bor- dered upon melancholy ; but the smile trans- formed it, illuminated it, flooded it like sudden X— 11 sunshine. Debenham saw it for the first time before he had been half-an-hour in her pre- sence, and it was one of her father’s sketches that called it forth. Taking the drawing from the folio — a river scene, with flat, low banks, a line of pollard willows, and a punt moored against a speary “ plump ” of bulrushes — Mr. Alleyne turned it towards her, and said : — “ Juliet, do you remember the bull ?” She had been sitting by till then, silent enough, with her face half averted, and her cheek resting on her hand ; but the flash of mirth came on the instant, lightening over every feature. “ Shall I ever forget the bull — or you,” she replied ; “ or the tragical end of the sketching umbrella ?” And then Mr. Alleyne laughed too, and told them how he had been besieged by a bull while peacefully sketching his own punt from the opposite side of the river ; and how, being unable to get at the punt and unable to swim, he had contrived to clamber up a tree, while the bull made war a outrance on the sketching umbrella. “ I never remember that adventure,” said he, “ without marvelling at my own activity.” “ If you could but have seen yourself, papa, as I saw you when I came to row you back,” said Miss Alleyne, “ perched in the tree like some strange bird, brooding over the ruins of the umbrella 1” “ If you could but have seen the bull, my love, defying it, bellowing at it, stalking round it, goring it, tossing it, trampling upon it ! It was a sight for Landseer. He was a magna- nimous bull, however, to give him his due. He respected the fine arts, and spared my sketch-book.” “ And this happened lately, on the Wye?” said Debenham ; asking the question for the sake of saying something. “Oh no ! it happened at a little place in Hertfordshire, where we spent a few days in the spring. Do you know the neighbourhood of Berkhampstead ?” The young man shook his head. “ I am quite a stranger in England,” he replied. “ I left it when a child, and only came back some eighteen months ago.” “ Then you have travelled a great deal?” “ No ; we were always at Zollenstrasse. I was educated there.” Mr. Alleyne had heard of Zollenstrasse — DEBEN LIAM’S VOW. LGood Words, March i, 1869. 154 had passed once within a few miles of the frontier — had known some one who after- wards became a professor at the Academy. This set them talking more freely ; and as Mr. Alieyne, in his airy way, asked a multi- plicity of questions, it Avas not long before Debenham had been led into an unwonted degree of expansiveness, telling his name and his profession, and even drawing, in some half-dozen sentences, a sarcastic sketch of the Grand- Ducal court, and the formal life of that self-important little capital. He de- scribed a court-day at the Residenz — the washerwomen bringing home the ladies’ flounced petticoats dangling from long poles, as if they were some kind of portentous fish just caught — the Lord High Chamberlain, in his nankeen morning-coat, trotting home, bareheaded, from Kopf the barber’s, not daring to put on his hat for fear of disturbing the hair-powder — the six tall cuirassiers, Avho Avere regularly selected from the corps de garde and transformed into footmen for the day, to swell the somewhat scanty pomp of the Grand-Ducal establishment — the old yellow chariot from the Hotel des Rois, which all Zollenstrasse wanted to hire at the same moment, and Avhich was to be seen in every part of the tOAvn at once, through- out the afternoon — the gentlemen avIio had Walked, dusting their pumps and shaking out their ruffles in the entrance-hall of the palace — the Baroness von Schlitte and the Baroness von Pfeffer squabbling for precedence in the ante-room — the Grand Duke yawning behind the plume of his cocked-hat — the Grand Duchess scolding the princesses for tittering —the gentlemen ushers and the gold sticks in waiting cutting jokes on the sly — the dust, the fuss, the flutter, the bustle that pervaded the whole town from seven in the morning till five in the afternoon ; and the relief it was to every one concerned when the gun up at the old Schloss gave notice that the Resi- denz gates were about to be closed, and the reception was over. All this he told, and told it with humour .; for Miss Alieyne, though still sitting some- what apart, listened and smiled; and each time she smiled he thought her more be- witching than before, and longed to make her smile again. Ihen the conversation drifted into more serious channels. Zollenstrasse led, some- how, to Munich ; and then they talked of German music and poetry — of Goethe, and the wonderful Weimar period — of Wagner, and King Ludwig of Bavaria. “ As for Carl August,” said Mr. Alieyne, “ he has been so effaced by Goethe that the Avorld has scarcely done him full justice. He was almost a great man.” “ Must he not have been quite great, so to* appreciate greatness?” asked Miss Alieyne. “He was certainly a magnanimous man,” said Debenham ; “ for Goethe, with his Olym- pian airs, his pomposity, and his infinite egotism, must have been a difficult person to deal Avith. Merely to have been the friend of such a man, and to have maintained that friendship unimpaired, without loss of dignity, throughout a period of fifty-five years, augurs a high degree of forbearance.” “ It was an unequal friendship, too,” ob- served Miss Alieyne. “And unequal friendships are as full of shoals and quicksands as unequal marriages,” said Mr. Alieyne, sententiously. “It Avas unequal in a manner particularly trying to the Duke,” said Debenham ; “ for all the rank was on his side, and all the fame on Goethe’s.” “Yet the Duke must have been an able man,” said Miss Alieyne. “ The Duke was a very able man,” replied her father ; “ but he was able as a statesman and reformer ; so that, his field of operation being small, his abilities went for nothing in the .eyes of the world. He must have felt this, and chafed under it ; for, after all, it is. not pleasant to be obliterated, even by the friends we love best.” “Was Mr. Blyth also a Zollenstrasse stu- dent?” asked the young lady; thinking, per- haps, that poor Archie was undergoing that very process of obliteration, and kindly trying to give him some share in the conversation. Archie blushed up to the eyes. “■:!?” he stammered. “ Oh, no. I was at Merchant Taylors.’ But I’ve been in Ger- many. I’ve been up the Rhine.” “ The one place in Germany that I have now any special desire to visit is Munich,” said the artist. “Vienna and Dresden I knoAV by heart; but the treasures of the Pinaco- thek I have yet to see. I should not wish to die Avithout having seen Titian’s 6 Presenta- tion in the Temple.’ ” “And I would give the world to hear Tannhaiiser , and see Herr Wagner !” said his daughter. “ Mr. Debenham. has, no doubt, done both, and can give us every information.” But Debenham had never been in Munich, nor, though the music of it Avas familiar to him, heard Tannhaiiser performed. He had,, however, seen not only Herr Wagner, but his eccentric friend and patron, the Ex-King of Good Words, March i, 1869.] DEBENHAM’S VOW. 1 55 Bavaria ; both having been present at one of the great Zollenstrasse festivals some three years before. “ On which occasion,” said he, “ a sym- phony of Herr Wagner’s was performed by the orchestra of the Academy ; and a more crabbed, distort, and singular composition I never took part in before or since. Yet there were wild, wonderful fragments of melody cropping up throughout it, in all sorts of unexpected places ; often quite lost to sight — buried in the heart of the score, like dia- monds in a block of quartz, and only discover- able by an adept. I remember one little passage of about four bars played by the oboe — a delicate, airy, exquisite flight of notes that haunted me for weeks after ; but it was imbedded in a crash of other instru- ments, and probably not a soul among the audience, unless it were King Ludwig, even suspected its existence.” “ Then there may really be a soul of beauty in things discordant ! ” said Miss Alleyne, smiling. “ In Wagner’s music — yes ; but you must be an analyst to find it out.” “ Is King Ludwig an analyst?” “ King Ludwig is not a Pericles, nor even a second Carl August; but he has a real knowledge and real love of art,” replied Debenham. “ Whether he is an analyst, in the technical sense, I cannot say ; but he has insight; and it needs insight to pierce the rough, and sometimes grotesque husk in which Wagner chooses to swathe his musical ideas. He has as rich a vein of mere melody as other composers, but he values it less, and employs it differently. His whole career, we must remember, is a re-action against the school of melodists— his every composition a protest against Bellini and the followers of Bellini. Like all re-actionists, however, he pushes his theoiy too far. He is not content to deny that melody is of paramount import- ance in music. He is not content to esta- blish melody and harmony on a footing of equality. He insists on degrading melody. He uses it as a mere accessory — as the cheapest of accessories ; and lavishes it just where it is least observed and least needed.” “ Like the Count of Monte Christo, who wore no jewels, but caused a priceless eme- rald to be hollowed out, to make a box for his opium lozenges,” said Miss Alleyne. “ Mr. Debenham is the first admirer of Wagner whom I have had the pleasure of conversing with,” observed the artist. “ Pardon me,” replied Debenham. “ I do not class myself with Herr Wagner’s admirers. I recognise his talent, but I entirely disap- prove of his style. I hold that beauty is the end of art, as truth is the end of science; and I cannot but regard music from which melody is banished (or in which melody is so far obscured as to be virtually banished) as essentially inartistic. Still the composer of Tamihciuser is a man of mark.” “ And originality.” “ Oh, he is startlingly original. There is but one Wagner.” “ And Ludwig of Bavaria is his prophet ! We painters, however, have no right to poke our fun at the ex-king. No living sovereign has done so much for contemporary art.” “Why, then, deny him the title of a second Carl August?” asked Miss Alleyne. “ Goethe’s Duke, my love, always kept up his personal dignity. He never said or did anything to make himself absurd in the eyes of the world; but King Ludwig is — well, suppose we say impulsive, and his impulsive- ness has led him into many follies. His quarrels and reconciliations with Herr Wagner alone are notoriously ludicrous.” “ Still, if he has so much taste and culti- vation — if he is such a liberal patron of the “ I fear, even so, that he will not bear comparison with so noble and steadfast a man as Carl August,” said Debenham. “ Or, at best, we must regard him as a mere whim- sical, erratic, half-pathetic, half-ludicrous imi- tation — like the jester at the funeral pageant of a Roman emperor, whose office it was to strut in the robes and mimic the bearing of ‘ imperial Caesar dead and turned to clay.’ ” “And your own Grand Duke — he of Zollen- strasse — is he musical?” asked Mr. Alleyne. “He partakes of the nature of the Aca- demy,” replied Debenham, laughingly. “ He is a little of everything. He paints a little, composes a little, models a little ; handles a lathe as dexterously as a bow, and turns a tune or a needle-case with equal facility.” “ I hope you do not imply that your aca- demic studies at Zollenstrasse are conducted on that principle ! ” “With this difference, — each student learns a great deal of something, and a little of everything.” “And you, I suppose, learned a great deal of music and a little of the fine arts. Do you paint ? ” “ I sketch — very indifferently. One cannot help it when half one’s fellow-students are artists,” replied the young man apologetically. “ I hope you will let us see your sketch- book.” DEBENHAM’S VOW. I. i5 6 [Good Words, March i, 1869. j But Debenham protested he had not cou- ; rage to show it ; and so, the inn-clock in the kitchen loudly striking eleven, rose to say good-night. “ There, I have frightened you away,” said ! the artist. “ But I think you will let me see ; it to-morrow, all the same. Shall you be here i to-morrow ? ” ; “ Oh, yes ; we shall be here to-morrow.” ! “I don’t ask if you make any stay; it’s such a wretched place, and the river is so much finer higher up.” “ I can scarcely tell,” replied Debenham, with an air of great indifference. “It de- pends on the fishing. If we get very good sport here, we may stay some days.” “ Then I hope you may get excellent sport,” said Mr. Alleyne. “ What — you will go ? Then good-night.” And so they shook hands, and parted; but Debenham did not dare to offer his hand to Miss Alleyne. He only bowed profoundly, \ and Archie, who was just stepping forward jl with outstretched palm, checked himself, and ^ bowed also. ! | “I suppose that’s foreign manners, old | i fellow,” he said, as they went up-stairs. “ Foreign manners ! what do you mean?” “Why, not shaking hands with Miss What’s- her-name.” “ I know little enough of English man- ners,” replied Debenham, “ so I cannot tell | where mine differ from them; but abroad, certainly, no man would venture to shake hands with a young unmarried lady. It would be an unheard-of liberty.” | “You did not even say good-night to her. jj Would that also have been a liberty?” “ I think so. What right have I to wish I her a good-night? Had it been her birth- day, should I have presumed to wish her many happy returns of the day?” “ Not if that’s the light in which you look at it ; but it’s an artificial light, to my think- ing. I prefer English manners. I should | have liked to shake hands with her — I should, j uncommonly. ” 1 “Well, good-night,” said Debenham, j[ abruptly. i They had now reached the landing, and his hand was already on the latch of his own bedroom door. “ Don’t be in such a hurry ; I want to ask you a question. What was that you said about staying here some days? Did you mean it?” “Mean it? Well, perhaps. I don’t know.” “ But I thought you were so eager to push on. I had no idea you cared so much about the fishing.” “ My dear fellow,” said Debenham, im- patiently, “we can talk of this to-morrow. Let us go to bed now. I’m horribly tired.” “All right. I only asked because I was surprised. And you wanted to have slept at Monmouth to-night, you know. However, I don’t care — not a bit. And if you’ve taken a fancy to the place . . . .” “ Good night, Archie.” “ Good night, then. But, I say . . . “What do you say?” “ Isn’t Miss Alleyne a little beauty ?” Debenham shut the door in his face. CHAPTER XII. — “ FOR THE FIRST TIME.” The next day, and the next, and yet the next went by, and still, to Archie’s infinite perplexity and ennui, Temple Debenham lingered on at Cillingford. He liked the place ; he liked the fishing ; he liked the landlady ; he liked the “ Silver Trout ;” he liked sketching with Mr. Alleyne ; he liked anything, in short, except sticking to the programme they had laid out for themselves at starting. Archie, to be sure, though he liked neither the “Silver Trout,” nor the landlady, nor Mr. Alleyne, could only sigh and obey. That Debenham should do as he pleased, and that Archie should do as Deben- ham pleased, was inevitable. The one always led, and the other always followed. Their friendship, indeed, had been based on this hypothesis from the first, and the result, till now, had been uniformly satisfactory. On the present occasion, however, Archie’s allegiance pressed somewhat heavily upon him. They had been out only a few days ; the weather was superb ; the pleasure of their holiday was all to come ; and yet Debenham had already called a halt, and showed no sign of moving. Nor was this all. There were strangers in the way — strangers who sketched, and talked German aesthetics — and to these people his friend devoted all his time and con- versation. So Archie, who neither sketched nor talked German aesthetics, found it de- cidedly dull. In the meanwhile, Temple Debenham had fallen irretrievably in love. For the first time — literally for the first time. Till this moment, he had cared for no woman but his mother. He had never known even a boy’s passing fancy. All the bright eyes in Zollenstrasse (and they were not a few) had never cost him a single heartbeat. As for his fellow-students, they cultivated the tender passion as they cultivated their beards DEBENHAM’S VOW. Good Words, March i, 1869.] 157 and hair — that is, profusely. Full to the brim of Kunst and sentiment and Vater- land, they lived in a chronic state of romance, and would not have known how to live out of it. Perhaps the sight of these tender- hearted German youths prosing together about their Gretchens and Annchens, as they quaffed their Bairische beer, and smoked their cheap tobacco under the trees in the Linden platz, may have had something to do with Debenham’ s indifference. He saw too much of love and love-making, and, like a nurse in a fever hospital, lived in such an atmosphere of contagion, that he became proof against danger. But, now that he no longer lived in that atmosphere, he was no longer safe. For him, as for other men, there was peril in “a rosie cheek or a coral lip.” His turn had come at last to take that “ falling sickness,” yclept love ; and, like all who take it late, he took it severely. The mischief was partly done before he had ever seen her. Sitting in the porch that first night, he listened to the music of her voice till l^e had half listened his heart away. The tender shades of the gloaming, the dawning stars overhead, the peace and poetry of the coming night, the very novelty of the situation, all predisposed him to any new impression. He was just in that mood when a man cannot help falling in love. Then her father came out, and invited them into her very presence ; and he went in ; and he saw her • and he found that she was as fair to see as her voice was sweet to hear ; and then it was all over with him, and he was as desperately in love as any of those poor Karls and Heinrichs whom he used to laugh at so heartlessly in the old Zollenstrasse days. However slowly the time may have dragged by for Archie, for Debenham, at all events, the days and hours flowed past in one en- chanting stream of poetry. Cillingford be- came his terrestrial paradise. No other air was ever so laden with perfume ; no other skies were ever so blue ; no other hills so golden in light, so purple in shadow. It seemed to him as if some strange and subtle spell had suddenly descended on the earth. Never had nature shown so fair; never had he, at all events, been so keenly conscious of the boundless beauty of forest and field. As for Miss Alleyne, he contrived to be with her, or near her, all the long day. He organized walks. He taught, or pretended to teach her the art and mystery of fly-fishing. He sketched, and Mr. Alleyne corrected his perspective, and touched up his foliage. He read aloud, while the father painted at the door of his temporary tent, and the daughter, sitting close by in the shade, pursued some deft little handicraft that looked like lace- making, less the pillow and bobbins. And then he talked — ah ! never before had he talked so well ! Never had his memory been so reproductive, his imagination so vivid, his illustrations so happy. All his reading came suddenly to the surface, and things long for- gotten were remembered like things of yester- day. It almost seemed to him as if he had never known till now how much he had thought, or how extensive his observations had been ; but then, till now, he had never been in love, and love is of all stimulants the most powerful. It sharpens the wits like danger, and the memory like hatred ; it spurs the will like ambition ; it exalts the imagina- tion like haschich ; it intoxicates like wine. A man of real power who, loving for the first time, loves with all the force of his intellect and all the fire of his blood, feels himself capable of all things. He holds the world and its gifts in the hollow of his hand. He has but to will and to do. He is no longer a man, but a demigod. And so it was with Temple Debenham. A new world had opened to him — a new life had descended upon him — a glory of hope and gladness was about his head. Rapt, in- spired, lifted out of himself, he felt like a hero — he talked like a poet. All the genius that was in him blazed suddenly into love. The coldness, the selfishness, the hardness of his nature, seemed all at once to shrivel away, and be consumed in that Promethean fire. He longed to do something great, that he might be worthier of her affection. He would fain have been called upon to make some heavy sacrifice or undergo some poig- nant suffering for her sake. How easy to achieve, endure, resign anything in her name ! He was ready, in short, to undertake the im- possible. It was a condition of things that could not long remain a secret to the lookers-on. The landlady of the “ Silver Trout ” found it out immediately, and told it, of course, to her married sister, and her sister’s husband, and the sister’s husband’s niece, and all her friends and acquaintances. The ruddy, red-haired, slatternly drudge called by courtesy the “ chambermaid,” made the discovery for herself quite as promptly, and shared the in- formation with every gossiping crone and giggling chit in the place. Archie, to his unutterable consternation, stumbled upon the truth in the course of the fourth day. Mr. 1^3 DEBENHAM S A OW» [Good Words, March i, 1809. Alleyne, however, being, like all selfish per- sons, extremely unobservant of matters not directly affecting his own comforts, painted and talked, sipped his port and smoked his scented Havannahs in the most luxurious disregard of the little drama which was being enacted before his eyes. He either did not see it at all, or, seeing it, mistook the whole performance for a mere ordinary flirtation, “ signifying nothing.” And Miss Alleyne ? Well — Miss Alleyne was a woman ; and no woman, however modest or dull, was ever yet so modest or so dull as to be unconscious of the admiration of a man. Juliet Alleyne was perfectly aware from the first that Debenham admired her ; but then she was used to ad- miration, and even a little tired of it — or tried to believe that she was so. She accepted his homage, at all events, as a matter of course, and attached no more importance to it than she had already attached to the homage of a score of others. She listened to him, how- ever, and knew that he was worth listening to. She made entries in her diary of the books he praised and the authors he quoted. In the mornings, when she was getting up, she began to wonder where and how soon she should see him; whether he would join them over at the tent, or meet them first on the Cillingford side, or cross with them in the ferry. At night, she fell into a habit of sitting on the side of her bed and remember- ing the things he had talked about during the day, and how he looked when he said them. ) Perhaps she even began to miss him when he was absent, and to listen, involuntarily, for the sound of his voice on the stairs, or his footstep on the gravel. But of this she was not even conscious. She liked him, of course. She would have answered frankly enough on that head, had she been questioned; but that she liked him better than she might, under similar circumstances, have liked any other chance acquaintance, was a proposition that never occurred to her for a moment. And so she suffered the acquaintance to glide into something almost approaching to intimacy before any suspicion of love — earnest, vehement, passionate love, such as this dark-eyed stranger might be capable not only of feeling but inspiring — had even flashed across her thoughts. CHAPTER XIII. THE CHURCH AMONG THE HILLS. Wandering at hot noon in the scented gloom of the pine woods ; climbing at sun- set by steep lanes and stony footpaths to every neighbouring hill-top ; following the windings of the steel-bright river in the early summer moonlight ; reading Shakespeare in the shade of an antique oak that might have struck root in the forest of Arden ; gathering poppies in the corn-fields, and wild straw- berries in the woods ; listening to the night- ingale in the gloaming, and to the cuckoo’s double note in the sultry silence of midday ; talking of music, of art, of poetry, of places and people famed in song and story, of the Alps and the sweet south — of everything, save love — these two drifted on day by day, setting their hearts to the music of the joyous present, as if life had never a past behind nor a future before it. An enchanted time ! Perhaps, take it for all in all, the very sweetest time that lovers know — when the frail barrier of silence is yet unbroken ; when nothing has yet been asked, and nothing granted ; when lips that have never met are tremulous with untasted kisses; when the passion that has not yet found lan- guage vibrates in the voice, and thrills the lingering palm ; when nothing is certain but hope, and nothing worth hoping for but certainty ; when the fair face of nature seems all at once to be divinely transfigured, and every common thing is informed with beauty, and the very air is love. An enchanted time ; but, by necessity, a brief one ! Love will out, no less than murder ; and, however sweet the suspense of silence, lovers will speak and end it. Debenham spoke and ended it before many days were past. It happened thus. Miss Alleyne had said that she would like to hear him play, and the landlady had told them of a little church up in a fold of the hills some three or four miles away, where there was an organ. So Debenham beat up the neighbourhood for a donkey, and at about four o’clock one brilliant afternoon they started — Miss Alleyne heading the procession on donkey-back ; Debenham leading the gal- lant animal by the rein ; Mr. Alleyne and Archie bringing up the rear.- The way was steep, and led, for the most part, through young plantations, and clear- ings populous with rabbits. Once they passed a woodcutter’s cottage, with its bit of garden, its beehives, its hollyhocks, its yelping cur and group of wondering children at the gate. Sometimes they startled a covey of partridges, and once or twice heard the whirr of a phea- sant. But it was a wild, solitary climb, on the whole, and, till they came to a cross road a long way up, leading to a space of furzy common where stood a cluster of some six or Good Words,] [March i “DEBENHAM’S VOW.’ DEBENHAM’S VOW. Good Words, March i, 1869.] *59 eight dilapidated cottages, they met not a single wayside passenger. Hence they were directed along a green road still trending up- wards, and so came to an old-fashioned par- sonage half hidden in trees, and a tiny church so overgrown with ivy that the windows and door, the little wooden belfry, and part of the roof, were alone visible. They found the church-yard gate unfastened ; the parson’s cob feeding among the graves ; the church door standing wide open for all who chose to enter. So Miss Alleyne alighted, and j they tied the donkey to the gate, and went ! in. A quainter, quieter, sadder little church it would be impossible to conceive. The raf- tered roof, the screen, the pews, panels, and pulpit, were all of black, worm-eaten oak. Old scutcheons and death’s-head tablets crowded the walls. The altar-cloth, once red, looked like a rusty pall. The footsteps of generations had worn the pavement into deep hollows, and half trodden away a pair of monumental brasses near the altar rails. As for the windows, they were so darkened with ivy, and so overladen with the dust of years, that it was impossible to distinguish even the colour of the few patches of stained glass that yet remained in them. The organ stood in a little dusk corner against the choir, partly hidden by the screen, and partly by a faded red curtain. “ And now, my dear sir,” said Mr. Alleyne, at once doing the honours of the place as if he were lord of the manor or bishop of the diocese, “ we are all impatience to hear you. Is the organ locked ? If so, we must apply at the parsonage for the key.” “ It is not locked,” said Miss Alleyne, peeping through the curtain. “ It is open — and it is the strangest little organ ! The keys are all ebony, as if its very teeth were black with age ; and it looks so feeble and decrepit that it seems impossible it should have any voice left.” “ Here is some trace of an inscription,” said the artist, adjusting his double eyeglass ; “but the gilding is so worn, and the place so dark, that I cannot decipher it.” Debenham, taking his seat on the organist’s bench, bent down and read aloud the name of “ Edward Fisher, Maker, London, 1622.” “ It is nearly two hundred and fifty years old,” he said, running his fingers lightly along the keys, which, there being no wind in the bellows, gave out a hollow sound like the rat- tling of dry bones. “Two hundred and fifty years — a long life for such a thing of pipes and valves. Why, Milton might have played upon it — Cromwell might have listened to it.” “ Has it been hidden up here in these wild hills, I wonder, all that time?” said Miss Alleyne. “ One would like to know its his- tory.” “A chequered one, most likely,” replied Debenham. “ It has changed its religion and its politics more than once, we may be cer- tain. Organs are sad renegades, and this one is old enough to have turned its coat a good many times. It may have been Royalist and Roundhead, Papist and Protestant — have droned Puritan psalm tunes in the days of the Protectorate, lilted secular airs to the rhymes of Sternhold and Hopkins for the merry monarch, and lent itself to Palestrina’s mass-music under James II. There is nothing in the world so shamelessly inconsistent as a church organ, except a peal of bells.” “ Or a woman,” said Mr. Alleyne. “ That observation, Monsieur mon ft ere, has not even the merit of novelty,” said his daugh- ter, saucily. “ Eternal truths never have, my love. But Mr. Debenham wants some one to blow for him.” “ I’ll blow,” said Archie, eagerly. “Then you must let me relieve guard when you are tired,” said the artist condescend- ingly. Archie laughed and shook his head. His coat was off already. “ I’m never tired,” he replied. “ I’m used to it. Now, Debenham, say when.” But Debenham was not yet ready. He was examining the stops, the names on which were almost illegible, and trying the compass of the pedals. “ Here is a stop,” he said presently, “ which is seldom, if ever, made by modern builders — -the Vox Humana,” “ I should like to hear that,” said Miss Alleyne. “ It is sure to be very bad. These Vox Humana stops are generally failures, even in the best instruments. Still, the thing has been done. There are t\t"0 Vox Humana stops in the great organ at Freiburg — a soprano and tenor — the effect of which is simply indescrib- able.” “Do they really sound like human voices?” asked Miss Alleyne. “ They sound like superhuman voices — like the voices of angels making use of no articu- late speech. Imagine an absolutely faultless voice singing without the utterance of even a vowel sound. But there ! one cannot imagine it. A voice must utter a note by means of a DEBENHAM’S VOW. 160 [Good Words, March i, 1869. vowel sound, and an organ can only utter the note. This it is which gives such unearthly effect to a good Vox Humana stop.” “ And this one . . . “ I predict that it is a bad specimen. Now, Archie, blow !” CHAPTER XIV. — THE VOX HUMANA. Archie fell upon the bellows with a will. Mr. Alleyne, having ensconced himself in the most comfortable corner of the squire’s pew, closed his eyes and prepared to listen luxuri- ously — or, it may be, to sleep. Miss Alleyne remained in the choir, separated from the organ by only a rail and a half-drawn curtain. “ Do you mind being overlooked while you play ? ” she said. “ Shall I go away ? ” He was playing now — a few soft prelimi- nary chords. “Ah, no,” he said, dreamily, without look- ing round. “ Never go away. Stay here, and let me play co you always.” “ Always ? ” she repeated with a gay little laugh. “Ay; if one could arrest the shadow on the dial ! ” “And lose the pleasure of expecting to- morrow?” ' “ To-morrow ? There is no to-morrow for those who- ” He checked himself ; drew out another stop ; went on playing. “To-morrow!” he resumed, after a mo- ment’s pause, still not looking round ; still in the same low, musing tone. “ To-morrow may bring doubt, or certainty worse than doubt. To-morrow may bring death, or part- ing worse than death. Do not speak of to- morrow ; it makes a coward of me.” Miss Alleyne drew back a little into the shade of the curtain, but said nothing. “ I used to live in and for the future,” he went on. “Ten days ago, I thought of ! nothing else. The present, with its disap- pointments and struggles, was a mere proba-- tion. Now the present is all in all ; the future, nothing.” “ You have had disappointments and strug- gles ? ” said Miss Alleyne, with a touch of tremor in her voice. “Who that is ambitious has not? They are the purchase-money of success.” He did not see the bright look that flashed across her face as he said this. “But — but if one pays for success too dearly ? ” she said, hesitatingly. “Ihere are some things for which it is impossible to pay too dearly.” “For instance, fame ? ” “ No ; one may pay too high a price for fame ; but for happiness ” He broke off abruptly. All this time he had not ceased playing. All this time the stream of sound kept swelling under his fingers like a gathering tide, as he added fresh stops and wandered on to richer and remoter combinations of harmony. “ It is perhaps one of our heaviest misfor- tunes,” he began again presently, “ that we do not know when we are happy. Blind to the wealth of the present, we go on staking j upon the future till we have lost all. Now, had I the power given to Joshua of old, I would bid the sun and moon stand still in the 1 heavens for ever. I would go on playing, you should go on listening — for ever. The trees out yonder should never shed their leaves, the cornfields never ripen, the shadows never lengthen on the grass.” “ And papa should never have his dinner, and poor Mr. Blyth should never leave off blowing!” laughed Miss Alle}me. “I fear they would not accept immortality upon such hard conditions. But you have not yet used the Vox Humana stop.” “ I am leading up to it,” he replied. “All this is introduction. I will use it now- — as a i solo.” “As a solo ? What do you mean ? ” “ I mean that I will take it alone, without the admixture of any other stops, on this upper row of keys, playing it, as you will see, with the right hand, while the left hand on the row below, and the pedals, supply the accompaniment.” “ Like a voice, in fact, singing to an accom- paniment ? ” “ Exactly. And now you must imagine that it is night. Scene, a garden ; the moon gleaming through broken rifts of cloud, the trees whispering prophetically as the night- wind comes and goes, the facade of an Italian palazzo all ghostly in the moonlight, a girlish figure on the balcony, a moving shadow among the cypresses below . . . .” “ The garden scene in ‘Romeo and Juliet !’ Yes, Mr. Debenham, I will try to imagine all that. Having done so, what next ? ” “ Having done so, we will suppose this Vox Humana to be the voice from the i garden.” “ Romeo singing to Juliet.” For the first time since he had begun to play, Debenham lifted his head and flashed a sudden glance at her. “ I have not said that it is Romeo,” he replied. Something in his voice, in his words, DEBENHAM’S VOW. Good Words, March i, 1869.] 16 I brought the warm colour in a tide to Miss Alleyne’s cheek and brow. Something in his glance seemed to scathe her like fire. But, even as he spoke, his master-touch evoked the first low, detached tones of the Vox Humana. The stop was not a fine one — that was hardly to be expected; but it was not, as Debenham had predicted, a very bad one. In quality it was somewhat dry and harsh : but as it belonged to the swell organ, the player had it in his power to make this defect less apparent. It was capable, at all events, of expression. And now, warming to his subject as he went on, the young man flung his whole soul into his improvisation. It was no longer the voice of an imaginary lover in an imaginary garden. It was his ov/n voice telling the tale of his own passion. Hesitatingly, timidly, the Vox Humana began, like the uncertain utterances of a love hitherto unspoken. Phrased like a recitative — interrupted by fre- quent pauses — now breaking off abruptly on Page 168. some unresolved note, as if waiting a reply — now hurrying on, as if eagerly pleading — now passionately uplifted, now falling to a whisper, the voice part scarcely needed words to make its story plainer. Declaration, suspense, hope, fear, entreaty, were all poured forth in turn. The very soul of the player seemed to pass into the instrument. The pipes obeyed his touch as if informed with a conscious sym- pathy — as if breathing the language of a living passion. Then suddenly these speaking, striving irre- gular utterances ceased. The accompaniment, no longer waiting upon the voice as in dra- matic recitative, swept into a magnificent flow of chromatic passages, rising and falling, coming and going, now dying in the distance, now returning in might, like the fitful swell- ing of a summer wind ; while clear above all, earnest, and full, 'and impetuous, , the voice-part rose in a strain of impassioned melody. Miss Alleyne had moved away before ; but now, constrained, as it were, by the spell of his “ so-potent art,” she drew insensibly nearer till she found herself standing breathless, fas- cinated, close behind the player. Such music as this she had never heard before. Not DEBENH AM! S V OW. [Good Words, March i, 1869. I l62 that it was so wonderful in point of manual !. skill, for Debenham was too profound a mu- j sician in the largest sense of the phrase to attach undue importance to the mechanism of his art ; and, finely as he played, it would at any time have been easy to find a dozen public performers who, as mere executants, surpassed him in dexterity. But his playing was the direct interpretation of his genius. It was mind expressed in sound — every pas- sage an inspiration — every touch an idea. I Between such playing as this — the playing of a great, improvisatore — and the playing of a mere performer, there is the same difference as between the speech of a fervid orator and the conventional rechauffee of a newspaper re- porter. Upon Archie Blyth labouring at the back of the organ in his shirt sleeves, and upon Mr. Alleyne placidly dozing among the cushions of the squire’s pew, this wealth of harmony was cast away; but not so upon the one hearer for whom alone it was created. She, at all events, listened as though she were listening to the music of the spheres. “ Have you skill to interpret this dumb sing- ing?” he asked, presently. “ L am skilled in nothing, Mr. Debenham,” she replied ; “ but — but I suppose no one ever played Mendelssohn’s Lieder Ohne Worte without imagining words of some sort to the melodies.” “Then what words have you given to our Vox Humana all this time?” Miss Alleyne hesitated. “ I do not think it is possible,” she said, “ to put actual words to music which one hears for the first time. One may ascribe a general meaning to the whole ; but unless one ! knows what is coming next — unless, indeed, the music is written ” “True; but you have ascribed a general meaning ?” “ I supposed you had taken the garden scene in 4 Romeo and Juliet’ for your theme.” “ And this voice?” “ Romeo’s, of course.” “Nay, I warned you against that conclu- sion, Miss Alleyne.” “ True ; but you bade me at the same time ! imagine a garden and moonlight — an Italian I palazzo — a lady, who could be none other I than Juliet, on the balcony . . . .” ! “ Ah, Miss Alleyne, take Juliet for granted, I if you will !” he said, half turning in his place ; I his left hand still resting on the keys ; his eyes | ! looking into hers ; his voice low, and hurried, ! and eager. “ Let it be Juliet who listens ; but not Romeo, not Romeo, who sings ! This song, could you read it aright, would tell a tale of love as sudden, as deep, as passionate as his ; but with this difference — it is a tale of first love. Romeo, remember, loved Rosaline before ever he loved Juliet ; arid may have loved a score of others besides. But he who made this song never gave a thought, or a hope, to any but the one Juliet whom he loved for the first and last time in his life. Nay, I : beseech you do not draw away— I beseech ' you, hear me ! What I have to say cannot be new to you. You must have known that I love you. You must have seen it in my face — heard it in my voice — felt it in the very air we breathe together ! I have loved you from the first moment I beheld you ; I have gone on since then loving you more and more every day, every hour. Perhaps, had I been sure you could never have loved me back again, I might have overcome it at the first — I might have forced myself to fly from you and never see your face again ; but now it is too late. I have not a hope, or an aim, or an end in life that does not centre in you. If I am to work now, it must be for you — if I am to excel, it must be for you — if I am to live the life and fight the fight that lay before me a week ago, it must still be for you. Fail- ing that motive — and a man’s heart is so fear- fully strong in hope that it needs a mighty effort even to think of adverse possibilities — failing that motive, Ju — Miss Alleyne, I hardly think I should be equal to anything, or worth anything, in the time that lies before me !” He broke off abruptly. Miss Alleyne turned a frightened glance upon the squire’s pew ; but her father still slept the sleep of the just. “ I— I had not expected this,” she said, falteringly. “ Does it surprise you ? Is it possible you had not seen how I loved you ?” The question was inconvenient. Like a true woman, she answered it, after a moment’s hesitation, by another. “ But why do you love me ?” She had a spice of the coquette in her composition — granted. But, unless she were the veriest coquette that ever lived, she could not have asked that question if she had meant to bid him despair. It was a question that authorised him to launch out into all the foolish, fond, extravagant reasons that a lover’s wit could devise. Why did he love her? Why did the sun shine in the heavens by day and the stars by night ? Why did the birds sing in the springtime, and the tides obey the moon, and the kindly fruits of the earth suc- ceed each other season after season ? Was Good Words, Maxell i, 1869.] DEBENHAM’S VOW. 16 it not that all things were governed by “ a law divine ” — a law of order, of fitness, of beauty, of sympathy, of love ? Was it not in ! obedience to that law that heart sought heart, and hand was outstretched for hand through- out the pilgrimage of life ? And across what a desert that pilgrimage lay for those whose fate it was to perform it alone ! For himself he dared not contemplate it. For himself there was nothing but Paradise or the desert. Why did he love her? Not because she was beautiful — graceful — accomplished ; not be- cause her tastes were his tastes ; not because she loved art, music, books; not because chance had thrown them together in a ro- mantic spot at the sweetest season of the year. No — for none of these reasons ; but for her very self. Were she unbeautiful, un- graceful, untaught, he felt he must have loved her just the same. It was that he had found himself constrained to love her — irresistibly drawn towards her as towards a second self — and this even at the first sound of her voice, before he had so much as seen her face ! Was this accident, or the result of circum- stance? No — it was destiny. It was that divine law of fitness and sympathy — et cater a, et cater a. In short, Temple Debenham, being not yet twenty-six years of age and very much in earnest, talked a vast deal of eloquent non- sense, to all of which Miss Alleyne listened with a beating heart and a changing colour. Had she disliked the speaker, or read all these pretty things in a second-rate novel, or over- heard them addressed to another, she would have been ready enough to criticize them ; but what woman ever yet detected faults of style in the declaration of the lover she really cared for? As for Debenham, he -would have been less fluent had he been less hope- ful. Miss Alleyne’s one little question as to why he loved her had buoyed him up to the seventh heaven at once. Having talked himself out of breath, he came by-and-by tb a pause. “You have asked me,” he said, looking longingly at her hand, which was resting on the curtain rail, but not daring to touch it, “ w T hy I love you, and I have tried to tell you. Perhaps my best and shortest answer, after all, would be to say that I love you because I cannot help it. Will you tell me in return if there is any reason why I should not love you ?” “ I — I don't know,” she answered, with the faintest flitting of a smile about her 1 mouth. “ I should think there were a good many reasons.” “ Do you dislike me?” “ N— no.” “ Do you love any one else ?” “ Yes. I love that excellent man asleep in 3^onder pew.” “ Ah, do not trifle with me, Miss Alleyne ! You know what I mean, and .... You must have had so many lovers !” “ A flattering supposition. Many thanks.” “This is cruel ! You jest with me, know- ing how desperately I am in earnest.” “ But what do you want ?” “ One -word of hope.” “ It is the first time you have even asked for it !” “ Good heavens ! what have I been doing for the last half-hour?” “ Let me see .... Well, you have been telling me, in the first place, how much you love me ; and, in the second place, why you love me ; and, in the third place, you wanted to know if there were any reasons why you should not love me. Now, I think, there are several.” Her hand was still resting on the curtain rail, and he was still’ looking at it. Timidly, as if it -were a sacred thing, he stooped and touched it with his lips. She blushed, and withdrew it. “ Name them,” he said, gently. “You do not know me.” “ I think I do.” “ Indeed, you do not. I am neither so good, nor so clever, nor so — so pretty, as you seem to fancy. And you know nothing of how I have been brought up, nor of my sur- roundings, nor of my disposition. I repeat it — you don't know me.” “ I beg leave to hold my own opinion on that point. What else ?” “ Well, I don’t know T you.” “ You know more of me in some respects than my own mother know r s of me ; and I think I have told you all my story, such as it is. However, the question is not whether you know 7 me, but — but whether you can love me.” Miss Alleyne’s hand had by this time re- turned, somehow or another, to the curtain rail. He kissed it again, imprisoned it fast within his owm, laid his cheek against it, felt it tremble, struggle for a moment to be free, and then yield itself passively into captivity. “ I know I am not worthy of you,” he said, tenderly ; “ but I love you, and I w 7 ill work for you, and some day you shall be proud of me. “I am proud of you already, pered. she whis- DEBENHAM’S VOW. 164 [Good Words, March 1, 1869. His arm was round her waist now ; but he was still sitting, she still standing, the envious curtaih rail still between them. He drew her nearer, but still not near enough. He laid his head back against the curtain rail, but also against her bosom; for she was half bending over it. He looked up into her face with those dark, deep, passionate eyes that were his only personal beauty. “ If it is true,” he said; “if it is not all a dream — kiss me.” But she averted her face, and held back silently. “ I have never been kissed in my life,” he said, simply, “ except by my mother.” Her eyes filled with sudden tears. “ My mother died without having kissed me — without having seen me.” she faltered. “ Poor child !” “You are sorry?” “ Yes ; because you have lost so much. I love you ; but what of that ? It is but a man s love, after all ; whereas a mother’s .... Well, the human being whose childhood has been blessed with the love of a good and tender mother gets his heaven at both ends of life, instead of at the latter end only.” “ How good Mis. Debenham must be, for you to say that !” exclaimed Miss Alleyne. The young man bent his head as reverently as a devotee who hears the name of his patron saint. “ My mother,” he said, “ is an angel.” “ Do you think that — that she will like me?” said Miss Alleyne, shyly, but with a gleam of coquetry. “ She will adore you !” “ But I am not an angel, you know.” “ Dieu merci ! What hope would there be for me if you were ? I should never get that kiss, for instance . . . .” “ Hush ! My father is waking.” “ No ; he has only moved his head. But he will wake presently ; I must go on play- ing. _ See, I cannot get up — I cannot take you in my arms. Be generous, and give me what I think you would not refuse if I were free to take it.” “ For your mother’s sake, then,” she whis- pered ; and, blushing crimson, bent forward and touched his forehead lightly with her lips. At that instant Mr. Alleyne sneezed and woke. He sat up, looked round him, and, remembering where he was and all about it, patted his hands softly together in decorous applause. > “ Thanks, Mr. Debenham,” he said, gra- ciously, “ many thanks. A very charming performance, indeed. Quite a treat — quite a treat. I have enjoyed it immensely.” “ The music, papa, or the nap?” asked his daughter, laughingly. “ My love, I have not been asleep.” “ Oh, padre mio /” “ Not for a moment — -not for a moment, I assure you. I have not lost a single note.” Debenham, to conclude with, played Men- delssohn’s immortal Wedding March. CHAPTER XV. — ARCHIE DISAPPROVES. The lovers went back to Cillingford by the direct road to Paradise, and spent the evening in a delicious dream, talking but little, drinking enchanted tea out of enchanted cups, and looking out oftener than was strictly necessary at the moon. Later in the even- ing Mr. Alleyne proposed the now habitual rubber, in the course of which Temple De- benham repeatedly trumped his partner’s best card, and Miss Alleyne invariably forgot to follow suit. After they had all bidden good night and gone up to bed, Debenham called Archie into his room and invited him to sit down. “ There is the bed,” he said, “ and there is the chair. The chair, however, has only three legs — I recommend the bed.” Archie perched himself upon the side of the bed, and stared at his friend in ominous silence. Debenham was evidently embar- rassed, and Archie was not disposed to help him out of his embarrassment. A solemn pause ensued ; Debenham walking excitedly backwards and forwards in his shirt-sleeves and slippers ; Archie swinging his legs to and fro, and waiting to be spoken to. All at once, Debenham plunged his hand into his knap- sack and brought out his cigar-case. “Have a weed, Archie?” he exclaimed, in a burst of hospitality. But Archie was not to be thawed. He took the cigar with a nod, put it un- lighted between his lips, and sat gloomily sucking it. “ I have something to tell you, old man,” said the other, presently. Archie removed the cigar, grunted, put it back again, and still answered not a word. “ There, — I may as well tell it in half-a- dozen words as a thousand. I love her, Archie, and she loves me. It’s all right, and I’m the happiest fellow in the world. Con- gratulate me.” He put out his hand as he said this, so that Archie could do no less than shake it ; but he pursed up his mouth and, as it were, performed that ceremony under protest. Good Words, March i, 1869.] DEBENHAM’S VOW. 165 “ I don’t see that it’s all right at all,” he said, gloomily. “ I should be more inclined to say it was all wrong. It’ll be the min of you.” “The min of me! What, in heaven’s name, do you mean ?” “ I mean that it’s all nonsense, and worse than nonsense. A man with your genius why, you’ll be making love when you ought to be making money. Such an en- gagement as that will weigh like a millstone round your neck.” “ Nothing of the kind. It will inspire me to do greater things than ever.” Archie shook his head. “ It gives me something to work for.” “You had fame to work for — fame and fortune.” “ Well, now I shall have fame, fortune, and a wife to work for.” “ A wife ! Why, you’ve only known her a week. What are you to live upon?” “ I haven’t the slightest idea — counterpoint and kisses.” Archie shmgged his shoulders dolefully. “Oh, dear, dear!” said he, “if you had only had a business education ! If you had only been brought up in the City ! What will Mr. Alleyne say?” “ Can’t imagine.” “And Mrs. Debenham?” “ My mother will be utterly happy to have such a daughter. They will adore each other.” Archie groaned aloud. “I’d bet any sum you pleased,” said he, “ that she hasn’t a farthing. The old man spends everything on himself.” “And is welcome to do so for me,” ex- claimed the lover. “ Do you think I want money with the woman I love? Not I ! I’d rather have Juliet Alleyne without a farthing, as you call it, than with twenty thousand pounds for her fortune.” Archie got up, and turned towards the door. “You are mad,” he said, “stark, staring, raving mad. But there ! — it’s no business of mine. I will say no more. I am only mak- ing myself disagreeable.” “ Confoundedly disagreeable, old fellow ; and for nothing. I thought you’d be de- lighted.” “ How can I be delighted ? I’m disap- pointed — awfully disappointed. I’m not clever. I don’t pretend to be clever ; but I know what genius is when I see it. I thought you were going to be a great man. I had set my heart on it. I thought you’d write something wonderful in the way of music ; or do something wonderful ; for it seems to me there’s nothing you could not do, if you liked. And then I thought you’d be famous, and marry a girl with lots of money — Claudia Hardwicke, perhaps; and then ” Debenham burst into a hearty laugh. “ Marry Claudia Hardwicke ! ” he repeated. “Why, I’d as soon marry Lady Macbeth or the Minerva Medica. No, thank you, Archie; I won’t trouble you to choose a wife for me. I think I can please myself best in that matter. Nay, don’t look so grave. Wish me joy, at least, before you go.” “Oh, I wish you joy — of course, I wish you joy,” replied Archie, his hand upon the door. “ I’m afraid it has been a little dull for you these last few days, dear old fellow.” Archie made a sort of grimace. “ Well, it — it hasn’t been amusing,” said he. “You’ve thrown me over, you know, altogether. The tour is at an end, I suppose, as far as you are concerned?” “ Indeed, I do not say that. I certainly shall not let you go on alone.” “ Ah, that means that you would like to stay on here for ever, playing at Corydon and Phillis, with me for audience.” “ No — it means that I want neither to part from you nor from her. Mr. Alleyne’s pic- ture will be finished in another week or ten days, and then he will go back to London. If we stay on till then, we shall still have three weeks left. “ Bother Mr. Alleyne’s picture ! ” said Archie, pettishly. “Be hanged if I’ll wait for it. Good night.” And with this he went out, and banged the door. Poor Archie ! It was very rude, of course. Of all known evidences of temper there is, perhaps, not one more futile, more ridiculous, more vulgar than door-banging. But it is very natural, and, no doubt, very comforting. Besides, it was a case of real provocation. Archie’s was, at all events, a loving nature — honest, forbearing, faithful as a dog’s ; and Debenham had, verily and indeed, “ thrown him over” for a pretty face of a week’s standing. Large allowances should be made for the aberrations of jealousy. CHAPTER XVI. THE TRYST BY THE RIVER. What will Mr. Alleyne say? It was a question that had flitted across Debenham’s mind before ever Archibald Blyth translated it into down-right, common- DEBENHAM’S VOW. 1 66 [Gocd Words, March r, 1869. place English. And it was a very unpleasant question — a question open to a variety of disagreeable answers, and suggestive of all kinds of inconvenient possibilities. That Mr. Alleyne would inquire of him concern- ing his means and prospects, was certain. That unless Mr. Alleyne took an exceedingly elevated and artistic view of the matter, he would be highly dissatisfied with the result of those inquiries, was no less certain. But, then, was Mr. Alleyne likely to take that elevated and artistic view? He was an artist. He abounded in lofty sentiments. He was fond of talking of himself as a servant of the Ideal, a high priest of the Beautiful, and all that sort of thing. But, on the other hand, he was particular about his dinners, curious in his wines, extravagant in the matter of cigars, olives, liqueurs, and all such personal luxuries. Was it not, then, gravely to be feared that, beau parlrnr though he was, Mr. Alleyne might in the present instance incline towards that prosaic view of love and matri- mony which is formed upon the oracular columns of Letts’s “ Housekeeper,” rather than towards that ideal standard which mea- sures all such matters by the law of pure sentiment, and is founded on a recognition of the eternal fitness of things ? Oppressed by these misgivings, the lover could not refrain from expressing something of his apprehension to Miss Alleyne when they met next morning, not wholly by accident, up at the weir, a good hour before the high priest of the Beautiful was up and stirring. “You see, my own Juliet,” he said, caress- ing the little hand that rested confidingly upon his arm, “ I have no money.” “ None at all ? ” “ None at all — except what I earn.” “But that is our own case ! Papa has only what he earns.” “ But I earn so little ! Mr. Alleyne has an established reputation — an aristocratic connection — commissions in . plenty. Mr. Alleyne, I doubt not, can sell whatever he paints.” “ He could sell ten times more than he paints,” replied Miss Alleyne. “The difficulty is to get him to work.” “Whereas I work nineteen hours out of the Jwenty-four, and can neither get my com- positions performed nor published — much less paid for.” “ Then how ” She checked herself, and blushed ; but he finished the sentence for her. “ How do I live ? Well, I give lessons ; I play the organ at a little church in the City ; I — in short, I barely earn enough to pay for the food I eat and the coat on my back.” “ But you support your mother ! ” “ No. My mother has a small annuity — -a salvage from the wreck of my father’s fortune. He had been rich once, I believe ; but was already a ruined man when they married. She has always been poor ; but she is a millionaire compared with myself.” Miss Alleyne pointed to a felled trunk a few yards distant. “ Let us sit down there,” she said, “ and talk it over.” So they sat down, his arm about her waist, her head half resting against his shoulder ; and for a few moments they were silent — silent and very happy. “ What folly it seems to talk of anything but love ! ” said Debenham presently. “ Listen to the birds — they vex their little throats with no questions of ways and means. They build their nests on the first branch they fancy, and leave all the rest to Providence. How divinely that thrush is singing ! The fellow is as happy this morning as ourselves.” “ It must be very pleasant to live in a tree,” said Juliet. “ I should like it so much. How delicious to go to sleep at night to the rustling of the leaves, and wake to the first glow of sunrise ! ” “ Ay, and how economical ! No rent to- pay, no taxes, no servants, no appearances to keep up ! Shall we try it ? Fancy how the address would look upon our wedding cards : ‘Mr. and Mrs. Temple Debenham, at home,. Broad Walk, Kensington Gardens, second elm to the right, fourth branch. Not a Bene . — The nest being somewhat high up, visitors are requested to provide themselves with wings.’ ” “ What nonsense ! ” “ Nay, for a couple with no money . . . .” “ I do not really see that it matters in the least whether we have money or not,” inter- rupted Miss Alleyne, tracing figures of eight in the dust with the end of her parasol, and assuming an immensely practical air. “ It is not as if we cared about getting married . . . .” “ I beg your pardon. I care about getting married ! ” Miss Alleyne shook her pretty head, and went on as if he had not spoken. “ It is not, I repeat, as if we cared about getting married. It is enough for us that we love each other, and are happy. We are both young ; and if we were to wait for fifteen or twenty years . . . .” “ My darling ! The age of man is but threescore years and ten,” remonstrated DEBENHAM’S VOW. Good Words, March i, i36g.~\ 167 Debenham. “You forget that we are not living before the deluge.” “ Well, supposing, then, that we waited ten or fifteen years . . . .” “ I decline to listen to any proposition founded on such monstrous premises ! ” “You cannot decline, Signore. It is a form of high treason. It is your duty to give heed to the voice of your charmer, charm she never so wisely or never so unwisely — to obey her in all things reasonable and un- reasonable — to see with her eyes, hear with her ears, speak with her tongue ; and, above all, never to interrupt her.” “ Thy slave hears, O Queen ! ” “ You see, Temple ” (how deliciously she j pronounced his name, hesitating at it a little, and then hurrying over it, like a shy young colt at a five-barred gate ! He longed to take her in his arms and kiss her every time 1 she did it) — “ I know papa thoroughly, and I am about to give you valuable advice ; but instead of listening to me as if I was an oracle — which I am — you interrupt me at every other word.” “ I admit the infallibility of the oracle. I am all submission.” “ Then begin by believing that I know papa better than any one knows him — better than he knows himself. I know all his little ways, all his little weaknesses, all his pre- judices. He loves me, of course ; but apart from his love, he is utterly dependent on me. I regulate his expenditure ; I keep notes of his engagements ; I answer his letters ; I invent his dinners ; I keep him up to his work. In short, I supply the clockwork without which his existence could not go on. It is therefore impossible that I should ever leave him.” Debenham began to look grave. “ And if — if ever we are rich enough to marry during his lifetime, it can only be on condition that we live as one family, and that I am never one bit less devoted to him than I am now.” Debenham looked graver still. “ What you have to do, therefore,” said Miss Alleyne, with the most delightful air of decision, “is to tell him first of all that we i don’t want to marry for years and years to ! come — till you are quite rich and famous, you know; and then to promise that you will never dream of taking me away from him.” “ But that is a very important promise, my dear Juliet,” said the young man, seriously. “To him; yes.” “To all of us. So important that very few men, I think, would like to give it.” “ If you were a prince of the blood, and offered to settle thousands a year on him,” she replied, “ papa would never give his con- sent on any other terms.” “ But if I once gave that promise . . . .” “ Then I don’t think papa would mind your being poor — not in the least. In fact, he would prefer it ; because I should remain unmarried all the longer.” “ That was not what I meant. I was about to say that if once I gave that promise, I should feel sacredly bound to keep it — and it might prove impracticable.” “ How is that possible?” He might have said, because Mr. Alleyne was utterly selfish, and that selfish people were difficult to live with ; or again, he might have said, because such duties and such de- votion as Mr. Alleyne was in the habit of exacting from his daughter would be incom- patible with the performance of her duties as a wife. But he would not be so ungracious. He only sighed, and said : — - “We are all human ; we all have our tem- pers and jealousies. These schemes, I know, seldom answer, and generally end in mutual disagreement.” “But we would resolve to let nothing 'of that sort creep in. It depends on ourselves, you know, after all ; and as for papa, why he is the most courteous and charming person in the world, if only he is allowed to have his own way.” “ But when that is every one’s case ?” “ It is not every one’s case. It is not mine ; and I’m sure it is not yours.” “ Then there is my mother.” “ She shall live with us too, of course ; and then we shall be always four to make up the evening rubber. Why, it will be perfect para- dise ! And oh, Temple . . . .” “Well, my darling?” “ Suppose they fell in love too ?” “ What do you mean ? Who ?” “ Mrs. Debenham and papa ! There, I prophesy it — the oracle prophesies it ! They will fall in love with each other, and be mar- ried too, and we shall be the happiest house- hold in the whole world !” The air rang again with her joyous laugh- ter ; but Debenham forced a grave smile, and made no reply. Miss Alleyne looked at her watch. “Oh, dear!” she said, “it is breakfast time. Who would believe that we had been here an hour ?” “ If you told me we had been here three hours, I should not be surprised,” said Debenham. 1 68 THE STAFFORDSHIRE POTTER. [Good Words. March i, 1S69. “ Indeed ! Does the time seem so long ?” “Ah, you have never read a poem of Longfellow’s, called 1 The Monk Felix.’” “ Yes, I have. The Monk Felix went out for a walk, and stopped to listen to the sing- ing of a bird ; and when he came back to his convent all the monks were changed, and he found he had been gone a hundred years.” “ Ay, but the bird sang of heavenly things, so that the monk fell into a miraculous ecstasy, and the hundred years went by like a few minutes. Now my case, you see, is even stronger. I have not merely heard of the joys of paradise — I have been in para- dise. Tell me that I have been here with you three days — three weeks — three months — and I will believe it immediately.” “ A very pretty compliment,” laughed Miss Alleyne ; “ but a trifle too elaborate. But indeed I must not linger here another mo- ment.” “ Yes, one moment. I shall go into Mon- mouth to-day, to see if I can find a ring for this dear little finger. How I wish I had anything by which to measure the size of it !” “ No, no — I never wear rings.” “ The more reason why you should wear mine. I must label you ‘ sold,’ you know, as they label the pictures in the exhibition. I suppose I had better not walk back with you to the house ?” “ Oh, no — not for the world. Papa will be dreadfully cross, too, when he comes down and finds no coffee ready.” “ Like the rest of the world, Mr. Alleyne’s most benevolent time, of course, is after dinner.” “ I think it is — but pray, pray let me go now. You will see me again, you know, in an hour.” “ Ah, it is hard to let you go, even for an hour ! ” And he held her, and kissed her again and again, and when she broke from him, half angry, half laughing, stood looking after her till the last flutter of her dress had vanished behind the willows. And then he sighed, and gnawed his mous- tache, and remained there for a long time, thinking. His thoughts, however, seemed scarcely to be the thoughts of a happy lover. He looked perplexed and anxious, and by- and-by began throwing stones into the river in a dreary, abstracted way, as if hardly con- scious of what he was doing. “ W ell, I needn’t speak to him to-day, any- how,” he muttered, presently. “To-morrow will do, after dinner.” And then, shaking off his reverie, he turned, with long, swift strides, towards the village. To-morrow — ah, who can foresee to-mor- row ! TOILING AND MOILING. Home gutomd of our Ifforhmg jjroph, Hub polo l^ibe. By “GOOD WORDS” COMMISSIONER. III. — THE STAFFORDSHIRE POTTER. On one side of a tunnel there are green meadows, hedges, and hedge-row trees, spread- ing clear, and quiet, and lonely ; on the other, the train rushes out into light dimmed by the omnipresent smoke of the crowded Potteries — a series of dingy towns and most unrural villages that run into one another, and sprawl for miles along the bottom and up the sides of what was once (as its outlying portions j and grassy, timbered oases in its murky midst are left to prove) a picturesquely verdant i valley. Longton, Stoke, Hanley, Etruria, Burslem, Longport, &c., have coalesced or are coalescing like the cities and towns and hamlets that make up what we call “ Lon- don.” Seen from the top of Mow Cop, the Pot- teries look like one straggling clay-built, clay- moulding city. Traversing the district by rail at night, when misty darkness blots from view the portions still unbuilt upon — stopping at the frequent stations, whose names, shouted in Staffordshire vernacular, are unrecognisable without a reference to Bradshaw — the inex- perienced traveller feels himself to be momen- tarily getting more and more hopelessly be- wildered in a Babylon of crockery. Always on one hand, sometimes on both hands, there is a far-reaching jumble of buildings dotted with long lines and confused constellations of dim gaslights. Towering chimney-stalks and corpulent kiln-cones loom through the gloom north, south, east, and west. Every now and then a glimpse is caught of the spectral black wheels gibbeted above the mouth of a coal-pn ; or the lambent flames of a row of iron-furnaces luridly light up the dark gal- Good Words, March x, 1869.] THE STAFFORDSHIRE POTTER. 169 lery that connects the blazing forts. The district is not less bewildering to wander through by day. But there is no mistaking the big, handsome Stoke station, the central one of the North Staffordshire line, with its red brick Tudor arcades, paved with encaustic tiles (dim- med by muddy clogs), looking over at the still handsomer great red brick railway hotel, with a statue of Josiah Wedgwood in the middle of the wide space between the two rich-look- ing Elizabethan buildings. Everywhere you hear a clatter of clogs on foot-paths paved with bricks — some plain, some diced, some figured like a chimney-sweeper’s smutty ten- of-diamonds — placed lengthwise at the borders of the path, crossed in a matting pattern in the middle, and fringed with an iron border like a cog-wheel beaten straight. Black clogs with gilt soles are a frequently recurrent sign; large square sign-boards hang over the road as they do in Hogarth’s pictures; some- times, instead of the mere emblazoned name of the thing that gives the hostelry its title, a full-sized model of the same is slung over the doorway. Public-houses are plentiful as blackberries, in which lounging imbibers pour Burton ale, drawn in earthenware jugs, into slim glasses like champagne-glasses, with tiny hop-leaves and such-like ground upon their lips. Meeting-houses as well as public-houses are plentiful in the Potteries — big meeting- houses, like old-fashioned inns or town-halls, in broad thoroughfares, and queer little con- venticles, like Silas Mamer’s, in queer little corners. Some of the little ones are Welsh. Weighing-machines squarely blotch the road- ways, rails are ruled rectilinearly along them, or flourished curvilinearly about them. The stranger hails as a guiding-star the yellow street-railway car — like a crammed Noah’s ark X— 12 on wheels — when he comes upon it, toiling up a hill behind its unicorn team, or rumbling down a hill with break-locked wheels. Don- keys, with unpainted milk-cans, like magnified tea-canisters, swung pannier-fashion over their black pads, amble by ; milkmen bearing i green milk-cans in their hands, milkwomen | dragging green milk-cans mounted on wheels, \ trudge along. Coal-carts, red, black, and ' blue, everywhere grind through the mud, or ! jolt over the frozen ruts. Some of the j potteries consume a thousand tons each a | week. Canals, with long narrow barges j floating on their peasoupy water, and Burton- „ THE STAFFORDSHIRE POTTER. [Good Words, March I, 1669. 1 /° ale-drinking bargees indulging m the broad chaff which used to raise the spirits of the melancholy-anatomizing namesake ■ of the beer, run right alongside the potteries, and litter their wharfs — scored with narrow tram- ways and tiny turn-tables— with Cornish clay, coals, bones, and flint. Everywhere there are potteries. The air is thick with smoke, as if “ all the world and his wife ” had got their chimneys on fire. A cloacinal odour, like that of Bromley and Bow Common, at times overpowers the compara- tively wholesome scent of soot. The sparrows are blacker even than in London. The cows and donkeys grazing in the rough waste land, here and there interspersed between the houses, are dusty as a door-mat. Green can scarcely be called the dominant hue of the pastures m which they lie down, melancholy- musing. These “meadows” are fenced with broken rail, ragged, fragmentary hedge, black rope, and jumbles of brick, tile, stone, and slag. Horrible pits of miry clay yawn in them, with almost perpendicular tramways reaching from the dull-brown brink to the yellow-green pool of water at the bottom. Ponds of hot water steam in them ; heaps of hot rubbish smoke in them. They are lit- tered with mounds of smashed crockery, and cracked “ saggars,” piled one upon another like mildewed cheeses. In other places, the lumpy waste is lined with a road, whose I fresh kerb-stones show that another link of j building is soon to be welded into the dingy Potteries' chain. In others, squat domed kilns are dropped, like black Arab tents upon the desert ; protected from intrusion only by the board, nailed to a high pole, which an- nounces, “No admittance to these works, ex- cept on business.” On all sides of the waste ground, little streets pull up abruptly, as if deterred from going further by its dreariness. Some of the older of the small houses in the Potteries are miserable enough; but, generally speaking, the potters seem to be substantially housed. The outside brick -often has the faintly-blush- ing negro tint that red-brick houses have in Spitalfields and Bethnal Green ; but the floors, paved with red and black tiles, in a magnified Rob Roy pattern, the classical red-on-black flower-pots, the abundance of chimney ornaments (sometimes including covetable little Parian busts), and the white porcelain number-plates upon the doors, make the potters’ cottages look neat and cosy, in spite of one’s invincible impression that they are being cured like hams in the smoke, which gives a foggy look to the Pot- teries, even on the brightest day. There are plenty of good-looking houses of a superior class in the Potteries ; modern villas, and old- fashioned square blocks of brick, with stone facings and stone globes on the piers of the tall iron gates — and sometimes ivy-draped — like those which abound in Hampstead, and Highgate, and Clapton. For some ten miles the pottery towns and suburbs stretch and straggle along continu- ously. The whole district bristles with kilns, showing above barrack-like dead walls, and many-windowed barrack-like ranges of build- ings. The two or tl : ,zee storied central por- tion of the “ bank ” sometimes has a carved quartered shield above its great gates ; some- times it is heavily old-fashioned ; sometimes ; it is built of modem, ornamented, streaky- bacon brick; but everywhere a plethora of china and earthenware shows through its many windows. Some of the kilns are like little pyramids, some like big bellows minus a nozzle, some like water monkeys, some like high-shouldered case bottles ; some are ringed with bulging rims ; some are varicosely veined with capriciously diverging cracks ; some are castellated ; some are pierced at the top as if for musketry ; some push out their plump proportions at the angle between two flat walls, like the corner towers of castles. Gallows-like black beams and cranes, with great chains dangling from them, protrude Good Words, March i, 1869.] THE STAFFORDSHIRE POTTER. 172 from the “banks.” When the great gates are opened, you see a court-yard littered with straw and choked with crates. It is in these huge concerns that the typical industry of the Staffordshire Potteries is carried on. The rough ware, popularly known as “ Stafford- shire,” made with no aid from moulds and steam machinery, is, I was told, almost extinct in Staffordshire. It is easy to obtain admission to one of these great “ banks.” A more courteous set of people than the Staffordshire people, of all the classes I encountered, I never came across. Wherever I applied for admis- sion I instantly got it, but I would particu- larly mention the courteous manner in which I was treated at the works of the Messrs. Davenport, of Longport, Liverpool, and Lon- don ; a gentleman connected with the firm consenting at considerable inconvenience — “ Partem solido demere de die — ” to give up to me the busiest hours of the business day, in order that I might obtain intelligent guidance over their great factory. (He was, by-the-bye, “ a subscriber from the commencement ” to Good Words). The pottery-manufacturers are as proud of their show-rooms as a young wife is of her drawing-room; and the feeling extends to those who have no interest in the show beyond that which springs from living in its neighbour- hood. When I Was going up to the Messrs. Copeland’s beautiful show-room at Stoke, a police-sergeant, who was chatting with the porter in the lodge, anxiously informed me that I must be sure to see Minton’s when I had seen that, because they had “ the foinest show-room hin hall Hurup.” The show-room, accordingly; is the first place to which the stranger is conducted in the Potteries. It is a sight of which its owners — and still more its makers — may w^ell be proud. In a long room like a picture-gallery, lighted by day through its many windows, and by night with pris- matic, many- dropped glass gasaliers, the choicest products of the potter’s art are ex- hibited : on the long tables that stretch along the middle of the room, on side tables, on shelves, and in recesses on the floor. Vistas of vases, colonnades of dwarf pillars, break- fast and dinner and dessert services, whose snowy purity, and rich gilding, and blue, and blushing flowers, it seems profanity to think of obscuring with coffee, gravy, or even fruit- juice ; basins and ewers that only water- nymphs seem fit to use ; delicately flowered porcelain panels and finger-plates and tables; quaintly gorgeous vessels of majolica; Parian Graces ; Santa Filomenas, with lamps ; Bea- trices with stars upon their brows ; listening Egerias, holding back their tresses : it is the apotheosis of alumina — a congregation of ground clay made perfect. It is difficult to believe that things so soft and pure can have been produced from such coarse stuff and in so rough a place, when you descend from the show-room and wander through the works, littered with the raw material of the “ slip.” The buildings make you think of a very dirty Inn of Court. There is no symmetry, and there seems to be no system in them. They are of dark brick, with the outside staircases of stone, and the inside staircases of wood. The work-rooms, however, in schoolboy I phrase, are “jolly warm.” One dark room — in which a pale-faced man, technically called the “looker to the ware,” is turn- ing basins ranged on racks — seems hotter than the Kew tropical aquarium. The I pale-faced man’s wages are 6 id. to every shilling earned by the maker of the ware. Out in the yard, here is a heap of Cornish china clay, like lumpy whity-brown sugar, and there a little Arabia Petrsea of flints waiting to be calcined, and beyond a valley of dry bones. On an upper floor square axles are revolving, horizontal cogged wheels grinding round and round, and vertical axles, with broad, heavy-weighted arms, are crush- ing to pulp some of the materials of the “slip,” in headless white drums. You ask the white-splashed man in charge why those . great stones are placed upon the arms. “ Ho, ho,” he says, “ ah couldn’t groind wi’- out un;” and then, as if to make up for having laughed at your ignorance, he takes off some rough wooden lids and shows you little tanks of beautiful pink and green and blue ; for the colours are ground here also, at a saving to the manufacturer, on colourman’s price, of 4 d. in the pound. In a dusty cave below, what looks like a dislocated portcullis thumps down its bars one after another in an opening in the wall : that, too, is crushing for the “ slip.” Against the walls of this long store, clay is stacked in square blocks, like unbaked loaves of “ seconds” flour that have not risen. Clay, you are told, improves, like wine, through being kept. You are invited, also, to notice the difference in quality be- tween the blocks. As the realm has its four estates, so clay has its four “bodies.” In the middle of the store stands a pug-mill. The clay-stained miller presses on an iron lever protruding from the floor, and the knife- armed shaft begins to revolve in the iron- bound cylinder, slicing and kneading up the THE STAFFORDSHIRE POTTER. [Good words , March i, 1S69. lumpy clay until it is forced out at the bottom in a putty-like mass, which the miller cuts into loaves with one swift down-stroke of a wire held between his hands. If his depart- ment makes you think of an Otomac bake- house, the room in which the slip is mixed makes you think of an Otomac dairy. There are vats on both sides. In some, graduated with knobs, gaunt dairymen, in white-splashed, loose flannel coats and coarse aprons, are blending into what looks like thick milk the liquefied blue clay, Cornish clay, calcined flint, and granite, together with the “ stain ” (mineral oxide that gives the ware its tint) : each so many ounces to the pint. In china slip calcined bones take the place of the so- called blue clay. Over other vats similar dairymen are straining their milk through veiy fine sieves, called “ lawns,” which they pull and push backwards and forwards along boards which bridge the vats : i8j-. a week is the slip-maker's remuneration. The earthen- ware slip is dried into paste in shallow, oblong tanks, paved with square quarries. There is a fire at one end, and flues run along the sides : the heat filling the chamber with a wash-house-like vapour. There is no vapour over the tanks in which the china slip is dried, these being cased with plaster j of Paris, which rapidly absorbs the moisture. Above the level surface of the drying paste rise flaky hummocks, making the tank look like a miniature frozen sea. Before the china slip can get into the tank, it has to run the gauntlet through serried ranks of magnets, planted in the trough through which it flows, to catch any iron it may hold. And now let us see the pasty clay moulded into form. The venerable, hand-turned pot- ter's wheel still revolves in Staffordshire ; and though the use of moulds may turn out more uniform sets of ware, the sharpness of eye and the skill of hand which it requires make the “thrower's” work, independently of its | historical associations, one of the most in- teresting of pottery operations. The thrower has two feminine familiars in pinafores, al- though they are women middle-aged and young ; one turns his wheel, and the other hands the thrower his clay and places his completed vessels on the shelf : each receiv- ing 4 d. to every shilling which he earns. The | girls, who merrily bob up and down, with arms a-kimbo, on the treadles of the potters lathes, are paid in the same proportion. Round spins the thrower’s disc, and, glanc- ing now and then at the little bar protruding 1 from his table for a gauge, the potter moulds the whirling clay into a great elongated acorn. Up and down it goes, like a snail’s horn. Presently one hand dips into the mass, then I both are deftly pressing out its sides, and i soon, as if by magic, the amorphous lump has become a shapely bowl. You are told ‘ that the thrower’s trade is very injurious to his health, owing to the cramped position which he has to keep for so many hours as he stoops over his work. From six to six in summer — nominally from seven to seven, but generally to six in winter — with intervals for meals, are the working hours in the Potteries. The thrower who overhears the remark is a light-bearded, ruddy young fellow, as broad across the shoulders as Tom Sayers. He grins merrily at the notion of his being made out to be an invalid, but adds, “ Ah reckon theer een't many so thickset as ah ham.” It is the pallor, rather than the smallness, of the men employed in the Potteries, however, that strikes a stranger. There are plenty ] of big fellows amongst them, but almost 1 j all have a tallow-candle complexion. A good 1 many of the women, on the other hand, pre- serve the rosy, buxom comeliness which seems to be a very common characteristic of their sex in Staffordshire. The dark-haired young woman who is turning our thrower’s wheel is ruddily handsome, and looks as strong as a horse. She, too, gives a broad grin with her black eyes and white teeth when she overhears a jesting remark that 1 “ bailers and turners ” get so plethorically \ wealthy, when they behave themselves pro- perly and the throwers with whom they work are not lazy scamps, that they are obliged to keep husbands in order to get rid of their superfluous riches. It is by the score of dozens that the throwers, &c., are paid. The greatest part of Staffordshire earthenware and china is made in or on moulds, by “ flat-pressing ” and “hollow- ware pressing.” A plaster-of-Paris cast is placed on a disc which a handle-turning “ jigger-boy ” causes to revolve; a short-cake | G >od Words, March i, t36g.] THE STAFFORDSHIRE POTTER. of clay is dabbed down on or fitted into that ; and then, by hand, and pressing-tools, and knife, which slices off superfluous clay like strips of dough, the presser makes his vessel. Vessels of complex construction, of course, re- quire many moulds ; the different parts being articulated while the clay is still moist. The jigger-boys are paid by the pressers, and make from 5^. to Ss. a-week. 1 You ask a flat-presser, who is making 1 plates, what he earns a week. He gives you a sly, sidelong glance, which plainly says, “What’s that to you?” You apologize for having intruded on his private affairs. “It is proivit,” he rejoins with a flickering grin. “ Ah reckon whet ah mek is naught to nawbody ’cept maself. Haverage ? Thaht’s moor loike. Welly moost on hus meks a poond a wake.” I learned from employers that this was a very low average. The flat-presser, however, is exceptionally reticent. Most of the men will chat readily enough, and will put themselves to inconvenience in order that you may see something done which they are not doing at the moment. Let us ask this hollow-ware presser, who is making pie-dishes, very much as a cook makes under pie-crust, what he earns. He says that he can make about twenty-two pieces in the day at $d. each. His neighbour, who is making soup-tureens, is also pleased when his swift workmanship is admired, but he is still more pleased when a little stranger that hinders him in his work attracts attention. He has got before him a little bird in a cage, which he intends to take home to his children at dinner-time, but which he now keeps on glancing at as proud as any child. He ex- plains that the bird has been taught to draw its own seed and water, but that, as soon as he bought it, he took away the little bucket and chain, because they seemed to weigh on the “ bird’s moind loike,” and kept it from singing. It is refreshing to note the serious interest with which the big fellow and his big fellow-craftsmen discuss the probability of the little bird’s recovering its voice under new circumstances. When the ware has been dried in a stove, it is packed in the hollow-cheese-like “sag- gars,” coarse vessels made of marl, luted with clay to prevent air from getting in. All kinds of things are packed in one saggar, to econo- mize space, but since they would coalesce if they were allowed to touch, they are kept apart by various kinds of clay -props. The commonest is the “spur,”— in shape something | like the Manx arms. As the points of this : often leave three marks on the bottoms of the plates, &c., such ware is now sometimes “ cranked ” — stacked with intervening clay thimbles at the sides of the piles, so made and \ arranged as to disfigure less the articles they separate. A board leads into the open centre of the kiln, through which the heat will come up. When the saggars have been ranged in rings of basaltic columns round these open spaces the door-way is blocked up with bricks, and the furnaces are lighted. These are in a pediment that bulges out at the bottom of the great black drum-like kiln, and are so arranged that the fireman can let air into them, or ex- clude air from them, at pleasure. He “ makes his proofs ” by taking out bricks at different heights in the blocked-up doorway, and so regulates the heat — a very ticklish operation. “ Theer, sir,” he says, as we stand outside the kiln in the gloomy cone, whose top looks like the shaft of a tunnel, “ luke at thaht.” He has taken out a brick from the doorway high up, and a glowing oblong of red emblazons the dingy brown. “And now luke at this,” he says, as he takes out a brick nearer the bottom. “It een’t nigh so red — it’ll be as black as my hat at breakfast-time to-morrow. It’s the nature o’ heat to hascend.” From forty- eight to fifty hours is the average time a kiln is kept alight. In cases of emergency the firing is done in twenty-four hours ; but such quick work is very “risky.” The minimum pay of a furnace-man is £2 a week. Eveiy potter stamps his work with a mark or num- ber ; and when it comes out finally from the kiln, the ware is sorted, and each man, of course, is credited with all of his that has come “ good from the furnace.” The failures are then scrutinised. If the fireman has spoilt them, the loss falls on the firm ; if the potter’s bad workmanship is manifestly to blame, it is he who is mulcted; and if the negligence cannot be traced with certainty, the potter gets half-pay. When ware has been once fired, it is called j “biscuit” — the drying-stove etymologically justifying the use of the “bis.” Let us go up into this first-floor room to see the bis- cuit enamel-printed. An aproned engraver heats a plate upon a stove, he dabs sticky } colouring matter on it, he pulls a proof on “flimsy” from his little hand-press. “Coot it hoop, Helizabeth,” he says. Elizabeth — a girl of thirteen, with scissors that turn cor- ners as swiftly and as skilfully as a Hansom cabman — cuts the pattern for the border of the plate into two kdies’ collars; she cuts out the patterns for the centre, and the “opaque china” trade-mark on the bottom, as rapidly ; and with equal neat-handedness 174 THE STAFFORDSHIRE POTTER. [Good Wofdsj March i, 1869. a young woman in a wash-leather apron ap- plies all to the proper places, rubs the pat- terns in, dips the plate into water, and brings it out looking, to inexperienced eyes, as if it did not need anything more to be done to it — although this is very far from being the case. The enamel-printer, when compli- mented on her quickness, responds, with languid satire, “Ah moost do a many to mek oot mah dee’s work.” “ And how much does that come to in the week ? ” “ Oh, we doan’t mek moor then ten shilluns ; boot the men thaht ken peent mek their twenty-three shilluns, an’ moor.” The printed ware is next put into the “hardening-on” stove, to have “the oil burnt out of the colour,” and then it is carried to be glazed. The glazer is not an old man, but much stooping over his poison- breathing tub has made him very pale and lean, and literally leaden-eyed. He dips the plate into his tub, swishes it about, and brings it out with a pale-red covering, quite obliterating the pattern. “ It’s bitty,” he re- marks, apologetically, pointing to the little lumps that pimple the glaze ; “ but ah oun’y did it for a mek-shift, to let yer see.” Inter- rogated as to the symptoms of the com- plaint his lead-inhaling calling causes, the glazer croaks like a raven — “ Chronic — rheu- matiz — p’isons the system.” “ It’s unhealthy work,” you hear in explanation ; “ but we do the best we can for them. The Factories Act makes us, indeed. We provide them with towels and nail-brushes to clean their hands before they take their meals.” “Yes, ah’ve two tow’ls an’ a neel-broosh,” echoes the glazer in a comically grateful tone, as if he thought both Government and employers had been exceedingly generous in securing him such luxuries. The earthenware, when it has been glazed, is once more fired, and then carried to the sorting-room, where a bevy of silently smiling lasses sit upon the floor “ dressing ” the ware — chipping off the kiln- marks with stumpy chisels. China is coloured and gilded after it has been glazed. Here gilders are drawing fault- less circles of brown gold as the ware spins round beneath their slender brushes. There, seated at tables that run along the sides of a long room, female burnishers are rubbing ! up the fired gilding into glowing brightness. This intelligent-looking young fellow in black is painting a dessert-service with flowers. He takes nature for his model, he says ; and his wild-roses justify his speech. He studied at the Stoke School of Design, which now numbers some eighty pupils ; and he has just finished a picture for the School of Arts which he modestly hopes may be “lucky.” Yonder artists in beards and blouses are making Parian statuettes. One of them is combing out the hair of a head, whose torso trunk and disjecta membra lie huddled in a box. A Musidora, just finished for the Crys- tal Palace, stands upon the table. Another female figure with flying drapery is waiting for the furnace, and presents an odd appear- ance, supported on all sides with props that are kept from sticking to her by powdered flint. Her modeller points out little holes in the Parian. “ Those are for ventilation,” he says ; “ she would blow up in the furnace, if it were not for them.” His brother-artist places two figures of the same design, a little Cupid and a big Cupid, side by side. They were of the same size originally, he says, but one has, and one has not, passed through the fire. Next he shows you the number of moulds that are needed to make a Parian figure — its parts, which look as if they were carved out of a single block of marble, being really joined together with adroitest skill whilst the material is still damp. That un- cooked-hasty-pudding-like stuff in the corpu- lent white jug on the table is liquid Parian — i.e., fine china “ slip.” He pours some of it into plaster-of-Paris moulds, and in a very short time it has become a semi-solid dog on its hind legs. Parian-moulding, however, can scarcely be included in the toiling and moil- ing of pottery. A few more words as to the potter’s social condition. The Staffordshire Potter of the Period is a very different man from his grandfather, or even his father. He no longer looks upon machinery as a device of the Evil One to deprive human hands of work. He clubs with three or four of his fellows to take in a daily paper, which they read aloud by turns at dinner-time. A great many, both of the potters and the potteresses, regularly attend some place of worship on the Sunday, and very “ splendacious ” often is the Good Words, March i, xS&>] THE STAFFORDSHIRE POTTER. attire of the potteresses at service. I do not mean to say that the potters are all church or chapel goers. For some little time before the publics empty on Saturday night, the songs sung inside become uncertain both in time and tune. On Sunday morning, unshaven potters may be seen smoking in their shirt-sleeves over their fires during service-time, and, spruced up in monkey-jacket and gay com- forter, taking their walks abroad, like young and old ladies of the period, with their canine pets in leash. These pets are critically com- pared. “ Boost think thaht a bad coor ? ” inquires one potter. “Fie lukes as if he’d foight,” says another. “ Ah’d coot his tail if ah’d thaht chep,” says a third. Nevertheless, Sunday in the Potteries, which used to be the fair-day there, is almost j as quiet as a Scotch Sabbath. The public- houses are open, to be sure, in the middle and at the end of the day ; but I did not hear nearly as much noise in them as at a love-feast on which I ventured to intrude. In these sceptical, nothingarian times, it was a curious surprise to listen to the day-of-the- month, hour-of-the-day, dates which the honest potters gave of their “ conversion,” and the confident manner in which they spoke of their constant “ growth in grace,” whilst their brethren joined in a chorus of “Amen, Krtnen” “Yes, thaht’s it,” “ Glory be to God ! ” The wording of the various confessions of faith was very piquant. One brother spurned the thought of “ blowin’ hup the hashes of a hextinguished hexper’ence.” A second be- gan, “ Ah’ m happy to se that ah knaw ah’m a sinner — preese the Lord!” A third, “Ah ken’t mek foin spee-aches loike soom folk.” A fourth, when several of his predecessors had dwelt on the inestimable advantage they had derived from being born of pious parents, commenced, somewhat satirically, “Ah ken’t se as ah wor born o’ pious perents, boot ah went to schule wi’ Jesus Chroist, an’ He teached me hall ah wahnt to knaw.” (This speaker seemed to consider, it rather namby- pamby to be born of pious parents, as not giving a man a chance of being religious “under creditable circumstances.”) A fifth brother preluded with this enviably dogmatical utterance, “ Ah knaw mah hown heart, an’ ah knaw mah hown moind , an’ ah knaw whet ah maned So far as the heart was concerned, there could be no doubt as to the genuine- ness of any of the potters’ utterances, and therefore it was a treat to listen to them. Next day I foregathered with a potter of the old school, and his reminiscences will serve as a foil to the “ love-feast experiences.” A remark on the unexpected quietness of the Potteries unlocks the old man’s memories. “ Th’ wouldn’tst ha’ thowt so fifty yare back, nor forty nayther. Theer wor cockin’ an’ dog foightin’ then. Theer’s a cock-pit at Fenton now, ah’ve heered, boot ah never seed it. Ah’d rayther see a cock-foight then a dog-battle any dee. The dogs welly worry theirselns to mgs, boot the cocks, if they’s any spoonk in ’em, soon gets it ower. It moost be a geme cockerel thaht ’ull stahnd the stale. Ah’d one once fowt for an hou-er, an’ wor hall coot hoop joost as if ye’d carved un. He wor a black-bristed red. A little loomp o’ a cock, he wor. Fou-er poond height wor his foightin’ weight. Ah bred foive from un, boot they was hall stou’n, hand then ah give ower cockin’. Hif yer keers about cockin’, all’ll tell yer soommut that’ll seeve yer money. Soom folk says it’s hall bosh about the colour o’ yer cockerels, boot ah lmaws better. Doan’t yer never foight a dark cock on a laight dee, nor a laight cock on a dark dee. A dark cock should be fowt on a dark dee, an’ a laight cock on a laight dee. An’ soom folk says it’s hall bosh about charmin’ yer cock, boot they’re wrong wo-ally. Ah moind, when ah wor a lahd, mah feyther an’ another chep backed a cock agin a parsohs, for ten poond a ’ soide. Mah feyther wor a teelor, an’ t’other chep wor a waver. Yer’ve heered about t’ old witch o’ Lane End? Doan’t metter — she wbr well knawed in these parts ; an’ mah feyther took a feather o’ his cock to t’old witch, an’ she charmed un; an’ as soon as the cocks wor put down, parson’s turns ower, an’ wouldn’t so mooch as look at t’other. ‘You’ve been to t’ devil,’ says parson; ‘boot ah’ve got a stronger devil then yourn ; ’ an’ he broke t’ charm, an’ his cock won arter hall. It wor one o’ them, wi’ a tassel on t’ head.” Considering the character of the magazine which I had the honour to represent at the time, I could not help being tickled at the old man’s belief that the “ cocking ” informa- tion which he was giving was likely to prove of personal benefit to his hearer. Although he was a cock-fighter, he plumed himself on his respectability. In reply to his remark that, though he had “heered mooch talk o’ Loonnon,” he had never been there, and didn’t suppose that he ever should go now, I pointed out the facilities for travel which excursion trains afford. “ Hexcoorsion treens !” the old potter cried, with aristocratic disdain. “ Ah went hin one o’ they, when t’ Queen kem to Manchester, boot all’ll never gaw agin — theer’s hall soart o’ coompany ! ” FOUR SONNETS. [Good Words, March x, 1869. FOUR SONNETS. A SNOW MOUNTAIN. Can I make white enough my thought for thee, Or wash my words in light? Thou hast no mate To sit aloft in the silence silently And twin those matchless heights unde- secrate. Reverend as Lear, when, lorn of shelter, he Stood, with his old white head, surprised at fate ; Alone as Galileo, when, set free, Before the stars he mused disconsolate. Ay, and remote, as the dead lords of song, Great masters who have made us what we are, For thou and they have taught us how to long And feel a sacred want of the fair and far : Reign, and keep life in this our deep desire — Our only greatness is that we aspire. 11. SLEEP. \A woman speaks.) O sleep, we are beholden to thee, sleep, Thou bearest angels to us in the night, Saints out of heaven with palms. Seen by thy light Sorrow is some old tale that goeth not deep ; Love is a pouting child. Once I did sweep Through space with thee, and lo, a dazzling sight — Stars ! They came on, I felt their drawing and might ; And some had dark companions. Once (I weep When I remember that) we sailed the tide, And found fair isles, where no isles used to bide, And met there my lost love, who said to me, That ’ twas a long mistake : he had not died. Sleep, in the world to come how strange ’twill be Never to want, never to wish for thee ! FOUR SONNETS. Good Words, March i, 1869.] -71 IV. Who veileth love should first have vanquished fate. She folded up the dream in her deep heart, Her fair full lips were silent on that smart, Thick fringed eyes did on the grasses wait What good? one eloquent blush, but one, and straight The meaning of a life was known ; for art Is often foiled in playing nature’s part, And time holds nothing long inviolate. Earth’s buried seed springs up — slowly, or fast : The ring came home, that one in ages past Flung to the keeping of unfathom’d seas : And golden apples on the mystic trees Were sought and found, and borne away at last, Though watched of the divine Hesperides. JEAN INGELOW. III. PROMISING. (A MAN SPEAKS.) Once, a new world, the sunswart marinere Columbus, promised, and was sore with- stood, Ungraced, unhelped, unheard for many a year ; But let at last to make his promise good. Promised and promising I go, most dear, To better my dull heart with love’s sweet feud, My life with its most reverent hope and fear, And my religion, with fair gratitude. O we must part ; the stars for me contend, And all the winds that blow on all the seas. Through wonderful waste places I must wend, And with a promise my sad soul appease. Promise then, promise much of far-off bliss ; But — ah, for present joy, give me one kiss. 1>]S BOMBAY POONA. -Good Words, March x, PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. By the EDITOR. III. BOMBAY FOONA. The preaching of the missionaries in the streets of Bombay, and the teaching given by them to the natives in the school, were features of Indian life which greatly im- pressed me. Let me first describe the preaching. At the appointed hour we went to the American chapel, from the doorsteps of which the Rev. Mr. Bowen has preached every week for, I suppose, a quarter of a century. He is, I think, connected with the “ American Board for Foreign Mis- sions,” which like the London Missionary Society, includes all Evangelical denomina- tions, but is practically identified with the Congregationalists or Independents. He is one of the best known and most honoured men in Bombay. In order to convince the natives of the unselfishness of his motives, he has lived for years as poorly almost as themselves — refusing all official pay. He has thus sought to convince the people, as it were by a visible sign, that he has no object whatever except to testify his love to God and man in preaching the Gospel of Christ. Whether this course was wisely chosen or not there may be different opinions and some difficulty in determining ; but no Christian man can doubt its devotion and self-denial. In this spirit, and at a money expense so small as to be scarce .worth reckoning, he has lived and laboured with a beautiful and unconscious self-sacrifice. I feel that I owe an apology for the apparent indelicacy of thus mentioning, the name of one whose life is so unobtrusive and simple, and whose work is so true towards God and man, that he must ' dislike to have it thus dragged forth into the light of common day. Mr. Bowen has maintained a strong faith, not merely in the truth of Christianity as a power to revolutionise, man’s nature, for this we all believe, but in “preaching” as the best means of so gaining access to the under- standing and the heart as to produce these results. The question about “ preaching,” as we understand the term, is not an easy one to settle. There are practical difficulties of a most serious and complex kind connected with it. It must be confessed that we have as yet won to our side comparatively few intelligent Hindoos, possessing either such intellectual power and eloquence, or such spiritual perception and firmness of principle, as are essential to effective preaching. Nor should it be forgotten that these same gifts are just as much required in the European who preaches to the natives. He must be well informed as to the views, prejudices, difficulties, and opinions of the people ; and have full sympathy with them, so as to be able to see as they see, to doubt and question and tremble and rejoice as they do. Preaching is something more than com- municating Gospel truth. It is a revela- tion of the truth as known and possessed by the speaker. He is not a mere dead voice transmitting accurately the message given him, but a living person who has sympathy with the message, and delivers it accordingly. And such preaching alone, whether at home or abroad, can find a response from living men. In India, above all other places, the preacher should have readiness of wit, quick- ness of repartee, and power of argument. It is essential to the success of one who addresses thoughtful and inquiring Hindoos that he should have such a knowledge of Christianity as will enable him to bring its doctrines fearlessly into “ the light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world,” so as to commend them to men’s con- sciences. And surely it should enter into our idea of the accomplished missionary, who might hope to get at the inner spirit of his more thoughtful and therefore more hopeful hearers, that he should be able to see the good as well as the evil in those beliefs which have lived so long, and have been held with such tenacity. It is his duty to inquire : — what light is in them ? What elements have contributed to preserve them so long ? What difficulties in man’s experience or des- tiny have they aimed at solving ? What good has the human soul with its fears and aspira- tions been searching for in them ? What has been its hunger and thirst, and how have they satisfied these ? How and where, notwithstanding them, has the soul gone astray, lost the road, and become poor and miserable, blind and naked? And what mean its orphan-cries ? Thus the missionary, with his glorious revelation of God to man in Christ Jesus, may, as a true prophet, interpret man to himself — interpret his thoughts, his longings, what he unconsciously seeks but has not found ; and proclaim that rest and satisfaction, which can be found Good Words, March i, iS5o.] BOMBAY— POONA. 179 only in Jesus Christ, the light, the truth, the Saviour, the all for every man who believeth. Such gifts as these we have mentioned are confessedly rare, more especially when they have to be exercised through the medium of a foreign language, which can only be thoroughly mastered by long and severe study. But even where such powers are present the difficulties of making any definite and lasting impression by preaching, are far greater than we at home are well able to realise. Indeed, it is scarcely possible to over-estimate the difficulty of conveying, in one sermon or even in a series of sermons, any true idea of the Christian system, to an audience gathered rapidly together in a busy thoroughfare or bazaar, and composed of heathens, having hardly one thought as to religion in common with the preacher- — their consciences almost dead, and their wills enfeebled ; while their passions are strong, and their ignorance of truth profound — their whole souls appearing to be saturated with a superstition well adapted to the pecu- liarities of their nature and mode of thinking ; and not only so, but all of them cemented together in the bonds of caste as firmly as granite blocks in an Egyptian temple. For a foreigner, in such circumstances, to make this people — to whom, indeed, he is an un- clean being — even understand in the slightest degree what he means by God, Creation, Providence, the Son of God, atonement, re- generation, new birth, repentance, eternal life, moral evil and good, is perhaps one of the most difficult tasks any man can attempt to perform. But when we consider that the aim of the preacher is, not only to make them understand, but to make them so believe what is preached as that they shall, as a necessary consequence, separate themselves from their families, their countrymen, and become vile outcasts, and, in the estimation of their own people, lost and cursed things in this world and the next, then we shall perceive the difficulty of converting Hindoos. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that it would be far easier, humanly speaking, for a Brahmin or Buddhist to preach in the" streets of London, and make those of the crowd who might listen to him, understand his creed and his views respecting soul and body, good and evil, God and men, or the teaching of the Mahabharata or of Sankhya !*' My remarks, of course, do not apply to preaching among the aborigines or low castes, * I have dwelt at some length upon this and other questions connected with Christian Missions in my “Address” pub- lished by William Blackwood and Sons. who are fettered by fewer ties and prejudices ; nor to cases where the missionary can meet the same audience week after week in a native village ; nor to preaching by able natives who understand their countrymen, and can follow it up by constant intercourse with them; far less to preaching, where there has been such an education given, whether in English or the vernacular, as prepares the mind to comprehend the terms made use of. I merely wish to make Christian people at home comprehend in some degree the posi- tion of their missionaries who have to deal with Hindoos, and beg them to abate their wonder and disappointment at there not being more numerous and immediate conver- sions. Mr. Bowen, as I have said, preached from the steps of the American chapel. We were accommodated with chairs under the verandah and above the steps, so that we could hear and see all. The venerable and learned Dr. Wilson of Bombay, and the eloquent Mr. Taylor of Guzerat, also addressed the meeting, which numbered about tw T o hundred persons. The services began by a short address from a native catechist, who read the Scriptures until the people who were passing along gathered together. I was much struck with several things. The general attention and courtesy of the audience, for instance, was very remarkable. A most respectful silence was maintained throughout, with one exception only, and that was when two young men interrupted the speaker with such remarks as these : “How much money did you give that catechist who began the service?” “ How much do you pay to converts?” &c., &c. Their features and the expression of their counten- ance indicated a characteristic type of a low stratum of “Young Bombay,” being full of vulgar conceit and arrogance. I was so moved by their conduct, that by signs I invited one of them to come and speak with me. I said to him, “ Young man, you interrupt a gentleman who, before you were born, left his native countiy and came here from mo- tives so unselfish and loving that, I fear, you can but faintly comprehend them. You pro- fess to have no faith in the Christian religion ; but these men, whom you sneer and laugh at, believing in that religion, bear such a good-will to you that, were it necessary, they would die for your good. Looking at your souls in the light of God and Christ, we all value you. But were I to estimate you at the value you put on yourselves, my opinion of you would not be very high.” BOMBAY— POONA. 180 [wood Words, March i, i30> “You evidently think very little of us,” was his answer. “Very little of you, indeed,” I replied, “ as mere creatures, the great end of whose existence is to enter the Government em- ployment, and rise in it ; and whose motto is, ‘ Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die / — so little, I tell you, that if one anna each would purchase you, and induce you to profess Christianity, I would not give it for you ! You have been very rude, and very unlike your gentlemanly countrymen. Give my compliments to your companion, and tell him that is my opinion of you both.” They soon retired from the meeting, which I confess, added very much to my estimate of them. We had thus before us a sample of one class of young men, which I am disposed to rank among the emptiest, whose small amount of knowledge has puffed them up, and made them what the Germans call “ Wind-beutels,” or wind-bags — a consider- able class in every part of India where English education is given. They require a firm and wise handling to break them into more humble bearing. I did not, of course, understand the language in which the addresses were given ; but it was deeply interesting to witness these signs of contact between the East and the West — this meeting of two streams of thought and belief, which had flowed down through so many ages in such different forms, and with such different results. Chris- tianity and heathendom were now beginning, however feebly, to try their strength in a contest which must end by one or other possessing Hindostan as long as the world exists. The very names which you could distinguish now and then in the “barba- rian speech,” such as “ Abraham,” “ Moses,” “ Christ,” “ Brahma,” “ Mahommed,” made you realise that worlds of history were being seen by the dark, piercing eyes of the silent and turbaned crowd, as well as by the preachers who addressed them. A smile would pass over this face, and a frown gather on that brow, indicating how thought was working in the minds of these hearers, while others again would break away from the crowd to express their feelings vehemently in Oriental fashion outside it, ere they separated with mutual satisfaction in their common re- jection of the foreign heresy. The very fact, however, of such ideas being listened to and canvassed is itself an education, and a prepara- tion for the reception of Christianity, when better understood, and more widely diffused. I may add that, whatever breaking up of the ground there may be in such preaching as I have described, by a tried and self-sacri- ficing man like Mr. Bowen, it has not as yet told to any large extent. He himself frankly confessed that, as far as he knew, he had never made a convert. His experience, in so far as Hindoos in the cities are concerned, is not singular. Such successes in preaching as we can claim have been attained in totally different circumstances, and among a different class of people. But in the meantime, I beg my intelligent reader not to assume hastily on this ground that missions have been a failure. Nothing can be further from the truth. To come now to the mission schools. As the Privy Council in this country gives grants in aid to any school which can educate up to a certain standard in secular knowledge, so does the Indian Government. Each school that can prepare pupils to pass an entrance examination before the University Examiner, and afterwards go forward to their degree, receives a certain allowance for each pupil passed. Thus, in each missionary in- stitute there is a school for boys, who re- ceive the elements of education, and are taught by means of the vernacular ; and also a college for advanced lads who are being trained to pass the university examination. For all secular branches native teachers are employed, and it is not absolutely required that they should be Christians. The object the young men have in view in coming to a mission school is purely selfish. They wish a good education as cheaply as possible, in order to obtain good appointments by passing the required examinations. The obj ect which the missionary has in view, on the other hand, is to give a good education in secular know- ledge, in order that he may thus have an opportunity of imparting sound Christian instruction, and by his influence from day to day elevate the whole moral tone of the pupils, and, if possible, bring them per- sonally to know and believe in Jesus Christ.. The college students are all taught the English language, and generally acquire, sooner or later, a fair knowledge of it. They quite understand the conditions on which the missionary receives them, and acquiesce in these conditions. By this means there are every year a large number of young men — Hindoos and Mahommedans— sent forth to occupy situations of trust, and to exercise influence in the community. These men are at least acquainted with historical Chris- tianity, and have seen its spirit represented in i BOMBAY— POONA. Good Words, March x, i860.] the noble lives and unwearying labours of its teachers. Now, whatever immediate results may flow from this system of Christian education, it is obvious that it must have great influence in preparing the natives for the ultimate recep- tion of Christianity. It may be slow, but it is sure in its general influence. It has little to impress the minds of those at home, who demand what will affect the imagination and excite the feelings. But it requires a patience, a perseverance, and a faith in the missionary, which ought to call forth our deepest sym- pathy and admiration. There is nothing in it of the dash of the cavalry charge, with waving of flags and sounding of trumpets, exciting the most indifferent spectator. It has more of the character of military mining work, which, unseen, is pushed forward in darkness and amidst innumerable obstacles, but which is destined at last to make such a breach in the battlements as will admit the eager and anxious besiegers. And, besides, it is out of the materials furnished by the best mission schools that we shall most likely obtain the one thing essential to any real advance of the Gospel in India, and that is, earnest and intelligent native preachers and pastors. But I have no wish to dogmatise as to the best method of conducting missions. I would allow every wise missionary to preach or teach ; to educate or print ; to heal the body; to plant, build, or sow — or do what- ever he thinks best to make known to the race or tribe amongst whom he labours, be they ignorant or learned, savage or civi- lised, high castes or no castes, in rural villages or in great cities, that Gospel which he is commissioned to communicate. Let us now look into one of the schools and see what it is like. To begin with the outward and material. The school buildings are necessarily large, not only to meet the increasing demands for educa- tion, but also for coolness and comfort. At all events, they generally look magnificent edifices, with pillared porticoes, noble veran- dahs, great flights of stairs, and spacious halls. There is little stone used in their con- struction ; but the lime — chunam — with which the pillars are constructed, gives a remarkably fine polished surface. As for the pupils : they range from the merest children to young men, some of whom are married, and they all strike one as being singularly pleasing and in- telligent-looking. They are uniformly clean and comely, with white dresses, stately turbans, beautiful shining teeth, brilliant full-orbed eyes, and finely cut features. There is a look of gene- 181 ral intelligence which whets one’s appetite to come into intellectual contact with them. But in the girls’ schools it is quite otherwise. These more resemble our infant schools. Some of the girls are like nice round india- rubber balls. Others, however, are brides, affianced at a very early age. One subdued- looking creature I saw in Dr. Wilson’s school, was covered with all sorts of chains and jewels, from the nose to the toes, and with ringlets on wrist and ankle. The whole family jewel box, which had been secured from Pin- daories, Mahrattas, and Dacoits, seemed to have been hung round this quiet pleasant- looking child. But there is a singular want of life, vivacity, or fun about them all, boys and girls alike. The whole young generation, in- deed, appeared to me to be always in a state of physical subduedness because of the heat. One saw nowhere any sign of that exuberance of life and spirit which is exhibited in the sports and frolics of a northern playground. Although, of course, it was a thing I ex- pected, yet I confess it was strange to me to hear these boys speak English. My friend happened to ask (I forget in what school), “ Do you ever read poetry?” “ Oh, yes, sir,” was the reply. u What poetry?” “ Milton, Scott, and such-like.” “ Which of Scott’s poems have you read?” “ ‘ The Lady of the Lake,’ and others.” “ What lake?” “ Loch Katrine, of course,” was the reply. Was I indeed in a school of Hindoos ! As to the religion taught in the mission schools, it is no exaggeration to affirm that their higher classes could compete in Scrip- ture knowledge and the evidences of Chris- tianity with the best of our common schools at home, and probably surpass many of them. Why, then, do not the pupils become Chris- tians ? it may be asked. How is it they can prove truths by arguments which they them- selves regard as unanswerable, and yet refuse to receive them as living powers into their hearts ? How can teachers in mission schools, and their pupils, lose all faith in Hinduism, yet conform to its practices and refuse to be bap- tized ? How can they produce the best and soundest arguments against their own super- stitious practices, demonstrate and laugh at their absurdity, and yet daily conform to them? What means this trifling — this want of all moral earnestness ? I cannot at present pause to reply. But such facts, although there are many exceptions, are patent to every one who carefully examines a mission school. In a stranger, at all events, these things jSs bombay- excite a new feeling of wonder, and suggest more than a suspicion that he has very much to learn before he can account for the dif- ference between East and West, in spite of many things common to both, revealing the same contrast and opposition between know- ing and being — the intellect and the will. We had the presence of one of the most intellectual natives of Bombay — Narayen Mandlik, who occupies a high position at the bar — in the examination of our mission school. He came to speak kind words to us as a deputation to India. Yet he is not a Christian by profession. This, however, only made his sympathy the more touching, and filled one with thoughts, many and hopeful, as to our relationship with such men. But while saying this, I may take the opportunity of referring to the timidity of many of even the educated native gentlemen. We made a return call on one, who received us with all the high breeding of his class, and in a splendid mansion. His English was per- fect, his frankness great, and his conversation most interesting, although naturally he was strong on the native side of things generally. He was not a professing Christian ; but neither had he any faith in Brahminism as a religious system. Yet, when his brother-in-law broke caste by going to England, he insisted that, before the offender could be received again into his patriarchal household, he must un- dergo the ceremonies, too disgusting to be stated, necessary to restore his caste ! He defended this conduct on several grounds — such as the importance of all natives con- sidering national and family feelings, and the necessity of their complying with even foolish customs which a philosophic mind can afford to despise, but which a kind man will comply with for the sake of others. My informant, before whom he laid his case, respectfully suggested to him that his conduct seemed wanting in moral courage. “ Moral courage !” he exclaimed, “I neither have nor pretend to have any such courage. Did we as a people possess it, you wouldn’t be here l,” But let us leave Bombay for a few days, and take a run to Poona. > Our journey by railway occupied about nine hours. The weather was hot, but the carriages were roomy, cool, and as comfort- able as possible, thanks to their double roofs. The windows have Venetian blinds to keep out the heat, and over each there is a pro- jection which throws off the rays of the sun. An Indian railway-station is unique as affording an easy study of native races and -P O ON A. [Good Words, March i, manners. The crowds of third-class passen- gers, especially, startle one. For however great the stride in Europe between the smartest and most rapid stage-coach and a railway train, it is still greater in India be- tween a bullock-garry, grinding and jolting along, and the hurricane speed of the loco- motive. The difference is also great in the ideas of time suggested by both modes of conveyance. In the minds of the natives it would seem as if there were no clear dis- tinction between time and eternity. Hours to them seem mere names, days insignifi- cant. One gets a rude notion of how the antediluvians, who lived for centuries, must have thought of engagements, as contrasted with the way in which engagements are thought of now by short-lived and busy mor- tals, who reckon up minutes as well as days. No man who has been a week in India can have any faith in native chronology. The inexorable bell and guard’s whistle are thus perplexing in the extreme to the natives. They assemble hours before the time of starting; and squat down and smoke their pipes till the hour arrives. Then they rush to and fro in earnest excitement, dragging their children, conveying pots and pans, beds and bedding, as they yell and jabber. With looks of frantic despair they crush and push along in a continuous turbaned stream ; and, wholly forgetful for the moment of all caste distinctions, they pour into the place assigned to them. Should a high caste man discover to his anguish that he has to enter a compartment already to all appear- ance crammed with low caste or no caste men, it is in vain that he turns and shrinks back. The English guard pushes him in, locks the door, whistles sharply, and waves his hand, crying, “ All right.” Puff, puff goes the engine, whirling off more than a dozen carriages filled with Brahmins, and Sudras, holy and unholy, twice born and low-born — ail of them originally emanations from the head or legs of the divine Brahma, but now united as second or third or fourth class pas- sengers speeding along the iron path of destiny at five-and-twenty miles an hour. It is evi- dent that the railway, like other civilising gifts of God, is, in its own way, working out the good of India. It is developing indus- try and commerce, bringing the people, who have been long and effectually separated from each other by distance, race, religion, and caste, into closer contact ; while it is un- doubtedly adding immensely to the central power of Government, making its presence felt at the farthest points, and enabling it to hold the vast empire more firmly together. Good Words, March x, 1869.] BOMBAY— POONA. 183 It is also rapidly and visibly telling upon the system of pilgrimages, and on the idle and confused gatherings of vast multitudes to the nielas , or holy places. Whatever has to be done is now done quickly, conveniently, and cheaply ; and what the priests, and beggars, and moving hordes of mendicants lose, the country and the people gain. The route between Bombay and Poona is one of the most picturesque I ever beheld. The earlier part of the line goes across the dead flat island of Bombay, passing through extensive palm groves. In these are scat- tered the cottages of a large population de- scended from the original Portuguese settlers. After passing along an extended causeway, which reaches to the station of Tanta, and before ascending the Ghauts, a most striking view reveals itself on emerging from a tunnel. This is a plain through which the sea worms its way from the north inland through in- numerable channels like rivers. These are dotted with white sails, and surrounded by hills with most beautiful and fantastic out- lines, and under the light and brilliancy of an eastern sky are grand and impressive. The scenery becomes more and more striking as the Ghauts are ascended. We reach at last a remarkable interruption in the Bhore Ghaut. A deep chasm had been bridged over by a dizzy and extensive viaduct. Some months before our visit a train had safely passed over this high arched path. Another train very soon after approached it within a few hundred feet, when it was suddenly arrested by the engine driver, who saw the whole bridge crash and crumble down before him into the unseen depths of the valley ! The new bridge was being built as we reached this chasm ; and we shivered as we thought of what a few seconds more would have witnessed had that train not been stopped ! But we need not enlarge on such a sensation spectacle. The travellers were in the meantime con- veyed in palinkins, or palkis, by a circuit of four miles to a station beyond the point of danger ; for it was probable that other bridges within that distance were likewise in an un- safe condition. Nevertheless, such is the curiosity of travellers, that we were anxious to travel by the break which conveyed the mails and baggage, and through the kindness of friends managed to do so both in going and returning. The scenery was worth all the risk. With the exception of the Neilgherries and Vellore, it was the only bit of rock and glen I saw in India. The line certainly had neither been planned nor constructed by persons in the least subject to nervousness. The gradients in some places were i in 37. At one time we looked down slopes which end in abrupt sweeps lost in depths of jungle where bears and tigers roam undisturbed by the steam whistle. At another, we had long descents, with corresponding ascents ending in further ranges of level precipice, with wide glens branching off, green below and gor- geously golden above, from the colouring derived from the decay of a peculiar grass. We ' had several most wonderful peeps into lower plains as well as into lower gorges, with expanses of green fields, sparkling tanks, and spurs of picturesque hills. Far down, a tank was pointed out to us in which it is said the Duke of Wellington lost his only gun — it having sunk in the mud during his rapid advance to Poona in 1802. The glory of the scenery of this pass through the Ghauts continues unabated till the pic- turesque station of Kandalla is reached. The Ghauts, I should have mentioned before this, are a range of hills which in some places rise to ridges of 4,500 feet. They follow the whole line of coast, descending almost with the abruptness of precipices into a plain called the Konkan, which varies in breadth, separating them from the sea. This outline may give a better idea of what I mean : — GHAUTS _ KTflKAW SEA / *~^ ' If one dare hazard a conjecture as to their geological history from seeing them from the window of a railway carriage, the conclusion would Be that their -summits re- present the highest portion left of what was once the original plain ; and that denudation, and the violent action of tropical torrents through long ages, have produced all their present characteristic features, and the fan- tastic groupings of the rocks, thus : — - Poona is very different from Bombay. The rich vegetation of the latter has almost entirely 184 BOMBAY— POONA. ^Good Words, March i, disappeared. The whole plateau on which Poona rests has an arid, ill-wooded appear- ance in comparison with the lower margin near the sea. But in the very expanse of plain, in the fine broad roads which every- where intersect the locality, there is a pleasant sense of relief. The neat, scattered bunga- lows, set amidst flowers and shrubs, give a fresh, healthy look, resembling very much an inland English watering-place. I breathed more freely here, and had less of the sensa- tion of close, hot mugginess than in Bombay. The only excursion we had time to make in the immediate neighbourhood was to Parbutty, once the citadel and palace of the last Peishwa. It is situated on a conical hill which is ascended by a huge paved pathway or staircase ; but so gentle that horses or elephants can ascend it. The once majestic palace is now in ruins. But the old temples with their gods, still remain in a walled en- closure near the inner gateway. This formed the private chapel or chapels of his highness and, what with cupolas and gilding, must have been handsome in its day. The several gods in their several shrines were described Parbutty. and lighted up for us that we might see them better; and we looked at them through th“ closed gratings with eager attention. They had the same ugly look as those we had seen ., k/r 6 f Cls,lwa played a conspicuous part in the Mahratta war of 1 8 1 7—1 8. He was grossly superstitious and yery t/eacherous. Hifcourt was like m o S t nat i ve courtS) which "°“ rt -acy° Se Hk yS ’ ^ SCeDeS ° f fri S htful 0 acy. His government was one of tyranny and oppression. But he was such a devotee al to have given a dinner to 100,000 Brahmins m order to. atone for the crime his father committed in having murdered one of the holy order. A vile slave who had risen to be prime minister, hated the English with such a hate as only Orientals feel. The Peishwa entered into an alliance to attack the English, and laid a plan to assassinate the English resi- dent, the distinguished Mountstuart Elphin- stone. The resident, in self-defence, and with only 3,000 infantry, took a position at Kirkee. BLe was attacked by 10,000 cavalry, and as many infantry j but finally gained a splendid BOMBAY— POONA. Good Words, March i, 1869.] 185 victory and seized Poona. Two of the most wonderful battles were fought about the same time. One took place about three weeks after, on the Setabuldee hills, when 1,350 troops, almost all native, beat the Peishwa with 12,000 horse and 8,000 foot, after a desperate battle which lasted eighteen hours ! The other, which was still more wonderful in its details, took place about six weeks later, when 600 Bombay native infantry, 26 European artillery, and 350 irregular horse, at Keirgaur, near Poona, fought from ten in the morning till nine in the evening against fearful odds — something like 20,000 horse and 8,000 foot, and remained masters of the field ! Such results as these might seem incredible were they not among the most notorious facts of our Indian history. In the last-mentioned battle, for example, one of the British guns was seized, when Lieutenant Pattinson — a man six feet seven inches in height — who was lying on the ground, bayoneted with a mortal wound, rose, and calling on his grenadiers to follow him, clutched a musket and rushed into the midst of the enemy, crushing them down right and left, until, Playing the National Tunes. wounded a second time by a gun shot, he fell down dead ! His heroic deed rallied the handful of troops, and the gun was re- taken. The Peishwa was eventually so harassed that he retired from the war, giving up his dominions on receiving a pension of ^80,000 a year, together with the territory of Bithoor, where he died. His adopted son and heir was Nana Sahib , the murderer of Cawnpore ; and it was his dispute with the Government and their refusal to continue the Peishwa’s pension which chiefly roused his hatred x-i 3 1 against the British, and his implacable thirst for revenge. In such a history as that of the Peishwa we have a type of what has been often repeated in the history of our conquest of India. Some powerful chief, urged on by a set of profligate adventurers whose lives were spent in grati- fying every evil propensity of their nature, made the attempt, when some plot was ripe, to crush the British power, which checked their insatiable love of war and vengeance. The Home Government, on its part, deter- mined to keep out of war, and to avoid BOMBAY— POONA. 1 86 [Good Words, March i, iSSg. aggression ; but it was ultimately forced in sheer self-defence to fight, and finally to have districts and kingdoms delivered up to it. When the stronghold was stormed and its former possessors scattered, it was a stern necessity at first, and, in the end, a blessing for all concerned, to occupy it with British forces, and to reform it by British justice. Opposite the gateway, and overlooking the temple area, was a band of six musicians, who every evening at six o’clock play hymns in honour of the gods. Their instruments were two pipes, played like flageolets, and two drums, which they beat with the fore and middle fingers of the right hand laid horizon- tally on the drum. From long practice these fingers seemed to have attained the firm elasticity of steel, so sharp and distinct was the sound they elicited. It is impossible to describe the music. It was slow in its mea- sure ; but to me it was harsh and grating as if pigs, or some stranger animals, kept on squeaking whilst pots and pans were being hammered. Its very wildness, however, and uncouth discord, had an interest, as being in harmony with the moral discord of idolatry. Poona, with the neighbouring military sta- tion of Kirkee, has a large English population, to which I had the happiness of preaching. I should think it is one of the most agreeable stations north of the Neilgherries. We had the pleasure while here of being the guests of Sir Alexander Grant. He was kind enough to ask a large party to meet us in the evening. This was composed both of European and native gentlemen, who could give us most reliable and intelligent information on the topics which interested us. From the circumstance of our able and dis- tinguished host being the director 6f public instruction in the Bombay Presidency, and of Poona containing several important educa- tional institutes, we had the opportunity for the first time of meeting natives who were able to take a prominent part in the work of education as teachers, inspectors, &c. There were present among others a Deputy In- spector ; the Principal of the Training Col- lege ; the translator of the “Arabian Nights a Pundit ; a college fellow ; and a college student. All these were singularly pleasing and intelligent gentlemen. The whole of them had renounced caste, and ate and drank with us, although one of them evi- dently felt a little awkward in - doing so, and was good naturedly twitted by the others on account of this. N one of them, however, professed _ Christianity. With one I had a long and interesting conversation as to what he thought were its peculiar doctrines. On many points he was not very well-informed ; and on others, the impressions which had been conveyed to him, whether by books or discussions, were of such a strong, one- sided, and narrow form as could not but be offensive to a thoughtful and cul- tivated mind. The conviction left on me by my contact with this native gentle- man was certainly not that he prefm'ed the darkness to the light, but that the light had not been given to him in regard to the truths which demanded his faith. There was every willingness on his part to discuss religious questions with the greatest patience and fair- ness. He was a typical specimen, I believe, of a large class. I cannot enter into details regarding the Free Church Mission Schools, or the Orphanage of the Church of Scotland, at Poona — the only two institutions of the kind we had time to visit. Suffice it to say that I was much pleased with all I saw, and regret much that here as elsewhere it was impossible to see more. The Free Church School building had been the house of some great man — a general or minister of the Peishwa. It gave one an excellent idea of those “good old times.” The entrance gateway ; the inner court ; the three stories of verandahs, with rooms branch- ing from them ; the pillared hall of audience ; the rooms with their grotesque frescoes ; and — what struck me more than once in India — the narrow stair which communicated with the different stories — so narrow and steep, in- deed, that a certain stout Western questioned the possibility of his being able to ascend it ; — all these revealed a world of history. They spoke of sudden attacks, insecurity, and treachery. Among other means of giving us pleasure, Sir Alexander had engaged three or four of the best native musicians to play national tunes. One of the instruments is not repre- sented in the engraving. It was shaped somewhat like an AEolian harp, resting hori- zontally bn the ground whilst played with both hands. The music was interesting in its structure, and pleasing too. The pieces played were not melodies, but long and in- tricate compositions. The performers had more agreeable and intelligent countenances than appear in our illustration ; and the native gentlemen seemed to appreciate and enjoy the performance as Europeans could scarcely be expected to do. Accompanied by our friend, the Rev. Mr. Ross, — a military chaplain of the Church of Scotland, stationed at Poona, — we travelled, Good Words. March i, 1S69.J BOIMBAY- I should think, for about thirty miles further on along the same line which had brought us from Bombay. The sun had set when we reached the station ; but we soon found our way to “ The Travellers’ Bungalow,” about a mile or so farther on. I may here inform the reader that along all these splendid roads, made through long years of labour by Government, — and which stood to the old tracks intersecting Hindustan as the railways now stand to these roads, — comfortable wooden houses have been erected at certain distances. These bungalows con- tain several rooms, sufficiently large and well furnished with tables, chairs, and bedding, to afford shelter and rest to travellers in a country, not only too thinly peopled for “hotels,” but even for a traveller relying upon their most agreeable substitute, the hos- pitable home of some European civil servant. They are built always near some village; and the policeman, or peon of the village, has official charge of them ; but, when they happen to be in places more frequented, a sort of native manager or mess-master resides on the premises. He can lay down the beds, furnish lights, and provide coffee and a dish of curry, or, at all events, what is necessary to keep soul and body together. But Eng- lish travellers are, of course, generally too prudent not to carry with them some stores of their own, in order, in such circumstances, to add a few luxuries to the necessaries of life. Many of these bungalows are now falling into ruins, chiefly in places where the railway stations either provide sufficient food and accommodation, or carry the passengers past them. In the present case the bungalow was required, as being the central point on the line of road which connected the station with important places in the interior. We found two good-sized rooms unoccu- pied — their floors, as is usual in such places as well as in native houses, covered with cow-dung, which had become hard, yet sent forth a peculiar aroma, perfectly bearable, but singularly suggestive of what is perceived everywhere in India. This kind of carpet, it may be mentioned, has nothing to do with any religious respect for the cow, but is used solely to relieve the discomfort which would be caused by a damp clay floor, if, indeed, clay could always be had. I believe it has also something to do in the way of checking insect life. Another part of the bungalow was occupied by Major G and his sweet English wife. They kindly sent us their cards ; and in their society we spent a portion of the evening -POONA. 187 most agreeably. This was our first experi- ence of the kind of life lived by our civilians in India — a class for whom I entertain the highest respect and admiration. Think of these gentlemen, often for months together dwelling in tents, and in places which are even unknown to the inhabitants of the country a few miles off; moving about from this place ending in “pore” or “lore,” to that other, ending in “ doore” or “ foore” — administering justice, collecting revenue, reconciling families and villages in bitter hostility about this field or that claim, exercising such influence over thousands as casts into the shade that of a lord-lieutenant or a high-sheriff at home — their white faces being more powerful than any battery, and their word of honour more trusted than the parchment or seal of any Peishwa or Nizam ever was ! To me this is a picture which powerfully affects the imagination, and gives a slight idea of the influence of a class of which our own country should be proud i I shall no doubt return to this subject again in illustrating English life in India. In the meantime I will only say that Tom or Dick who brings a wife to India to share this life with him, should be kind to a degree which in England and by selfish bachelors might be termed “ spoony.” He should give her as much of his time as possible, and try to interest her in his work. He should en- deavour to get her to do what she can in the way of opening up the hearts of Hindoo families to British sympathy and Christian civilisation. He should soothe her if -she is despairing ; make her pillows comfortable on the couch if she is wearied ; and chaff her gently and lovingly, with a kiss on the fore- head, if she is “ nervous.” He should never blame 4 her, as she should never blame him, for being “ irritable ” when every nerve is tingling; but, believing that climate changes people, and invests most Europeans in India with a thinner skin than is known in Europe, they should live in faith of a healthier region north of Suez, where both will one day, in their English or Scotch home, wonder at their peevish past, and, mutually confessing their short-comings, cordially maintain that there is not a more loving or a happier couple on earth ! And then the 'wife must never say to Tom that he ought not to have married but have remained a bachelor, because she was never fit to be his wife ! Rather, if she will confess it, let her admit that she is “ very foolish,” and “ nervous,” and “ out of sorts,” and “ silly ; ” but that she is sure Tom loves her and is the best of husbands, and wall bear with her and treat her like a THE HISTORY OF [Good Words, March i, 1869. spoiled child. But let no third party, whether the chaplain, or the wife of any military man or “ civil servant,” be called in, or all peace is over ! No, no ! Believe in each other, and, what is best of all, believe in One who knows and loves you, and can unite your hearts and give you such love as our friends in the bun- galow were blessed with. So ends my sermon. This bungalow was memorable to me as being the only place in India in which I had, what at the time appeared to me, a dangerous encounter with a snake. I had wished to see a snake, a cobra more especially, if such a meeting could be arranged with perfect safety — to myself at least. Now my friend Dr. Watson, with a smile, reported to me that he was persuaded there was a cobra bask- ing in the moonlight, near the bungalow. Hearing this, I seized my large Lochaber crook, which has shared all my wanderings, and which I knew could be depended on as a courageous and faithful ally. What a night it was ! Not a cloud was in the sky. It almost seemed possible to get a peep round the comer of the moon, as she stood out sharp and clear from the sky. Slowly and cautiously I approached, with uplifted staff, to the spot where the dragon lay. I saw him ; a long, grey monster ! As the chi- valrous St. George flashed upon my mind, I administered a fearful stroke to the bmte ; and, from a sense of duty to my wife and family, rushed back to the bungalow, in case of any forth-putting of venom, which might cause a vacancy in the Barony. I resolved to delay approaching the “worm” till next morning ; but, whatever the cause was, no one, strange to say, could discover the dead body when morning dawned ! A few decayed branches of a tree were discovered near his foul den, and these had unquestionably been broken by some mighty stroke; but the cobra was never seen afterwards, dead or alive ! This was my first and only deadly encounter with a snake ; and I trust the reader will duly appreciate my courage, and wonder at my escape. At daybreak we started for a station be- tween twenty and thirty miles off, called Colgaum, in order to be present at a characteristic meeting in connection with the American mission. We travelled by “ tongas ” — a most agreeable kind of native conveyance. The “ tonga ” resembles a low- hung dog-cart, with a canvas hood like that of a hansom cab, covering the seats before and behind, each of which can accommodate two persons. It has two strong wheels, and numerous “lashings” and supports, as if meant for rough work; and is drawn by two small, active ponies, harnessed to a powerful pole, with a cross-bar at the end, like a yoke, which goes across the back of their necks. The road over the flat plain was tolerably i good. We reached the river Bern or Bema I in an hour or so. It is a fine clear stream., and is easily crossed at this point by a broad, shallow ford ; but no sooner had our ponies entered it, dragging their burden through the yielding sand, than, influenced as it seemed at once by the irksomeness of their toil and I the delicious coolness of the water, they both lay down, their heads alone remaining above the surface, supported by the yoke. In vain i were blows administered, and every sort of phrase, whether of remonstrance or rebuke, addressed to them. The perverse creatures preferred the water to the land, in spite of public opinion condemnatory of their con- duct. We were obliged to lessen their pains and share their pleasures, by forgetting our dignity, and wading to the farther shore. As I cross this Jordan with my staff, I shall for another month take leave of my readers. THE HISTORY OF THE FALL OF JERUSALEM, IflasfrafiH of % ^fubentcts for [\t &raffj of Cjjrisfiantfg. By the ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. The story of the fall of Jerusalem has been often told, and with great poetic power by Dean Milman, in his “ History of the Jews,” which is accessible to all. It may be thought by some that we do not find any very direct testimony to the truth of Christianity in this page of history. But this at all events I think we shall perceive, how well all we know of this history agrees with the supposition that the facts recorded in the Christian Scriptures are true — how easily and naturally it takes its position in that vacant space which is left in the records of the chosen people of God, where the narrative of the Gospels and the Acts fails us. But, first of all, it may be well to meet what to some has appeared a difficulty. How is it, we are asked, that we find so little Good Words, March i, 1869.] THE FALL OF JERUSALEM. 189 mention of the rise and progress of the Christian Church in the writings of the Jewish historian, who details to us the melancholy account of the capture and utter destruction of the metropolis of his country? Josephus was born at J erusalem, of a priestly family, in the year of our Lord 37 — that is, within a very few years of the crucifixion. Early in life he set himself to examine the tenets of the chief Jewish sects, and ultimately attached himself to the Pharisees. At twenty-six years of age, in the eleventh year of the Emperor Nero, he went to Rome, to plead the cause of some Jewish priests, sent there on a charge by Felix, that procurator of Judaea whom, the writer of the Acts tells us, St. Paul’s preach- ing had caused to tremble, though it could not convert him from his wicked life. Jo- sephus would seem to have been at Rome at the same time as St. Paul. It is curious to remark that, like St. Paul, in his voyage thither, he narrowly escaped losing his life by shipwreck, being picked up by a vessel of Cyrene, and being landed in Italy, again like St. Paul, at the port of Puteoli. Thence he reached Rome by the same Appian Road along which St. Paul travelled, and was introduced to the notice of Poppaea, the infamous mistress and afterwards wife of Nero, whose supposed inclinations towards Judaism we have before mentioned. When he returned to the East, he found his countrymen bent on revolt against the Romans. He was chosen one of their generals, and became governor of Galilee. Now it is said this man, moving at that time in the very scenes in which the Christians moved, must have seen much of them. He could scarcely fail to be greatly struck by them. Why does not he make more explicit mention of them ? To clear up this supposed difficulty, I will first state that Josephus’s character is a peculiar one, and that his circumstances at the time when he wrote his history were peculiar. We have said he was a Pharisee : it would have been more correct, perhaps, to designate him a Herodian. He might be professedly a Pharisee in religious tenets, but his political views greatly affected his religion. As the Herodians in our Lord’s time had devoted themselves to the family of the Herods, who were always supported by the Roman power, and felt none of those stern longings after national independence which so soon led to the great national cata- strophe; so Josephus was from an early period, certainly from the date of his visit to Rome, a great admirer of the Roman power. Not- withstanding these feelings, he for a time bore arms against the Romans, and that gallantly, till, being taken prisoner, he found himself at the mercy of Vespasian and his son Titus. But when brought before them, he saved his life by paying them the most abject flattery. He pretended to be a pro- phet, and to have a commission from God to foretell that Vespasian, then only the general of Nero, commanding against the Jews, was destined soon to be himself em- peror. This saying got abroad, and doubt- less greatly influenced Vespasian in his sub- sequent attempt upon the empire, how it had been foretold by ancient seers that a chief coming from Judaea should become ruler of the world. There is no reason to doubt that it was Josephus who thus impiously suggested that the ancient prophecies of the Messiah j applied to the heathen soldier. Now a Jewish priest, who could thus tamper with all that his countrymen revered, as most sacred, and who was contented to secure for himself the quiet possession of wealth and a palace in Rome by this unworthy flattery, when his country was desolated with fire and | sword, and his countrymen sold by tens of | thousands in the slave market, was not a very j likely man to embrace the self-denying and despised religion of the Cross, especially when he had not improbably seen with his own eyes, while in Rome, the fires of Nero’s per- secution. “ He that is of God,” said Christ, “ heareth my words. Ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.” Josephus was not likely to feel any attraction towards Christianity. It had no connection with an introduction into the high places of princely favour in which he loved to be seated. It was making its way, as we have proved abun- dantly from other history, and as cannot be denied by any one who knows anything of the times, amongst classes with which he had little sympathy. And his making no mention of it, supposing him to have made none, would rather show that the subject was dis- agreeable to him — a subject on which he did not exactly know what to say. His silence in the matter, if silence there be, would prove too much : for other history shows beyond a doubt that at this time there were Christians, j and many of them, and that their sect was j hated and dreaded, and- had even attracted : much attention in the emperor’s court at Rome. Josephus would not have been silent 1 as to Christianity except from design. But is he thus silent? Here two especial passages, besides that general agreement with the New Testament which we find in his ac- count of all the main facts of the Jewish his- t I go THE HISTORY OF [Good Words, March i, 1869. tory, as interwoven in the narrative of the Gospels and Acts, are well worth referring to, as containing strong confirmations of the state- ments of Christian history. The first is found in the “Jewish Antiquities,” b. xviii., ch. v., § 3. Speaking of the loss which Herod Antipas had sustained in his war with his father-in-law, Aretus, king of Arabia — a war caused by Herod’s desertion of his lawful wife, Aretus’s daughter, that he might indulge his unlawful love for Herodias — Josephus writes “ Some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herod’s army came from God, and that very justly, as a punishment for what he did against John, who was called the Baptist ; for Herod slew him, who was a good man, and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue both as to righteousness towards one another and piety towards God, and so to come to baptism ; for that the washing (with water) would be acceptable to Him, if they made use of it, not in order to the putting away (or the remission) of some sins (only), but for the purification of the body, supposing still that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness. Now when many others came in crowds about him, for they were greatly moved (or pleased) by hearing his words, Herod, who feared lest the great influence John had over the people might put it into his power and inclination to raise rebellion, for they seemed ready to do anything he should advise, thought it best, by putting him to death, to prevent any mischief he might cause, and not bring himself into difficulties, by sparing a man who might make him repent of it when it should be too late. Accordingly he was sent a prisoner, out of Herod’s suspicious temper, to Macherus, the castle I before mentioned, and there put to death. Now the Jews had an opinion that the destruction of this army was sent as a punishment upon Herod, and a mark of God’s displeasure against him.” This passage may very well illustrate the general agreement between the New Testa- ment and Josephus’s statements, where he touches on the same matters with the sacred writers, and is not led by any prejudice to avoid the points of which they treat. The second passage I shall adduce is from the 19th book of the “Antiquities,” ch. ix., § 1. It refers to a matter of church history not mentioned in the New Testament, but in all uninspired Christian histories — the death of James, who is pointed out in the sixth of the Acts as the first bishop of Jerusalem : — “ And now Csesar (that is, Nero), upon hearing of the death of Festus (the same Festus before whom it will be remembered St. Paul preached when he almost persuaded King Agrippa), sent Albinus into Judaea as procurator. But the king (that is, Agrippa II., the King Agrippa of the Acts) deprived Joseph of the high priesthood, and bestowed the succession to that dignity on the son of Ananus, who was also himself called Ananus. . . . . This younger Ananus was • • • • a bold man in his temper, and very insolent, j He was also of the sect of the Sadducees, who were very rigid in judging offenders above all the rest of the Jews. . . . When, therefore, Ananus was of this disposition, he thought he had now a proper oppor- tunity [to exercise his authority]. Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the sanhedrim of judges, and brought be- fore them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others [or some of his companions], and when he had found an accusa- tion against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned. But as for those who seemed the most equitable of the citizens, and such as were most uneasy at the breach of the laws, they disliked what was done. They also sent to the king [Agrippa], desiring him to send to Ananus that he should act so no more, for that what he had already done was not to be justified ; nay, some of them went also to meet Albinus, as he was upon his journey from Alexandria, and informed him that it was not lawful for Ananus to hold a sanhedrim without his consent.” These two accounts of the death of John the Baptist and of James the Just, the brother of our Lord, may each be taken as examples of the way in which Josephus’s writings illus- trate the Christian Scriptures. Many will remember that there is another notable passage (that, viz., in the 18th book of the “Antiquities,” 3rd chap., § 3), which has raised much discussion : — “ Now there was about this time (the time of Pilate’s government of Judaea) Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him ; for he appeared to them alive again the third day ; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, is not extinct at this day.” It will at once occur to all that the expres- sions in this passage are too strong to be likely to be used by any one who was not a be- liever in Christ’s divine power. Hence the suspicion with which the passage has been regarded, notwithstanding the strong external evidence for its genuineness, and notwith- standing that some have urged also that the temporising Josephus may not have been un- willing to throw into his history, when led to mention this eventful time, a few expressions which might secure the favour of persons who were certainly growing into importance when he wrote. There were, as w r e have before seen, in Domitian’s time, Christians even in the circle of the emperor’s family : it has been thought Josephus might be anxious to conciliate these, since they might have the power to help him. Or, again, the passage may in the main i : genuine, though the strongest expressions may have been inserted by some unscrupulous, over-zealous Christian of later times, through a pious fraud. But the whole subject of the criticism of this passage is too much involved in doubtful Good Words, Jiarch i, 1SG9.] THE FALL OF discussion to allow us to ground any stable argument upon it. Nor is it needful that we should use it to answer the objection of which we are now treating. Though Josephus gives us no detailed account of the rise and progress of Christianity, his writings bear the strongest indirect testimony to the general historic truth of the Christian narratives. And now we proceed to the history of the events which led to that great catastrophe of which Josephus is the historian. The narrative of the details of this catastrophe when it actually came, as well as of the events which preceded it, certainly accords well with the belief that the religion of Christ is what it professes to be. One of the most interesting monuments to be found in Rome is the Arch of Titus, erected by the senate and people to commemorate the triumph which followed the capture of Jerusalem. Who can look on that single Arch of Greek marble which still stands at the foot of the Palatine Hill on the road leading from the Colosseum to the Forum, eighteen centuries after it was erected, and trace its sculptures, without being deeply moved ? Above you have the inscription : — “The senate and people of Rome, to the glorified Titus Vespasianus Augustus, the son of the glorified Vespasianus.” The word Divo and Divi , which we have translated “glorified,” shows that both the father and son who led the Roman armies to the conquest of Judaea were dead before the Arch was erected. The Jewish war was ended by the burning of the temple in the year 70 a.d. In 71 Titus led his triumphant procession through the streets of Rome, in which both father and son received the honour awarded to their common victory. Nothing, we are told, could equal the splendour of the procession — rich with gold and jewels and the rarest animals, and the wondrous exhibition of the representation of countries ravaged and cities stormed, and all the horrors and glories of war. Amongst the spoils were borne the golden table and golden seven-branched candlestick, and the sacred book of the law, and here in the sculptured representation on the Arch appears aprocession bearing such sacred spoils A we can recog- nise, besides the table and candlestick, the sacred vessel of incense and two trumpets, which remind us of the sacred trumpets of | silver spoken of in the tenth chapter of l Numbers (ch. x., ver. 2), “ Make thee two j trumpets of silver : of a whole piece shalt thou make them, that thou mayest use them * Burton’s Rome, vol. i., p. 235. JERUSALEM. ' 191 for the calling of the assembly and for the journeying of the camp.” These sculptures ought to be compared with the descriptions which Moses has left us. The candlestick is described in the twenty-fifth chapter of Exodus, from the 31st verse, and seems to agree wonderfully with the sculptured figure on the Arch. The table is described in the 23rd and following verses of the same chapter. At verse 26 we are told that it is to have rings in the four corners' on the four feet, to enable it to be easily carried ; but these are not visible in the sculpture. Perhaps, as has been suggested, the edges in the stone- work have been rounded off by time. Two vessels stand on the table. The sight of these sculptures very vividly recalls to our minds how God employed Titus to bring to accomplishment our Lord’s and Daniel’s prophecy, while the abomination of desolation took possession of the holy place where these sacred things so long had stood. We cannot say whether these articles for the furniture of the Temple thus exhibited, were the very same which had been taken to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar 600 years before, and which were brought back to Jerusalem after the seventy years’ captivity. But we have a record of their subsequent history down to a late period. The Ark of the Covenant is said to be preserved amongst the relics of the church of St. John Lateran, but it does not appear from Josephus that it was ever carried to Rome. The sacred veil and books of the law were placed in the Imperial Palace, while the candlestick and other spoils were kept in the Temple of Peace. < When this temple was burned a hundred years later, these treasures were not destroyed, for the Hebrew vessels which Titus brought from Jerusalem are mentioned* amongst the spoils carried off to Africa by (Genseric) the Vandal king when he sacked Rome nearly 400 yearsf after the fall of Jerusalem. From Africa, after the lapse of over eighty years, they were borne to Constantinople by the conqueror of the Vandal kingdom. Thence they are said to have been sent to the Christian Churches of Jerusalem, from fear lest they should bring down some judgment of God unless they were sent to rest in the place where Solomon had dedicated them. It was, we have said, in the year 71 that the triumphal procession in which these sacred things were borne passed through the streets of Rome. As it reached the Capitol * Vide the authorities as given by Dr. Burton, t *>., in the summer of 455 a.d. Vide Biographical Dic- tionary, “ Genseric.” 192 THE HISTORY OF [Good Words, March x, 1869. it paused, while execution was done on Simon, whose name is so well known as one of the reckless and desperate defenders of Jerusalem.* His ignominious death under the halter and the scourge was announced as the crowning act of Roman victory; forth- with the appointed sacrifices were offered on the altar of Jupiter, and all the people raised a shout, as if to mark that the gods of Rome were now victorious over the God of the Jews, who had so long resisted them. The Arch, as we have seen from the inscription, could not have been dedicated till some time after the triumph. The triumph was celebrated a.d. 71. Titus died in a.d. 81. We have seen that he was dead when the Arch was erected. But our chief business now is with the victory which both the triumph and the Arch were intended to commemorate. Never in the history of Roman warfare was there a more deadly struggle than that which ended in the triumph of Titus. For years the clouds had been lower- ing, before that fearful storm burst which deluged Judaea with blood and cast her cities down to the earth. In tracing some of the symptoms which gave notice of the approach- ing catastrophe it will be well to go back to the year a.d. 40, within ten years of our Lord’s crucifixion. In that year a remarkable deputation of Jews repaired to Rome, with the hope of obtaining from the reigning emperor some redress of the grievances under which they laboured. The history of this deputation, of which a detailed account has been preserved in the works of Philo, himself one of the deputies, will throw some light on the position in which the Jews at this time were placed, and the events which were hurrying on their destruction as a nation. The deputies reached Rome five years before the sudden death of Herod Agrippa, men- tioned in the twelfth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. Now, I think, it would not be out of place did our limits allow, to introduce this Herod Agrippa by referring to Josephus’s account of his death, for he and his son, King Agrippa, as he is called in the Acts, are so much mixed up with the whole history of these struggles of their ill-fated countrymen that we cannot follow the history without frequent mention of them. At all events, no one can hesitate to allow that, in the Jewish historian’s account of the death of Herod Agrippa (Antiq. xix., ch. viii.), we have substantially the same nar- rative which is given us in the twelfth chapter of the Acts, ver. 21. The allusion to the owl in Josephus’s ac- count carries us back to an early period of this king’s chequered life, and his connection with the Roman court. Pie had come to Rome shortly before the death of his grand- father Herod, called “the Great;” and had been brought up with Drusus, the son of Tiberius, and Claudius, the future emperor. He had plunged early into reckless extrava- gance, vying with the great men of Rome ; and, as a natural consequence, was soon en- tangled in hopeless embarrassments. To escape from the pressure of his debts, he was put to great shifts, and was obliged to remove from place to place. At one time we find him, in his native country, accused of receiv- ing bribes ; at another, a princely beggar in Alexandria, and again returning to Italy. On this second visit he was admitted for a time into high favour with Tiberius, and contracted an especial intimacy with the young Caius, afterwards the emperor generally known to us as Caligula. But to be very intimate with one so likely to be heir to the throne was not the way to retain the favour of the jealous Tiberius. We soon find Herod in chains; and Josephus has recorded a foolish story that while he was standing one day in chains in front of the palace, and an owl was ob- served to sit upon the tree against which he ( was leaning, a certain German, who was his fellow-prisoner, augured, according to the cus- tom of his country, from the appearance of the bird, which was above Herod’s head, that he should soon be loosed from his bonds ; adding, “ But do thou remember that when j thou shalt see this bird again thou shalt have but five days to live.” It was the remem- brance of this warning which Josephus would have us suppose so filled him with alarm when he felt the pangs of his last illness seize him, and saw the owl above his throne. Be this as it may, Herod Agrippa had been instantly released from his bonds when Tibe- rius died, and was succeeded by Caius or Cali- gula, and he was soon raised by his imperial friend to great wealth and power. The next year, his uncle, Herod Antipas (the murderer of John the Baptist), was deposed by his influence ; and the emperor added the uncle’s dominions to the kingdom of his favourite. Thus Herod Agrippa grew in power. His dominions in his native country formed a goodly kingdom, and he retained his power at R.ome. He was present in Rome when the imperial throne became again vacant, and it was greatly through his influence hat his early friend Claudius succeeded to his nephew. The very intimate friend Good Words, March i, 1869.] T. HE bALL OF JERUSALEM], 193 of two emperors, Herod Agrippa went on prospering to the day of his death ; and Claudius showed his sense of the favours which he owed to him by adding Judaea and Samaria to his already ample dominions. It was this which gave him power of life and death in Jerusalem when, as we read in the twelfth chapter of the Acts, he killed James, the brother of John, with the sword, and, because he saw it pleased the Jews, stretched forth his hand to take Peter also. Now Herod Agrippa, thus raised to more extensive kingly power than had been enjoyed even by his grandfather, in whose reign our Lord was born, was, we have said, much mixed up with the struggles of his countrymen which preceded the fatal war. When the deputation of Jews which we have mentioned reached Rome in the year a.d. 40, Caligula was on the imperial throne. The deputies came from Alexandria to represent that their countrymen had been subjected to disgrace- ful treatment contrary to the laws by the Roman governor (Flaccus Aquilius), on his way from Rome to take possession of his newly-acquired dominions ; and the arrival of Herod Agrippa at Alexandria — a Jew adorned through the favour of the emperor with all the insignia of kingly power — had been one moving cause which called forth the rage of the populace against his countrymen. Up to the reign of Caligula the Jews had been treated, on the whole, considerately, and even kindly, by their Roman masters. Governors like Pontius Pilate had at times vexed them by acts of cruelty or rapacity, but Pilate had been recalled and disgraced, and the central government had usually been very cautious of giving offence to the Jews, and had especially avoided doing anything that might shock their national religious pre- judices. But on the 16th of March, a.d. 37 — that is, within five years of our Lord's crucifixion — Caius (or Caligula) had, as we have seen, succeeded his granduncle on the Roman throne. The young Caius (or Cali- gula) was in truth a madman, very different from the cautious old man whom he suc- ceeded, who seldom allowed either his de- praved love of vice, or the suspicious malig- nity of his temper, to mislead him into acts which were impolitic.* Caius was little known till his granduncle’s death. The number of those who had come into close contact with him, and discovered his unnatural wickedness before his accession to the throne, was very small. He was in the bloom of life (being * Niebuhr’s Lectures, vcl. ii., lect. Lxii. twenty-five), and his beautiful features, which we still admire in his statues, gained him popular favour, while they recalled by their resemblance the memory of his noble father (Germanicus), over whose untimely bier the whole civilised world had mourned with true and deep sorrow. But the joy with which Caius was hailed emperor was very short- lived : Rome soon found out that he was a madman of the worst kind. Niebuhr has compared him to Christian VII. of Den- mark, whose madness burst forth in the same combination of obscenity and cruelty. “ Men like these two,” he says, “ are occa- sionally met with among Eastern princes, especially among the Mohammedans.” Un- able to sleep at nights from the perpetual restlessness of a diseased brain, he would probably have soon worn himself out; but the Romans could not wait for a release in the course of nature, and after he had dis- graced the purple for four years, he was mur- dered in his palace by his own officers. But these four years of mad misrule were fraught with melancholy consequences to the Jewish nation. Caius, in his insane vanity, had re- solved that divine honours should be paid to him by the whole empire, and he would not allow any exception to be made in favour of the Jews, or pay any respect to their national abhorrence of idolatry. He issued an edict, the execution of which was entrusted to the Praefect of Syria (Petronius), that a gilded colossal statue of himself should be erected in the holy of holies at Jerusalem. Now, about the same time with the issuing of this edict, those disturbances had broken out in Alexandria which were connected with the arrival of Herod Agrippa in Egypt, on his voyage to take possession of his dominions, and which caused the deputation of Jews, we have noticed, to be sent to Italy to seek an audience of the emperor. In Egypt, at this time, it is calculated that there were a million of Jewish residents (a circumstance, by the way, which naturally accounts for our Lord’s being taken down to Egypt in his childhood). And these colonists had long enjoyed special privileges ; they were wealthy, and amongst them were to.be found the most enterprising traders of the great city of Alexandria. As we might naturally expect, they were looked upon with great jealousy by the Greek popu- lation, who would be very ready to avail themselves of any opportunity which might be afforded by the emperor’s expressed deter- mination that he would set at naught the long-respected scruples of the Jewish religion.. The Greeks of Alexandria were too happy to IC)^ THE HISTORY OE [Goo'd Wo.rils, March i, 1869. have a show of imperial authority for insult- ing their hated rivals. Matters seem to have been in this state when Herod Agrippa, as we have said, landed at Alexandria on his way to his native coun- try to take possession of his newly-acquired kingdom. The Grecian faction, we have said, could not bear the sight of a Jew parading their streets with the splendour of a king — a Jew, too, whom they remembered but a short time before visiting their town in very different plight in his days of penury. The wits of the place wrote satirical verses on the Jewish king; he was ridiculed on the stage; and derided, as it were, in effigy, or by deputy, in their streets. It was now that that scene was acted which has often been noted from its strange likeness to the treatment which the real King of the Jews received, some six years before, at the hands of the Roman soldiers in Jerusalem. The Greek rabble seized a poor idiot, well known in their town, and determined to make him represent Herod Agrippa. They placed him on a lofty throne, dressed him in an old mat for a robe, put a paper crown on his head, and a reed in his hand, and bowed the knee to him, presenting to him petitions, and calling him lord. Herod — probably unwilling to be the cause of stirring up further animosity by his presence — seems to have speedily departed ; but he did not fail to take steps which he hoped might conciliate for his countrymen the good-will of his imperial friend. He received from the Jews of Alexandria a decree which they had passed, in which they offered to pay to Caius all honours which were permitted by their law ; and not long afterwards we find him at Rome, and, according to Josephus, interceding at court that the barbarous edict for the pro- fanation of the Temple might not be put in force. Meanwhile, the tumult at Alexandria burst all restraint, while the rioters were encouraged by the connivance of Flaccus, the governor. The Jewish places of worship were profaned; the mob rushed into them under pretext of erecting the emperor’s statue, and many were burned to the ground. And Flaccus, instead of putting down the tumult, issued a decree by which the people were encouraged to drive the Jews from their houses. Their shops and storehouses were ransacked ; and, chased into a narrow quarter of the city, they were there cooped up, and exposed to all the miseries of disease and iamine ; while day by day deeds of violence became more frequent, whole families perished in the flames, and some of the most unoffend- ing, after being scourged and put to the tor- ture, were crucified. Flaccus seemed daily more disposed to encourage these atrocities. He affected to apprehend a dangerous revolt amongst the Jews, and added also the severi- ties of judicial violence to the outrages of the populace, till at last his own hour came. The evil he was doing by allowing such outrages was reported at the seat of government. The emperor issued orders for his deposition and arrest, ■ and he was carried to Rome, tried, banished, and at last executed. And now that deputation reached Rome, which was appointed to plead the cause of the Jewish people of Alexandria before the emperor. The Jewish writer Philo, himself, as we have said, a deputy, has left us an ac- count of these proceedings. At first the Jewish deputies had good hope that their prayer would be granted, and that their places of worship would be protected from dese- ' cration by idols. But gradually these hopes disappeared. In the final audience to which the deputies were summoned, the Emperor did not appear in a public court, but received the Embassy in the apartments of two con- tiguous villas, where he treated them with such scorn and insult that they were glad to retire, Philo remarking that “ the Jews felt happy to escape with their lives.” (p. 179.) A collision betwen the Jewish people and their Roman masters now seemed inevit- able, and such a collision could only end. in the ruin of the Jews. Most definite orders were issued to Petronius, the governor of Syria, to place the emperor’s statue in the temple at Jerusalem, whatever might be the consequences. But Petronius was a man of sense and good feeling. He knew that to carry out the order was to deluge Judaea with blood. Thousands of the Jewish people as- sembled from all quarters, with every sign of the deepest mourning, and threw themselves in his way as he advanced towards the capital, declaring their readiness to lay down their lives rather than consent to the profanation. No rebukes nor entreaties moved them ; the chiefs and the people alike declared that they had no ’wish to rebel, but that they feared the wrath of God more than that of the emperor, offering their throats to the swords of the ’ Roman soldiers. The whole land remained uncultivated, though it was the time of sow- ing, and Petronius saw that to enforce Caius’ edict must be the utter ruin of his province. Moved by the entreaties of the people, seconded by Herod’s brother, and other men • of great influence, he resolved, on his own responsibility, to suspend the edict at what- ever risk to himself; and meanwhile King Good Words, March i, i86g.J THE PALL OF JERUSALEM. 195 Herod Agrippa, at Rome, seems to have pressed the cause of his countrymen upon the emperor.* Common sense and good feeling seemed at last to prevail. Orders were in- deed given for the degradation of Petronius from his government, in punishment of his disobedience, but the offensive edict for the profanation of the temple was not put into effect, and the death of Caius came oppor- tunely to give the Jews a short breathing time. But the bursting of the storm through which prophecy was to be fulfilled, and the ancient people of God punished for their many sins, though delayed for the time by this mad tyrant’s death, could not be averted. Claudius became emperor on the assassination of his nephew Caius, in the year 41 a.d., having received, as we have seen, no small assistance in asserting his rights from the in- fluence of King Herod Agrippa, who was then at Rome. Claudius seems to have been, on the whole, mildly disposed to the country- men of his friend, and when he confirmed him in kingly power over the whole of the Holy Land, he gave the Jewish people more of the semblance of national independence than they had known since Herod, called the Great, died. A few years after — to use the words of prophecy — Shiloh came, and the sceptre de- parted from a Jewish prince to be vested in a Roman governor. Claudius, as is well known, was not a man of at all a bad natural disposition. He was in his fiftieth year when he came to the throne, and his earlier life had been spent amid great trials. Not devoid of a certain degree of talent, especially for literary pursuits, but evidently wanting in some of those common gifts which are indispensable to make a sen- sible and useful man, he had been re- garded by his family as little better than an idiot. Augustus would never allow him to appear at all in public, and his grandmother (Livia), wife of Augustus, had treated him with great cruelty. He had felt this treat- ment keenly, and sought consolation in lite- rary pursuits. But this taste had only aggra- vated his misfortunes ; for he wrote a history of the times during which his family established their fame, and spoke in his book so much more truthfully than prudently, that the whole family were enraged with him. Tiberius had only suffered him to live because he thought him utterly contemptible. The poor man had been unfortunate in his marriages, and, with a heart yearning after love, he could not find a true friend. His. affection * Josephus’s account is here followed, not Philo’s, which is less creditable to Herod. Vide Milman, p. 185. for Herod Agrippa was undoubtedly great, but the king died in the fourth year after Claudius became emperor, and with him disappeared again the nominal independence of the Jewish people. The son, the young Agrippa — he before whom St. Paul preached — was not neglected by his father’s friend. Deemed too young to succeed to his father’s extensive dominions (he was only seventeen years of age), he was first kept at Rome in the immediate society of Claudius, while Judsea was reduced again to the form of a Roman province. But eight years afterwards, on the death of another mem- ber of the Herodian family (Herod, king of Chalcis), the young prince was invested by the emperor with the principality which thus became vacant, and with the right of ap- pointing the high priest, and superintending the temple at Jerusalem. To these favours was added, four years afterwards, the right of exchanging the principality for other do- minions held formerly by his granduncle, and the title of king was conferred upon him. Hence when St. Paul pleaded before him he is called King Agrippa. Meanwhile, disputes had arisen at Jerusalem between the chiefs of the Jews and the Ro- man governor, Cuspius Fadius. In these dis- putes Agrippa had been employed by his countrymen as their advocate with the empe- ror, and Claudius had decided in their favour. It is not our intention to follow the steps by which, as governor succeeded governor, the Jewish people became more and more embittered against the Roman yoke. Clau- dius, in the end of his reign, a.d. 54, would seem to have turned against the Jews. We read in the eighteenth chapter of the book of the Acts, and also in two heathen writers (Suetonius, Claud. 25 ; and Dio Cassius, lx. 6), that he commanded all Jews to depart from Rome. His heathen biographer adds an account of their continual seditions as excited by one named Christos — a remarkable proof, it would seem, that thus early the attention of the imperial court was directed to the progress of the Christian sect, and the i violent opposition which it met with from the unbelieving Jews. Long before this time the weak emperor had fallen completely under j the dominion of unworthy favourites selected j from his freed slaves. Of these, one of the j worst was Pallas, a wretch who reduced his j helpless master to so despicable a thraldom ij as to select for him Agrippina as the second h wife he was to marry after the murder of his ; first, the shameless empress Messalina. And report accused the freed slave of having made 196 THE HISTORY OF '[Good Words, March i, 1869. this representative of the house of the Caesars, the daughter of Germanicus, sister of Caius, and mother of Nero, purchase his support by her dishonour before he admitted her to share the emperor’s bed. It was by these partners in iniquity, the degraded empress and this insolent slave, her paramour, that the wretched Claudius was despatched by poison after he had reigned thirteen years. But Pallas had a brother, himself also a slave by birth, whom, in an evil hour, the Jewish chiefs, smarting under the pillage and slaughter which they had suffered from the tyranny of the last governor (Ventidius Cumanus), used all their influence to have appointed to the command of their province. This brother of Pallas was Claudius Felix, before whom St. Paul pleaded his cause and reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come. This slave vied with his brother in the magnificence of his profligacy. He had three wives, all of royal birth — one, a Jewess, who sat by his side when he heard St. Paul concerning the faith in Christ, was the beautiful Drusilla, daughter of the first Herod Agrippa and sister of the se- cond, whom he had seduced and carried away from her first husband, himself king of Emesa. The government of this man was ruinous to Judaea. He continued in his place after the reign of Claudius had ended. Relying on the influence of his brother, first with the old emperor, and afterwards with his successor, he thought he might commit any crime with impunity. He even stooped to enter into confederacy with two bands of armed assas- sins, who afterwards played so notable a part in utter destruction of the Holy Land, and did not hesitate to employ their daggers to rid himself of the high priest, whose influence had been exerted to obtain for him ’ the government. The whole country became one scene of robbery and lawlessness of eveiy kind. Jerusalem was stained with blood, and in the Roman states of Caesarea the animosity of the opposing nations rose to such a height, that at last the Jews and Roman soldiers fought in the streets under the very eyes of Felix. By this time Nero had succeeded Claudius on the imperial throne. The influence of Pallas, great at first with the new emperor, could no longer protect his brother, and Felix was recalled. And now the Jews had again a short re- spite under the moderate and wise govern- ment of Porcius Festus. The account in the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth chapters of the Acts of the calm hearing which Festus gave to St. Paul, and of the way in which, feeling unskilled in Jewish questions, he sought to be guided by the aid of the young Agrippa, who was visiting him with his sister Berenice, corresponds well with the character of the man. But the lull was only for a brief space. The just Festus died during his government, and the province was given up to a successor who was worse than Felix (Albinus). Ra- pine and murder stalked unrestrained through- out the land. This man seemed a fit repre- sentative of the imperial power now wielded by the bloody Nero. But even this man found a successor worse than himself, as if God had resolved that the country of his ancient people should be now given up to suffer the deepest humiliation from the hands of the most abandoned of the heathen. Gessius Florus, the worst of all the bad governors who had pillaged the province, at last goaded the Jews to madness. It seemed as if he and his superior, Cestus Gallus, the Proconsul of Syria, had no other object than to hurry on war which might insure the utter destruction of the nation which they hated and oppressed. It would be tedious and useless to go through the long list of their enormities. As one example out of many, in one day 3,600 unoffending men, women, and children were slaughtered without warn- ing in the streets of Jerusalem, while there was an attempt to plunder the sacred treasury of the Temple in the confusion which ensued. All this seems to have happened in the year a.d. 66, one year after St. Peter and St. Paul were put to death in Rome. King Agrippa, who had been absent during these scenes of violence, vainly endeavoured, on his return, to induce his countrymen to submit patiently, in the hope that better days would soon come and bring a better governor. The state of the public mind was such that no moderate counsels could now be listened to, and all influence passed into the hands of the violent and fanatical. Agrippa tried to compel the war party to give way by force, and sent 3,000 horse to overcome their violence ; but all was tried in vain. The contending factions fought in the city. The palace of Agrippa and his sister and the house of the chief priest were burned. Next day the fortress of the Antonia was stormed by the insurgents. For a time, the scanty Roman garrison held out, but was soon in- duced to surrender on terms which were im- mediately violated. The whole body of Ro- mans in the town, with the exception of their leader, was treacherously put to the sword. This act of perfidy, which made all accom- modation with the Romans utterly hopeless, took place upon the Sabbath; and as if in |j Good Words, March i, 1869.J THE FALL OF JERUSALEM. 197 just retribution, on that very day, as Josephus tells us, a vast body of Jews was slaughtered by the Greek inhabitants of Caesarea. There was nothing for it now but war to the knife. The Jews rose all through Syria, and seized many cities, and the twelfth year of Nero was darkened in the Roman annals by a defeat of the Roman legions under Cestius, in which the Jews slaughtered 5,300 foot and 380 horse — a disaster such as made it absolutely necessary for the empire that a nation so for- midable in its desperation should be destroyed. It is not my intention to go through the revolting details of the next few years, the last of which saw Jerusalem and the Temple levelled with the earth. The strange story of the fierce zeal of the contending parties, who fought with each other to the last moment, while they were threatened daily with destruc- tion from the common enemy, speaks in unmis- takable language of a people utterly given up by God. So hideous were the forms of wild fanaticism and brutal violence that raged amongst the defenders of the national inde- pendence, that a Jew who really loved his country and the worship of his God could have no sympathy with those who had con- stituted themselves the national champions. The better sort must have looked on almost with stupefied indifference, scarce knowing whether the stern heathen foe, or the diabolical men who called themselves the champions of God, were most truly his worst enemies. It would almost seem to give some excuse for the temporising conduct of Josephus, that he saw his countrymen so manifestly given up of God. King Agrippa, like Josephus, after the final capture of the city, went with his sister Berenice to take up his abode in Rome, where he attained a high civic dignity, and died long after, the contented vassal of the emperor, in his seventieth year. Meanwhile, the four years rolled on. The I world was relieved of the tyranny of Nero. ] The eighteen insecure months of his three I feeble successors passed, and Vespasian, | ! whom, on the defeat of Cestius’ legionaries, I Nero had appointed to command in the Jewish war, is recalled to Italy to mount the throne, and Titus advances to the siege. A few words ought to be said here of the character of Titus. His father, V espasian, was S a rude soldier, unscrupulous to a proverb in the means by which he sought the riches j which he knew to be indispensable for his power. But Titus has the reputation of being the mildest and most benevolent of Roman princes — the darling and delight, as his flat- terers have it, of the human race. Yet Titus, be- fore and after his accession to the throne, has two different characters. Niebuhr (lect. lxv.) even holds that some of the worst severities of the father’s reign are really attributable to the son. The history of the siege of Jerusalem gives evidence certainly of his sternness, as well as at times of his compassionate feeling. Five hundred Jews, who had fallen into his hands crucified in one morning under the walls in sight of their countrymen — this was a strange exaggeration of Roman severity. Yet there seems enough to prove that it was the mad violence of the Jewish defenders of the city which made him lose all patience, for he certainly showed that he had some compassion and feeling for the holy city ; and it is curious to know, that, called as he was to be the de- stroyer of the Jews, the tenderest feelings of his heart became enlisted on the Jewish side, for he loved a Jewess, Berenice, King Agrippa’s sister, so passionately, that nothing but fear of unpopularity caused him to refrain from making her the partner of his throne. It was now the 13th of April; and the city, even in this time of mortal conflict, was crowded with worshippers, who had come from distant countries to adore the God of their fathers in his holy and beau- tiful house, to which the heart of every Jew turned with longing as his home. It may be well to recall to mind the localities of the city now destined to destruction. Thirty-seven years had now passed since the Lord Jesus, two days before his crucifixion, had taken his stand with his disciples on the slope of the Mount of Olives, and looked with love and tender pity for the last time on the fair spot which had so long been honoured to be the centre of religious light in the midst of a world lying in darkness. Certainly, the city must have looked surpassingly beautiful, as, standing on the eminence on its eastern side, Christ and his faithful company, thirty- seven years before, watched the sun set amid the western hills, gilding the towers and minarets, and the Temple roof with its thou- sand golden spikes glittering as if on fire. Standing on the Mount of Olives, they looked over the dark glades which skirted the hill, and across deep ravines of the valley of the brook Kedron. Directly in front rose the stately temple in all the splendour which Herod’s forty and six years of restoration had con- ferred on it. Facing the valley was the golden gate which opened into the beautiful cloisters that surrounded the outer court, while the inner courts, and the Temple itself, were in the centre ; and, at a little distance, was Herod’s palace. On the right hand, to the north, ig8 THE HISTORY OF [Good Words, March x, 1869. close to the temple, on a rock, frowned the dark fortifications of the tower of the Antonia. Mount Zion, too, the city of David, rose on the south-west, across the valley of the Tyropceon, calling up many images of the days of the man after God’s own heart, and the theme of many a sacred song — Zion, the boldest and most extensive of the hills on which the city stood. At its base, on the south and west, stretched the valley of Hinnom, where the children had passed through the fire to Moloch in the old days of the idolatrous kings, and which, for half a thousand years ever since Josiah’s reformation, had been polluted and regarded as a place accursed, to remind the nation of their fathers’ sin. And away over the lower city, without both the first and second walls, still facing the ground on which He stood, the Lord’s eye might catch a glimpse of Calvary, which He was so soon to make known as the saddest spot on earth; and yet, for the lesson it taught, most full of comforting associations for the race of sin- ful men. His disciples, with excusable natural pride, called attention to the huge stones and massive building of the Temple; and far beyond the Temple, the two walls, with their frowning towers of rugged strength, seemed to ensure success against all invaders. The city was great and full of inhabitants and noble buildings within its walls, while all along the north side, inclining to the east, stretched the great suburb, as large as all the rest of the city, not as yet enclosed with that wall which was soon afterwards erected as its bulwark to the north, east, and west, by King Agrippa. All the mass of buildings and hills must have formed a noble outline against the western sky, and the rugged grandeur of the whole scene would be relieved by beautiful gardens, with their cedars and sycamores and j bubbling fountains of clear water that had everywhere been created in the naturally barren soil for the sons and daughters of Jerusalem to wander in and take their pleasure with their families, or give themselves up to meditation on the outskirts of the bustling city. W. e know how deep and holy, and full at once of sad recollections of the past and of even sadder forebodings for the future, were the emotions which the sight of all these varied beauties called up in the Redeemer’s heart ; and now, when thirty-seven years had passed , and Titus’ army drew near, the day was fast approaching when the prophecy with which the Lord had closed the day standing on the hill side was to be fulfilled in irretrievable ruin. As Titus drew near, he stationed the tenth legion at the foot of the Mount of Olives. The third or outer wall, erected by Agrippa, and the suburb soon fell into his hands. But more than one tremendous sally of the infuriated defenders soon taught him the danger of an assault upon the more ancient precincts of the town. Taking up his sta- tion about a quarter of a mile from the wall, he cast a trench about the city, and compassed it round and kept it in on every side. And soon famine began to do its work more effectually than the sword of the Romans. All this time, the mad party spirit of the defenders made them war with one another at every moment they could spare from their warfare with the Romans. Now, two well- known parties of robbers and fanatics, under Eleazer and John of Giscala, were in the Temple, while another, under Simon, occupied the upper part of the city. Assassins prowled through the streets, and in every house there was a death. Meanwhile, famine rages, and the well-known story of Mary of Bethezor fulfilled the most melancholy page of Old Testament prophecy — “ the tender and delicate woman” of Jeremiah xix. 8, 9 (cf. Deut. xxviii. 53 — 56 ; Lam. iv. 10, cf. 2 Kings vi. 28), the parallel to which in 2 Kings vi. 28, is [ mentioned as the lowest misery in the siege of Samaria. Between the 14th of April, when the siege began, and the 1st of July, it is said | that 115,000 bodies had been buried in the city at the public expense ; and the Roman general wept as he saw the misery, calling heaven to witness that not his enmity, but the madness of the Jews themselves, was the cause of these unheard-of sufferings. At length, by the latter weeks of July, the Antonia was ; stormed. The daily sacrifice had ceased ; no hope seemed left, and the defenders of the Temple were exposed to an irresistible assault from the fortress, which commanded its courts, j But their furious zeal made them defend the 1 holy precincts inch by inch. Titus himself watched the assault, and urged on his sol- diers, but to little purpose. It was not till the 10th of August, the day, it was remarked, on which the king of Babylon had destroyed the first temple, that all was lost. Titus, it was well known, was anxious to save the magnificent building, hallowed by the reli- gious associations of so many centuries ; and this may account, in part, for the slow pro- gress of his victory. But on this fated even- , ing, a soldier, against orders, cast a brand into a small gilded doorway on the north side, and in a few moments the whole Temple was in a blaze. A loud shriek of horror from the defenders announced the catastrophe to Titus, who had retired to rest, intending to Good words, March 1. 1869.] THE FALL OF JERUSALEM. 199 begin the assault the next morning. Wildly rose the uproar; blazing rafters lighted up the darkness, while all around the crackling of the flames and the crashing of the falling roofs mingled with the shouts of the victors and the death-cry of the Jews. Titus rushed forth, and in vain gave orders to stay the conflagration. His soldiers were in the Holy of holies ; they seized upon the treasures, which were scattered all around; not even Roman discipline could restrain them, and the abomination of desolation took posses- sion of the holy place. When the flames subsided, nothing was left of the Temple but a small portion of the outer cloister. Even in this hour of horror the wild fanaticism of the Jews was scarcely quelled. The Messiah had been looked for as a deliverer by many, even in this last ex- tremity. The small remnant of the cloister was now burned by the Roman soldiers, and 6,000 unarmed people, with women and children, were destroyed in it, who had been led up to the Temple shortly before by a false prophet, confident that a great deliverer was at hand. But the actual destruction of the Temple — not one stone left upon another — was a death-blow ; the spirit of the wildest was now effectually broken. The upper city (the stronghold of Zion) still, indeed, resisted. There Simon had been joined by his rival John. Some time was necessarily lost before the Romans could raise their works against the steep bank of the valley of the Tyropceon. When they did commence the assault, they found that the defenders had lost their wonted courage ; when, on the 7th of September, the Romans burst, with shouts of triumph, into the last stronghold of their enemies, they found little but silent streets, and houses full of dead bodies; while John and Simon long baffled all search, being concealed amidst the ruins and in the subterranean passages. Thus Jerusalem was utterly cast down. A portion of the western wall and three great towers were left standing, to shelter the Roman soldiers ; but all the city, Zion, Acra, and the Temple, was left in a mass of scarcely distinguishable ruins. The fearful catalogue which Josephus has preserved of those who lost their lives in the siege and the massacres which had preceded it in this war, tells us that they exceeded 1,300,000. And even if this be supposed to be an exaggeration, no one can read the account of the horrors of the war, and espe- cially of its last struggle, without seeing that it well called for that terrific imagery with which its approach had been announced in our Lord’s prophecy. And now it may be asked, Where, during all this time, were those whom these prophe- cies had warned of the impending misery? The portents which had been noticed, accord- ing to the Jewish historian, in the siege, had not spoken to them in vain. The heavenly voice related to have been heard from the holy place in the stillness, “ Let us depart hence ;” the oft-repeated warning of Jesus the son of Ananias, “ Woe, woe to Jeru- salem some of these were, perhaps, the echoes of the Christian prophecies ; and before the siege was formed, Eusebius tells us that the Christian community, acting on their Lord’s injunctions, left the capital in a body, and retired to the town of Pella, beyond the Jordan. There they waited calmly for the event which they knew to be inevitable, and recognised in it the righteous judgment of God against the murderers of his Son. They learned more clearly than as Jews they could have learned before, that the time was really come when neither in Jerusalem nor in any other holy spot was henceforward to be the peculiar seat of acceptable worship, but that the Judaism, which they could not but love as Jews for its time-honoured associa- tions, had indeed perished ; and that hence- forward the true worshippers of a spiritual religion were to be accepted everywhere if they worshipped the Father through the Son in spirit and in truth. The effects on the Christian Church of the utter de- struction of the holy city and the break- ing up of the Jewish nation, were very important in establishing amongst Chris- tians of Jewish birth a distinct conviction (for which St. Paul had so earnestly con- tended) that the obligations of the Jewish law were at an end. As Jews, the Christians of Pella could not but deeply mourn for the sad events which had befallen their country ; but they comforted themselves doubtless, as they studied the ancient prophecies and com- pared them with the words of Christ, in the thought that all blessings they ever expected from the earthly would be received tenfold in the heavenly Jerusalem : that a day was coming, and not very distant, when the true Messiah would return, and establish that mountain of the Lord’s house, of which their beloved earthly Zion had been but a type ; and that all nations should flow into it ; and honour such as their race never had before, even in the brightest days of their indepen- dent kingdom, should be enjoyed for ever and ever by the true Israel of God. UNDER THE PALMS. [Good Words, March i, 1869. UNDER THE PALMS. Led on — not driven by mere outward force ; Led on — not drifting at my own weak will ; For falt’ring footsteps, an appointed course ; For nerveless grasp, a Hand firm-holding still ! Led on — past childhood’s easy grassy ways, Past youth’s glad scaling of a flower-fringed steep, Past plans and failures of less sanguine days, Past graves where I had thought to stay and weep. Led on — but how ? I stumble as I go ; Led on — but whither ? clouds seem all I see : My trust, a purpose higher than I know ; My hope, a goal yet undescried by me. Oh friends ! if loved ones love me to the last, And deem earth sadder for that I am gone, Think not too much of the dim track I’ve pass’d, Think still of me as but led on — led on ! 11. I'n the band of noble workers Seems no place for such as I : They have faith where I have yearning, They can teach where I but sigh, They can point the road distinctly Where for me the shadows lie. Lofty purpose, high endeavour, These are not ordained for me ; Wayside flower may strive its utmost, It can ne’er become a tree. Yet a child may laugh to gather, And a sick man smile to see. And I, too, in God’s creation Have my little proper part : He must mean some service, surely, For weak hand and timid heart ; Transient joys for my diffusing, For my healing, transient smart : Good Words, March i, 1869. J UNDER THE TALMAS. Just to fling a ray of comfort O’er life’s downcast, dreary ways ! Just to fan a better impulse By a full and ready praise ! Pitying, where I may not succour ; Loving, where I cannot raise ! hi. Why would you have me dwell on Death, Rehearse the awful parting hour, The creeping chill, the ebbing power, The gasping for the latest breath ? Why vex a child ; neath noontide sky With image of his nightly ^est ? Just now his games, his toys seem best — He will be weary by-and-by ! Just now a hand is linked in mine, Just now thought flashes far and free, I joy in everything 1 see, I call this God-made world divine ! Wait — till night fall at His behest, Wait — till He hush to sleep through pain, Wait — till He show me Death is gain, And give the longing, with the power to rest ! iv. Not my will, gracious Lord, Not my blind will and wayward be fulfill’d ! I dare not say that bowing to Thy word All my heart’s wishes are subdued and still’d. My will might crave some boon by Thee denied, Covet the praise that ministers to pride ; Shrink back from taking up a needed cross, And shun the furnace to retain the dross. Not my will, O my Lord, No — be Thy name adored : Though too much to the dust affection clings, And self-wrought chains hold down the spirit’s wings, Yet out of sorrows past and present fears, Out of experience bought by loss and tears, At least the breathing of one prayer I’ve won — Not my will, Father, but Thy will be done. l. c. s. lo?. SHORT ESSAYS AND APHORISMS. [Good Words, March i. 1S69. SHORT ESSAYS AND APHORISMS. By the AUTHOR OF “ FRIENDS IN COUNCIL.” SECOND SERIES. What will become of the doll ? — The doll affords the most significant distinction be- tween the natures of man and woman. The boy breaks it to pieces to see what it is made of, while the girl treats it with infinite tender- ness and love. It would be a great mistake to imagine that the affection for the doll is ever absent from the feminine heart. Al- though the little creature compounded of wax, or wood and sawdust, may be laid aside, another doll always takes its place. It may be a father, or a brother, or a lover, or a husband, or a child, or the clergy, or a pet author, or a favourite politician ; but there is always the doll of some kind or other, which must be taken care of, and caressed, and made much of. Moreover, the doll’s life is chiefly made endurable to it by this petting. If women are to enter largely and seriously into the affairs of men ; if they are to become merchants, and lawyers, and doctors, and politicians, and statesmen, I only ask, What is to become of the doll 2 It may be very stupid of me, but I cannot recognise the justice of the present laws of copyright. If I have a piece of land only big enough to grow three gooseberry bushes upon it, the law is my friend for ever as re- gards this little bit of land. I may have gained it by a dexterous manipulation of butter. It may have descended to me be- cause my great-great-great-great-grandfather knocked down somebody and took the land. Or that much-respected relative may have contrived, not without some loss of character, to have been always on the right side, in times of civil discord. Perhaps this distant ancestor was a judicious gipsy, who squatted upon a piece of waste land, which, however, has now become very valuable. In whatever way this land may have been gained, the law loves and protects me, its possessor, or rather loves it as a bit of property. The law even gives me a valid right to all the air above my land, and all the minerals beneath it. .Now look at the other case. Out of my mind I construct something which I cause to be recorded in black marks upon pieces of white paper. Some people — perhaps wisely, perhaps foolishly — are willing to give me bits of gold and silver for these blackened pieces of paper of mine. It is not so very easy to ' persuade them to make this exchange ; and I often, perhaps, blacken paper much to my own detriment. But, still, sometimes these good people are quite ready and willing to give their silver and gold for my blackened paper. Now why should the good law, that is so tender and loving to me as regards the bit of land that I possess, be so harsh to me about my bits of blackened paper ? It says that anybody else may blacken the paper in the same way as I have done, after a few years have passed, and that my poor grandchild — so like me too, as everybody says he is — shall have no interest or property in my blackened bits of paper. I cannot see the justice of this proceeding. It seems to me very much like robbery. Some say — but their saying does not con- sole me — that my blackening of paper may be very interesting and valuable to the human race, and that my naughty grandchild may say that there has been enough of this black- ening of grandpapa’s, and that he should wish to put a stop to it. I have not, how- ever, observed that many persons are anxious to put a stop to anything, however injurious to the public, from which they derive a revenue. And in this case it has been ad- mitted that this blackening of paper done by me has been useful and valuable to mankind. My grandson, if he is at all like his grand- father, will. not refuse any money which may come to him honestly. Almost everybody is agreed that every- thing in the way of a function, as they call it now-a-days, is too long. Of course there are exceptions. A pantomime is never too long for a child ; but, as a general rule, everybody would be glad to have these functions short- ened. The only question is, what should be the amount of shortening ? The timid and the conservative would only shorten by one-fifth ; the extreme reformers by one-half ; the mode- rate party — amongst whom I should wish to class myself — would be contented with one- third. The advantage to religion of this shortening would be incalculable. • At present we do everything to make religion hateful to the young. Good words, March 1,1869.] SHORT ESSAYS AND APHORISMS. 203 It is very puzzling, sometimes, to distin- guish between jealousy and envy, for they often run into one another, and are blended to- gether. The most valid distinction seems to be this, that jealousy is always personal. The envious man desires some good which another possesses ; the jealous man would often be content to be without the good so that that other did not possess it. It would be comparatively much less diffi- cult to invent a plausible account of the meaning and purpose of this world if it were only inhabited by human beings. But the existence of animals complicates the question hugely. It would be well if we could believe with Descartes, that animals were mere phan- tasms, and had no real existence. But who can look at that bull-dog, and consider him to be a phantasm ? Observe how intel- ligently he looks up at the sound of his name, and expresses a wish to contradict this vain theory, observing that Descartes was only a Frenchman; or, taking it another way, that French poodle dogs might possibly be phantasms, but English bull-dogs certainly not. The disciples of Confucius have given a description of the behaviour of The Master, as they called him, on the important occa- sions of his life. They say that, when in the presence of the prince, his manner displayed his respectful uneasiness. There could hardly be given any two words which more fitly describe the manner of most Englishmen when in society. I am lost in astonishment when I contem- plate the “ questions,” as they are called, which are debated by the different religious parties, and respecting which they become furious. Vestments, intonings, processions, altar-cloths, rood-screens, and genuflections, are made to be matters of the utmost import- ance ; and all the while the really great questions are in abeyance. It reminds me of children playing at marbles on the slopes of a volcano, which has already given sure signs of an approaching eruption. I wish I could persuade men of science and men who have peculiar gifts of investiga- tion and examination, that it would be most desirable for them, and a worthy employment of their gifts, to examine what, for want of a better term, we may call spiritual phenomena. \ Let them remember, thaf to dispel error | may be nearly as important as to ascertain truth. Then, let them recollect, that almost ; all great discoveries have been accompanied j by a great deal of quackery and imposture. Let them think how much these investigations ! might tend to promote medical science. Let I them reflect how important a thing it is to investigate the value of testimony. Let them further reflect what a world of mystery we live in. Now look at the powers of memory. It is not too much to say, that if the records of memory, even of a peasant, were written out in full, the weight alone of the ink would probably be greater than the weight of the brain that remembers. After this, can they say that any process of the human mind is astonishing? There are numbers of state- ments, apparently well authenticated, in which it appears that the last thoughts and wishes of a dying person have had great in- fluence over relatives and friends, divided from these dying persons by large distances of land and sea. Let us carefully record and examine into all these statements. It would be an unutterable comfort to many minds to have it well ascertained that there was any influence after death of one mind upon another. But I do not rest my case upon these high metaphysical grounds. I rest it upon three other grounds. First, that, in investigating these so-called spiritual phenomena, we should ascertain more about the laws of evidence ; secondly, that we should ascertain whether there are any powers, forces, or influences, j of which we are at present not aware, that : have their place in the creation ; and, thirdly, whether disease brings into operation faculties of hearing, eyesight, or imagination, of which we have at present no adequate conception, medically, morally, metaphysic- ally, or scientifically. These questions demand the most careful investigation from our best weighers of evidence, and from our most accomplished scientific men. The greatest perplexity in contemplating life is seeing of how little account is the individual, and what small pity or provision Nature seems to have made for his sufferings. It seems such a world of caprice. Think of the difference of suffering endured by the man or woman who had to undergo a severe 204 SHORT ESSAYS AND APHORISMS. [Good Words, March i, 1869. operation twenty years ago, from that which any person having to undergo a similar opera- tion suffers now. And yet the former sufferer might have been quite as good a man as the present one. Think of the treatment of fever cases in past times. Think of what reputed witches and wizards must have suffered, and of the torments that heretics endured. But there is no need to contrast the present with the past. Now-a-days there is just the same j horrible inequality in the fortunes of indi- viduals. One is a pet, and the other a victim, ( without any apparent reason. There is the same thing in the lower crea- tion. Think of the difference between the 1 conditions of the Arabian horse — the pet of j the family, in old age never ill-treated — and j of the horse that comes under the tender j mercies of the vivisecting French veterinary | surgeon ; of the butterfly that is pinned by a 1 collector, and of the butterfly which finishes its existence in its own happy butterfly man- ner ; of the cat which is the joint property of three schoolboys, and of the cat that is the darling of one elderly lady. There is cer- tainly a considerable difference in the condi- tions of men, animals, birds, and insects, not by any means resulting from their own pecu- liar qualities or merits. The only ray of comfort is to have a belief and hope that there is a “solidarity” of in- terest, as the French would say, throughout the universe. We know so little of the Divine government, that we may not unreasonably indulge ourselves by such hopes and beliefs. And then these martyrs — it is a grand expres- sion, “ The noble army of martyrs ” — may have some reward for their martyrdom. be known about it. If the knowledge about books embodied in that committee could have been given to the world, it would have been a most valuable addition to the world's knowledge. Often a great but obscure student dies without having given to it any of the results of his extensive reading. There is hardly anything in which mankind is so thoughtless, so servile, and, as regards ideas, so poverty-stricken, as in ornamenta- tion. The imitative nature of the monkey comes out strongly in man upon such occa- sions. But perhaps the death-blow was given to beauty and variety of ornament when once the system of moulding was invented. This, of course, suits men’s indolence, as similar ornaments, if ornaments they can be called, may be turned out by the thousand with but little trouble, and at small expense. A very useful book might be written with the sole object of advising what parts of what books should be read. It should not be a book of elegant extracts, but should merely refer to the passages which are advised to be read. It might also indicate what are the chief works upon any given subject. For example, take Rent. The important passages in Adam Smith, Ricardo, Jones, Mill, and other writers, should be referred to. Of course, this work must be the product of more than one mind. I have often heard it said that when the London Library was founded, there was scarcely any work of any kind, and of any age, proposed for purchase, respecting which some member of the learned committee which formed and regulated that library, could not tell something desirable to I am one of those who think that lectures are a great means of advancing knowledge for the human race. As regards the im- provement of agriculture, it may be observed that there are no people so dense as agri- culturists, and so adverse to adopting any new thing. Now, there are men, a few only, who have studied agriculture very pro- foundly. I do not think that they could make a better use of their knowledge and their time, than by going about the country, and giving agricultural lectures. There is not one person in a thousand who under- stands the principles of drainage, and how the capillary system acts in drainage. The agricultural lecturer would at first have to lecture to a small and most sceptical audience. But the good seed would have been sown ; and some amongst his audience would have received ideas which they could not easily get rid of, and which they would gradually test by practical experience. No doubt all knowledge is good, and will eventually prove serviceable to the world. But, speaking for myself — if I had been consulted first — if it had rested with me to decide — I think I should have voted against the invention of the electric telegraph. It ap- pears to me that the electric telegraph chiefly serves to convey the news of misfortune rapidly, inaccurately, abruptly, and partially. Good Wprds, March i, 1869.] SHORT ESSAYS AND APHORISMS. 205 We have now the fifth act of the tragedy before we know anything of the preceding ones. Then, again, the system of telegraphing tends more and more to divide official men into two classes — idiots and madmen. The facility for conveying information at once, and desiring instructions, gradually dwarfs the mental powers and activity of the subordinate in the distance ; while the principal man at home is driven into madness by never having a sure moment of peace. There was some talk in a company of men of experience about misstatements, and how they should be dealt with. It arose thus. One said, “There is a title of a Spanish newspaper which always amuses me — El Cla?nor Publico — it is such an honest title.” Then there was talk about false rumours and misstatements generally, when one said, “The question of refuting false statements has always seemed very difficult to me. I have gone through several phases of opinion about it. When I was very young in office, I remember a minister being very much abused in the newspapers for having done, as it was supposed, a base and mean thing. Now he was quite innocent. He had not done that thing, but quite other, as Mr. Carlyle would say; and I knew this, having docketed the correspondence. One day I had to wait upon the minister to get some papers signed, and so I ventured to say to him, being in a state of much indignation myself, 4 How can you, my lord, suffer these scandalous things to be said about you? You know, of course, that I know how utterly false they are.’ ‘You are an excellent fellow,’ said the good-humoured minister to me, ‘ and it is very kind of you to take such an interest in my reputation. But you are young, my dear boy — very young. When you have come to my time of life, and have been as much abused as I have been, you will endure these things as patiently as I do.’ “ ‘ But the truth, my lord — the truth ! Is it not always desirable that the truth should be known?’ You see I was very young at the time. “‘Well, now,’ he said, ‘I’ll convince you that I am right. Suppose I were to answer this thing, which I can answer, then in a few weeks there comes some other attack, and I cannot answer it. I may be equally innocent ; but my duty to my colleagues, my duty to the j public service, my anxiety to preserve ami- cable relations with foreign governments, absolutely prevent my giving a complete explanation. Then the world cries out : “ He answered that \ he cannot answer this ; of course this is true.” No, my dear fellow, you are young in the public service. You do not know that every public man should be pachydermatous. I am.’ “ I went away silenced, but not con- vinced.” I have often told this story before ; but I think it is a valuable one, and I do not fear to repeat it. Then said another : “ Let me tell my story. I, too, was very young; but it did happen that I had to take a leading part on one of the great questions of the day. The part that I took was unpopular, and thundering articles were written against me. I was perfectly right, as the event proved. There was no merit in that, for it was my business to under- stand the subject in question thoroughly; but before the event took place I was very miser- able. To tell the truth, I thought I was ruined as a public man. I prepared an ela- borate answer to the attacks upon me. I was one day in my study hard at work at my refutation, when an editor of one of our greatest publications called upon me. ‘ What are you about ? ’ he said ; ‘ I see you are in a state of great agitation.’ ‘ I’m answering these fellows,’ I replied. ‘ I assure you I have a perfectly good case.’ “ ‘ I dare say you have,’ replied the great editor ; ‘ but do you think any editor is fool enough to allow himself to be answered in his own newspaper?’ “ The remark, coming from an editor, was convincing, and I stayed my hand.” “Well, now, let me tell my story,” said i another. “ I had a friend, a most learned 1 man, a great philosopher ; and he had fallen j out with some philosophic system. If I recol- j lect rightly, it was the Hegelian system. He I published his big book. I did not read the ; book, but I read an elaborate review of it, in which the man was stated to be a disciple of Hegel. “ Shortly afterwards I met my friend in the street. ‘ How long is it,’ I said, ‘ since you have changed your mind, and have become a disciple of Hegel?’ “ ‘ The rascals ! ’ he replied. ‘ In my first forty pages I thought it right to explain the j Hegelian doctrine. They only read those | forty pages, and did not look at my refuta- tion. I wrote and explained to them the state of the case. They replied to me that criticism was a matter of opinion. They had their opinion, I might have mine.’ ” I ! 206 SHORT ESSAYS AND APHORISMS. “ Now I must tell my story,” said a fourth. “ I saw the other day that a statement I had publicly made was declared to be inaccurate. Now, if there is anything I pride myself upon, it is being accurate. I had rather be S called a scoundrel than an inaccurate man. : Home I go, planning as I walk a complete answer to this attack. But when I arrive at ; home, I find grave domestic matters awaiting ; me. My little daughter’s favourite canary bird is seriously ill ; and I am imperatively required to attend to the case. After much ■ pondering over it, having summoned all my ignorance to my aid, I prescribe a warm : bath, and I have to superintend the opera- tion. Moreover, Juno, my pet pointer, the I best pointer, I believe, in the world, has met with an accident. Worst of all, old Nurse Broadwood, who lives in the neighbouring village, is worse to-day, and thinks it would do her good, I hear, if young Master George were to come and see her. You would not perhaps think it, but “young Master George” is the slightly bald, somewhat ro- ; titnd, and decidedly middle-aged gentleman who has the honour, at the present moment, of addressing you. These cares and troubles absorb my mind. The next day I am determined I will write the refutation. The next day, however, brings its own cares and duties with it. The day after that, I say to myself, ‘ I don't care so much about this thing ; but for the sake of the public, I will answer it some day. On the fourth day, I am quite cool and indifferent about the matter, and say to myself, ‘The public will not care a bit more about it than I do.’” It may be noticed that in each of these instances, from some reason or other, a mis- statement was left uncontradicted. “ Now,” said another person in the com- pany, “I am going to put before you a great ! idea. Let us set up a refutation paper, which I shall occupy itself solely in refuting the errors, !. falsehoods, calumnies, lies, and unjust cri-ti- : cisms, put forth in the course of the week, i Oh ! you say, it would never sell. I think it i would. The victims would form a large body ! of buyers. But at any rate, it would be a | curious experiment. Let us try it.” ! “ No,” said another, “ let us get some well- ; known paper to devote a portion of its space solely to these refutations. That appears a more feasible scheme ; and this part of the ( paper might really be made very interesting.” We all thought that this scheme was the ! best ; and here the conversation ended. It has been a favourite fancy of imaginative men, to picture to themselves the persons whom they would like to have known. And ■they generally name historical personages, or men of literary renown — such as Dr. Johnson, Milton, Cromwell, Charles I., Queen Elizabeth, Roger Bacon, or Alfred the Great. My fancy runs most amidst the great obscure. I should like to have known the man who first ventured to leave off wearing his pigtail. What a great man he must have been ! The pigtail possessed every feature of folly which costume can present. It was ugly, inconvenient, ridiculous ; it took up time, it spoilt clothes ; it needed assistance. Think of a regiment having their pigtails arranged under the inspection of the prudent captain late at night, in order that his regi- ment might be the earliest ready for battle, or parade, on the ensuing morning ! What heaps of calumny must have been piled upon the man who first left off his pig- tail ! If he had a wife, the neighbours doubt- less said that he beat her ; if he had children, that he starved them ; and all agreed that he was an atheist. In moments of depression, and they must have been frequent, how fer- vently he wished that he had never dismissed his pigtail ! But there is no returning in such a course, and to have taken to the pigtail again would not have condoned the original offence. With the deep insight into things which misery gives, he no doubt often said to himself, “ Better conform to the foolishest of human follies, than be ever so wise but withal so lonely in the world.” Thus he went, staggering under his burthen of eccentricity, sometimes morbidly courageous, sometimes morbidly timid and shamefaced ; now think- ing himself a presumptuous idiot, and now a glorious martyr ; but never again enjoying that sweet peace which abides with common- placedness. We have many pigtails now — moral, physi- cal, metaphysical, and theological. But woe to the man who makes a first appearance in broad daylight without his pigtail ! Yes : I should like to have known the man who first left off the pigtail of hair. Depend upon it, he had most of the qualities which rendered the great personages above-named famous in literature or in history. When people talk of women’s claims, and women’s rights, I think of the tournaments of former days. If the ladies had descended I into the arena, most of them would have Good Words, March x, 1869.] SHORT ESSAYS AND APHORISMS. 207 made but sorry knights ; whereas, remaining in the gallery, it was they who gave the prizes, and it was to win the meed of praise from them that each knight did his best. There is something of the same kind even in the most unchivalrous ages. Observe a dog or a cat turning and twist- ing about, and perhaps beating with its paws before it can make up its mind to lie down even upon the softest cushion. This, natural- ists tell us, is a reminiscence of its former state when, a wild animal, and when it had to make its bed for itself. Thousands of years of domesticity have not obliterated this habit derived from its ancestors, the dwellers in the forest. See the force of ancestry. There is doubtless the same thing to be seen in the ways and habits of men ; and probably his most distant ancestors still live, in some extent, in each individual man. The common notion about the springing of a serpent is mistaken. Those who have watched the creature say that it gradually uncoils itself before it makes its spring. So it is with most calamities and disasters. There is generally time to do something to avert or avoid them ; but we are fascinated by the sense of danger, and watch the un- coiling without doing anything to help our- selves. It is very significant to observe in speeches delivered in parliament, that the greatest orators speaking on the most interesting subject, cannot keep up the interest and attention of their audience the moment that they begin to read out a quotation. What an argument this is for extemporary preaching 1 I think that men might be taught oratory. | Not as Lord Brougham would have taught it. No man will become an orator by studying his Demosthenes ; and, indeed, models of eloquence are of next to no use, for every man must create his own form of eloquence. But there are certain rules of general ap- • plication which would go far to ensure success in public speaking. Of course, I presume that the man has something to speak about, which he knows about and cares about. There must be a certain amount of passion in all good oratory. The rules that I would suggest are these : — 1. To arrange methodically and in just se- quence the order of the topics ; and not to vary from that method and that sequence. Inferior speakers wander about to and fro like a dog on a journey in their speaking ; and nothing is more tiresome to the hearer than this fault. 2. Not to commit to memory a single sentence, except, perhaps, the first and the last. Speakers would be astonished to find what strength, what facility, and' what assur- ance this practice would give them. And for a very simple reason. I admit that the mind has such powers, and that it can go on speaking and recollecting what it has to say at the same time. But, if so engaged, it will not have the power of exercising other func- tions, which are absolutely required for great success in public speaking. When you notice a man much embarrassed in the course of a speech, and you are sufficiently his friend to Cross-examine him afterwards as to the cause of this embarrassment, you will generally find that he will acknowledge that he was en- deavouring to recollect something which lie had resolved to say, and the words in which he had resolved to say it. There never should be any occasion for such a painful effort of memory. Now as to the other occupations of the mind, which should go on while a man is ■ speaking, he ought to be observing his audience, and watching which topic of his discourse interests them most, and therefore enlarging upon that He ought to reserve the spare powers of his mind to encounter and make the most of any interruption or any hostile demonstration. This will never be done by the man who is taxing his memory to recollect the exact words in which he has in his study embodied his thoughts. I admit that considerable speeches have been made by men who have learnt every word of these speeches off by heart. But these men are not orators ; they are speaking essayists. The world finds them out directly. They hold a middle place between the man who manifestly reads out something, and the | man who speaks unpreparedly as regards the mere words — preparedly as regards the matter and the order and sequence of its arrange- ment — and who is the real great orator. 3. Cultivate the memory to the uttermost — not for the purpose of recollecting how you shall express your thoughts, but for re- collecting the facts upon which you speak. One who has had unvaried success in speak- 208 MICAIAH, 1 HE SON OF 1 MLA. [Good Words, March i, 1869. ing, tells me that he has made it a rule, never to be varied from, not to read anything by way of extract or quotation. Long lines of figures are dull things ; but it is astonishing how interesting they may be made by a man who has that vast and reliable memory, that he can quote them without reference to books or papers. You feel a respect for that man. You feel that he has acquired that mastery over the figures that they will be his slaves I for ever — that they are not his servants ; merely for to-day. | Why, making an exception to my rule, I ! say that a man may learn by heart his first i sentiments and his peroration, is this : it is I a concession to human weakness. Even the I greatest speakers, perhaps — especially the greatest speakers from the fineness and sensi- tiveness of their natures — are apt to be a little tremulous and embarrassed at the out- set of a speech. The heart beats painfully, the nerves are somewhat overcome at the first rising to address a great audience ; and it is well to be prepared for this. Again, as regards the peroration, one of the most difficult things in human life is to know how to leave off ; and, therefore, it is well to be prepared with something which may form a good ending, and tempt you to leave off. Few people can quit a room at the right time ; few people can break off an audience at the right moment ; and very few people, indeed, know when and how to leave off public speaking. , HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. By the BISHOP OF OXFORD. III.— MICAIAH, THE SON OF I ML A. It is strictly in accordance with that system of correlation which is implied in the very notion of the government of the earth and all that dwell on it by an ever-present, ever- acting personal God, that great sins should call forth marked interference, and that great sinners should be met by great witnesses of God sent to withstand their evil deeds. All nature is full of material types of such a sys- tem of moral proportions. The vast plains of Africa abound with the large carnivora, and with countless tribes of all the large ruminating animals. In the wild northern expanse of waters the huge cetacea have their home : as round the tops of the chiefest mountain-peaks may ever be seen the wide- winged flight of the great vultures and the sweep of the imperial eagles. The very rocks tell the same tale in their shadowy pictures of the melancholy wastes of those primaeval times which followed first upon the chaos, and which stand before us full of the hideous and terrible tribe of Saurian monsters. This graduated scale in nature marks on the mate- rial world the impress of the same hand which, in His government of man, proportions the instruments of moral resistance to the instru- ments of sin. It is not, therefore, in any sense surprising that, to meet so great a criminal as Ahab, other prophets of the Lord beside Elijah should from time to time have been raised up in Israel. For Ahab was indeed great in all the powers and proportions of his evil cha- racter. His influence over Jehoshaphat the king of J udah exhibits in striking colours his com- manding nature. Scarcely any other king of Judah receives such commendation in the sacred record as is bestowed on Jehoshaphat the son of Asa. He fortified his kingdom with widely diffused garrisons. He furnished it with cities of store, to equalise in bad times the supply of food to its working classes ; he established a system of national religious education, sending a royal commission, who “ went about through all the cities of Judah and taught the people.” He provided in it for the administration of justice; setting “judges in all the fenced cities,” and giving them the remarkable charge, “ Take heed what ye do ; for ye judge not for man, but for the Lord, who is with you in the judgment; wherefore now let the fear of the Lord be before you : take heed and do it, for there is no iniquity with the Lord our God, nor respect of persons, nor taking of gifts. Deal cou- rageously, and the Lord shall be with the good.” (2 Chron. xix. 5 — 11.) But, above all, he was a great reformer in religion ; he “ took away the high places and the groves out of Judah,” which his father Asa, even in the first heat of his zealous restoration of the worship of Jehovah, had not dared to do. And in this great work he laboured by a personal progress through his kingdom, “for he went out through the people from Beersheba to Mount Ephraim, and brought them back unto the Lord God of their fathers.” (2 Chron. xix. 4.) Good Words, March i, 1869.! MICAIAH, THE SON OF I ML A. 209 Moreover, when trouble came upon the land from their heathen enemies, and the Moabites and the Ammonites came in “ a great multi- tude ” to invade Judah, he set his people the example of trusting, not to the wise military preparations he had so judiciously made, but to the arm of Jehovah. “He set himself to seek the Lord, and proclaimed a fast through- out all Judah.” And such was his influence with his people for good, that at his call “ they came out of all the cities to seek the Lord.” And then, when God’s prophet brought them a message of encouragement, “ Jehoshaphat bowed his head with his face to the ground : and all Judah and all the inhabitants of Jeru- salem fell before the Lord, worshipping the Lord.” With the watchful wisdom which sought to seize on all favourable opportunities to promote the service of the Lord, he used this softening of their hearts to restore amongst them, with their own assent, and not as forc- ing it on them, that ritual of public thanks- giving which his great progenitor David had delighted to establish for the honour of his God. For, “ when he had consulted with the people, he appointed singers unto the Lord, and that should praise the beauty of holiness.” (2 Chron. xx. 21.) Such were his outward works. There was, moreover, behind them what gave them their deepest value, a true, earnest, personal faith in his God. “ He sought to the Lord God of his fathers, and walked after his command- ments, and not after the ways of Israel.” Yea, so thoroughly did he so, that he is found worthy of the high praise, “He walked in the first ways of his father David, and his heart was lifted up in the ways of the Lord.” (2 Chron. xvii. 3, 4, 6.) Temporal prosperity followed largely on this devoted faithfulness. “ He waxed great exceedingly. He built in Judah palaces : the men of war, mighty men, were in Jerusalem : and the fear of the Lord fell upon all the kingdoms of the lands that were round about Judah, so that they made no war on Jehoshaphat : and he had riches and honour in abundance.” Such a man as this we might have expected to find visibly counteracting the influence and designs of the king of Israel, who had wholly sold him- self to work iniquity, even though Jehosha- phat’s wiser policy might have kept him from renewing with Ahab the war which, through all their days, had lasted “ between Asa and Baasha, king of Israel.” Yet, it would seem certain that he would in nothing mix himself up with the enemy of the God in whom he so sincerely trusted ; and that he would use all his endeavours to keep his own family and his people free from the infection which familiar communications with the idolatrous court and nation would be so sure to spread amongst them. What a proof, then, of Ahab’s power over others is given us in the startling contradiction of all such expectations which the actual facts exhibit ! For, in im- mediate connection with the inspired state- ment of Jehoshaphat’s abundant riches and honour, stands, in God’s Word, the solemn note of condemnation, “And he joined affinity with Ahab.” To such a degree did this power extend, which the naturally stronger mind exerted over the weaker, that it was not wholly swept away even by such words of terrible threatening as reached the king of Judah from the mouth of Jehu, the son of Hanani the seer, when, after the greatest perils of death, he “ returned to his house in peace at Jerusalem,” to hear, instead of the welcome which had so often greeted him from sacred lips, the startling reproach, “ Shouldest thou help the ungodly, and love them that hate the Lord ? therefore is wrath upon thee from the Lord.” Terrible in its consequences even towards so favoured a servant of God was the wrath kin- dled against him by this fellowship with the evil house of Ahab. It cost him the overthrow of that army he had formed so carefully, and with such success ; it led to his navy being scattered, and his great “ works broken o: the Lbrd;” and it brought the sword, which followed the seed of Omri to destroy them, into his own house. For, first, that sword, in the hand of his own son Jehoram, cruelly and treacherously devoured all his younger chil- dren ; then the Lord had smote the murderer of his brethren himself with an incurable disease, of which he died miserably in his prime, leaving behind an evil name; “departing without being desired,” and being borne to his lonely grave without honours ; for “his people made no burning for him like the burning of his fathers, and they buried him not in the sepulchres of the kings.” But this was not all, for the wrath reached on in the new generation to Jehoram’s own sons, with consequences of destruction told with fear- ful plainness in the words of inspiration. “ Ahaziah walked in the ways of the house of Ahab, for his mother was his counsellor to do wickedly. Wherefore he did evil in the sight of the Lord like the house of Ahab, for they were his counsellors after the death of his father to his destruction. And the de- struction of Ahaziah was of God by coming to Joram; for when he was come, he went out with Jehoram against Jehu, the son of MICAIAH, THE SON OF IMLA. [Good Words, March i, iSS? Nimshi, whom the Lord had appointed to .cut off the house of Ahab. And it came to pass that when Jehu was executing judgment upon the house of Ahab, and found the princes of Judah, he slew them. And sought Ahaziah, and they caught him (for he was hid in Samaria), and brought him to Jehu, and when they had slain him they buried him.” And even yet the sword ate on. For when Athaliah, the mother of Ahaziah, and his evil counsellor, saw that her son was dead, with the wild vengeance which lay ready to be aroused in the proud dark heart of the daughter of the Zidonian Jezebel, she arose, and with fiend-like cruelty destroyed, so far as she could, all the seed royal of the house of Judah. So far reaching in its issues of iniquity, so terribly remembered in its conse- quences of punishment, was the sinful subju- gation of Jehoshaphat to the imperious will of Ahab. It was not, we may readily conceive, with- out many resistances, though all too weak to stand the strong strain of temptation, without self-deceptions, ever ready to blind half-willing eyes, and remorse, bitter, but too late to be effectual, that Jehoshaphat yielded to the great but wicked king of Israel. It is in the record of a signal example of this moral trial and failure of the good but over-mastered king that Micaiah, the son of Imla, first comes by name before us. The scene exhibits him as the witness for Je- hovah, in one peculiar trial of his faith- fulness, to which we have no record of Elijah’s exposure, and without seeing which we cannot estimate at its full height the severe testing in those evil days of those who bore unflinchingly the burden of the Lord. We must have before us the whole scene, with what we know of the relation to each other of the kings of Israel and of Judah, to enter fully into the nobleness of Micaiah’s grand bearing of his witness. Jehoshaphat had been persuaded to go down and visit Ahab in that city of Samaria where, in open defiance of the God of Israel, he had set up for the worship of the court the statue of the obscene and abominable Baal. To come in friendly guise as the guest of such a court was of itself offence enough in one who feared the Lord. But according to its law of J accursed fruitfulness sin ever follows sin ; and one point of right yielded, is but the har- binger of the yielding of another ; and so the king of Judah next consents on the en- ticement of his royal host to join him in a confederate attack upon the king of Syria. So far the evil induence triumphed unrebuked. Then succeeded one of those hesitating im- pulses bred of his better nature. As prin- cipal he would undertake no war without inquiry at the word of the Lord, nor engage in battle without “ seeking the Lord God of his fathers.” And so before the expedition was actually undertaken, he said to his royal compeer, “ Inquire, I pray thee, at the word of the Lord to-day.” It was easy for the king of Israel to yield a seeming compliance to what he doubtless deemed the hereditary weakness of his new ally : and with all the accidents of royal estate the two kings sat in a void place near to the gate of Samaria, “ either of them on their throne, clothed with their robes,” to hold solemn consultation with the oracles of God. The summons of the king brought at once before them four hun- dred prophets to declare the bidding of the Lord. Afar larger number doubtless Sama- ria could easily have furnished, even after the destruction of the priests of Baal upon the mount of Carmel. For under its evil kings Israel had imported into the Holy Land all the idolatries of the heathen round them, and with each false god came an attendant troop of priests, and diviners, and soothsayers, and magicians. With such Elijah had contended in the solemn lists of the moun- tain of decision, and had triumphed over them openly. But it was not such as these whom Ahab would have called to remove the scruples of the good king of Judah. We may be sure that the four hundred who this day with one mouth declared good unto the king spake as spake Zede- kiah, the son of Chenaanah, in the name of the Lord, whose word Jehoshaphat re- quired. But he was not satisfied with the loud voice of the consenting chorus. So spake not at the court of Jerusalem the aged Hanani ; nor with such semi-heathen tumults of utterance did his fathers’ God reveal His will through Jehu, the son of Hanani, and Jehaziel, the son of Benaiah ; and, as one perplexed by the din of this artificial consent rather than convinced by its deceitful voice, the king of Judah asked, “Is there not here a prophet of the Lord beside, that we might inquire of him ? ” Ahab’s keen discernment read at once, in all its causes and meaning, the secret dissatisfaction of the heart he de- sired to win, and he knew where to find the prophet, for whom, through all that surging number, the troubled glance of Jehoshaphat had searched in vain. But that man, for reasons of his own, he would not willingly pro- duce. “There is yet one man by whom we may inquire of the Lord ; but I hate him, for he Good Words, March x, 1869.] MICAIAH, THE never prophesied good of me, but always evil. The same is Micaiah, the sou of Imla.” Jehoshaphat’s courteous disci? 'mer of such treason for the prophet, “Let not the king say so,” was an irresistible demand of his presence; and an officer is sent to fetch him quickly. Then begins in all its severity the faithful prophet’s trial. The officer who brings him tells him, as they hasten through the streets, the outline of all that has passed in that open space where in hushed expectancy the crowd await his arrival ; he hears of the gathered company, the royal presences, the momentous issue, the concurring oracles, and that “ the words of the prophets declare good unto the king with one assent;” and he is urged, with friendly importunity, “ Let thy word therefore, I pray thee, be like one of theirs, and speak that which is good.” From Ahab’s words, it is plain that this was not the first time these two men had met and measured their strength together. “ He never prophesieth good concerning me, but always evil.” What a sore, proud, revenge- ful, and yet crouching spirit the words betray ! How gladly, but for the trembling of his spirit under an overmastering eye, would he have rid himself of those fearless, detested prophesy- ings ! How plainly does the “ I dare not wait upon the I would ” of the conscience-stricken tyrant ! How did he detest this intrusive prophet as such men ever do hate fearless reprovers ! How far pleasanter to hear those voices pro- phesying good things with that glad accord ! If only it were possible quite thoroughly to believe them ! And now the king of Judah had uttered in outspoken syllables the voice which was murmuring already its dull, hollow sound to the sleepy conscience of the evil king ; and he sends for this dark, unwelcome sayer of sad truths. When these prophecies of evil had been spoken by Micaiah the Bible does not tell us ; but we have in this case no reason to distrust the statement of Josephus, that one instance of them is to be found in Holy Writ, although the prophet’s name is not there recorded. It was, Josephus tells us, the son of Imla who administered to Ahab in his hour of victory over Benhadad that reproof 1 1 from God which must have been so especially ! I galling to the proud and prosperous king. 1 1 There had been on that occasion a certain ! ! magnificence of triumph about his conduct, j There was, first, the entire success of his arms | against the mighty Syrian monarch, and then I the seeming magnanimity of dismissing him in j safety. And now the first was rudely wrested j from him by the open declaration before his | glittering staff that not his valour but God’s SON OF IMLA. 211 judgment had subdued Benhadad ; and then, for the second, his noble magnanimity is changed into his having disloyally allowed the escape of a great criminal committed by another to his keeping; and all this angry irritation is aggravated by his own sentence being unawares extorted from his own uncon- scious lips : “ So shall thy judgment be ; thy- self hast decided it.” The severity of that sentence must have burned in its fiery sharp- ness into the very fibres of that angry and excited soul : “ Because thou hast let go out of thy hand a man whom I appointed to utter destruction, therefore thy life shall go for his life, and thy people for his people.” No wonder that the proud king “went to his house heavy and displeased.” We can hear the echo of his growl of rage in the fierce out- break to the king of Judah : “ I hate him, for he never prophesieth good concerning me, but always evil.” With this scene before us, we can have no difficulty in believing further, what Josephus asserts, that the king’s hatred had broken forth in its natural expression by casting ) Micaiah into a dungeon : sooner or later the usual home under such a king of Jehovah’s fearless witnesses. This account agrees en- tirely with Ahab’s knowing, as he evidently did, where the prophet was ; and being able to send at once for him, and command his presence, when “the king called an officer, and said, Hasten hither Micaiah, the son of Imla.” What a dungeon was in those j hard old days, we read in the book of Jere- j miah : “ In the dungeon there was no water, ' but mire; so Jeremiah sunk in the mire” j (Jer. xxxviii. 6). From some such dark and | dreary tenement the prophet was drawn forth to stand before these kings. It seems as if his estate had touched the heart of the officer who brought him, and who, for his own sake, besought him, “ Let thy word, I pray thee, be like the word of one of them.” This was the special point of his trial. It was comparatively easy to stand against the prophets of Baal. In such an encounter, J e- hovah was evidently with his faithful servant. It was the sham god against the true ; it was the spirit of devils against the Spirit of the Lord. There was no room for choice : there was scarcely room for fear. Against such as j these, though gathered against him by hun- j dreds, Elijah had stood single-handed, and had triumphed openly. But Micaiali’s trial was far subtler of approach, and so more dif- ficult to resist. These men professed them- selves to be, even as he was, prophets of Jehovah. In His holy name they uttered j MICAIAH, THE SON OF IMLA. [Good Words, March i, iS6$. their predictions. Probably as to many, if not all of them, there had been a time when the true voice visited them. In that peculiar dis- pensation the prophetic gift was the one only feature of the great Mosaic institutes of wor- ship and communion with God, which remained to them. Altar, sacrifice, high priest, Urim and Thummim, the very law itself, — all were gone. There was left but the gift of men on whom fell the afflatus of the Spirit, from whom yet breathed, now in whispers, and anon in thunders, the oracles of Jehovah. No one could foretell on whom the gift would fall. There were schools for those who sought the office, but not all of them were taken ; whilst at its will the free Spirit fell as upon Amos, who was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but “ a gatherer of sycamore fruit, a herdsman of Tekoah.” This gift, like all god’s gifts, could, it seems plain, be turned by the receiver into evil. He might trifle with it ; he might dumb its utterances through fear of man ; he might pervert them for gifts and rewards. And as he thus trifled with the great power which had rested on him, he drove away its presence; and as the Holy One withdrew Himself, the evil one came near, “ and entered in and dwelt there.” He became a false prophet, — a prophet of lies. It may be that in the several utterances of the Spirit within him, he was at most but dimly con- scious of the awful change which had passed upon him. The moral trial had been when first, for fear or for gain, he tampered con- sciously with the truth ; when he. “ divined for money.” Now he was the victim of what then he chose. We read not so much of the false prophet prophesying consciously a lie as of their seeing lying visions, and so uttering deceits. As of old the vision spread itself before them in a dream, an ecstasy, or an inspiration, and what they saw they spoke. But it was a vision painted for them by the evil one ; it was an inspiration bred of the low vapours of their own hearts, of their covetousness, their worldliness, or their greed. The next step in their evil course was the endeavouring by excitement, or even by for- bidden arts of magic, to recall the ebbing power of prophecy. This darkening of the evil soul which once had known the light, is what Micah so awfully portrays, “ Concerning the prophets that make my people err, that bite with their teeth, and cry, Peace. There- fore night shall be unto you, that ye shall not have a vision ; and it shall be dark unto you, that ye shall not divine ; and the sun shall go down over the prophets, and the day shall be dark over them.” (Micah iii. 5, 6.) Yet it was only by the event that the false- hood of such prophecies could be determined, and he, therefore, who resolutely withstood them, took upon himself the risk of with- standing the true word of God. What it was which led Jehoshaphat, in distrust of those now gathered round him, to desire “a prophet of the Lord besides,” we know not certainly. It may have been, as has been already sug- gested, the excitement of these professed possessors of Jehovah’s Spirit. It may have been that he had heard of Micaiah in. his dungeon, and that his heart turned sadly to the record of his father’s sin in putting the seer into a prison house, and of the disease and death which, as God’s chastisement, avenged that idle rage against the instrument of God’s rebuke, and so that the very fact of Micaiah’s imprisonment for a faithful utter- ance, awoke within his soul an irresistible desire to test by such a witness the truth or hollowness of this consenting band of pro- phecies. Great must have been the rage of these prophets of lies at this emphatic declara r tion of the king of Judah’s distrust, eager their readiness to turn on him who was thus pre- ferred before them. Amongst this crew the single prophet stood. To him the dull stillness of the dungeon was suddenly exchanged for the eager interroga- tions of the king, the angry taunts of the pro- phets, and deep, expectant hum of the people. Instead of the darkened light and dreary out- lines of the pit, in which he had been fed with “the bread of affliction and the water of afflic- tion,” there was the eastern sun, in all its glory, pouring down its rays on the splendour of the thrones of the two royally apparelled monarchs, and on the living sea of faces which filled the void space of Samaria. A feeble spirit might have been utterly dashed by the mere suddenness of the change — a = weaker heart might have fainted under the heaviness of the burden laid so singly upon his solitary strength. But it was not so with him. Jehovah stood beside him, and he was not alone; he saw “the Lord sitting upon the throne, and all the host of heaven stand- ing by Him on his right hand and on his left ; ” and the sun in its glory paled beneath that keener light, and the crowned kings, the crowding multitude, and the cursing and smiting prophets were as though they were not when set beside that grander company ; and so the Spirit of the Lord fell on him, and found its utterance through him. This loud consenting chant of coming triumph was but the baseness of a mercenary lie. These prophets had prophesied for hire ; and Good Words, March i, i86g.l IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA. 213 in counselling in Jehovah’s name their coun- sel of deceit, had opened their hearts and prostrated their intellects to the lying spirit. Their leader in iniquity, who had made him “horns of iron” for the misleadingofhis prince, and who had smitten God’s true prophet on the cheek, should fly in vain from chamber to chamber from the avenging sword ; the monarch on his throne of pride should be lured on to a defeat of ignominy and to a j death of violence — he should come no more ; to his fathers’ hill-crowning city in peace, j Such was the word of Jehovah. Most I bravely was it spoken; calmly, in the face of uttermost danger; resolutely, against all seeming improbabilities. The great warrior should be beaten down ; the confederate kings should be overthrown ; Israel, which had been taught to trust their own successful mo- narch as an unfailing conqueror, should be scattered upon the hill as sheep that have not a shepherd ; nay, even the awful sentence of the great Elijah should as it seemed be brought to nought ; for how — if Ahab fell at Ramoth Gilead, three days’ journey from Samaria — could the dogs lick his blood in the vineyard of Naboth, hard beside his palace home? Yet so the message was, and it was spoken out; a warning not to be listened to, but a prophecy to be fulfilled. Yet a few hours more, and all was accom- plished. From that void space in the en- trance of Samaria the royal train rolled grandly back to the ivory house of Ahab ; the company of prophets, whose voice of counsel had succeeded, swept triumphantly away ; the gathered crowd melted and dispersed. The one man with whom was Jehovah’s presence was led back dishonoured, smitten, and re- viled, to eat the prison’s bread and drink its waters. The silent night drew on, and all was hushed; the stars looked coldly down upon the silent square ; angel bands guarded the dungeon prisoner ; and he too, the day’s tumult over, slept the sleep of peace. But the decree had gone forth, and the watchers were fulfilling it ; and but a few days later on Gilead’s mountains a king miserably dying, and an army slaughtered, scattered, and fugi- tive, attested the reality of Micaiah’s mission and the verity of his words, “ If thou return at all in peace, the Lord hath not sent me.” IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA. There is no foreign country in the world with which Englishmen ought to be so well acquainted as America, and yet there are few about which greater mistakes are made. Many educated persons know very little of its geography ; and of those who understand the constitution of the United States, the limits of the power of Congress, and the extent of State rights with which that power sometimes comes into conflict, I suspect that the number is small indeed. The names of the two great political parties- — Democrats and Republicans — into which the nation is divided, convey no real idea of their mean- ing, and in themselves rather tend to mis- lead ; they are, in fact, only intelligible to those who have taken some pains to study the history of the States. The manners, habits, and institutions of the country can be very imperfectly known from books, which are too often written with a one-sided and pre- judiced view by travellers who make the whole people responsible for individual peculiarities, and remind one of the pedant mentioned by Hierocles, who, having a house for sale, carried about in his pocket a brick as a specimen. I do not believe that it is possible to understand the Americans without visiting them at home, and I am very sure that a hasty visit, such as I have lately paid to the United States, is not enough to make an Englishman understand them ; but it has enabled me to correct some false impressions on my own mind of the people and country, and I shall be very glad if I can correct them in the minds of others, for my earnest desire is to do all in my power to promote good-will between our trans-Atlantic cousins and our- selves. I know I shall make some mistakes even in the few random recollections which form the subject of this article, but they are, I believe, in- evitable in the case of every traveller, and at all events I have done my best to observe ac- curately, and I can promise to relate faithfully. And first as to manners. This is a point upon which every nation is sensitive, for it is that upon which ridicule most easily fastens its attacks, and ridicule is often more keenly felt, and causes more irritation, than a real or supposed injury. Now a great deal of ridicule has been lavished by writers on this side the Atlantic upon American manners, and the effect has been to make us imagine that what may have been characteristic of the past, when society was in a more rough and unsettled state, is characteristic of the present, and to stereotype in our minds ideas which have ceased to have any foundation in fact. Such a book as Mrs. Trollope’s “Ame- rica” would now be simply a caricature ; and IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA. [Good Words, March i. *869. it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to find persons who could sit for the portraits drawn in “ Martin Chuzzlewit.” An English- man is apt to think that, as regards manners, America is a vulgar edition of England, and that if he travels there he will find, even in good society, his sense of propriety more or less offended. Before my visit to the States I was strongly possessed with this idea, and I am sure that I do not exaggerate when I say that it is general. I went there prepared to admire the material wealth and prosperity of that magnificent country, and the energy and enterprise of the people, and yet I found that my imagination was outstripped by the reality; but I confess I expected to meet with sins against the code of good society in Europe. I was, however, entirely mistaken, and I feel as if I owe an apology to my American friends for the erroneous ideas I had fonned. As regards the middle and lower classes, they carry, I think, independence of manner a little too far. What we consider only respectful, seems to them to be servile ; and they have a quick, short mode of answer- ing a question, which is very like incivility, and certainly does not tempt a stranger to ’pursue his inquiries. They appear to think that the more curt their reply, so much the less time will be wasted. But rudeness is ex- tremely rare. I travelled a good deal on the railways and in the steam-boats — going west as far as Chicago, on Lake Michigan, and St. Louis, on the Mississippi — and I was struck by the entire absence of that inquisitiveness which is generally supposed to be characteristic of the Americans, and which we have been ac- customed to regard as impertinence. They talk freely and energetically enough to their friends and acquaintances, but to those who are neither they are, I think, more reserved and silent than ourselves. By this I mean that they do not volunteer conversation with a stranger, although, when it is commenced, they carry it on with remarkable fluency and intelligence. But of the manners of the upper classes, or what is called Society, it is difficult to speak too highly. There is far more refine- ment than we give them credit for ; and an American gentleman is as good a type of the class as can be met with in London or Paris, i know that this is not the general opinion, and I think it therefore right to state what I found to be the fact. And there is this difference in their favour, that they have less stiffness and formality, without being at all less observant of the rules of etiquette. In that true politeness which consists in a desire to oblige they have no superiors. Nothing, indeed, can exceed their courtesy and kind- ness, and they receive an Englishman with a warmth, and bestow upon him a hospitality, which he must be ungrateful indeed not to remember and acknowledge* There is a friendliness of accueil which makes one feel immediately at home with them. Instead of the cold ceremony of an Englishman’s bow on first acquaintance, an introduction in the States is almost always accompanied by a hearty shake of the hand and an assurance of welcome, which in every case I found to be genuine and sincere. This shaking of hands in America is quite an institution, and is car- ried to an almost inconvenient extent, as the operation is repeated between the same per- sons if they meet a dozen times in a day ; but it is the sign and expression of cordiality which si non e vero e ben irovato. In their households and their dinner arrangements there is, with one exception, nothing to which the most fastidious can object. The excep- tion to which I refer is the introduction ot cigars after dinner ; but it is a curious fact, probably owing to the dryness of the climate, that the smell of tobacco does not linger in a room : so that, as Burke said of vice, it loses half its evil by losing all its grossness. I expected to find more peculiarities of expression than I met with, but they were “conspicuous from their absence;” indeed, in good society, I heard scarcely any, although I have been asked, “Are you through ?” for, “ Have you finished your dinner ?” And the mercantile character of the nation is shown by such phrases as, “You are well posted in that subject,” and, “The balance of the com- pany amounts to so and so.” A candidate for office always “runs,” and never “stands,” in the States ; but the American term is, per- haps, more appropriate and correct than ours, as involving the idea of competition and a race. There are some words which are pro- nounced differently from our usage, as “clurk,” for “clerk;” and I very often heard “route” called “ rout,” which is clearly wrong. One thing which it is impossible not to notice in American society is the general intelligence and versatility of mind. I would say “ cleverness,” but that word has a different meaning on the other side of the Atlantic from what it has with us. It there signifies a moral, and not • an intellectual quality — namely, kindness of heart and readiness to oblige. It is surprising to hear the variety of subjects on which they can not only talk, but talk well. This is owing partly to the native vigour of the American intellect, partly to their liberal system of education, which Good Words, Marcn t, 1869,] IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA. 215 opens out so many avenues of knowledge, and partly to the necessity for self-exertion, which makes every one desirous of improving his faculties to the utmost. I never heard a word said in disparagement of England or “ the Old Country,” as it is often affectionately called ; but, on the con- trary, it was always spoken of in terms of kindly interest and respect. In order to gauge the real feelings of educated Americans to- wards ourselves it is, I think, necessary to visit them, and talk with them in their own homes. The truth of the matter hardly ap- pears in their literature, and certainly not in their newspaper press, which, with a few honourable exceptions, writes down to the level of the masses, fostering bad passions, and degrading, instead of elevating, the tone of public opinion. But the cordiality with which an Englishman who has proper creden- tials is received is a plain and manifest proof of the good-will with which the Americans re- gard us, in spite of the disturbing causes which now and then arise like clouds on the poli- tical horizon. And it will, I firmly believe, be our own fault if anything occurs to change that feeling. The change will be caused not so much by difference on public questions as by misrepresentation, ridicule, and caricature. One of the first things that disagreeably forces itself on the attention of the traveller in America is the general dearness of everything. The prices of all commodities are much higher than in England, but they seem to be higher than they really are. The only currency is paper, which is depreciated in comparison with gold nearly 35 per cent.; a dollar note may be taken to be worth about three shil- lings. But in bringing with him gold or bank notes, or a letter of credit, the traveller must remember that he gets an increase of paper money correspon ding to its depreciation, so that he does not suffer from that cause. There is a real cause of dearness in the high protection tariff and heavy taxation, which raise the price of articles considerably — a surtout coat costs £1 2 ; a silk umbrella, £2 ; a pair of gloves, 6s. ; a tolerable cigar, 9 d. The lowest wages are 6s. a-day ; skilled labour costs 1 2s. or 1 $s. ; the hire of a carriage is from 4s. 6d. to 6.r. an hour ; and washing is extravagantly dear. There are two theories as to the cause of the depre- ciation of the paper currency. 1. Because it is inconvertible, and there is a latent fear that it may never be redeemed in specie. 2. Because it is too abundant, and therefore, like every other commodity when the supply is in excess of the demand, it falls in value. But as to this second reason, it is by no means clear that the currency is in excess of the de- mand, or, in other words, there is no proof that the circulating medium is too large, nor is it clear that if it were contracted it would materially rise in value. I suspect that the real cause of the depreciation is an undefined idea that there may be some difficulty in ulti- mately resuming cash payments. And, of course, if this feeling to any extent exists, it will be increased in proportion as the paper currency is enlarged, so that the first of the two causes assigned for the depreciation will operate in the same manner as the second, and may easily be mistaken for it. A controversy has been going on in the United States whether the Government bonds ought to be paid in gold or paper when they fall due. The Republicans insist that they ought to be paid in gold ; the Democrats that they ought .not. But the Democrats altogether repudiate the idea of “ repudia- tion.” The question is, what was the original contract ? The Act of Congress which autho- rised the issue of the bonds provides that the interest shall be paid in gold, but makes no such provision as to the principal ; and this is urged by the Democrats as a proof that it was not intended that the principal should be so paid. The Republicans, on the other hand, rely upon the language used in Con- gress at the time of the passing of the act, and by the Secretary of the Treasury at the time of the issue, as a proof that the under- standing was, that the bonds should be paid in gold. Assuming that the original contract does not bind the Government to pay in gold, the Democrats contend that to do so would unfairly enrich the bondholder at the expense of the people, from whose taxes the money must come ; and they represent him as a sort of parasite who does not increase the wealth of the country, but fattens upon its produce ; forgetting, however, the important fact that it was he or those whom he represents who lent the money to the Government in the time of its need, and that he has as much right to be considered as any creditor who has lent his money to a private individual. The Demo- crats further contend that the money origin- ally advanced to Government in exchange for the bonds was not gold, but paper ; and that, therefore, it is only fair that the holders should be repaid in paper. The general feeling of the country, however, is in favour of paying the bonds in gold, and this is part of the Re- publican “platform;” and that party has been strong enough to carry the election of General Grant by a large majority. The argument of the Democrats against it may be 2 1 6 IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA. [Gocd Words, March i, 1869. plausible, but there can be no doubt that if it were successful American credit would sink to a very low ebb indeed. But what is a Democrat, and what is a Re- publican ? It is impossible to have any just idea of American politics unless these terms are understood, and I will try to explain them as briefly as possible. It would occupy too much space to trace their origin and history, but I may mention that the Republi- can party as now constituted was formally organized in 1856, to resist the extension of slavery into new territories. I do not pro- pose to go into the mysteries of Hardshells and Softshells, Hunkers and Barnburners, Copperheads, Dough-faces, and Carpet-bag- gers ; and the principles of the two parties will be best understood by showing on what points they are chiefly opposed to each other. First, then, the Democrats favour the South. Not that they ever admitted the right of the Southern States to secede from the Union, or doubted that Secession was treason to be crushed by force. On the con- trary, they fought as heartily and gallantly as the Republicans for the Federal flag. But when the war was over, they wished to “ for- give and forget,” and to admit the seceded States into the Union on the same terms as before. Their “platform” is — 1. Restoration of all the States to their rights in the Union under the Constitution ; 2. Amnesty for past political offenders ; and, 3. Regulations of the elective franchise in each State by its own citizens. But the Republicans are not so lenient. They determined to treat the Southerners as conquered rebels, and they passed Reconstruction Laws by which none of the Confederate States was to be re-admit- ted into the Union unless it gave the electoral franchise to its negroes, and in default of this, it was to be ruled by a military government. It is needless to point out what a divergence of policy these opposite principles involve. The Democrats accuse the Republicans of being the friends of negro supremacy and military despotism, while the Republicans retort that the Democrats are favourers of rebels, and false to the Union. In the next place, the Democrats are staunch defenders of the independent rights of the different States, and jealous of any encroachment or interference with them by Congress or the Executive. The Republi- cans are charged by them with trampling upon these rights, and so violating the Con- stitution. Thirdly, as I have before shown, the two parties are opposed on the question of cash payments. The Democrats hold that the Government bonds ought to be paid in paper ; the Republicans, in gold. The Democrats are sometimes called the Conservative party, and this being so, it is curious that the Irish almost universally belong to it, for they certainly are not Con- servative here. But the reason is this : Some years ago the Republican party proposed to lengthen the period of residence in the States which is necessary before a foreigner can acquire the rights of citizenship. This was opposed by the Democrats, and as the Irish would have been chiefly affected by it, they supported them then, and have ever since adhered to that party. The emigrants who arrive naturally adopt the side on which they find their countrymen ranged, and thus the Irish vote is a very important part of the numerical strength of the Democrats. Whether it does much credit to their cause is another question. An American once said to a friend of mine that they would willingly agree to give up the Alabama claims if we would only take back all the Irish we had sent there. I have heard the genuine brogue in Chicago and Cincinnati, but, as a general rule, the Irish emigrants hang about the sea- board towns, and do not push on to the west like the Germans. They are most numerous in New York, which feels their influence in all its elections, and the result is an amount of jobbery and corruption, which has made that city a by-word of municipal misrule. There are few things in which the Americans may take more just pride than education. It may fairly be called universal; and the schools (in which instruction is entirely gra- tuitous) are supported by local taxes or rates. Thus, at St. Louis, in Missouri, on the banks of the Mississippi, there is levied on all real and personal property within the city, a tax of “ one-tenth of one per cent.,” which is paid to the Board of President and Directors of the St. Louis Public Schools. Of course, in schools which depend upon taxation, there cannot be distinctive religious teaching, but in some of those I visited the Bible is read every morning, and hymns are sung, in which the children of Christians and Jews, Trini- tarians and Unitarians, join without objection. One might hope that, by the aid of a con- science-clause, the problem, which has been found so difficult amongst ourselves, might be equally well solved in England. In some States, as in Missouri, both sexes are taught together ; in others, as in Pennsylvania, they are kept separate. I went through the class- rooms of the High School at St. Louis, where . Good Words, March i, 1869.] IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA. 21 7 there were boys and girls, young men and women, together, busy at their lessons, but sitting in two divisions apart. In one room they were construing the first book of the HSneid ; in another they were learning mathe- matics ; in a third (I think there were five in all) they were doing composition. I have seldom seen more eager, intelligent faces, than were displayed there by “ Those bright and ordered files,” as each strove to correct a slip or mistake when it was made by the pupil who happened to be questioned. There is a higher class of graduates of both sexes, who, when they have successfully gone through the prescribed course, are presented with diplomas. In Philadelphia I visited the Normal School, where those young women are edu- cated who are destined to become teachers, like our National school-mistresses, and for my sins I was suddenly called upon to address about three hundred of them, assembled in a large room, before I left. Here, as in the St. Louis school, there was a considerable diversity of subjects, and each pupil has to attend to them all in turn, passing from room to room. I think an hour is given to each. I remember that in one room they were studying physiology, and I could not help thinking that the knowledge they got about cartilages and tissues and fibres and bones would be of very little use. In another, men- suration was taught ; and the pupil-teacher who was lecturing seemed to be so clever at mathematics, that I could not help whisper- ing that, if she were a man, and could gra- duate at Cambridge, she would be senior wrangler. But the most amusing room was • that in which a class was engaged in com- position. The plan was this : One of the young women read aloud a letter she had written on some imaginary subject, such as a picnic or a journey; and then the teacher asked for criticisms : “ Can any one point out any faults of expression or grammar in the letter that has just been read?” “ I think,” answered a young lady, “ that one sentence was not quite clear ;” and then repeating it, she observed that it was uncertain whether it was the tart or the grass that was eaten at the picnic. This, of course, produced much mer- riment, and so the ball was kept rolling, but great quickness and attention were necessary. In an adjoining room, elocution was going on, and I heard several recitations of Hohen- linden. Besides all this, they are taught drawing, music, and singing ; so that the time from ten until four, allowing an hour for : X— 15 lunch, which they bring with them or get at shops in the neighbourhood, is fully occupied. Whether too much is not attempted, and whether there is not in consequence more surface than depth, is a question which can only be answered by those who have had longer opportunities of watching the effects of the system. I should fear that the result must be that the attainments are superficial rather than solid. But there can be no doubt that the intellect is brightened, and the wits are sharpened, by the variety of subjects with which the pupils have to deal, and the mode in which they are taught. The schools are open to all classes, without distinction ; and two girls were pointed out to me, sitting side by side, one the daughter of a millionaire (in dollars), and the other whose mother sup- ported herself by washing ; but many of the wealthier families, not liking the promiscuous society of the public schools, send their daughters to private boarding-schools, or have governesses at home. At Washington, I had an interview with the President, at the White House. Nothing can be less formal than his receptions, and people attend them in shooting-coats or any other attire they choose to wear. I was ad- mitted into the “ presence ” with half-a-dozen ladies, one of whom was a “strong-minded” woman, whose hobby was education. She immediately attacked the President on the subject, and monopolized his attention for a full quarter of an hour, while she favoured him with her peculiar views. These were, that nobody but herself had ever yet studied education scientifically ; that she had ex- hausted the libraries of Europe, and was still in want of books on the subject; that it was necessary to investigate the condition of man in his savage state ; that children ought to be made natural philosophers, and their toys should be constructed on philosophical prin- ciples, so that instruction might be combined with amusement ; and that thus the standard of the human intellect would be raised, and so forth. Most patiently did Mr. Johnson listen, with a quiet smile on his lips, and he now and then interposed a remark, which showed that he had some sense of humour. I told him afterwards that I thought he paid dearly for his high office, if he was often compelled to undergo such a lecture. He has a full, heavy countenance, and the firmness, not to say obstinacy, which he has displayed in his contest with Congress, since he has been President, is legibly written in his face. We are apt to think that America is the | hotbed of strange and extravagant sects in IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA. [Good Words, March i, iS6g. religion; and the perusal of such a book as Mr. Hepworth Dixon’s “ New America ” leaves an unpleasant impression on the mind that credulity and fanaticism run riot in the United States; but we must take care not to exaggerate the fact : “ Faciunt favos et vespa3,” says Tertullian, “ faciunt ecclesias et Marconitae.” It is undoubtedly true that there is to be found there almost eveiy kind of belief and worship which the credulity and folly of man can devise ; but, if we except the Mormons, the numbers of each of these eccentric sects are insignificant, and they are as unknown, and as much an object of curio- sity to the Americans generally as to our- selves. The Shakers near Albany, in the State of New York, are one of the “lions” of the neighbourhood, and as such are shown to strangers who visit that quiet and Dutch- looking town. I went one evening, while I was at Boston, to a Spiritualist camp-meeting, which was held in a wood about five miles from the city, and lasted a week. It was a strange and rather picturesque sight, with tents among the trees, and lighted lamps, and a crowd of people, most of whom seemed to enjoy it as a kind of gigantic picnic. In one tent there was a regular performance of jug- glery, such as the Davenport trick of untying knots ; in another, a pale, unhealthy-looking young woman, a “ medium,” worked herself up into a state of ecstasy, and gave utterance to unintelligible rubbish ; while on a platform close by, a wild-looking man, with a bushy beard, harangued the audience, and told them that it was Spiritualism which had reclaimed him from rum-drinking, tobacco-chewing, and infidelity. The most numerous sects in the United States are the Methodists and the Baptists. I am not sure whether the Episcopalians or the Independents come next, and after them the Roman Catholics. The stronghold of the Unitarians is Boston. I was assured that they make little progress out of Massachu- setts. There seems to be no lack of religious zeal; and new churches, which are most liberally built and supported by voluntary subscriptions, fairly keep pace with the popu- lation.. The Unitarian chapel of Dr. Bel- lows, in New York, cost ^40,000 ; and he has a stipend of ^1,000 a year from his con- gregation. I was much pleased with the interior of the Episcopalian churches, which seemed to me generally to observe the right medium between too much and too little ornament ; and I think it cannot be denied that the changes made in their Book of Common Prayer, whereby some grammatical errors are corrected, some obsolete words replaced, and some repetitions avoided, are improvements which we might introduce with advantage. It must take a long time to wear off the prejudice which exists against the negro in the States. Even in the North, where the hatred of slavery is most strong, the coloured population are a race very much apart : they have their own churches and their own schools. Whatever the law may say as ta equality of rights, there are social antipathies which it cannot alter. In the North, the blacks are not allowed to vote ; and this makes the Southern States feel more keenly the injustice, as they think it, of the Act of Congress, which imposes negro suffrage upon them as the condition of their restoration to the Union. At St. Louis, in Missouri, which was one of the slave States until slavery was abolished, no negro can ride in one of the street cars unless he holds a white child in his arms, or is in attendance as a gentleman’s servant upon his master. In the North, I have frequently had blacks as fellow-travellers in the railways, and I could see no difference between them and others as to the way in which they were treated. In most of the hotels — as, for instance, at Newport, West Point, Boston, Niagara, Chicago, Cincinnati, Washington, and Philadelphia — and on board the steamboats, I found that they were the only waiters, and sometimes they acted as chambermaids. I thought them in general apathetic and sulky, and very unwilling to give themselves any trouble. At St. Louis, and elsewhere, I talked to negroes who had been recently slaves ; and they spoke of their former state without the least trace of bitter- ness. They said they had been well-treated, and did not seem to bear any ill-will against their former masters : but they admitted that they had witnessed scenes of cruelty. One man told me that either he or his father (I forget which) was kept a close prisoner for some time because he had surreptitiously taught himself to read. These men were earning, as common labourers on the wharves of St. Louis, two dollars, or 6 s . a day. Railway travelling in America is anything but comfortable. There is much more noise and shaking than is at all necessary ; and as each carriage or “ car” contains fifty persons* with a passage in the middle, and any one who likes can pass from one car to another, there is perpetual movement and slamming of doors. Boys go up and down with news- papers and books or fruit and cakes for sale ; and I have seen itinerant musicians enliven Good Words; March i, 1869.] IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA. 219 the passengers with their fiddles. At night, a berth in one of the sleeping-cars can be hired for an extra dollar ; but the noise makes it difficult to sleep. The danger of a level crossing is never thought of in the States. The trains pass not only across but along the streets of town without any guard or fence of any kind ; but a board is here and there to be seen with the notice, “ Rail- way-crossing. Look out for the Engine ! ” and it is only wonderful that children are not oftener killed. I have seen pigs trot- ting about the line, and a cow astray upon it; but all this seemed to be taken as a matter of course. The buffets at the wayside stations in the western States are almost as bad as those in England — they cannot be worse — and they were the only places where I met with real incivility. Smok- ing is not allowed except in carriages set apart for the purpose ; but there is quite sufficient annoyance without tobacco-smoke, in spitting and other amenities, to render railway travelling disagreeable. On some 1 lines, however, there are drawing-room cars, j where, for an extra dollar, the traveller may secure more select company and considerable | comfort. 1 On one of the railways, I met with what I j thought a good instance of American sharp- ness. I had taken a ticket at New York for Chicago, but had accidentally dropped it at the office before starting. When we had gone some distance, the collector applied to me for my ticket, and I told him of my loss. He said, “ Oh ! there is a boy in the train who has picked up a ticket ; perhaps it is yours.” I then went along the cars in search of the boy; and he told me that, having ! found the ticket on the ground, he had got into the train, thinking that the passenger who had lost it would be much annoyed, and i fully expecting to discover him. He said, “I expect you will not object to pay my fare | back;” and with this and a small trifle besides, he was quite contented. j The luggage system is admirable. Each article has a strap with a brass number at- tached to it, and a brass ticket with a cor- responding number is given to the passenger; so that he can claim his luggage at the sta- tion where he stops without any possibility of mistake. There are also express companies, to whose agents the tickets can be handed ; and { they bring the luggage to the hotel, or house | where the passenger intends to stay. When l I was in the States, an unfortunate hen had been sent, thus ticketed, to the West ; but, as no one claimed her, she was sent back. Her owner, however, could not be found, so she was again despatched westward ; and at last it became a practical joke to send on the hen, so that she seems destined to travel, and, like the spider, “ live along the line ” for the rest of her natural life. But any amount of discomfort in travelling is more than compensated by the beauty of the scenery. Here, again, I was agreeably surprised. The only parts which were at all wearisome were the vast rolling prairies of Illinois ; but the Indian corn, peach and other fruit trees showed an abounding fer- tility. The country generally, even in the Eastern States, is less cleared than I had ex- pected, and there is an endless succession of woods and rivers and lakes, with undulating hills and valleys, in which are nestled wooden farm-houses, painted white, with green shut- ters, like islands in a sea of leaves, and the very picture of snugness and prosperity. In the north of the State of New York, there is still a large tract of primaeval forest ; and in Pennsylvania, a region called the Wild Cat country, sufficiently indicates its nature by its name. To see, however, nature in her glory in America, a man should travel in the latter end of autumn, when the leaves are changing their colours, and the bright reds and yellows contrast with the deep green of the fir and the pine. An Englishman will note the ab- sence of parks and mansions in a country full of the most inviting spots. But the Americans would feel bored by a country re- sidence ; they do not hunt or shoot as we do, and there is no temptation to live amongst a tenantry for the sake of political influence, even if a tenantry could be created where land can be bought in fee-simple for a few dollars an acre. They therefore prefer to spend their money on villas at favourite watering-places, such as Newport, Long Branch, and Nahant, and leave the country to the farmers and peasantry. There are in each State of the Union two sets of law courts, the one belonging to and administering the laws of the particular State, the other belonging to and administering the law of the United States. Th^ latter are called district courts, and they have cogni- zance of all suits to which the United States are party, or in which different States are plaintiffs and defendants, and they have ex- tensive admiralty and maritime jurisdiction; they have also cognizance of all crimes com- mitted against the United States. Thus, if a letter is stolen from the post office, as the department is under Government, the offender is tried in one of the district courts. Besides IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA. [Good Words. March r. 1869. ‘ these, there are circuit courts established by Congress in the ten circuits into which the United States have been divided, and their chief duty is to enforce obligations of the people of the United States in their national character, or which result from the laws passed by Congress. But many of the dis- trict courts have been clothed with circuit court powers, and the system is too technical and complicated for explanation here. I need not say that amongst the judges, advo- cates, and juries, there are to be found some of the ablest men who have ever adorned the profession ; but I will only speak of a few pecu- liarities which struck me. In the first place, there is no legal costume, not even a gown ; and this, I think, is a mistake. No sane people would think of introducing our wigs, which, I believe, astonished the Japanese when they were here more than anything else they saw in England ; but an appropriate dress would add dignity and respect to the bench and the bar. There is, certainly, in some of the courts a want of what we should think proper decorum. At Chicago, I lis- tened for some time to a trial where the question was as to the right of the plaintiff to what, in the Illinois law, is called a me- chanic’s lien. The subject in dispute was dull enough, but the scene was amusing. When I entered the courts people were smoking ad libitum ; but this was during an adjournment, and when the trial was re- sumed, the judge said that they must put out their cigars. The jury sat on rows of chairs, in front of which was a low iron bar ; and the counsel, in addressing them, walked backwards and forwards, ever and anon spit- ting vehemently. One of them frequently declared that his learned friend had got into a “ pretty tight fix,” and this accounted for the weakness of his argument. In the mean time, the judge, whose observations showed that he was an acute lawyer, descended from his seat, and talked with some of the by- standers — I was going to say he joked, but he looked much too dyspeptic for that. In Philadelphia, I once heard an advocate, who was interrupted by a judge, address him with great earnestness as “ my dear Sir !” Public officers in the United States, from the President downwards, are underpaid, and the judges are no exception to the rule. Their salaries are quite inadequate to their station ; and I met one day at dinner a distinguished and able judge, who was just leaving the bench to resume his practice at the bar, for the avowed reason that he wanted a better income for his family. This is a great evil ; but a worse one is that of choosing the judges by popular election, and “ running ” the can- didates, as if they were striving for a political office. I think that in Philadelphia this sys- tem is discontinued, and it ought to be abolished everywhere. While I was in America the contest for the presidency was going on, and each party was striving its utmost to secure the victory. I attended an immense torch-light mass meet- ing of the Democrats in Philadelphia at night, and stood by the orators who addressed the crowd. But the speakers were constantly interrupted by processions of large bodies of men with flags and music who represented the different wards, and who had some diffi- culty in forcing their way through the stationary multitude. Each of them had separate emblems and devices. It happened that a Mr. Fox was the Democratic candidate for the office of mayor, and every individual of one of the marching regiments had a fox- tail, or the nearest approach to it he could procure, on his hat, while an unhappy live fox was carried aloft, chained to a table. In the meantime rockets and other fire-works were bursting around, so that the scene was one of immense confusion. I observed that no point made by a speaker told so well with the crowd as a hit at the negroes, and the reason was obvious. The blacks compete with the Irish in the labour market, and a great part of the audience was Irish. Next day I went to the Town-hall to see the pro- cess of naturalisation, which was going on at the rate of a thousand a day. Every man who claims to be made a citizen must take an oath that he has resided five years in the States, and must forswear all dignities and titles, past, present, and future. There was some hard swearing by men who were most unmistakably “ bog-trotters,” and in the course of the day two or three were arrested, and were to be indicted for perjury. But, as both sides were equally anxious to procure recruits, neither was very particular as to the proceedings of the other. It made one tremble to think that the destinies of a mighty empire would be influenced by poli- tical power being placed in such hands ; but then came the reflection that there was illimitable room for all. Democracy is like gunpowder, which is harmless enough when ignited, unless it is confined, but terribly ex- plosive in proportion to the narrowness of room. I should like, if I had space, to say some- thing of the towns — of busy, bustling, noisy New York, “ where merchants most do con- Good Words, March i, 1869.] IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA. 22 1 gregate,” one of the worst governed cities in the States, but where a stranger is received with genuine kindness and hospitality ; of Philadelphia, with its long streets of deep red brick and white marble, which I preferred to any town of the Union ; of Washington, which has been well called the city of “ mag- nificent distances,” and is a strange contrast of meanness and grandeur, the grandeur, how- ever, being confined to the public buildings, and the meanness largely preponderating; of the marvellous growth of Chicago, where, scarcely a generation ago, wolves and bears howled in a desert which is now covered with stately houses and splendid shops, and swarms with a population of a quarter of a million ; and of Ottawa, the capital of the new Dominion of Canada, which the Ameri- cans say is the first “clearing” between the North Pole and the States. I should like also to speak of the admirable charities, which are nowhere better supported nor better con- ducted than in America ; but I must confine myself to a few words about the state prison of Philadelphia, called the Eastern Penitentiary, which is best known in this country by the ac- count given of it by Mr. Dickens in his “Ameri- can Notes.” He condemns it in the strongest possible terms, and speaks of every prisoner confined there as a man “ buried alive, to be dug out in the slow course of years ; and in the meantime dead to everything but tortur- ing anxieties and horrible despair.” All I can say is, that after a careful inspection of the prison, I came to a very different con- clusion, and after talking to many of the prisoners, I was surprised to find how little they seemed to feel the effect of solitary con- finement. I am by no means an advocate of the system, and I visited the Philadelphia penitentiary with the strongest prejudice against it ; but I am bound to say that the prisoners did not seem to feel its effects in anything like the degree I had expected, and I certainly saw no signs of that hopeless misery which shocked Mr. Dickens. It sounds like a paradox, but the system, though solitary, is not silent. Visitors are frequently admitted, and the prisoners talk freely with them. From the centre of the building corridors radiate like the spokes of a wheel, and each of these is lined by the separate cells. On Sundays volunteer minis- ters take their stand in the centre, and each preaches to a corridor, the doors of the cells being opened a little to admit the sound of his voice. Thus three or four may hold forth at the same time, Episcopalians, Methodists, or Baptists, as the case may be, and by an arrangement of doors in the centre the voices are said not to interfere with each other. But I confess I did not see how this could be prevented. I went into several of the cells. In the first the inmate was smoking his pipe, and had ornamented his room rather neatly. I have seen convicts in the Maison des Con- damnes, or la Roquette , in Paris, smoking in their yards ; and convicts, whose red caps betokened that they had committed murder, working in chains, with cigars in their mouths, in the streets of Genoa. Behind each cell there is a small open space of about the same size, called a garden, although I saw no flowers anywhere, and in this the prisoner is allowed to walk up and down, which is the only exercise he gets during the whole time of his confinement. The health, however, of the prisoners is said not to suffer, and I heard no complaints from any of them. They employ themselves in carpentry, weaving, shoemaking, and other trades ; and, of course, their great resource is occupation. After they have worked for the State, they may use their extra time in making articles for sale, with which they buy whatever comforts they like. In some of the cells I found, to my surprise, two prisoners together, but I was assured that this was exceptional, and caused by want of room. It seemed to me, however, a most objectionable ar- rangement. In one cell, after the turnkey had knocked at the door and inquired whether she were willing to receive visitors, I was introduced to a murderess, who had killed her husband and another man almost at the same moment, and who in England would certainly have been hanged. She was sentenced to imprisonment for eighteen years, and only three of them had passed away. She was a Roman Catholic, and had two rooms, one of which she had made quite gay with pictures, which she had set in frames of bright blue paper. She was twenty-three years old, and rather pretty, with nothing whatever in her countenance to indicate that she could have perpetrated such a terrible crime. She did the honours of her cell with quite an air, and said she was contented with her lot, declaring that she did not wish for a companion, and greatly preferred being alone with her pictures and books. The inmate of one of the cells had constructed a model of an ingenious fire-escape, for which he was anxious to get a patent. The room which Mr. Dickens describes in his “ American Notes,” as beautifully ornamented by a Ger- man prisoner, has become one of the lions of the place, and the walls were still covered 222 NOBLESSE OBLIGE. (Good Words, March i, 1869. with the colours a little faded, which were fresh and bright when the great novelist was there. I doubt much whether the system of sepa- rate confinement, as the sole punishment where prisoners are allowed to have any com- forts which their means can procure (of course I do not mean spirits or wine), is sufficiently deterrent. The full weight of loneliness can hardly be understood except by experience, and when a man knows that he will have in prison light work, and plenty of books and tobacco, he is not likely to be frightened from crime by the punishment. I preferred the system at the Albany penitentiary, where the prisoners work together, but the strictest silence is observed. The labour of the con- victs there, which consists exclusively in making shoes and cane seats for chairs, is hired out to contractors, and not only is the prison self- supporting, but it yields a surplus revenue to the State of New York. But I have already exceeded my limits, and to write on America in a single article is like trying to squeeze the Atlantic into a tea- cup. I will only add that I know no country which will so well repay the trouble of a visit, and where an Englishman will find so much to interest him. The voyage in one of the splendid Cunard steamers only occupies ten days from Liverpool to Sandy Hook, and it will be the traveller’s own fault if he does not return with a pleasing recollection of the wel- come he has met with and the kindness he has received in the New World. WILLIAM FORSYTH. “NOBLESSE OBLIGE.” got of &o-frag. By the AUTHOR OF “ CITOYENNE JACQUELINE.” CHAPTER, VIII. — THE WALK TO WOOERS ALLEY. ARTY had re- solved to see Phoebe and her mother home when the party S was over. In ) truth, he was anxious to make it up with Phoebe ; for he was bur- dened with compunctions which she did not seem in- clined to take off his hand. Yet he was not conscious of having " ^ gone very far wrong. He had been rude certainly, and in his own house, too; but then he had been provoked into speaking out freely. Poor Mrs.. Paston was highly elated at Phoebe s having an admirer so very much in earnest, and with expectations which rendered him as magnificent a match for Wellfield and her daughter as the Marquis of Fairchester was for Brockcotes and Lady Dorothea. She was afraid it would make Baer feel terribly old to have a son-in-law, not only grown up, but well-nigh as old as Paston ; but there was one thing, Mr. Wooler was a fine-looking man, and she had always gone in- for beauty. | Mr. and Mrs. Barty Wooler would, no doubt, i go off and enjoy themselves., and she would j be left with old Mrs. Wooler, who looked as if she could snap her up. But she was pre- 1 pared to sacrifice herself to aid her daughter’s triumph. She was even willing to let it be understood that she was half a dozen years older than she was. These tokens of her mother’s excited weak- ness were harder lines to Phoebe than all that had gone before. She was convinced , that Barty understood it all. She did not ; know that he had said to himself that her I mother was more like a superannuated canary I than anything else in the world ; yet although she was not informed of his words, she in- stinctively guessed his feelings. She could ill brook from an unfavoured suitor what she would have barely tolerated from a man she loved, because there might be an in- opportune sense of tire ludicrous, but sub- stantial good-will would exist along with it, and filial respect would come in time. The sole house of any pretensions in Wooers’ Alley was the Pastons’. It had been the old rectory, and it not only com- manded a near view of St. Basil’s, with the warlike battlements to its peaceful tower,- and Good Words. March i, 1869.] NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 2 23 the thick clothing of ever-young ivy wander- ing and winding up its grey buttresses, but it bore in itself a likeness to Close architecture in its mullioned windows with their heavy ledges, its peaked coping above the door, and its close-shaven court, which suffered ] what seemed the wanton gaiety of orchard j and garden to drop into the background. Mrs. Paston through all her married life j had lamented the ungentility and incon- venience of Wooers’ Alley; but Phoebe through all her maiden life had loved it. j She had been born and brought up in it, and | had spent all but the last eighteen months of j her life in it. And in spite of the Folks- ; bridge people’s depreciation of the little town, Phoebe was staunchly fond of it. Though ■ she had seen the world lately, and had ad- mired many a greater and grander scene, — the true heart had always turned to Well- field and its picturesque corners. The pic- ture constantly presented itself to her ima- gination. She never forgot the apple boughs blossoming pink and white, or bending with scarlet and russet balls; the clematis, a tangled mass of summer growth, or spangled with purple berries ; the mountain ash spread- ing out in a sheet of white, or flaunting its coral clusters, the brilliance of which con- trasted with the wanness of the autumnal roses in some of the Jack-and-the-Bean-stalk gardens. Phoebe had never ceased to look forward to two things on her return home, — to walking up to Brockcotes, and to strolling leisurely and delightedly along Wooers’ Alley at sunset or at moonrise. Less than three months ago she would j have regarded Barty Wooler’s escort, not as I a drawback, but as a boon. Being a Well- 1 field man, she could not have the happiness of acting as his cicerone in Wooers’ Alley. But who, save her father, could better appre- ciate its many glories ? A painter’s sympathy could not fail to intensify her admiration of the bits of mossy green garden ; the bulging thatch roofs crowned with stone-crop, and in one instance with a tuft of blue bottle ; the Vauxhall trees with golden lights glimmering in their dusky leaves ; the broken lines of hedges reddening with the haws which, in the merry month of May, had been summer snow ; and the solemn glimpses of old St. Basil’s and its bristling ramparts (reminding Phosbe of the sword girt on its master’s thigh), above which hung the evening and the morning star. Three months ago she would have prattled to Barty Wooler freely and fearlessly on every object of the walk, and would have prized each one of them r the more for the freedom and the inspira- tion of the prattle. But now, because he desired to have all her prattle to himself, he should have none of it. Thus their whole relations were disturbed and overturned. Phoebe was silenced for ever so far as Barty Wooler was concerned. So he had to con- sole himself with the simple facts of the walk on the early autumn evening, and with the conquest of Mrs. Paston— a triumph which in other circumstances he could perhaps have dispensed with. Phoebe would have been full of unmixed thankfulness that the walk was at an end, had it not been for the incident with which it closed. Mr. Paston met them at the door. He was a man of whom it could be written, “ Much study had made him very lean and pale and leaden-eyed.” He was a little like Phoebe, but wasted and worn, and with all her buoyant life and high courage stifled and broken. Still there was a deep, ardent, repressed glow in his eyes, and he looked the very type of a man marked out for neuralgia, heart-complaint, breast-pang, paralysis. He opened the door, and stood with it in his hand, as if, contrary to all his usual habits, he had been watching and waiting for them. Notwithstanding the hour, he wanted Barty to come in, and when Barty declined, he said, emphatically, “Come when you like, Wooler; remember you are always welcome.” Phoebe’s father was not like her mother. He was a wiser man in his generation- proud and delicate-minded. In his strong affection for his only child he was not likely to be carried away by public clamour or private vanity. In whom then should she have faith if her father failed her? — so Phoebe' thought to her- self as she entered the house. CHAPTER IX. IN THE PAINTING-ROOM. There was one room in the old rectory at Wooers’ Alley which Phoebe, after her return from Folksbridge, loved and prized even more than she had done before she went away. This room did not offend her more matured and trained taste as the drawing- room undoubtedly did. Her father had furnished the drawing-room on his return from Italy, at the time of his marriage, and it had not been altered since. But her mother, who had not an original idea in furniture any more than in dress, was not accountable for this. Poor Mrs. Paston had | j not a thought beyond taking housewifely care j of her household gods — only a tendency to pile Pelion on Ossa, and to overlay the one 224 NOBLESSE OBLIGE. [Good Words, March i, 1869. with the other as a bad speller tries to cover his uncertain orthography by a redundancy of letters. The Wooers’ Alley drawing-room — (in its solitary state literally the drawing- room of Wooers’ Alley) — exhibited a faded transcript of that phase of Caleb Paston’s life, when he came back from Rome wearing a blue cloak, a coat with crimson-lined sleeves, and a cameo ring. He had now left that period of his life far behind ; but he had not sought to bring his drawing-room into corre- spondence with his advanced experience. Indeed, he had ceased to notice the details of a room into which he went but seldom, and only to rest, when he did go. But now Mrs. Paston was minded to have tea there, in order to mark Phoebe’s return home as a grown-up young lady. As for Phoebe, ever since her return she had been wanting to see everything wdth the old unquestioning eyes, and had, at the same time, been striving to tone down the deep distinct colours of the drawing-room furniture — the scarlet and black of its vandycked curtains, and the apple-green ground of its carpet — and been doing all she could to soften Page 223. what was odd and fantastic in the preponder- ance of eagles, griffins, and serpents. Her ambition was to blend into greater unity the curiosity chairs and cabinets, and to make the most of the few good pictures, which were very much marred by the bad light and by their accompaniments. She had done what she could to keep the room from speaking “ shop ” to a degree and in a manner quite incongruous with English middle-class home- life. But this other room in the old rectory Phoebe thought was fit to be looked at after the Brockcotes rooms. She felt it was as far beyond any of the rooms at Garnet Lodge as works of art are beyond the mere products of wealth. This was her father’s painting- room. He and Phoebe did not call it a studio, holding the term to be a foreign affectation. Mr. Paston rarely tolerated visitors here, even when he was not working, unless, indeed, it might be an employer like Lord Exmoor. Mrs. Paston never crossed the door, having an obstinate aversion to the smell of paints. Besides, she laboured under the standing Good Words, .March i, 1869.] NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 2 ^5 grievance that Mr. Paston would never warn her to keep off his easel till it was too late, and declined to prompt her as to what she should notice and admire, so as to save her from mistakes which were awkward in an artist’s wife. But Phoebe had been free of her fathers painting-room from the time when she served as a professional child-model, even before she was able to walk with a hold of his hand to Brockcotes. Her father had said she was such a quiet little woman that she never dis- turbed him or did mischief. The quietness, however, proceeded from her not having been brought much into contact with other children, rather than from her being a phenomenon of infantine discretion. She soon got a small appreciation of his performances, and would walk round them of her own accord, her plump little balls of hands ostentatiously and sagely clasped behind her back, all the while contemplating the pictures at her ease, like a little old virtuoso. The solitary painter, in the isolation of the country town, was refreshed by the child’s sympathy and interest. He was not given to fondling children, but he would fondle her a little at such times, and, to the child’s bewilderment, talk proudly, almost passionately, of Margaret Van Eyck and Tintoretto’s daughter. Yet when the dream of her taking up the artist life died out, he was rather thankful for the disap- pointment. Art, he felt, was long — too long, too arduous, and too exclusive a path for any but a very exceptional woman’s safe tread. Mr. Paston was too grateful for a little tolerably intelligent sympathy to lament that it was not the sympathy of a rival, in a rivalry that should ultimately carry the girl away on the engrossing current of her own fortunes. It was a great step granted to Phoebe when she was told that she might enter her father’s painting-room in his absence, look at its contents as she liked, and thus store up observations and conclusions for the painter’s benefit the next time they should have a talk. About a week after the Woolers’ party, she was spending an evening by herself in the painting-room, where she was most secure from interruption and intrusion. She was now acting as housekeeper, her father and mother having gone to visit Aunt Sally, a sister of Mr. Paston’s. Aunt Sally moved in a somewhat humbler walk of life than the Pastons, but was quite in comfortable circum- stances. She was married to a parish-clerk and schoolmaster about ten miles distant from Wellfield, and was tenacious in demanding that her kindred who had risen in the world should come and see her and taste of her hospitality once a year or so, or make up their minds to be baited and bombarded by her bitter reproaches. The ordeal was such, that Mr. Paston, though not a visiting man, pre- ferred the first alternative. The painting-room was at the back of the house, and had been the old rectory dining- j room. It was lit entirely from one side, and by pleasant oriel windows, which looked into the orchard and flower-garden. Its exemption from cross lights was its special qualification for Mr. Paston’s purpose. The nights had lengthened since Phoebe’s j return from her grand tour. Ripening amber j and purple plums, straw-coloured codling j apples — earliest of the apple tribe — and I mottled russet-green pears, were dropping on j the grass. Silver stars of asters, golden suns of marigolds, Versailles ranks of hollyhocks j and dahlias stood confronting each other, with the early dusk softening their features, or the harvest moon brightening them — all being evidence that the September race-week, the gala of the Wellfield year, with its company, j honours, excitement, and profits was near at hand. As Mr. Paston did not work at night, and objected to the presence of gas in his room, there was no chandelier. In its stead there was an oil reading-lamp. This arrangement suited Phoebe. She could carry the lamp wherever she chose, and throw its light from j picture to picture. On a fine night like the [ I present, she could still have the open window j ! with a glimpse of the half moon, as yet young ! i like herself, tipping the tops of the trees, and j \ causing them to chequer the turf below with j I their shadows ; and she could also have the 1 ! pale, sweet China roses hanging into the sill. The painting-room having changed with its j J master, was now as unlike as possible to the j drawing-room. The servants called it mas- j ter’s workshop. It was sober to severity, with j nothing grotesque in it but the spasmodic lay j figure. No richness but the richness of art, f and nothing of upholstery stuffs or ornaments, I save as matters of drapery and background. | It was bare and brown, with few traces of the ! artist mania for collection, except in plaster : casts of subjects so common in their fame, j that only the seal of the divine still left could I preserve them — Dying Gladiator, Laocoon, and Dancing Fawn though they were — from being stale, flat, and unprofitable. There was one very valuable Riposo of Andrea del 226 NOBLESSE OBLIGE. [Good Words, March j, 1869. Sarto, a rare enough sight out of Florence, and there were two small Holy Families of the Bassani, with the jewel-like brilliance of the tone strangely setting off the rustic home- liness of the figures, as if a second village maid had wedded another Lord of Burleigh and crowned her sun-burnt brow with a Devonshire diadem. Phoebe knew the Andrea del Sarto and the Bassani almost as well as the lay figure, which was a very old acquaintance. It had been a reward for long spells of good behaviour in her childish days to be allowed to dress up the hideous lath man, Saul, in her little mantle and bonnet. This reward seemed but an event of yesterday. And yet here was she, in the swelling life of troubled maidenhood, cumbered with a suitor whom she did not want — vexed, too, by Lady Dorothea’s con- gratulations, and aggrieved by what she could not help regarding as her father and mother’s willingness to give her away to her father’s restless old friend. Phoebe said to herself in tremulous scorn, that she might have been another desperate and shrewish Kate in sore need of another mocking Petruchio. To make the penalties of her womanhood com- plete, it only remained for her to be provided with a lover whom she did love. Still she had never been able to care for the Del Sarto till now that she had reached womanhood, with its perplexities and dis- tractions. The Virgin Mother was not youthful and pure, as Raphael’s Madonnas, but was rather the reflection of a woman with la heaut'e de diable , haggard as well as fair — haggard with infinitely baser yearnings and disappointments than those which, in antici- pation of her incomparable sorrow, pierced the heart of the blessed among women. It was a face like that of Vivien, when Merlin’s wisdom fell before the folly which he could read like a printed page. In this picture, from the promptings of his own wretched heart, the old Italian painter had lent to the face an air of wistful, baffled combating as with its own eyil — a lingering, heart-broken looking back from its miserable vanities and vicious appetites, before the final plunge in which two sinful souls went out from God’s light into darkness. The prematurely old, beautiful, but crafty face of the wife of one of the luxurious, dissolute goldsmiths of / Florence, which was made to represent the innocent Hebrew peasant girl, betrothed to the carpenter of Nazareth, preached a marvel- lous sermon of its own to Phoebe, a sermon to scare as well as to fascinate. She stepped softly from picture to picture, carrying the lamp uplifted, so that it threw its mild light, not only on the pictures, but on her own rounded figure. She wore a thin white jacket, buttoned with coral studs, over a dress of some light stuff, with glossy peacock- tail spots on it. She looked here an altogether different person from the uncomfortable, un- responsive Phoebe of Mrs. Wooler’s party. The figure was not out of keeping with the ideal groups among which it moved so ten- derly. There was a transfer of graces, and over both there hovered something of the bountiful charm of an early harvest night. It was Phoebe — caught at one of those happy moments which may make impressions to last a life-time. She was in herself a picture at this instant — the happier that she was wholly unconscious of it — a picture fit to take and hold in itself all the poetry of the pictures. And the setting too was of the choicest. The cool shimmer of the moon, and the warm gleam of the lamp, the pale summer roses on the sill hanging heavy to death with their faint sad fragrance, and the glowing embers of the wood fire sinking into white ashes, like a good man going down, time-honoured, to his grave in peace, were all fitting acces- sories. Phoebe had studied a Herodias with a head of John the Baptist, which her father was copying from a nameless old picture at Brock- cotes. Neither the subject nor the style was much to his taste or to hers. She had shaken her head, and passed on to what she called fondly a Caleb Paston. This was a picture of an old man and a little child, in an ancient hall, like the guard-room at Brockcotes; a picture which, with no affectation of senti- J ment, was full of pensive, human feeling, of humour and pathos, and was pervaded by subtle lights and shades of humanity, so delicate that one was in danger of forgetting their grasp in their fineness. She was gazing at the picture with her heart in her eyes, smiling with lips apart, and holding up the lamp to see every corner of the canvas, when she was startled by the j opening of the door. Her father’s painting- j room was so private a place that she was quite taken aback. Already, in the door-way, were two gentlemen, at whom she stared. They stood still, dazzled by the light of which she was the radiating point. CHAPTER X. SURPRISED AND MYSTIFIED. “Plow do you do, Phoebe?” cried an as- sured and well-known voice ; “I asked the maid-servant if you were at home, and when she said that you were in my uncle’s painting- Good Words, 1 [March i, 1869 NOBLESSE OBLIGE.” Page 226 Good Words, March i, 1869.] NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 22*J room, I told her to take us there at once ; I hope I have not committed a shocking blun- der by bearing down her scruples and break- ing in on a young lady’s mooning without leave?” “You have often before now broken in on my mooning without leave, Frank, so one more offence needn’t count.” Thus Phoebe acknowledged her cousin, and came forward to shake hands with him, divided between gladness at seeing him, and uncertainty as to whether she might without any objection receive him there. “Now, before I ask whether you have come from London or Garnet Lodge, and all the rest of it, I must beg you not to move a step farther. You know you are on forbid- den ground, Frank; papa will not let any- body in here unless he is here himself.” “ But I’m not anybody, Phoebe, any more than yourself,” persisted Frank Hall, keeping his ground unabashed ; “ may not a nobody come in ? ” Phoebe hesitated ; she knew very well that it was the last thought likely to be seriously entertained by Frank Hall that he was a nobody ; but she did not want to overstep her instructions. She would like very well to show him those of her father’s pictures which he had not seen, and to note the impression they made upon him. Although fault-finding was Frank’s trade, she knew he was capable of something better. But she was discom- posed by the presence of the stranger, very likely another ironical journalist, whom her cousin did not introduce to her. She decided, at last, that her father would prefer that she should lean to the side of liberality and courtesy, and she granted Frank Hall and his companion the required permission. “Since you have come so far, Frank, I suppose I am not obliged to turn you out. But you must make up your mind to behave like a nobody — take no notice of anything you see, and not go and lay down the law about it afterwards ; or if you do I shall never forgive myself.” “ You may depend upon my behaving like a nobody, Miss Paston,” Frank’s anonymous friend broke in ; “ for I have not a particle of claim to any other character.” Still Frank did not introduce the stranger, and Phoebe had a passing notion that it was somewhat odd that he should address her by name without an introduction. Frank stood looking at his companions as though his acute pug-nose were sniffing a little surprise and a good deal of amusement in the air, very much, indeed, as if he had expected the persons before him to have known and recog- nised each other. Seeing the position of affairs, Phoebe became possessed with the conviction that the under-sized, dark, plea- sant-looking young man of three or four and twenty must be some other newspaper man (higher bred, and not smelling so unmistak- ably of tobacco), whom she had met in Frank Hall’s society at Garnet Lodge or at Folks- bridge, and whom she ought to greet and welcome to Wellfield. Yet in spite of the most strenuous effort of memory she could not recall when or where she had seen her new acquaintance. The low stature which had elegance in it, and the face that was largely forehead, eyes, and soft moustache and beard, she could not remember, though once seen, they were not likely to be forgotten. She could not arrive at any more definite con- clusion than that she must have seen the gentleman before. Phoebe felt that the vagueness of the ante- cedents made her position awkward, and she dreaded that Frank Hall, though senior of the party by half-a-dozen years, might be tempted to farther mystification and mischief. She was eager to make a diversion by show- ing the pictures. Frank told her that in for a penny was in for a pound, and added some- thing about holding a key to the position beforehand, so that a surreptitious advantage was of no moment. At this his companion put up an eyeglass. Phoebe first took the gentlemen to the Del Sarto and the Bassani, in honour preferring the dead masters. “ Ah ! the miserable tailor,” exclaimed Frank Hall’s friend on the instant ; “ I did not expect to meet him out of the shadow of his campanile.” Phoebe was puzzled anew, and changed her mind at the word. The stranger must be an artist like her father, and not a jour- nalist like Frank. But how could she have come to think she had seen him before, while all the time she was satisfied that Barty Wooler was the only artist whose acquaint- ance she had made since she left her father’s house? Frank had brought his artist friend to see her father’s pictures, and it was hard to say whether the cousins had been altogether discreet in the manner in which the purpose had been fulfilled. “ It is bad enough to have a round-eyed baby to represent the typical mother, but a vile woman of the world is a mighty deal worse,” remarked Frank Hall, with dry directness, as he looked at the Del Sarto. He had no relentings towards the wicked, or, for 228 NOBLESSE OBLIGE. [Good Words, March 1, 1869. that matter, towards the foolish of the world. Phoebe proceeded to illuminate one of her father’s pictures, which he had painted a number of years before. He still kept it on his wall, and occasionally retouched it, al- though he sometimes disparaged it as being maniere and harsh, like his early version of the Brockcotes tragedy. At least Phoebe remembered that when her father had shown his pictures to his old friend, Wooler had advanced to it, and looked at it without per- mitting himself an expression either of praise I or censure, although he had been comment- j ing on the others very freely. He continued his progress, accompanied by Mr. Paston, neither of the two exchanging a word on this work, as though they were tacitly agreed to hold it below criticism. Phoebe could not con- sent to measure its deserts by their standard, but neither could she set up her opinion in opposition to theirs. Accordingly, she dis- played the picture with a doubtful qualm of her responsible daughter’s heart. The painting was a version of the apo- cryphal legend of one of the Bellini steal- ing from another Italian painter the secret of painting in oils, — a secret which had before then cost Andrea the assassin his crime, and the victim his life. The Bellini, in the dis- guise of a Venetian cavalier, strolls into his fellow’s studio, and in the character of a sitter introduces himself to the envied possessor of the grand arcanum of painters. During the sitting, while the unsuspicious painter mixes his pigments, the Bellini narrowly watches, | and learns the medium which by comparison left the juice of figs as weak as water. Caleb I Paston had not only reproduced the medi- aeval studio and the figures — the unsuspicious | worker manifestly triumphing in the hidden, ; hard-earned knowledge, which is now uncon- I sciously oozing from his finger-ends, and the ' eager, absorbed spectator, masking his inte- rest by pretending to play with the painter’s popinjay — but had rendered the whole with something of the justness and concentration which belonged to his last, best style. In particular he had lent to the darkened face of the Bellini a devouring anxiety, a despair- ing necessity which made his discovery a matter of life and death to him. “ This is not bad,” said Frank Hall’s asso- ciate, using a quiet, negative form of praise, that needed all the cordiality and pleasure of the tone to keep Phoebe from spurning it as an ill-conceived and unmerited slight on her father’s established reputation. “ This is not the Bellini, however,” ob- jected the young connoisseur; “at least, I have seen Gian Bellini’s portrait at all periods of his life, and this is none of him. It is a fancy likeness ; I take it there is more in it of the man who painted it than of Bellini. He has rubbed down some of his indivi- duality, and mixed his colours with what proves a shockingly expensive alloy, though it is the only valuable one.” Phoebe began now to be struck with the fact, that very much at his ease and com- municative as this gentleman was, he had a dash of boyishness in his dignity, indicating half-a-dozen years between him and Frank Hall, who, being the eldest of the family at Garnet Lodge, was some ten years older than Phoebe. “ A sensational and impressive dogma,” Frank chimed in to the last remark. “ I think I see a little likeness to Paston himself, —my uncle, Phoebe, — in his spurious Bel- lini.” “And I am sure you see nothing of the kind : you are talking nonsense, Frank,” pro- tested Phoebe, a little annoyed, she could hardly tell why. “ There is no more of papa in that face than there is of me, who am also sallow in complexion.” “ Oh, no, not sallow, Phoebe ; golden brown, since we cannot call it fair in a literal sense. Now, don’t be angry with my. dis- tinction ; it was you who forced us into the discussion. There is none of you there as j you are at present — I don’t know what there i might be under other circumstances. But I j shall have to argue with my uncle against the j disease of personality, for all my friend says j of the alloy. Mr. Paston ought not, at this j time of day, to put himself with flourishes into ! his pictures as Byron put himself into his ! poems. Goethe did it too ; but you know j we pardon a great deal to Goethe.” “ Now, Frank, you will not,” forbade Phoebe; “ I mean you shall not put in your column of The Bat an article on the self-consciousness of modem artists. I hate that pretence of knowing everything and being everybody’s teacher which you literary men choose to set up. What constitutes you the impartial cen- j sors of the public ?” “There, Phoebe, you have said it. The public — the public elects us, at least it credits us, and is glad to buy our wisdom second- ■ hand ; and we are glad to sell our ware, for j we have human wants, and do not pretend to j be above them.” “ You are the most impudent pretenders j I know. I wonder the world encourages ; you, or suffers you ; but it will rise in revolt j Good Words, March i, 1869.] NOBLESSE OBLIGrE. 22Q and annihilate you one day — that is some comfort. You don’t put your names to your effusions, which read all so very much alike — all sneer and languor, with a faint, super- cilious wonder, now and then, that the world, worthless as you find it, has lasted so long, i Yet it is in your eyes the hugest presumption to attempt to make the world better. Your cure for the world’s evils, you know, is simply | stabbing the lieges in the back.” “You are amazingly logical on their behalf, my dear Phoebe. But pray don’t affront me beyond forgiveness, lest I do you some harm without being able to resist it, seeing that my tendencies are so awfully destructive.” “ You are not destructive at all, Frank,” contradicted Phoebe, raising her brows ; “ you i only flatter yourself with being an executioner I in the department of art. Any one could i give you a specimen of the condemnation which you contribute to The Bat : ‘We must put a veto on the deadly apathy of brown and j grey, which would be endurable in a lithograph. | We cannot admit what is a monstrous inno- | vation. Let us have handling at once solid and lustrous. If we are not to have the in- spiration of genius, let us at least have paint- j ing, and Mr. Paston has not even given us I this.’ That is the very echo of your style, I Frank.” “ Thank you ; I hadn’t the least idea it had been so good ; I had not, really.” “ But the style of art you condemn takes root, and grows and flourishes in spite of you. The books you cut up are read and spread, j and do their mission in defiance of you. You j can do no more than the east wind, which | makes everybody feel uncomfortable and j quarrelsome while it blows, but only blights i foreigners and weaklings.” | “ Yes ; and the east wind checks premature growth, and keeps down weeds and vermin, — | about as much as any of us can ever hope to ■ do. I willingly accept the simile, Miss i Phoebe, but it appears to me that the east : wind is blowing from the other side of the | house to-night.” “ Well, Frank, I am not afraid of a return blast. I am in the safe privacy which attends on an ordinary young woman who has nothing j to tell her neighbours, and can only feel j obliged when her neighbours have anything I to tell her. I shall never write a book for you to notice with condescending pity or supreme disdain, because you must have some prey nearer your muscular yet refined training to stir your strength into genuine, gentleman- ; like abuse. I shall never paint anything good | enough even for the Ladies’ Exhibition. I think I should dislike to have a friend in your court pretending to praise me, and bribing the rest of you to silence, far more than to have you all my open enemies. Papa’s reputation is made. You gallant men, who stab with pen and ink, are too cowardly , to meddle with made reputations, unless you , happen to bear special personal malice, and papa lies too far out of your way for such a feeling as that.” “Papa’s daughter doesn’t seem to lie too far out of the way.” “ I cannot help it, Frank ; I cannot put up with you; though I don’t mean you particularly, and of course there are exceptions. But most of you are far from humble and modest in expecting that the world is never to become sick of the not very honourable revelations of how you get up this penny journal, how you gave each other a lift, and how you knocked rivals down, and were the only true, kind fellows in the world— that is, to each other. It is all imitation French, Frank, superfine sneer and stiletto, or corduroy growl and fist. It is a cool plagiarism from Victor Hugo and Balzac, as I have heard them spoken of, and has an unmistakably Gallic flavour about it, and suits a thousand times better with portes- cocheres, quartiers, cremeries, feuilletons, le Theatre de Varietes, and Meudon, than with English firesides, Covent Garden, the Times newspaper, and the Thames at Richmond.” “ My dear Phoebe, did I ever imagine that you would be guilty of a harangue, of a whole lot of harangues !” protested Frank. “ I had the idea at one point that you were going to cast the card of Lord Chesterfield’s usage of Dr. Johnson in my face, and I was preparing to take the trick with a quotation from Sir James Mackintosh.” “ You provoked me, Frank,” Phcebe put forward in apology, colouring as she spoke. “Then I must be lamentably unfortunate in my manner,” regretted Frank in demure despair. “ I can certify that I never said a word to call down such an attack — I take my friend to witness.” Frank Hall and Phcebe Paston were suffi- ciently related to be familiar and friendly. They did not dislike a war of words, and were in some danger of warring continually when they met, as if battle were the breath of their nostrils. But Frank could not alto- gether account for Phoebe’s sudden animus to-night, and thought it hardly well-bred. Phoebe herself had a quick remorseful feeling that such vehement jesting in earnest might -seem bold and ungracious in the eyes of a stranger. Several influences contributed to 230 NOBLESSE OBLIGE. [Good Words, March x, 1869. the result. She was chafed by what she had done in admitting the two men to her father’s painting-room, and by the little mocking mys- tery of having failed to identify one of the two. Again, though Frank Hall could not be aware of the fact, and his companion still less so, Phoebe, in her sarcasms, was aiming three- fourths of her light shot, not at Frank Hall or his comrade either, but right over their heads at a caricatured effigy of Barty Wooler, which she saw in the blank space before her. Barty, with his broad back, was the Saxo-Gallic Bo- hemian vagabond, whom she was fain . to riddle in every vulnerable part. Not being able to explain her intentions, she stood covered with a piquant discomfiture. “ Miss Paston hits hard. Is it the fashion for the young ladies ofWellfield to be like the heroines of sensational novels — killing in more senses than one?” Phoebe regarded the question as charged with a little impertinence from a new-comer, and armed herself to ignore it with all her girl’s loftiness and shyness. The speaker, on his side, continued without even seeming to be sensible of a double intrusion, and with- out minding the lack of a reply : — “ I confess I am glad to hear Hall get his due. I am convinced the press men are the most intolerably conceited cads of egotists breathing. The fellows and the dons at the universities are nothing to them.” “Take care,” Frank warned him, “you have not my cousin’s blessed immunity from our claws and fangs, — or are they hoofs and horns, eh, Phoebe?” “ I laugh at your steel pens and bad type,” asserted the aristocratic-looking lad in merry fearlessness. “ We have had no elec- tioneering in my day. We never went in for that kind of thing like some folk.” As Phoebe stood listening, trying hard to puzzle out his meaning, he resumed the per- sonal discussion. “ I am a mere dauber at art. I have no prospect of ever exhibiting any more than Miss Paston, and with far more reason for my humility. I shall not play the Bellini in Mr. Paston’s painting- room.” “ No, indeed,” Phoebe said to herself in- dignantly. To turn the current of conversa- tion, she remarked aloud — “ Papa has no portrait of any member of the Brockcotes family here just now.” “ You know I am living at Brockcotes,” interrupted Frank, quickly. “ I knew you were invited to Brockcotes ; we were all exceedingly proud and pleased to hear it.” “ The deuce you were,” protested Frank, and checked himself. “ But I thought you would have come to j us first,” objected Phoebe, a little piqued. “No, for the good reason that we” — here | he cast a glance at his companion — “travelled I down to Wellfield last night in the small j hours, when every respectable family in the | town was sleeping the sleep of the just. I | must have gone to the 1 Exmoor Arms’ if we i had not entertained a notion that in a colos- j sal establishment such as Brockcotes, some stray meditative mortal above the harness- room or in the dairymaid's quarter might be j waking. We therefore went on and got ad- ! mission. The Earl was good enough to give j me some preserves in my own line to walk j over this morning, until I walk over the j stubble and turnip fields. We came out to- , have the air and a smoke on leaving the j dining-room, and we walked over here. I da j not think I have been very long in reporting j myself.” As Frank spoke Phoebe’s attention was for the first time drawn to the fact that the gentlemen were dressed for dinner. She was pursuing two lines of thought. The main line, which she kept to herself, was something like this : “And so this boy is at Brockcotes too. What right can he have to be there ? Surely Frank can never have been so outrageously independent as to carry a companion unasked to share in the Brock- cotes hospitalities. Papa will be terribly vexed if it is so, and will not know how to apologize for the freedom of his nephew’s behaviour. The Earl is very good, but he never forgets that he is the Earl of Exmoor ; and no one else forgets it save a noisy artist of the Barty Wooler type, or a man of letters like Frank, notwithstanding that he pretends to polish, and has an idea of going into par- liament and becoming a great man in poli- tics. I should as soon take a liberty with the Countess as with the Earl, but certainly my uncle Hall would not comprehend the enormity, far less stand aghast at it. He cannot distinguish the difference between Garnet Lodge and Brockcotes, between bills of lading and letters patent.” The second line of thought Phoebe fol- lowed almost mechanically, and spoke it out : “ Papa had a good likeness of Lord Exmoor here for years, — you might now have been competent to pronounce on it, — but it was painted for the court -rooms, and was re- moved there some months ago. I have a sketch of Lady Dorothea in coloured chalks which was not done by papa, but was sent Good Words, March s, 1869.] NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 231 me from Munich, and is hung in my own room, but I do not think it does her half justice. The Countess does not care to sit, though papa has painted her ; so did Leslie on her marriage, and Thorburn in a group with her children. Lord Wriothesley has been so much away from Brockcotes, since he was a little fellow, that we would not know a portrait of him at Wellfield though we had it.” Phoebe ended in the slight accent of ill- usage with which Wellfield was beginning to allude to the protracted absence of the heir- apparent. “ Since he was a little fellow,” repeated the stranger, as if in absence of mind, and Frank Hall laughed at this indiscretion. The artist continued, “ I hope Lord Wriothesley will not disappoint you either in the flesh or on the canvas when he does turn up. The worst thing of a rara avis is that when you’ve got it in your hand, it is so apt to prove but a common crow.” Phoebe flashed up again as the champion of the Brockcotes family. “ Lord Wriothesley has taken a double first at Oxford,” she urged warmly, setting the young man right, and putting an end to her own stiffness ; “he is very clever. With his abilities and his position, he must do something great.” “ But what on earth is there great left for him to do?” argued his detractor, showing a strong sense of the difficulty. “ The handle to his name may have helped him to his class — I don’t doubt that there are tuft- hunters among the examiners as well as among the students. I can’t say it is to my mind that a peer’s son should devote himself to putting out fires, or getting her Majesty’s opera out of grief ; then Garibaldi sings truce for the present ; the Arctic regions are used up — I mean,” here the stranger called himself back, and took pains to correct himself, “ if Wrio- thesley is of my way of thinking, he must look on the temple of fame as awfully hard to reach when there is nothing under the sun, which his ancestors or other fellows’ ances- tors have been liberal enough to leave for such as he to strike out.” “Lady Dorothea and the Earl and the Countess would be dreadfully disappointed,” insisted Phoebe, “ and we would all be disap- pointed, if he failed. Lord Wriothesley be- longs to Wellfield. We have pinned our faith to him, and mean to be very proud of his triumph.” “ I suppose patentee of the green wax, or surveyor of the meltings at the mint would hardly suit Lady Dorothea’s book or yours?” i questioned her opponent. Phoebe did not recognise the quizzical al- \ lusion, and with the strong prejudice of her j years against being laughed at, had a still | more decided objection to the process as j being performed by an assuming lad whom ! Frank Hall thought fit to carry hither and j thither with him. “ Lord Wriothesley ought to be very grate- ful,” concluded the young man more seriously. “ For what ? ” asked Frank Hall cynically ; “ for having honours thrust upon him, or for having other people borrow his honours ? ” “ Never mind, Hall. He ought to be grateful, and what is more, I believe he is.” “ Well,” said Frank, with a still queerer look than any that had gone before, “you should know best.” And he followed this up by a brusque statement that if they meant to show themselves to the Countess, they could not trespass on Phoebe’s patience any longer. So he took leave of his cousin in haste. When the gentlemen were gone, Phoebe- tried to escape out of the labyrinth she had been led into, and to cast off the incubus of balked curiosity. But simple as the clue was, its very simplicity, and the pre-occupation of her mind, made her miss it. The only con- clusion she could arrive at was, that Frank, like his tribe, had a propensity for doing things differently from other people, and had no objection to astonishing his friends. Phoebe liked Frank Hall all the same, and was proud of the position which he had attained among journalists, while, nevertheless, she railed at him and his affectation. “ Phoebe,” cried Mr. Paston, prepared to bring an accusation against his daughter on his coming into the drawing-room next day, “ Phoebe, what scrape is this you havegotinto?” “Is it my allowing Frank Hall and his friend to come into your painting-room last night, papa?” inquired Phoebe with- out much perturbation, as she leant for- ward to arrange a glass full of purple and white stocks on the table before her. “ Frank was in the doorway before I saw him, and I could not very well turn both him and his friend out ; but you know I told you all about it when you came home this morning, and of the other man whom I could not make out, and whom Frank did not take the trouble to name.” “ Humph ! the man you could not make j out ! rather an awkward piece of ignorance, when I have made him out to be Lord Wriothesley.” NOBLESSE OBLIGE. I 232 [Good Words, March r, 18&9. “Oh! papa, it could not have been Lord Wriothesley — impossible that I should have been so stupid as not to know Lord Wriothesley,” cried Phoebe, quitting her flower in incredulity and consternation. “ Lord Wriothesley would never come here in such a manner under Frank Hall’s wing.” “ Lord Wriothesley came here in the way which happened to suit him, and did not think twice about it. Frank Hall is quite fit to be a Mercury, although he is too big for a Puck, even were there no odd whimsical element to be extracted from the situation.” “Perhaps he did not mean it, perhaps neither of them meant it beforehand,” said Phoebe, who was reflecting with all her might, and who now arrived at the correct solution. “ It struck me from the first that they both thought I ought to know Lord Wriothesley, if that boyish-looking lad — and I see now why he looked quite master of himself and of the position — can be Lord Wriothesley. They would naturally forget how long it was since I had seen him, indeed it would seem a matter of course to Lord Wriothesley that everybody at Wellfield should recognise him at once.” “ I must say,” commented Mrs. Paston, as she roused herself out of a gaping maze, “ I never approved of your father’s trusting you in his painting-room, where I do not go — what with the white-lead and the verdegris in the paints, and your gowns and things. I am sure you ought not to have met Lord Wriothesley till he came and called for me here, and then I should have got to know him properly myself.” “I am_ sure I wish I had not met him, mamma; it was from no desire of mine,” sighed Phoebe ; and then for the benefit of her father and mother, she pondered anew, and laughed, and blushed the vivid wine- coloured blush of a brown beauty, in which traces of irresistible waggishness struggled with those of ingenuous shame. “ Oh dear i” she said, “I shall never be able to look him in the face again, for we spoke of him to himself — at least I spoke of him ; a gentle- man like Lord Wriothesley should not have listened to me. What a disgrace it was of Frank Hall to allow me to do it !” “ You should not have been so rash. Frank Hall would make no bones of it,” her father reproached her. “ I never saw anybody like you, Phoebe,” Mrs. Paston commented; “you either chatter like a magpie, or you sit as mum as a mouse, like you did the other night, miss.” Mr. Paston, by the defects of his early education, was rendered punctilious, and if the offender had been anybody else, he would have been much annoyed. As it was, he took refuge in a bit of hyperbole. “ I dare- say Hall took notes of the scene. It might serve some friend who writes for the Olympic or the Adelphi.” “ I could not have said anything very bad,” reasoned Phoebe, readily taking consolation to herself now that her father indulged in humorous exaggeration, “ because there is nothing bad to be said of the Brockcotes family. And even if there were, I should certainly be the last person to say it, and I was very angry at the rude way in which another person spoke of them lately. But I remember I told Lord Wriothesley what was expected of him. No, I cannot look him in the face again !” But Phoebe looked Lord Wriothesley in the face that very afternoon, when he called upon Mrs. Paston in due form, and unac- companied by the disturbing presence of Frank Hall. Lord Wriothesley, like his father, was quiet and simple, unconsciously dignified and affable ; and he was in addi- tion Lady Dorothea’s own brother in quick intelligence and the abandonment with which he threw himself into a subject. Until he rose to go he did no more than take Phoebe, who kept in the background the better to cover her confusion, into the general scope of his looks and words. Then he addressed her particularly to offer his sincere excuses for his share in the misunderstanding and mystification. “ It was an accident, Miss Paston, and alto- gether unpremeditated. You cannot conceive us guilty of the impertinence of proposing to play a trick upon you ; though I freely admit that one of us ought to have taken the initia- tive, and acquainted you with what was a trifle after all. I feel no end of mortification for not showing more consideration towards you, and I can only trust to your generosity and kindness not to suffer me to fall in your opinion, and not to allow it to interfere with what ought to be our good relations, for the sake of my father’s old friend, Mr. Paston, and of your friend, my sister.” Phoebe was a little reconciled to herself and mollified towards him by the grace of his excuses. As to taking out her indigna- tion on Frank Hall the next time she saw him, he was so lost to shyness and fine feel- ings of that description, that it would have been very like seeking the payment of a heavy debt from a penniless man. Good Words, April i, 1869.] DEBENHAM’S VOW. 233 DEBENHAM’S VOW. By AMELIA B. EDWARDS, Author of “ Barbara’s History.’ I CHAPTER XVII. WHAT DEBENHAM FOUND AT THE POST-OFFICE. OVE is an ex- pensive lux- ury, as all lovers can testify. The poorest clown must find a piece or two wherewith to buy ribbons for Mopsa when Auto- lycus comes by with his pack ; and so, in like man- ner, Temple Debenham, than whom few lovers could well be poorer, trudged into Monmouth that very after- noon, and bartered away a bright, new sove- reign for a ring to place on Miss Alleyne’s finger. It was a poor little ring enough — a mere wire of twisted gold, surmounted by a tiny heart set with one small turquoise, and a place for hair. But Temple’s were very few in number, and, slight as the gift was, he could afford no better. He gave the jeweller a bit of his hair to put in the little heart, and then, having Archie with him for company, took a stroll round Monmouth while it was being done. Conscientious sight-seers both, they con- trived within the next hour and a half to ■explore the quaint old town from end to end, seeing the market-place, the castle-walls within which Harry V. was born, the ancient gate upon the Monnow-bridge, and the beau- tiful old Priory window in which, say the traditions of the place, Geoffrey the Chro- nicler loved to sit and write. By the time, however, that the sight-seeing was achieved and the ring ready, it was nearly five o’clock. The afternoon was hot, the way long, the road dusty, and Archie proposed that they should take a boat back to Cillingford. While he ran down to the Wye bridge to chaffer with the boatmen, Debenham, strolling leisurely after him, X— 16 caught sight of the post-office at the corner of a neighbouring street. He hesitated — passed on — stopped — turned back. It seemed unlikely that there should be any letters waiting ; and yet it was possible. For himself, he had heard from his mother quite regularly since leaving home, and he had no other correspondent. He had also kept her informed of his address. Still, both he and Archie were to have been at Mon- mouth a week ago, and, Archie being a man of business, it was just possible ... At all events he could not do wrong to inquire. So he went into the post-office, and asked if there were any letters for Mr. Archibald Blyth. The post-mistress, a rather pretty young woman in ringlets and a scarlet Gari- baldi, dipped into a row of pigeon-holes at the back of her desk, and pronounced that there were no letters for Mr. Archibald Blyth. “Nor for Mr. Temple Debenham?” She fluttered about the pigeon-holes again, shook her ringlets triumphantly, and produced an envelope sealed with black wax. There was a letter — one letter — for Mr. Temple Debenham. He recognised the seal, shape, and general aspect of the letter before even seeing the handwriting. It was from his mother. He turned it over. He examined thu post- mark. It bore date of more than a week ago. Now it happened that he hau received a letter from Mrs. Debenham that very morn- ing, and one almost every morning since he had been at Cillingford ; but in none of these had she made allusion to this missive, lying, “ to be called for,” at the Monmouth post-office. Concluding, therefore, that it had been despatched before he had announced his intention of putting up at the “Silver Trout” till further notice, and also concluding that its contents must by this time be toler- ably stale, he thrust the letter into his breast- pocket, and ran on to the Wye Bridge to see what Archie was after. He found that cheer- ful and indefatigable henchman sitting on the parapet, whistling a lively air, and contem- plating the labours of a boatman who, having piloted his boat to the foot of the stairs, was busily wiping down the seats, spreading his bit of carpet, and making ready for the journey. “ Behold our ‘ trim-built wherry,’ ” he said, as Debenham came up, breathless from run- ning. “ Charon asked five bob. Thy Pylades DEBENHAM’S VOW. [Good Words, April i, 18651 234 offered him three. The bargain is struck for three-and-six. Don’t look grave. Even to walk costs something, you know ; and in this world nothing can be done for nothing. See, I’ve bought some buns, a tin flute, and a number of the Fa7nily Herald , — the buns for our fleshly sustenance ; the Family Herald for the improvement of our minds and manners ; the tin flute that we may have ‘music on the waters,’ going along. You can serenade the fair Juliet on it to-night, if you like. So romantic ; cost one penny. Hi, boatman ! are your ready?” The boatman touched his cap, and sung out, “Ay, ay, sir,” in true nautical fashion. So they went down, took their seats, pushed off, and in another moment were gliding along as fast as a capital pair of oars, aided by the force of the current, could cany them. Then Debenham bethought him of his letter. He had no sooner taken it from the envelope, however, than he was struck by something unusual in the appearance of it. It was a very long letter, to begin with. It was written upon Bath post letter-paper. The writing, too, was smaller and closer than Mrs. Debenham’ s ordinary hand, and covered rather more than three pages. Finally, the whole document, in its regularity and clear- ness, looked like a careful transcript rather than a news letter, thrown off, as Mrs. Deben- ham’s letters were habitually thrown off, currente calamo. Marvelling somewhat at these things, and moved by a vague and sudden sense of apprehension, the young man began to read. At about the third or fourth line he paused, looked back to the date, and referred to the post-mark on the envelope. Then he began afresh from the beginning, and read about half the first page. And then, with a look not so much of trouble as of surprise and perplexity, he stopped again ; darted an impa- tient glance at Archie, who was shrilling negro melodies on the tin flute with all Ills might ; folded the letter up without attempt- ing to read further, thrust it hastily into his pocket, and leaned back, earnestly thinking. “No bad news, I hope,” said Archie, stop- ping short in the midst of a flourish. Debenham shook his head. “No,” he said. “No news at all, — at least, nothing that can be called news.” Archie looked up inquiringly. “ But don’t ask me anything about it, dear old fellow,” continued Debenham, hastily. “ I really don’t know what the letter is about myself, yet — bygone family matters, so far as I can see. There, we won’t talk of it, please.” And so the matter dropped. The Alleynes had just sat down to dinner when they got back to Cillingford ; but later, when Temple and Archie had despatched their own frugal meal and made such change of dress as their limited resources would per- mit, Mr. Alleyne came out to smoke his usual post-prandial cigar, and found them in the porch. Then followed the now-habitual invi- tation to tea and a rubber; and then Mr. Alleyne and Archie strolled up and down outside, while Debenham talked to Juliet through the parlour-window. “ You look,” he said, “like a portrait in a frame of honeysuckle ; or, rather, like one of those pieces by two masters, where one painted the head, and the other surrounded it with a garland of flowers.” “ I hope I am a good likeness,” laughed Miss Alleyne. “ The best ever seen — of an angel,” said the lover, passionately. And then he brought out his little ring, tried it upon her finger, and besought her to wear it for his sake. “ Think that it is my heart,” he said, show- ing her the little devicfe, “and try not to break it.” “ Your heart has a hinge to it !” “Yes — see, it opens.” “ And this is your hair ?” “ This is my hair.” “Nay, then, you cannot be enshrined in your own heart. It must be my heart, if you are in it.” Mr. Alleyne’s back being turned for the moment, Debenham seized her hand and covered it with kisses. “ That is the dearest thing you have ever said to me yet ! ” he exclaimed. “ Am I really enshrined in your heart ? Is it my home, my shelter, my kingdom for ever?” “ Be sober, please, or I will immediately unsay it,” retorted Miss Alleyne, drawing back from the window. “ Could you be so cruel?” “You have no idea how cruel I can be. I am the perversest creature living.” “ If I were only sure that you love me as much as I love you, you might torment me to your heart’s content !” “ I think, my darling,” said Mr. Alleyne, coming back to the window, “ you had better ring for tea.” So Miss Alleyne rang for tea, and the gentlemen went in, and all love-whispering was over for that evening. She wore his ring, however ; and she was his partner at cards ; and her hand lingered in his at parting. Good Words,] “DEBENHAM’S VOW.’ Good Words, April x, 1869.] DEBENEIAM’S VOW. , “ I shall go out again presently,” he murmured. “ Bid me good-night from your window.” And she gave him a smile which was a promise. Ele then went up to his room, as if for the night, and bolted himself in. He would not go out again at once, for two reasons — the first being that he did not care to have Archie’s company under Miss Alleyne’s win- dow; and the second, that he had all this time been waiting for a quiet opportunity to read his mother’s letter. So now he sat down on the side of his bed, took the candle in one hand and the letter in the other, and dis- posed himself to a careful perusal of its con- tents. CHAPTER XVIII. MRS. DEBENHAM’s LETTER. The letter, it has already been observed, was long and closely written. Seeing once more how long and how close it was, Deben- ham was again conscious of that same vague sense of apprehension which he had felt on first opening it. He told himself, however, that presentiments were all folly, and that his mother could not possibly have anything to write to him, which he should not rejoice to read ; and so he began. This was what he read: — *' Cumberland Terrace, Canonbury, August 4, i860. j “My dear Son, ‘ * I intend this letter to be received by yon when you reach Monmouth, and I, therefore, send it on to await you at the post-office, knowing that you will find it there sooner or later. “You will be surprised when I tell you that at Monmouth you are within a dozen miles of the spot where your beloved father lies buried. You know that he died in North Wales ; but you do not know that he was a native of Benhampton, in Monmouth- shire, and that he was laid, by his own wish, in the vaults of Benhampton Church, the burial-place of his family for many generations. I never saw the p'ace before that day, when, at the close of a long and mournful journey, I there parted from all that yet remained to me of my precious friend and com- panion ; and I have never seen it since. You, how- ever, ought to see it ; and you ought to know more of your family history than I have yet had courage to tell you. It has ever been a painful subject to me ; but that has not been my only reason for avoiding it. I have shrunk from it on your account, my own boy, even more than upon my own. Your life, up to this time at least, has been embittered by no regrets. You have been obscure, and industrious, and happy ; and you have been honourably ambitious of success in the profession of your own choice. What unhappiness for me, if anything I had to say to you should disturb that peace, and make you dissatisfied with your pre- sent condition ! “A chance determination, however, has taken you almost to the very spot where your family history may be said to begin and end ; and it is now my plain 2 35 duty to tell you in what way you are connected with that spot, and to give you the opportunity of seeing the birth-place and burial-place of your father and his people. “Your father wrote his name De Benham, as all the De Benhams wrote it before him. The first De Benham of whom any definite record remains is one Geoffrey William, to whom King Edward the First devised a grant of lands in Monmouthshire in the year 1273. This Geoffrey William is supposed to have built the most ancient fragment of the present ruin. At all events, he founded the family and gave his name to the place. You will find a village called Ben- hampton, and a parish and parish church of the same name; and even, I believe, a small stream, which the. villagers call the Benham river. Six centuries of De Benhams lie buried in the vaults of Benhampton l Church. The walls are lined with their monuments — j the aisle is paved with their brasses. Your father lies I under the north window, to the left as you face the altar, a little below the chancel ; a plain stone slab, engraved only with his name and the dates of his birth and death, is let into the wall close by. His wife was too poor to erect a better monument ; his son must some day undertake the office. “ My own boy, you will not let the sight of these things trouble your contentment. The De Benhams, as a family, are no more. All that was once theirs has passed into the hands of strangers, and their very name is by this time almost forgotten. You are the last of the stock, and all that remains to you of what was once a large inheritance are the vaults in which ■ your ancestors sleep. You will make up your mind \ to these facts, my son — you will not give way to use- j less regrets. You have always been poor, and you j have always been happy ; and this knowledge leaves j you no poorer, and ought not to leave you less happy. j Instead of repining over what was lost before you j were born, you should rejoice to know that you repre- sent a noble and ancient family. Such knowledge is i wealth in itself, and ought to inspire you with fresh courage to fight what you have so often called the battle of life ; and, after all, their ancient name and unstained honour were the De Benhams’ best pos- sessions, and these you still inherit. For my own part, I am prouder that my son should be heir to their virtues than to all the lands and privileges that have melted away. “These lands and privileges, however, had been melting for many generations before your father’s time. Much was confiscated, I believe, during the Commonwealth ; and much more was squandered by those De Benhams who lived under the four Georges. One after another, they mortgaged, sold, and muti- lated their estates ; so that when your grandfather \ died, leaving your father an orphan of eleven years of age, only a remnant of the property remained. This remnant being vested in the hands of a con- scientious guardian, was carefully nursed for him during his minority. He went to Eton and Oxford, and was intended for the army. He had good abili- ties, without being particularly clever, and he was good-natured to a fault. Like many very good-natured people, he was somewhat inclined to indolence and disinclined to study ; and was as . generous, unsus- pecting, and credulous as a child. Nature seems to design such men for victims. The needy and dis- honest scent them, as it were, by instinct, and prey upon them without pity. It was your father’s heavy misfortune to fall in the way of one of these social vultures during his third year at the university, and the vulture devoured him. I shall not attempt to do more than outline the story of his ruin. “ The young man’s name, I think, was Wynyatt; DEBENHAM’S VOW. 236 [Good Words, April 1, 1869. he was only eighteen years of age, and your father was turned twenty-one. But the younger was the elder in all worldly things. He came of a bad stock. His father, I have heard, was a disreputable, dis- sipated man, involved in turf transactions ; married to an Italian opera-singer of doubtful reputation; and discountenanced by his family. The son at eighteen was blase, vicious, and unscrupulous ; he obtained a fatal ascendancy over your father’s mind ; led him into wild and reckless courses ; plunged him into debt ; induced him to put his name to all kinds of papers — in a word, ruined him ! ‘ ‘ And never was ruin more swift and thorough. There was so little to lose, and it was so quickly gone ! Your father was hurled in a few weeks from competency to beggary. He left college without having taken his degree, fled to the Continent, and left his guardian and creditors to deal with the estate as they pleased. In the meanwhile, the elder Wyn- yatt refused to pay one penny of the bills which his son had led your father to accept. Young Wynyatt was a minor, and irresponsible ; your father was of age, and legally liable for the whole. Then the last acre of the De Benham lands was brought to the hammer, and your father’s fortunes were wrecked at once and for ever. “ A miserable pittance of something less than fifty pounds a year having been rescued for him by the strenuous efforts of guardians and lawyers, he con- tinued to live abroad, and hid himself for more than a year in some obscure town on the borders of the Italian Tyrol. Interest was then made for him at Vienna, and he obtained a commission in the Aus- ■ trian service. This he continued to hold, as you know, till about a year before his death, when his health finally broke and we came back to England. We had then been married some nine years ; and you, our only child, were just eight. The youngest daughter of a needy English chaplain in a foreign capital, I had been used to poverty all my life, as you have been, my son ; and I could not understand why your father was not as happy and contented as myself. But his life was one long regret. He could not endure privation ; he could not reconcile himself to the loss of his position in society ; he could not bear to see his wife and child poorly dressed and lodged, and living in obscurity. You remember how sad your dear father used to be, Temple ; and how he would sometimes sit for hours by the open window, ! silent and brooding, with his head resting on his hand. You remember the journey to England, and the summer we spent all that time when he was so ill among the mountains in North Wales. And I think you remember the mournful place where, when the last leaves fell, he died. “This is along letter, my son, and yet it leaves much unsaid that I had meant to say. But I feel that no letter, however long, and no details,, however circum- stantial, would tell you as much of the past as you would learn at Benhampton in the course of a single morning. Write to me after you have been there. I think I know you well enough to be certain that, when once you have received this letter, you will not rest till you have made the journey. “ Your loving mother, “Adelaide Mary De Benham.” With some pauses and some turning back, the young man read this letter through from the beginning to the end ; and then he sat for a long time, on the side of his bed, still with the candle in one hand and the letter in the other, lost in meditation. And then he read it all through again. It was a long letter, a very long letter — simple, and earnest, and straightforward, as became the occasion, and written, as has been already observed, with almost docu- mentary precision. Debenham felt, as he read it, that’ every word in it had been weighed. He also thought that he could trace in almost every sentence a studied re- pression of feeling, and even a tone of re- serve, that extended to the statement of facts. The oftener he read certain passages, the more this impression gained upon him. It was a very vague impression. He could not by any means have put it into words ; but he had an indefinable instinct of something yet to come. For, after all, the letter told him very little that was new. He had always known that he had gentle blood in his veins, and that his father’s circumstances had once upon a time been less terribly straitened. That the De Ben- hams should date back to so remote a period as six hundred years, and that the family name should be so divided as to carry the aristocratic Norman prefix, were facts plea- sant enough in themselves, but not so very surprising when one came to look into them. And then, if designed only to tell him these things, and to enable him to pay a pious visit to his father’s grave, was not the letter need- lessly elaborate ? Pondering thus, he still fancied, and could not help fancying, that there was something which his mother had left untold ; something that was not mere omission of detail ; some- thing important, which it concerned him to know, but which she, for some reason which he could not conjecture, had hesitated to tell him. And what was the nature of this something left untold ? He could not guess. Nay, he was almost afraid to guess, dreading some painful truth of which he would fain be left in ignorance. But he would learn it at Ben- hampton — that much was certain. Be it good news or evil news, he would learn it at Benhampton. And then he resolved that he would go there to-morrow. His candle had all this time been burning lower and lower, and the moon had slowly set behind the hills, and the sweet summer night was waning in the heavens. But he noticed neither the candle, nor the moon, nor the summer night, so absorbed was he in his thoughts and in his letter. Then, in the midst of the silence, the clock in the inn kitchen struck one. Good Words, April x, 1869.] DEBENHAM’S VOW. 237 He sprang to his feet with an exclamation of dismay. It was not possible that it should be one o’clock already ! He looked at his watch, and the watch confirmed the fact. He could not believe it. He could not believe that, having come up-stairs at half-past ten, two hours and a-half had slipped away so quickly. And Miss Alleyne— Miss Alleyne, who was to have come to her window to bid him good-night, when the rest were gone to bed. Good heavens ! he had forgotten all about her. What should he say to her ; — what could he say to her in the morning ? How was it possible that he should confess to the lady of his love that he had forgotten all about her ? CHAPTER XIX. BENHAMPTON. “ Hallo there ! Is this the way to Ben- hampton ?” The rustic thus hailed halted with his hand on the gate, grounded his scythe, and looked round. Seeing only a dusty and somewhat shabby-looking wayfarer in the road below, he shouldered his scythe again, and, boor-like, answered with a question. “ Maybe you’re bound for Farmer Bow- stead’s ?” “ No.” “ Then maybe you’re going up to parson’s?” “ I’m going to Benhampton, if I can find the way,” retorted the stranger, impatiently. “If you can’t direct me, just say so.” The man with the scythe grinned, shifted his weight from the left foot to the right, and said : — “Well, I’ve lived here, man and boy, nigh upon forty years. I think I owt t’ know the way by this time. You’re in Benhampton parish ever since you passed the pike.” “ Then where is the village ?” “ Down yonder, at the bottom o’ the hill.” “ And the church ?” “ Oh, the church is up agin Farmer Bow- stead’s.” “ Which is my way, then, to Farmer Bow- stead’s?” Rusticus scratched his head and considered. He knew every inch of the parish ; but he had no talent for description. “You go by the road,” he said, hesi- tatingly, “ as far as Mill Pond, and then up Goodman’s lane and across t’ common. But the nighest way’s up here by the quarry.” “ Then I’ll come by the quarry.” And, swift in act as decision, the ; traveller sprang upon the bank and climbed the slope in a moment. “ If you’re going that way, my man,” he added, “ I’ll go with you. Are you one of Farmer Bowstead’s labourers ?” Whereupon he of the scythe, moved thereto, perhaps, by something of authority in the strangeds manner, touched his cap and re- plied more deferentially : — “ Ay, sir. I be one of Farmer Bowstead’s men.” And with this he trudged on, leading the way by a scarcely perceptible foot-track that s led up transversely across a steep hill-side, divided here and there by rough stone fences. At the top of this hill there ran a long belt, or terrace, of fir plantation. Beyond that - again, the ground seemed still to lead up to higher levels, and the road below wound down into the valley, which spread thence away into the far distance, fertile, and sunny, and golden with the coming harvest. To the left, some ten miles off, or more, lay the Monmouth hills, marking the course of the Wye ; of which, however, not a gleam was visible. Temple Debenham marked all this as he scaled the hill-side, looking out the while for any first sight of housetop or spire. He was himself surprised at the keen and eager interest with which he scrutinised each foot of the way. Of every tree, every enclosure, every fence, he said : — “ This was once theirs.” The landscape took a deeper sig- nificance, because it had been so familiar to those who were gone before. The very clod- hopper plodding by his side, inasmuch as he was a son of the soil, seemed not altogether the same as other clodhoppers in Temple Debenham’s eyes. “ Did you say you were born here — in this very parish ?” he asked, presently. The man nodded. “ Ay,” he said. “ I were bom here, sure j enough. And my father before me.” “You don’t remember the old family, I ! suppose ?” The man looked at him vacantly, and i shook his head. “What old family?” said he. “ The De Benhams — the old masters here, j who once owned all these parts. You must I have heard of them ?” He shook his head again. “No,” he said. “ I never heard tell of any i such name.” ; And then he began to whistle. i The young man sighed, and a feeling of j desolateness came upon him. His mother ! was right. The family, as a family, was dn- j deed extinct, and the place thereof knew it i DEBENHAM’S YOW. [Good Words, April i, 1869. ) no more. He had not thought to find the very name forgotten. By this time they had mounted the hill- side and struck into the plantation. Presently Rusticus, who was now plod- ding ahead, the path being full narrow, gave his scythe a hitch, and, half looking back, said : — “ Maybe you mean the folks that belonged | to tli old castle ; but that was before my time.” j “ What old castle?” asked Debenham, quickly. “ Benhampton Castle, to be sure — Farmer Bowstead’s place.” Benhampton Castle ! His mother had told him nothing of this — not a word. He ; remembered, however, that her letter had I said something about a ruin. Still he had not dreamed that this ruin was the ruin of so great a place as the name of Benhampton Castle would seem to promise. “ What do you mean by speaking of it as Farmer Bowstead’s place ?” he said, after a brief silence. “ Is the castle a ruin, or a farmhouse ?” “ Both,” replied Rusticus, curtly, j “Both?” “ Ay — t’ master lives up in a corner like, and a’ leaves the rest to th’ owls.” The young man fell back a step or two, i silenced and troubled. His eagerness was gone. He cared to ask no more questions. He had heard too much already. How high they must have held their heads, j how rich in all worldly possessions they must i have been, those De Benhams of the olden j time ! And now — now their very name was | not only forgotten in the place, but their | ! ancient home, the birthplace of the race, was I I given over to Farmer Bowstead and the owls ! |j Bitter reflections, these. Debenham began j I to think that his mother was not altogether I wrong in her apprehensions. It might have !j been better for him never to have known j | these things — never to have set foot in ihe I I place. They now emerged from the plantation, 1 1 and, still following the path, skirted the base 1 1 of another slope, apparently no less steep | than the last. Then, passing a huge stone j quarry, hewn out of the hill-side like an | ancient amphitheatre, and long since clothed ! with trees and brambles, they came to a stile ; j j and beyond the stile to an open space where | j sheep were feeding. || “Yonder’s the church,” said Rusticus, j] pausing with his foot on the stile. “And 1,1 yonder’s the castle.” Debenham cleared the stile at a bound. CHAPTER XX. — THE TABLET IN TPIE CHURCH. “ The knight’s bones are dust, And his good sword rust ; His soul is with the saints, I trust.’' Coleridge. Benhampton Castle on the crest of the hill; Benhampton Church nestling against the slope a little lower down; Farmer Bowstead’s stacks and barns clustered, notunpicturesquely, in the midst of the ruins ; Farmer Bowstead’s sheep feeding all about the pleasant sward ; Farmer Bowstead’s plump roan cob looking out placidly from his place of pasture in the churchyard, with his nose on the churchyard gate; in the background, more hills, more woods, more belts of fir and pine; in the foreground, reaching far and wide on either side and down into the valley, long waving slopes of gold-brown wheat and rippling barley, rich spaces of chocolate-coloured fallow, fragrant fields of white and purple clover, and broad tracts of turnip lands and beet; down in the valley, a chain of low meadows, green, alder-fringed, populous with cattle, and watered by a . winding rivulet : beyond all this, the open country, and the far-away hills. Such was the scene, en Hoc , as it were, which met Temple Debenham’s eyes at the first glance. That first all- embracing glance once given, he looked again for the details. A long, straggling, grey stone ruin was Benhampton Castle, bounded by a line of battlemented wall which enclosed, apparently, a space of several acres. This wall, in some places quite perfect, and in others so broken away as to be almost level with the ground, was interrupted here and there by a hollow- eyed, windowless watch-tower; while standing a little back (towards the centre, as it might be, of the inner courtyard) arose a huge square keep, literally tapestried with ivy from top to bottom. A picturesque and imposing ruin, on the whole, and superbly situated. So, at least, thought Temple Debenham, who had seen feudal ruins by the score during his life in Germany. The church looked very small, and more modern by some centuries; but this, pro- bably, was because it had been restored from time to time, and so restored as to lose on each occasion some of its primitive charac- teristics. It was surmounted by neither spire nor tower, but only by a small wooden belfry containing a single bell. And the church, like the castle keep, was almost overgrown wit^i ivy. The grassy hill-side on which these build- ings stood was dotted over here and there with clumps of fine old trees, and presented Good Words, April x. 1869.] DEBENHAM’S V OW. one unbroken stretch of pasture covering perhaps twenty ^cres. It was evidently all that remained of the park of former times. For some moments Debenham stood look- ing fixedly, silently, as one who pauses at the summit of a mountain pass, when first the landscape which he has toiled so far to see breaks upon his sight. Then he drew a deep breath, and, turning to the labourer who still lingered by his side, said : — “ Is the church open ? ” “ It’s open most days,” was the reply. “ But if not, shall I find the keys up at the castle ? ” “Ay — you ask th’ master. He’ll let you in with his key. H e be one o’ the churchwardens.” “Thanks for your guidance, my man,” said Debenham, his fingers exploring the some- what waste recesses of his waistcoat pocket. | “ Get yourself some beer this hot morning.” : Rusticus looked at the shilling, looked at the stranger, and looked back again at the shilling. He had been doubtful all along whether or not this dusty pedestrian was a gentleman ; but the shilling decided it. So | he touched his hat for the second time ; con- i' signed the coin to some pocket of unknown i depth and difficulty under his smock frock, J and with a muttered “ thankee, sir — thankee ! kindly,” turned on his heel and went his way. Then, very slowly, Temple Debenham went up towards the church. He could see as he drew nearer that the half-door at the porch was standing ajar, but that the inner door was closed. At the churchyard gate he paused to glance for a moment at the graves. There were but few of these — a dozen head- stones perhaps ; one or two railed tombs ; a score or so of plain mounds on which the grass had had long time to grow. The young man knew that none of his own people lay | out here in the cold. His mother’s letter | told him to look for their monuments and | brasses in the church; and yet his glance i! lingered with a kind of interest on these 11 humble graves. Were they not the resting- 1 places of those who had been tenants, | labourers, servants of the family, generation | ; after generation ? j j The roan cob snuffed at him, as if knowing j j him to be a stranger, and, as he opened the gate, moved aside to let him pass. And then he went quickly up the path, and through the porch, and up to the churgh door. The handle turned in his grasp, and the door yielded. His heart beat faster than usual as he took off his hat and stepped across that threshold. He advanced a few steps — paused — looked round — looked down — saw that the very flag- 239 stones on which he was standing were covered with inscriptions and armorial bearings; that the walls were thick with tablets and moulder- ing hatchments ; that the aisle and chancel were lined with stately monuments. Were these all De Benhams ? Were these stained glass heraldries through which the noonday sun was pouring in shafts of purple and orange, these many-quartered coats of arms, these mottoes, these devices, theirs — all theirs? His brow darkened as he reflected that he, the heir, the last living representative of all these dead, was ignorant of the very insignia of the family. But before approaching any of these monu- ments, before deciphering one of those in- scriptions, Temple Debenham looked round for the one tablet which, above all else, he had come there to see. “ Under the north window,” said his mo- ther’s letter. “Under the north window, facing the altar — a little to the left of the chancel.” He had not yet advanced beyond the font, just inside the door; but he saw it instantly — a small square tablet bordered with black marble; a tablet that, even at this distance, looked newer than the rest. In another moment he was standing before it, reading the inscription. That inscription was brief and simple enough, but it epitomized a history. NEAR THIS SPOT LIES THE BODY OF THE RIGHT HON. REGINALD TEMPLE DE BENHAM, TWENTY-EIGHTH BARON DE BENHAM, OF BENHAMPTON IN THE COUNTY OF MONMOUTH, AND COUNT OF THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. BORN APRIL 14, 1809. DIED NOVEMBER 6, 1 842. The young man read, and, as he read, a deep, dark flush mounted slowly all over his face and brow. Then the flush faded, and left him very pale. For a long time he stood on the same spot, in the same attitude, motionless, absorbed in profound thought. Again and again he read that brief inscription ; again and again recapitulated to himself the facts which it recorded. But they were facts of which he found it difficult at first to realise the full significance. At length he drew a deep breath, sat himself down upon the altar-step, and covered his face with his hands. The sun had shifted from the painted window and the shadows had changed upon the floor, before he looked up from that reverie. And then he rose heavily, dreamily, like one just roused from sleep. 2^.0 DEBENHAM S VOW. [Good Words, April i, 1869. One by one, he then took the monuments as they came, staying to read the inscriptions upon such as were still legible, and setting himself, apparently, to carry away a clear and permanent recollection, not only of each separate tomb, but of the name and deeds of those who lay beneath. Happening to have a pencil and a small note-book in his pocket, he now and then scrawled a line of memoran- dum as he went along ; and once he stopped to sketch a hasty outline of a coat of arms. All this he did methodically, earnestly, with a strange look of concentrated purpose in his face — such a look as it had never worn in all his life before. It was a long task; for the monuments were many — very many, very various, all more or less defaced. The inscriptions, too, were difficult to read, full for the most part of quaint spelling and crabbed abbreviations, and in some cases almost wholly illegible. Of one, for instance — a beautiful Gothic tomb surmounted by a carved canopy of delicate, lace-like tracery — he could only discover that it was erected in memory of one Alan Beau- clerk De Benham, slain somewhere in battle, a.d. 1306. Of another and a very curious monument in high relief, representing a knight and his lady kneeling face to face with their children kneeling behind them, four boys behind the father and four girls behind the mother, all in painted stone, but greatly muti- lated, he could make out no more than these were the effigies of one Marmaduke De Ben- ham and Elizabeth his wife, with their family, and that they both died on the same day of the same year some time during the reign of King Henry VII. But the dates were all effaced, and the inscription, though long and apparently full of detail, was so chipped and obliterated that even an adept would have been puzzled to decipher it. Next to this group (for the monuments succeeded each other in anything but due chronological order) came a cumbrous structure of cinque cento pillars, relievos and decorated arches, in the midst of which reposed the headless effigy of a certain Simon Charles De Benham, thir- teenth baron of that name, attired in full trunk-hose, starched ruff, and high-heeled shoon. This nobleman, said the Latin epitaph, inscribed along the front of his tomb, served, while a young man and during his father’s life-time, as a volunteer in the Im- perial army, under the Emperor Rodolph II.; and, having valiantly distinguished himself I against the Turks at the siege of Gran, in Hungary, a.d. 1595, was, for his services there rendered, created a Count of the Holy Roman Empire, the title to descend to his children and their successors for ever. Then came a pompous mural tablet surmounted by a bust of one Algernon Sackville De Benham in a laced cravat and a Ramilies wig — a great man in his generation; a captain of the second troop of horseguards ; a Lord of the Bedchamber to his highness Prince George of Denmark ; Lord-Lieutenant and Custos Rotulorum of the County of Monmouth, and Governor of the Island of Guernsey. This “high and puissant lord,” as he was styled in the inscription, died at St. Peter Port a.d. 1747, and was brought to Benhampton “with much honour ” to be buried in the vaults of his family. Then, besides these more imposing monu- ments, were numbers of smaller tombs, mostly of Gothic design ; some richly panelled and decorated with elaborate coats of arms; some yet retaining traces of paint and gilding; some bearing recumbent figures of knights and ladies ; and one adorned with the statue of a portly abbot in his mitre and robes. Here, too, were tablets, and brasses, and flag- stones, each with its record — one telling how an only son had fallen at the battle of Flod- den Field, on the 9th of September, 1513 ; another lamenting the death of a young bride only four months wedded; another, setting forth how a whole family, seven in number, the children of Jocelyn, sixteenth Baron De Benham and Mary his wife, were swept away in less than three weeks, dating from May 12th, 1667, by “a malig- nant fever.” More ancient, however, and for every reason more interesting than any of these, was a plain black marble sarcophagus stand- ing in a dark recess behind the choir, upon which lay the statue of a knight in full chain armour with his hands folded in prayer, his sword and spurs girded on, and his dog at his feet. No statue in all the church was so mutilated. Not a feature of his face, not a finger of his gauntleted hands remained. His very dog was shattered almost out of form — and yet before this tomb Temple Debenham lingered longer than before any of the others; for here, as testified a modern inscription let into the wall above, lay the dust of that Geoffry William De Benham upon whom the barony was first bestowed in 1273. “He fought,” said the tablet, “ for the king at the battle of Evesham, a.d. 1265; accompanied Prince Edward in his expedition to the Holy Land in 1270 ; and was among the first of those, his former companions of the Cross, whom that prince distinguished by his favour Good Words, April r, 1869.] DEBENHAM’S VOW. 241 on returning home as king of England in 1273.” Of the date of his birth, of the date of his death, of his wife’s name and lineage, of all the deeds of all his later life, no vestige of record or legend remained. Having gone the round of the monuments, and investigated every nook and corner of the church, Temple Debenham turned back as he was leaving the place and retraced his steps — not to the tablet under the north window, but to that dark corner behind the choir where lay the dust of the Crusader. Between that shadowy warrior and himself yawned an abyss of well-nigh six hundred years ; and yet he felt attracted to his grave by a subtler sym- pathy of kinship than he could anyhow bring himself to feel for the hero of Gran, or the governor of Guernsey, or any others of those Page 245. his predecessors who reposed close by in high funereal state. What manner of man, he won- dered, was he, the stalwart founder of so long a line ? Was he not only brave but wise ? Was he good ? Was he happy ? Lived he to a green old age, building his house, plant- ing his trees, 'Cultivating the arts of peace, and surrounded by a numerous family ? Suppos- 1 ing that grave were to be opened, what would ! be found within ? Dust and ashes ? A rusty sword ? A pair of golden spurs ? Who could tell? Ah, who indeed? Not one of all these pompous statesmen — not one of these be-frilled and be-perriwigged courtiers. Least of all he, the poor obscure musician, the landless heir to all these empty honours ! So, beside the resting-place of the founder of his family, lingered and mused, half in bitterness, half in sadness, the last of the De Benhams. At length he turned away, far 242 DEBENHAM’S VOW. [Gocd Words, April i, 1869, the day was wearing on, and he had yet the castle ruins to see; but his last glance, as he passed out into the porch, sought the grave of the Crusader. CHAPTER XXI. COST WHAT IT MAY. “ An extinct family, sir — an extinct family, and an extinct title. Not one of ’em left. All dead and gone — dead, and gone, and for- gotten. Such is life ! Not but what they had a good time of it, those De Benhams. Six hundred years, sir — six hundred years ! It was a long lease, and they made them- selves uncommonly comfortable while it lasted. They dipped their fingers into every- body’s pie, and very pretty pickings they got, I can tell you, — abbey -lands, governorships, rich heiresses, monopolies of all sorts. Bless you ! I know all about them — how they got it, and how they spent it. The spending was quick work compared with the getting, too. Why, I’ve an old chest up in one of my garrets yonder, full of their mouldering old family papers — deeds, charters, settlements, leases, letters, and the deuce knows what beside. Many’s the winter evening I’ve amused myself and my girls by spelling ’em over. It’s made regular antiquarians of us — by Jove ! it has.” So, in a big, burly voice, with his hands in his trousers’ pockets ; his feet very wide apart; his studs, his watch-chain, his brass buttons glittering in the sun ; and the whole length and breadth of his enormous person radiating pomposity, respectability, good- humour, and irreproachable solvency, said Farmer Bowstead. Or, as he himself preferred to be called, Mr. Bowstead. Or, as his daughters would fain have had him called, Squire Bowstead. He had, however, no claim to the squiredom, being in truth neither more nor less than a wealthy yeoman, of yeoman parents bred; fairly well educated; ready of speech at a vestry-meeting,, an agricultural dinner, or an election committee ; as well known in the hunting-field as the master of the hounds himself; and a prominent man in all local and parochial matters. A well-intentioned, liberal- minded man, too, according to his light; ready with his purse ; hearty and hospitable withal. No great favourite, by the way, with the Reverend Agag Golightly, perpetual curate of St. Barnabas, Benhampton ; but well liked, on the whole, by his labourers and servants, and gratefully spoken of in time of dearth or sickness by the poor of the parish. “ I presume that I am addressing the owner of— of this property?” said Temple Debenham, glancing from Farmer Bowstead to the ruins, and from the ruins back again, with some inward distaste, to Farmer Bow- stead. “ I bought the castle, sir, such as it is, and the home farm, at Colonel Smithson’s death,” replied the big man, audibly jingling the gold and silver in his pockets as he spoke. “ No great bargain, either. A light, poor land, up here among the hills ; some good pasturage down in the valley; seven hundred acres, altogether. As for the castle, you see what that is, — building-material — mere building- material !” Debenham had gone up from behind the church, and entered the ruins at a point where the line of outer fortification was broken away level with the ground. Here he had suddenly come face to face with Farmer Bowstead, who, well pleased to do the honours of the place, had at once begun the conversation. They were now standing close under the shadow of the keep, a mas- sive, quadrangular building, in the later Norman style ; or, perhaps, more accurately, in that transitional style which followed the Norman and preceded the early English. An inner quadrangle, or courtyard, of which only some portions remained standing, seemed to have been added at a later date, retaining the keep, apparently, as a sort of military front or gateway, and so, with some loss of architec- tural congruity, but much gain of picturesque- ness, incorporating it with the new design. This quadrangle, of which the other three sides reached away to a considerable distance at the back, had evidently consisted of a series of galleries or corridors in the Deco- rated style, flanked by four rectangular bastions, and further strengthened by a smaller tower in the centre of each wing. Of these galleries and corridors, the outer wall, for the most part, alone remained ; and even this was, in many places, shattered out of form, covered with brown and yellow lichens, and overgrown with ivy. Fine Gothic windows, in which a tiny lozenge of stained glass was yet visible here and there ; towers, of which the shell only was left ; spiral stairs springing from the wall at inaccessible heights and leading nowhere ; chimney-pieces rich with heraldic carvings, showing the site of stately upper chambers from which all trace of floor and ceiling had alike dis- appeared ; arched doorways with foliated mouldings ; capitals without columns, columns without capitals ; indistinguishable heaps of fallen masonry ; charred timbers, bushes, DEBENHAM’S VOW. r Good Words, April i, 1869.] 243 young trees, long rank grass, and weeds innumerable ; — such were the characteristics of this inner quadrangle to which Farmer Bowstead had referred, not altogether inaptly, as “ mere building-material.” “ Have you used any of it,” said Deben- ham, gravely, “ for that purpose ?” “ None of this part,” replied the master of Benhampton ; “ but I got two capital barns and a whole row of out-buildings from the ruins of the outer walls. As good as a quarry, sir — as good as a quarry ; and cheaper to work.” The young man checked a sigh. “So far as I can see,” he said, looking round with a scrutinizing eye, “ no part of the castle seems still habitable.” “ You won’t say that when you have been round to the other side of the keep,” rejoined the farmer. “You’ll find that we have a habitable corner — not very cheerful, perhaps, and not very luxurious ; but habitable. We’ve the servants’ hall, now partitioned off into two rooms, which serve us for dining-room and sitting-room ; and the guard-room, which is our kitchen ; and the warder’s-room, and the rooms over the gateway. We manage I pretty well, on the whole. Better than Colonel Smithson managed, I should say; for the place was in a wretched state when I bought it.” “Colonel Smithson?” said Debenham, interrogatively. This was the second time that Farmer Bowstead had mentioned the name, and the young man wondered who Colonel Smithson was, and what he could have had to do with the property. “ I put it in thorough repair,” said Farmer Bowstead, chinking his gold and silver, as if his pockets were an outlying colony of Tom Tiddler’s ground. “ I put in modern grates, and new window-sashes. And I laid down two new floors ; and I papered and painted every niche of wall and wainscot before com- ing in. The Colonel may not have been particular ; but I don’t like living in a pig-sty myself.” “ So you bought this property from Colonel Smithson ?” said Debenham, abruptly. Then, correcting himself with a well-bred grace that came to him naturally at times, he added : — “ I beg your pardon. These questions seem impertinent ; but I have just been seeing the monuments in the church, and I cannot help feeling some interest — some curiosity . . “ Don’t mention it, sir — don’t mention it,” replied the farmer. “ Impossible not to be interested in a fine old place like this. Yes, I bought it from Colonel Smithson ; that is to say, I bought it after Colonel Smithson’s death from Colonel Smithson’s executors. An eccentric old man ; had lived all his early life in India; visited no one; neither shot, nor hunted, nor did anything that a country gentleman is expected to do. Never went to church. Never voted. Never opened a news- paper. Hated the sight of a woman — wouldn’t have a petticoat about the place. Folks about here used to say he was mad ; but that was all rubbish. Eccentric — eccentric, if you like ; but no more mad than you or me.” “And how did he come by it?” asked Debenham, inwardly chafing against the man’s pompous garrulity ; but enduring it for the sake of such information as might be extracted therefrom. “ By the property?” “Yes, by the property.” “Well, he rented it, I rather think, for several years' before he bought it — rented it from the creditors, you know; for the last lord was over head and ears in debt — hadn’t an acre that he could call his own. When he died, everything came to the hammer ; and Colonel Smithson bought just what I bought after him — the home farm and the castle. But he did the place a world of damage, sir — a world of damage.” “ Ay — how so ? ” “ Neglect, sir — sheer neglect; let it fall to pieces faster than need have been. The banqueting-hall was quite perfect when he first came here, and nearly all the north side of this quadrangle ; but he would not do the least thing to preserve the place. Except in the corner where he lived — where I live now — he never replaced a tile, or put in a pane of glass, or shored up an insecure bit of wall, or spent a sixpence to save the place from ruin. And so it fell from bad to worse, and became what you see. Age, of course, has done much ; but wind and weather and neglect have done more.” “ So that it has really suffered more damage within the last seventeen years than might have come to it, with fair treatment, in the course of a century,” said the young man, bitterly. “ Colonel Smithson bought the property somewhere about March, 1843, and we’re now in i860,” muttered Farmer Bowstead, half-aloud. “Yes, that’s just seventeen years. Humph ! I took you for a stranger, sir ; but you seem to be readier with these dates than myself.” “ Probably because I have just come from the church, where I have been reading the DEBENHAM’S VOW. 244 fGood Words, April 1, 1869. inscription on — the latest tablet/’ replied Debenham, with some hesitation. The suspicious look cleared off from the farmer’s hearty face like a shadow. “To be sure, to be sure,” said he. “I told you he bought it when the last lord died, and you saw by the inscription that it hap- pened in November, ’forty-two. Quite right, sir — quite right. The Colonel did buy it seventeen years and five months ago, by the book. And I bought it in ’fifty-six — four years ago next Michaelmas. And there you’ve the whole history of Benhampton Castle. It has only changed hands twice since the old family died out, and they held it over six hundred years.” “And now, you say, there is not one of the name left?” said the young man, with assumed indifference. “No. I said it was an extinct family ; but it is not yet an extinct name. Lady De Ben- ham is still living.” The young man could not repress an involuntary movement. It was the first time he had thought of his mother by that title. “ The estate was clogged with an annuity for her,” continued the owner of Benhamp- ton ; “ and she draws it to this day.” “ From you?” said Debenham, quickly. “ No, no. Not from these lands. These are mine, fairly bought and fairly sold — free- hold — unencumbered — no mistake about them. No — Lady De Benham’s pittance, such as it is, comes from land down in the valley. I have nothing to do with it. I should be very sorry if I had. Fancy forty pounds a year for the widow of Lord De Benham, one of the oldest barons in the English peerage ! I should be ashamed to have the pitiful sum pass through my hands.’ “ The feeling does you honour, Mr. Bow- stead,” said the young man, in a low voice. And at that moment he liked the burly farmer so well that he would gladly have shaken hands with him. He felt as if the man must be a good man in that he spoke of Lady De Benham, even in this rough fashion, with compassion and respect. And, besides, he gave her her title — that title which her son now heard for the first time, and which sounded so pleasantly in his ears. He would perhaps have been ashamed to acknowledge it even to himself, but that Farmer Bowstead should have been the first to speak to him of his mother by that name affected him almost as a special claim upon his regard. In the meanwhile the owner of Benhamp- ton, all unconscious of what was passing in the mind of this sunburnt stranger, stared at the compliment, and felt half inclined to resent it as a liberty. “ You spoke of the banqueting-hall just now,” said Debenham, resuming the conver- sation. “ Where did it stand ?” “ There — where you see that large end window. The chimney-piece, and all the east wall, are still pretty perfect, and even the hinges of the door. Would you like to make the round of the ruins ?” This was precisely what Debenhan had been longing to do from the first ; so Farmer Bowstead, who really proved to be a capital cicerone, led the way, and the young man followed. They began with the site of the banqueting- hall^ — a magnificent room, now roofless, win- dowless, floorless, carpeted with weeds and brambles, and open to all the winds of heaven. This hall, said Farmer Bowstead, measured sixty feet in length and twenty-four in width, and had formerly contained a musicians’ gallery over the door, as well as a panelled and gilded ceiling of extraordinary richness. Over the chimney-piece (which, being of carved stone, was still comparatively unin- jured), the young man recognised the same coat of arms which he had just now sketched in the church. Next after the banqueting-hall came the cook’s kitchen — an area some thirty feet square, but now left with only two sides standing. Some fragments of a groined and vaulted roof, and the great cavernous fire- place, however, yet remained— that hospitable fireplace at which many an ox had been roasted whole in the good old times of De- benham’s feasting forefathers. “ There’s a chimney for you !” said Far- mer Bowstead. “We don’t built such chim- neys as that, now-a-days.” And then Debenham peeped up the great yawning funnel which, black and mysterious as a coal shaft, went narrowing up to a square glimpse of daylight some forty feet above. From the kitchen they then passed on to the site of what had once been the servants’ - hall, and thence, threading their way amid a wilderness of weeds and rubbish, made the j circuit of the whole quadrangle. Of this, little more than a line of dilapi- i dated outer wall remained standing; and though his guide professed to know all the topography of the place, saying of one spot that it had been the armoury, of another that it was anciently a tennis-court, of a third that it was the site of the guard-room, and so forth, still the young man felt that it was DEBENHAM’S VOW. Good Words, April i, 1869.] *45 mere guess-work, and more likely, on the whole, to be wrong than right. Coming back thus to the keep, and ap- proaching it from the other side, he found himself all at once in the midst of inhabited ground. The ivy on this side had been partially cleared away to make way for a smart green door and trellised porch, and some half-dozen modern windows. The porch was clustered over with white roses ; the windows showed glimpses of white blinds and scarlet curtains, and were flanked with boxes of mignonette and stocks ; and the weed-grown courtyard was here transformed into a slip of smooth-shaven lawn islanded with brilliant flower-beds. Debenham came to a sudden halt. The cheerfulness of the place was almost startling in contrast with the desolation of the rest ; but its very cheerfulness jarred upon him. In vain did the hospitable farmer urge him to go in and rest awhile ; in vain press upon him the refreshment of “ a cup of tea, or a glass of home-brewed ale.” He felt as if he could not bring himself to cross the threshold, or break bread under that roof-tree — -as a guest. He felt he could no longer endure to talk indifferently of the place and its history, or to keep up the semblance of a mere stranger’s curiosity regarding it. His heart was too full, and he wanted now, above all else, to be alone. “ My girls would make you kindly welcome, sir,” said Fanner Bowstead. “ Let yourself be persuaded. It’s altogether against my creed to let the stranger turn away from my door in this way.” At that moment, however, Debenham’s quick ear caught the first few notes of a popular polka ‘‘jangled out of tune,” upon a piano whose days were evidently in the sear and yellow leaf. There flashed upon him a horrible vision of the Miss Bowsteads, red- cheeked, red-elbowed, possibly red-haired, and musical exceedingly. The vulgar measure grated upon his ear like a profanity. Pie re- coiled impatiently. “ No, no,” he said. “ I must go. Time presses, and I have a long walk back. Many thanks — good night.” And with this he raised his hat, turned abruptly on his heel, and strode away. Leaving the ruins by the way he had come, he neither paused nor looked back ; but, with the swift, assured step of one who has a de- finite purpose before him, made direct for the churchyard gate, pushed it open, went up the path, took off his hat in the porch, walked straight up to the altar rails, bowed his face upon his hands, and knelt down in silence. He remained thus for some moments ; then rose— fetched a small Testament from the nearest pew — turned again towards the altar — put the book reverently to his lips, and said, almost in a whisper : — “ I swear it — so help me God.” He had taken a solemn vow, and taken it in the most solemn way he could devise, with the dust of a long line of ancestors beneath his feet, and their monuments looking down upon him from every side. No wonder, then, that, having replaced the little Testament and cast one last glance at the tablet under the north window, he turned away with a graver brow and a slower step than before. Then, still intent upon his own thoughts, he replaced his hat, as it were, mechanically ; passed out through the churchyard ; and followed the downward path as far as the stile. Here he stopped and looked back. The sun was now fast bending towards the west, and the ruins were all aglow in the rich light of the early summer evening. He gazed at them long and earnestly, and, as he gazed, there again came into his face that strange, concentrated look — that look of hard resolve — which was soon to become its fixed and habitual expression. “ I have sworn it,” he said, scarcely con- scious that he was speaking aloud. “ I have sworn it, and I will achieve it — cost what it may.” The next moment, he had bounded over the stile, and was swinging back to Mon- mouth at the rate of something better than four miles an hour. In the meanwhile Farmer Bowstead, pre- siding over a well-furnished tea-table, dis- cussed the stranger's visit with his daughters — three pleasant, comely young women enough, not one of whom, by the way, was either red- elbowed or red-haired. “ As off-hand a fellow as ever I saw in my life,” said the master of Benhampton Castle. “I asked him in — offered him a glass of our old ale — and he barely thanked me. Just turned on his heel and marched off, as if my house wasn’t good enough for him.” “ Was he young, papa?” asked one of the damsels. “ About six or eight-and-twenty.” “And good-looking?” “Not according to my notions, Miss Bella.” “ I’m sure he was a gentleman,” said the youngest and prettiest of the three. Farmer Bowstead frowned, shook his head, 2^5 DEBENHAM’S VOW. [Good Words, April i, 1869. and helped himself to an enormous slice of meat-pie. “ Not a bit of it, my dear,” he said. “ Not a bit of it. A shabby-looking fellow — pedes- trian tourist, evidently — an actor, or painter, or magazine writer, or something of that sort, I’ll be bound. Not a bit of a gentleman ! ” CHAPTER XXII. MONEY VERSUS FAME. “ The world is mine oyster.”— King Henry IV. Mr. Archibald Blyth was not given to early rising. Under his fellow-traveller’s rule and governance, he consented, coyly enough, to rise at six, or even, on especial occasions, at half-past five ; but, left to himself, he would go on sleeping the sleep of the just till eight, or nine, or even ten o’clock, on the brightest summer morning that ever shone. Thus it came to pass that at nine a.m. on the day following the events last related, when the little world of Cillingford was all up and doing, and the birds outside his window were singing for joy of the sunshine, and even Mr. Alleyne was engaged upon his matutinal broiled trout and coffee, Archibald Blyth was suddenly wrenched from the farthest Elysium by the pressure of a hand on his shoulder, and the sound of a voice in his ear. “ Awake, arise, or be for ever fallen ! ” said the familiar, half-mocking tones that he knew so well. “ Why, man alive ! do you know what o’clock it is ? ” Archie sat up, gasping, and rubbing his eyes, “What — Debenham — back already?” he stammered. “ Where do you come from ?” “ From Monmouth, where I slept last night, and breakfasted this morning at half- past six. I have had such a glorious walk ! You never saw such effects of sunshine and colour.” “And you have transacted the business you went about ? ” “Yes.” “ It didn’t take long, anyhow,” said Archie, staring at Debenham with all his might. The other looked grave. “ Look here, my dear fellow,” he said, after a moment’s hesitation. “ I don’t want to be mysterious with you. My solitary expedition has puzzled you . . . .” “ Enormously.” “Well, be puzzled no longer. I went to visit my father’s grave. He was buried not ! many miles from Monmouth, and I had never seen the place before. Didn’t know where it was, in fact, till three days ago. Now you have it, and I had rather the subject was not named between us again.” So Archie, with a very serious face, pro- tested that no allusion to it should be made- on his part. “ And now,” said Debenham, “ I want you to get up, and come for a walk — and a talk. I have a heap of things to say to you.” “ I’ll be ready in ten minutes,” said Archie, scrambling out of bed. “ But you’ve had no breakfast.” “ Doesn’t matter a bit,” sputtered Archie, with his head and face in a great round tub of cold water. “ I’ll put a crust in my pocket.” Debenham, however, would not hear of this; so he ran down to get his friend’s breakfast prepared in the kitchen, and in about half an hour they were strolling together by the river. “You have seen Miss Alleyne, of course ?” said Archie, finding that Debenham did not begin the promised conversation. To which Debenham — looking away, and full, apparently, of other thoughts — replied in an abstracted voice, that, supposing the Al- leynes to be at breakfast, he had gone straight to Archie’s room, and seen no one. “ They asked me in to tea last evening,” said Archie. “ I thought it was kind of them — in your absence.” Here he paused for a reply ; but receiving none, went on. “We played two rubbers, with dummy. Mr. Alleyne took dummy, and won everything before him.” “Ah— indeed!” “ So for once, you see, I had Miss Alleyne for my partner. Are you jealous ?” Debenham smiled faintly, and shook his head. “ What did you talk about?” he said. “Well, let me see — of you, for one thing.” “Yes. What did they say about me?” asked Debenham, looking round with more appearance of interest than he had yet shown. “ I must consider. Mr. Alleyne said you were a good conversationist. You reminded him of some famous wit — I forget who. And then he said that music was a poor profes- sion — he meant in the way of getting money.” “ He’s quite right,” said Debenham, bit- terly. “ It’s a beggarly profession ! What else did he say?” “He thought you very clever, but . . “ But what ?” “ He feared you were very unpractical.” “Unpractical? Confound his insolence! On what ground does he — an acquaintance j of ten days’ standing — presume to base his opinion?” “ Ah, I didn’t ask him that,” said Archie, drily. V DEBENHAM’S YOW. Good Words, April i, 1869.! T 247 “And Juliet — what did she say? Did she agree with him ?” “ I don’t know. She didn’t say so.” “ Did she contradict him?” “ No.” “ Did she speak of me at all?” “Yes; she asked if I expected to hear from you this morning. I fancy she thought you had gone away rather abruptly.” “ Did she tell you so ?” “ No; but I fancied I saw it in her manner. You told her where you were going, of course ?” ‘ £ Why * of course ? ’ She’s not my wife yet — we are not even formally engaged. I told her I was summoned away on family business, and might not be back for a day or two. I told you the same. It was quite enough.” Archie looked down, and was silent. The gloom and irritability of his friend’s manner both pained and perplexed him. He seemed out of tune with all things. He had called his beloved art “ a beggarly profession.” His indignation against Mr. Alleyne . seemed out of all proportion with the magnitude of the offence. Even in the tone in which he had spoken of Miss Alleyne, there was a some- thing which grated upon Archie’s ear. True lovers, according to his simple creed, should have no secrets from each other; and, al- though he did not argue the question out in so many words, he felt instinctively that the young lady had a fuller right than himself to Debenham’s confidence. It was plain that something had gone wrong ; but, then, what could that something be ? “ You said you had heaps of things to ! talk to me about,” he said -presently. “ When | are you going to begin?” “ Now, if you are disposed to listen. Shall we sit down on this old trunk, and smoke a pipe the while ? ” j It was the same felled trunk on which he had sat with Miss Alleyne only two morn- ings ago ; but his mind was full of other j matters now, and he did not even remember I it. So they sat down, lit their pipes, and smoked for some moments in silence. “ Do you remember the day we came to this place ? ” asked Debenham, at length. “ Remember it ! ” said Archie. “ I should think so. It was the hottest day I ever knew in my life.” “ And the meadow by the river side, where we rested and you fell asleep ? ” “ Thrice-blessed meadow, and thrice thrice- blessed sleep ! I have the liveliest recollection of both.” Debenham frowned. He was in no mood for jesting; and the levity of Archie’s tone- displeased him. “ I cannot, of course, expect you also to remember the subject of -our conversation that afternoon,” he said. “Not unassisted, perhaps; but if you will refresh my memory . . . .” “We were talking of money, and how to make it. I said I should like to earn a thou- sand a year ; and you said that with good abilities and a good education, a man might command as much as that, and even more — in commerce. Do you remember that ? ” “ Yes; I remember it perfectly.” “Was it true — or a mere figure of speech?”* “ True, of course. Literally true.” “But how? In what way? Not in a merchant’s office ? ” “Yes; even in a merchant’s office, if by that you mean sitting all one’s life at a desk in a counting-house. Managing clerks, for in- stance, and foreign correspondents, get famous salaries sometimes. But that was not what j I meant when I spoke of the sort of openings that are to be found in commerce for men of real talent and extensive acquirements.” “What did you mean, then, Archie?” said Debenham, earnestly — so earnestly that Archie, catching a sudden glimmer of the truth, laid down his pipe and looked full in his friend’s face. “ Why, Debenham ! ” he exclaimed, “ is it possible . . . .” “Yes, it’s quite possible,” interrupted the ' other, hurriedly but very decisively. “My opinions on that subject are changed. I am tired of being poor. I want money. I am deter- mined to have money. I don’t care how j hard I work for it — I am used to work hard. I And I don’t care what sort of work it is, if it only pays me well enough. That is the point. It must pay. And a little will not content me. I have known what it is to be poor — very poor ; and now I mean to know what it is to be rich. Only tell me how — only show me the way. Let the path be steep and thorny; the steeper and thornier it is, the better I shall like it.” “ My dear fellow,” said Archie, “ you posi- tively take my breath away ! ” “ But the way — only show me the way ! ” persisted Debenham, almost fiercely. “You can’t make a fortune in a day,” said Archie. “ There’s no way to do that.” “ Of course not ; but I would be willing to j work with double energy. I would be willing to put a week’s labour into a day ; a month’s I into a week ; a year’s into a month. I would j be willing to spend brain and fibre at a 1 DEBENHAM’S VOW. 248 [Good Words, April x, 1869. double rate — ay, at ten times a double rate, if that were all. A man may surely push the hands on in that way ? ” “Ay — if he doesn’t cripple the clock meanwhile,” said Archie, sententiously. “But you must let me think for a minute or two. You have so taken me by surprise, that I seem not to have an idea in my head.” And then, planting his elbows on his knees and resting his chin upon his hands, he began, slowly and clearly, though in a somewhat roundabout way, to explain in what special directions a man of great capital might em- ploy, and amply remunerate, the services of a man of high education. There were foreign loans, for instance, in the negotiation of which the nicest tact was required, and the most discriminating knowledge of all sorts of languages. And there were foreign missions in abundance — missions involving the adjust- ment of differences, the legalisation of com- mercial rights, the establishing of difficult and distant business relations, and so forth. Poli- tical knowledge, too, commanded its premium. Enormous fortunes had been made at a blow by those who were skilled in watching the political horizon, and knew how to ; take prompt advantage of every change and rumour of change. In short, though he could deal only in generalities, Archie said quite enough to convince his friend that his brains were marketable, and that if the world were indeed an oyster, he had a fairer chance of opening it than most penniless adventurers. “ And so you are really in earnest,” said die City man, when their long talk came at last to an end. “ I am really in earnest.” “And it is to be commerce versus music — money versus fame ? ” “ It is to be commerce and money for the next ten years of my life — or the next twenty, if need be. I don’t say that it may not be music and fame after that; when I am a rich man, and can afford to indulge my tastes.” “ Then all I can say is, that I am heartily glad of it,” said Archie, warmly. “You never would, and never could, have earned more than a bare living by music ; and even so you must have gone on giving lessons all your life. And you would never have been looked upon as a gentleman — at least, in England. I always felt that with your splendid talents you ought to make a fortune. And so you will, old fellow. So you will.” “ I will try,” said Debenham, more to him- self than to Archie. “ And I will speak about it to my cousin Hardwicke the moment we get back to London.” “ Thank you, Archie — thank you. That is, if I do not speak to Mr. Hardwicke myself.” And with this they rose up and strolled on side by side ; both silent ; both weary of talking ; each absorbed in his own thoughts. As for Archie, he was lost in wonder at what had taken place, and kept stealing furtive glances now and then at his com- panion. The more he thought of all that had been said, the less he seemed able to believe it. What a revolution ! What a change ! Who more . indifferent to money, who more devoted to his art than Debenham, but one little month ago ? And now .... Well, the motive, at all events, was not far to seek. He wanted to make money that he might marry Miss Alleyne. Nothing could be clearer; nothing* after all, more natural. It was just the old, old story over again. That is to say, it was the old, old story — with a difference. For love, which makes fools of so many, had, from Archie’s point of view, made a wise man of his friend. And then he smiled to himself, thinking that it was like the old Antwerp legend turned upside down; for here, instead of the smith turning painter, the artist, for love’s dear sake, was about to give up his art for the drudgery of anvil and hammer. Such was the miracle-working power of a pretty face ! But in all these assumptions and conclu- sions, obvious as they seemed, Archie was wrong; entirely and fundamentally wrong. That a marvellous change had come upon Temple Debenham was true — but neither love nor Miss Alleyne had anything whatever to do with it. I Cood, words, April x, xs^] PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. PEEPS AT THE EAR EAST, By the EDITOR. A Family Party on a Journey. IV. COLGAUM THE CAVES OF KARLI RETURN TO BOMBAY. The horses having enjoyed their bath, and we our wading, the journey was resumed. We proceeded across the plain for about twenty miles, and along a good road, to the village of Colgaum. The scenery had little interest, notwithstanding the cheering sight of far-spread fields bearing the green and luxurious crops of spring. The palm forests of the sea-shore were gone ; and, except the jungle which covered portions of the plain where it joined a low range of hills, few trees were seen, and these were chiefly around the villages. The climate of the Deccan — a name ap- plied generally to the great plateau of central India which is separated by the Ghauts, as by a wall, from the lower strip along the sea —is very dry, often, indeed, much too dry. This may seem strange when such floods of rain are poured down on the Ghauts during the south-west monsoon. Yet so it is. While two or three hundred inches of rain deluges these hills during the rainy season, fifteen or twenty miles inland there is no more rain than is sufficient for the ground. The air currents, saturated with moisture, burst upon the mountain-ridges, and then pass on across the plains in gentle showers and cool breezes. At this season, when the “ Bombay ducks” are swimming in a steaming bath, the The Peacock-seller at Poonah. T7 PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. [Good Words, April 1,1869. Mahrattas of the upland plain are enjoying a delicious climate. The villages were to us a novel feature in the landscape. They are surrounded by mud walls of considerable strength, with stone gateways. The public roads pass near them, but never through them. Although un- necessary as a means of defence now, even against wild beasts and robber-gangs, the walls remain a visible tradition of the past, when the villages were subject to sudden surprise and attack. Those “ good old days ” of native rule are now nightmares of history ; although certainly the people do not realise this to the full, else the present daylight realities would be more appreciated. What a scene of ceaseless war, plunder, extortion, and remorseless cruelty that Deccan was during the 150 years from the days of the great Mahratta Sevajee and the invasion of Aurungzebe, down through the fights of Nizams and Peishwas, Guicowars, Scindias, Holkars, and the terrible Pindaries, until Wellington first, and Lord Hastings after- wards, established English power ! Now all is peace and prosperity. These villages have no pretence to order or neatness. The houses are huddled to- gether, along narrow lanes, each builder freely following his own caprices. They thus pre- sent to the eye a confused medley of mud walls, and dusty paths, with crowds of The Monkey God. copper-coloured children running about, and growing up as nature dictates, and groups of women, lightly but decently clad, plea- sant-looking, frank, and always busy. Men with their lanky limbs, their knees up at their ears, sit idly chatting and smoking, or wait patiently in their humble bazaars for customers. Others drive their oxen to and from the field. There is a temple of course, probably two or three, for the worship of Mahadeo Hanuman, the monkey god, or others; and these temples are all more or less conspicuous. There are besides many holy places in and around the village. These places are consecrated by the priests as the abodes of deity, and have such marks as a few flowers growing on an altar, or a stone or tree daubed with red or white paint. There are thus abundant wayside chapels where the people may do their pujah, and go through their religious forms. Whilst we were changing our horses, I observed, for the first time, the great care which is taken both by men and women of their teeth. They rinse their mouths, and, though I cannot say they brush the teeth, yet certainly they rub them with some solid substance or other, most probably an astrin- gent bark. This habit, I think, is common over all India, and certainly is attended with such success as might tempt all who aspire to “ secure and preserve beautiful teeth” (as advertisers of “ dentifrices ” express it), to follow their example. I was also pleased with the 'quiet polite- ness of the men. When I asked for a light for my cigar, it was cheerfully brought, and the shoes were put off as it was handed with a salaam and a smile. Through an inter- preter, we had some conversation with a group of natives who sat smoking under a pepul tree, chiefly about their crops and general affairs. They told us that they were comfortable and contented ; that land which annually returned about 150 rupees was burdened by taxation to the extent of 5^ per cent., whilst under the Peishwa they would have paid 20 per cent., without any security for their property. Without going into minute details, I may here state that the whole land in India belongs to the Government, as it always did to the native rulers, the title to it being grounded on the right of conquest. The Government is thus the only landlord, and the chief revenue of the state is consequently derived from land. Except in Bengal, where there are zemindars , or landed proprietors, who come between the tenants and the Government, and about whom I shall have to speak afterwards, the land is leased to the cultivators, who have a tenant right to it so long as they pay their rent in the shape of the land-tax. This tax or rent is fixed for different periods in different provinces. In Bengal it is perpetual ; in Bombay it is at Good Words, April I, 1869.] PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. 251 present settled for thirty years ; in Madras it is annual. The collection of it forms a great department of the civil service work. The Bombay Presidency alone, for example, which is larger than Great Britain and Ireland, is divided into nineteen districts or counties, each with an average population of three quarters of a million. Over each dis- trict there is a collector, who is also the chief magistrate ; and he collects the land revenue and other taxes, and sits also as judge in the courts. He is assisted by a sub-collector and joint magistrate, who acts as his deputy, also by an assistant magistrate and collector, who, after passing various examinations in the vernacular, is in due time promoted to the higher offices. The district, again, has for convenience several sub-divisions, called in Bombay talooks , over each of which there is a native who acts for the collector, and is usually a magistrate also. He is called the talookdar. The village is represented by its ftatil) or “ head man,” who manages the busi- ness of its peasant inhabitants with the talookdars ; and so on, until the central Government of the Presidency as the last link is reached. It is by these agencies that an accurate account is kept of every field and of its possessor ; that all revenue is col- lected, and all cases of dispute heard and decided. The collector lives with a staff of English and native officials in the chief or suddar town of the district. All the official records of the district are kept there, together with the treasury, &c. There the law-courts are held, and all business transacted in the ver- nacular. For six months of the year the collector lives a tent life, visiting every part of his district — holding courts, giving audiences, hearing and pronouncing judg- ment on disputed questions. How little do we at home realise the influence or the responsibility of such men, or the valuable education they thus receive in the art of government. Indeed, it is hardly credible that the vast empire of India is governed by some 3,000 English civilians ! The village system, throughout India gene- rally, is extremely interesting, as being almost the only instance of self-government by the people. Each village is in itself a small republic. Nothing can exceed the way in 1 which these villages, especially in the Deccan, have been managed from generation to gene- ration. They generally include a population of 500 or 600. There are twelve important characters in every village, each having his ■ own specific duties assigned to him, with which no one else dare interfere. After the fiatil I have mentioned, with his deputy and one or two assistants, there come the “ carpenter,” “ blacksmith,” “ cobbler,” and “porter” or “messenger,” the “scavenger,” “ washerman,” “ baker,” and “ potter,” the “ goldsmith,” “ schoolmaster,” and last, not least, the village “astrologer.” Besides these, there is another but lower set of officials, made up of the village “watchman,” — “gate- keeper,” “ betel-man,” “ head-gardener,” with the “ bard ” and “ musician.” Each and all of these besides certain privileges, have their public duties to the village, to the temples and gods, to strangers and travellers, at mar- riages and feasts, &c. The lowest castes are not permitted to live in the village, but out- side its gates, and a very low caste is as proud and distant to a lower caste still, though both are outcasts from the village, as a Brahmin is towards the others. Now, so long as the “ township,” with the surrounding fields belonging to its citizens, is respected ; so long as taxes are moderate, water abundant, and a fair supply of food and clothing obtained, so as to keep the people comfortable and the wives and children con- tented, the village never asks under whose raj or reign it is. What does it know or care about the rest of India? No more, indeed, than a worker in the Potteries cares about the people or the politics of Turkey, unless these come to interfere with his beer or bacon. What care these ryots whether they are under John Bright or a Grand Mogul — if, indeed, they ever have heard of either ! It is enough if the white face of the magis- trate smiles upon them, deals justly towards them, and helps them to live. Nationality ! love of independence ! these are terms as ! meaningless to the villagers of India as they would be to an Esquimaux, to whom a seal’s liver is the truest sign of an earthly paradise. Therefore, I believe that, in so far as we make these peasants comfortable — respect ! their village rights and old customs, meddle not with their own ways and plans of doing ! things — we shall make them faithful and obedient. But, after all, they do not in this j respect differ very greatly from millions at 1 home j what education may do ultimately is another question. As we say in Scotland, “ It’s an ill win’ [ that blaws naebody good.” The ill-wind of i the American war blew much good to the ryots or peasants of the Bombay Presidency, 1 more especially where cotton could be culti- vated. I was informed from a reliable source, that forty millions of pounds had thus passed into the hands of the ryots, to be turned into 252 PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. [Good words. a p hi *. ornaments for wives and children ! The | silver ankle-rings, bracelets, nose-rings, ear- | rings, together with the pearl necklaces and | the like, represent a considerable amount of ' wealth. A young bride carries a large dowry I on her little person. But when the people have had a longer experience of peace and good government, they will no doubt put j out their money to purposes of greater use j and profit, or trust it to Government savings- i banks. Just now the peasantry in this presi- j ! dency evidently enjoy a great degree of com- ; fort. I could not help contrasting their privileges with those of many of the poor Highlanders. I recalled to mind a High- i land parish I know well, in which, by wanton i exercise of power on the part of a proprie- tress with no family to provide for, the j | people of a whole district were cleared off, and houses where respectable families had lived for generations ordered to be torn J down. I cannot help wishing that we had some of India’s civil servants to “settle” : Ireland and the Highlands. But I must j pass on to the consideration of more pleasing ! topics. As we pursued our journey, we noticed a low range of hills, which stretch along the east for a short distance, rising like mounds from the plain ; and were struck by their i appearance. They seem to mark, in some degree, the extent to which the original plain has suffered from denudation. The geologi- 1 cal structure of this part of the country has been described by Colonel Sykes in his Geological Me?noir ; and I have much plea- sure in furnishing an outline of the district I over which I travelled, giving heights, &c. ; It presents about 90 miles, stretching from the sea near Bombay to the Deccan plains 1 near Poona. (See p. 257.) We reached the travellers’ bungalow early j in the afternoon, and found two American j missionaries, Messrs. Bissell and Hazen, wait- 1 ing for us. They gave us a hearty welcome, as did also Mr. Watson, the English chaplain I from Ahmednugger. Near the bungalow ! Major T had pitched his tent, and was there with his Bheel policemen.* These : Bheels, now employed as police, are a living J illustration of what can be done by Indian j civil officers to convert wild robber gangs j into protectors of life and property. They stand towards the old system much in the same relation as the Highland regiments do to the erewhile wild caterans. With the courtesy of an English officer the major immediately sent his card, offering us any aid or hospitality in his power. Here was another of those wanderers, far away from England, among strange races, of whom his dear friends in the old house among the trees, with the cawing rooks, and singing birds, and flowers, and humming bees, know almost nothing. Nine out of every ten English ladies or squires, as well as mil- lions of the “ intelligent classes,” know little about the tens of millions of human beings who in Providence are placed under their “dear John” or young So-and-so, who is “in India,” whatever that mysterious geographical term may mean ! And yet, what John, or what Mr. So-and-so may do, say, or decide, must tell on the weal or woe of a greater mass than one would like to number. This apathy at home about India is a mystery ! The major seemed to know nothing about the American mission, although he had been travelling the country for seven- teen years. Had I met him only, I might have left India with the impression that no such mission existed. This is by no means a solitary instance of the ignorance of intelligent Europeans who have been long resident in India regarding missions. Never- theless, when such men come home, they are recognised as authorities upon all points per- taining to India, and they are not slow to re- mark after dinner, when some one, perhaps the English “parson” or the Scotch “minister,” eagerly asks, with due respect, the opinion of such an unbiassed and unquestionable authority 1 concerning mission work, “All humbug, I assure you ! ” The company smile, and are satisfied. But why should we be surprised at such ignorance abroad, when we meet with it every day at home? For how many men, well-disposed on the whole to increase the well-being of the working classes, are yet, owing to a variety of circumstances, utterly ignorant of what is going on in the interest of these classes at their own doors ! In truth, mission work, or the instruction of the igno- rant in what God wills, and in what He has revealed to men through Jesus Christ, is too much associated with the clergy only, and is regarded as something which they are paid ; for doing officially, and with which “ laymen ” have little or nothing to do, just as if there were a different religion and code of morals for each. And if this is so at home, it is more V * The police, in each district are now a body of con- \ stab ul ary, like the police force in Ireland. They are under the control of a military officer, with inspectors, most of, whom have been soldiers, and some are Europeans. Each province has an Inspector- General of Police ; and there is an average of one constable to every 1,300 of the population, fin England, it is one to every 870. An immense improvement has . •>_£aken .place in this department since the mutiny. \ ■ t — — Good Words, April i, 1869 . j PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. 25 3 j likely to be the case abroad, where each man has his own work to do, and where Govern- ment officials like to stand well with the natives, and where, moreover, the aristocratic feeling of their own official “ caste ” and position in- duces many to keep aloof from missionaries, on the ground of their being somewhat, exclu- sive, unsocial, and (shall I use the word ?) snobbish. Add to all this the many cases in which the European has no real faith and feels no interest in true religion or its progress, and the additional drawback which arises from the fact that public (native) opinion is not in favour of Christianity, but positively against it. I do not wish to be misunderstood. I do not speak of Europeans generally in India, far less of the most influential of them. I honestly believe that some of our most dis- tinguished men in Hindostan are, and have been, the warmest friends of missions ; whilst the contributions to the cause from European residents are far more numerous, and far more liberal in proportion to their number than those of church members in this country. But if our European officials in India would only feel a little more keenly their tremendous responsibilities, and take the trouble to in- quire patiently and carefully into the conduct of the missions within their respective dis- tricts, I feel assured from the character of the missionaries they could with a good con- science become their best friends and most zealous supporters. And this I think they can do, without compromising themselves as representatives of Government ; nay, in such a way as even the heathen would respect. The missionaries who met us had been sent out by the American Board of Commissioners on Foreign Missions — a title which, when ex- pressed by mere initials, is sufficiently formi- dable — A. B. C. F. M. It is one of the most important and influential societies in Ame- rica, being composed of members of various Evangelical Churches. It may be interesting to some to be informed that America entered the foreign mission field as late as 1810, and that she now contributes nearly ^200,000 a year to the cause. The progress of this Mis- sionary Society has been very remarkable." 4 * The following presents a summary of the operations of the Board : — Number of Missions 20 „ Stations 104 „ Out-Stations 421 Ordained Missionaries (five being physicians) 139 ,, Physicians not ordained ... 4 ,, Other Male Assistants .... 3 ,, Female Assistants 160 Total number of labou-ers sent from America 312 Number of Native Pastors . 62 ,, Native Preachers and Catechists 266 My interest in this society was first awak- ened when I was voyaging across the At- lantic twenty-three years ago, with one of its missionaries — Rev. Mr. Burgess — who was- then returning to America to recruit his healths j How little I thought then that I should ever | be enabled to visit the scene of his labours ! i Very soon after our arrival, we proceeded [ to the tent of our friends, which, as they were j itinerating, was pitched near the village of i Colgaum. On each of several successive days, i a religious service had been fixed for some | specific purpose. This afternoon an examina- tion of a native candidate for the ministry was to take place. In the evening, native pastors were to preach to Christians and heathen. The afternoon meeting was held in a large open verandah, at the end of a walled j court, which was entered by a gate. This j building had formerly been used as a local court of justice under our Government. Three native pastors were present, and two of them, ' at least, could speak English. They were accompanied by several deputies, or “ elders,” from the native churches, who acted as mem- ■ bers of the ecclesiastical court ; and there was a small Christian audience of probably twenty people. All were in their native dresses. The three preachers, highly intelligent -looking men, sat. at a table, one of them acting as clerk. The candidate for license was a tall young man, robed in cotton, and inno- j cent of stockings, which among the natives ! is not an evidence of poverty, but of a desire to be comfortable. He was married,, and Ins. wife and children were present, as well as his 7 old father, who had long been a convert to | Christianity. During the forenoon this man 1 had been subjected to a four hours’ examina- \ tion in theology, church history, &c. He ! was being examined now on church discipline chiefly. The American missionaries took no Number of School Teachers 290 „ Other Native Helpers .... 197 Total number of native labourers .... Total number of labourers connected with the Mission . . Printing Establishments Pages, as far as reported Number of churches (including all at the Hawaiian Islands) ,, Church Members (ditto) so far as re- ported Added during the year (ditto) Number of Training and Theological Schools . . ,. Other Boarding Schools ,, Free Schools (omitting those at Ha- waiian Islands) „ Pupils in Free Schools (omitting those at Hawaiian Islands) . . 10,057 „ Pupils in Free Training and The- ological Schools 318 ,, Pupils in Free Boarding School . 526 Total number of Pupils % The receipts for the last year from all sources have amounted ' to 438,090 dollars 33 cents, and the expenditure to 441,883 doV [ lars 36 cents, leaving a balance in the treasury of 6,206 dollaia * 97 cents. -'1 8*S 1 3,64«»826 - r ?4>’ 24,630 881 x6 17 395 2^4 PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. [Good Words, April 1, 1869. part in the examination, but left it entirely to the native pastors. What impressed me most was the calm, thoughtful, business-like way in which it was conducted. The examiners had about them a look and manner which would not have lowered the dignity of the bench of bishops, or any presbytery of the “ kirk.” The young man seemed to feel this : it was evidently an eventful day in his life, and there were indications of the same feeling in the countenance of his old father. So slow and calm were the proceedings that by aid of the interpretations of the mis- sionaries I could easily follow every ques- tion and answer. When we entered, the point on which the examiner was question- ing the student happened to be the nature of the sacraments, and the leading opinions regarding them. This was followed by most practical and sensible questions as to the duties of church members and office-bearers towards brethren who were walking inconsist- ently with their profession — how to deal with them, and restore them. Sometimes when one subject was ended, and before another had been begun, the pastors asked the elders and members present if they were satisfied. If they suggested a question, it was put to the candidate ; if satisfied, they held up their hands. After the examination was over, the meet- ing adjourned until eight in the evening. We returned in the meantime to our bun- galow, which was about a mile off. The sun was about to set. The missionaries, the 1 native pastors, and their people, accompanied us on our way through the village, amidst the eager but respectful gaze of its inhabit- ants. Bn route , we visited the heathen tem- ple, which had the usual collection of idols in their several shrines. The Brahmins, poor un- intelligent-looking men, showed us their gods with all the eagerness of children exhibiting their toys ! There was not a symptom of fanaticism or unkindness, but rather of weak- ness and ignorance, with an eager desire to be civil and obliging. This did not impress me as being unreal on their part, but as some- thing quite natural and childlike. They ran from shrine to shrine, and directed our atten- tion to each god, as if disposed to say to us, “Is he not grand? see what teeth, what paint !” or, “ Is he not funny and amusing ? ” The native Christians, who had once worshipped them, expressed no feelings of horror, dis- gust, or aversion, but quietly mentioned their names and attributes, and smiled at them as “ vanities.” We parted for the time near the temple. If The scene has vividly impressed itself on my memory. The sun had just set, and the moon was rising above the horizon, a huge orb of lustrous gold. The higher part of the village and of the temple stood out in sharp relief against the yellow-green light of the sky. Shepherds were driving in their bleating sheep and goats, suggesting pleasing associa- tions of rural and patriarchal life. The white- robed congregation — pastors and people — ■ seemed almost unearthly. I gazed on the group, and my eye wandered to the temple, as my ear caught the bleating of the sheep following their shepherd. I felt a strange choking at the heart — an overpowering sense of sympathy with these my brethren in Christ and my fellow-labourers, whether native or American; and a joyful hope filled me that, as sure as Jesus was the Good Shepherd, He would seek his sheep until He found them, and one day bring them home rej oicing ; and ; that as sure as He was the Sun of Righteous- ness, He would yet arise in the latter day and shine with glory over the plains of India. I invited the major to attend the evening meeting, which he did. The result proved how often men are ignorant, not so much from any bad will or indisposition to learn, as from that destructive, although negative force, “ not thinking.” The meeting was held in the same place as the former one. There were about thirty Christians and seventy heathens present. The services were conducted by native preachers only, and were begun with prayers and praise. The singing was led by a native pastor, who was also a poet, and had composed several hymns. He was I accompanied by instrumental music; — one instrument, I remember, was like a large violoncello, played as a guitar. The music, as well as the instruments, was all native. As the saying is, this was “ in the right direc- tion,” and not one of those wretched attempts to introduce everything English, down even to the very names given in baptism. If we would see the absurdity of such European names, let us only fancy a Scotch child, of the Gaelic clan Macdonald, being baptized by a Hindoo pastor as Krishna Shastri Chip- lunkar, and then let loose among his com- panions in^Lochaber ! It is our duty in trifles, as well as in great things, to respect and pre- serve, as far as possible, everything native. Then came two addresses in Mahratti ; one being on the transmigration of souls, as con- trary to God’s character ; and the other on Christianity, as being agreeable both to the nature of God and of man, and as the only religion which can meet man’s varied spiritual Good Words, April i, iSfig l PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. wants, or give peace to his heart and con- science. I was much pleased with the style and bearing of the native preacher — Ram- chunder, I think, was his name. His preaching gave evidence of much quiet strength, “unction,” and energy, the whole look of the man expressing power and love, I asked one of the missionaries to interpret the passage which especially seemed to move both speaker and audience. This was an appeal to the heathen, in which he perilled the truth of Christianity upon the marked difference between the lives of the converts in the several villages and those of their | heathen neighbours — the heathen themselves being judges. It was very hopeful to listen to such an argument. The major said “the preacher was a splendid fellow, and that he had never heard a more eloquent sermon.” Before the meeting ended, Dr. Watson and myself were both asked to address it, which we did, our American friends trans- lating our speeches, and I have no doubt improving them. It was a new and great happiness to me to be thus permitted to speak to such a congregation. This mission, I may mention, numbers about six hundred communicants , besides many hundreds of hearers, eighty teachers, and six native pastors, with excellent schools for the children of Christian parents only. An American deputation brought about some changes in the mission school system for the heathen, at all their stations in India, which has caused considerable difference of opinion, but on which I give none. Two remarks only I make, that the people who have been chiefly influenced by the mission are Maratha Mahrs, who are a low caste ; and secondly, that the former schools have exercised a vast influence on the mission. Many of their once heathen teachers have become native pastors, and the most efficient labourers of the mission. The eloquent preacher, to whom I have al- ready alluded, was once a heathen teacher in one of the mission schools, and by teaching others the words of Christian truth was him- self led to see and believe it. I have no doubt that the higher castes would have been far more extensively brought under Christian influences had the old school system, with the English language, been continued. I may just add, that we had the gratifica- tion of receiving next morning, a most kind address, written in English by the pastors, thanking us for our visit. Thus ended our first and last visit to American missionaries. It is noble of Christian America thus to labour for the good of our heathen fellow-subjects, and their example should quicken the energies of the English people. I have dwelt at some length on this visit, as it was the only “ preaching ” mission which we were enabled to visit in the field of its operations, and because in its leading features it is a fair type of many others connected with different missionary societies in other parts of India. We left at five in the morning, and bade farewell to the Bheel police camp and its commander, to our brother Mr. Watson, and in heart also to all the church, its preachers and people, in the “ Nuggur district.” Our ponies were determined to refresh themselves in the river when returning just as when going. A vain attempt was made to collect sufficient people to help us through ; but after the most energetic appliances of voice, whip, and stick, the team looked up and winked, and then lay down in peace. So we took to the water again, and I confess that I did not in all India find any walk so agreeable. We called at Poona, en route to Karli, and passed an hour or two there. Our friends Mr. and Mrs. Ross had made every arrange- ment for our comfort, as to servants, pro- visions, &c., and agreed to accompany us on our journey. We bade farewell for ever to Parbutty and its gods, but not neces- sarily to our friends at Poona, who had received us so hospitably, and to many of whom we had the pleasure of preaching. India is like no other country on earth inasmuch as one may possibly see again every European he meets there. They all intend to return home some time or other. Dwellers in tents, like Abraham, they confess that they are “ strangers and pilgrims ” in the land of their sojourning, but unlike Abraham, they are very mindful of the country from whence they have come out. So one does not experience the sadness which is felt in parting from acquaintances in other countries, save, indeed, in the case of natives, because we shall “ see their face no more.” I am truly glad that our distinguished host Sir Alexander Grant has since become the Principal of the University of Edinburgh. The ocean plain of this part of the Deccan is lost in a bay, which gets more and more narrowed between the enclosing hills, the only outlet from it being by the gorge at Khandalla, which, as I have already described, cuts deep down into the Bhore Ghaut, until it meets the lower plain that goes on to Bombay. We stopped at the the ghauts near khandalla. 2ijS PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST.. L cood words, Apni i, 1869. ! • 1 Lanowli station, the next to Khandalla, and the one nearest to the caves. A bullock garry was waiting for us, and a waggon for our luggage, servants, and pro- visions. The transition from the railway to the garry was powerfully felt. What the former is we all know, but few know the garry, for it belongs to the days when earth was young — the days of the. Vedas or Maha- bharata. It is a square wooden box or caravan, drawn by two bullocks, and holding six ordi- nary human beings. We were told that the bul- locks often proved as good trotters as horses ; and we did see in other parts of India splen- did creatures, who seemed to combine great- ness and go. But our bullocks were either lost in abstraction — dead to all arguments or impressions from without, or were the tem- porary dwelling of some wretch who was undergoing transmigration on account of laziness, and, proceeding from bad to worse, was getting ready to be transferred to a tortoise. The dark mummy who drove us twisted their tails, plied them with his stick, and shouted to them in the vernacular. The chaplain got hoarse with his exhortations. But no power could force them beyond a slow, easy walk along the smooth old Government road, and even here two miles an hour was so severe a trial for them that they once lay down to rest and to chew their cud. About sunset, and after duly admiring the beautiful wood of Lanowli, which reminded us of a fine old English park, we reached our bungalow. It was beautifully situated. But, like an old inn ruined by the railway, it was shut up, and seemed to be falling into decay. We found an entrance, and sent for its official master, the police-officer of the neighbouring village. After a while [ he appeared in official garb, and did every- ! thing he could for us ; but what could . he, or even the Governor- General, have j done in such circumstances ? The very memory of travellers seeking its shelter had almost faded out of mind. The rooms were large and airy, but of beds there were no vestiges, except broken bedsteads, with huge gaps in their cane bottoms. Soon, however, we contrived — with planks, and broken chairs, and rickety tables — to get something higher than the floor on which to sup. We spent a most cheerful evening, thanks to our kind hosts, Mr. and Mrs. Ross, especially the latter, and finally ma- naged to rest in our clothes till the morning. We found a large number of attendants ready to accompany us to the caves. They l had swung two comfortable arm-chairs on poles, one for the lady, and possibly the other , for one of the travellers, a rather elderly gentle- man, and “a portly man i’ faith/’ to whom “a yard of uneven ground is a mile,” especially in heat. The distance was two or three miles only, but the ascent to the caves rather rough and steep. It was a heavenly morning. The plain was enlivened with flocks and herds going out to pasture, and the air was deli- cious and scented with the perfume of odori- ferous plants. The path across it was easy and agreeable. The low range of hills before us was covered with groves of cactus. When the ascent commenced, my readers may be sure the chairs were not forgotten. In about an hour from the time of start- ing we reached the platform leading to the famous caves. “ But what caves ?” my reader very naturally asks. In reply, I beg to inform him that long ago, before the beginning of the Christian era, that form of religion called Buddhism was supreme in India. It is now extinct in Hindostan, but in Ceylon, Burmah, China, and Thibet, it has even yet a greater number of fol- lowers than any other system of religious belief can claim in the world. Some cen- turies before Christ the Buddhists waged great ecclesiastical wars with the Brahmins and their caste system. They had then in India, as they have now wherever they exist, their churches, with internal arrangements not un- like our own, and their monasteries, with hordes of monks, who practised celibacy, shaved their crowns, and lived by alms.'" The caves of Karli are the finest of several fine specimens which survive of Buddhist early architecture, dating back as far perhaps as the first century. They tell their own story regard- ing this venerable and strange “ body.” The illustrations (p. 259)+ will convey a better idea than any I could give of what meets the eye and so powerfully affects the mind of the traveller. To come suddenly on such massive and imposing architecture in a wild recess of rocks and brushwood, is in itself impressive, * Speaking of the purposes of these chaityas (churches) and monasteries, Mr. Fergusson says: — “ Any one who has seen Buddhist priests celebrate either matins or vespers, or their more pompous ceremonies, in one of their temples, will have no difficulty in understanding the use of every part of these edifices. To those who have not witnessed these ceremonies, it will suffice to say that in all the principal forms they re- semble the Roman Catholics. This has attracted the atten- tion of every Roman Catholic priest or missionary who has visited Buddhist countries from the earliest missions to China to the most recent journey into Thibet of Messrs. Hue and Gabet. All the latter can suggest, by way of explanation, is, ‘ Que le diable y est pour beaucoup.’ ” f For these beautiful drawings of the Karli caves I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. Fergusson. They appear in his masterly work, the “History of Architecture,” published by Mr. Murray. Good Words, April i. 1869. liiilhi In 1 1 "i -rTccm ' | r VIEW OF THE KARLI CAVE. CENTRE AISLE OF THE KARLI CAVE. PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. [Good Words, April i, 1869. 26-, and more especially so when associated with thoughts of the vast antiquity of the system of belief which they represent, and of its still powerful influence on so large a portion of the human race. The details of this caverned hill are also most striking. In a recess on each side of the doorway there is a most original, and to me most appropriate, archi- tectural ornament; — elephants in bold re- lief fronting the spectator with their heads and trunks, as if bearing up on their huge and powerful backs the mass of sculptured rock above. The interior of the “ church,” too, is very impressive : the centre aisle has fifteen pil- lars, twenty-five feet high, on each side, sepa- rating it from the two side aisles. At the end there is a dome-shaped building, called a Dagopa , like a high altar, within an apse surrounded by seven pillars. The roof is arched with ribs of timber, probably as old as the excavation. There is no light ex- cept from the great open window above, through which it falls directly upon the “ altar,” leaving the rest of the cathedral in shadow. The length is one hundred and eighty-six feet, the breadth forty-five, and the height forty-five A Around the church are the various halls and cells of a monastery, which are also cut out of the living rock. There are three storeys, and the ascent from the lower to some of the higher being interrupted, the strong arms of guides are required to push one up, as through a wide chimney, and across rather awkward gaps. The upper story is a noble vikara or hall, with an open bal- cony or verandah supported by stone pillars. From this there is a commanding view. There is a raised dais at the end of the hall, as if meant to be occupied by the superiors of the monastery. Around it are the small cells of the monks, each having had a door, probably of stone. Within is the narrow stone bed on which the ascetics lay. On the walls are sculptures — figures of saints with the halo round their heads. I was very thankful to see this dead monu- ment which so vividly recalled a living past. We reached the station in time to catch the train for Bombay. After parting from our friends, we once more dived into the Ghauts — once more managed to get on the break — once more roared for sixteen miles down an incline of 1,831 feet; dived through I know not how many tunnels ; crept across * For a full description of this and other Buddhist caves I refer the reader to Mr. Fergusson’s Handbook of Architec- ture. tottering bridges ; gazed into savage ravines ; admired more than ever the splendid scenery, — for a true idea of which I am happy to refer to the very accurate and artistic illus- trations furnished me by the Rev. Francis Gell (see pp. 256, 257), whose Indian sketch- books, together with those of Miss Frere, generously placed at my disposal, have done much to revive my impressions of Eastern scenes. At the Narel station we looked up to Ma- theran with longing eyes, and much regretted that we could not see this famous and beau- tiful sanitarium. We stopped again at Tan- nah, and admired the views of mountain, sea, and rich foliage. We passed through the palm groves — along the first bit of railway laid down in India ; and then Bombay was reached with its moist heat, — from which I sought refuge as speedily as possible under the old hospitable roof of “ Graham’s Bungalow.” Best of all there were letters from home. Strange how, what is otherwise a mere trifle, may minister to one’s strength and comfort at the moment when both are needed. In the first letter I opened was one in large Roman capitals, from my youngest boy, who could not write, but who, wishing to contribute to the family budget, had copied it from print. He had himself selected a verse from the metrical version of the Scotch Psalms, which he begged no one might read until it met my eyes. It was this “ The Lord thee keeps, the Lord thy "shade On thy right hand doth stay : The moon by night thee shall not smite, Nor yet the sun by day. The Lord shall keep thy soul ; He shall Preserve thee from all ill. Henceforth thy going out and in God keep for ever will.” These were the first words from home I received in India — and as I read them I “ thanked God and took courage.” As Coleridge says, — “ Well, it is a father’s tale,” and as such it may be forgiven by the reader. And now that I have once more returned to Bombay, and must soon leave it again, what more can I say about it ? Were I speaking at the fireside, especially to a lady friend who had “ nothing particular to occupy her,” and therefore could listen to my easy-going gossip, I can quite understand how she might insist on my answering a number of ques- tions, and allege that I had really given no information whatever, at all events had by no means exhausted my subject. As many of my readers may agree with my imaginary questioner, it may be prudent in me to compromise matters, by myself suggesting Good Words, April r, 1869.! PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. 261 questions, to which I am to reply. The convenience of such an arrangement of question and answer will be cordially ad- mitted by all the members of the newly- elected Parliament. Well then, courteous reader, before I start in the steamer, what would you like to hear about ? “ Did you not preach ? and did you not address meetings?” We did all that. But j who would tolerate an account by us of our j own sermons and speeches, or even of our ! audiences ? Charity must assume that they j were all excellent. “And what of the clergy and missionaries whom you met ? ” What more need I say of our brethren ! We found them in every- thing to be indeed our brethren. As my friend Dr. Watson once remarked, “ The clergy, like sherry, get mellowed by a voyage round the Cape.” Whatever be their cha- racteristic on this side of the Cape, we certainly found them all we could wish on the other. Their friendliness was a wine which cheered the heart. We assisted Dr. Wilson, for example, in dispensing the com- munion to his native church, and such fel- Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy's Hospital. lowship would, in present circumstances, be impossible in this our “ liberal ” and “ evan- gelical ” Scotland. It is not improbable that our common missions to the heathen may be the means of uniting our churches for mission work both at home and abroad, and ; thus manifest that oneness of life and spirit ' which is the grand argument for the truth of Christianity, because evidencing the power of our living Lord as “all and in all.” Nor need I here narrate all our happy inter- course with our own brethren, especially the Scotch chaplains, the Rev. Messrs. McPherson and Paton, and the missionaries, the Rev. Mr. Cameron and Mr. Melvin, in our own institution. My silence regarding these and other friends does not arise from want of gratitude, but from a wish to avoid as much as possible such personal allusions as would soon become like “ endless genealogies,” were I to attempt to give the names of all those in India of whom we have an affec- tionate remembrance. But my questioner not being Scotch, perhaps, does not desire further information on these points ; and being a lady, as I 262 PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. [Good Words, April 1, 1S69. assumed, would like to ask instead whether we were at any parties? To this, I answer, Yes, every day — for never were men more hospitably and generously entertained. “ And did you not dine at Government House ? ” We did, and were cordially received by the Governor, Sir Seymour Fitzgerald, who otherwise and elsewhere supported us, be- cause of the object of our mission, apart from any special letters of recommendation. “He lived in a grand oriental palace, no doubt?” Well, I have seen grander both east and west. The Governor, however, was not at the time occupying Government House proper, but was in his summer bun- galow on Malabar Point. It is a delicious residence, and when the broad carpeted verandah is lighted up at night, and a large gaily dressed party is moving about or in groups chatting, the effect is much more beautiful and comfortable-looking than any drawing-room of a more formal kind in a northern clime. The air is balmy, the trees seem to meet and mingle with the sky ; and then the stars come out to have their light reflected in the great sea. “ And what of the society ? What of the ladies ? What of the gentlemen ? ” Pardon ! me ; I dislike eaves-dropping, and abhor the ! thought of a stranger being kindly entertained, : and then giving rise to the suspicion that — “ A chiel’s ama-ng ye takin’ notes, Gude faith he’ll print them ! ” 1 What else would you expect such society to be, save very much like that of well-bred and cultivated ladies and gentlemen at home ? “ Did you meet Lord Napier? ” Yes ; we : met him more than once, and had the honour of dining with him and Lady Napier, and I may, "without gossip, gratify my own feelings by recording that I have seldom met any one with whom I was so irresistibly captivated. But a truce to this play of question and answer. I will now take up at random a few stray gleanings, and bind them in my Bombay sheaf. We had a splendid St. Andrew’s dinner, at which we proved most satisfactorily to our- selves, not only that the cold, wet, and small northern province called Scotland has con- tributed a fair share to the world’s work, in every department of it, and in every region of the earth ; but also that the Scotch are the chief pillars on which rest all that is worth upholding. This will of course seem a more than doubtful assertion to those who assume that the Scotch are always in a more or less tottering condition from other than purely natural causes ; that indeed the majo- rity of them cannot stand at all, especially on Sundays, when they are all supposed by Londoners to be either depressedly drowsy ui church, or mad drunk in the public-house. But there is no such belief .among the Scotch themselves. I thought also that the company had a general conviction, from which few will dissent, that the songs of Burns have done more to bind us together by the senti- ment of an old nationality, than any other power — except the Presbyterian Kirk ! Thus, strange to say, Knox and Burns have become allied in ways they could not have thought of. And it seems to me to be a matter of fact that the teachings, the traditions, the education, the republicanism of Scotch Presbyterianism, have had a great influence in giving to the Scotch a wonderful unity of beliefs, associa- tions, and attachments, which everywhere awakens in them a feeling of nationality and brotherhood. While Burns, on the other hand, by his genius, by his native Doric, so picturesque, so full of humour and pathos, by his wedding of the old music, that goes home to the heart, to those songs of his, in which the scenery of Scotland lives with every “ heigh and how,” every burn and flower, — has made Scotchmen all over the world feel as with one heart, and compelled them to weep or laugh as the magician wills. The heartiness of St. Andrew’s dinners arises more from this than from any “provincial- ism ” of those who attend them. “ Auld lang syne,” wherever sung, “ the warl’ ower,” will make each Scotchman firmly “ grip ” his brother’s hand as that of “ a trusty frien’.” As to the educational institutions of Bom- bay. The principal of these is the Grant Medical College, with sixty-five pupils and eight professors ; the chairs being those of anatomy, chemistry, materia-medica, surgery, medicine, midwifery, ophthalmic surgery, and medical jurisprudence. Connected with this college, is the noble hospital, the princely gift of the well-known Parsee, Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy. The year before last his fitmily erected a hospital for incurables near it ; and about the same time an ophthalmic hospital was also opened by another munificent Par- see, Mr. Cowasjee Jehhangheer, at an ex- pense of more than ^11,000. The Parsees, it will thus be seen, do more than make money and lounge in their clubs, drive about in splendid equipages, or inhabit princely houses. They have displayed such liberality as none of the natives in Western India have either manifested or imitated. For this they deserve all honour. I have no wish to speak unkindly even of their modes of sepul- Good Words, April ^869.] PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. 263 ture, in so far as these may be connected with religious convictions. But I must still indulge the hope that their tastes in this respect may change, and be made to har- monize more with those of the West. | In a note, I allude to the Elphinstone | College, and the several school systems of ! India, together with what is special to Bom- bay, and to this I must refer those who desire condensed information on these topics.* I * The present system of Government education in India ! dates from the issue of the famous “ dispatch” in 1854. There | are eight great circles of education, each having its own independent action and government, including the raising and expenditure of funds for the carrying'out of the general ; system. These circles are the three presidencies of Bengal, I Madras, and Bombay ; Scindh ; North-western Provinces ; I Oudh ; Central Provinces; British Burmah. Each of these I has its Director of Public Instruction, with his staff of in- i spectors. The annual sum expended in all India by Govern - I ment for education amounted, in the year 1866-7, to £732,875. In Great Britain the sum so expended is nearly double. The educational institutions wholly supported or assisted by grants j in aid from Government are — (1) village schools, in which the | vernacular of the district is taught ; (2) district or zillah j schools, situated in the head- quarters of the district, or what we should term the “ county town,” and in these the higher classes are instructed in English and prepared for the univer- sities ; (3) talook schools (Anglo-vernacular), which prepare for the high or district schools ; — and I may mention that a talook is as large as four or five parishes ; (4) colleges, esta- blished in some of the principal cities, such as Benares, Delhi, Agra, Lahore, or Poona, which have European professors and teachers, and give a first-class education through the English language ; (5) presidency colleges, one being at Madras, and another at Calcutta, in which a complete course is given in ! arts and law, Elphinstone college being the presidency college of Bombay; (6) technical colleges, for engineering, of which there are three, and for medicine and surgery, of wliich there are also three ; (7) normal schools. To these might be added mission and other private schools, which are under inspection, and receive grants in aid, very much, as I have said above, on the same principle as schools at home receive grants from the Privy Council. There are about 20,000 schools which receive aid from Government, and are under inspection. Education under Government inspection is thus afforded to 3,089,000 Hindoos, and 85,757 Mohammedans. Of these, 40,000 attend schools in which English is taught, some of which are capable'of educating up to the University entrance examination. Besides these schools, there are thousands of purely native schools scattered through the villages of India, where the education given is of a very meagre description. There are three universities — one 1 in each presidency. The universities have all halls for as- I sembly in the course of building ; but they do not have per- j manent professors, being constituted on the principle of the | London University. They consist of corporate bodies, whose functions are limited simply to holding examinations and granting degrees in the four faculties of arts, law, medicine, and engineering. Candidates for degrees are admitted from any school or college “affiliated” to the university, a privilege which it obtains from being under supervision, and by proving its capacity to give the education required for obtaining a degree. No one can “matriculate” without passing the entrance examination. This matriculation examination is an important stimulus to the schools. The standard is about the same as in the London University, &c. Two years after passing their entrance examination, the students are required to undergo another examination, called “ the first examination in arts;” and at the end of the fourth year comes the final examination for the degree. In Calcutta and Bombay Universities degrees in arts can only be obtained by passing an examination in English and one classical lan- guage, i.e., Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Hebrew, or Arabic. In Madras University the vernacular languages are accepted in lieu of a classical language. In the year 1867 eight hundred students matriculated at the University of Calcutta. It is conjectured that in a year or two there will be four thousand undergraduates on its rolls. The number of young men who aspire after the higher educa- tion increases every year. While religion is not directly taught in the Government schools, yet the Government books have provided, instead of the wretched trash formerly used, a pure and wholesome literature for the scholars, and for the schools of India gene- rally ; and not only this, but the selections for the training of those seeking a degree have been made with the greatest care from the very best books in English literature ; and, when such works as Butler’s “Analogy,” or Coleridge’s “Aids to There is a nationality in which the Chris- tian Church always takes a great interest — the Jews, who are largely represented in Bombay and its immediate neighbourhood. Dr. Wilson says of them : — “In the island of Bombay, and on the adjoining coast on the continent, from the Puna road to the Bankot river, there is a population of ‘ Bene-Israel ’ amounting to about 8,000 or 10,000 souls. In worldly affairs they occupy but a comparatively humble posi- tion. In Bombay, with the exception of a few shop- keepers and writers, they are principally artisans, particularly masons and carpenters. On the continent, they are generally engaged in agriculture, or in the manufacture and sale of oil. Some of them, often bearing an excellent character as soldiers, are to be found in most of the regiments of native infantry in this Presidency. They can easily be recognised. They are a little fairer than the other natives of India of the same rank of life with themselves ; and their physiognomy seems to indicate a union in their case of both the Abrahamic and Arabic blood. Their dress is a modification of that of the Hindus and Musalmans among whom they dwell. They do not eat with persons belonging to other communities, though they drink from their vessels without any scruples of caste. They have generally two names, one of which is derived from the more ancient Israel- itish personages mentioned in the Bible, and the other from Hindu usage. Their social and religious discipline is administered by their elders, the chief of whom in the principal villages in which they reside are denominated Kddhis , or judges. They are all circumcised according to the law of Moses ; and, though till lately they had no manuscript copy of the Pentateuch, or of other books of the Bible, they receive the whole of the Old Testament as of Divine authority. When they began, about fifty years ago, Reflection,” are admitted, and such a subject as the history of the Jews is taught as a branch of general history, one mayjudge what a boon the system has been, even although it should in many points be found defective. We only hope that it may be let alone for a time, and have a fair trial, and not be “ tinkered ” by new men and new experiments. I shall not discuss the question of the religious results on the minds of the natives, but may briefly consider it in a future paper. The public expenditure for education in Bombay is upwards of £90,000 per annum (1866-7), which bears the ratio of i-i2th per cent, to the presidential revenues, while the parliamen- tary grants in aid to some schools only in England is i| per cent, on the imperial revenue. Grants in aid are given in Bombay by payment for results, — £2,400 having been thus expended in 1866-7. There are in Bombay Presidency 1,632 Government col- leges ; schools with 106,794 pupils on the rolls; and 56 private institutions receiving aid, with 6,290 pupils on the roll. Of private institutions under inspection, but not receiving aid, there are 1,754, with 117,547 pupils on the roll. There is a great book department in connection with the educational. Of books 273,006 were issued in 1866-7, at a cost of upwards of £11,000. The late able superintendent, Sir A. Grant, complains in his last report that there is not connected with the Bombay University, the fountain-head of science and literature for fifteen millions of people, a single professor of history, political economy, Latin, Greek, Arabic, or Hebrew, nor of geology, astronomy, or even of Indian law ! Native female education is hardly begun in the Bombay Presidency in so far as Government is concerned. The ex- penditure on female schools of every description, including grants in aid, is under £400 per annum. The Parsee schools (privately supported) are reported as being the most efficient in the Presidency. From the apparent willingness of the people to receive instruction from schools under Government, and from the efforts now being made by Miss Carpenter for the training of female teachers — an immensely difficult task in India, owing to the social habits of the people — it is to be hoped that female education will steadily and rapidly advance, and in the long run produce vast changes in the native family life. 264 HAPLESS LOVE. [Good Words, April 1, 1869. particularly to attract the attention of our countrymen, they were found combining the worship of Jehovah with divination and idolatry, serving other gods whom neither they nor their fathers had known, even wood and stone. From the Arabian Jews visiting Bombay, they had received portions of the Hebrew Liturgy of the Sephardim, for use in their humble synagogues, or places of assembly. They denominate themselves Bene-Israel, or Sons of Israel ; and till lately they viewed the designation of Iehudi , or Jew, as one of reproach. They have been settled in India for many centuries.” I am quite aware of the prejudice which exists among many professing Christians against the J ews. How unworthy of us ! more especially when it is remembered that the Saviour and all his Apostles were Jews according to the flesh; that the Christian Church itself is but a growth from Judaism ; and that we Gentiles have -been grafted into that old olive tree. There are six schools, attended by upwards of one hundred and seventy children of the Bene-Israel, in connection with the Free Church Mission at Bombay. But now we must bid farewell to Bombay, and proceed by sea along the Malabar coast to Madras. Khandalla. HAPLESS LOVE. HIC. Why do you sadly go alone, O fair friend ? Are your pigeons flown, Or has the thunder killed your bees, Or he-goats barked your apple-trees ? Or has the red-eared bull gone mad, Or the mead turned from good to bad ? Or did you find the merchant lied About the gay cloth scarlet-dyed ? And did he sell you brass for gold, Or is there murrain in the fold ? ILLE. Nay, no such thing has come to me. In bird and beast and field and tree, And all the things that make my store, Am I as rich as e’er before ; And no beguilers have I known But Love and Death ; and Love is gone, Therefore am I far more than sad, And no more know good things from bad. HIC. Woe worth the while ! Yet coming days May bring another, good to praise. ILLE. Nay, never will I love again, For loving is but joyful pain If all be at its very best ; A rose-hung bower of all unrest ; But when at last things go awry, What tongue can tell its misery ? And soon or late shall this befall — The gods send death upon us all. HIC. Nay, then, but tell me how she died, And how it did to thee betide To love her ; for the wise men say To talk of grief drives grief away. ILLE. Alas, O friend, it happed to me To see her passing daintily Before my homestead day by day. Would she had gone some other way : For one day, as she rested there Beneath the long-leaved chestnuts fair, In very midst of mid-day heat, I cast myself before her feet, And prayed for pity and for love. Good Words, April x, 1869.] HAPLESS LOVE. 265 How could I dream that words could move A woman ? Soft she looked at me ; “ Thou sayest that I a queen should be,” She answered with a gathering smile ; “ Well, I will wait a little while ; Perchance the gods thy will have heard.” And even with that latest word, The clash of arms we heard anigh ; And from the wood rode presently A fair knight well apparelled. And even as she turned her head, He shortened rein, and cried aloud — “ O beautiful, among the crowd Of queens thou art the queen of all !” But when she let her eyelids fall, And blushed for pleasure, and for shame, Then quickly to her feet he came, And said, “ Thou shalt be queen indeed ; For many a man this day shall bleed Because of me, and leave me king Ere noontide fall to evening.” Then on his horse he set the maid j Before him, and no word she said Clear unto me, but murmuring j Beneath her breath some gentle thing, | She clung unto him lovingly ; i Nor took they any heed of me. Through shade and sunlight on they rode, | But ’neath the green boughs I abode, j Nor noted aught that might betide. The sun waned, and the shade spread wide ; The birds came twittering over head ; But there I lay as one long dead. But ere the sunset, came a rout Of men-at-arms with song and shout, And bands of lusty archers tall, And spearmen marching like a wall, Their banners hanging heavily, That no man might their blazon see ; And ere their last noise died away, I heard the clamour of the fray That swelled, and died, and rose again ; Yet still I brooded o’er my pain Until the red sun nigh was set, And then methought I e’en might get The rest I sought, nor wake forlorn Midst fellow men the morrow morn ; So forth I went unto the field, One man without a sword or shield. But none was there to give me rest, Tried was it who was worst and best, And slain men lay on every side ; For flight and chase were turned aside, And all men got on toward the sea ; But as I went right heavily I saw how close beside the way Over a knight a woman lay Lamenting, and I knew in sooth My love, and drew a-near for ruth. There lay the knight who would be king Dead slain before the evening, And ever my love cried out and said, “ O sweet, in one hour art thou dead And I am but a maiden still ! The gods this day have had their will Of thee and me ; whom all these years They kept apart ; that now with tears And blood and bitter misery Our parting and our death might be.” Then did she rise and look around, And took his drawn sword from the ground And on its bitter point she fell — No more, no more, O friend, to tell ! No more about my life, O friend ! One course it shall have to the end. O Love, come from the shadowy shore, And by my homestead as before, Go by with sunlight on thy feet ! Come back, if but to mock me, sweet ! HIC. O fool ! what love of thine was this, Who never gave thee any kiss, Nor would have wept if thou hadst died ? Go now, behold the world is wide. Soon shalt thou find some dainty maid To sit with in thy chestnut shade, To rear fair children up for thee, As those few days pass silently, Uncounted, that may yet remain ’Twixt thee and that last certain pain. ILLE. Art thou a God? Nay, if thou wert, Wouldst thou belike know of my hurt, And what might sting and what might heal ? The world goes by ’twixt woe and weal And heeds me not ; I sit apart Amid old memories. To my heart My love and sorrow must I press ; It knoweth its own bitterness. WILLIAM MORRIS. X--I8 266 THE MUSICAL PITCH QUESTION. [Good words. April x. ik* THE MUSICAL PITCH QUESTION. What is musical pitch ? Musical sound is the effect on the human ear of periodic vibrations of the atmosphere, produced, in their turn, by some disturbing force. Pitch is the pace at which these vibra- tions are made. The greater this pace, the more acute (higher, or sharper) the sound ; the lesser, the more grave (lower, or flatter). Vibrations are estimated according to their number per second. • The number involved in the production of even the lowest appreciable sound is far too great to be counted. Thus, the C of a 32-ft. organ pipe is the result of 16 double vibrations per second of the column of air contained in it ; i.e., the air in the pipe (and consequently the surrounding atmo- sphere) moves to and fro — contracts and expands, sixteen times per second when that C impinges upon the ear. How is even this low number, crowded into so short a space of time — not to speak of numbers enor- mously higher — ascertained and recorded? Is musical pitch merely comparative l Is one sound only sharper or flatter than another ? or is the sharpness or flatness of every sound absolute , and capable of individual estimate ? The pitch of, or number of vibrations due to, any given sound can be ascertained as certainly and easily as the height of any given mountain or the distance between any two given places ; and this not by one method only, but by at least six methods, more or less differing from, and therefore confirming the accuracy of, one another. Some of these have been known to, and used by, scientific men, since the beginning of the seventeenth century. A brief description of even the sim- plest would be probably unintelligible ; and for a long one, I have not space. I must, therefore, ask my reader to accept as proved that though 512 vibrations made in a second cannot be counted, 8 can; and that the number due to any note once ascertained, that due to any other is simply a matter of easy arithmetical calculation. ■ Consequently, as there would be no difficulty in tuning a pianoforte in St. Petersburg and another in Naples, on the same day, and at the same hour, to precisely the same pitch, so there is no difficulty in recovering the pitch of any given note at any given past time, supposing it . to have been ascertained and recorded scientifically. Such record, it must be ob- served, wifi be altogether irrespective of tuning-forks , the authenticity and unaltered conditions of which must always be mat- ters of some doubt. Of course, the evi- dence of many tuning-forks, collected from different quarters, all of which told the same story, with only trifling variations, would go far to prove what the pitch was when they were made; and, in the conduct of a “case,” to which I propose to intro- duce my reader, I shall perhaps call this evidence into court; only, however, as con- firmatory of other evidence, direct and in- direct, much more worthy of consideration. Too much, perhaps, has been said about certain tuning-forks, supposed to have been used as authoritative standards of pitch at this or that epoch. Once for all ; if all the tuning-forks in existence were broken up into knife-blades, the relative pitches of the present and such past times as we care to know about, could be quite as satisfactorily ascertained as it can be now. The ground being cleared thus far, let us get on to this “ case,” to the consideration of which it is the object of this paper to draw attention. It is asserted on the one hand that, for about 250 years past, pitch has been rising — gradually, insensibly at any particular mo- ment, but as certainly without intermission — inexorably, so to speak. That this rise now approximates in amount to a minor third : — in other words, that the A of to-day is nearly identical with the C of the seventeenth cen- tury. Moreover, that this elevation has been attained with an accelerated velocity,— that the pitch has within only thirty years risen a semitone, and that it still continues to rise. That this rise, which has been attended with no advantage to any class of musical per- formers, is in the highest degree inconvenient and distressing to one class ; and that the public are every way losers by a state of things under which, possibly instrumental, certainly vocal performance is deteriorated in sonority and sweetness. The answers to these charges and asser- tions are very various ; so various, indeed, that, in some instances, they answer not so much the charges as one another. It is de- nied that the pitch is essentially different from what it has been always; or, granting that it is higher than it was a century ago, that it has risen at all considerably within the memory of living men. Or it is admitted that there has been an elevation since (say) the end of the, last century, and that this eleva- tion, so far from being a matter for regret, is matter for congratulation, having been at- Good Words, April i, i£6g.] THE MUSICAL PITCH QUESTION. 267 tended with an increase of “brilliancy” in in- strumental performance ; while, as for singers, the complaints we hear come only from those whose physical gifts were always insufficient, or are now on the wane. Finally, that the public have no interest in the matter. It must be admitted that the amount of direct evidence as to the pitch in the last years of the seventeenth century (the epoch of Corelli in Italy, of Purcell in England) is very small. It is otherwise, however, with indirect evidence ; and this, strange to say, points unequivocally to the existence of two contemporaneous pitches — one for the church, the other for the chamber — an organ pitch and an orchestral pitch, each no doubt having its own varieties, but of which the former was always considerably the higher. That this was the case in Germany down to a comparatively recent period, is attested by the existence,* very recent if not actual, of organs tuned to a higher pitch than has ever yet been reached by any modern orchestra. This was distin- guished in Germany from the secular pitch, or Kammerton , as the Chorton. Nor were these two contemporary pitches confined to Ger- many, The evidence we have as to former | English practice, though of another kind, I leads to the conclusion that it was akin to the German. Much, perhaps all, the church music of the age of Purcell indicates the use of an English Chorton. Not only is the tessa- j tura of all the parts, to the eye, very low, but ; certain passages, not in exceptional solos, but in choral services for daily use, are beyond the reach of the majority of bass voices, even at our present pitch. On the other hand, the secular music of the same masters looks as ex- travagantly high as the church music looks low — indicating equally the use of a Kammer- j ton. It is incredible that any considerable j number of persons should ever have sung the songs in the Orpheus Britannicus or the Amphion Anglicus at a pitch even approxi- mating to ours; equally incredible that entire volumes of chamber music should have been sold in large numbers which hardly any one could perform as it was printed. For Purcell’s G substitute our E, and all difficulty disap- pears ; his passages are then at once brought within convenient reach of the voices for which they were intended. There can be no reasonable doubt that in the last years of the seventeenth century, as the church pitch was much higher, so the chamber pitch in Eng - 1 land was much lower — perhaps to the extent I of a minor third— -than it is now. In the | course of the first half of the last century the higher or church pitch seems to have gone j out of use in England. Nothing like the dif- ference of tessatura which exists between the church and chamber music of Purcell and Blow is observable in that of Handel. The respective parts in the Chandos Anthems, the Dettingen TeDeum , his operas and oratorios, might severally be sung by the same per- formers, at the same pitch. What was that pitch ? What do we really know about it ? We have seen that at an epoch consider- ably anterior to Handel’s (1710 — 59), several methods of ascertaining the paces of vibra- tion were known to men of science. These, however, they do not seem to have brought to bear on practical music ; in any case no reliable records of their having done so have come down to us of an earlier date than the latter part of the last century. One excep- tion may be named in the case of an eminent writer on acoustics, Dr. Smith, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, who, about the year 1755, ascertained and recorded the pitch of the organ in Trinity Chapel as being 3881- vibrations per second for A, = 466i for C. This organ does not seem ever to have been used in combination with orchestral instru- ments, and its pitch, therefore, at this time is unimportant — of itself. In connection, how- ever, with the fact that it is considerably lower than that of an existing tuning-fork, said to have belonged to Handel (which gives 416 vibrations per second for A, = 499! for C), it deserves attention, and tends to inspire confidence in the authenticity and unaltered condition of the latter, — -neither of which of themselves admit of irrefragable proof. Of the pitch in various years and places since the latter part of the last century we have abundant and thoroughly reliable evi- dence. The following table presents the results of various observations made and recorded in the years and at the places named in it, by Chladni, Fischer, Opelt, Lissajous, Scheibler, and other eminent acousticians who have lived and written dur- ing the last hundred years : — A. c. Theoretical Pitch 426!=: 512 Paris, Chapel Royal 1788 .. 409 = 490^ ,, Grand Opera 1821 .. 431 — 5 1 7^- „ „ 1835 •• 449 — 538 ^ ,, Conservatoire 1795.. 0.430— 5*6 „ „ 1833 .. 435 = 522 Diapason Normal 1859 . . 435 — 522 Stuttgard (Congress) 1834 .. 440 — 528 Vienna, various places 1834 •• 434 — 5 20 t ,, Karnthnerthor Theatre 1865 .. 466 — 559T Berlin, various places 1822 . . 437 = 524;?- ,, ,, 1833 .. 442 530.I Dresden ,, 1852 . . 439 — 526-f St. Petersburg ,, 1771. .417 — 500?- „ „ 1800 - 437 — 524I 268 THE MUSICAL PITCH QUESTION. [Good Words, April x.iSS* A. C. St. Petersburg, various places 1865 . . 460 zz: 552 Cambridge, Trin. Col r 755 •• 388£zz: 466! London, Handel’s tuning-fork c. 1740 .. 416 :zz 4995- ,, Philharmonic Soc. 1812-42 .. 433 z= 519! „ Italian Opera 1859 . . 455 zz: 546 From this it appears that in 1788 A, in Paris, was about 20 vibrations per second higher than A in Cambridge, in 1755, an< ^ 7 vibrations per second lower than A in Lon- don at about the same time, according to “ Handel’s tuning-fork.” Some years after this (in 1795), on the foundation of the Con- servatoire de Mnsique , the orchestral pitch in : France is known to have been suddenly raised nearly a semitone. It appears to have experienced no further change till the year 1821, after which it gradually rose till 1859, when, by a legislative enactment, it was con- siderably lowered, and the “ Diapason Nor- mal” (A at 435 = C at 522), identical with that of the Conservatoire in 1833, introduced. The pitch which -obtained in Paris imme- diately before this enactment has been, how- ever, considerably exceeded in altitude by that of other places ; as many as 460 vibrations per second for A having been reached in St. Petersburg, and even 4 66 in one of the orchestras in Vienna. With these two excep- tions, the average pitch of London was, in 1859, the highest in Europe. To what cause can this prodigious elevation (in which all musical Europe is implicated) be at- tributed? Is it a matter of choice, or a matter of chance ? or have we already at- tained in music that point at which in all other arts decay and decline have had their beginning ? — that point at which a liking for the huge, the crowded, and the coarse, takes the place of a love for the majestic, the clear, and the refined? Is high pitch only the necessary complement to insupportable in- I tensity, extravagant pace, and exaggerated emphasis ? With those who defend it, it is, of course, a matter of choice, so far as choice .acts in the matter. They, tell us that a high pitch conduces to “ brilliancy” in instru- mental performance. It is extremely difficult ; to deal with an assertion of this kind (which, by dint of repetition, has become a sort of public opinion), expressing itself as it does by a word which can only be figuratively applied to anything that appeals to the ear. It is much to be desired that some one would tell us what “brilliancy” in music exactly means. Is it force, or is it quality ? Or is it something compounded of the two ? In the absence of information on this head, let us assume that it is something desirable, — say, the utmost force combined with the best I . quality that can be got out of each instru- ment. Let us consider in what way high pitch is likely to, or can possibly contribute to these. First for the wind-instruments. Of these the majority — the wood instruments especially — are of recent facture, designed, bored, and voiced to something like the present pitch. They have the advantage, therefore, of being used at or about their normal pitch. But they are inevitably of somewhat smaller capa- city — contain a shorter column of air — than their predecessors of other days. That their voicing should be more “brilliant” on this account is simply incredible. Of the brass instruments precisely the same may be said ; with this addition, — that, given the same instruments (and many of these are not new), elevation of pitch increases the difficulty of reaching the extreme notes. Is it the present elevation we have to thank for the all but expulsion from the orchestra of the most refined of brass instruments, the trum- pet, and the substitution for it of the coarsest — cornets, cornopeans, and saxe-tubas dire ! But the brilliancy about which we are talk- ing is not “pre-eminently seen,” i.e., heard, in wind-instruments. It is from the violin family we get (so we are told) this accession of strength and sweetness. As with the wind- instruments, elevation of pitch will here, it may be supposed, be met by alteration of j size. The new instruments, of course, will I be of smaller pattern than the old, and the old will somehow be made to tally with the new. N ot so. The violin (and all its belong- ings) resembles the voice in many things, and among them in its having attained perfection a very long time ago. The models of three centuries since are the models of to-day ; and the highest compliment that could be paid to a contemporary “luthier” would be to tell him that his last violin might be mistaken for a work of Stradiuarius, who died at the age of ninety-seven, in 1733. The violin does not accommodate itself to the present pitch by any change of model, but by the use of thinner strings, and in the case of old instru- ments, by internal modification which de- stroys its identity, and would seem likely to diminish its resonance. How thinner strings and internal modifications can increase the “brilliancy” of violins, supposed to have come perfect from the hands of their makers, is a puzzle I leave to the initiated..* * Everything about these admirable instruments (the works of Stradiuarius) has been foreseen, calculated, and deter- mined, in the clearest and most certain manner. The bar alone has proved too weak ; in consequence of the gradual elevation of pitch since the beginning of the eighteenth cen- Good Words, April i, 1869.] THE MUSICAL PITCH QUESTION. 269 But admitting, if only for the sake of peace, that such boundless improvement in instru- mental performance has been obtained by such apparently insufficient and even dete- riorating agencies, what is to be said of the effect of the present pitch on the voice? Our greatest performer on the rarest of voices has had the courage to answer the question in the most decisive and unequivocal manner —fadis ?ion verbis — by declining to sing at it any longer. In a report, with which the present writer had a good deal to do, issued by the com- mittee appointed by the Council of the Society of Arts, on “Uniform Musical Pitch,” some ten years since, it was observed : — “ Some impediments stand in the way of ascertaining directly the effects of the present high pitch on the quality and probable dura- tion of the voice. A remonstrance in respect of it on the part of a singer might be too readily interpreted into a confession of weak- ness ; and a premature decay of physical power might be imputed to an artist who protested against the gratuitous exertion which an extravagantly high pitch obliges him to undergo.” That which was indicated in this paragraph as possible or probable has come to pass. Mr. Sims Reeves did but refuse to do violence any longer to his voice and his ear, by singing music at a pitch in some cases nearly a tone higher than that at which its composer intended it to be sung — “ When straight a barbarous noise environs ” him, — and a chorus, at even a higher pitch than has yet been tried among us, is heard far and wide, the burden of which is that our admir- able tenor has been overtaken by “ a prema- ture decay of physical power,” and (to speak plainly) is losing his voice. Mr. Reeves must have known that the course he was about to take would be followed by this imputation — as certainly as the head is followed by the tail ; and he took it. Having counted the cost of his procedure, he proceeded, as none but a man conscious of his ability to meet that cost would have dared to proceed. To stop now to answer this imputation would be the idlest waste of time and words. The answer, indeed (if it need an answer), will be better sung than said ; and sung it will be, we may confidently hope, for many years to come, with un- diminished vigour and, if possible, increased refinement. tury, the inevitable result of which has been a considerable increase of tension and a much greater pressure on their upp ;r surface. Thence the necessity for re-barring all the old violins and violoncellos. — Fetis. Antoine Stradivari. Paris. 1656. It is to be regretted that so few of his vocal cotemporaries, male or female, should have dared to come forward to support Mr. Reeves’ protest ;* but it is not in the least to be wondered at. V ery young athletes, of what- ever kind, never care to husband their strength. Not having ascertained its limits, they think it has none. Athletes who are no longer young may be glad to be spared unnecessary trouble, but only on condition that nothing is said about it. No amount of youthful freshness, or of manly or womanly vigour, would guarantee its possessor who ran the risk Mr. Reeves has done, from the charge which has been brought against him. Few, like him, have the courage, or are in the posi- tion, to brave it. So the very young singers, and the singers who do not wish to be thought otherwise than young, however ac- ceptable to them change might be, are silent as to the existing state of things. They sing “ and make no sign.” But, it may be said — it has been said already— what has the public to do with all this ? So long as we (the public) are enter- tained, what is it to us that the physical powers of Mr. A., Mrs. B., and Miss C., are tasked to the utmost, that the work which should be pleasant and easy is (from what- ever cause) disagreeable and difficult to them, or that their careers in consequence are now and then brought to an untimely end ? Assuming, for the sake of argument, that the public cares as little about the comfort and welfare of those who minister to its pleasure as some who profess to represent it would have us believe, the public has at least an interest in the preservation of its own property. If anything be public pro- perty, it is surely the voice of a public singer; and the voice of a singer, public or private, will not long maintain its strength or its sweetness if it be misused — made to do work for which it is unfit. Rome was not built in a day ; and a singer is the (often tardy) fruit of a long course of cultivation. Is it not Colley Cibber who accounts for the rarity of actresses eminent in youthful parts, in the all but impossibility that a woman should acquire skill enough to do justice to them, before her youth is over and her beauty gone ? Sentiment apart, it is difficult to conceive anything in which the public could have a deeper interest than the preservation of the instrument — never, alas ! to be replaced by another — of one whom the sunshine of its own favour has ripened into that rare pro- * Mademoiselle Nillson presents an honourable exception. We have not yet been told that she is losing her voice. Per- haps we shall. 2 7 o THE MUSICAL PITCH QUESTION. fGood Words, April X,X86 9 . duct of nature, art, and circumstance — a great singer. But the public has an interest closer than any personal interest, in the depression of musical pitch ; musical performance, of what- ever kind, would be not merely facilitated, but improved by it. Not only would vocalists find the amount of their physical labour lightened, not only might they hope for a prolongation of their artistic career by its general adoption, but they would inevitably sing better , as well as more easily and longer, j for it. Every instrument has a pitch especially becoming to it — at which it answers most readily to the touch, at which it yields the sweetest, strongest, and most certain sound. And of all instruments, that by which this truth is most emphatically asserted is the voice. In every voice there is a pitch, at which every passage possible to it can be best executed. A passage may be possible to it higher or lower, but in the one case generally with a loss of sweetness, in the other of strength. Now, the structure of an artificial instru- ment, a violin or an obofe, admits of very considerable modification. The body of the one may be formed on a different model, or its strings may be thicker or thinner ; the pipe or the reed of the other may be short- ened or contracted to almost any extent ; but the human voice, so far as we know its his- tory, has been what it is now (i.e., has had the same limits as to compass) from time im- memorial. Out of many millions of contem- porary basses and sopranos, we here and there find one of the former who can touch the B flat below the bass stave, of the latter the F above the treble ; among certain races, higher or lower voices are more or less numerous than among others ; certain cli- mates, too, seem more favourable to the produc- tion of the one than of the other ; but “ there is not the slightest evidence to justify a belief that the average soprano of the nineteenth century differs, or that the average tenor of the twentieth century will differ, from the average soprano or tenor of the eighteenth.” * The progress of music during the last cen- tury has been chiefly in the direction of instrumental composition and execution. With exceptions, insignificant in quantity though not in quality, the instrumental music of the seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth centuries — even that of Corelli and of Han- del — has little more than an historical in- terest for the average performer or auditor of * Report of the Committee appointed by the Society of Arts on Uniform Musical Pitch, London, 1859. to-day. Not so the vocal music. The Gallo-Belgian, Italian, and English masters even of the sixteenth century, and earlier, are still not only models for students who would write well for voices, but their compositions are still able to give pleasure to the unlearned and unlearning auditor. While, for grandeur in the combination, or refinement in the succession of musical sounds, for contra- puntal skill or melodic grace, in the double chorus or the single and often self-supporting air, none, even of the giants who have come between him and ourselves, have surpassed (should it not be said have equalled?) our countryman by adoption, Handel. It will, of course, be admitted at once that the in- ventor of such passages as those which abound in the works of this mighty master is likely to have known how best to give effect to them; i.e., where , in the great system of sounds, to place them so that they would be heard to the best advantage. Assuming even that he cared little for the convenience of his performers, it is likely at least that he would arrange his passages so that they might be most effectively performed. Now nothing is ever as effectively performed as it might be ! the performance of which is unreasonably, difficult and attended with pain to the per- formers. It is certain that a large number of Handel’s passages, both choral and solo are , at the present pitch, unreasonably difficult, and that the performance of them is attended with pain, not merely to the performers', but to the auditors. Who now-a-days hears with pleasure, — nay, who, with “ears to hear,” ever hears without suffering, that passage, so sublime in conception, in the Hallelujah Chorus, which is made by those successive steps on the words “King of kings?” The drums may beat and the fifes may play, the organ may roar and the violin bows scrape — “ a percer le tympan d’un quinze-vingts,” — still, clear and compact the Amazonian phalanx penetrates the mass, and by dint of a musical “system” altogether its own, cul- minates in a G — much nearer to Handel’s than ours ; while the auditor, to whom every step of the ascent has been as every turn of the screw to a heretic under torture, gasps out his joy as the summit is not attained, that that much at least of his evening’s work is over. It is not at all improbable that Handel liked something, and occasionally arrived at something akin to, what is now called “ bril- liancy ;” nor is it altogether impossible that he may have known how to give it to his composi- tions, when he wanted to do so. I put it to the most enthusiastic advocate of high pitch, Good Words, April x, 1869.] THE MUSICAL PITCH QUESTION. 271 whether, if that great master had desired to add to the “ brilliancy ” of the passage to which I have alluded by an elevation of pitch, it might not have occurred to him to write it a semitone or even a tone higher? Evidence is not wanting to show that he was acquainted with the keys of E flat and E natural, and also that the instrumentalists of his time could play in them. He knew better ; and would not have risked a passage which could never be sung otherwise than harshly, rarely otherwise than out of tune. At one of the earliest meetings of the com- mittee on Uniform Musical Pitch, appointed by the Society of Arts, the following resolution was passed unanimously : — “ That as the basis of any recommendation of a definite pitch, the capabilities and convenience of the human voice in singing the compositions of the great vocal writers, should be the first considera- tion.” This resolution was passed nearly ten years ago, “ unanimously,” by a body deeply interested in the subject, and certainly com- petent to discuss it in all its bearings. They subsequently recommended the adoption of a certain pitch lower than that obtaining then, and, a fortiori , now. Why was it not generally adopted? Or, why was little or nothing done in the matter ? Why were things allowed to go on pretty much as before ? Partly, no doubt, because the necessity for any change has not even yet been unani- mously admitted ; but chiefly on account of the very great cost of making it. The par- ticular pitch recommended by the Society of Arts (C at 528 vibrations per second), which had already been adopted by a Congress of Musicians at Stuttgard, in 1834, was, not without protest , adopted by the Society, as a compromise. It was thought by some to be too high, too near to the present pitch, to afford the relief sought in a new one. They did not oppose its recommendation, however, because they believed — and the belief was shared by many practical instru- mentalists — that existing instruments (wind- instruments mostly) could in most cases be adapted to it with comparatively little cost. Experience seems to have justified the pro- test, as it has certainly not confirmed the belief ; seeing that the first attempt that has been made to realise the intentions of the Society has been in excess of what their committee recommended, and that the at- tempt has been carried out, not by the altera- tion of old instruments, but by the purchase of new ones, adapted to the French “ Diapa- son Normal” of 1859, which gives C at 522 vibrations per second. This attempt, doubtless connected with the protest of Mr. Sims Reeves, has been made in two choral and instrumental concerts, under the direction of Mr. Joseph Barnby. No musician who was present at the first of these can have failed to have been struck by the excellent timbre or quality, especially of the soprano and tenor voices, as well as by a certain air of ease characterizing the delivery of all the vocalists, principal or other. This was less apparent later in the performance than at the beginning ; not because the ear got used to it, but because, as the temperature rose, so did the pitch with it ; and so will it always, till our public rooms are better ventilated. By the end of the first part of the concert it was somewhat higher than that recommended by the Society of Arts ; by the end of the second part, much higher. This rise was no doubt accelerated by the organ, which, being elevated some ten feet above the highest part of the orchestra, luxuriated in a tempe- rature as many degrees higher, and therefore inevitably kept the lead, in sharpness, of all its brother instruments. Nor are these all the disadvantages under which Mr. Bamby’s expe- riment has had to be tried. The wind-instru- ments — such of them as were new — were al- ready adapted to the new state of things. N ot so the stringed instruments — all of them old. A sudden declension of pitch must for them be attended always with some loss of sono- rity. Instruments of this class will not, at a moment’s notice, adapt themselves to a pitch other than that to which they have been long used — or mis-used.* They are animal ’ as well as vegetable, and resent unaccus- tomed treatment — new strings, or relaxed tension of old, and being made to vibrate otherwise than of yore. But these and other shortcomings notwithstanding, Mr. Barnby’s experiment was quite successful enough to justify perseverance in it, — with a little modi- fication of his modus operandi. I venture to think that in his choice of a pitch he has made a mistake; that the French “ Diapason Normal” is still too high; and that he would have done better to have adopted what is known as the “Theoretical Pitch” (of C at 512 vibrations per second). Could the pitcli throughout any given performance be by any contrivance maintained , the little difference between the two would be of slight practical importance ; but an ascent of nearly a semi- tone in the course of a concert being not at * An eminent double-bass player whom I questioned between the parts of the performance about the change, said, “ I am afraid every moment lest mj^sound-post should fall,” — a catastrophe which would inevitably have been followed by , the entire collapse of his instrument. all an uncommon circumstance, it is advisable to start from as low a number of vibrations as may not be positively inconvenient. The theoretical pitch is so called on ac- count of its having been assumed by almost every writer on acoustical science as the true and natural one ; originally, no doubt, because of the simplicity of the numbers by which it expresses the vibrations due to the successive octaves of the lowest audible sound, these numbers being all “powers of two,” — 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, and so on. What- ever attraction the simplicity of this series might have for a theorist, it could not be expected to have any for practical musi- cians, unless the numbers themselves repre- sented notes apt for musical practice ; in other words, a pitch at which “the com- positions of the great vocal writers” might be executed effectively with due regard to “ the capabilities and convenience of the human voice.” * A pitch may be too low as well as too high ; and if it could be shown that the adoption of any pitch, however philo- sophical, put the average vocalist to a dis- advantage in executing the compositions of the great vocal writers, it would be a suf- ficient reason for rej ecting it at once. But we have seen already — supposing the opinion of one of the greatest of those great writers to be worthy of attention — that the adoption of a pitch even lower somewhat than that of 512 vibrations per second could not entail any such inconvenience ; seeing that it is certainly higher than the pitch in England in Handel’s time, and a little higher even than the highest in Europe a few years after his death — that of St. Petersburg, which in 1771 was A 417 = C 5 oof. It is higher, too, than the Parisian pitch of 1788, i.e., three years only before I the death of Mozart ; and but a few vibrations | lower than the Viennese pitch, in 1834,— when Schubert had been dead six years, Beethoven seven, Weber eight, and Haydn twenty-five; when Schuman had attained the age of twenty- four, Mendelssohn twenty-six, Meyerbeer forty-two, and Spohr fifty-one. Finally, it is but a few vibrations (practically inappre- * “ The voice,” said "one of the greatest singers and best practical musicians of the age, Madame Goldschmidt-Lind, at one of the meetings ’of the .Society of Arts — “ The voice is the pitch. ciably) lower than the pitch — if the unani- mous testimony of innumerable tuning-forks is worth anything — which regulated the Phil- harmonic Society of London from 1812 to 1842, at whose concerts 'many of the best works of Mendelssohn had been performed, before the last of these years, under his direc- tion. His brilliant career, as is well known, was prematurely closed only a few years after, in 1847. It is not too much to say that our last great oratorio, Elijah , was composed with reference to a pitch nearly identical with the theoretical, and, indeed, that all the great composers of the first half of this cen- tury were educated at, or at about, it. The general adoption of the theoretical or any other uniform pitch — for uniformity is hardly less to be desired than depression — may still be postponed for a time. The diffi- culties attending it are very great, and it is useless to ignore them ; but they are, how- ever great, not insuperable. They are diffi- culties of detail only, or, to put the matter in its simplest aspect, difficulties of pounds, shillings, and pence. How are the expenses of change to be met ? How is an orchestral performer — generally the worst paid of all living artists — to replace a costly instrument, often all but his only property ? It must be borne in mind too that this is no case for bit- by-bit reform. The pitch must be lowered, much or little, at 07 ice ; and it is clear that, when the time for doing this arrives, a vast number of existing instruments will have to submit to considerable modification, and many will be rendered altogether useless. Even modification will be costly; sacrifice, of course, much more so. But we have all of us seen greater difficul- ties than these tided over. Let it be shown that this is no mere personal question — no matter of convenience to particular per- formers, great or small, old or young — but, on the contrary, a question affecting the pleasure, and as Handel would have said, “ improvement,” of all who love music, and as a consequence feel kindly towards its practitioners, and somehow or other, sooner or later — the sooner the better — it will be carried. Where there’s a will there’s a way. JOHN HULLAH. Good Words, April i, 1869.] THE SPIRIT OF THE SPRING. 2 73 THE SPIRIT OF THE SPRING. Sweet Spirit of the Spring, I hear thee on the wing, I saw thee leave thy darling where the snow-drops shed their light. And I heard thee singing say, “ Come, love, with me away, And I’ll chant a sweeter matin as we sunward take our flight. “ I will show thee where the lilies, The laughing daffodillies, Are bright with golden halos and bending o’er the brooks, "Whose pretty, playful ways Have scooped out fairy bays In the willow-wattled bank-side and by alder-shaded nooks. “ Come say, love, wilt thou follow Over height and primrose hollow ? I will give thee in a solo the heart’s sweet over- flow, Till the merle takes up the chorus, And the throstles all assure us Most pleasant ’tis to warble where the daffodillies grow.” Sweet Spirit of the Spring, ’Tis heaven to hear thee sing ; For Spring, with flowers and sunshine, and the merry lark away, Were but an eyeless grace With the soul out of her face, Though children light the meadows and frisky lamb- kins play. EDWARD CAPERN. 274 MOSAISM AND CHRISTIANITY. [Good Words, April i, .[£69. PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. By the DEAN OF CANTERBURY. III. — MOSAISM AND CHRISTIANITY. Christianity having sprung out of an older form of faith, it becomes an important matter to define, how much it has inherited from its predecessor. The conditions of the enquiry which may lead to such a definition will manifestly be these. First a strict regard must be had to the sayings of the Founder of Christianity, and to those of His authorized servants : and in all matters outside those sayings, we must be guided by the spirit of Christianity itself. Now from the very nature of the case, we may expect the sayings of Christ Himself on this matter to be but few, and those few of a general, rather than of a special kind. The subject was one of those which His dis- ciples could not bear. The data for com- prehending it were not before them. For in- stance, even the bare facts of His sacrifice of Himself, one of the greatest elements of the change, were unwelcome and incredible to them. So that on the details of that change He could only speak in enigmas, which should afterwards light up into meaning, when their exponent facts should be mani- fested. Such would be the general declarations, which we find scattered up and down among His discourses, intimating, that in Himself and His work the Law and the Prophets were to receive their fulfilment, and in that fulfilment, their practical abrogation. Such an intima- tion is clearly gathered from such sayings as these : “ Think not that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets : I came not to de- stroy, but to fulfil.” “An hour cometh, when neither in this mountain, nor yet in Jerusalem, shall men worship the Father.” And in the Sermon on the Mount, He carries out and gives examples of, the practical fulfilment, by shewing that whereas the former commands had regarded outward acts, His began with the thoughts of the heart : that whereas they had been founded on a narrow and national view of mankind, His proceeded on a large and unstinted system of brotherly love. Such, in the main, are His utterances : sufficient to guide those who were to come after Him, and leave no doubt as to the great result of Christianity with reference to Judaism: but not descending into detail. For instance, He but once mentions that which was the great object of contention afterwards, viz., the ordinance of circumci- sion : and when He does, it is with a mere collateral reference. One ordinance, indeed, He does mention, and treats of as He treats of no other : but of that we will not speak at present. It may certainly be, that among the things pertaining to the kingdom of God, of which He is related to have spoken to His disciples after His resurrection, might have been this one of the difference between the new dis- pensation and the old. But if so, the Apostles profited little by what was said : for when the practical differences begun to unfold themselves, they were entirely unpre- pared for them. Still, it might well have been that some of those differences were plainly laid before them, while on others they were left to be guided by inference. On the matter, for instance, of the efficiency and finality of the sacrifice of the Lord’s death, we find no doubt or wavering among them : whereas on the question of the obligation “ to be circumcised and keep the law,” there were grave and lasting disputes. Few then and general as our Lord’s dicta on this matter are, we are led next to look on further in the sacred books, and to in- quire what His authorized followers said on the subject. And here the decision is much more pronounced, by the very circumstances of the case just set forth. Definite matters were in dispute. Were the Hebrew converts to be circumcised and to keep the law of I Moses ? These questions were argued, and ! decided on general principles. And it is to I those general principles, thus enunciated, that we must look for guidance in deciding kindred questions arising among ourselves. The one point on which St. Paul insists in his arguments concerning these matters is, the universality of Christianity. “ In Christ,” | race, station, sex, vanish before the general ; unity of standing and privilege assured to all. Jew and Gentile, Greek and barbarian, bond and free, male and female, — these are names no longer known with reference to any differ- ence of degree in Christ’s service ; the only difference between man and man being the amount of faith manifested by works of love. To this world-wide character of Christi- anity would belong other considerations, naturally ranging themselves round it as they arose. One of these has already been before us in the words of our Lord to the Samaritan MOSAISM AND CHRISTIANITY. Cood Words, April i, 1869.] 275 woman. Days were to come, He told her, when neither Mount Gerizim, nor Mount Mo- riah, would be signalized as the place where men ought to worship. God being a spirit, and to be worshipped in spirit, — wherever the spirit of man is, there is His temple. Under the new and fuller revelation of God to man, there is no sanctity of place as such : no “ place where God has put his name.” It required no less than the utter destruction of Jerusalem and its temple, to teach the Jew . this lesson. Had these remained, we might have had even to this day, believers of Jewish descent “going up to Jerusalem” to keep their Passovers and other great feasts. Yet this conclusion at once followed from the universality of our religion. Had one place only, as before, been set apart for the celebration of its more solemn rites, the effect must have been, the exclusion of the Church in general from assisting at them. I Even in railroad days, the condition of pre- j sence in Jerusalem could have been fulfilled j only by a few. What then has been the result ? The uni- versal recognition of the principle in the ab- stract, that sanctity of place has vanished with Judaism. But at the same time, human instincts and yearnings refuse to be extin- guished with the extinction of a formal obli- gation. Places for worship men must have : and when set apart, men will of necessity invest them with a certain sanctity. The very demeanour required within their walls, the very fact that God is sought only fitfully elsewhere, but systematically there, these, not to mention any even higher associations, forbid uS to think of churches as common places. We bestow on them cost and labour peculiarly their own. We resent insult or desecration offered to them, with an indignation which is common to every Christian man. Yet to this feeling there is a limit prescribed by common sense, and indicating in its observ- ance sobriety and soundness of mind. We all know that the sanctity which we attribute to churches depends on circumstances which are subject to change — is not inherent, but accidental. If public utility, for instance, re- quire the removal of the fabric of a church, and the secularization of the ground on which it stood, the man of common sense and of real Christian feeling will cheerfully consent : the man of narrow intellect and superstition alone will persist in objection. In other words, this feeling, which attaches sanctity to place, is on the whole well understood among us to belong to human wants and associations, and not to any requirement of our religion itself. This being so, let us regard another feature in the diverse characters of the two dispen- sations, analogous in most of its lineaments to the last considered. Not only was Juda- ism bound to a central locality as its home, but it was subjected to an ordinance enforc- ing sanctity of time also. Sacred seasons were appointed at different times of the year, and their special duties prescribed. But sanctity of time found its chief assertion in the ordinance of the Sabbath. At intervals of seven days, a recurrent day was to be kept holy. The ordinance was absolute, while the reason of its being hallowed was variously given. The seventh day of the week was to be universally observed. Now the language of our Lord Himself, and of His authorized messengers, is as plain on this point as we found it on those others. He Himself again and again put this ordinance, even as concerned the Jew, on its right footing. He shewed His hearers that even under Judaism, the institution was one intended not for the coercion, but for the benefit, of man : and this being so, He asserted that He, as the root and Head of mankind, had right to modify and dispose of this ordinance as well as others. The prac- tice following upon this assertion of principle is fully carried out by St. Paul. Among the signs that his Galatians were rapidly moving away from the Gospel which he had preached to them, was this, that they were striving to re-introduce ' the sanctity of times which Christianity had abolished. “Ye observe days, and seasons, and months, and years. I am afraid, lest I have bestowed labour on you in vain.” Again in instructing the Romans how to deal with the infirmities of weak brethren, he tells us of some who ate all food alike, others whose conscience was weak, and limited them to the eating of herbs : of some who regarded one day above another, others who regarded all days alike. I ask any man of ordinary fairness of mind, whether it is possible to gather from this language any other inference, than that he placed the sanctity of meats and the sanctity of times on the same footing — in other words, that he regarded both as done away in Christ ? But in his Epistle to the Colossians he speaks even more plainly. “ Let no one,” he says, “ judge you in eating or in drinking, or in the matter of a feast, or of a new moon, or of sabbath days : which whole matter is a shadow of the things to come : but the body is of Christ” (Col. ii. 16). That is, if words have any meaning, he classes together the MOSAISM AND CHRISTIANITY. LGood Words, April X, 1869. whole matter of meats and drinks, and ob- servance of times, as the past shadow of realities now present in Christ. It is therefore in this as in the other case. Sanctity of time was a characteristic of Mosaism, but is not a characteristic of Chris- tianity. One place is as good as another: one day is as good as another. Indeed it could not but be so, if Chris- tianity were ever to embrace the whole ex- tent of the globe. As no place could be set apart for exclusive worship, so no fixed day could be put aside as sacred. For one and the same day is never present to the whole church. Let two travellers, both bent on keeping holy the prescribed seventh day, start from the same point : let one go round the world eastward, the other westward : and let both observe the Sabbath during the journey. What would be the result? When they met again, the former would be keeping the first day of the week, — the latter the sixth : and both would be desecrating the Sabbath itself, as kept at their common home. But in this case, as in that other of sanctity of place, the Church of Christ has taken account of human needs and sympathies. We require a set time for worship, and a rest from the business of life, as much as we require a set place of assembling. The Church therefore has not refused to recog- nise the devotion of one day in seven to these purposes. She has imitated the ancient ordinance of the Sabbath, as she has imitated the ancient ordinance of the temple and the synagogue. The day of the Lord’s resur- rection, the first day of the week, was the natural time of assembling among the primi- tive Christians. He Himself impressed His sanction on the adoption of the day, by appearing to the assembled apostles on its first recurrence. In every age of the Church, its observance has been universal. To dilate on its beneficent results, would be idle. No language of eulogy of its advantages could be exaggerated : for its conservation, if threat- ened by the mammon-spirit of the world, no zeal could be inopportunely strong. But to endow it with inherent sanctity, or to invest it with the obligations of the Jewish Sabbath, is absolutely unchristian. It is one of those matters, in which our Christian liberty is sacred : “ Let no man judge you.” When we repeat the decalogue, — when we include the Fourth among the other Com- mandments, and beseech God to “incline our hearts to keep this law,” it must be plain to the meanest capacity, that we can only do this in a Christian sense. We come to church that morning, fresh from the non-observance of the very day, which, according to the literal view of the commandment, we pray for grace to observe : than which nothing can be conceived more absurd. And as to any change of the day from the seventh to the first, saving the obligations of the former Sabbath to the new one, there is no trace in the ancient records of the Church of such ever having been made. Nothing indeed could have warranted such an act, but the express and open command of Christ Himself. And had this occurred, is it con- ceivable that, amidst all the exhortations in the Epistles to correct Christian conduct, not one should be found impressing on the con- verts the duty of keeping the Sabbath ? Is it possible that, with such a sacred obligation passing on them, one church should be in- formed by St. Paul that the man who re- garded all days alike was as acceptable to God as he who regarded one day above another ? or that another should, on account of keeping of days, be counted as having expended the Apostle’s labour in vain? or that yet another should be commanded to let no man judge them in respect of sabbath- days, when all the time that ordinance in all its rigour was transferred to one day in every week of their lives ? Considerations like these will, I conceive, guide us to the true estimate of the obliga- tion which rests upon us with regard to the Christian day of rest. It is not a legal, not a rigid, not a slavish obligation. The “liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free ” should be jealously guarded, at the same time that the blessings of the day are made safe to all. It is emphatically with us an ordinance made for man, and not man for it : it is an ordi- nance over which, as made for man, the Son of Man is lord. And those who, authorized by Him, have rule over the various sections of His church, are lords also. If by existing rules and practices grievance is inflicted on man, injury to his body or his soul, — then those rules and practices ought by competent authority to be altered. Our great temptation is, in the present day, to contribute unwittingly to the desecration of the day of rest, by rigidly and super- stitiously narrowing the rules for its observ- ance. It is true, that Christian liberty will assert itself in spite of rules ; but it is a far more wholesome state of things, when its de- mands are taken into account and recognised. Our faults in this matter may be looked at from two points of view. First, as regards Good words, April x> xs*] MOSAISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 277 others. It cannot be right that we should, by the peculiar character of our observation of the day, drive multitudes of our working population into degradation and sin. And yet there can be little doubt that this is the effect of the English Sunday in our large cities. Churches for them there are none ; or so few and far between, as to be of no account in any reckoning. Let any one who knows the back streets and mews lurking behind the rows of palaces in the fashionable end of London, say what is to become of their inmates on the day of worship ? Where are the churches, where the meeting-houses, to which they can resort? For every carriage which takes the wealthy to church, how many inhabitants have been brought into the neigh- bourhood who are absolutely precluded from ever entering a church ? And on a day when trading is unlawful, and amusement turned off, what is to become of this population, except one thing, easily imagined ? It would seem as if the brewers and distillers had had the ordering of our English Sunday for their own private purposes. Shut off then from the people this source of mischief, and let the taps run no longer on that day. Well, and what then? Do you suppose the working man will sit out his Sunday in a corner? He is even as you are : he wants his ease, as you do : he will take that which is to him ease, if he can get nothing better. He has a fine vigorous mind, jealous for truth and justice, as he deems of truth and justice : capable of taking in all that you can take in, and sometimes more, of the acts and words of God’s Christ. You, who deny him the means of working with his hands, how are you excused for condemning him to Sun- day sloth and debasement ? If church is too expensive for rich men to provide, if church clergy are too conventionally stiff for poor men to understand, then in God’s name let us abate the nuisance of trumpery j ealousies between church and meeting, and do His work how we may : let eveiy square and terrace be bound to provide for its depen- dants a decent conventicle, and let some man with brains in his head, and a heart in his bosom, stand up Sunday after Sunday and talk to them of Him who took on Him the form of a slave and was obedient unto death : who looked not on His own things but on the things of others : who shewed us the road to purity, and paid our fare to the end of it. And there is a fault, next, as regards our- selves : the fault of keeping up in our ideal, and in profession, a far higher standard for the observation of the day, than we ever do, or can possibly, carry out in our practice. Too frequently, while the practice of a family on the Lord’s Day is thoroughly Christian, the theory is as thoroughly Mosaical. Live with them, and no better example could be desired of the discernment and use of Christian liberty : talk with them, and they are unflinching advocates of Judaizing rigour. Now surely, this cannot be good for any man. If the practice is what it ought to be, the stand- ard wants to be lowered to correspond with it. This is a matter too often forgotten. In many things, where theory and practice differ, it is at once assumed that practice must be at fault, and needs to be brought up to the ideal standard. We may safely say that, in the greater number of such cases in the Christian community, it is the theory which needs amending rather than the practice. Let it be at once and ingenuously acknow- ledged, that the obligation of the observance of the Lord’s Day rests not on an ordinance of the Mosaic law, but on the universal sanc- tion of the Christian Church in all ages and countries. Let it be fairly confessed that reverence for the Christian day of rest is of the same kind as reverence for Christian places of worship — an instinct of the Chris- tian mind, which to contravene is sacrilege and sin, but which may and must be obeyed under subjection to the higher claims of the Christian conscience, and to the conditions of Christian liberty. But, it is said, without the strong defence of the Divine command, the day of rest will be imperilled. Worldly men, who are ever held back by fear of disobeying a command- ment of God, will, when that fear is removed, at once break in, and make the day one of toil for gain. Now I need not remind any man of ordi- nary reasoning powers and common honesty, that such an argument is entirely beside the purpose. The question for us is not, “ Is the assertion of obligation of a Divine com- mand expedient ? ” but, “ Is it true ?” If it be not true, then no expediency can make it justifiable. Besides, I entirely deny that the placing of the Lord’s Day obligation on its proper footing would entail the consequences threatened us. The institution of sanctity of time is, under Christianity, as has been already insisted, ana- logous to the institution of sanctity of place. We require it for the needs of man’s spirit, and besides, for the refreshment of his bodily powers. The presence of this latter consi- deration of itself casts a fence around the sanctity of times which that of places does 27S POOR PEOPLE. [Gocd Words, April 1, 1869. not possess ; unless indeed the mertfory of the dead may appear to furnish a safeguard of a somewhat similar kind. Now we do not invoke the Mosaic deca- logue for the defence of our churches and churchyards from profanation. We leave them to the reverent feeling of Christian men, and they are safe. Even so would the observance of the blessed day of rest and worship be safe, far safer than it is now with its Draconian law set at nought in practice, if we had the moral courage to say of it what Christ and his Apostles would have said — to follow out in common honesty the legitimate inferences from their sabbatical declarations. Let not what is here set down be mistaken. I am contending, not for the depreciation, but for the ennobling, of the Christian day of rest. Those depreciate it, those lower its dignity, who borrow for it inconsequent sanction from a system of shadowy ordi- nances, as if it had not a standing, and an independent claim of its own : those rob it of half its blessedness, who repudiate for it the constraining sanction of the Spirit of Christ speaking in every age and section of his Church, and go back to Moses for its obli- gation : those depose it from a glorious privi- lege won for us by the beneficent spread of the Gospel, who would drag it in bondage to those “weak and beggarly elements,” of which we are now eighteen hundred years in advance. Those are the real enemies of the Christian observance of the Lord’s Day, who are “ willingly ignorant ” that no such ground as that on which they rest it is laid down either in the sacred books of our religion, or in any of those who lived and wrote in the primitive and purer ages of the Church : that any such ground was emphatically repudiated by the Reformers : that, assert it as they will,, no Christian nation, no Christian family, no Christian man, has ever regarded it in practice from its first introduction until now. It had been in my mind to set down several more notions and practices in which we are at present rather Mosaists than Christians : but I have spent my time and my space about that one, which seemed to me of most serious import : that one in which we seemed to me to have most completely lost the mind of Christ and his Apostles. I will only say therefore, that this one great mistake has brought in with it many others. The whole of what is now known as “ ritu- alistic ” worship in the Church of England is Mosaistic. Its defenders openly allege as much. They defend it by saying that Moses on the mount was shewn the heavenly wor- ship, and that the tabernacle constructed after its type was not fleeting but permanent — the prescribed pattern of worship for all ages of the church. And the spirit of the practices which are growing up around this notion is also Mosa- istic and anti-christian. This tendency is by degrees to obliterate the efficacy of the great once-for-all Sacrifice, and to put in its place the efficacy of its renewals or commemora- tions : to hide from the eyes of the faithful the glorified human form of the divine High Priest at God’s right hand, and to put in His place certain avatars or dynamic symbols of His presence down here on earth. And the upholders of this worship among us are the very successors of those who dis- turbed the Galatians, the Colossians, the Philippians. In many passages of those Epistles, we have but to change the language j so as to express modern habits, and the j descriptions are perfect. POOR PEOPLE. (FROM VICTOR HUGO.) ’Tis night. The cabin door is shut, the room, Though poor, is warm, and has a flickering light By which you just distinguish through the gloom A shelf with row of plates that glimmer bright, Some nets hung out to dry upon the wall, And at the furthest end a curtained bedstead tall ; Near it a mattress on rude benches spread — A nest of souls — five children sleeping there ; Upon the hearth some embers glowing red ; And by the bedside, rapt in thought and prayer, The mother kneeling, anxious and alone. While out of doors, with foaming breakers white Unto the clouds, the winds, the rocks, the night, The gloomy ocean lifts its ceaseless moan. Her husband is ©ut fishing. From a lad With chance and danger he has had to fight, No matter what the weather — good or bad ; The children hunger, and are thinly clad ; So in his little sailing boat each night He must set off, however hard it blow. His wife remains at home to wash and sew, Prepare the bait, and mend the nets, and keep Watch o’er the herring broth — their only meal — Till, all the children being put to sleep, She can pray God for her dear husband’s weal. She prays ; and praying hears the gulls’ wild cry Sound as it mocked her, dismal shadows press Into her mind — waves rolling mountains high, Fragments of wrecks, and sailors in distress. POOR PEOPLE. Good Words, April x, 1869.I And all the while, pent in its wooden frame, The clock’s impassive pulse beats on the same ; Each beat a summons countless souls obey, To enter life or pass from life away. She muses sadly. Very poor they are ! Her children’s feet in winter time are bare ; . They never dream of tasting wheaten bread. Oh how the wind keeps roaring over head ! The waves are hammering the shore, on high The stars like sparks seem flying through the sky. Midnight in cities, is the reveller gay, Who smiles behind the mask he wears in play ; Midnight at sea, is the unpitying foe Who lurks in mist, intent to deal his blow, Seizes the fisher, and with sudden shock Hurls his frail boat upon a sunken rock. Horror ! he feels it foundering — his cries Are stifled by the waves that o’er him rise. ‘ He sinks, and sinking sees the sunbeams play On his old boat-ring in the quiet quay ! Thoughts such as these through Jenny’s fancy stray. She weeps and trembles. Ay ! poor fishers’ wives ! ’Tis piteous to your lonely selves to say That husbands, brothers, sons, your souls, your lives, Your flesh and blood, may be the billows’ prey ; That with their precious heads the rude winds play ; That ponder how you will you cannot tell If at this very moment all be well ; That they, to hold their own against the gale And the unfathomed waves that round them swell, Have but a plank or two and strip of sail. Wild with the thought, you run through sand and wrack, And pray the rising tide to bring them back. No answer there of comfort ! — 111 agree The ever-fearful heart and ever-restless sea ! But Jenny thinks no case is like her own, — Her husband in his boat is all alone. Alone this bitter night, beneath that sky’s black pall! “ No help 1 ” she sighs, “ the boys are all too small! ” Poor mother! saying now, “ Were they but men, Their father is alone ” — the day draws nigh When they will share their father’s perils. Then “Would they once more were children ! ” wilt thou cry. She takes her lantern and her cloak — maybe He is returning — anyhow she’ll see If still the beacon light be burning clear, And if the waves are less and daybreak near. She goes — too soon — ’tis dark and rainy too, No line of light divides the sky and main — Nothing so dreary as this early rain. I You’d say Day wept its birth as mortal children do. She wanders on — no window shows a fight. Sudden her glance — intent to find her way — Meets an old hovel fallen to decay ; No fire within — ’tis black and cold as night. From the low roof the ragged thatch flies fast, And the door rattles loosely in the blast. “ Ah ! the poor widow — I forgot her quite! My husband found her worse the other day, I’ll just look in, a friendly word to say. Sick and alone — a dismal lot is hers ! ” She knocks, she listens, no one speaks or stirs. Jenny stands shiv’ring at the broken door ; “ Sick and with such young children, sick and poor — She has but two, but then her husband’s dead.” She knocks and calls, “What, neighbour ! all in bed ? ” Still the same silence — “ Well, she must sleep fast ; No use in calling.” All at once the blast. 279 As though the elements did sometimes heed And take compassion on our human need, Beat on the door and blew it open wide. She entered, and her lantern’s feeble fight Revealed the hovel’s bare and ruined plight, The rain fell through the roof on every side. In the far comer of the wretched room An awful form appeared from out the gloom — A woman motionless and stiff — feet bare, Glazed eyes that seemed to threaten by their stare — A corpse — a mother not long since, strong, active, gay — The spectre of dead poverty to-day ! All that remains to prove how dire the strife That paupers wage with want and cold for fife ! From out the straw one livid arm hung down, The hand already dark with hues of death — The mouth wide open and the forehead’s frown Told of the struggle for the latest breath, And bore the impress of that awful cry Of death which echoes through eternity ! Close by the bed on which their mother died A cradle stood, and in it side by side Two rosy infants smile in slumber sweet. The mother, feeling her last hour draw near, Had heaped on them the gown she used to wear, And rolled her cloak about their little feet, Hoping that covered thus by fold on fold, They would keep warm while she was growing cold. But what has Jenny in that cabin done ; What is she bearing in her cloak away ; What is the fear that causes her to run With beating heart in such a stealthy way ; What is it she with troubled glance has laid Upon her bed behind the curtain’s shade ? The woman has been stealing you would say. When she got home it was the break of day. She sat down pale and trembling, some regret Seemed to be weighing on her mind, she let The brow she clasped fall heavy on the bed And, in short broken sentences, she said, “ My husband ! Heavens ! what will the poor man say ! Such toil and trouble — what a thing I’ve done ! Five children on his hands already. None Work harder than he does ; and I must make His burden heavier. How that door does shake ! I thought ’twas he. Well, if he scold outright, Or even beat me, it will serve me right. Is that his footstep ? No — not yet — I’m glad — Why, what a shame ! things must be getting bad When I’m afraid to see him back again ! ” And then she shuddered, and a gloomy train Of thought absorbed her so, she heard no more The shrieking sea-birds or the waves’ dull roar. Sudden the door bursts open, lets a track Of cold fight in ; upon the threshold stands, Dragging his dripping net with both his hands, The fisher, calling gaily, “ Well ! I’m back.” “ ’Tis you ! ” cried Jenny, as she caught and prest Her husband as a lover to her breast, And kissed his very clothes in her delight ; While he kept saying, “ Here I am — all right ! ” His manly face, fit by the turf-fire, showed How his true heart at sight of Jenny glowed. “ The sea’s a thief! ” he cried, “ I’m fairly done ! ” “ What w r eather ! ” “Bad.” “What sort of haul?” p “Why, none. But now I hug my Jenny all seems bright. Well ! I’ve caught nothing ! and my net is torn — - 28 o POOR PEOPLE. [Good Words, April x, 1869. There was a devil of a wind that blew, And once I thought — ’twas getting on tow’rd morn— We should capsize— the cable broke in two. What were you doing then ? ” O’er Jenny’s frame A shudder passed before her answer came — < ‘ I ! nothing much — I sat and sewed— the sea Roared so like thunder it quite frightened me. The winter seems set in before its time.” Then, trembling as if taken in a crime, Jenny continued — “ Oh ! and by the way, Our neighbour’s lying dead— died yesterday, I think — at least it was last evening late — ’Twas after you were gone at any rate. She leaves two children — boy and girl — quite small — Johnny begins to walk and Meg to crawl. The poor good soul was, almost starved, I fear.” The man looked grave at once, and flung away His close blue cap wet through with rain and spray ; “ Deuce take it ! ” he exclaimed, and rubbed his ear, “ This will make seven, and we had five before : How shall we keep the wolf from off the door ? Why, in bad weather, as it was, the fare Often ran short — ’tis hard to see one’s way. Well ! I can’t help it — ’tis the Lord’s affair. Why take the mother from such brats away ? Not bigger than my fist — what use to say, 4 W ork for your bread ’ to mites like those ? No doubt Men must be scholars to make these things out, They fairly bother me. — Go fetch them, wife. If they should wake and find themselves alone, With mammy dead, ’twould scare them out of life. Look you, the mother’s knocking at our door, We’ll take her children in amongst our own ; At evening they will play about our knees, Just like the other five we "had before, Brothers and sisters all. When the Lord sees That we have got to feed and clothe two more, He’ll send more fish into our net. Besides, I can drink water and work double tides. That’s settled — run and fetch them — ’tis not far. What ! vexed ? I never saw you move so slow be- fore ! ” — She turns and draws the curtains — “There they are ! ” l. c. s. Good Words, April i, 1865. j SHORT ESSAYS. 28 J SHORT ESSAYS. By the AUTHOR OF “FRIENDS IN COUNCIL.” THIRD INSTALMENT. “ Let who will write the history of a nation, so that I may write its ballads.’’ Such has been the wish expressed, or implied, by many a great poet. My ambition stretches further and deeper. Let who will write the ballads, so that I may write the copies for the copy- books. And what is the first copy I should set to those who are learning to write ? I think it would be this : “ The worst use that can he made of writing is to write needless and intrusive letters to busy people in great placed No, that would be too long, and perhaps would be hard to be understood by the juvenile beginner. “ Never write intrusive letters , because there are others who will be sure to do that work for you” It is still too long; and, for large round hand, I suppose I must' be satisfied with a copy consisting of only these words : “ Never write intrusive, letters .” Now I do not wish to be harsh in the use of that word “ intrusive.” Doubtless nine out of ten of the people who write intrusive letters do not mean to intrude, and do not think that they are intruding. But though the letters may be the result of a species of hero-worship of the great man who receives them, they add most seriously, if most un- wittingly, to the weighty burden which such a man has to carry ; and, in the end, the writers absolutely hinder him from doing what they would most wish him to do — namely, to continue in the course of thought or action which has elicited their admiration. They should consider that because a man has attained pre-eminence in some branch of human endeavour, there is no reason to suppose that nature, however gracious, lengthens out the day for him. He is on the surface of a ball of earth which turns round at a steady pace, carrying him, as well as the other small creatures who are upon it, into the darkness of the night ; and he has no supernatural powers which enable him continuously to borrow from that night “ an hour or twain ” more than other men. The mischief caused by this needless cor- respondence is immense. The other day I saw a private secretary sending off to his master, who was in the country, a pouch con- taining the letters which had arrived for him by that morning’s post. They amounted in number to one hundred and seven. Probably ninety-seven of them were needless and in- trusive — telling the great man what he might, | X— 19 could, would, or should do ; instructing him largely in the duties of his office, or merely praising or blaming him. But to read them, however cursorily, takes time, and fritters away life. In fact, the needless demands made upon any eminent man’s time and at- tention are increasing to such an extent, in these days, that he can hardly find leisure or freedom to think out, still less to work out, any great matter for himself. The time will come, perhaps, when a great man will rise to eminence, and then, by these constant and trivial demands upon his thought and energy, degenerate into idiocy. In short, he will always culminate when attaining eminence, and not after he has attained to power and influence by that eminence. Every man who is taught to write, ought at the same time to be taught that he should be merciful in his writing. To proceed with the copies for copy-books, undoubtedly there should be another, to this effect : “ Cruelty to animals is a great wicked- ness.” Or perhaps it had better be put in a concrete than in an abstract form, and should run simply thus : “ Do not teaze the cat.” It is astonishing how much the edu- cation of the young is neglected as re- gards the simplest matters of duty. They have to listen to long sermons, not one word of which, in their minds, has the slightest application to themselves. It is strange that elder people should have seen that the young should be separated from them as regards all manner of pleasures and entertainments — that they should even have a pantomime in the daytime for children — and that these same people cannot realise the fact that children should have separate church services and separate instruction in moral and religious matters. I believe that the cruelty towards animals so often manifested in children, is not so much from want of thought, as from the absolute want of in- struction. It is a melancholy fact, but it is a fact, that people are often as much attached to things as to persons. We may doubt whether there have been many broken hearts from disappointments in love; but there is very little doubt that there have been many 282 SHORT broken hearts from loss of fortune. What it has cost ruined men to part from the homes of their ancestors, or from the homes which they have created or beautified, can hardly be estimated too highly. The reason of all this is as follows : — The loss of a love is something tender, touching, elevated : the loss of these material things is degradation. And then, again, men do not see that the loss of love is in any way their own fault. It is a decree of fate. It is inevitable; and, though with many pangs, we always make up our minds to the inevitable. But the loss of material things is generally accompanied by the loss of self-esteem ; and no man is utterly lost, except by the loss of that self- esteem. I think we might have a triumph over the French in a small matter of expression ; and it is rare that we can have any such triumphs. There is the proverb, “II y a fagots et fagots a proverb which has become one of the most frequently used in modern times, as express- ing nominal similarity and substantial differ- ence. But the words are surely veiy ill- chosen. One bundle of sticks is really very like another bundle of sticks. But suppose we were to change it in this way : “ There are kisses and kisses.” Then you would have something of which the name was the same, but the substance very different. There is the kiss of custom, the kiss of respect, the kiss of duty, the pre-conjugal kiss, the con- jugal kiss, the filial kiss, the playful kiss — as when the grandfather is found, without any intention of course on his part, directly under the misletoe-bough — the kiss of be- trayal, and the kiss of passionate devotion, of which the poet says : — - A man had given all earthly bliss, And all his worldly worth for this, To waste his whole heart in one kiss Upon her perfect lips.” Then, too, these different classes of kisses are strangely intermingled, as when, for in- stance, an old and attached minister, upon some formal occasion, kisses the hand of his sovereign, but yet expresses in that kiss his reverent, fond, and abiding attachment — a Burleigh kissing, on receiving some wand of office or some mark of favour, the hand of Queen Elizabeth. You cannot find any two things in which there may be so much outward resemblance, and at the same time so much inward differ-, ence, as in two kisses. If you were to say, “ There are houses and houses,” — well, there ESSAYS. [Good Words, April i, 1869. is considerable difference in houses ; but, foi the most part, there is a similar inconvenience and a similar want of skill and adaptation to be found in the mansion in Belgravia as in the suburban semi-detached residence. Yes, I think the rest of the world would admit that, if we were to turn, “ II y a fagots et fagots into “There are kisses and kisses,” we should have made a translation that far exceeds the original in force and meaning, as much indeed as Dryden exceeds Horace, here and there, in his rendering of some Horatian Ode. Tied to the same stunted willow, a punt and a wherry were moored together. They were not exactly friends, but they were friendly acquaintances, like merchants who often meet on ’Change; and so they spoke familiarly together. It was one of those times and seasons which invite interchange of thought, and compel even the reticent to indulge in un- wonted confidences. The returning waters (for the river was tidal) stole into the ex- pected embrace of the softly curving shores with a fondness not less fond because it was of daily recurrence, like that with which the good man of the house welcomes, and is welcomed by, his loving wife after the day’s labour is ended. The least beautiful things gained a beauty not their own from being reflected in the still water. The sunset was not grand, nor gor- geous, nor severe : it was simply equable and soft. Indeed so soft, that it might almost have been a reflection from the water into the air. There was a plashy gurgling sound as the ample river kissed the shores — a sweet, con- tinuous musical noise, like the purring of a pleased animal- — which bespoke peace and contentment. The delicate frame of the wherry felt the full influence of the scene. “Punt, my dear punt,” said the wherry, “yours, I fear, is somewhat of a dull life. One man walks up and down you in a tread- mill fashion ; or you are fixed in some placid part of the river, and have to listen all day long to the thin talk of two elderly gentle- men fishing for gudgeon. Whereas the liveliest young men of our city hurry me along our beautiful river, borne on its top- most current, more in air than in water, to the admiration of all beholders. Besides, I have sensations which you cannot even imagine. I quiver with delight as I speed along, aiding as well as obeying each impulse of my joyous young rowers. Flat-nosed as you are, my friend (forgive my plainness of Good Words, April i, 1869. ] S H O RT speech), and broad in your other proportions as any Dutchman, you are, alas ! incapable even of understanding, much more of par- ticipating in, emotions such as mine/’ The poor punt owned, with a broad, sad sigh, that he was certainly neither delicate nor sensitive, and that these emotions so fondly dwelt upon by the wherry were un- known to him. The next day the punt, with its freight of two elderly anglers, was fastened near to to a bridge which the wherry was about pass under. The lads in the wherry stopped for a moment to speak to their uncles in the punt. The wherry and the punt rubbed bows together, which is their way of shaking hands. At that moment, unobserved by the lads, or their uncles, or the wherry, or the punt, a huge barge, laden with bricks, came floundering on towards the bridge. It drove both punt and wherry sharply against the archway. The punt hardly felt the shock ; but the wherry was capsized and crushed. The lads escaped into the punt ; and the dis- abled wherry, now attached to the punt, was dragged back to their common place of moor- ing. When there, and when tied to its willow, there was but little of it that could keep itself above water, so battered had it been by its shock against the bridge. It was very silent that evening as the cruel water triumphantly gurgled over it. But the punt said to itself in low tones — for it was a good-natured crea- ture, and did not love to be loud-mouthed in depreciating comment upon any of its fel- lows — “ I should not like to be so refined and sensitive as my poor friend here, whom a bump from a rude barge can so easily upset.” Moral— very obvious moral. — In order to last long, and to bear complacently with the rude shocks of this world — for there are many clumsy barges to be met with in the river of life — it is better to be a little dull than over-sensitive, and to be constructed rather on the lines of the punt, than on those of the wherry. Vulgarity is as good as an income. For see what advantages a vulgar man has. He can push his fortunes without even know- ing that he is pushing them. He can ask and refuse, and haggle and barter, and do any disagreeable or dirty -work, without exhaust- ing himself by it. In dealing with the world, he is in his true element. He flatters heartily, without knowing that his flattery is an imper- tinence. For himself, he can swallow praise ESSAYS. 283 like a pig its provender ; and no want of re- finement prevents him from enjoying the coarsest entertainment. Parents who care for the material success ! and for the rude happiness of their children, * should pray that they may be sufficiently vulgar, and should always give them a good example in that respect. Avoid using words which have become in your day words of reproof and blame, but which are not naturally so. F or example, there is the word “ sentimental.” In the present age, no word is meant to be more condemna- tory, and perhaps no word is more rashly used. You constantly hear such phrases as these : “ This is a sentimental view of the question,” or, “ Putting aside all the sentiment con- nected with the question.” Such expressions are very juvenile. It is to abound in folly, to have arrived at the age of thirty-three, and to suppose that men are guided by right rea- son and by motives of self-interest, rather than by motives of sentiment. Just as a boy thinks it a very fine thing to smoke his first cigar (bought for twopence), concealing, with Spartan endurance, all the agonies it causes, so a young man thinks it very fine to hold out that he is much too old to be guided by sentimentality, though all the time, if he looked honestly into his mind, he would find that the sentiment connected with the ques- tion is that which has the most prevailing influence over him, and has probably tempted him to "write about the matter in question. To express our ideas in writing must evi- dently be a very difficult thing, seeing how rare an acquirement it is, and how few even of the best writers have acquired perfect ; facility in the art. Most of them will, I ; believe, tell you that, after long practice, they still find it nearly as difficult to write well as j - they did when they began to write. Yet it seems that certain rules might be j laid down for good writing ; and, at the risk of appearing presumptuous, I will venture to suggest some. 1. Let the subject that you write about, be one that you really care about. 2. Never throw away an adjective. If you use an adjective that does not add any meaning to the substantive, it is a wicked | waste of adjectival power. 3. Take care that your relatives clearly 284 THE WORKHOUSE GIRL. [Good Words, April 1, 1869. and distinctly relate to your antecedents. In seven sentences out of ten that are obscure, you will find that the obscurity is caused by a doubt about the relatives. 4. Do not fear repetition. This fear is also a frequent cause of obscurity. 5. Avoid parentheses. A parenthesis can generally be made into a separate sentence. 6. Do not attempt to abbreviate your general statements, or suppose that those general statements will be understood by your reader. Eor instance, if you have been writing a paragraph which tends to show that when men get into any trouble, there is generally some woman concerned in the case, do not begin a sentence in this way — “ If this be so,” &c., &c., &c. Your reader does not know what this is, or what so is, or, at least, he does not make out your meaning without a little thought ; and you should keep all his thought for the real difficulties which you have to lay before him. Therefore, boldly say, “When men get into trouble, there is mostly a woman concerned in it,” & c., &c. 7. Try to master what is the idea of a sentence — how it should be a thing of a certain completeness in itself. If it is to consist of many clauses, let them be clauses having a reasonable dependence one upon another, and not sentences within sentences. 8. Attend to method. That alone, if you commit all other faults, will make your writing readable. For example, if you have to treat a subject which is naturally divided into several branches, take them up one by one, and ex- haust them. Do not deal with them by bits. Let us call these branches A, B, and C. Do not begin by saying only half of what you mean about A, and then bringing in the rest of A after you have treated C, thus making B and C a long parenthesis. Often the mist created by this want of method enshrouds the meaning of the writer as completely as that which fond Venus threw around her darling Trojan hero when the Greeks were pressing him too hardly. 9. Follow the nature of your subject, and let your choice of words, your length of sen- tences, and all the other delicacies of writing, be adapted to that nature of the subject. To use an admirable simile, which has been used before, let the writing fall over the subject like drapery over a beautiful statue of the human figure, adapting itself inevitably to all the outlines of the body that it clothes. 10. While you are writing, do not think of any of these rules, or of any other rules. Whatever you have learnt from rules, to be of service, must have entered into your habits of mind, and into your tastes, and must be a part of your power which you use, as you do the power of nerve or muscle, uncon- sciously. THE WORKHOUSE GIRL. Of all the complicated and troublesome parts of the Poor-Law question, that which refers to the treatment of young girls and women is the most perplexing, and in its bearing on another terrible problem of social life, perhaps the most important. There is no reason why the whole question should not be reduced to a principle, nnd when once the principle is settled, it can only need time to make it generally under- stood and received, before it is fairly carried out into practice. It is true that, like the fox and goose and peck of oats, Poor-Law boards, Vestries, and ratepayers form a triad which will not work well together ; but means may be found, even if they have to be brought over two at a time, to bring them all to land. The treatment of paupers is now passing through a variety of experimental processes, very much as that of criminals has done, and when a complete practical answer has been given to the question in the first case, that of the second will be readily solved, for the criminal is supplied from the pauper class, and the supply has hitherto been promoted rather than checked by the prescibed treatment. Up to this time the system pursued with the inmates of Workhouses has been very much like that of criminals fifty years ago. They are collected in workhouse wards, and though a sort of classification has been attempted, it has been left in the hands of Workhouse masters and matrons, whose ideas on the most difficult of all tasks are often such as to ensure its performance in the most arbitrary and ignorant manner. Indeed, the whole aim of Poor-Law authorities and Workhouse officials, nay, of the Poor-Law itself, in many of its enactments, seems to be repression . And as the enemy they encounter cannot be put down , even by Alderman Cute, but will get up again, we may see that this way is not the right one. If we were to consider misery and sin as what they are, forms of social disease and death, they might be met, not with re- pression, which is but another form of death, Good Words, April i, x86gj THE WORKHOUSE GIRL. 285 but by the introduction of new life ; and health and strength would soon take the place of social disease and destruction. This experiment has been made with complete suc- cess in the most hopeless department of work- house management, the treatment of young women and girls. If we compare the two processes and their results, we shall see how desirable it is that the example, set in a few instances by kind and sensible individuals, should be followed by the parishes. The greatest cause of failure in Workhouse management arises from the mixture of all classes of destitute poor in the Union; and the consequent impossibility of keeping young women, who are not absolutely bad, away from the influence of the most depraved. The most violent and ungovernable are often placed together in what is called the refractory ward, and while there cannot do any great harm, except sometimes breaking a window, and helping by their talk to make each other worse ; but some of the women who have been inmates of this ward, are at times allowed to do the work of the house, and, of course, to come into contact with the other inmates, old and young, of both sexes. But it is not only from the most refractory girls that the destructive example emanates. The whole moral tone of workhouse life is low, almost on the level of animal life ; for no person who can work, or who has any feeling of self-respect, will remain in the place a moment after he can get away. And the sick and aged poor, among whom we often find bright examples of gentleness and patience under privation and suffering, are kept apart in the sick and infirm wards. All the able- bodied inmates of the Union, generally the worst in the neighbourhood, may be found at times in the wards and stone passages of the workhouse. That the workhouse thus be- comes a nursery for vice will be attested by all who have filled the painful and laborious post of chaplain to a union. For some of the following facts and observa- tions, I am indebted to an interesting book, “The Children of the State,” by Florence Hill, published in the early part of last year. Some of the statistics given by Miss Hill are six or seven years old, and it may be supposed that much has been done in the last few years to secure a better state of things. But this is not true in the case of young women, many of whom are still dependent on workhouses, and compelled to seek a shelter there when theyare out of a situation. “No girls,” says the Rev. 0. J. Yignoles, chaplain of the North Surrey District schools, “should remain in work- houses after the school period ; it is undoing all the benefits of previous training and sepa- ration in district schools.” “ I can affirm one thing on my own experience,” says Miss Frances Cobbe ; “ that is, that one of the ! largest channels through which young lives are drifted down into the dead sea which underlies all our vaunted civilisation is the workhouse The poor girls so trained, go out into the humbler class of service, where their ignorance of the simplest house- hold duties, their want of self-control, and their hopeless stupidity often provoke the harshness of their employers. In their errands into the street at all hours, the secret of another and all too easy livelihood is revealed to them. Out of a single work- house in London, inquiry was made concern- ing eighty girls who had left it and gone to service. It was found that every one of them was on the streets.” In some parishes the refractory women are placed in a ward or shed within the wall, and made to pick hair or oakum, of which some- times as much as four pounds is required as a day’s work. This is, of course, unpaid. The smell of the hair is very offensive, and the work monotonous and hard. As the shed is often dark, and there are no objects surround- ing them to relieve the wearisomeness of their ! occupation, it may be supposed that the workers’ mind and feelings are not raised by it. On Sunday there is absolutely nothing to do, and, though the women may attend service if they like, very few do so. Books left in this place are more often torn to j pieces than read, and a state of things pre- vails in the ward much like what takes j ! place on week-days after work is done, when the company indemnify themselves for their toil and restraint by the most coarse and law- less rioting. In St. Pancras parish, of which I speak because it is the one best known to me, an oakum shed was established out- side the walls of the house, in order to give employment, at a low rate of pay, to that class of women who are either incessantly clamour- ing for out-door relief, or, if admitted into the house, are a source of endless trouble and disorder. In this shed the utmost that could be earned in a day was one shilling. When I visited the place, at that time situated in a mews at some distance from the workhouse, it would have been hard to say which was most suggestive of the absence of stimulus to pure and healthy life — the locality, the workers, or the work. Thirty or forty women were seated round a rough, narrow table, pulling short, thick pieces of rope into tow. 2 36 THE WORKHOUSE GIRL. fGood words, April 1,1859. | The walls were bare and thick, and a skylight made darkness and dirt visible. Many of the ! younger women frequented the shed for shelter during a few hours of the day-time, but were not dependent for subsistence on their earnings in this honest if distasteful work. Their manners and language during our visit were quiet enough, but an official who kept guard at the entrance, said that the usual disorderly talk was only suspended for the time, partly in compliment to the chaplain, who was of the party, and partly because we had been heralded by vague rumours of our being deputed by Government to make golden offers to any girl who would emigrate. One fine-looking young woman, a thoroughly hope- |! less subject, who had defied many attempts I at reformation, excited our sympathy by a : romantic tale about her intended husband, j like herself a model of constancy, without j whom she said she could not leave the j country. I found afterwards that this history — which might have qualified the narrator for a contributor to the London Journal or Reynold. d Miscellany , was an extempore fic- tion. One might imagine that such ready inventive talent might be turned to some good purpose, instead of being starved into falsehood by the surroundings of the work- house. This shed has since been shut up, j and the work removed to a ward within the I House. The principle of the oakum shed is j a good one, offering as it does the means of I obtaining a scanty livelihood to those who cannot gain one in any other honest way. The plan might be modified and extended, and the oakum shed or stoneyard be converted into a workshop of a higher class, where j instruction should be given, and wages below the rate in the trade earned. In their present form these places, like most necessary evils, only make bad worse. I have described the condition of a young woman in a workhouse, and her fate when she leaves it. There are, however, some girls depending on the parish, who do not slide directly into the “ dead sea ” of misery which receives the workhouse girls. These are or- phans and destitute children, whose complete friendlessness renders them entirely “ chil- dren of the state,” and for whom a brighter j hope and a better chance in life is held out by the industrial schools, established in dif- ferent parts of the neighbourhood of London. These schools, which altogether contain many hundred children, in a pure air, and with fresh and happy surroundings, enable a child to breathe a better physical and moral atmo- j ! sphere than either her paternal cellar or the stone yards and dull wards of the workhouse. Twenty years ago a child no sooner reached the age of nine or ten than he or she was con- signed by the tender mercies of a board of guardians to a factory, and so got rid of. Now his chance in life is better, for, if answer- ing to the required conditions as to health, &c., he may be sent to the industrial schools, and kept there till he is fit to be placed out at a trade, or if a girl, till she is supposed to be ready for service. The age at which the authority of the parish over a child is supposed to cease is sixteen. But the path in life of a parish child — I will suppose it to be a girl — is beset with stumbling-blocks from the moment when she first breathes the polluted air of her native court or the workhouse ward, till the time when she is fairly launched in life, and has, or ought to have, power to choose between an honest and a disgraceful liveli- hood. When girls are sent from the schools to service, some few get on pretty well, and, finding good employers, become respectable servants. The reason why almost all do not take the safe path is this. So great is the demand for servants, that girls who are be- lieved to have been kept out of harm’s way, and to have had some training, are in great request, and the matrons of the schools often have applications for them a year in advance. So the poor girl is sent into a place some- times at twelve or thirteen years old. She has been very happy at school, living among kind companions and treated with indulgence. She can read and write and sew a little, and do a little arithmetic, but her knowledge of house-work and cookery is necessarily of the roughest and simplest character, limited perhaps to scrubbing a floor or throwing together a bed, such as she sleeps on in the dormitory ; for, in an establishment where all the meals, serving, and appointments are necessarily of the plainest and simplest kind, the wholesale way in which all the work is carried on is totally different to what will be required of her when she enters a family. As for cookery, the means and appliances of the establishment to meet its own simple and wholesale needs are so numerous, that roast- ing and boiling, except with all the facilities afforded by a cooking apparatus, cannot be learnt. The same may be said of making a pudding, or cooking vegetables or soup. All the newly invented arrangements for cooking, washing, and other departments of household work, are splendid triumphs of art in their way, and excellent means of enabling us to do almost without servants ; but when the Good Words, April i, 1869.] THE WORKHOUSE GIRL. object is to teach young girls how to prepare food and to wash clothes in small families, where many contrivances and expedients are required, patent scientific cooking and wash- ing machines are not likely to promote it. Girls who are accustomed to a place warmed with hot-water pipes, and with a hot and cold water tap on e very floor, find it hard to carry coals and water cans up a staircase in their new home. The best chance the girls have of learning anything of servants’ work, is when their turn comes to wait on the master and matron; but they leave the school too young to profit much by such small prac- tice. There are three causes why a complete, or even nearly complete, servant’s education cannot be given to girls in the district schools : first, the age at which they are sent away; secondly, the undue facilities which are afforded for all sorts of household work ; and, not least, the impossibility of develop- ing individual character where such num- bers of children are collected. Girls, who are more sensitive, more in need of personal care, and more ready to give attention to details, are more injured than boys by the wholesale treatment I have described, and this is shown when they are sent to service. In her new home, a girl is told to do, as a matter of course, what she has never done before — perhaps to carry a can of hot water up-stairs. She exaggerates all her difficulties, becomes despairing and stupified, and unless her mistress is more considerate than mis- tresses often are, the poor little servant gets on for a time in an unhappy state of mind, and then runs away. Some girls go from one place to another, and are at length lost sight of. It is well if these do not re- appear at the workhouse after a few months, possibly years, in another character — a burden and a misery to the world and to themselves for the rest of their lives. Many girls, after being placed in service, have been visited by the chaplains of the schools ; and the friendly counsel and en- couragement given by these gentlemen have induced several to remain in their places who would otherwise have run away in despair. The Rev. Septimus Buss, chaplain of St. Pan- eras workhouse, has for years visited many of these girls; and his experience confirms every other account, namely, that for a young woman to live in the workhouse is almost certain ruin ; so that if she is compelled to return there after having left her place, all the former benefit gained at the school is ! undone. Two things are evident : that no j girl or young woman of tolerable character 287 ought ever to enter the workhouse, and that an intermediate asylum, between the schools and service, would supply the deficiencies of the one, and ensure well-doing in the other. When boys are first taken to a reforma- tory or to a boys’ home, they are dull, sullen, and spiritless, seeming to have neither mo- tive for action nor enjoyment in life. The pleasures of street life, which consist in throwing mud or stones, shouting bits of slang and snatches of popular songs, with an occasional scuffle or fight by way of variety, being out of their reach, they have nothing to do or to think of but eating and drinking. As soon as these boys learn to do something in which they can excel — if it be even chop- ping and tying up wood, they wake up from their lethargy, and enter into the natural, bright, and active condition of healthy boys. At the Home* in my neighbourhood, the young inmates do all sorts of carpentering and cabinet work, brush-making, tailoring, &c., besides the ordinary employment of cutting firewood. One day lately, some blind-rollers having been broken, a boy was sent for to repair them. An active, intelli- gent boy of about thirteen or fourteen came, and at once set the blinds to rights in a masterly manner. On his going away for some tacks, another job was found for him, which he did equally well ; and on some one saying as he came in, “ Here’s the carpenter come back,” it was pleasant to see the look of conscious usefulness and responsibility his face expressed. In the course of next year, he and three others, all skilled workmen, will be sent to Canada, where they will in all probability become thriving settlers. The particulars of several homes for desti- tute girls, maintained either entirely by pri- vate charity, or by the parish assisted by pri- vate benevolence, are given in Miss Hill’s volume. Of these homes, the best known, as it was one of the first, is perhaps Miss Twining’ s, established in New Ormond Street in 1861. The object of this institution was to save destitute girls who, having gone to service chiefly from the pauper schools, had run away, or were, from other causes, out of place, and had no refuge but the workhouse. Miss Twining has been very successful with her inmates, notwithstanding their previous disadvantages. A still greater degree of suc- cess might be expected if the training, from the very first, could ensure judicious teaching and entire separation from evil influence. Let us suppose a home for destitute women j and girls established in every parish, the in - j * The Boys’ Home, Regent’s Park Road. 288 THE WORKHOUSE GIRL. [Good Words, April i, 1869. mates of which should be maintained by a weekly allowance from the parish, at the same rate as they would cost in the workhouse or the British schools. In this home should be placed: — i. Girls who have been in the schools, but who require further instruction in house-work, to make them good servants ; 2. Girls, w T ho from any cause are out of place, and are on that account in danger of being sent to the workhouse ; 3. Young women of tolerable character, who have ap- plied to the parish for relief, without having been to the schools; 4. Young women who may have been in the workhouse, but who are sufficiently well-disposed to afford a hope of their doing well, if placed under good in- fluence for a time, but whose reformation is I not certain enough to warrant their being sent to service, as their chief danger arises from their meeting with, and being misled by, former bad companions : these women might, after a time, be fit subjects for emigration, or, if a laundry were established, a few of them might remain to carry on and teach the work. The home now proposed would be ren- dered more efficient if, instead of one large building, it were to consist of several smaller establishments under the same roof, each forming a little household. One large house would not admit of the classification of cha- racter, which is indispensable, neither would it allow of such a variety of domestic occu- pation as would make the training for service progressive. The home should give teaching of different kinds, all the girls receiving more or less of either or all, as her disposition or abilities might indicate : 1. Plain cookery ; 2. Cleaning and house-work in general ; 3. Needlework ; 4. Washing and ironing ; 5. Nursing and care of infants. The first efforts in cookery would consist of preparing meals for all the inmates ; and I imagine that, as the girls improve, it might be practicable to send them for a time to a sick kitchen, or _a school of cookery, of which there are more than one in London. There is now, con- nected with the London Hospitals, a cook- ing establishment in Woburn Buildings, at which dinners are prepared and given to those convalescent patients who need food more than medicine. Young cooks from the Home might have the privilege of a little practice at this or some similar institution. Housemaids’ work could be sufficiently learnt in the home, by attendance on the matron and other officials. I should recom- mend that in the work-room there should be a sewing-machine, which some of the girls should be taught to use, and that cutting-out clothes and darning stockings should be in- cluded in the work. The laundry would, of course, be similar to that in any other insti- tution of the same kind. The home should also contain a nursery, for the infants of young women of classes 3 and 4, who having- been placed in service, would be required to pay a small sum weekly towards their chil- dren’s maintenance. The care of these in- fants would furnish practice for young girls, and would thus meet a great want, that of well-trained and careful nursemaids. A lady who has an excellent Servants’ Home in Wolverhampton, has also established a Free Registry Office in the same place. This office, which is open day and night, has been found extremely useful. Friendless and homeless young women have only to go in and enter their names in a book kept by the Registrar, a trustworthy woman, whose duty it is to inquire into all statements made by applicants, who, if found deserving, are helped, either by being recommended to situations or placed in the Home; and who, if not free from blame, but anxious to reform, are assisted in other ways. Such a registry office should be attached to the parochial home. More than one attempt has been made in past years to get such a Home as I have described established. In i860, a recom- mendation to this effect was made by the ladies of the Workhouse Visiting Society, supported by some of the guardians of the poor. At that time, however, it appeared that the requirements of the Poor Law would not justify the Board in carrying out the measure. Should this difficulty be overcome, all hesitation on the ground of present outlay ought surely to yield to the pressing want of an institution, which, under judicious manage- ment, would certainly save the parish long and fruitless expense. The first establishment ought to be simple and inexpensive. One or two small adjoining houses, with only just such furniture or ap- pointments as are absolutely necessary. If two or three girls, with a steady woman, were placed in these, they would set to work at once, and have the satisfaction of cleaning and forming their home. And if, when the home is once fairly prepared, the weekly payments for the inmates were made by the parish, superintendence would not be wanting in the form of kind and devoted women, who would do for the home what they have done for the hospital. It will be well for England when national and private benevolence can thus be made to work together. S. E. DE MORGAN. Gcoj Words, April i, 1869.] THE MAN OF GOD WHO CAME OUT OF JUDAH. 289 HEROES OF HEBREW BIISTORY. By the BISHOP OF OXFORD. IV.— THE MAN OF GOD WHO CAME OUT OF JUDAH. It was a high day in that old town of Bethel. The great king of the ten tribes, the founder of the fresh dynasty which was to rival, if not to eclipse, the house of David, was present in this border town of his new dominion. To it, around his person, were gathered the chiefs of the families and the elders of the tribes. He was himself in person and in mind a born king of men. And those natural gifts had been improved to the utter- most by administrative experience, by foreign travel, and by his having drunk deep into the highest antiquities of the old world in its native Egyptian soil. Strange and wayward had been the vicissitudes of his life. He was of a stock'" which might have been suspected of hereditary hostility to the house of David from the return by Solomon upon the head of his old father, whom we know better as Shimei than as Nebat, of the curses which he had heaped upon the great king in j the time of his adversity. But he was yet of j tender years when he was left fatherless, and had spent his youth in the house of his widowed mother, Zeruah, in Zereda of Ephraim. There he grew up strong, energetic, and diligent. He early attracted the attention of Solomon, and shared in his magnificent patronage. When that wise king, in the accomplish- ment of his vast architectural designs, was restoring the “ Millo,” which was, as it seems, the highest part of the old Jebusite fortress, which was now the city of David, Jeroboam was, amongst others, employed by him. The difficulty of the process evidently tested to the utmost all the engineering power which the king could command ; and, as he watched the accomplishment of his purpose, and saw the breaches in the old wall repaired, he noted in Jeroboam the faculties he loved to possess in a servant ; he observed with pride his strength, his daring, and his untiring industry ; and when the work of the Millo was finished he promoted his favourite to be ruler over all the charge of the house of Joseph — to be, that is, his chief officer in collecting the taxes and imposts due from the powerful tribe of Ephraim. Promotion kindled the burning ambition of the young Benjamite. His charge over the house of Joseph made him feel the full amount of change from early vigour to a * S.t. Jerome identified Nebat with Shimei. (Quest. Heb., 2 Reg. xvi., App. viii., vol. ii., p. 31.) X — 20 palsied feebleness which was passing upon the reign of the uxorious king, whose magnificence could not be supported except by imposts, the severity of which tried the loyalty of his people, and alienated them from the son of David. The transformation, too, of the | nation under his influence from being a | purely agricultural into becoming a mercantile community, with the sudden enrichment of new families, and the free intercourse with foreigners which such a change entailed, was very unwelcome to the lovers of old customs, and generally offensive to the landed interest. Even in the time of King David, the fickle temper of the people had more than once displayed itself; and a far less general dis- content, when carefully cultivated by Absalom, had threatened his father’s throne. The ill- humours of the time suggested to Jeroboam the possibility of a more successful revolt. He multiplied his chariots and horses, and set 'himself at the head of a numerous band of followers. Nor was it without a higher sanction than his own ambitious longings that he thus began to “ lift up his hand ” against his master. He was meant by God to be the instrument of Solomon’s chastisement when the heart of the aged king was “ turned from the Lord God of Israel, which had appeared to him twice” (i Kings xi. 9). Most unlooked for by Jeroboam must have been the granting to him this high commission. He was not a man given to consort with prophets, or to listen to their words. But as he goes forth from J erusalem pondering in his solitary walk his schemes of rebellion, Ahijah the Shilonite, the prophet of the Lord, meets him, and by sign and by word tells him that God will, for their sins, rend from the house of David in the time of the king’s son ten of the twelve tribes, and give them as a kingdom to him. Into what a flame must such an announcement have stirred up his spirit ! What a clear reading of all his secret desires did the prophet’s words imply ! “ Thou shalt reign according to all thy soul desireth, and shalt be king over Israel.” In that furious turbulence of his spirit it was hard for him to wait for the death of Solomon ; and some indications of what was filling his soul would, in act or deed or preparation, find their vent. These weie soon brought to the jealous ears of the old king, who, with something of his early vigour, sought to slay the threatening insurgent 290 THE MAN OF GOD [Good Words, April i, 1869 Egypt was the natural protector of one in ! such peril. Egypt, the common home of | expatriated leaders, the land which welcomed to its palaces all who would be the willing instruments of its crafty policy against border- ing peoples. To Egypt Jeroboam fled, as Hadad of the seed royal of Edom had done before him. Like Hadad, if we may trust the Septuagint, he was welcomed at the court of the Egyptian king, and given in marriage an Egyptian princess, sister of the queen, and of the wife of Hadad. In all this there was a large promise for the future ; but there was much to stir up for the present the bitter waters of his soul. He was an exile at a foreign court; all the inevitable degradations of such a life chafed his im- perious spirit. Time, too, was passing, and the old king lingered on still upon the throne he longed to seize. Such a life must have deepened all the hard lines of his stern character. Amidst the busy throngs of the Egyptian capital, through the gorgeous palaces of the Pharaohs, he moved as a shadow, with his heart afar off on the mountains of Canaan, buried in his own thoughts, forecasting his future reign, and weaving the dark threads of his lifelong conspiracy. Faith in the God of Israel, in the high sense of the word faith, his after history shows that he had none. The prophet’s words were to him but as the promise of the Weird Sisters to the dark- souled Scottish chieftain, chanting back to him with a certain external authority the dreams of his own heart, and breeding within him a more confident resolution and more fixed purposes of daring. Instead of yielding himself sub- missively, like David, through his long years of adversity, and waiting to be the simple instrument of God’s will, his ambitious long- ings were even already a rebellion against God and a grieving of His Spirit, whilst the influence of the Egyptian mythology and creature worship, in the midst of which he found himself, obliterated any deep lines of exclusive faith in Jehovah, and prepared the way for his great after fall. But at last the forty long years of the reign of Solomon were over, and news came down into Egypt that “he slept with his fathers, and was buried in the city of David his father.” The dark heart of J eroboam laughed with the gloomy joy of gratified ambition at the long-expected tidings, and he returned back to the old dwelling place of Zereda, in the Mount of Ephraim (Sept.), from which the jealousy of the old king had hunted him. Here he began to practise his former arts, and gathered round him all the tribe of Ephraim. The stupid obstinacy of Reho- boam helped forward mightily his projects. The oppressive tribute which Solomon had raised had shaken his great authority, and the dissatisfied tribes clamoured round the throne of the young king for a release from their burdens. Their reasonable cry was met with insult and threats, and as one man the alienated tribes looked abroad for another ruler. Then was the time of Jeroboam’s | triumph. He had put himself at the head of those who most eagerly demanded a reform of the abuses of the late reign. This gave him at once the position of a leader. His name was in all mouths. Stories of his exile, of his greatness in Egypt, of his return to his own people, of the magnificence of his life upon the Mount of Ephraim, of his wisdom, his strength, and his daring, ran through the ten revolted tribes ; whispers as to the pro- phetic voice which long ago had destined him for the throne, seemed to add a Divine sanction to his usurpation. He was the very man they needed as their chief. We may see the working of his crafty hand in the great act of rebellion which consummated the revolt when the old chief of the tribute who had stood high amongst the princes of the wise Solo- mon was, as the king’s representative, de- liberately stoned to death by all Israel. After this act of rebellion return to the house of David was impossible, and all Israel made Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, their king. He soon showed that, however ready he might be to listen to the voice of prophecy when it promised him a throne, yet it was mere earthly ambition, and not the doing of God’s will, which had been throughout his motive. When the promise of the kingdom had been made him there was joined to it a solemn charge to try his faithfulness. “ It shall be,” the prophet’s word had said, “that if thou wilt hearken unto all that I command thee, and wilt walk in my ways, and do that which is right in my sight, to keep my statutes and my commandments as David my servant did, that I will be with thee and build thee a sure house, as I built for David, and will give Israel unto thee” (i Kings xii. 38). It may well be that at the time visions of future service to God mingled themselves with the dreams of his young ambition. But the choking thorns had strangled the faint upgrowth of the better seed ; and as soon as he had won the throne he set himself to keep it by his own subtlety, and not by obeying the God of Israel. The heart of the success- ful conspirator was darkened with the fear that if God’s altar at Jerusalem continued to Cjrvid Words, April i, 1869.] WHO CAME OUT OF JUDAH. 291 be the central point of the national worship, and was frequented yearly at the great feasts by all the males of his kingdom, the throne of Judah would supplant all their unmatured affections to the throne of Samaria. “Then shall the heart of this people turn again unto their lord, even unto Rehoboam, king of Judah, and they shall kill me and go again k unto Rehoboam” (i Kings xii. 27). So much political craft his Egyptian sojourning had taught him— it had taught him too a remedy. His mind had shaken off the narrow trammels of the Jewish theology. The great presiding Deity could be wor- shipped acceptably, not at one altar only, or only under one form. It was necessary to the strength and permanence of his dynasty that the new kingdom should have a pure feature of national worship. If he could not impart to it all the hereditary sanctity of the altar at Jerusalem, he would at least emulate the splendour of the Jewish temple and exceed the gorgeousness of its cere- monial. He would interest in the service of the new sanctuary the great mass of his people. Instead of the sacerdotal exclusive- ness which limited in Judah all the prizes of the priesthood to a single tribe, his enlarged mind would communicate them to all, and so inlist all in the maintenance of his new religious establishment. With the most en- gaging liberality he made priests of the lowest of the people. His keen eye saw the sensuous tendency of his people, and he boldly repro- duced amongst them the sacred emblems of the unseen God, which he had seen so deeply reverenced in Egypt, and he set up at Dan and at Bethel the golden calves which should present sacramentally to his people the great Jehovah who had brought them up from Egypt. This was the very central point of his policy, and he devoted to its perfect establishment every resource he could com- mand. Bethel, no doubt, was chosen not only from its proximity to the dangerous border of the southern kingdom, but also from the holy associations which hung around it and made it so pre-eminently a hallowed spot. There the king had now gathered a crowd of obsequious worshippers. Tenderness for his I people’s needs was one great motive he assigned for the spiritual revolution he in- augurated. “It is too much for you to go up to J erusalem : behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt ” (1 Kings xii. 28). He was anxious to provide for them at a less cost than the journey to Jerusalem the full satisfaction of their religious desires. Nothing should be wanting which the king could command to make that supply sufficient. He made a house of high places ; he multiplied beyond prece- dent the crowd of sacrificing priests — since as these were no longer limited to the tribe of Levi, he could fill abundantly their ranks. He appointed two great days of festival to rival those which were kept in the old capital. On the fifteenth day of the eighth month, “the day which he had devised out of his own heart” as an ordained feast for the children of Israel, all the magnificent ritual of the new temple was complete, and the great national worship was to be commenced. To add to the magnificent impressiveness of the scene, which was to remove from his people’s minds any lingering recollections of the great Solo- mon’s dedication festival of the temple on the mount Moriah, the king came down from his distant capital to attend the festival, and take part with his own royal hand in the service of inauguration — to offer upon the altar and to burn incense. It was impossible to overrate the importance of this occasion to himself and to his dynasty. If by that day’s successful ceremonial he could thoroughly engraft upon the religious feelings of the people the new worship, his throne was safe for himself, and for his children after him. The dark heart of the long-practised conspirator concentrated its utmost energies to make this turning-point of all his long-laid and happily- accomplished schemes thoroughly successful. He had provided so far as the most anxious foresight would enable him against any pos- sible failure, and now the crisis of the great experiment was come, and in the sight of all his people, “ the king stood by the altar to burn incense.” We may picture to ourselves the whole scene : the band of supple courtiers ; the new priesthood fiercely zealous in the asser- tion of their spiritual pre-eminence ; the as- senting crowd ; pleased with their monarch’s care ; rejoicing in the bright promise of an external worship which met the longings of their carnal hearts ; flattered with the distinc- tion of rivalling or surpassing the worship of J erusalem ; with only here and there one whose grave, saddened countenance spoke of the inward struggle between the conflicting fears of dishonouring their fathers’ jealous God and incurring instant destruction if they op- posed their fierce and strong-willed monarch. And now the king raises his arm to bum incense on the altar; when suddenly one unbidden presence intrudes itself within the inmost circle of his attendants. The garb of the stranger bespeaks him a prophet of I 2Q2 THE MAN OF GOD [Good words, April i, 1869. Jehovah. The marks of travel are upon him ; he has come from far ; come, it may be, to take part in this grand service of initiation. ' One gaze, at least, rested full upon him. One master-eye was bent upon him, and sought to read in his countenance his unspoken message. What was the first emotion which throbbed through the dark heart of the anxious king when that unlooked- for figure first broke upon its consciousness ? Had he come for good or for evil ; to bless or to curse ? Once before, with the same unbidden and unlooked-for suddenness such a form had stood beside him as he walked of old out of the highway of the city : had taken up the thread of his inmost thoughts, and forecast for him the strange future of his life. And now, with what message had he come to-day ? Was it the very same prophet, or one of the same prophetic line? What would be the burden of his prophecy? Self-flattery would whisper that it need not be unmitigably hostile. There was of necessity a certain rivalry between the prophetic class and the Levitical priesthood. The monarchy of the house of David had finally superseded the long line of prophetic rule; and the temple at Jerusalem had been r a vast exaltation of the family of Aaron and of the house of Levi. Jeroboam’s new temple and new hierarchy were the heaviest blow yet struck against the old Aaronic supremacy. Could it have been accepted. Might it be that prophetic lips would sanction his bold attempt to localise in his new kingdom and swell into hallowing devotion the waning worship of the distant tribes before this new altar to their father’s God ? And with these mingled other thoughts. Let his message be what it might, could he be ' mad enough to dare the monarch to his face? And yet could such an one, indeed, approve? and if he did not approve, why was he there, except he was sent by Israel’s God to blast in the very agony of its birth the just- developed worship ? We may see the eyes of the two men meet, and we can almost hear the deep hush which spread itself as a silence of hearts over the thronging mass around. What would come of it ? Which would yield ? Which wing would beat the other down? What would be the issue ? There was no sign of fear upon that pro- phet’s brow. He stood as though he had already forecast within his heart all the scene j before him, and was ready for its utmost ! need. And so, indeed, he was. When the divine afflatus had . breathed upon him in peaceful Judah, it may be that the first im- 1 pulse of his startled spirit had been to shrink aside from so infinite a daring. Jeroboam’s strength of purpose, his unscrupulous em- ployment of any means to reach his end, and his unflinching daring, were well known in Judah, and he was hated and feared as the despoiler of the house of David, and the divider of their nation’s unity. To withstand such a man in the very central point of all his policy ; to do it openly, publicly, without protection, in the sight of all his people, was indeed to cast his own life away upon an utterly hopeless hazard. But if human weak- ness had shuddered, God’s strength had triumphed, and the messenger of Jehovah had girded himself to do the mighty bidding. As he walked forth alone along his appointed | path, what tossing waves of conflicting emo- tions must have risen and surged within his soul ! Even as he paced the streets of Jerusa- lem, the engrossing strife within had made him feel himself so utterly alone, that its crowded thoroughfares were to him as a desert. And j now he had left behind him the outskirts of the chosen city ; he had passed beyond the terraced vineyards with their walls and watch- towers, and was making his way along the high mountain ridge which formed the track to Bethel. From time to time he exchanged the white limestone path and the grey wil- - low-like olive trees for the far distant views which that high ridge presented to his eye. He saw the border hills of Moab, girdled by the rich Jordan valley, where of old the threatening walls of Jericho had fallen at God’s bidding before the trumpet blast of the circling host; and he thought upon the ancient charge, “ Only be thou strong and very courageous,” and built up his own spirit in the faithfulness of his God ; or he looked j upon his left and saw the blue sea brightly speckled with the ships of Tarshish, and swelling in its might under the breath of God ; and he saw before him the out- stretched rod of his prophet ancestor, and those waves at his command parting them- selves asunder and standing as a wall on this side and on that, and his heart knew that he was safe in His hands who had divided the sea, whose waves roared and made the waters of the great deep to be a way for Flis ransomed to pass oyer. And now he was J drawing near to Bethel ; and as he thought upon his message, and there rose before his eyes all the abomination he was commissioned to rebuke, his soul burned within him from very jealousy for the honour of the Lord God of Israel. Was it not enough that, in distant Gad, where the Lloly Land was passing into Good Words, April i, 1SC9.] WHO CAME OUT OF JUDAH. 293 the unblessed forests of Bashan, the accursed altar should be raised, and the image of Israel’s old sin be renewed, but must its pre- sence pollute also the sacred ground of Bethel, and insult the memories of Abraham and of Jacob? Must the veiy spot where, as he first trod the soil of the Land of Pro- mise, Abram had builded an altar unto the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord, see this forbidden worship rise to provoke Jehovah’s wrath ? Must the stones which Jacob had taken to be his pillow, when the great vision of God’s nearness to him had been permitted to fill his wondering soul, be now builded into an altar to the calf of Gad? Must the oak of weeping, which marked the grave of one of the great patri- arch’s household, now wave its branches over these unhallowed rites ? The very trees of the forest which clothed the hill-side, as it stretched from Bethel to Ai, seemed, as they swayed under the breeze of the morning, to be uttering God’s sentence on such daring un- faithfulness, and to lift up to the full compre- hension of his message and the resolute deter- mination to deliver it all the great soul of God’s appointed messenger. With such thoughts burning within him, his feet trod the crowded thoroughfare ; he passed through it as men pass through a city of the plague — he must touch nothing in it lest its pollution pass on him ; he might not eat its bread or drink its water : by open sign, as well as by spoken word, its guilt and desolation must be declared. And so with the foot of a re- solute speed, he passed along its streets, trod the courts of the novel temple, passed through the self-opening circle of the idol-worshippers, and stood in threatening silence in the very presence of the haughty king. But the silence was not long. Deliberately, and as one speaking in the ears of all, a sen- tence terrible to listen to, the words were spoken. To the king, as though he were unworthy to receive it, no word was uttered. To the altar he addressed his words ; upon the altar, the instrument and the witness of the monarch’s sin, fell the terrible denunciation. He cried against the altar, in the word of the Lord, “ O altar, altar, upon thee shall a prince of the house of Judah offer the priests of the high places which burn incense upon thee. This is the sign which the Lord hath spoken : Behold, the altar shall be rent, and the ashes that are upon it shall be poured out.” The pealing of the thunder-cloud could not have broken forth with a more startling burst. Every device of the cunning subtilty of the usurper was crushed beneath it. His scheme for a new national worship at the very moment of its perfecting fell helpless to the ground ; here, where he had hoped to raise a barrier against his dynasty being weakened by any possible return to Judah of the brethren of the separation, here a Prince of the house of Judah should stand and burn the bodies of the priests of his new institution, to the power of whom he looked as the prolongers of the majesty of his royal race. Here on the altarwhereon hewould consecrate his line, here should be the utter- most abomination of Hinnom, even the burn- ing of the bones of the dead. No wonder that his wrath broke forth — sharp, sudden, undis- guised, unflinching. He might as soon abdi- cate his hardly-won dominion as endure this intolerable ignominy. No sooner did he hear the words than he stretched forth with eager energy the hand which was about to burn the incense, and cried out, as though fearing the possible escape of the messenger of evil, “ Lay hold on him.” It was the action of a moment ; but even as it was wrought, it was avenged. His hand, which he had put forth against God’s messenger, dried up, so that he could not pull it in again to him ; and the altar of his sin— that too quivered beneath the word of power so that it rent asunder, and the ashes on it were poured forth. The ■ strife was over. God had, beyond all con- tradiction, put forth his might. The broken | altar, the withered arm — these were the abid- ing tokens of the fray. The strong man of the earth had lifted up himself against the unearthly power, and it had shivered him to powder. Calm, serene, unmoved, stood yet beside the altar the prophet of Jehovah ; and as the trembling king entreats the prayer of i God’s servant for the healing of the arm his \ word had withered, that stern strength in . which his features had been set melted into mercy, and he besought the Lord, and the king’s hand was restored to him again, and became as it was before. Humbled by the judgment, softened by the mercy, it seems for the moment as if that hard heart was yield- j ing itself up to grace — as if the hero daring . of the man of God had rent, not only the j altar-stones, but the harder rock of a rebel- ' lious spirit. “ Come home with me,” is now his utterance to the man of God, “ and refresh thyself ; and I will give thee a reward.” Yet even this condescension is with- held. Those meats of the idol-worshipper were to be no food for the servant of the jealous God; Jeroboam’s gold no guerdon I for Jehovah’s messenger. “ The man of God h said unto the king, If thou wilt give me half I 294 THE MAN OF GOD WHO CAME OUT OF JUDAH. [Good Words, April i 1869. thine house, I will not go in with thee. Neither will I eat bread nor drink water in this place ; for so was it charged me by the word of the Lord, Eat no bread nor drink water, nor turn again by the way that thou earnest.” And so they parted : the king humbled, foiled, subdued ; the fifteenth day of the eighth month — “ the month which he had devised in his own heart” — the day of his humiliation instead of his success ; the great feast which was to have cemented the loyalty of Israel to his throne, having proved the first great shock to its stability. The prophet still, as ever, calm, determined, triumphant ; spuming reward as he had laughed at threatening ; and at God’s com- mand, turning from the guilty town by another way from that which had borne him thither. How different were his thoughts as he left the town from those with which he had entered it ! The great burden which had been laid upon his soul had been lifted off. He had entered the town with a full sense of all that was before him. He had cast himself into that eager and excited crowd of worshippers, knowing all the risk he ran : but not knowing what the Lord who sent him had appointed for him : he had obeyed simply, and he was victorious. He had been faithful unto death, and his Lord had stood by him and saved him. What did that countenance speak as he left the evil town ? Was it all thankfulness ? Was there that sinking of the spirit which so besets humanity when it has accomplished a struggle which has tried it to the very uttermost ? Or was there something of human triumph in the flushed cheek and bounding tread of him who had passed in through those gates pale that morning in the energy of subdued earnestness? It seems probable that these conflicting emotions were struggling within him. Struggling dangerously — foreboding, it may be, to the watchful eye of some guardian spirit all that followed. What an unutterable sadness there is about that future ! What lessons of self-distrust, of the need of continual watchfulness, of the need of perseverance, woven in colours of blood into the bright web of his noble daring and high-souled triumphs ! He leaves the city, and as the first dan- gerous sign of yielding to temptation, he sits down to rest beneath a wayside tree, instead of pressing forward at any cost from the idols’ home. But for that rest he might have triumphed to the end. For but for that the tempter would not, it seems, have overtaken him and plied him with the falsehood which led to his signal downfall. It is not difficult to trace the inducements which led to the utterance of that lie. The old prophet was, it seems, one of those whose souls had once been visited by the visions of the Most High. But they seem to have van- ished from him. Probably a life of worldly compliance had, as it is wont to do, dulled the receptive ear and made dumb the prophetic voice. His continued residence at Bethel, now that it had become the House of Idols instead of being the House of God, was an actual instance and for the future an unlimited promise of compliance with evil. In such an one, painfully conscious of the fading away of the prophetic power, there would of necessity be a craving for acknowledgment by a brother in the great company of the prophets, even for the satisfaction of his own uneasy conscience. Moreover, for his credit sake with others, he would desire to have the brotherhood avowed. The town was ringing with the fame of the nameless prophet — his calm courage, his unflinching utterance, the supernatural confirmation of his words, the yielding of the king, the high- minded rejection of the proffered present, the utter condemnation conveyed with such a terrible energy of expression in the refusal, on the command of God, to eat or drink within the accursed city — all invested the prophet-messenger with a marvellous halo of sanctity That such an one should make no acknowledgment of the old prophet could not but lessen his already waning influence ; what might it not effect in raising his reputa- tion amongst his townsmen if the prophet who had rejected the hospitality of Jero- boam should be known to have been his guest ? And so his scheme was laid : feigning, as such men learn to feign, what once had been real to him • utterly careless, as such old triflers with the voice of God evermore become, of the sin, and shame, and ruin which he might bring upon his victim, he sets out to overtake him and to bring him back. That halt under the way-side oak enabled him to fulfil his purpose. Doubtless the charge to return by another way from that which had borne him to Bethel con- veyed to the awakened conscience of the prophet the charge to hasten far away from the sinful place, and so that halting was a tempting of God. Doubtless when the lie was uttered which was to lure him back, his conscience stirred within and warned him. But the temptation came in so seductive a shape — for old prophets counselling ease to kill the self-denying zeal of younger spirits, are ever Satan’s chosen instruments of evil — Good Words, April x, 1869.! NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 2 95 it appealed with such an urgency of entreaty to his lower nature, for he was weary and faint, and the mid-day sun was hot and scorching, and Judea so distant, and present rest and refreshment were so needful, and he was in the unguardedness of spirit which is too often bred of recent success, and with some- thing of the dangerous triumph of a great temp- tation mastered, and therefore of the right to some little self-allowance earned; and so he faltered and he fell. He who had received his own command direct from God, suffered it to be overborne by the word of a man, and he returned and ate of the forbidden bread and drank of the forbidden water. And even at the moment the voice of con- demnation wakes against him, and the sen- tencer is sentenced, and the judge is judged. Another man he set out upon that second return. No doubt the voice of judgment had woke up again his slumbering conscience. No doubt his very setting out from Bethel bespoke his reawakened faithfulness — he was in God’s hands. Let Him do as seemed Him good. Bowed, humbled, penitent, ashamed, he tracked the new path appointed for him. Its course led him by the mouth of the woody defiles which ran up from the Jordan valley to the central ridge — the wonted haunt of the wild beasts which breed there in the jungles of the river. From one of them comes the terrible roar, and the whirlwind spring of the avenger of his disobedience. To stamp unmistakably upon the whole act the character of judgment, the lion spares the beast which was his natural prey, and as though witnessing against the man of Judah, couches beside his lifeless form. Surely we must read in such a spectacle the glory and the risk of being the servant of the jealous God. The broken life, the dis- honoured end, the strange sepulchre, the place amongst the catalogue of heroes, but the hero’s name withheld, the escutcheon taken down, and the banner removed, all speak alike the undying lesson of not fainting in the battle, of not coming short in the trial; all echo the mingled threat and promise of the grand apocalyptic words, “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee the crown of life.” “NOBLESSE OBLIGE.” Jit (Bnyltify S$tcrrg of ftkr-fotg. By the AUTHOR OF “ CITOYENNE JACQUELINE.” CHAPTER XI.— -LORD WRIOTHESLEY AT HOME. I ORD WRIO- TP (P THESLEYwas disposed to cul- tivate the Pas- tons’ acquaint- ance, without, however, going beyond the bounds of pro- priety and good taste. His in- timacy with Frank Hall fur- nished him with an additional opportunity for carrying out his desire. He painted well for an amateur, and being thus fa- miliar with the artist’s pursuits, was capable of interesting Mr. Paston. He revived re- collections of foreign studies, conveyed infor- mation as to modern schools, and discussed their merits with spirit. For that matter, art was a mild specialty of the house of Exmoor. The present Earl had always made Paston’s painting-room a lounge when he was in Wellfield ; and in this he had only followed the example of his father, who was supposed to have discovered and de- veloped the genius of the charity schoolboy. The Countess, too, displayed a subdued tinge of the art tendency in her indefatigable labours at the Countesses’ drawing-room hangings, and in her elevation of the embroidery into a business of importance. Lady Dorothea, the most original member of the family, had least of the prevailing bent. The natives of Wellfield, on their part, thought the Latimer love of art an aristocratic weakness, — very amiable, but still a weakness, and occasionally murmured at it, as carrying an undue amount of the august family coun- tenance into one narrow channel. Why should Lord Exmoor frequent Mr. Paston’s painting-room more than the Rectory, the family doctor’s house, or the attorney’s? What title did Mr. Paston’s fame, not to speak of his occupation, give Phoebe Paston, that she should be the god-daughter and in- timate friend of Lady Dorothea ? And now 296 NOBLESSE OBLIGE. ’[Good Words* April 1, 1869. ’ here was Lord Wriothesley, on his first return home, continuing and consummating the in- justice. But Brockcotes had the little town too well in hand to allow of its trifling dissatis- faction rising into a roar of disapprobation. To do the Latimers justice, they had always paid ready heed to the Wellfield murmurs when these reached them. Indeed nothing fidgeted the present Lord Exmoor more than the idea that he had failed in some self- imposed obligation which the county or the town of Wellfield might have expected of him. Lord Wriothesley, too, was, in some respects, like a Red Cross Knight, or a girl, and the commencement of his intimacy with the Pastons was thus unclogged even by a suspicion of the appearance of evil, however much it might have been disapproved of otherwise. As for Frank Hall, he was really too busy to take note of his noble ally. He was en- grossed with the necessity of acquiring well- bred ease in shooting over great covers in the morning, and dining at great tables in the evening. He could not get to Wooers’ Alley on his own account, except merely on flying visits, and this chiefly to repeat explanations of his continued absence. Nevertheless, Frank’s presence served to help his friend, within the briefest space of weeks, to establish himself on a familiar foot- ing with the household at Wooers’ Alley. The young Lord’s presence had a fine stimulating effect on the tired fastidious painter, over whose delicate organization the prestige of birth and the dignity of power held great sway. But it awed and fluttered Mrs. Paston beyond every effort of Wriothesley’s to check, so that he could have twisted her round his little finger, had he not been too much of a gentleman to fail to treat her with respect. At the same time, he wiled Phoebe from her displeasure with him, and her disgust with herself. There is this further to be said, that the manner in which the two made each other’s acquaintance had left a personality in their intercourse which could not have existed had they been origin- ally presented to each other as chief and vassal. Lord Wriothesley speedily taught Phoebe to pay him the high compliment of thinking him nearly worthy of Lady Doro- thea. Her ladyship sometimes accompanied her brother to Wooers’ Alley, but not so often as her own attachment to Phoebe Paston might have warranted. An excellent understand- ing existed between brother and sister : and Lady Dorothea laid great weight on Lord Wriothesley’s gifts and claims. But though she was the junior in years, she was the senior in maturity. This, and the nature of the distinction between them — the circum- stance that here the woman was the realist, and the man the dreamer — had affected their relations, not making them less friends, but rendering them less chosen associates and sympathetic companions than they might have been. Lord Wriothesley, it must be confessed, complained that Dolly was fatigu- ing — she was so tremendously in earnest r and, at the same time so cool and liberal,, so indefatigably industrious, and so vastly beyond trifling and triflers. Poor Fairchester and his people were doomed to smart for it. The truth was, that Lady Dorothea — un- constrained as she had been from her in- fancy, and without the slightest doubt as to what was right, or the smallest hesitation as. to doing it — had a dangerous propensity to legislate for her neighbours. Even Phoebe was forced to own reluctantly that Lady Dorothea would be spoiled if this trait grew in her. It is true, she had been so tho- roughly well brought up, that the inclination did not show itself in her behaviour towards her father and mother, to whom she was alto- gether sweet and submissive. But it peeped out, perhaps all the more obtrusively, in her dealings with her brother. Not that he was jealous or irritable under it. He laughed at it to Lady Dorothea’s face; but, notwith- standing this, it unsettled, and to some extent reversed, the natural relations of the two, and interfered with the closeness of their intimacy. And so it happened that Lord Wriothesley fell into the habit of calling at Wooers’ Alley two or three * times a week. He had messages from Frank Hall to deliver, art journals to bring, and bric-a-lrac speci- mens to discuss. At last he even proposed to sit to Mr. Paston for a portrait which the Countess wished to have taken. If the young nobleman had a double motive, like the Bellini, he had a fair field for his machi- nations. The only spy on him was Phoebe, whom he constantly saw coming and going, for even when Mr. Paston took his stroll within the limits of the flower - garden, among hollyhocks, dahlias, and asters, ver- benas, geraniums, and fuchsias, or in the orchard among plums and pears, Phoebe was rarely absent. She was the great admirer of the view of hoary, battlemented, ivy-draped St. Basil’s, with its scars, its warlike array, and its immortal defiance, both of foes and Good Wc -ds; April i t NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 2 97 Mrs. Paston would have of creeping decay, it that it was only a crumbling, dark, old church, given over to rats and damp. But Lord Wriothesley rose to eminence in Phoebe’s esteem when he compared St. Basil’s to Albrecht Diirer’s engraving, in which the way-worn knight rides on through the jaws of the pass, unrepelled and unappalled by the grinning Death on one side of him, or the dart-discharging Devil on the other. CHAPTER XII. “A BOLD STEP AND BLUNT.” Old Mrs. Wooler threw out meaning hints long before even Miss Rowe and her scandal- bag had made anything of Lord Wriothesley’s attentions. The rugged purity of the old woman’s nature prevented her from stooping to base insinuations which would have caused her son’s blood to boil. Yet it was not the dread of his anger which subdued and softened her. She could call him master in her house, and recognise him as the master of her heart, but still she would not shrink from thwarting and enraging him for his own good. She had even a rough relish for such encounters, although she was too honest wantonly to drag another woman through the mire. She said to herself that Caleb Pas- ton’s daughter might be an impertinent, set-up, artful hussy * but she would think mortal shame to blacken any girl, however light and vain, to any man, most of all to her son. Barty laughed all his mother’s little spiteful hints to scorn. “You don’t comprehend the bearing of the case, mother. At all events I shall not pick a quarrel with the Pastons on the faith of a scheme of theirs to entangle young Lord Wriothesley into a compromise of his rank. Good heavens, mother ! Paston would as soon scheme to murder the boy lord in order to pick his pocket, and then bury him under one of the hearth-stones of Wooers’ Alley !” Notwithstanding all this, Barty Wooler was the man who, in virtue of his yeoman’s blood, found himself called on to speak a word of warning to Caleb Paston. A few days after- wards he made a morning call at Wooers’ Alley. Mr. Paston, as was his wont, was taking advan- tage of the best lights and working busily. “ You are still the old man, Paston ; you would turn your work into a pleasure by mere dint of sticking at it, even were it not in it- self agreeable.” I 298 NOBLESSE OBLIGE. [Good Words, April r, 1869. “ Yes, Barty, I wish that were true of me. Certainly the mere work often adds a pleasure; for painters, I take it — some of them at least — are something like mothers, and are apt to think most of what gives them trouble, and grow attached to it and love to finger at it, and not seldom spoil it too. That portrait of Lord Wriothesley, now, has tried me. His expres- sion is capricious and ill to catch ; and, you see, I have flown for relief to broader effects,” he said, stepping back a little and turning his head on one side to take in the whole effect, as is the manner of painters, often perhaps more to invite sympathy and the expression of opinion than anything else. “Well, I wish I could say I shared your experience ; though I have no desire to strain after the blink of the Latimer eye,” answered Barty, with an uneasy meaning smile that struggled to veil another feel- ing. “ But what is this. Ah ! the Rotterdam Kermess ; well you have got breadth there certainly, and a bright sunny effect too. You must have a deal in hand just now, surely,” turning to a corner and lifting up a canvas which stood there on the floor, with its face j to the wall. “ And this is your sketch for | Lord Wriothesley ? His Lordship’s many appearances in Wooers’ Alley have made a fair impression here; I only wish for your sake, Paston, that the impressions produced on outside minds were as pleasant.” “ What is that you say, Barty ? ” asked Mr. Paston with puzzled, eyes, and laying down his palette and pencils, which up to this time he had kept in his hand. “ You have always had a close connection with the Brockcotes family, Paston. Of course, that is all right. But you will not object to hear an old friend’s opinion on another side of the question ?” “ Certainly not, Wooler. Speak as frankly as you like.” “ Well, to be plain,” Barty went on, awk- wardly, “I don’t think the connection re- quires you to keep open house for the son and heir, more particularly when you have not a son, but a daughter. But be so good as to remember that I reckon her as far above such a discussion as any Lady Doro- thea Latimer of them all. At the same time Miss Phcebe should not be talked about — forgive me for saying so to you, who are her father, but sometimes outsiders see clearest. Of course, I do not for a moment insult Lord Wriothesley by imputing deliberately foolish intentions to him. It would be a great shame to speak of such a thing hare.” “ Really, Barty, I fail to follow you,” an- swered Mr. Paston, with some impatience. “ Well,” Barty proceeded, “ what I mean is this : a girl, an innocent, high-spirited girl, is only a girl after all, and with all a girl’s wavering sensibilities and excitable vanity. Miss Phoebe might be a little dazzled — I put the case hypothetically — by the most distant chance of -the crown-matrimonial of Brockcotes. We know how delusive such an idea is, and that even were it realised, the result would prove no better than a splendid misfortune. But she has not had our ex- perience. Perhaps you think that I am forgetting myself to say this to you, Paston ?” While the latter part of this dialogue was going forward, Mr. Paston had taken up his pencils again, and was furiously working with a brush on an unoccupied corner of canvas, as a safety-valve and a mask to his irritation. “ No, no, Barty, by no means,” answered Caleb, as he looked up with a smile — a little smile, with a flicker of restrained eagerness in it ; “ but I think you are mistaken. Every one at Wellfield knows the terms on which I am with the Brockcotes people ; and, bless you, Lord Wriothesley and Phoebe are not fools, though they are young. Why, Barty, it seems to me it is you who are growing prudish, you who were wont to rebuke my starchedness. But out of respect to your opinion and your friendly interest in Phoebe, I shall put a check on the notice which the young gentleman is so good as to take of us.” “Friendly interest!” repeated Barty, warmly, and said no more for a moment. Then after a pause, u I ought to beg your pardon, Paston, for annoying you. Lord Wriothesley’s portrait is to blame for my going off on a different tack from what I had meant to follow ; and now what I have got to say on that head may seem a little imprudent, and my words too like the cuckoo’s eggs dropped into another bird’s nest. What I wanted to ask you to-day, Paston, and what I ought not to have let other matters chase from my tongue, was this — how would you think of me for a son-in-law, supposing Miss Phoebe would stoop to listen to a confirmed wanderer and idler like me?” “ After all that has come and gone, Barty, I would sooner have you as a son than any other man I know,” answered the painter, in some agitation. “But I must tell you that I shall not lift a fingef to influence Phoebe’s inclination, even to wipe out the heaviest debt that ever was contracted.” “ I do not ask that of you,” responded Good Words, April r, 1869. 1 NOBFESSE OBLICjtE. “99 Barty Wooler, a little haughtily, dropping the hand which he had taken. “You may credit me,” Mr. Paston de- clared solemnly, “ that if your suit fail, I shall be as much disappointed as you.” “ No, no, Paston,” protested Barty, re- covering his frank fervour; “no man alive can be so disappointed as I shall be, if Phoebe will have nothing to say to me. But, depend upon it, I shall burn my own smoke and not go puffing it in the face of the world. You may console yourself beforehand with that conviction.” “ I have no doubt of it,” said Mr. Paston. “ I’m afraid I haven’t much chance ; you see I am getting such an old out-of-date sort of fellow,” Barty went on, rearing his vigo- rous figure and drawing his fingers through his thick hair. “And there is no fool like an old fool, you know ; so, I suppose I went and persecuted the girl till — now she will neither look at me nor listen to me. But I think she is still free, as she seemed to be when I met her first at Folksbridge. I be- lieve I am safe from that pug-faced, wide- awake owl, Frank Hall, whom she would always be arguing with. To be sure I am honoured by having a young nobleman for my rival, and none besides.” “You must settle that for yourself, Barty,” rejoined Mr. Paston, a little tartly ; “I am not my daughter’s confidant. Certainly, she is young and light-hearted ; and if I consulted my own judgment, I should say a great deal too much so to be troubled as yet with matters of this kind.” “ But I have no time to lose,” interrupted Barty, impatiently. “You forget that, Paston. And the worst of it is, I am not what I might have been. I have been a vagrant — the idlest and most unconcerned beggar. The quality which settles men seems to have gone out of me, if it was ever in me.” “ As you are, Barty,” answered Mr. Paston, with his rare smile, “ I would rather Phoebe changed her name for yours than for that of any other man in Britain,” As the two men stood there, the contrast in their personal appearance was extreme. Mr. Paston was spare and spent, hollow- chested and ashen-haired. Barty Wooler, on the contrary, was full and firm, clear-eyed and erect, with close clusters of shining hair. Still Paston deferred to Barty, whom he addressed fondly as a boy almost, and Barty, without being condescending — it was not in the true Saxon .Englishman to be supercilious, though he could be surly — was as nearly as possible commiserating in his tone towards his old companion-in-arms, who had long and far outstripped him in the race. i “ 11 Francia was older than you before he laid down the goldsmith’s tool for the pencil,” ! urged Mr. Paston, “and Quentin Matsys, when he quitted the blacksmith’s anvil for the easel.” “But they had been busy men in their ! former callings ; and I have neither the i devouring ambition of the Italian, nor the lusty life of the Fleming. I am only an odd, middle-aged sinner of an Englishman, likely to be well-to-do through no effort nor credit of my own. I don’t want to deceive you, I fear I shall never be more than a dilettante apprentice instead of a devout and diligent master of my craft, like you.” “We shall see,” said Mr. Paston, pre- paring to drop the point. “ I shall not give you rest or peace ; and Phoebe, I am sure, would never be content till you were more.” “Ah! if Phoebe took me in hand,” said Barty with a bright glance, “ something might be made of me yet.” . CHAPTER XIII. A DISAGREEABLE DUTY. When Mr. Paston spoke to Phoebe in ful- filment of the promise made to Barty Wooler, he did it with such awkwardness and bad grace as vividly suggested a prompter. In his craving to soothe and satisfy his old friend, he had undertaken an office for which he neither saw any necessity, nor had any qualification. If Mrs. Paston had not been beyond imagination an incapable woman, he might, with advantage, have intrusted the task to her. But he had not that resource. In his sensitiveness, he was affronted even at alluding to the probable misconstruction of the public ; and blundered irreparably in the accomplishment of his object, just as Barty had blundered throughout his courtship. “ It has just struck me, Phoebe,” he began, on the first opportunity, “that you had better not come into the painting-room when there is any stranger with me, especially when Lord Wriothesley is sitting for his pic- ture. It is my fault that you have been till now so much here on my business — though, by-the- bye, I observe that you are very careful to respect my privacy when Wooler is with me.” Phoebe, who had been looking frankly in her father’s face, appeared annoyed at the mention of Barty’s name, but as she said nothing, her father resumed : “Now, Phoebe, that is the very exception you need not make — an old friend like Wooler is a sort of second self to me ; ' though he is not so old either — a man in his | 1 NOBLESSE OBLIGE. [Good Wards, April i, 1869. prime. But he is another Dick Tinto, and I want him to be at home here. At the same time I fancy fathers are sometimes doting, and forget that their children grow up into big boys and girls. As for Lord Wriothesley, I have the greatest faith in him; but he has been rather too much abroad, and has brought back some of the freedom of con- tinental art students, which he will have the sense to get quite rid of long before he takes his seat in the House of Lords. I was bent upon getting a good study of him, and do you know he looks a little haggard when he sits quiet and still ?” “ I know,” confirmed Phcebe. “ When I described him to you first, don’t you recollect I said that his face was all eyes, forehead, and beard?” “Yes, I understand that,” continued Mr. Paston, speaking for speaking’s sake, with a view to take off, if possible, the edge of his discourse; and while he did so, he played un- becoming tricks with the creaking, unresisting joints of his model, Saul. “ His lordship has burnt the midnight oil o’ver his books ; these have been the late hours he has indulged in. Nine hours of artificial light will spoil any man’s eyes. But all the Latimers are of the right sort. I don’t suppose they would otherwise have lasted as they have done. They must have died out before ‘the late Revolution of 1688,’ as' that little curiosity, Lady Dorothea, likes to speak of it. Be- tween you and me, Phcebe, the race is on the decline, though they are as much addicted to out-door exercise - and field-sports as their neighbours, and were good soldiers and sailors the last time they tried the services. But I can remember the Brockcotes Hunt before it was merged into the County Hunt, and when it was a matter of course that the old Lord should ride next the huntsman. Light weights they all rode, and resolute they were at rising to a leap. Now, Lord Exmoor hardly does more than appear at the ‘ meet ’ as a bit of civil formality. And I have heard, that though on the last occasion he was in at the death, he had to be lifted from his saddle on his return. They want new blood, or some other sort of rude degeneration, to re- cover them.” Phoebe had been standing, putting some books to rights on a side-table ; but now, when her father paused, she glanced up at him, as if to say, inquiringly— “I suppose so, papa; but what do you really want ? ” “ Certainly, that is not the question,” granted Mr. Paston, colouring like a girl at his own mal-apropos remarks. “ What I have to say is, that unless Lady Dorothea come with her brother, I should prefer you to re- main out of the way. If I cannot help my- self, I shall send for you. I find it better to put a stop to a gallant young man, far beyond you in station, following you ever so inno- cently to the drawing-room and the garden. I hope I do not hurt your feelings, my dear. I do not blame you in the slightest degree. I trust you are not so silly a girl as to be put out by what it is disagreeable for me to say. I am forced to say it because, as you know, your mother will always seek guidance rather than guide others. Phoebe, remember the world is a common-place, coarse-minded world, and has its standards, which are as unchangeable as the laws of the Medes and the Persians. All well-disposed people at- tend to these, and our friends perform the kindest part when they remind us of them, if we by any chance forget or neglect them.” “ Oh no, I am not angry with you, papa,” declared Phoebe, with a beating heart and a great reservation of anger. “ You have the right to tell me how to behave, and to correct any fault in my conduct. You want me to avoid Lord Wriothesley because he is young and a nobleman, and because reckless young noblemen and giddy girls in my rank have forgotten what was due to themselves and to each other, and been idly spoken of and laughed at before now. Isn’t that it, papa?” “ Exactly, child ; and I am glad you speak with such comprehension of the matter,” said Mr. Paston, a little surprised. “Well, papa, you may depend on my paying attention to your wishes, which are so reasonable and simple. I take shame to myself for not having anticipated them.” Now, all the time that Phcebe was answer- ing her father with such glib propriety, and even with a little archness, she was say- ing to herself, as her breast swelled with girlish provocation and wounded pride, “ I see from what quarter the wind has been blowing, and whom I have to thank for this. Not papa; no, no. Papa alone would never put an impertinent and insulting construction on the innocent friendly footing on which I have stood with Lord Wriothesley.” As a supplement to this secret protest she proceeded to say aloud in demure self-defence : “ I thought it ought to be both my duty and my pleasure to make myself agreeable to every member of the Brockcotes family, when they have been so good to me. You called Lord Wriothesley gallant, didn’t you, papa?” Phoebe could look up and speak with Good Words,! “NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 1 Good Words, April i, 1869. i NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 301 open, somewhat aggrieved face. She had not as yet been dazzled with splendid possi- bilities. The disparity between her and Lord Wriothesley was too great, and was remembered too plainly, and she was too loyal both to herself and to the Brockcotes family to entertain such possibilities quickly. But another mistake was made which im- perilled Phoebe’s safety in the very anxiety to secure it. To go and destroy Phoebe’s unconsciousness, by bidding her beware of danger from the strife of tongues, and to pique her into the contemplation of impossi- bilities, was an egregious blunder which only two clever men could have been so left to themselves as to commit. CHAPTER XIV. A LOVE TALE. What had gone before was an unfortunate preparation for Barty Wooler’s proposal. He made it soon afterwards, indeed the very first time that he, instead of Lord Wriothesley, was left alone in the garden with Phoebe. He began by addressing her as “ Miss Phoebe,” using her Christian name with a little qualification as a half-way stage between the Miss Paston of their Folksbridge acquaintance and the “ Phoebe ” he coveted for the climax of the Wellfield relation. “ Miss Phoebe,” he said, expressing his taste on an indifferent matter, “ I must con- fess I don’t like your ribbon borders;” and here he gave a slight spurn with his foot in the direction of the lobelias, Tom Thumbs, calceolarias, and petunias, which blazed in rings within rings of colour round a few small lozenge-shaped figures, divided by narrow edgings in the gravel. “ Blue, red, yellow, purple,” Barty lectured, “all of the same season, and all as flat as my hand. There isn’t so much as the relief of height and depth, of light and shade. It is the monotony of glare. No painter could be so lost to what is subtle and suggestive as to dream of representing it.” No observation could have sounded more harmless or have less threatened a startling finale. Phoebe had some sympathy with the opinion, not being responsible for this bit of the flower-garden, which had been laid out to please Mrs. Paston. But she kept per- sistently altering and re-altering the pegs in her verbenas, with her head close to the ground, obstinately declining Barty’s offers of assistance. She would not gratify the in- truder even by agreeing with him on a single small question. “ I thought pre-Raphaelite painters af- fected rampant colours,” she replied indif- ferently, as though identifying him with the school. “Yes, but one at a time, or blended by neutral tints. You would not call the rainbow a*ribbon border, would you, Miss Phoebe ? ” She would not call the rainbow Jacob’s ladder, though he should wait an hour to hear her do it. Comprehending her pouting dumb- ness, he did not wait, but spoke on for his own pleasure and gratification. He praised old English gardens, with their flowers of all seasons. He quoted Lord Bacon’s example, and maintained that this new-fangled garden- ing was vulgar and wearily insipid in its very brightness. Then he passed from old Eng- lish- gardens to old English houses, with their picture galleries. He spoke of the fine family- groups in these old houses, and of their genial wedded pairs — stout squire and stately noble, with the frosty mellowness of autumn in face and figure, mated with dames, in whose youth- ful traits the grace of spring was just bursting into the beauty of summer. He even fell to citing Shakespeare and the Bible in support of his theory. He questioned her as to what smooth-faced, red-and-white cheeked Romeo could compare with the middle-aged, swarthy Moor, and the elderly, grizzled Antony, in strength of passion? whether Boaz or the young men among the reapers of Bethlehem was most tender of brown-faced Ruth ? Long before this, Phoebe dreaded what was coming, and stiffly rose up from stooping over her gaudy flower-beds, to bear the trial as she best might, to hear the love-tale which she could no longer hope to escape from. Barty used plain enough words at last, and said what he had to say very simply. Phoebe interrupted him with little excited breaks in her speech. “ I ought to thank you, Mr. Wooler; but I am very sorry that you have spoken so to me. I would have stopped you sooner if I could. Surely I need say no more. I can give you no other answer.” Barty was not an impatient boy, to be summarily dismissed without striving his utmost for final hope and happiness. But he was a proud man, who, while he bore no | malice, was fit to withdraw quietly on a de- cided dismissal, and not stoop to importune a peevish girl. “Will you not reconsider your sentence?” he asked gravely, and then he reminded her gently — “ You know it is a hard sentence.” He made this last assertion with a vehe- mence that for a moment quelled Phoebe, and staggered her in her self-reliance, j “ If you abide by your unconditional re- 302 NOBLESSE OBLIGE. [Good Words, April i, x84> jection, Phoebe,” he urged, “the life that remains to me will be, in one respect, like a tale that is told. I have no right to com- plain, and I will not complain. I have been idle and desultory in my work, and unsettled in my habits, I admit ; but I had some pro- vocation to begin with. I take shame to myself; it pains and humbles me to have to make this acknowledgment. But I trust that my failure in this respect is over. Luckily it does not, in my case, involve the absence of those worldly goods with which every man would wish to endow the woman he loves. In other circumstances it would have been the height of selfishness, almost of baseness, in me to have aimed at uniting your bright hopes with my broken ones.” Phoebe interrupted him at last so impe- riously, that she fairly startled him. She had not been able to take in the whole drift of his argument, though now and then it had touched her. But at last the foolish fancy entered her hot young head that he was trying to bribe her by the promise of making her the richest woman in Folksbridge — the temptation with which her cousins, nay, even Lady Dorothea, had assailed her. “It is useless to tell me all this, Mr. Wooler ; I can never change my mind.” He grew a little pale, and his full tones became harsh as he said, with a tolerably successful effort at composure — “ I have done, Miss Paston. Forget that I have troubled you with this petition, and do not suffer it to make any difference in our friendship. Pray do me the small favour — no, don’t be frightened.” He paused to reassure her, with an inevitable grimness in his smile, and then went on : “ I don’t think you will object to do me this favour. It is only to offer my excuses to your father. When we spoke of it the other morning, I promised to tell him how my mission fared; but a man does not like to be bearer of the news of his own defeat, if he can help it. Of course, if you have any ob- jection, I shall not ask you to do this for me.” Phoebe could only mutter that she did not object. Barty took her hand for an instant, lifted his hat formally, and left the garden. Phoebe was conscious of a shadow falling across the sunshine, of a chill coming into the air, and of a sense of blank regret and sharp self-accusation. She looked round her half stunned, half scared, and thought the little flower-garden was barren and hard in its stereotyped brightness. She looked down at herself in her dainty buff skirt and jacket, and wondered if she, whom he had called by implication callous, were as hard and shallow as the garden. Heretofore she had always preferred the cool, grave ^ourt, with the sober old flower-! Drder, to the new showy flower-beds. But she would hate the latter after this day’s work. She saw Barty again with the same eyes as when she had admired him in the beginning of their acquaintance. Her father’s estimation of him must be correct, and she would not see his like again as a lover. Not that she dreamt she could have accepted him, but it was a grief to her that there had been no alternative found but to decline his dearest wishes and destroy his fairest prospects of happiness. He had said so. She was sorry now, and even ashamed of the manner of the deed. She was sensible, when it was too late, that she had not behaved well under the trial. She felt she had been ungracious and ungenerous to a man who had distinguished her by his highest regard. Phoebe’s remorse lasted till her reluctant feet had carried her to the threshold of her father’s painting-room. She stood there, not only shy and shrinking, but waiting till she could see an inch before her. The change from the broad yellow afternoon sunshine, the fresh air, and the vivid mosaic of the flower-beds, to the dimness of the painting- room, in which the plaster-casts looked like ghosts and the pictures shadows, struck her as it had neter done before. Here her father led a charmed life in a world of his own, and was now finishing a spell of long and hard work. It seemed to agree with him at pre- sent. He was standing before a picture of the “Reconciliation of Jacob and Esau,” which he had lately sketched in. Judging from his low whistling — a trick which was not native to him, but which he had caught from Barty Wooler — he was looking at it with satisfaction. But Mr. Paston was not so lost to sym- pathy that he did not anticipate Phoebe’s confession as soon as her guilty face appeared in the door-way. She did not need to intro- duce the subject; for he turned round on her with a sharp interrogation. “You haven’t had a difference with Wooler ? you haven’t dismissed him without the simple grace of considering the matter and without consulting your friends, Phoebe ? I had hoped better things of you.” Mr. Paston contrived on the instant to scat- ter Phoebe’s compunction to the winds. What was there to consider in the matter? What had her friends to do with her choice ? Phoebe was very jealous of the freedom of her heart. Mr. Paston was stricken with disappoint- ment, but he did not utier another word of Good Words, April i, 1869.J NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 303 ^ displeasure. Instead of walking up and | down, and venting his excitement in irritable complaints, according to his custom, he stood sorely vexed and mortified. He did not say to Phoebe that his life was precarious ; that he could not do more for her and her mother than leave them fairly provided for. He did not seek to entice Phoebe, by refer- ring to Barty Wooler’s prospects. Let people say what they would, Caleb Paston was not a mercenary man. But when he spoke again, there was a poignancy of regret in the tone in which he vindicated and reproached him- self in a breath, as if he had been in fault, and not Phoebe. “ Bear me witness, Phoebe,” he said, “ that I have not tried to influence you, though the connection seemed to me for your good, in the light in which I saw it. I know Barty Wooler as I know myself. There is not a more manly heart, or a cleverer brain than • his; and yet these are wasted while he is flitting about here and there like a bird of passage. I know you could not help it, but it cuts me up. I meant you to be happy, child : who should care for your happiness if I do not ? I thought all the mischief was to be remedied. Barty and I long worked together, not that we were equals, though I was very fond of him. He was my superior then, above me in every respect, and yet who so pleasant, or so lavish in his regard and confidence ? Poor fellow, I never reckoned on his failure ; if I had foreseen that, it might have been prevented. I have lamented over it more than anybody — unless his mother — certainly more than himself. I thought it was all to be atoned for. I fancied we should work together once more — old blood and young. I could have directed him, and he would have put new life into me. But I am certain you could not help it, my poor Phoebe, any more than you can guess the mischief you have done.” Phoebe was thus dismissed with a rueful smile. CHAPTER XV. “AS OTHERS SEE US.” Phcebe was used to what her mother called “ Paston’s tantrums.” She knew that he was not a stranger to paroxysms of morbid feel- ing, or of extravagant enthusiasm, in which the shy man came out of his shell, throwing aside for the moment his constitutional cloak of reserve, and making in the act a passing revelation of himself to any capable observer — a revelation more striking and complete than any that could be drawn from the habitual babbling of a free, careless man. In spite of this Phcebe could not follow him now. She had come in from the garden with very conflicting feelings ; and she opened wide, moist eyes at the outpouring of her father’s disappointment. But in the end she was hardened rather than softened. She did not, however, remind her father how little there could be in common between a man who was blustering, headstrong, and over- bearing, even in his courtship, and a retired, , absorbed artist. She did not argue that there must be something illusive in the friendship which could be suffered to lie dormant for twenty years. That would have been to say that she was wiser than her father, and Phoebe did not say it, although she did not escape the thought. Phoebe was tormented by the suspicion that her father had deceived himself into ex- pecting terribly unreasonable things of her, because of an early partiality and a recent caprice. He had not been wont to act thus, but he had always been exceptional and eccentric. She now fully realised this for the first time. She had a dread that her father had been betrayed into exaggeration, into speaking melodramatically. She experienced an aching sense of the weakness of one dear and reverenced, together with a quick desire to shield both him and herself from the result of this weakness. She took courage to re-enter the painting- room shortly after her dismissal. “ Papa, I am very sorry that I have vexed you and Mr. Wooler. I did not think that I was coming home to do this,” she ended abruptly, with a swelling heart, as her father sunk down in an attitude of weariness, and leant his grey head on his hand. The ordeal was past, and Phcebe was more sensible than ever that a crisis in her life had come and gone. It was something more than the ordinary awkwardness of getting rid of an unwelcome su-itor, and of feeling con- strained, as a point of duty, to tell her story to the head of the family. It was an event which fancifully grieved and mortified her father, and swept away a dream which he had taken to his heart. It did not follow because Mr. Paston had received the information that he would communicate it to his wife. Not that the couple lived unhappily. They got on as well as could be expected in the manifold shortcomings which exposed a life’s mistake. But besides a turn for sarcasm in his speech with her, Mr. Paston had acquired, almost unconsciously, a habit of not seeing and 304 NOBLESSE OBLIGE. [Good Words, April 1,18-59. hearing his wife. This involved the avoid- ance of tete-a-tetes with her, above all on any subject which deeply interested him. It was a minor-fret to Phoebe to break the facts to her mother, who was, as she ex- pressed it, “ struck all in a heap ” by Phoebe’s audacity, improvidence, and ingrati- tude. Mrs. Paston did her best to indemnify herself for her great loss in an early and excellent marriage for her daughter, by be- wailing that daughter’s undutiful sauciness. But, to do Mrs. Paston justice, she did no more than whimperingly bewail. She was as incapable of sustained resentment as of mag- nanimous silence. Phoebe was her father’s daughter, young as she was. Mrs. Paston had always said that Phoebe had a mind of her own, cruel and cross as it was to pro- claim this of her own child. She washed her hands of the business, in which she had never been consulted. Oh, dear ! of course she was nobody in the matter, and she de- clined to be answerable for Phoebe’s skittish- ness, and what it would bring her to — a skinny, shrewish old maid, who would be as difficult to live with, and as scornful, as her father, and whom she would be ashamed to call her own flesh and blood. To think that a daughter of hers should come to this ! She had been a beauty in her own day, nor had she been without her pick and choice of a husband before she was Phoebe’s age, although perhaps she had not made the wisest selection. She would not say that either, though Mr. Walker, the apothecary’s apprentice, was now “ riding ” in his carriage, with the best practice in Folksbridge. No doubt he was not a bit famous, like Paston, and Paston had his good side. But every- body who has any knowledge of the world — Mrs. Paston trickled off into sinning against her husband again — knew that an artist and genius was a sore trial to the mistress of a house. She would say it, who perhaps should not say it, that she was as good a house- keeper as any woman in Wellfield, with Paston often not caring to sit down to his meals with his family like a decent Christian, and never sending her in supplies of provi- sions, not even a string of trout, or a mea- sure of early potatoes, like other women’s husbands. He wouldn’t even put himself out of his way to hear a word about over- charges and underweights, or to recall prices and seasons, if it were to save her life. Now, here was Phoebe getting as bad as her father every bit, and spilling her full cup on the first opportunity, like an ungrateful minx. See what Phoebe’s friend, Lady Dorothea, would say to it, when everybody had heard that Lady Dorothea was about to make the finest match in Britain to please her father and mother; and they were an earl and countess, well off, from their Brit- tany-cows’ milk to their sparkling cham- pagne — from their diamond rings to their cambric frilled linen, which, she had it from the second best authority, was put on clean out of the fold and fresh plaited, every morn- ing it lightened, and every night it darkened. Whereas her Phoebe had gone on the spur of the moment, and, without consulting or car- ing for her parents, had thrown away the best marriage in Wellfield, or in Folksbridge either : a marriage that would have enabled Phoebe to get her foot on her cousins — -the only good marriage that might offer for many a year to come, where independent, well-to-do young men were so shockingly scarce. Phoebe cherished the hope that her mother’s chagrin would close her mouth about the family disaster, although there was great danger, as she knew, that Mrs. Paston would grow indignantly proud of the unprecedented misfortune, and, even at the risk of damaging Phoebe’s future matrimonial prospects, go whispering the secret, shaking her head over it and twinkling away ever-ready tears in the most improper quarters. And then the story had to be confided to Lady Dorothea, if only to silence her specu- lations. She disapproved, like the rest ; but she arrogated no right of friendship to resent the step Phoebe had taken on her own re- sponsibility, or even to reproach her gossip. She acted with far greater wisdom. She turned the subject over in her mind, and then she provoked Phoebe as much as any of them by her striking statement : — - “You have managed very badly, my dear Phoebe — you, and he, and everybody con- cerned. I never heard of a more complete mess made of a very desirable and un- exceptionable parti. For you — I beg your pardon, Phoebe — but I don’t think you know your own mind. However, it is not likely that even such an amount of reckless- ness will cause a match like that to go off so quickly. Let us hope so, and let it rest in the meantime. It will come on the tapis again after it has been well aired, when I trust you will all have come to your right minds.” Lord Wriothesley did not hear of the dis- carded suitor through his sister, but in the course of the ordinary Wellfield tattle ; and his brief comnfent on the rumour would have pleased most girls : “So Miss Phoebe is par ticular. Well, she is entitled to be particular.” Good Words, May i, 1869.] DEBENHAM’S VOW. 305 DEBENHAM’S VOW. By AMELIA B. EDWARDS, Author of “ Barbara’s History.” CHAPTER XXIII. “HE LOVES AND HE RIDES AWAY.” R. and Miss Alleyne were both out when the young man returned to the “Silver Trout;” whereupon . Debenham re- membered that he must write to his mother. “ You may depend they have only gone over to the other side of the river,” said Archie. “Suppose, then, you just take the ferry across, like a good fellow, and see,” suggested Debenham hurriedly. “ And if I find them, what shall I say?” “Oh — say that I have come back tired, and — and that I have an important letter to write before the Chepstow coach goes by.” “ And that you will follow me by and by?” “ Yes — of course. In less than an hour.” So Archie went off, not without some in- ward wonder at his friend’s want of empresse - metit, and Debenham locked himself into his room, and sat down to write a long letter to his mother. The task, however, was not an easy one. He felt as if he ought to say a great deal, but his inclination prompted him to say very little. Mrs. Debenham would expect him, perhaps, to write about his father, and the castle, and the church, and the monu- ments, and the ancient glories of the De Ben- hams, — yet, what could he say of these things? He had nothing to say about them. The past was past, and all his thoughts now were of the future. Well, then, he must write about the future ; he must write what was really in his mind. At all events, he must write some- thing. So, having made two or three unsuccessful beginnings, he at length took a fresh sheet of paper, and dashed off what he had to say, just as it came. X— 21 “ Cillingford, August . “My dearest Mother, “ I told you in my last that I had found your letter addressed to me at the Monmouth post-office. Since then, I have been to Benhampton. I am sorry that my knowledge of the place and its history comes so late. I am sorry that at sixteen I was not as wise as I am now at six-and-twenty. I should have shaped my life altogether differently, and have worked with quite other ends in view. Late, however, as this knowledge comes to me, I hope it is not too late. At all events, I mean to begin life anew. “ Do you remember, dear mother, in that essay of Macaulay’s that we were reading just before I came away— I mean the one on Warren Hastings — there was some account of how the little fellow, while yet a mere child, was taken to see the grand old family place that had once belonged to his own people ; and how, stealing away from the rest, he went and lay down under a tree by himself, talcing in every detail of the scene, and, child though he was, silently resolving to win that old house and those broad acres back again ? Well, mother, I think if you had taken me to Benhampton ten or twelve years ago, and shown me those ruins and those tombs, I should have taken the same resolution ; and by this time, perhaps, I should have fulfilled it. “ However, it is of little use to think of what might have been. Let it be enough that, as a man, I have arrived at that point from which Warren Hastings started as a boy. I mean at once to give up the pro- fession of music — to look out for some lucrative em- ployment — and to think of nothing but making and saving mom y for many a year to come. And then, mother, I hope some day to see you again occupying your proper station in society ; and I hope myself to buy back the old place, and restore the old castle, and sustain as worthily as I may my father’s name and title. “ I fear this will sound to you like a wild and im- possible scheme. Still, I can but fail ; and, wild and impossible though it may be, I must henceforth devote to it such strength of mind and body as are mine. “We leave Cillingford to-morrow, or at the latest on Saturday ; pleasant neighbours at the inn, charm- ing scenery, and good fishing, having already beguiled us into lingering here for nearly three weeks. You may direct your next letters to Ross. I think I shall return in about a fortnight— that is, by the end of the fifth week. Archie gives me good hope that I may find something to do in the City ; and I shall therefore be glad to have a few days at my own disposal, to look about me, before St. Hildegarde’s is re-opened. “I continue to be as idle as ever; doing nothing in the way of music — that is to say, doing nothing worth mention. A little Toccata in the antique style, however, pencilled down in bed the other night when I could not sleep, might please you. “The weather is superb. We have had a few showers ; but not one wet day since we left Chepstow. Archie, of course, maintains his character as the best of travelling companions. He is really a paragon of cheerfulness and good nature. I have made up my mind, liebe Mutter , that you must go somewhere out of London for a week or two in September ; so please not to oppose me. You know what a determined fellow I can be when I choose. 3°6 DEBENHAM’S VOW. “ I find myself at the foot of the last page of my second sheet, so good-bye for to-day. “ Ever, dearest mother, your loving son, “De Benham. “ P.S.— I sign myself, you see, with my own lawful signature ; but of course only to you. For the rest of the world, I remain plain Temple Debenham — at all events, till I have made my fortune.” This he wrote in hot haste, without pause or correction ; and, for fear that he might not be satisfied with it on perusal, sealed it up and consigned it to the Cillingford post-box with- out even reading it over. And perhaps, on the whole, it was as good a letter as he could I have written at that time. He loved his j mother with a very deep and tender love; 1 but he could not help feeling that he ought long since to have been told the secret of his j birth. He knew that Lady De Benham had ' acted for the best, according to her judgment ; ! but he also knew that she had pushed the 1 parental right of judgment beyond its proper i limits. Knowing how every rood of his in- heritance had passed away, and concluding that her son must therefore renounce all the privileges of his birth, she had trained him to regard obscurity as his portion in life, and to desire no other. But then, as he told himself again and again, she had no right to leap at that conclusion, and still less right to act upon it. He ought to have known the truth at six- teen, at the latest. He had an undoubted legal right to know it at twenty-one. Not knowing it, he had been virtually excluded from that freedom in the choice of a career which is a young mans most precious privilege. And he had wasted ten of the best years of his life. It was natural that he should feel sore when he thought of these things, and that he should chafe impatiently against them in his mind ; and it would have been excusable if he had evinced some of this impatience ! and soreness in his letter. But he had put a control upon his pen ; and if he had written somewhat coldly, entering into few particu- lars, and expressing himself with unwonted brevity and decision, still he had not given utterance to one bitter or reproachful word. In so far, then, as the letter was temperate and not unloving, it fulfilled its purpose, and was, as has already been said, as good a letter as he could have written, under the circumstances. But if he succeeded in keeping his regrets and his bitterness below the surface, he was none the less affected by them, and by the momentous resolution which he had taken. A great change had come upon him — a change of which he was himself vaguely conscious, and which none of those about him could for one moment fail to observe. His whole nature seemed suddenly to have indurated. A strange, hard look had settled on his mouth ; and when he smiled, it seemed less like an im- pulse than a deliberate effort of the will. Then he felt so much older. He looked out upon the world from such a different point of view. He had parted at one fell swoop from the hopes, and dreams, and pleasures of his whole life, and taken up with the hardest of hard realities. And this he did, knowing the magnitude of the sacrifice — counting the cost — resolute to pay the price, come in what form it might. “ Ay — come in what form it might ■!” He had fallen into a. way of repeating this and similar phrases to himself, within the last day or two ; not that he attached any special meaning to the words, but because the mere repetition of them seemed to strengthen him for the battle to come. In the first moment of meeting, Miss Alleyne saw that there was a cloud, a shadow, a something upon his brow, which was not there before he went away. And then she concluded that he had met with some loss or disappointment in the matter of hiS journey, and her whole heart filled with sympathy for him. She tried to show this sympathy in a thousand pretty, quiet ways, all through the day, telling herself that he would be sure to confide his trouble to her when they were alone, and thinking how she would try to comfort him in this and every other mischance that might befall him. But, somehow, the afternoon went by, and they ' separated at dinner time without having been alone to- gether for a moment. Once, however, he had pressed her hand unseen ; and when Mr. Alleyne, putting up his canvas and colours, invited the friends, as usual, to take tea, he accepted the invitation with a glance that seemed to say for whose sake he was glad to do so. “ It is so good to have you back again, old fellow,” said Archie, as they sat by and by at their accustomed table in the kitchen window. “ The place seemed awfully dull yesterday without you. Isn’t this a fine, big pike ? I caught him last evening, just above the weir ; and, not thinking you would be back so soon, I was lamenting that I must sit down to him alone. How glad I am that I did not send him to the Alleynes !” “ It is indeed a Goliath of a pike, my little David,” said Temple, “ and capitally cooked.” But though he praised the fish, he sent his plate away almost untasted. He could not eat. His mind was ill at ease, and many things were perplexing him. So he presently Good Words, May i, 1869.] DEBENHAM’S VOW. * 307 left Archie to finish his dinner alone and be- took himself to the river-side, where he walked up and down in front of the inn, anxiously thinking. Should he, or should he not, tell Miss Alleyne ? That was the question. It would be pleasant to tell her ; and perhaps he ought to tell her. But then, how would it profit her to know? Would it add one iota to her hap- piness, or her love ? It ought not to do so. Nay, more — it was impossible that it should do so. Still, it was sweet to know that he was loved for himself alone. Besides, why should he put her discretion to so severe a test? She was very young to be trusted with so grave a secret ; and a secret it must remain — profound, strict, inviolable. Surely it would, on the whole, be wiser to keep silence, at all events for a year or two longer. And then so many things might happen in a year or two ! Deliberating thus, he strolled to and fro till Archie came out ; and by-and-by they were joined by Mr. and Miss Alleyne. Mr. Alleyne, however, brought his glass and his decanter of port into the porch, and sat there smoking his customary post-prandial cigar, while the others went down to the landing- place to see the cows ferried home from their pastures on the opposite side of the river. “You did not expect me back to-day, Juliet?” said De Benham, finding that Archie lingered discreetly in the rear. “ I think I did— that is, I hoped.” “ I despatched my journey as quickly as I could,” he said, hesitatingly; “because — because I find it is absolutely necessary for me to be in London by the end of another fortnight, and therefore “ I know,” said Miss Alleyne ; the smile with which she had looked up at the begin- ning of his sentence having vanished in a sudden paleness. “And therefore you must resume your tour. When do you think of going?” “ I suppose — I fear — to-morrow.” He felt a slight tremor in the hand which rested on his arm ; but that was all. “ It seems to come suddenly at last,” he said, half apologetically; “but we have had three weeks at Cillingford already, and — and I am bound to consider Archie a little. For myself, I should desire nothing better than to spend the whole time here.” She tried to force a smile. “ I know that,” she replied, simply; “but it will do you more good to travel. You work so hard in London, and you ought to go back so much stronger.” “ My darling ! ” he said, tenderly ; and then he thought he would tell her, after all. “ I mean to work harder than ever, now,” he began, “ and to be better paid for my work. In fact, I am going to give up music, and take to some more profitable occupation.” “ Give up music ! ” repeated Miss Alleyne. “ Impossible ! ” “ ‘A coeur vaillant , rim d’ impossible! That was Henri Quatre’s motto, and it shall be mine.” “ But what other occupation . . . . ” “ At present I can hardly say. I only know that I have certain marketable acquire- ments, and that I mean to sell myself to the highest bidders. Would you not like to be rich, Juliet?” “ Not in the least. I only desire to be happy/’ “ But have you no ambition ?” “Of that sort, none whatever.” “ Well, but you have some ambition for me ?” “Yes, I have ambition for you; but still not of that sort. I should like you to be famous; I do not care that you should be rich.” “ But this is mere romance, my sweet,” urged the lover. “ Money represents the graces and charities, to say nothing of the comforts, of life. It is impossible that you should not care for these. You might as well say that you placed no value upon rank or station.” “ Nor do I,” said Miss Alleyne, promptly; “unless as the reward of personal merit.” - “ Do you mean that if I, for instance, were heir to an hereditary coronet, transmitted through a long line of ancestors, you would be no prouder of me than as plain Temple Debenham?” “ I should be no whit prouder of you,” she answered, radiant and glowing. “ On the contrary, I should long for you to achieve some distinction that might raise you above your title ! ” But De Benham had no response for the girl’s generous answer. He only looked aw T ay, and said, coldly “ So — you are a democrat ! I had no idea of that. You and I must never talk politics, then, car a i?iia; for we should surely dis- agree.” And from that moment, he made up his mind that he would not tell her. Yet, when he went to bed at night and was alone in his own little room, his heart smote him, and he wondered at the change that had come upon him. But a few r days ago, and he was as unworldly as herself. DEBENHAM’S VOW. 308 (Good Words, May 1, 1869. But a few days ago, and he, too, would have chosen to earn rather than inherit his honours. He had then as little care for wealth, as little fear of poverty, as keen an appetite for fame, as the warmest enthusiast could desire; and now .... Well, now he was Lord De Ben- ham, a Count of the Holy Roman Empire, and twenty-ninth Baron of his name ; the last male representative of his family ; friend- less ; fortuneless ; landless ; with scarce a second coat to his back, and something less than five pounds in his pocket ! These were pregnant facts — such facts, surely, as might well excuse a man for some change of opinion. Besides, it was no mean ambition, after all, to aim at reinstating a grand old name, and reviving the honours of an ancient house. Nay, was it not something more than an ambition ? Was it not a duty ? So reasoning, and so comforting himself, he decided that it was a duty — clearly a duty ; and, having arrived at this satisfactory con- clusion, he laid his head upon the pillow and fell fast asleep. The next day they parted, stealing a few last words in the porch before Mr. Alleyne was down. “ I have said nothing to your father, dearest,” said the lover. “ I dared not, in my present beggarly position; but I have every hope that in the course of a few weeks I shall have found some employment com- manding a fixed salary, and then I shall feel that I have a better right to speak, and a better chance of being heard.” Miss Alleyne looked down with a some- what heightened colour, and made no reply. “ He has invited me to call upon him at Kensington,” added De Benham. “ May I come the day after your return home?” “ I cannot tell when that will be,” replied Miss Alleyne. “ You have seen how capri- ciously papa takes up and lays aside his pic- ture. He may finish it in ten days, or he may stay here for three weeks longer.” “ But you will let me know — you will write to me ! “ How is that possible ? What would my father say ?” “ But, my darling, you would not leave me without news of you for three whole weeks ! You might be ill — a thousand things might happen ! I had hoped that you would write to me every day.” Miss Alleyne shook her head. “You cannot seriously mean to refuse me !” exclaimed the lover. “Iam very sorry — so sorry ; but you ought not to ask me.” “Once a week, then — only once a week !” “No. It would not be right.” “ Right !” he echoed, impatiently. “ And our engagement ?” She turned her face away. H er lip quivered ; but she made no reply. He repeated the question. “ There can be no engagement between us,” she said, falteringly, “ without my father’s sanction.” He paused a moment before replying ; but when he did speak, it was with the calmness of suppressed irritation. “ Very well,” he said. “ In that case I must speak to Mr. Alleyne before I leave Cillingford. I believe that I shall injure my cause by doing so at this time ; but I must take my chance.” “ I do not counsel you to speak to him,” said Miss Alleyne, gently. “ I would rather you should act as you think best.” “But you say there can be no engage- ment . . . .” “ That is true, Temple ; but why need there be one — just yet? Be patient, dear. I know that you love me — and I will wear your ring, and I will think of you day and night while we are parted. It will be but for three or four weeks, at the most.” And with this she put up her other hand, and so clasping his arm quite round, looked up at him, half smiling, half in tears. “ But if you should be ill !” “ I have not the slightest intention of being ill. I never was better.” “And how shall I know when you go home ?” “ Call at the house now and then, when you are passing that way, and enquire of the servants.” “ Humph ! And you don’t care a bit about not hearing from me all that time?” “ 1 do care ; but I know it is not for long. And now you must tell me where you will be each day of your tour, that I may follow you upon the map, and always know where you are.” So De Benham tore a leaf from his pocket- book, and made out a list of such places as he and Archie had proposed to stop at en route ; and by the time this was done Mr. Alleyne came down and began ringing for coffee. “You will come in presently to wish papa good-bye,” said she, preparing to be gone at the first echo of the bell. “ Yes ; but I must have my farewell kiss now. My love— my own Juliet ! Ah, surely as much my own as if we were never so formally engaged ?” DEBENHAM’S VOW. Good Words, May i, 1869.] For a moment she let herself be folded in his arms, pressed to his heart, kissed on brow, and eyes, and lips. “You do love me?” he said, passionately. “Yes,” she whispered, “I do love you — with my whole heart — with my whole heart 1” But even as she said the words, she slipped from his embrace and was gone. Half an hour later, they shook hands and parted quite gaily and politely, as a well-bred lady and gentleman should. “We shall expect to see you at Kensington, remember/’ said Mr. Alleyne, graciously, as he followed the young men to the gate. Whereupon they thanked him, looked for- ward to the earliest opportunity of paying their respects, exchanged all due civilities and good wishes, and took their departure in heavy marching order, knapsack on back and staff in hand, like two pious pilgrims of the olden time. CHAPTER XXIV. THE FIRST PLUNGE. It may be conjectured that neither Archie nor Temple were sorry when the tour came to an end, and they shook hands, on parting at the Paddington terminus. The real plea- sure of the excursion was all over for Archie when Miss Alleyne came upon the scene ; and, somehow, even when Miss Alleyne was left behind, and they were again wandering together day after day by river and ruin, woodland and vale, the old feeling of cama- raderie was missing, and things were never the same again. De Benham, absorbed by one fixed idea, was a changed man; and Archie, though attributing that change to a wrong cause, could not but feel the effects of it at every turn. De Benham silent and gloomy, De Benham brooding over the lost fortunes of his family, De Benham pondering the one great problem of his own future life, seemed to him no other than De Benham desperately in love and thinking perpetually of Miss Alleyne. Even when the conversa- tion reverted, as it was always reverting now, to money and money-making, Archie, wearied to death of the subject, still believed that his friend’s sole aim was to get rich for the sake of the woman he loved. And then Temple, on his side, grudged every day that deferred the execution of his project. Gone for him was that enchanted time “ Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower,” when only to walk abroad in the sunshine and breathe the morning air was joy, and inspiration, and gain immeasurable. He now only longed for the toil and press of active 3°9 life, for the city, and the mart, and the fever of success. So it was well when the holiday was over ; and not either of the travellers, we may be sure, would have desired to prolong it. They came back on a Saturday evening, just one week before the re-opening of St. Hildegarde’s ; so that, for the first time in eighteen months, De Benham found himself in London on Sunday with nothing to do. How he would have enjoyed such liberty, five weeks ago ! He would perhaps have taken his mother to Westminster Abbey in the morning; have dropped in at St. Paul’s or the Temple Church in the afternoon ; thence have pushed on for a long ramble through Kensington Gardens and the parks, and have come home at dusk, tired and hungry, and happier than a king. But now all was changed. Fine organs, choral services, famous preachers — he cared for none of them. Moody and pre-occupied, he spent his morning sorting papers, making out accounts, and tying up j his compositions in parcels, dated and en- [ dorsed, as if to be laid aside for ever. This I done, the rest of the day seemed intermin- j able. He wandered in an aimless sort of way about the dreary little streets and squares . of the neighbourhood. He went with his mother to some dull church close by, in the afternoon. He did not care to talk ; he could not read, for his thoughts were too busy. He could only count the hours as they went by, and wonder if to-morrow would ever come. J The morrow came, however, and found j him at about half-past eleven o’clock in Mr. 1 Hardwicke’s counting-house, addressing him- I self to one of Mr. Hardwicke’s clerks, and' r requesting the favour of ten minutes’ con- I versation with the great man himself. The clerk looked at him doubtfully, sug- gested that he should see Mr. Knott, the managing clerk, instead, and finally, on being told that he was the organist of St. Hilde- garde’s, consented to take his message. “ Mr. Hardwicke is much occupied,” he said, coming back after a few minutes ; “but he will see you presently, if you like to wait.” So Temple said he would wait, and did wait for more than half an hour, watching the coming and going of messengers and porters, and listening to the hum of office talk, the rapid scratching of many pens, the busy ticking of the great clock over the door, j and the ceaseless reverberation of heavy 1 traffic in the street without. At length he was summoned to Mr. Hardwicke’s private room ; a room dark and lofty, double-doored, double-windowed, heavily furnished in maho- j gany and red morocco, after the fashion of j •'ii DEBENHAM’S VOW. 3 TO Strathellan Blouse, and adorned over the chimney-piece with a stupendous portrait of the late illustrious Alderman Hardwicke in the full panoply of civic robes — that Aider- man Hardwicke who, it will be remem- bered, was Lord Mayor of London, and from whom the beautiful Claudia had inherited no small proportion of her wealth. Mr. Hardwicke, standing with his back to the fireplace and an open letter in his hand, received the young man with his customary urbane smile, though, at the same time, with less pompous suavity, and a more brief and business-like manner than it was his pleasure to assume when dispensing the hospitality of Strathellan House. “ Good morning, Mr. Debenham,” he said. “ I thought you were following Mr. Choake’s example, and enjoying your liberty. Mr. Choake is in Switzerland, and St. Hildegarde’s, they tell me, can scarcely be got ready by next Sunday after all. You want to know, I suppose, when your duties will begin again?” “ I have no such excuse for my intrusion, sir,” replied De Benham. “ I come to ask the favour of your advice upon a matter of private business.” Mr. Hardwicke looked grave, anticipating an appeal to his purse, and glanced at the clock on the chimney-piece. “ I can say all that I have to say within the space of five minutes,” said De Benham, haughtily, “if you can spare me so much of your time.” The merchant begged his visitor to be seated, and replied, somewhat formally, that he was entirely at Mr. Debenham’s service. De Benham, however, following Mr. Hard- wicks’ s example, remained standing. “You know me, sir, as a musician,” he said ; “ but the calling is unremunerative, and I am dissatisfied with my prospects. I have received a liberal education ; I have good health; and I am not afraid of hard work. How to get work is my difficulty. I know what I can do ; but I do not know what I am fit for.” Mr. Hardwicke’s brow cleared. He liked the straightforward way in whfi h the young man stated his case ; and he was relieved to find that there was no question c. f borrowing or lending. “ What can you do, Mr. Debei ham ?” he said, smiling. “ I can write and speak fluentl} German, F rench, and Italian. I have a fair k i lowledge of Spanish. I know some Greek, and more Latin. I have taken a medal for mathematics. I am a tolerable draughtsman. And I have been a miscellaneous reader upon all kinds [Good Words, May i, 1869. of subjects, so that there are few matters of general interest about which I do not know something, in case of need.” “ Book-keeping, I presume, is not one of them?” “ No — but I will learn it.” “ Of everything connected with trader — the import and export trade of Great Britain, for instance — you are no doubt entirely ignorant?” “ Of trade, as trade, I am, as you say, entirely ignorant; but I have some leading notion of our own natural and industrial re- sources, and of those commodities which we receive from abroad.” Mr. Hardwicke referred to his letter. “ It is absurd, of course, to ask the ques- tion,” he said ; “ but I have here a letter of advice from Liverpool in which my corre- spondent mentions a consignment of some article called chica — do you know what it is ? I have no idea, myself ; unless, judging by the small quantity reported, it is some kind of drug.” De Benham hesitated. He remembered to have come upon the word long since, in some book of travels, but he could not, for the moment, force his memory to bring back the details. “Where does your consignment come from ?” he asked. “ From America.” And then it all flashed upon him. “It is a pigment,” he said, quickly. “It is a red pigment prepared by the Indians of the Orinoco, from a plant of the bignonia tribe. They use it, mixed with alligator fat, to stain their skins.” “ You are sure of that, Mr. Debenham ?” “ Quite sure. I read it years ago, in a German book of travels. I remember it perfectly.” Mr. Hardwicke looked pleased, pencilled a marginal note against the word, and put the letter in his pocket-book. “ Many thanks,” he said. “ Your miscel- laneous reading and your good memory, Mr. Debenham, are evidently not without their value. That you are a linguist is also in your favour. A commercial man cannot have too many modern languages at his com- mand. It would not be amiss if you were to add Russian, Portuguese, and Romaic to your present stock — the two last would come to you easily enough through your Spanish and Greek.” Then, without giving De Benham time to reply, Mr. Plardwicke opened a drawer in his writing-table and took out a pile of thin, foreign-looking papers. “ Here/’ he said, “ are two letters from two of my foreign correspondents — Mr. Em- pedocles of Athens, and Mr. Villada of Lis- bon — the one in Romaic, the other in Portu- guese. Can you make anything of them ?” “I do not doubt that I can read the Portuguese,” replied De Benham. “ Of the Romaic I am not so sure ; but I will try.” Saying which, he took the letters over to the window, for the writings were strange and crabbed and the room dark, and there stood, studying them attentively. In the meanwhile, Mr. Hardwicke drew his chair to the table, opened his desk, and scribbled off a note or two ; humming softly to himself the while, and now and then stealing a glance at his visitor. Presently he touched a spring bell and sent his letters to the post ; and once a clerk came in with some message about an invoice; but all this did not occupy more than ten minutes, at the end of which time De Benham said he thought he understood the drift of both the letters. “ Mr. Villada, it seems to me,” he said, regrets that there should have been a mis- take in the last shipment, and informs you that a fresh consignment is already on its way to the port of London. And he adds that one Mr. Montalba, a friend of his, will take those goods which have been wrongly sent, and remove them at his own expense from your warehouses at any time you may appoint.” Here Mr. Hardwicke, referring to a large, ledger-like volume lying beside his desk, nodded approval. “ Quite right, Mr. Debenham,” he said. “ Quite right. For myself, I don’t profess to know any modern language but French ; but in this book I keep English abstracts of all foreign letters of importance. Your trans- lation tallies with my clerk’s abstract in every particular. Now for Mr. Empedocles.” “ I am not sure that I follow the meaning of this writer throughout,” replied De Ben- ham. “ His abbreviations are puzzling, and his Greek characters very difficult to read. I gather, however, that he introduces his nephew, Mr. Demetrius Michaelis, for whom he entreats your good offices during his visit to London. Mr. Demetrius Michaelis is also, as I understand it, the bearer of a case of choice Santorin wine, of which Mr. Empe- docles begs your acceptance. I cannot make out the concluding paragraph — it refers to some money transaction ” . Mr. Hardwicke closed the abstract-book, and said with his most courteous smile “Enough, Mr. Debenham — more than enough. That you can deal so well with lan- guages of which you know nothing, is ample proof of your facility in dealing with those you profess to understand. Be so good as to favour me with your address. I will bear your wishes in mind, and promote them, if I have the opportunity.” While the young man was yet expressing his thanks and getting out his card, the same clerk who had parleyed with him in the outer office came in, bringing a telegraphic de- spatch. Mr. Hardwicke tore the envelope open and ran his eye rapidly along the lines. De Benham, having placed his card upon the table, took up his hat, made his bow, and moved silently towards the door. Mr. Hardwicke looked up, frowning and troubled — glanced from De Benham to the I telegram, and from the telegram back to De Benham — seemed about to speak — hesitated till the door was just closing between them, and then called his visitor back. “ Stop ! ” he said. “ Another minute, Mr. Debenham.” The young man turned back, with his hand on the door. “ Shut it,” said Mr. Hardwicke, impa- tiently. “ Shut it, and come in.” Not quite liking this authoritative tone, De Benham, with a somewhat heightened , colour, shut the door and came in. “I have bad news here,” said Mr. Hard- || wicke. “ One of my ships — the Fairy Queen , ■ laden with tallow from Odessa — driven out of her course by stress of weather, has j stranded somewhere on the south-eastern coast of Calabria. Her captain having met with some accident, I do not know of what kind, is lying ill in the nearest village. The boat, unfortunately, is not insured; and I j must send some one out at once to look after ] both captain and cargo. You say you can bear fatigue, and you speak Italian fluently, j Will you go ?” De Benham’s heart gave a great leap of j exultation ; but he put control upon himself, and said promptly, but quite gravely : — “ Yes.” “At once?” “ I can be ready within an hour and a half.” “Good. You can take the next tidal train which leaves London Bridge at twenty minutes past four — that will allow you more than four hours. You must go straight through to Naples without stopping, and from Naples enquire your quickest way to — what is the name of the place? — Soverato. And, mind, you will spare no expense to save 3 12 DEBENHAM’S VOW. [Good Words, May i, 1869. time. Arrived at Soverato, you will at once assume the command. Mackenzie, the first mate (he who telegraphs the news), is an honest, active fellow, and will obey you im- plicitly : but you will do well to follow his advice in all matters of which he knows more than yourself. Do you follow me ? ” “ Perfectly.” “ Your duty, of course, will be to protect the cargo, keep off the natives, resist imposi- tion, and, if possible, get the ship off again. But if you find the damage is too great* charter another vessel, and reship the cargo without loss of time. Do you know any- thing about the law of salvage ? ” “ Nothing.” “ Then here is Pouget’s book — ‘ Les Prin- cipes du Droit Maritime •* Read it on the Page 310. journey ; it will tell you all you ought to know. And as for Barclay, the captain (an excellent sailor and a man for whom I have the highest esteem), do all that is possible for him. Perhaps you had better take on a surgeon with you from Naples. The coast on that side is wild and desolate, and I sus- pect that Soverato is a mere fishing village, destitute of any sort of accommodation, and probably no doctor within reach for twenty miles. Now go ; and be back here by three o’clock for your credentials. You shall have full written instructions, full powers, and ample credit. For the rest, your success depends upon yourself.” “ I will do my best, sir, not to disappoint you,” said De Benham — bowed — and was gone. Then Mr. Hardwicke drew a deep breath, rose from his seat, and began pacing thought Good Words, May i, 1869.J DEBENHAM’S VOW. 313 fully up and down the room. He was not given to act upon impulse ; but he had acted upon impulse now, and his mind misgave him sorely. The young man seemed clever — was clever undoubtedly ; not wanting, apparently, in decision of character ; self- reliant ; ready ; straightforward. Still he was untried ; untrained ; a mere novice in things commercial. It was a risk. Mr. Hardwicke could not conceal from himself that it was a very serious risk; and the more he con- sidered it, the more his mind misgave him. “ I wonder what Knott will say to it,” he muttered to himself. “ I wonder if I have made a fool of myself.” Mr. Knott, it will be remembered, was Mr. Hardwicke’s managing clerk, and Mr. Harwicke entertained a profound respect for Mr. Knott’s opinion ; so it was not without some inward trepidation that he wondered what that sagacious henchman would “say to it.” CHAPTER XXV. BY LAND AND SEA. Speeding along for the first time in his life by first-class express ; a handful of bright sovereigns in his purse, and a little packet of letters of credit in his travelling belt ; repre- sentative, for the nonce, of a great commer- cial house ; and furnished not only with money but authority, De Benham was at first almost bewildered by the change in his posi- tion, and the new life into which he had plunged. The time had been so short and his preparations so hurried, that it was not till the train had steamed out of the station and he was fairly on his way, that he had time to think at all. And then the whole thing seemed to him more like a dream than a reality. But an hour or two ago, and he was rushing hither and thither, hunting up a substitute to take his duty at St. Hildegarde’s, in case the little church should re-open before his return — writing an explanatory letter to Mr. Choake, to be forwarded by his mother in case of need — supplying the deficiencies of his wardrobe at an outfitting warehouse — packing — parting — flying back to the City in a Hansom — receiving his money and cre- dentials, not from Mr. Hardwicke, but from the far more awful hands of Mr. Knott, a stony-visaged veteran with a relentless eye, who glared upon him as if he were a con- victed felon, and dismissed him as it might be to the penal settlements — all this but three hours, two hours, half-an-hour ago, and now’ .... now the new life had begun, and these things belonged already to the past — that past which he seemed to be leaving farther and farther behind with every fleeting mile. Folkestone already, the impatient steamer panting at the pier, and the dancing sea beyond ! Now the fresh breeze and the open deck — the welcome cigar — the delicious sum- mer evening — Boulogne sparkling with in- numerable lights, just as the last glow fades out of the sky — the landing-place — the cus- tom-house — the inevitable “portion” of cold chicken and half bottle of vin ordinaire at the station — and now the rail again. By this time, it is night. The train, though pro- fessedly “ grande vitesse ,” makes but moderate speed, and stops often by the way. Alone in his compartment, De Benham wraps him- self in his railway rug, makes a pillow of his travelling bag, and tries to sleep ; but in vain. The more he tries, the more hopelessly wide awake he is. At last he gives it up ; lights his reading lamp, and devotes himself to a careful study of the continental Bradshaw. London to Paris, Paris to Marseilles, Mar- seilles to Naples ! Up and down, backwards and forwards, he performs the travellers per- petual penance, and with the usual results. Trains do not correspond with each other, and steamers do not correspond with trains. Four hours’ delay in Paris; nineteen hours to Marseilles ; seven hours’ delay at Mar- seilles ; fifty-six hours by the boat .... Why, to get to Naples alone will take him ninety-eight hours at the very least, and then he has to find his way across the country to Soverato ! Meanwhile the Fairy Queen may be slowly going to pieces among the rocks, and her cargo washing out to sea with every tide. The mere thought of this danger comes upon him with so keen a sense of his own utter helplessness, that, stopping now for twenty minutes at Amiens, he is fain to allay his impatience by hurrying up and down the platform till the train goes on again. It is now past midnight. He is no longer alone in his compartment, and feels less than ever inclined to sleep. Two ecclesiastics — one, apparently, of high rank — are his travel- ling companions from this point. The dig- nitary sleeps profoundly all the way, while his subordinate nods over his breviary by the feeble light of the oil lamp overhead. Thus the night wears, and at a little before three they arrive in Paris. On, then, at once through the dark and empty streets to an hotel over against the terminus of the Chemin de Fer de Lyon, where, after much knocking and ringing, a sleepy porter stumbles to the door, and lets the traveller in. Here, all dressed as he is, De Benham snatches some 314 DEBENHAM’S VOW. [Good Words, May 1. 1869. two hours of heavy sleep ; and then, after breakfast and a bath, is on the road again. A delicious morning, fresh, and breezy, and joyous; the bare French landscape all open to the sun ; the reapers at work in the yellow corn-flats ; the oxen at plough in the stubble ; the children on their way to school, stopping to shout after the train as it flies I by ! De Benham is now deep in Pouget’s “ Principes” beginning conscientiously at page | the first ; but as the day advances and the I sun gains power, the study of maritime law becomes more difficult. Too sleepy to read j and too hot to sleep, half choked with dust, } and half blinded by the intense glare struck j back from earth to sky, he is carried on league after league, hour after hour, by Dijon, ! and Chalons, and Macon, with flying glimpses ! of the sleepy Saone and the golden hills of j the Burgundian Arcady. Then, about six i o’clock, as the heat begins to abate and the shadows lengthen, comes Lyons. Three- ; quarters of an hour, here, for refreshment, j and so on again southward, to the sea ! Sunset now, gorgeous and glowing — twi- I light, and “ eve’s one star ” — night, and the crescent moon, and the transparent darkness of a southern sky. The twinkling lights from hill-side villages and the gleaming river close at hand, are so mysteriously picturesque ; the time is so peaceful ; the air so cool and fra- grant, that De Benham would now fain keep awake, and prolong the pleasure of the pass- ing hour. But he cannot. The oblivion that would not be courted last night, comes upon I him at last with resistless power ; and, fairly tired out, he sleeps profoundly all the way to Marseilles. At a little after two in the morning, how- ever, he is roused up, cold and shivering, by the blaze of a lanthorn and the voice of the guard imperatively demanding his ticket. It seems to him that he has but just left Lyons, and he cannot believe that he is already at I the end of his journey by land. The keen air, however, comes to him laden with the taste and smell of the sea as soon as he is out of the station ; and he sees a forest of masts at the bottom of the street through which he is driven to his hotel. The seven hours in Marseilles drag by slowly enough, and by nine a.m. he is on board the steamer of the Messageries Imperiales, bound for Naples, but touching at Civita Vecchiaby the way. This touching at Civita Vecchia is another inevitable delay; which, however, like the rest, must be borne patiently. And now, breathing the salt air, pacing the deck, and studying Pouget with a will, De Benham finds the time pass less wearily. His fellow-travellers, mostly French and Italian, enjoy themselves immensely : but then they are gay and sociable by nature, and are neither hedged in by an invincible reserve, nor op- pressed by business cares. The weather, too, is enchanting — the sea scintillating like a diamond, and blue as the bluest sapphire. Towards evening there is music upon deck, and some dancing ; and by midnight all the passengers, save one, are gone to their berths for the night. That one, though he has not been regularly to bed for two nights already, is restless, and prefers the deck. Here, falling into conversation with the captain, he hazards an inquiry respecting Soverato, its distance from Naples, and its accessibility by land; but the captain, who has spent his life on the Mediterranean, has never even heard of Soverato. Upon one point, however, he is positive ; and that is that his passenger must not attempt to reach the south-eastern coast by land. The roads are bad, and the moun- tains infested with banditti. Besides, there are plenty of Italian steamers plying between Naples and Messina ; and by taking one of these as far as Reggio, he can easily hire a small sailing-boat for the rest of the distance. Judging from what De Benham tells him of the position of Soverato on the map, he imagines it may be done, with favourable weather, in about eighteen hours — say, allow- ing for delays, twenty-four. Twenty-four hours from Naples, and not yet at Civita Vecchia ! Five nights and six days — perhaps longer — and not one hour’s avoidable delay ! What will Mr. Hardwicke say? What will Mr. Knott say? What is happening, meanwhile, to the Fah'y Queen ? “Is there no quicker way ?” he asks, his anxiety betraying itself in his voice. The captain shrugs his shoulders, shakes his head, and, with your true Frenchman’s dislike to utter an unacceptable truth, says nothing. “ Supposing that I landed at Civita Vecchia and went on by rail to Naples — should I gain even a few hours, do you suppose ? ” Again the captain shakes his head. “ Mats non” he replies. “ There is but one direct train from Rome to Naples each day ; and that train leaves Rome in the morning, and takes all day to crawl to Naples. Besides, when you land at CivitaVecchia, you are still forty-five miles from Rome, and we shall not get into port till the first train has started. You would lose twelve hours, instead of gaining one.” “ Then there is no help for it ? ” Cood Words, May i, 1869,] DEBENHAM’S VOW. j “ Rien que la patience , Monsieur ” replies j the captain, with another little shrug. | “ La patience ,” indeed ! Is there, in our ! whole vocabulary, French or English, a more ■irritating word in the ears of an impatient | man ? “ Monsieur le Capitaine would, perhaps, I find it difficult to be patient, if his good boat : here were in hourly danger of being wrecked or plundered, and he travelling day and night I to her rescue.” “ Ma foi , oui ; but Monsieur puts an ex- treme case,” says the captain, deprecatingly. | “ I put my own case,” retorts his passenger j : and so goes on to relate something of the disasters that have befallen the Fairy Queen and her captain. Hereupon the Frenchmans professional sympathies are at once awakened, and he is | as ready and eager with his counsel as if he j had a personal interest in ship and cargo. He asks questions, proposes expedients, and has, withal, some valuable suggestions to offer. That the captain of the merchant vessel 1 should be disabled is, in his opinion, the ; worst feature of the case. An immense re- | sponsibility has devolved upon the mate, and to this responsibility he may not be equal. He is probably beset by all kinds of difficul- ties; — want of authority, of money, of ex- perience, of presence of mind. He may find it next to impossible to keep his crew together — to repel intruders — to make him- self understood by the natives — to engage proper assistance. For all this, Monsieur must be prepared beforehand. By the way, ' has Monsieur communicated with the mate ? Does the mate know that Monsieur is on his way ? Ah ! that has been done by the owners in . whose interests Monsieur is travelling. !, Good — but the mate may all this time be j sorely in want of advice ; of assistance. Would it not be well if Monsieur were to telegraph from Civita Vecchia to the nearest British Consul — say at Squillace, which cannot be very far from Soverato — and request him to give such help and countenance as may be ; in his power ? And what if Monsieur were also to telegraph to the mate, telling him that the British Consul had been summoned to his ; assistance, and that Monsieur would himself 1 1 be upon the spot in the course of twenty- four hours ? Such a message could do no harm, and might do much good. The man’s courage and endurance, for instance, might be giving way : and, to?merre de Dieu J who can say what a timely word of encouragement may not be worth? As for salvage, if any kind of assistance has been rendered by 3i5 those on shore, Monsieur must hold himself prepared to encounter the most exorbitant claims, and to contest them point by point. Here, again, the British Consul will be his main help and adviser ; but he can also ap- peal, if necessary, to the Conciliatore , or petty magistrate of the commune. All this, and much more to the same pur- pose, does the eager little captain of the Etoile du JS/ord , pour with untiring volu- bility into De Benham’s attentive ear, as they pace the deck in the moonlight. All this the young man seizes upon, acts upon, and turns promptly to account. At Civita Vecchia he telegraphs to the mate at Soverato, and to the British Consul at Squillace ; and through- out the rest of the voyage he continues to cultivate the captain, so hiving a world of valuable information, and learning more of cases of wreck and salvage than he could have acquired in a month from all the books that had ever been written on the law of merchant shipping. Arrived at Naples, they part with hearty thanks on the one side, and many expressions of good-will on the other ; and then De Benham, in a strange, noisy, brilliant foreign city, is once again thrown upon his own resources. In Naples, however, he is destined to stay longer than he had foreseen, and to take quite another route than that suggested by the captain of the Etoile du Nord. Being advised thereto by various persons in whom he is bound to have faith (such as Lloyd’s agent, and the British vice-consul, and a certain Signor Festa up at the British Library, who is an irrefragable authority in all such matters as maps, routes, guide-books, couriers, and the like), he gives up that scheme of taking the Neapolitan steamer to Reggio and then doubling Cape Spartimento in a sailing boat, and decides, instead, upon landing at a place called La Pizzo, about half-way between Naples and Reggio, and thence posting on across the mountains to the Gulf of Squillace on the eastern coast, at a point where the two seas are but fifteen miles apart in a direct line. Even by this route, undoubtedly the best and quickest he could take, he finds it impossible to reach Soverato in less than forty- five hours. Arrived at Naples about seven in the evening, he there has to wait twenty- four hours for the boat to La Pizzo ; and is for- tunate even so, for at this time the Adriatic steamers ply only once a-week along that coast. All night long, too impatient to rest, he stays on deck from Naples to La Pizzo. All day long; he posfs from La Pizzo to Soverato. For though the mainland is but DEBENHAM’S VOW. 3i(3 [Good Words, May i, ifl&jt fifteen miles across from sea to sea, as the crow flies, the roads are hilly and circuitous, and double backwards and forwards in such wise as almost to treble the distance. At length, when all this is done, and his carrettella draws up before the doors of the dilapidated albergo and posting-house situate at the farther extremity of the still more dilapidated village of Soverato, he still finds himself more than two miles from the scene of the Fairy Queen's disaster; and so, taking a bare- legged Masaniello in a scarlet cap for his guide, and followed by a troop of ragged urchins, brown and beautiful as little antique bronzes, he goes down to the shore on foot. It is now just the hottest hour of the hottest day he has ever experienced. Sea and sky are all of one pitiless blaze. The bare volcanic rocks of this wild eastern coast ; the long, white, blinding roads over which he has been toiling in an open vehicle for the last seven hours ; the very stones and sand under his feet strike back the universal glare, and smite upon him like the blast from a furnace. And now, at about three o’clock in the afternoon of the second day after his arrival at Naples, threading his way down a preci- pitous path, evidently the bed ot a winter torrent, and turning a sudden angle of rock that seems almost to overhang the sea, Temple de Benham sees the ship — the object of all his anxiety, the goal of his long journey — lying over on her beam-ends against a steep shelf of rocky beach some forty or fifty feet below, apparently safe and uninjured, looking like a monstrous whale cast up, dead, by the waves. CHAPTER XXVI. — DE BENHAM MAKES HIMSELF MASTER OF THE SITUATION. That splendid, fast-sailing, iron clipper ship, Fairy Queen , a a i, 1,000 tons register, Captain James Barclay, presented nothing like the spectacle of wreck and disaster that De Benham had been picturing to himself all these days and nights that he was journeying from London. He had seen her, in his mind’s eye, a mere dismantled hulk, fast breaking up, partly submerged, the sea wash- ing over her, and the beach strewn with shattered casks, fragments of broken masts, and debris of every description. He found her, on the contrary, high and dry, and to all appearance uninjured. The Fairy Queen , however, was not uninjured. She had lost her bowsprit, suffered damage in various places to her yards and rigging, and sustained a severe shock in taking the ground. Still, the damage done was not considerable, and much of it had been already repaired before ever De Benham appeared upon the scene, j The real damage, in fact, was that she should | be where she was ; and the real difficulty would be to get her afloat again. That she should ever have got there at all, seeing in what a narrow cove she lay, and how the mouth of that cove, and all the inaccessible coast beyond and around it for miles on either side, bristled with perils, seemed little short of a miracle. The worst of the injury done, in truth, was not to the Fairy Queen , but to her captain. He, it seemed, had been knocked down by a falling spar just at the moment when the ship grounded, and was now lying between life and death at the house of the parish priest, some- | where on the outskirts of the village. Accord- j ing to Mr. Hardwicke’s wish, De Benham ! had brought an English surgeon with him from Naples ; but they found the medico from Squillace in close attendance, and Mr. Cooper said at once, that Signor Stefani had done all that was possible under the circumstances. The patient was still delirious, though not so violent as he had been ; and his skull was. fractured in two places. Signor Stefani was not without hope of bringing him through ; “aided,” as he courteously said, “ by the skill and experience of the Signor Cooper.” But ; the Signor Copper, who was in a hurry to get back to his own oatients, managed to turn the whole affair into a mere consultation; and, protesting that he could not leave Cap- tain Barclay in better hands, took advantage of De Benham’s returning carrettella , and went his way that same evening. In the meanwhile, the whole village turned out to marvel at the stranger who had come all the way from Inghilterra to see after the safety of the Fairy Queen and her captain. Stalwart, scowling, bare-legged men in blue > shirts, and scarlet caps, and linen drawers ! rolled up above the knee ; mothers with their children clinging- to their skirts, and their babies slung upon their backs; young girls and youths, brown and black-eyed, and full of joyous life, like beautiful bacchantes and i fauns ; patriarchal old men with beards and tattered cloaks ; horrible old women, with j scant, dishevelled locks and pendant eye- brows, withered, toothless, mumbling, and j decrepit — all these, and more, came crowding i down upon the narrow beach, clamouring for j j alms, for employment, for salvage-money, for j rewards proportioned to all kinds of imaginary j j services ; and equally ready to fight, quarrel, or steal, upon the smallest provocation. Mackenzie, the mate, a fiery, curly-headed Good Words,] [May i, 1869. DEBENHAM’S VOW.’ I DEBENHAM’S VOW. Good Words, May i i8£g.] 3W Scot of about thirty-four or five, hailed De Benham as if he were an ambassador from Jove himself, and denounced the whole Cala- brian population as a set of “ ill-bluided, skulking, knifing, pilfering deils,whom hanging was too good for.” And then he swore at them heartily, in broadest Scotch, and shook his fist in their faces ; whereupon the men only scowled the more fiercely, and the old women begged the more clamorously, and the girls and boys were more daring than before. | “They’ve just driven me beside mysel’,” said the mate. “ It’s only been by setting up targets against the rocks, and putting the men to ball practice, that Eve kept them off the ship. They’d ha’e strippit the very copper off her bottom, sir !” And then he went on to explain how, for the first few days, the inhabitants of every fishing village within the next fifteen or twenty miles had turned out en masse, hoping to find the ship a wreck, and eager for plunder ; and how, with the exception of bringing down fresh meat and vegetables for sale, all of which had been paid for on the spot, no kind of help or service had been rendered to the ship’s crew by those on shore. As the Fairy Queen had been cast, so she had lain ever since. The ship’s carpenters had been hard at work upon her, refitting masts and yards, stopping leaks, and doing all that was pos- sible, so long as she remained in her present position ; but in none of this work had they found it necessary to call in assistance. Every claim, therefore, that might be advanced, whether for salvage, wages, or debt of any kind, was false and extortionate. As the ship was comparatively uninjured, ! so also was the cargo. Of nine hundred and thirty-six tons of tallow in the hold, not a dozen tons, in so far as it was possible to judge without unlading the vessel, had sus- , tained salt-water damage. The crew, however, had not proved easy to I manage. As the captain of the Etoile du j Nord had predicted, the temptations of the shore proved stronger than the authority of the first mate, and Mackenzie had found it I; impossible to keep his younger sailors from straying to the neighbouring villages. “ I’ve been tied to the ship mysel’,” said he, “ or I’d lugged them out o’ the wine- shops. But now you’re come, sir, we maun ha’e discipline.” “ We will have discipline, Mr. Mackenzie,” said De Benham. And though he said it very quietly, the first mate knew that he meant it. He did mean it, too ; though perhaps he felt less securely confident of his own power than he chose to appear. The responsibility was, in truth, enormous ; and it was a respon- sibility that he never fully realised till he came face to face with his work. That work, however, had to be done, and as the first step towards doing it, he proceeded to get rid of the mob. It was of no use, he told them, to beg, for he would give them nothing. If they had claims, they might send three spokesmen to him at the Albergo del Sole, and he would hear them ; but if they could even prove those claims, it would be for the British Consul to pay them. He himself had no power to pay away a single grano. And in order that he should listen to them at all, it was necessary that they should at once disperse to their homes. He was determined, he said, to keep the beach clear. He would have no intruders within a hundred yards of the ship on any side. And then he warned them that an armed patrol was about to be posted round about the ship ; that it w r ould be the duty of this patrol to challenge all comers ; and that such persons as disregarded the challenge would do so at their own proper peril. Finding that he spoke their language flu- ently, they listened to him ; and seeing that he said what he had to say in a plain, resolute way, and was not one jot afraid of them, they hung back, cowed and silenced, and then gradually dispersed. When they were all gone — and De Benham never stirred, nor took his eyes off them, till the last straggler had turned away — he bade Mackenzie call up the crew ; asked the name and grade of each sailor; inquired if any were absent without leave; took down the names of two then missing ; selected two men for the patrol, and two others to relieve them at the end of the first watch ; desired that each man should be armed with revolver and cutlass ; and himself traced out the line of their beat, and gave them the watchword. This done, he left the first mate in command, and went back to Soverato on foot. Not to dine, however; not to rest; fasting and fatigued though he was. Before he would admit to himself that he wanted either food or sleep, the missing seamen must be found ; punished, if necessary ; at all events, sent back to their duty. And he did find them, after repeated en- quiries and much wandering to and fro in the village. He found them carousing in a low wine-shop at the bottom of a dark, dis- reputable alley ; and, at the risk, perhaps, of some personal danger, brought them out from DEBENHAM’S VOW. [Good Words, May x, 1869. 318 the midst of a savage, half-intoxicated com- pany, any one of whom would have been ready with knife or stiletto at a moment’s notice. He then saw them out of the village and along part of the road leading to the beach ; and so, bidding them go at once to the first mate and report themselves, dis- missed them. Walking slowly back to his inn in the plea- sant summer dusk, with the stars coming out one by one overhead, and the fire-flies begin- ning to flit and sparkle about his path, De Ben- ham could not but be conscious of a pleasant sense of victory. He felt that he had esta- blished his authority with the crew ; and he almost marvelled at his own success in deal- ing with such a mob as that which had gathered about the ship in honour of his arrival. So far, this was very well, indeed. True, the most difficult part of his mission — that part for which he was least fitted by pre- vious experience, and in the performance of which he must rely chiefly upon the help and counsel of others — still remained to be done ; but that part which depended on himself alone, that part in which there was even some little spice of danger, and which, for its successful accomplishment, demanded cou- rage, promptitude, a strong will, and some power of endurance, was already achieved. Thinking these things over, he sat down by-and-by to his solitary dinner, in a bare, white-washed room, looking to the sea. Meagre were the resources and execrable was the cuisine of the Albergo del Sole ; but, fortunately for De Benham, that same pleasant sense of victory covered a multitude of culinary sins, and imparted a flavour to the omelette and a body to the thin Gerace wine, to which neither could lay claim on the score of its own individual merit. After dinner, fagged though he was, he went again to the priest’s house, to inquire after the sick man ; and then back to the inn, to despatch a letter to his mother, and another to Mr. Hardwicke. The letter to Mr. Hardwicke was by no means short, for it treated of important de- tails; but the letter to his mother took a still longer time to write, and covered many pages. In it he told her all that he had seen and done since leaving Naples. He described the journey across the mountains ; sketched the scenery with the touch of an artist, and the people with the pen of a satirist ; and was as gay and discursive as though he were neither overwhelmed with anxieties, nor so worn out with fatigue that the pen was almost- dropping from his fingers. For he knew that his letters, when he was far away, were to her as the very bread and wine of life, and he would not, for any consideration upon earth, have let her want that bread and wine while it was in his power to give them to her. Nay, he would, if necessary, have sat up half that night to write his letter, and have spent the other half in walking to Squillace and back to post it, sooner than leave her fasting for a single day. And then, having written the longest and most amusing letter he could think of, he stayed some time with the paper and pens before him, thinking of Miss Alleyne. How strange it seemed, sitting there all alone in that wild, far-away Calabrian albergo — sitting there and thinking of her, with hun- dreds of miles of land and sea between them ! How strange to look back upon those three weeks at Cillingford, so near in point of time, yet so distant in the impression they had left upon his memory ! It seemed to him as if years had gone by since that day when they went up to the little church among the hills .... And now she did not even know where he was ! Well, that was not his fault. She had forbidden him to write to her; and if fate had sent him to Australia instead of to Italy, it would have been all the same. Still, in the absence of any posi- tive engagement, she was right. And it was better so. In nine cases out of ten, a long engagement was neither more nor less than a pnrgatoire a deux ; and what right had any man to condemn any woman to so weary an ordeal ? Clearly none, be his love what it might. Yes, yes, it was undoubtedly better so — especially for Miss Alleyne. And then the young man shut his eyes, buried his face in his hands, and tried to bring back her image to his mind; for he had no portrait of her — not even a carte de visite. But, somehow or another, the sweet face eluded his memory, and would not come for all his trying. He could remember the flash of her eyes when she smiled, or the turn of her head, or any separate feature ; but, strive as he would, he could not evoke the gracious picture as a whole. It was like a strange, tormenting puzzle. The pieces were all there ; but to put them together defied his utmost skill. And, trying still to put them together, he fell asleep. 1 I 1 \ Good Words, May x, 1869,] SHORT ESSAYS. 3*9 SHORT ESSAYS. By the AUTHOR OF “ FRIENDS IN COUNCIL.’’ FOURTH INSTALMENT. To listen well is a most rare accomplish- ment. Indeed, it is a thing beyond an ac- complishment. It takes a great man to make a good listener. This is a bold saying, but I believe it is true. The ordinary hindrances to good listening are very considerable, such as the desire to talk oneself, the proneness to interrupt, the inaccuracy, if one may use such an expression, of most men in listening. But there is something which prevents good listening in a much more subtle way, and to a much more dangerous extent, than any of the above-named hindrances. It is this. As soon as you begin to give utterance to some sentiment or opinion, narrate some story, declare some fact, you will find that your hearer, in nine cases out of ten, strikes at once a mental attitude in reference to what you say. He receives it as a friend, or as a foe, or as a critic, or as an advocate, or as a judge. Now all these characters may after- wards be fairly taken up ; but the first thing is to listen, if I may say so, out of character — to be a bona fide listener, and nothing more. This requires some of the simplicity of great- ness. It indicates the existence, too, of that respect which really great men have for other men, and for truth. In short, I maintain that it takes a great man to make a good listener. One of the best modes of dwarfing the influence of clever men in state affairs, is to keep all salaries very low. If a Machiavelli were consulted by a rich aristocracy as to the best plan for securing power to themselves, I think he would reply somewhat after this fashion : “ Tarquin signified what he meant by cutting off the heads of the tallest poppies : I say, starve them at the roots, so that they may droop their heads and be of no account with anybody.” Then dropping metaphor, for Machiavellis are not fond of indulging in metaphors, he would add, “You can do this under the pretence of economy, and so in- gratiate yourselves with the populace, while you suppress those who might be troublesome rivals to you.” There is something animal about decisive- ness. If the mind be a fine and discursive mind, inclined to thought, and stored with knowledge, it must be hard for it to be swiftly decisiveness is to be able to shut your eyes to all manner of minor considerations, and ! sometimes even of major considerations. To do this, requires courage, which is an animal virtue, to be much enlarged by practice. Let us take a numerical illustration, showing the rough and ready way in which decisions are arrived at by the neglect of minor con- siderations. Let there be eight considerations of the following values : No. one, value 17; j No. two, value 9 ; and then six others, the ! values of which are not ascertained, but it is 1 reasonably concluded that no one of them is | higher than 4. A decisive man sees that if he decides in a j particular way, he will have on his side No. 1 one, equal to 17. He sees that No. two will ! be against him. He has not time (it is per- j haps on the field of battle) to ascertain to i which side the other six will incline. He assumes, however, that they will be evenly balanced ; he knows that the highest value of any of them is only 4 ; and he takes at > once the decision which will be supported by ' consideration No. one, value 17. Of course no man thinks so pedantically, as, for the purpose of illustration, I have sup- posed him to do in the foregoing instance. But it may serve to illustrate the mode of thinking adopted by decisive men, and to show how they are often right. Llad there been time for looking carefully at each of the eight unascertained considera- tions, it might have turned out that the smaller considerations would have entirely altered the decision. The man, not practised in decisiveness, cannot bear, even at a mo- ment of peril, to overlook this possibility. They say that every man is his own worst enemy. I do not know how this may be ; but I am certain that he is his own most dangerous competitor. All that he has ever done is sure to be brought up against a man, in some way or j other, when he does anything new. If it is I different, people say that he had better have kept to his old style, for there is a profound belief in common minds, as Sir Walter Scott ! has observed, that no man can do two different kinds of things equally well. If what he ' does is of a similar character to that which i 3 2 ° SHORT ESSAYS. [Good Words, May i, i85^. he has done before, then all his past merits are brought up against him ; and he is sure to be compared most disadvantageously with his former self. At last he almost hates that former self as being his bitterest and most provoking rival. He is like a man who has married a widow, and is always hearing about the merits of the dear departed. I can imagine a man who had lived a very long and very active life, and who had done much either in writing, speaking, or in action, being absolutely suppressed by his former self when he undertakes any new thing. He would be crushed under the weight of his | old laurels, which all men would conspire to j heap upon him. It was a vulgar way of getting rid of Aris- tides, to ostracize him. His Athenian friends, by constantly bringing up, and dwelling only upon, his past merits and services, might easily have driven him into exile, to find a recogni- tion of his present merits in some other state. Regarding one day, in company with a humorous friend, a noble vessel of a some- what novel construction, sailing slowly out of port, he observed, “ What a quantity of cold water somebody must have had down his back ! ” In my innocence I supposed that he alluded to the wet work of the artizans who had been building her ; but when I came to know him better, I found that this was the form of comment he always indulged in, when contemplating any new and great work, and that his somebody was the designer of the vessel. My friend had carefully studied the art of discouragement, and there was a class of men whom, he designated simply as “ cold-water pourers.” It was most amusing to hear him describe the lengthened sufferings of the man who first designed a wheel ; of him who first built a boat ; and of the adventurous personage who first proposed the daring en- terprise of using buttons, instead of fishes’ bones, to fasten the scanty raiment of some savage tribe. Warming with his theme, he would become quite eloquent in describing the long career of discouragement which these rash men had brought upon themselves, and which he said, to his knowledge, must have shortened all their lives. He invented imaginary dialogues between the unfortunate inventor, say of the wheel, and his particular friend, some eminent cold-water pourer. For, as he said, every man has some such friend, who fascinates him by fear, and to whom he confides his enterprises in order to hear the worst that can be said of them. The sayings of the chilling friend probably, as he observed, ran thus : — “We seem to have gone on veiy well for thousands of years without this rolling thing. Your father carried burdens on his back. The king is content to be borne on men’s shoulders. The high priest is not too proud to do the same. Indeed I question whether it is not irreligious to attempt to shift from men’s shoulders their natural burdens. “ Then, as to its succeeding, — for my part, I see no chance of that. How can it go up hill ? How is one to stop it, going down ? How often you have failed before in other fanciful things of the same nature ! Besides, you are losing your time ; and the yams about your hut are only half-planted. You will be a beggar ; and it is my duty, as a friend, to tell you so plainly. There was Nang-chung : what became of him? We had found fire for ages, in a proper way, taking a proper time about it, by rubbing two sticks together. He must needs strike out fire at once, with iron and flint ; and did he die in his bed ? Our sacred lords saw the impiety of that proceeding, and very justly impaled the man who imitated heavenly powers. And, even if you could succeed with this new and absurd rolling thing, the state would be ruined. What would become of those who now carry burdens on their backs ? Put aside the vain fancies of a childish mind, and finish the planting of your yams.” No one who had not heard my ingenious friend throw himself into the part of the first objector, can well imagine how much there is to be said against the invention of forks. The proposed invention was impious, trouble- some, unclean, unnecessary, and ludicrous. Besides, it was impossible, by reason of its difficulty ; and, if it were possible, it would be most dangerous. It was putting a ready weapon into every angry man’s hands, when the juice of the grape should mount into men’s heads ; and it would mount into the heads even of the wisest. Who would an- swer for the deaths that would ensue from these dangerous weapons being always close j at hand ? There could be no blessing on a meal that was to be eaten with forks. They had had a famine last year, when two million Celestials died in anguish. What would happen the year after forks should come into use ? Not that they could be used ; for it would take a lifetime to learn how to use them. Then, what was to become of the four great Tang-rang ceremonials, which all depended upon the meat being taken bit by bit, in due succession, be- Good Word May i, 1S69.] SHORT tween the thumb and each of the several fingers? How was the Celestial monarch to show his world-astounding favour -to a wisely-controlling minister, when that royal personage could not take between his thumb and his little finger a boiled bird’s- nest, and for ever irradiate with joy the statesman, by throwing it into his mouth, held open reverently ? The thing could not be ; and he who should endeavour to invent such a machine as a fork, was an idiot, a hater of men, a parricide, cousin of a dead dog, and a despiser of all ceremonials. Finally, what would his aunt, widow of the great Ling-Pe, say? a wise lady, who had known all the sacred usages of old, and who had seven rice-fields and three-and-twenty slaves to bequeath. Thus the invention of forks was stopped in China. My humorous friend was wont to say, that thus, too, several fork inventors in various countries had been quelled, until the wicked idea entered into a man who had no aunt, and then forks were invented ; but he, the inventor, was justly burnt alive. It is really very curious to observe how, -even in modern times, the arts of discourage- ment prevail. There are men, whose sole pretence to wisdom consists in administer- ing discouragement. They are never at a loss. They are equally ready to prophesy, with wonderful ingenuity, all possible varie- ties of misfortune to any enterprise that is proposed ; and, when the thing is produced, and has met with some success, to find a flaw in it. We once saw a work of art pro- duced in the presence of an eminent cold- water pourer. He did not deny that it was beautiful ; but he instantly fastened upon a small crack in it, that nobody had observed ; and upon that crack he would dilate, whenever the work was discussed in his presence. Indeed, he did not see the work, but only the crack in it. That flaw, that little flaw, was all in all to him. The cold-water pourers are not all of one form of mind. Some are led to indulge in this recreation from genuine timidity. They really do fear that all new attempts will fail. Others are simply envious and ill-natured. Then, again, there is a sense of power and wisdom in prophesying evil. Moreover, it is the safest thing to prophesy, for hardly any- thing at first succeeds exactly in the way that it was intended to succeed. Again, there is the lack of imagination which gives rise to the utterance of so much discouragement. For an ordinary man, it must have been a great mental strain to grasp X— 22. ESSAYS. 321 the ideas of the first projectors of steam and gas, electric-telegraphs, and pain-deadening chloroform. The inventor is always, in the eyes of his fellow-men, somewhat of a madman; and often they do their best to make him so. Again, there is the want of sympathy ; and that is, perhaps, the ruling cause in most men’s minds who have given themselves up to discourage. They are not tender enough, or sympathetic enough, to appreciate all the pain they are giving, when, in a dull plodding way, they lay out argument after argument to show that the project which the poor inventor has set his heart upon, and upon which, per- haps, he has staked his fortune, will not succeed. But what inventors suffer is but a small part of what mankind in general endure from thoughtless and unkind discouragement. These high-souled men belong to the suffer- ing class, and must suffer ; but it is in daily life that the wear and tear of discouragement tell so much. Propose, not a great inven- tion, but a small party of pleasure, to an apt discourager (and there is generally one in most households), and see what he will make of it. It soon becomes sicklied over with doubt and despondency ; and, at last, the only hope of the proposer is, that his pro- posal, when realised, will not be an igno- minious failure. All hope of pleasure, at least for him, the proposer, has long been out of the question. There is a very peculiar form of criticism prominent, if not predominant, in the present day. Formerly, there were very unjust and slashing criticisms. There were also very hearty, praiseful criticisms. But it was left to our times to develope a form of criticism which should be a quiet, studiously-devised, continuous denigration, and which should balance its praise and blame in the same sen- tence with a certain skill, always contriving, however, that the blame should ultimately predominate. The writers who indulge in this kind of criticism will say of a statesman, an author, or an artist, something of this kind — “ The object which he has aimed at, were it worth aiming at, has certainly, to some small extent, been attained. But the methods by which he has attained it are illusory, illogical, and often absurd. There was a young man mentioned by Jeremy Tay- lor, who threw a stone at a dog, and hit his cruel stepmother, whereupon he said ‘that though he had intended it otherwise, it was not altogether lost.’ We may say of our author that, if he has been more fortunate 3 22 SHORT ESSAYS. [Good Words, May i, 1869. than this young man, he has also been less fortunate. It would certainly have shown more good sense and good taste to have missed his aim than to have attained it; but we must confess that he has in some measure attained it.” Their parentheses, as you will observe, are always injurious, their qualifications depreciatory, and their summing- up condemnatory. The man criticized feels that he has not much to lay hold of. Did they not say that he had attained his object? But all the time the poor man feels that an unpleasant creature of the snail species has crawled over his work, and left its slime be- hind it. If he cares about such things at all, and there are few men who do not care, he feels humiliated, discouraged, and depressed ; but he has very little tangible ground for a grievance. The men who write these criticisms have seldom done anything themselves. Doing is not their forte. They would, however, effect a great deal of mischief, and would bring on a Byzantine period in statesmanship, in letters, and in arts ; but that, fortunately, the busy, ener- getic world is too strong for them ; and the workers go on working, and never minding, except for the moment. After all, the world recognises true work; and though it is amused with this kind of denigration, does not really believe in it. The ant is a most satirical creature, as may be seen by the quantity of formic* acid it secretes, which is only latent criticism. It was a rainy day; and a community of, ants had blocked up all the avenues to their | nest. Now the ant, though very industrious, ! is also very fond of amusement, and holds with Aristotle that “ the object of labour is to procure leisure.” So, after having seen to the comfort of their wives and their babies — for the ant is very affectionate, as is the case with many satirical creatures — the males of the nest sat down in a lower room to have some good conversation. A frequent subject with the ants is afforded by the goings-on of men, which they view with considerable con- tempt; and this subject they dilated upon at some length on the present occasion. As is well known to those who have studied the ways of ants, they interchange thought by means of touching one another with their antennae. A bitter old ant had touched off * The printer, _ in the first proof, put the word forensic instead of formic. All authors must have noticed that what are called printers’ mistakes are often only a subtle expression of wit on the part of the printers, which, to vary a monotonous occupation, they cannot help indulging in, even at some trouble to themselves. many satirical things about men, as regards their religion, their polity, and especially their social arrangements. “ There are plenty of paupers among men,” he said ; “ but there is no such thing as a pauper ant. We under- stand how to provide for every member of our community.” In every company there is generally found some one who, for the sake of contradiction and from the love of argument, takes the un- popular side. A clever youth amongst the ants touched his neighbour’s antennse, to the following effect. He intimated, with some signs of disapproval from the rest of the com- pany, that there was a good deal of similarity, after all, between men and ants. They build nests, we build nests; they are masons, we are masons ; they are carpenters, we are carpenters ; they keep cows, we keep cows ; they make wars, we make wars ; they take slaves, we take slaves, — and so on. To this the bitter old ant replied, that men were not good to eat, and therefore he did not see why they had been created. They were great, heavy, clumsy creatures, and all their arts of life had been borrowed from them, the ants. “ At any rate,” responded the younger ant, “ they are like us in that they can communi- cate their ideas to one another, if it be but by horrid noises resembling the barking of dogs.” The old ant touched off a triumphant reply, bringing in Providence, as people often do when they want to say a very severe thing. He said, or rather intimated by a very pregnant touch, that this noise which men were obliged to make, in order to convey their ideas to one another, was a signal proof of their inferiority, and of their paucity of ideas. A kind Provi- dence, seeing how few ideas they have to com- municate, had given them this slow, but upon that account beneficent, way of conveying their ideas. He, the present toucher, had known from a friend of his, an ant who lived under the flooring in one of their talking nests, that a man would make a noise for three hours to convey only two ideas. Each ant touched his neighbour with laughter, and the whole company laughed so obstreperously that the female ants ran down from the upper chambers to learn what was the matter. Thus it maybe seen how the greatest gifts, even the gift of speech, may be depreciated ; and it also may be observed what extraor- dinary powers have been conferred even upon what we call inferior creatures — powers which, in any state of being, we can hardly imagine to be conferred upon ourselves. Good Words, May i, 1869.] SHORT There are, I think, more good words to be said against Competition than for it. No doubt, it is a great incentive to exertion ; but there its function for good begins and ends. It is no friend to Love ; and is first-cousin, with no removes, to Envy. Then it deranges and puts quite out of place the best motives for exertion. “ Read your book because that other boy is reading his, and you will be beaten in the contest with him, if you do not take care.” Such is the motive that compe- tition administers, but it says nothing about learning being a good thing for itself. Con- sequently, when the competitors are parted, the book is apt to drop out of the hand of him who chiefly used it as a storehouse of weapons. Then, again, when education has been greatly built upon motives of competition, excellence is made too much of, and moderate proficiency is sadly discouraged. A very in- jurious effect is thus produced upon the mind of the person who has been used to compete. He, or she, thinks, “ If I am not everything, I am nothing,” and declines to sing, or to play, or to draw, or to go on with some ac- complishment, because it has been ascertained by competition and examination, at a certain time of life, that other people could do better. The world loses a great deal by this ; and, moreover, it is by no means certain that in- feriority in anything, at one time of life, pre- cludes excellence in that same thing at another time of life. Competition, however, will not cease to be urgently employed as a motive, indeed as the first motive, until the mass of mankind become real Christians — an event which does not seem likely to happen in our time. The practical object, therefore, is to see what limits and restraints can be applied to com- petition. I should propose three : — 1 . Do not apply it to the very young, for two reasons. In the first place, experience shows that, for the mere acquisition of know- ledge, it does not answer to work the brain early ; and that children who are somewhat let alone as regards learning, surpass the others when the proper time for diligent study comes. I do not pretend to define this time : that is a matter upon which those only, who are skilled in education, can pronounce. The second reason is, that it is well, morally speaking, to let children get the habit of regarding their fellows as friends and play- mates rather than as rivals. 2. Never apply competition as a motive in a family. Looked at in the most business- like and worldly way, it does not pay. Let ESSAYS. us take a familiar and domestic instance, for abstract talk, though it sounds grandly, seldom leads to much result. A father has two sons, James and Charles. James is always down in time for breakfast : Charley is apt to be late. Let the father praise and encourage James for his early rising, but not in Charley’s presence. And let him (the father) administer good advice, or blame, to Charley, in the matter of early rising, without saying one word about Jamesie’s merits, or holding him up as a model to be followed — and disliked. It is far more important for the family interests that Charley’s love for Jamesie should not be diminished in the least, than that he should be incited, by competition with his brother, to get up early. That splendid copy-book saying — I wonder who first said it ? It must have been the eighth wise man of Greece — Comparisons are odious , is especially true in domestic life. And the most unpleasant and dangerous comparisons are always brought out to incite to competition. 3. If, for purposes of education, you must, at some period of life, have earnest, I would almost say, fierce competition, at any rate let it be as little individual as possible. Let the object for a youth be, to get into a certain class, not to beat a certain other youth or youths. The riding school seems to furnish a good model. Put a bar up, and say, “ All those who leap over this shall be considered good horsemen and then the youths who do succeed in leaping over it, will congratulate one another, and have a feeling of pleasant companionship, rather than of bitter rivalry, with each other. You may have as many bars as you like, of different heights, in order to test different degrees of excellence in horsemanship ; but do not inquire too curiously into the exact merits of each in- dividual rider, and seek to put him in what you may call his proper place. That will be found out soon enough, when they all come to ride across country — the difficult countiy of public or professional life. After the foregoing illustrations, which are of a very homely character, it may seem a somewhat abrupt transition to revert to reli- gious considerations. But I cannot conclude this short essay without remarking that com- petition is not a thing much encouraged in the best of Books and by the Divinest of Teachers. There is a command — the great command — about loving one another, but none about competing with one another. Yes ; perhaps there is (at any rate an im- plied command), to compete for the lower place. 324 PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. [Gocd Words, May 1, 1869. PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. By THE EDITOR. V. FROM BOMBAY TO MADRAS. I left Bombay with much regret. Never did men receive more kindness than we did there from all quarters. Many names, which need not be recorded, must ever be remembered by us with gratitude. I must mention, however, two visitors who, though they afforded me little information, gave me much pleasure and much of their time during my stay. These were two beau- tiful birds of the finch tribe. They occupied most of their spare hours in my dressing- room, engaged in a desperate endeavour to hold friendly communication with two mys- terious relatives, who always appeared to them when they gazed into the mirror at the open window. How these creatures survived the agonizing flutter of their wings, and the incessant tapping of their beaks, to kiss their unknown brethren, I know not ! Yet they never seemed to weary. Hope of ultimate success could alone have sus- tained their affectionate and eager endea- vours. For aught I know, they may be still experimenting. As I parted from them they paused, and looked tenderly at me, forgetting for a moment the higher aim of their lives, and said, or at least I fancied they said, “ Why leave us, instead of helping us to solve this mystery? Yet, remember, we are not sad, as you seem to be, for our family has lived on from generation to generation, piping their songs, eating their food, and enjoying the sun and air. And why should not you also sing and enjoy your good things ? But you would not be less happy, nor get fewer worms or flies to live on, if you kindly helped us to understand those strangers, who look so like ourselves, but with whom, alas ! we can neither eat nor sing ! ” And so we parted from Birds and Bhestie, Hammals and Puttewallas, and But I forget all the kinds of servants who did the work given them to do very readily and faithfully. By the kindness of the agents of the India Steam Navigation Company, or “ Mackinnon and Mackensie’s ” line, so famous in the East for its enterprise, we had a free passage to Beypore. Many friends came to bid us fare- well and God speed. The bay, as we sailed across it, seemed more beautiful than ever. A gentle swell gave an almost imperceptible motion to the surface of the sea, on which delicate yet bril- liant coruscations rolled out in undulations of gold and silver, ruby and amethyst, more splendid than the royal robes of Delhi. The distant hills, with their fantastic out- lines ; the islands, with their lustrous foliage ; the stretches of sunlit reaches — “ all, all were beautiful.” I then hoped to have seen it again ere leaving for home, but God willed otherwise ; and so Bombay, with its many representatives of busy life, its scenes, its friends of all nations, remains in memory as when I bade it farewell. As it faded out of sight, we could not but contrast the wonderful change which had taken place in its history, and in our own, since the time when it was ceded to England by the Portuguese as part of the dower of Catharine, the wife of Charles II. Then England was busy with intestine reli- gious wars between Episcopalians and Non- conformists and Presbyterians (alas ! not yet ended) ; Louis XIV. was the Caesar-god of his day; and the Zenana yet reigned in their respective courts. The empire of the Great Moghul was still supreme in India in the person of Aurungzebe, the fourth in sue ■ cession from the great Acbar. The Mahrattas were but rising above the horizon ; while the English, as yet but little feared, were looked on merely as a nation of shopkeepers, and so were graciously permitted to kneel on the shore of India, humble suppliants before its ! mighty sovereign. And now ! But how shall it be when three other centuries have passed? That, under God, will be determined chiefly by the Christian righteousness of this same nation of shopkeepers. I may state by the way, that just before leaving we accidentally picked up a copy of a native paper called the Weekly Journal of Prabhu News . It contained a long notice of the death of a distinguished member of the so-called “Young Bombay” class. I extract a few specimens of what I presume is considered by them to be “ fine writing ” in classical English ; and, as such, may be interesting to my readers : — “ Alas ! He is gone — gone far from us to the future world, leaving his beloved rib and pet children to the tender mercies of friends, to bemoan his loss. In the twinkling of an eye, Death pounced upon him and he was no more. What is the life of man ! Poets have appropriately writ and styled it but a span. He was in the full enjoyment of health, last week as we have said ; and where is he ? His soul severed Good Words. May i, 1869.] PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. 325 Irom its clayey tegument must have been borne away, we hope, to a happier and a brighter world ; but his body is now reduced earth to earth and dust to dust. May his soul rest in peace ! “ What boots it for vanity and boast in this drama of life. No sooner the drop scene lowers than all is over. And what more ; in the words of Johnson ‘ Unnumber’d maladies (man’s) joints invade, * ~ Lay siege to life, and press the dire blockade.’ “ So it was with our hero. The fort was besieged, the enemy became formidable and the garrison was obliged to surrender. “ His death has cast a gloom over Young Bombay, who mourn for his loss with true cordiality. He was an asylum for this boasted class and was ever ready to give his ear and voice to any that went to him. He was a loving husband, a kind father, an amiable friend, and in a word, he was ‘ Fat , fair and forty .' 1 ” We left in the afternoon of Monday, the 17th of December, and sailed along the Malabar coast, reaching Beypore, the termi- nus of the railway which crosses to Madras, early on Friday the 21st. The sea was smooth as the waters of an inland lake, and was never once ruffled by the slightest breeze. Our ship was indeed “ sailing in sunshine far away,” and each day was a “ gentle day.” The habit, acquired in a moist and ungenial clime, of addressing our neighbour, in the bonds of common wonder and thanksgiving, by the salutation of “beautiful weather !” or “a fine day !” died j upon our lips. We sailed as close to the shore as was prudent, and had an excellent 1 view of the scenery. This gave such in- j terest to the voyage, that we anticipated its j ending with regret. We passed Jingeera and Viziadroog, or Gheria, once the strongholds of pirates. The possessors of Jingeera (or “ the Island ”) are Mussulman Arabs from the coast of Abyssinia, whose ancestors were admirals of the Great Moghul. When that dynasty broke up, after Aurungzebe’s reign, they became their own lords, and ranged the | seas, to the terror of all who sailed them, j Their descendant, the Hubshe, or Seedee j (Abyssinian), is still independent chief of the small state of Hubshan, Dhunda Rajepoor, and resides at Jingeera. It was never re- duced, and the principality has survived the empire of the Peishwas. In 1689 the Seedee captured the Island of Bombay, leaving only the fort in our possession. He materially assisted Admiral Watson and Clive in 1756 in subduing Angria, the Mahratta chief of Kolabah, a few miles south of Bombay, the last of whose descendants, I believe, died lately. The Hubshe still holds to his rock, a speci- men of the fortifications of which is afforded * This family has always received a pension of £5,356 from the British Government. by Mr. Gell’s sketch of the water-gate, page 328. We touched at Curwar, Cananore, and Mangalore, but saw little except a small creek, glorious forests, an old fort, some native boats, a few European agents, which made one wonder how any of our country- men could live in such out-of-the-way places. Curwar is the port where travel- lers must land who wish to see the falls of Gokak, which during the rains are the most picturesque in India — a volume of water, which, as a river, is 180 yards wide above the cataract, falling down a precipice 176 feet in height. The view of the Coorg Mountains, beyond Cananore, was also very pleasing. The jungles along the sides of these western ranges are very thick, abounding in monkeys and panthers, with innumerable reptiles. We also saw the small town of Mahe, which is still possessed by the French — who have also Pondicherry and Karical, on the east coast of the Deccan, Chandernagore, near Calcutta, and a small factory, Yanaon, on the coast of Orissa. At one of those places, where we called at night, I was awoke from a deep sleep by a hearty and healthy looking young man, who announced himself as “ one of the sons of the clergy.” I was recalled to such a measure of consciousness as enabled me to comprehend that he was the son of an old acquaintance. On becoming “wide-awake,” I was rejoiced at this strange meeting with “ a son of the manse.” We had, as is ever to be found on those steamers, a motley company. There was a European circus troupe, and professional singers — highly respectable, — together with one or two distinguished civilians, and in- telligent military officers. In the wife of one officer I discovered the daughter of an old friend. With another couple I renewed, with pleasure, an acquaintance made in the steamer * from England; and as I saw the recently- j married, sweet young wife, from the English j parsonage, landing and driving off into the j interior with her excellent husband, Major 1 , I realised how much true love is needed for a woman thus to commit herself to \ another. But “ tak thocht, lads and lasses,” I as we Scotch say, how you make such an 1 experiment as that of voyaging across the j ocean, to depend upon each other’s love for ! years in a far distant India “ station !” One of our passengers was old General , who was described, with a smile, as “a specimen of an old Indian officer.” I 326 PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. [Good Words, May i, 1869. know not why, for one associates with this class refinement, intelligence, and cour- tesy, in spite of some crotchets. Poor old fellow ! He had been in India — as a bachelor, too, I understood — for forty years, without having once visited his native land. He was not a small, wizened, yellow-faced man, but ruddy and well-favoured ; and that he was large and rotund was obvious to common sight as he daily lay stretched asleep on the sky-light. He was unapproachable ; and seemed to be a fort placed under mar- tial law. Every one demanding admittance was suspected of being an enemy. “ Yes !” “ No!” were sent forth with the loud report of rifle, accompanied as by the blast of com- pressed air from a bellows. The interest he excited arose from the unvarying consistency of his manner, and his negation of what- ever could inspire a stranger with confidence. One felt that to recognise him as agreeable would be the best way to insult his self- respect. Yet perhaps he has his old sisters or nieces at home who are supported by him, and who love him dearly. Perhaps, too, he has had disappointments which soured him ; and perhaps But why conjecture? He has landed, and the last I heard of him was a tremendous growl. I was delighted to find in our captain a native of the same town as myself, and full of those reminiscences of old characters and occurrences, which so vividly recall our past, and are more especially refreshing in a distant country, and among scenes and circumstances which seem to belong to a different and dis- tant world. Captain G told me this story, among others, of the cyclone of ’6 4 : — “It was very awful ! The darkness seemed like black marble. I could not stand, but dragged my- self as I best could, along the deck on hands and knees. All the crew skulked below, save one man named Nelson. He was a brave fellow, and stood by me till the last. It was necessary, at one time, to cut away a hawser astern. At the risk of his life he did it — and disappeared. He was swept overboard ; but as be was being carried past the ship, he caught hold of a rope, and to my joy crept up beside me again. Soon after that some one came near me, and shouted in my ear words I heard with difficulty : — ‘ A steamer is beside us, and my wife and child are on its deck. For God sake, save them ! save them !’: Nelson and I managed to get over the side, 1 know not how, and we dimly saw something white. With immense difficulty we got hold of a woman and child, and dragged them on board just as the steamer sank. Next day we re- ceived many thanks, and assurances that never, never, would this be forgotten ! But, as in too many similar cases, we never heard more of husband, wife, or child ! ” “ And what became of Nelson?” I asked. “ He committed suicide in a fit of de- lirium tremens, in China,” was the sad reply. We had a distant glimpse of Goa (see p. 329) • and again we had to regret passing on without visiting a quaint and interesting memorial of departed greatness. The Por- tuguese territory in India is now confined to Goa, Damaun, and Diu, with an area of upwards qf a thousand square miles and a population of 313,262 souls. How are the mighty fallen ! We reached Calicut early on Friday. A new feature appeared, in the long, narrow boats which came out to meet us. They seem as if cut out of the trunk of a tree — so narrow that the beam across accommodates but one person, with an outrigger to wind- ward to balance them, on which, when neces- sary, one man or more will sit. And another new feature was presented in the huge round flat hats of the men, made, of palm leaves, and serving also as umbrellas. Nothing can be more grotesque than their effect when thrust out of the third-class railway carriages, or when worn by the solitary steersman in the tiny boat which spins along like a mayfly before the breeze, nothing being seen but hat and sail, thus : — We landed early in the day ; drove through the scattered town ; visited an old Portuguese burial-ground, in which, so our European guide assured us, Vasco de Gama lies buried ! We finally paid a visit to the excellent magis- trate, Mr. B , and the German Mission Home. Calicut is interesting as having been the first port in India visited by the great Vasco (1498), and the scene of The Lusicid. Here, as Camoens writes, the band of adventurers “ First descried the orient land, The end at which their arduous labours aimed— Whither they came Christ’s holy law to spread, New customs to establish, and erect Another throne. As they approached the coast, Innumerable little fishing-boats they saw, And from their crews learned that their landward course To Calicut would lead.” But all such associations were lost, or rather Good Words, May i, 1869."] PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. 32 7 were blended with the scenery of the spot which will for ever live in my memory as affording me the first and, in spite of Ceylon, the most vivid impressions of the rich, sur- passing glory of tropical vegetation. It is always an era in our life when, for the first time, we realise our ideal in nature or in art. It was thus to me at Calicut. I had never of course seen any- thing like this magnificent province of the vegetable kingdom, nor even conceived such glory of form and foli- age. Here were palm-trees of every kind — cocoa-nut, palmyra, date, with the grace- ful betel-nut (see p. 329). The bread-fruit spread its large and beautiful leaves; the jac-tree hung out its fruit from its trunk, where no fruit had ever been seen by me before ; the banyan dropped tendrils which sought to reach and root themselves in the earth, soon to become as cables of wood uniting the branches to the soil. There were tamarind- trees ; bamboos, radiating their long and feathery branches to the sky ; tree ferns ; and teak- trees, such as could build the navies of the world ; while hedges of cactus and aloes lined the roads and divided the fields. One felt as if in a huge botanic garden, and wondered where the glass roof was which should have protected such ori- ental splendour from destruction ! The red colouring of the roads, from their being made of laterite, formed a beautiful warm contrast with the rich green foliage of 3 the woods through which they led. The cottages of the natives too seemed comfortable, and nestled in the shade of the overhanging trees. The whole scene, as it suddenly presented itself to me, was like a glorious dream, the most fascinating and imagina- tive I had ever beheld — so beautiful was it in itself, so oriental in its every feature, with such visible enjoyment of human beings from the generous bounty of that Creator who is merciful to the unthankful. It re- called scenes described by poets which had excited and pleased me in youth, — where every home in the landscape was the abode of domestic happiness, and every shady grove i afforded an asylum to innocent and happy lovers. Paul and Virginia, somehow, constantly suggest- ed themselves to my thoughts. But alas for reality ! Nature is ever pure, orderly, and bountiful. Yet it is a sad disturbance to these asso- ciations, or to any others which might be suggested by imagination guided by cha- rity, to become acquainted at first hand with the ac- tual condition and character of the inhabitants of such favoured spots. Those who know India, specially Mala- bar, will understand why I do not record the marriage laws and customs of the Namburis , or the Nairs , or the real history of the Ack- hums and their sisters. A little south of Calicut at Trichoor, begins the remarkable lagoon or “ backwater,” by which the traveller may sail or be rowed by the natives for 160 miles as far as Trivanderam. This is practically the same as if voyaging along a river, and as the water is always smooth and the shore loaded with the same glo- rious vegetation, backed by the line of the same varied and picturesque hills, it may easily be conceived that such travelling is a luxury. It was not in our line of route, however, and therefore I TheBanyan - can only speak from the evidence of others. From time immemorial there has been a regular trade carried on between the Mala- bar coast, the Persian Gulf, and the Red Sea. This has been fostered, no doubt, by the constancy of the monsoons both north and south. All the Arab trading .le Jac-tree. 3 28 PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. [Good Words, May 1, 1869. vessels are built of teak procured from Malabar. The emigration of Arabs has been from of old. We have seen how Abyssinia supplied them for the eastern navies ; and even now there are many thousands in the army of the Nizam, forming, as they have ever done, a body of Mussul- man fanatics. The chief tribe on the Mala- bar coast are the Mopillas, who are the descendants of Arabs by native women.. They are the navigators, and were the pirates,, whose towers are still seen along the coast.. The Water-gate of Jingeera. They manifest a fierce determination to main- tain their real or supposed rights. They murdered Mr. Conolly the collector, and are guilty of such violence as quite equals that of their Arab fathers. It seems to me that Malabar, and not Ceylon, was the district to which the ships of Solomon made their long voyages, returning “ every three years ” “ bringing gold and silver, ivory, and spices, and peacocks.” The Nairs, or Nyrs, of Malabar, are a Hindoo race, and one of the most warlike in Good Words, May i, 1869. J PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. 329 The Landing-place at Goa. 33° PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. [Good Words, May i, 1869. India.* The Tiars are the cultivators, while the Pariar tribe eat carrion, and the Naidas are wretched outcastes, whom no slave would touch. They wander about in companies, and howl like dogs, keeping at a distance from all passers by, who if they wish to give them food leave it for them on the ground. There is a German Mission in Calicut, t After calling on the excellent collector we spent a short time with the missionaries. There are three here. We found them intel- ligent, good men, who seemed earnest in their work, with very encouraging results. These being connected with education as well as preaching are the more likely to be permanent. We left the Mission-house after sunset to travel six miles by a bullock garry to the terminus of the Madras railway at Beypore. We had sent on our servants some time before with our luggage, so that we had no inter- preter, nor ever anticipated the need of one. But our machine broke down, and so did we ! We were helpless. After making many vain attempts to obtain information or give advice by signs, we determined to let the driver do as he pleased with his team, while we walked back for two miles or so to the Mission- house. Though we grumbled considerably at the time, yet I recall with peculiar pleasure that ! night walk through the woods, with the glorious ' stars and their diamond sparkle overhead in j the blue. The roads were crowded with groups of people, all loudly chattering, and as if returning home after the labours or pur- chases of the day. Like all hot climates, India is most alive very early or very late. The village bazaars also are open till a late hour, their small lamps casting light upon various kinds of grain, vegetables, and fruits, sold by men who sit doubled up, with their heads and turbans, like tulips, between their knees. Every one we met carried blazing torches of cotton, which, by the way, having been first grown in India, was manufactured in Manchester, was worn in India, and there finally blazed abroad in torches. We met, too, the Indian mail. A coach and four, was it, or a palki ? * It is a strange fact, that, owing to the native marriage laws, no Nair can ever know who is his father. t It belongs to the Basle Missionary Society. This society employs upwards of 90 missionaries in different parts of the world. Of these 45 are in this part of India, with 42 female missionaries ; occupying different points around the re- spective head-quarters of Canara,, South Mahratta, Malabar, and the Neilgherries. The mission was established in 1834. It has schools — “ Higher,” “ Boarding,” “ Parochial,” “Anglo - vernacular,” and “Heathen-vernacular,” employing 30 Chris- tian (native) teachers, and 17 heathen teachers, and attended by 1,786 children. There are 1,680 adults in communion with the church, and 1,600 children (baptized), with 135 catechu- mens. Native pastor, 1 ; native evangelists and catechists, 45. The average cost of each European missionary is from £ 100 to £120 per annum. There are 10 unordained, and 32 married. A swift dromedary or an elephant? No. The bags, conveying all the varied threats, commands, and resolutions of love-making, and money-making, were carried on the back of a native runner, who with his lantern and small bells hurried past us ! It is in this primeval fashion that the postal communica- tions of Southern and Central India are kept up. The “post” goes at a conscientious trot, and soon transfers his bags and respon- sibilities to another. So on it goes, until all letters are duly delivered — as they generally are — at their final destination. We learned afterwards that these torches, with the rattles or bells, are necessary pre- cautions, to scare away cobras and other venomous serpents, which come out in num- bers at night. Ignorant of any danger, and Good Words, May i, 1869.] PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. without light, except what came from our hearts, and without any rattle, except from our tongues, as we sung “Ye banks and braes o’ bonny Doom,” — which we wished the sleeping woods to hear, — we trudged along in peace and safety. The serpent brood had no fellowship with us, nor we with them, and so we never met. Perhaps the song mesmerised them; or perhaps the news of my great battle and victory at Colgaum had been carried south and filled them with terror. We re-entered the Mission-house, to the great surprise of our friends. We received a hearty welcome, and were assured that not without risk had we travelled in the dark, our host himself the night before having killed a large cobra in the path leading from the gate to the door of his house. While another carriage was being got ready for us we partook of a generous tea with Mr. and Mrs. Schauffler and the other mission- aries. I was delighted in this out-of-the-way place to have revived in me the memory of those good old German customs which were so pleasing to me in my early days when I spent some time in the Vaterland. In no other country was there then, in my opinion, such a combination of mental refine- ment and culture, such domestic virtue and simplicity, such unaffected kindness. The round smiling-faced, flaxen-haired Frau could cook, arrange the table, nurse her child, and do many things belonging strictly to servants’ work in England ; while her knowledge and nice appreciation of literature and art made her a fit companion for her husband, who with black velvet skull-cap, large spec- tacles, and long pipe, sat in the arm-chair discussing his sauerkraut, or speculating on theology, philosophy, and politics. This Calicut Mission-house, with its most pleasing hosts and hostess, is quite of this type, and no mission can be conducted with more economy, good sense, and genuine piety. After spending a pleasant evening with our German friends, we got a safer machine, and reached the river which separated us from the railway hotel. It was delightful to hear in the clear air of the moon-lit night the songs of the ferrymen as they pulled us across. The cadence was melancholy but pleasing. Our steersman acted as clerk, and never failed to give his response and refrain at the right moment We found the hotel far from comfortable ; and though, through the hospitality of friends, our experience was limited to only one other hotel in North- j ern India, yet all we heard led us to j the conclusion that this great half-civilised, l half-savage caravanserai of wide corridors, large half-furnished rooms, without rest for the weary or bread for the hungry, was but a type of too many Indian hostelries. But when men are done up, the difficulty is not to sleep, but to keep awake with any degree of intelligence. Our measure of sleep was stinted, for early in the morning we started for Madras. In vain we asked for something to eat before leaving ; we could not get anything, not even a cup of coffee; so we set out with the disagreeable sensations of hungry men, — sensations which were not allayed until two in the afternoon, when we got some tough meat and the never-failing curry. The journey from Beypore, beneath the shadows of the Neilgherries, is very beautiful. This group of hills occupies a space upwards of forty miles in length, and twelve in breadth. There are nearly twenty mountains within this space averaging from 5,000 to upwards of 8,000 feet high. The famous English Sanitorium of Ootacamund, to which all who can manage it escape from the summer heat in the Madras Presidency, is upwards of 7,000 feet above the level of the sea. The scenery of this granite range, from the lofty peaks down through the forests which clothe their sides, to the dense jungle which chokes the valleys, is described as singularly varied and beau- tiful. The sportsman, artist, and invalid, are sure to speak with equal enthusiasm of the Neilgherries. We passed with regret the station at which travellers leave for the Sani- torium. We dared not attempt to snatch at the great pleasure of visiting it, but were com- pelled to hurry again over the plain of the Deccan. Yet the view we got of these southern spurs of the hills was well worth seeing. With their bare scarped sides and precipices, their masses so picturesquely broken by peak, ridge, knoll, and gorge, the rich clothing below contrasting with the wild summits above, — they made a most unique picture. Never before or after in India had I the pleasure of seeing such rapid inter- change of light and shade, — the shadows of the clouds slowly moving across the moun- tain sides. It brought the Highland hills, which I had just left, vividly before me. We remarked at the time, too, how like to that of Dunkeld was the broken and wooded scenery of the lower grounds. The aboriginal tribes of these hills have excited great interest among ethnologists, who tell us much about the Erulars, Kurumbars, Kohatars, Bada- kars, &c., and above all the Tudas, with their fine faces, flowing ringlets, 'monotheistic 332 PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. (.Good Words, May i, 1869. Group of Natives of the Neilgherries. religion, and strange morals, including poly- andry. With the thermometer at nearly 90° in our carriage, a whiff of mountain air would have been “ gratefully received,” — the cool season though it was. But the guard whistled, and we had to bid fa-rewell for ever to the Neil- gherries. After a long ascent we passed the Pal- ghaut station, and soon emerged into the monotonous plain, until in the morning we saw the fine hills near Vellore, of which more anon. We noticed in our journey very re- markable looking hills or knolls rising out of the great plain like icebergs or islands in the ocean. They are the remains of decomposed granite. They seemed to me to average from one to two hundred feet in height, and to be shaped in this sort of way : — Two things in the way-side scenery here attracted my notice. One was a shepherd watching his flock ; the other the mode of drawing water for irrigation. The process is familiar, by which a bucket is let down from the longer end of a lever, and raised or lowered from the smaller end ; but what I had never seen before was this sinking and elevating process being accomplished by men walking alternately backward and forward along the top of the lever. It was very odd flood Words, May i, 1869. | PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. n n 1 00 J Drawing Water. to witness two lanky natives steadying them- selves by a light hand-rail as they paced to and fro, up and down, this lever that looked like a fishing rod, with a long pole for its line, and the bucket for its bait. On the afternoon of Saturday we arrived at Madras. Here again my friend and I separated, each going to different hosts. Mr. William Scott was mine, and my comfort was secured in his hospitable and beau- tiful bungalow. But the word “ bungalow ” does not seem appropriate to these Madras residences. Mansions or houses are terms better adapted to describe these more stately structures. Between them and those of Bom- bay the contrast is striking. The large wooden Bombay cottage, so to speak, in spite of its elegance and comfort, here gave place to square, flat-roofed buildings of two stories, having pillared porticoes, verandahs opening into stately rooms, with handsome staircases, broad passages, and entrance halls; all surrounded by well-kept grounds, and trim flower gardens. There is, in short, a finish , a sense of permanence, which we had not hitherto seen. What a luxury it is after a railway or steamer journey, or after an hotel like that at Beypore, to find oneself in such a home ! I feel that I have not yet done justice to that great institution — that life-giver and bracer of soul and body — the Indian bath. It is not a marble coffin in a small apartment, as at home, but a sufficiently large apartment off bedroom or dressing- room. It is generally paved with clean brick, and has a huge tub full of cold water, and on a raised dais , a number of jars filled with the same. These jars are so small that one can pour them over one’s head, and so numerous that one can satisfy one’s intense desire to feel thoroughly cool. The water finds egress for itself to the hot world without through a hole in the comer, so PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. LGood Words, May i, 1869. ;334 that there is no restraint from the fear of flooding or splashing the apartment, as a bird does its cage when fluttering in its little saucer of water. This apartment is attended to exclusively by that water-kelpie the Bhestie , who must be descended “ori- ginally ” from a water. god, whose throne must be on the western Ghauts. If there was a chief of the Bhesties, he should be made — perhaps not a C.B., for I detest puns, yet the bearer of some honourable dis- tinction.* Refreshed by the bath, I was prepared in the afternoon to ac- company my kind hostess in her car- riage drive, and thus to get my first peep at Madras. The general fea- tures of this Presi- dency town are not difficult to catch. It is a dead flat. The bustle of commerce * Since, this was in type a friend has informed me that Behishti is itself an honourable distinction — meaning Para- diser ; and with this I am content. is confined to the native quarter, which is somewhat broken up into separate portions, one called Triplicane, another Blacktown, under Vepery, Chintadripeta, &c., all apart from the European districts, As at Poona, so at Madras, I was reminded of a rich English watering-place ; yet it is j not a small town, as its inhabitants number 700,000, of whom 2,000 are Europeans. The surf, which every one has associated with the name of Madras, was the first object I desired to visit in this my first drive ; and not the less so as our Scotch Missionary Institution is on the beach, and therefore beside this “ sounding sea. 5 ’ I much enjoyed the sight. Oceanward, ships and steamers lay at anchor, and rocked with becoming decorum. The surf, like its Highland cousin on the shores of the Hebrides, came in, as it has been in the habit of doing — during what period ?— with crested head, and heavy thud and roar, expending its gathered energies. We watched with interest the catamarans and Massowla boats riding over and defying the angry sea. There is really no danger what- ever in these boats. As for the catamarans, the shark never touches them, from his high- bred sense, I presume, of low caste and high caste ; while a white Englishman, on the other hand, will be instantly devoured We drove thence to the public park, where a regimental band was at the time performing. There one felt at home amidst the crowds who had assembled from many a scattered mansion, barrack, or official resi- dence. The cen- tre of attraction was the military band, which was surrounded by carriages linked to carriages, most of them stationary, others driving slowly round, with a large attendance of riders. This was the Madras Rotten-row — with its flirtations, its groups of admirers and admired, its elegant dresses, manners, and talk, with all the^ results, more or less artistic, of the fashionable world. But having travelled a few hundred miles, Good words, May i, i869.j PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. 335 J day and night, I felt disposed for rest and an early sleep — and therefore very soon retired. That night I made my first acquaintance in India with the voices of the jackals, which | I had not heard since I was in Palestine. Of : these I shall have to speak when we reach Calcutta. At present I must relieve my feel- i ings by testifying against them as the authors of the most diabolical and hideous sounds I have ever had the misfortune to hear. I only regret being obliged to use such mild lan- guage when alluding to such wretches. Next day we preached in the beautiful Scotch church of St. Andrews, and to a large audience.'' 4 It was the first time I had ever preached with punkahs cooling the church. The effect was most distracting, for the swing- ing of this huge fan alternately revealed and concealed my hearers. I no sooner caught the look of any individual, or number of in- dividuals, which so much guides a speaker, than I instantly lost them again. But though this is a trial of patience as regards the preacher, yet were the punkah dispensed with there would be a worse infliction on every one of the hearers. The punkah is drawn by cords and pulleys, which pass to the outside of the place in which they are used. At private houses, old men may be seen seated under the verandah near the wall, their whole occupation being to pull this cord night and day, during the hot season (and when is it a cool one?), both for public rooms and hed-rooms. These men are gene- rally in couples, to keep one another from sleeping. It is not a very exciting occupation, verily ! Yet it is one necessary for the health — at all events, for the comfort — of the un- happy foreigner panting for air. There is a punkah over the sleeper in bed ; over the preacher (even the most decided Sab- batarian !) in the pulpit ; over the party at dinner, whether on land or sea ; over every man, woman, or child who wishes to breathe with any degree of ease. Woe be to the old creatures who hold the cords of our fate in a hot night, if they pause for one moment and let the oven get overheated ! A loud shout is soon heard from the. gasping sufferer, which quickly awakens the punka- walla, and restores the breeze. It is only when one actually travels through such a country as India, that one begins to * The Church of Scotland has not only missionaries in Indi-a, but military chaplains for the Scotch troops. These are paid by Government, and have retiring pensions, &c. There are eleven of them. According to the treaty of .Union, the Established Churches of England and Scotland have equal standing in the eye of the law beyond Great Britain. Neither is the Established Church. realise its vast extent and its various ‘‘kin- dreds and tongues.” We felt this to die full after our journey to Madras. Yet we had scarcely touched India, except on a small part of its circumference. We had seen Bom- bay — a Presidency including upwards of twelve millions of people, or, if we include Sindh, Cutch, Gujerat, and Katewar, upwards of twenty-three millions, speaking Mahrathi, Gujrathi, Sindhi, with many dialects. We had sailed along a seaboard for nearly six hundred miles, and had been whirled on for upwards of four hundred more through a portion only of the Madras Presidency, itself with a population as great as that of Bombay, with an area larger than Great Britain and Ireland, peopled by various races, civilised and savage, speaking various languages, — Ta- mil, Telegu, Gond, Canarese, Malyalum, &c. ! Yet, how few think of India as if it were other than one country, v/ith the same race, the same religion, and the same language ! It would be just as near the truth to think of the Highlanders of Scotland as being one with the Turks of Constantinople, be- cause both happen to be in Europe. Let me, therefore, without wearying the reader by long statistics, select a few facts out of many, which from time to time I may intro- duce into my narrative for the information of those who wish to learn as much as a mere Peep can teach regarding this vast portion of the British Empire. The territory of British India is larger than all Europe, exclusive of Russia. 'Its population is between one hundred and eighty and two hundred millions. Let it not be supposed that there are no native rulers in this great territory. There are ; perhaps, too many ; and they govern upwards of forty millions of people, according to their own laws and customs. They enjoy princely revenues, but are under allegiance to Britain, and depend on her protection, without which there would be no safety for themselves, and but little security for liberty or justice to their people. This protection, though represented in a vast number of cases by the local magis- trate, yet also implies the presence of an English Resident, or Commissioner, at each Native Court of any importance. With as little interference as possible, he is always ready to advise its government, to give a hint occasionally if he sees anything going very wrong, to prompt and encourage what is right, and to act as a check on the many influences, whether social, political, or fanati- cal, which surround native rulers. Accord- ingly, the “Yea” or “Nay” of the British 336 PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. [GoodWords, May 1, 1869. agent, whether commissioner, resident, or magistrate, when the Governor-General says Amen to it, is omnipotent in any court from the Himalayas to the sea. However numerous his opponents may be, and however treach- erous, yet he is as a decimal dot, after which all the figures, however great or numerous, become as fractions for evil. But, when the native rulers are disposed to do good, the said dot retires, and then all the military and political figures, whether Brahmins or Waha- bees, resume their old places, either as mere ciphers, or with their full powers for good restored to them. There are thus under British protection 153 feudatory States, small and great, which, in addition to that of the Nizam, are ruled by Rajahs, Maharajahs, Nawabs, Thakoors, Jaghirdars, Chiefs, &c. These native rulers, small and great, from petty chiefs to great princes, have altogether under their sway half of the area and nearly one-fourth of the population of British India. Such of them as do not represent dynasties begun by military adventurers, are the suc- cessors of cruel usurpers or professed robbers. None of these native rulers have a tenure or a history older than our own in India, while the really old families, like the Rajpoots, would have been dispossessed and extinguished long ago, had it not been for the protection afforded to them, at their own request, by the English. The annual sum drawn by all these feudatories, either directly from reve- nue or from pensions granted by the British Government, amounts to ten millions and a-half pounds.* In 1862 the pleasing intel- ligence was announced to the native rulers that the governments of the several princes and chiefs of India were to be maintained, and that “ on failure of natural heirs, the British government will recognise and con- firm any adoption of a successor by each of the reigning chiefs or his successor, made by the ruler or any of his successors.” This is to be for ever, as long as the ruler and chief continue loyal. For the purposes of administration the whole of India is divided into ten divisions. There are first of all the three old districts called the Presidencies, which grew out of the factories, or innocent warehouses and counting-houses, first established by the Lon- don merchants in British India ! Each of * Among the pensioners are the King of Oudh, who receives £120,000 a year; and the Maharajah Dhuleep Singh, who receives £40,000. About £1,800,700 is given annually in pen- sions of this kind, or compensations to persons who have suffered by “the chances of war,” or by political necessities. The rest is guaranteed to the several native rulers or chiefs out of the revenues of their several states or properties, while the tribute from them all, which is paid out of the same revenue to the Indian Government, is £700,634. these having required a council and president to govern them, and a fort also to protect them, thence came the term “presidency,” and the names of Fort William (Bengal), and Fort George (Madras), as representing the presidency towns. These presidencies re- main, with a governor and legislative council, each with its own army, law courts, revenue administrations, educational establishments, &c., as distinct (strange to say !) as the several states of the American Union. All, however, are responsible to the Governor- General in the first instance, and then, along with him, to the Imperial Government at home. But to become more definitive : the ten divisions are these — (i.) Bengal ’ now divided into two, with an area larger than France or Austria, a population of nearly forty millions, and containing wild tribes more numerous than the inhabitants of Scotland. Its southern division is under a Lieutenant-Gover- nor, who resides at Calcutta. (2.) Madras. (3.) Bombay. The respective areas and popu- lations of these two Presidencies I have already noticed. (4.) The North West Provinces (includ- ing the towns of Agra, Cawnpore, Allahabad, Benares, &c.), rivalling Great Britain in extent, and with a population to each square mile greater than any kingdom in Europe.* These have a Lieutenant-Governor, and form the northern division of Bengal. (5.) The Punjaub, from Delhi to Peshawur, which is as large as Italy, and nearly as populous, and also presided over by a Lieutenant-Governor. (6.) Oudh , which is governed by a Chief Commissioner, and is as large as Belgium and Holland, with a dense population of upwards of eight mil- lions. (7.) The Central Provinces , which also are governed by a Chief Commissioner, are nearly as large as Great Britain and Ireland, with a population of upwards of six millions, and with wild districts inhabited by wild tribes. (8.) Burmah , also with a Chief Commissioner, is three times larger than Scotland, but with a smaller population. (9.) Berar (for the Nizam), larger than Den- mark, and having a million and a half of people. And, (10.) Mysore, with three millions and a half, which is now being managed for its future rajah, who, for good or evil, is to be placed on the throne when he comes of age. The civil service of all India is on the same system as that of Bombay, which I de- scribed in a former chapter. The ten great divisions enumerated are consequently sub- * The greater portion of Bengal has 300 to the square mile, which is above the average of Great Britain and Ireland. The average in British India generally is 126; the largest in the East except Japan, which is 153. In China it is 77 ; in Russia in Asia it is only i'5 ; in Persia 22 ; and in Turkey in Asia 29. ABRAHAM. Good Words, May i, 1869.] 33 7 | divided into about no districts (or counties), each with a collector-magistrate, or deputy- commissioner ; while in most provinces these districts are further grouped into, what might I be called, departments, having each a chief | commissioner ; and of these there are twenty- | three. The revenue of this great country has j reached the sum of fifty-two millions, and in ! spite of wars, mutinies, and famines, and not- withstanding the cessation of the income tax, has about doubled itself in fourteen years ! These statistics, though necessarily dry, will not be uninteresting if they convey to us some impression of the greatness of our East- ern Empire, and the magnitude and splendour of the charge committed to our country, and to us as her citizens. And this impression should be deepened when we come to re- j fleet on the various languages of India, as i indicating races either differing originally, ! or long severed from each other. The old j Sanscrit of the Aryans has about fourteen family branches ; while the indigenous, or Dravidian, has nine branches, besides many dialects. To these twenty-one languages, Hindostanee, or Urdu, has to be added, which is probably the most modern language in the world. And then there are also the various religions with whose followers we come into contact : Hindoos (104,000,000), Buddhists (Burmah and Ceylon), (4,000,000), Mahommedans (30,000,000), Siks (1,129,3 1 9), and Parsees (250,000), &c. The aborigines, who are hardly known, number upwards of twelve millions, and have religious beliefs and customs totally different from those of the Hindoos.* How difficult it is to understand how to rule and to Christianize such a coun- try as this ! We in England seldom think of the great cities in India ; and yet there are twenty with upwards of 100,000 of a population, very many more with upwards of 30,000, and hundreds with several thousands, while villages with populations as numerous as most of the capitals of our Scotch coun- ties, are clustered over distances greater than between London and any European capital. This, and a great deal more than this, must be known and remembered, ere a fair con- clusion, approximating even to the truth, can be come to regarding the manner in which the Church or State in India have performed ■their respective duties. HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. By the BISHOP OF OXFORD. V.— ABRAHAM. The readers of this series of papers are in this to be taken back from the later | development of Hebrew hero-life into which I they have been looking, to the fountain-head ! from which it sprung, eleven hundred years ! before the time when Micaiah the son of Imla prophesied to Ahab and J ehoshaphat — to [ the time when Abram was born in the house j of his father Terah. Here we stand amongst the great progenitors of our race. Abram’s birth was but two hundred and eighty years after the flood : a shorter period than has passed since Queen Elizabeth sat under a tree which is still alive in Hatfield Park, and saw the approach of the royal messenger who brought her, instead of the expected warrant to a dungeon and a scaffold, the tidings of her succession to the throne of England. Noah lived for sixty-two years after the birth of Abram, and may well have repeated in his hearing the wonderful story of that rescued life which the hand of God Himself had shut for safety into the ark of gopher- wood. It may be that by such communings was first nourished in the soul of the patri- arch that supreme trust in God’s presence X — 23 with him and care for him which was the warp into which was worked the great spiritual life of the friend of J ehovah and the father of the faithful. He was bom to Terah in Ur of the Chaldees, one of the cities of the rich plain of Shinar, into which flowed the first streams of the life of the repeopled world — the cradle of the first Babylonish empire of which, through the mists of the long ages, we may dimly see the shadowy form of the great Nimrod, the “mighty hunter before the Lord,” laying the colossal foundations. Thus though himself of the favoured race of Shem, Terah, the father of Abram, lived in the midst of the first Hamitic empire. This dwelling in the tents of Ham gives a certain probability to the stories which Arabian and Jewish traditions have woven round his name. Holy Scripture tells us only, with its wonted sim- plicity of narrative, that “ Terah dwelt on^ * The latest and most authentic statistics give the following] results as to the relative proportions of religions and races in* British India, excluding the feudatory states. ; Asiatic Christians 1,100,000 Buddhists 3,000,000 Aborigines 12,000,000 Mussalmans 25,000,000 Hindoos 110,000,000 ABRAHAM. 338 [Good Words, May 1, 1869*. the other side of the flood ” (the charac- teristic name of “the great river, the river Euphrates ”) “ in old time, and served other Gods ” (Josh. xxiv. 2). But the story grows in other records. Terah is a maker as well as a worshipper of idols. He is high in favour with the mighty Nimrod, and a chief captain in the Hamitic host. Abram, his son, is a believer in the unity of the God- head ; keeping alive, under the ^secret visita- tions of grace, the true tradition of the faith as it had been received from Noah. In the fervour of his spirit he destroys his father’s idols, who accuses him to Nimrod. Then the grand drama which was acted generations after in the days of Nebuchadnezzar so gloriously on the plain of Dura by the three descendants of the patriarch is asserted to have been anticipated by their great ancestor, on the plain of Shinar. Abram refuses the offers of the idolaters, and is cast into a burning furnace, from which J ehovah delivers him unharmed. Some striking differences of narrative seem to contradict the idea of the story being a mere casting back of later his- tory into a fabulous antiquity. For instead of the constant fidelity of the three Jewish worthies, it is said in the old record of Abram’s trial that Haran, Abram’s brother, was sittingby and saying in his heart, “ If Abram overcomes, I am on his side ; and if Nimrod overcomes, I am on his.” So when Abram was delivered, they turned to Haran, and demanded, “ On whose side art thou ?” and, seeing that Abram was safe, he answered, “ I am of Abram’s.” So they cast him too into the furnace. But his heart not being whole with God, there was no deliverance for him, and so he was consumed. These old traditions may or may not hold in solution facts historically true. They may- be nothing more than the nimbus glory which streams from great saints and manifests itself to us by lighting up into an encircling crown the floating atoms of the past. But whether they record facts or imaginations, we know that dealings of God with his faithful ser- vant not less wonderful than these did mark the life of Abram in that old plain of Shinar. So much the words of inspiration tell us : “ The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, be- fore he dwelt in Charran, and said, Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred, and come into the land that I shall show thee ” (Acts vii.. 2, 3). Such was the summons, and the obedience of Abram was immediate and complete. The traditions of a life were broken up, he went forth out of Ur of the Chaldees, not knowing whither he went ” (Heb. xi. 8). The bitterness of that first parting with kinsmen and relatives and accustomed scenes and the habits of a life was mercifully lessened by his aged father Terah’s going forth with him into the un- known land. How the old man was moved to this migration we can but guess. Nahor, the eldest son of the house, was dead : and though Haran, the second brother, remained at Ur, yet it may well be that Terah saw in the character of Abram that which marked him out as the foremost of his family, and therefore clung to the mysterious fortunes of his youngest son. And so they journeyed, as men journeyed in those days of old, with sons and daughters, and shepherds, and man-servants and maid-servants, and goods, across the roadless steppes, by the tracks which other travellers had marked upon the ’ great plain. At Charran, in Mesopotamia,, the cloudy pillar of God’s presence halted',, and for a while the migration stayed. There for Terah’s lifetime they abode; understand- ing, however, as it seems, that this was but a broken halt, and that the more distinct sum- mons of the original command beckoned him yet farther. And so, when T erah’s bones were- laid in their resting-place, the march again began, and upon a grander scale. As yet y though parted from their early home, the wanderers had not altogether quitted the land of their nativity. That patriarchal realm was bounded by the mighty Euphrates — the “great river,” “the flood;” the “ other side ” of which to those ancient men was little less of a partition from all they knew of life than were the waters of the great Atlantic to the adventurous Columbus. Right across the flood the mystic summons called the son of Terah, and over it he dutifully sped, and came into the land of Canaan, This second migration is marked as the turning-point of his life — the first great ven- ture of his faith. The former migration had been one of those tribe movements which appertained to the early history of man, when from the East, in which he had been cradled^ he moved forward, as the tides of ocean sway under the moon, “ to replenish the earth and possess it.” Then his father, Terah, is spoken of as having taken Abram, and they went forth from Ur of the Chaldees; but now the patriarch goes forth alone ; now the Voice calls him, and he follows. “ The Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s ; house, unto a land that I will show thee So Abram departed as the Lord had spoken unto him And Abram was seventy and 1 Good Words, May i, 1869.] ABRAHAM. 339 five years old when he departed out of Haran.” On the whole face of the replenishing earth such another sight was nowhere to be seen. It was the single grand spectacle of huma- nity on which angels gazed with wondering joy. He was perhaps then the sole type of that one true Man who in the after-ages should spring from his seed to do the will of God perfectly : to hear always that voice, and always to follow it. This nobleness, different indeed in measure, but in kind the same, the faith of Abram imparted to his soul. He rose above this earth because he believed simply in God. This is the record of the Highest. When Abram was ninety years old and nine, “ the Lord appeared and said unto him, Walk before me, and be thou perfect. This was the one grandeur of his life ; and this was to be for ever commemorated in the new name given to him. “ Neither shall thy name be any more Abram ” (“father of elevation’’), “but thy name shall be Abraham” (“father •of a multitude ”). This walking before God it was which invested him with that glorious cha- racter which the voice of the Lord himself, when speaking to Abimelech, attributed to him. “ He is a prophet, and he shall pray for thee, and thou Shalt live” (Gen. xx. 7). We never read of Abraham’s predicting the future, and yet he was, for the voice of God declared it, “a prophet.” It is full of instruction for us to see wherein his prophetic character consisted. For we shall have poor and unworthy conceptions concerning the mighty office of the prophets of Jehovah so long as we confound them with the tribe of the mere predictors of the future. Such a prescience was indeed often imparted to the prophet to qualify him for his office. But, first, it was the accident, not the essence of his office. In the soothsayer and the oracle priestess, on the contrary, that decla- ration of the future, real or pretended, by guess or enigma, by dark sign or darker word, was the very central point of the whole ministration. Men came in the hope of having the blinding curtain which hung over the future lifted up for them ; they sought nothing else ; they could receive nothing more. But so it was not with the prophet of Jehovah. He was the witness to man of the living God of righteousness and truth. If he did predict, he did it to shake some ungodly heart with terror, or to build up some faithful soul in hope. Abram, though, so far as we know, he uttered no predictions, w T as a grand I fulfiller of this office. By his simple obedi- ence and his glorious faith he bore a witness to Jehovah such as no other man then living, perhaps as no other mere man through all the generations of the sons of Adam, ever equalled, as, with all belonging to him, he crossed the flood, going he knew not whither, at the bidding of the Voice, how grandly did he mirror back to all times and all ages the faithfulness and truth of Him in whom he so trusted ! Thus in this central characteristic of the prophetic office Abraham ranks high in the goodly fellowship. But, again, the prophet of Jehovah differs from the soothsayers in this essential feature of his predictive faculty. The mere oracular utterance declared, or professed to declare, some isolated and disjointed fact, foreseen in itself by some accidental prescience, as the eye may see some solitary star through a chance opening in the cloudy canopy which veils the general heavens. Instead of this, the true prophet’s revelation of the future based itself on the present and on the past. On the present, because to him who believes in the righteous government of the all-good and the unchangeable the present is ever full of types of the future, which, until they are fulfilled all remain dark to common eyes, but which are opened to the reading of his in- structed gaze ; and on the past, because that past as it lies written in history is but the record of God’s dealings heretofore with man ; and it is the ever unfolding line of God’s dealings which is opened to him. The law and the right of the moral government of the mighty King, not the unmeaning triviality of some separate event which an idle or an in- terested curiosity longs to foreknow, is that which it is given to him to discern. To him therefore the past is the future, as it lies yet folded up and waiting for its develop- ment within the germinating seed; and to him therefore prophecy is history prolonged. His prediction, whether in word or in act, is the utterance of his spirit, as under the teach- ing of the Spirit of Jehovah it reaches forth into that yet future development of the truth and right with which it now commerces in God. Now, such a gift of prophecy as this was most surely given to Abraham. For Christ has said, “ Abraham desired to see my day, and he saw it and was glad.” The great insight of his faith reached on so far as that. When he received as simply true the word of God concerning the birth of Isaac— against hope believing in hope that he might become the father of many nations — not staggering at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strong in faith, giving glorv to God, and being fully persuaded that what 1 34° ABRAHAM. [Good Words, May i, 1869. He had promised He was able to perform, as the God who calleth those things which be not as if they were (Rom. iv. 17 — 21), then he received the promise of the true Son, in whom all the families of the earth should be blessed. Here we see before our eyes this great insight of the prophet of Jehovah into the typical character of the present ; for in this gift of Isaac beyond the rule of nature he read the gift of the virgin- born ; in the present son of promise, the coming in the fulness of time of the promised seed ; in the son of Sarah, the Son of Mary. It may well be that his eye was opened to read further types which for others lay im- penetrably folded up in the blinding pre- sent. As he climbed the hill of sacrifice, ready to accomplish that vast venture of his unquestioning faith, may he not have seen in the child of promise, bearing beside him up the steep the wood of the sin-offering, the figure of the child of far greater promise, of the desire, not of his eyes only, but of all nations, as He too bore up the hill of Calvary the wood on which He was to be offered up, the one sacrifice of sin? (Heb. xi. 17 — 19.) Surely he foresaw the offering of the one sacrifice for sin when he saw the day of Christ and was glad. Nay, may we not gather that even the mighty mystery of the resurrec- tion of the Lord was read by him in the giving back to him of Isaac, from those preg- nant words of the Epistle to the Hebrews which tell us that his faith grasped the seem- ingly audacious hope that “ God was able to j iraise Isaac even from the dead ? ” This prophetic gift, then, we may trace in Abraham. But further, it is the prophet’s office not j only to read, but also to declare the future. This he may do in word or in act. Ezekiel as truly prophesied in act, when, at God’s command, he portrayed the city of Jerusa- j lem on a hill, and laid siege against it, and cast a mount against it, and lay on his right side and then on his left side, as when he uttered the predictive words which fore- told the coming judgment. And in act, who was a greater prophet than Abraham ? His whole life was, in the highest sense of the mysterious word, a prophecy. This leaving Charran, this “crossing of the flood,” what else were they but acted prophecies of the mighty truth which shines conspicuously in the Gospel pages, that the man who would inherit the heavenly Canaan must be content to leave father and mother and all that he hath, and to follow houseless and homeless , the call of J esus ? And as it was from the beginning, so it was unto the end. Almost every recorded fact in Abraham’s life is full of prophecy. In this high sense he is indeed the father of the faithful ; and the history of all his children is fore-acted, in himself. How simply and emphatically was he in act the true forerunner of all who ever since have “ died in faith !.” (Heb. xi. 14 — 16). Thus it was in the point of his history which we had reached. After the signal obedience which was accomplished in his leaving, at God’s call, his home and all that he had, and cross- ing the Euphrates, to be led on he knew not whither, he is brought to the northern fords of Jordan, and crosses over them into the land of his future inheritance. The district that he entered was the most fertile of that whole valley of abundance. He passed up the valley of the Jabbok into the plain of Moreh. There, when his eye had been filled with the sense of beauty which is so keenly awakened after a weary journey through a waste, by the sight of abundance and ver- dure, “ the Lord appeared unto Abram and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land” (Gen. xii. 7). There, in the fulness of his grateful trust, Abram built his first altar in the land of promise to the God who had appeared unto him. Perhaps he thought that all his wanderings were over, that thence- forward he might know again in this land of beautiful fertility the sweetnesses of home ; but it was not to be so. He is indeed allowed to halt for a season in the earthly paradise he had entered. The first taste of the good land was to be one of rest after labour, of enjoyment after suffering, of the springing water and the vine and olive, after the droughty, fruitless, barren desert. But the rest was not to last long, or even his faithful energy might have been relaxed ; for “ over sweetness breedeth gall, and too much joy, even spiritual, maketh men wanton:”* and so he tastes and passes on. All that he looks upon shall be his ; but it is not his yet : “ the Canaanite was then in the land.” The enemy must be cast out before the joy of the faithful can be full. The time of that de- liverance is hidden deep in the unrevealed counsels of God. In Abraham’s day the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full : for all his children in faith the mystery of iniquity is not yet accomplished. Of that day and that hour knoweth no man. But it shall come. Evil shall be driven in upon itself : the seven nations of the wicked shall be driven out. The heir of all things shall possess the earth. And so the rich plain is * Hooker. Good Words, May i, 1869.] ABRAHAM. 34i to be left almost as soon as it has been gained ; and from its luxurious ease the guiding pillar leads him on to the safe but barren upland. There he pitches his tent, “ on a mountain on the east of Bethel, having Bethel on the west and Hai on the east;” and there again “he builded an altar unto the Lord, and called on the name of the Lord.” Bethel and Hai, names un- known as yet in any sacred story, famous as they shall thereafter become for God’s dealings with his people, for God’s revelation to his saints. As yet there was no Beth-el, no house of God ; it was known only as the district lying near to Luz, a heathen city of the elder Canaanite possession, the dreary dwelling- place of the godless and the idol worshippers. That first altar to Jehovah, as it rose under the hand of Abram, was itself a prophecy of all that was to follow; it foretold God’s gracious vision to the wandering outcast from the family of Isaac ; and again God’s meeting him, as he came back from Padan Aram, and, after the mysterious night wrestling, endowing him with the name of Israel — that name of mystic significance, whether it be “ thou hast contended,” * or, as the elders have it, the “ prince with God.” f It prophe- sied of the time when the ark of the cove- nant should here be fixed, with Aaron’s grandson ministering before it, and when the repentant children of Israel should come here in their extremity to seek succour and direction from their fathers’ God (Judges xx. 18, 31 ; xxi. 2). Yet even here, at his mountain encamp- ment, the faithful wanderer was not long to halt. To make his act of prophecy perfect, he was to be as destitute of any fixed habita- tion as is the Bedouin Arab of the wilderness. “Abram journeyed, going on still toward the south” (Gen. xii. 9). He was to show that he had “embraced the promises of God and confessed that he was a stranger and pilgrim on the earth” (Heb. xi. 13). Then began those perpetual marches of his consecrated tent wherewith he moved up and down the land which his seed was here- after to inherit, though not so much was given him in possession as to set his foot upon. And so with some brief, interposed intervals, in which he sojourned in Egypt, or amongst the Philistine lords on the plains which skirted the neighbouring seaboard, his long after-life was spent upon the rocky ridges and high grassy uplands of the hill country of Canaan ; on which there slept in the sunlight, or fluttered beneath the swee ping breezes of the night, * So Gesenius and Rosenmuller. t St. Jerome. the white folds of the great wanderer’s tent. What a sight it was for the watchers of God’s angel host, as they marked the man of faith I standing well-nigh alone on a rebellious, un- ! believing earth, building from post to post his altar to the Lord, confessing his name, doing his will, interceding for offenders, communing as a man communes with his friend, with the Almighty Jevohah ! As those sacred circuits measured out the land, attesting its future possession by the faithful, what a prophecy did they utter of the setting up, on the moun- tain of the Lord of Hosts, of Messiah’s king- dom ! For within those circling folds there was gathered, in seed and promise, all the future Church of Christ. There was the family in covenant with Jehovah ; there, the living faith which from generation to generation joins the soul of man to God. There w r as the only sure knowledge of the one true God; there, the revelation of his will. There, in the mysterious visitation of the three stranger forms before his tent toor, subsiding into the single presence of Jehovah, was already a de- claration of the hidden majesty of the Trinity in Unity. There, given perhaps already by sacred tradition from Noah — there, in vision, in dream, and by voice, vouchsafed to the watching patriarch, was all which should grow, under the prophetic breathing of the future, into the lively oracles of God. There, al- ready, faith spread its strong wing, and soared in what were hereafter David’s Messianic Psalms, and Isaiah’s evangelic predictions. There, in the shadows of the covenant, sealed in circtimcision and renewed in burnt-offer- ings, were the great sacraments of the Gospel Church, waiting only the appointed day of their open manifestation. Surely, in no other time or place has the earth ever seen a life like that of the hero patriarch, which God’s hand had shut within those enfolding curtains. By many a fire of furnace heat that great soul was tempered and annealed to do and bear without reserve the will of God. When, leaving all behind him, he crossed in simple trust the great river, he would, in man’s judgment, have been pro- nounced already perfect in faith. Yet further trial brought to light an unsuspected weak- ness even in that great heart, and under a wholly new temptation the faith even of the father of the faithful wavered. A famine drove him into Egypt, which was even then beginning to develop its early heathen civi- lisation, strongly marked with deep lines of sensual indulgence and despotic power. The tented wanderer shrank as the Arab of the ■ desert shrinks from the crowded city life, and | j ABRAHAM. 1 i -342 [Good Words, May i, 1869. he who through his desert migration and mountain wanderings had found ever in I those vast solitudes abundant companionship | in the presence of his God, felt himself for- : saken and alone in the more depressing iso- lation of being immersed in the full busy stream of life, separated in every sympathy from his own. In this depression his great heart sank within him, and he sought to save his life, endangered by the coveted beauty of Sarai, by the denial of his wife. God was | better to him than his fears, and delivered him from the danger which he dreaded, and he came up from Egypt enriched by the largess of its king, and safe under the shadow of the Almighty hand. To purge away this remaining weakness he was still held by the hand of Love in the furnace heat. It was specially in all that concerned the child of promise that the long discipline and perfecting of his faith lay. There was first the long nine-and-twenty years of waiting from the date of the first promise for this still protracted birth. The slow years of waiting crept on until to mere nature the gift seemed to be impossible. Then when Isaac had been given there was the casting forth of Ishmael, who it is plain I had greatly engaged the affections of the otherwise childless father. The thing was I very grievous in Abraham’s sight because of j his son (Gen. xxi. n.) Then, so far as ! i Scripture has recorded his life, there was a J lull in the sharp discipline of the great patriarch. The early years of Isaac’s life passed peacefully, and he grew up in his father’s tent, a meek and docile son, from I childhood to maturity. But when this one delight of the aged pair, this gift beyond nature, this heir of so many promises, was something more than twenty years of age, once more his father’s faith was subjected to the signal trial into which all the lesser ones of his life ran up and found their completion. He is called upon to offer up this beloved son, the one gift of gifts, in sacrifice upon the mountain of Moriah. He hears the voice, and he obeys : slowly up the hill of sacrifice his patient feet climb ; the victim bearing the wood for the burnt-offering by his side. His faith is tested to the very uttermost. For not I until the sacrificial knife is raised to slay his I son is that obedient hand stayed. This was | the last great act of discipline. Now at last his noble, single-hearted faith was perfected. So the voice of God proclaimed : “By my- self have I sworn, saith the Lord : for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not with- held thy son, thine only son, that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven : .... and in thy seed shall all the nations oi the earth be blessed, because thou hast obeyed my voice” (Gen. xxii. 16 — 18). The special purpose of the sacred records of the life of Abraham is written plain upon their surface. They are chosen with the. one plain purpose of illustrating in this chiefest example the life of faith. They show us its root in the word of Jehovah; its fruit in simple obedience ; in the grandeur of an unfaltering trust ; in the fulness of a life of sacrifice. They show us its nourishment in secret com- munings with God, its reward in the gift of righteousness, and with that the promised inheritance of the world. But whilst the great purpose of the sa- cred narrative is to show us how this grand faith was formed, perfected, and crowned in Abraham, enough besides this is left on re- cord to exhibit him as a real man and no imagi- nary figure. Thus we see him not only in his acts and communings as the friend of God, but also on his earthly side, in his intercourse with his immediate ldndred on earth, with those in whose borders he sojourned or with whom the events of his life brought him into contact. All of these wear the same character. He is the Great Shiek. Grand, generous, powerful ; when necessary, war- like, and always munificent. Thus when increasing riches make the parting of himself and Lot, his brother’s son, necessary for the peace of their retainers, he cedes at once to the younger man the choice of habitation, content himself to take whichever district is abandoned to him. His nephew’s greedy selection of the well-watered plain involves him in the calamities which soon after over- whelmed the native chieftains. One of the many migrations of the more warlike northern tribes broke upon the rich and enervated dwellers in the vale of Sodom; and the retir- ing wave of plundering aggression bore back with it, amongst the captives, the kinsnfian of Abraham. Though Lot’s misfortunes had been the fruit of his greed, yet the generous heart of Abraham is at once touched to the quick by the terrible captivity of his brother’s son. With Bedouin speed Abraham armed three hundred and eighteen trained men, bom in his service, and with three confederate chiefs, Aner, Eshcol, and Mamre* attacks the retreating plunderers, routs them completely, rescues his nephew and his goods : and even drives back the' emigrating horde into their own distant territory. The returning conqueror is met by a two- THRIFT. Good Words, May i, 1869.] 343 fold greeting ; one enveloped in no little mys- tery ; both displaying highly indicative traits ■of Abraham’s character. To the king of Sodom’s proposition, that he should yield to him the ransomed captives and retain the recovered goods, Abraham’s answer reveals at once his estimate of that evil brood, in the midst of whom Lot from covetousness had so rashly settled, and his jealousy for the honour of his God. “ I have lift up mine hand unto the most high God, the possessor of heaven and earth, that I will not take from a thread to a shoe latchet, and that I will not take anything that is thine, lest thou shouldest say, I have made Abram rich” (Gen. xiv. 22, 23). The other greeting was from that half- revealed figure which reappears with un- diminished mystery in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Who this Melchizedek was — the king of Salem, the priest of the most high God, the king of peace to whom Abram gave tithes of all — conjecture has from the earliest Christian time been busy to dis- cover. The older belief rejected as impos- sible the newest theory that he was a Canaan- atish prince, and delighted to see under this garb of mystery the priestly son of Noah, the venerable Shem, transported by the might of his God to bless his great descendant in whom now the whole line of the faithful was embodied. The burial of Sarah throws out again into a strong relief the figure of the patriarch as he shows amidst the men around him. His first and only possession of the land of Canaan is the cave of Machpelah, which he purchases of Ephron the Hittite, that he may lay in it the body of the dead wife, who through so many eventful years had been the faithful sharer of his ventures and his wanderings, and whom God himself had changed from being Sarai the quarrelsome, into Sarah the princess. The aged man comes with his precious burden to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her. “ I am a stranger,” he says, in a half- deprecating tone, to the children of Heth, “and a sojourner with you: give me a pos- session of a burying-place amongst you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight.” The answer gives us, as though it were the event of yesterday, the Hittite view of him who wandered up and down their country the friend of God alone. “ Thou art a mighty prince amongst us, in the choice of our sepulchres bury thy dead” (Gen. xxiii. 6). With grand oriental solemnity “the mighty prince amongst them” bows himself down before the children of the land, and declines to share with them in death, as he could not share with them in life, and weighs out to them in shekels of silver, current money with the merchants, the full price of Machpelah’s cave. Eight-and-thirty years later the stone was rolled from the cavern’s mouth, and Isaac and Ishmael bore another honoured corpse into the shelter of that tomb. Abraham was laid beside Sarah his wife. The long toil, the many ventures, the faithful service, the joyful communing with Jehovah — these were over. The mighty faith which God’s love had kindled, which many prayers had fed, which many trials had perfected, 'had lasted on even to the end, and “Abraham gave up the ghost and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people.” THRIFT. A LECTURE DELIVERED AT WINCHESTER, MARCH 1 7 , 1869. Ladies, — I have chosen for the title of this lecture a practical and prosaic word, because I intend the lecture itself to be as practical and prosaic as I can make it, without becoming altogether dull. The question of the better or worse educa- tion of women is one far too important for vague sentiment, wild aspirations, or Utopian dreams. It is a practical question, on which depends, not merely money or comfort, but too often health and life as the consequences of a good education, or disease and death (I know too well of what I speak) as the consequences of a bad one. I beg you, therefore, to put out of your | minds at the outset any fancy that I wish for a social revolution in the position of I women, or that I wish to see them educated by exactly the same methods, and in exactly the same subjects as men. British lads, on an average, are far too ill-taught still, in spite of all recent improvements, for me to wish that British girls should be taught in the same way. Moreover, whatever defects there may have been — and defects there must be in all things human — in the past education of British women, it has been most certainly a splendid moral success. It has made, by the grace of God, British women the best wives. THRIFT. 344 [Good Words, May i, 1869. mothers, daughters, aunts, sisters, that the world, as far as I can discover, has yet seen. Let those who will sneer at the women of England. We who have to do the work and to fight the battle of life know the inspira- tion which we derive from their virtue, their counsel, their tenderness, and — but too often — from their compassion and their forgiveness. There is, I doubt not, still left in England many a man with chivalry and patriotism enough to challenge the world to show so perfect a specimen of humanity as a culti- vated British woman. But just because a cultivated British woman is so perfect a personage, therefore I wish to see all British women cultivated. Because the womanhood of England is so precious a treasure, I wish to see none of it wasted. It is an invaluable capital, or material, out of which the greatest possible profit to the nation must be made. And that can only be done by thrift ; and that, again, can only be attained by knowledge. Consider that word thrift. If you will look I at Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary, or if you know j your Shakespeare, you will see that thrift sig- ! nified originally profits, gain, riches gotten — ' in a word, the marks of a man’s thriving. How, then, did the word thrift get to mean parsimony, frugality, the opposite of waste ? Just in the same way as economy (which first, of course, means the management of a house- hold) got to mean also the opposite of waste. It was found that in commerce, in hus- ! bandry, in any process, in fact, men throve in I proportion as they saved their capital, their j material, their force. Now this is a great law which runs through life ; one of those laws of nature — call them, j rather, laws of God — which apply not merely I to political economy, to commerce, and to | mechanics, but to physiology, to sociology, to the intellect, to the heart, of every person in | this room. | The secret of thriving is thrift ; saving of j force ; to get as much work as possible done I with the least expenditure of power, the least jar and obstruction, the least wear and tear. And the secret of thrift is knowledge. In proportion as you know the laws and nature of a subject, you will be able to work at it i easily, surely, rapidly, successfully, instead j of wasting your money or your energies I in mistaken schemes, irregular efforts, which | end in disappointment and exhaustion. The secret of thrift, I say, is knowledge. The more you know, the more you can save yourself and that which belongs to you, and i do more work with less effort. A knowledge of the laws of commercial credit, we all know, saves capital, enabling a less capital to do the work of a greater. Knowledge of the electric telegraph saves time; knowledge of writing saves human speech and locomotion ; knowledge of domestic economy saves income ; know- ledge of sanitary laws saves health and life ; knowledge of the laws of the intellect saves wear and tear of brain ; and knowledge of the laws of the spirit — what does it not save ? A well-educated moral sense, a well-regu- lated character, saves from idleness and ennui, alternating with sentimentality and excitement, those tenderer emotions, those deeper passions, those nobler aspirations of humanity, which are the heritage of the woman far more than of the man, and which are potent in her, for evil or for good, in proportion as they are left to run wild and un- disciplined, or are trained and developed into graceful, harmonious, self-restraining strength, beautiful in themselves, and a blessing to all who come under their influence. What, therefore, I recommend to ladies in this lecture is thrift; thrift of themselves and of their own powers : and knowledge as the parent of thrift. And because it is well to begin with the lower applications of thrift, and to work up to the higher, I am much pleased to hear that the first course of the proposed lectures to women will be one on domestic economy. I presume that the learned gentleman who will deliver these lectures will be the last to mean by that term the mere saving of money; that he will tell you, as (being a German) he will have good reason to know, that the young lady who learns thrift in domestic economy is also learning thrift of the very highest faculties of her immortal spirit. He will tell you, I doubt not (for he must know), how you may see in Germany young ladies living in what we more luxurious British would consider something like poverty ; cooking, waiting at table, and performing many a household office which would be here considered menial : and yet finding time for a cultivation of the intellect, which is unfortu- nately too rare in Great Britain. The truth is, that we British are too wealthy. We make money, if not too rapidly ; for the "good of the nation at large, yet too 1 rapidly, I fear, for the good of the daughters of those who make it. Their temptation — I j do not of course say they all yield to it — but i their temptation is, to waste of the very sim- : plest (I had almost said, if I may be pardoned 1 the expression, of the most barbaric) kind — to G6od Words, May i, 1869.'] THRIFT. 345 an oriental waste of money, and waste of time; to a fondness for mere finery, pardonable enough, but still a waste ; and to the mis- taken fancy that it is the mark of a lady to sit idle and let servants do everything for her. Such women may well take a lesson by contrast from the pure and noble, useful and cultivated thrift of an average German young lady — for ladies these German women are, in every possible sense of the word. But it is not of this sort of waste of which I wish to speak to-day. I only mention the matter in passing, to show that high intel- lectual culture is not incompatible with the performance of homely household duties, and that the moral success of which I spoke just now need not be injured, any more than it is in Germany, by an intellectual success like- wise. I trust that these words may re-assure those parents, if any such there be here, who may fear that these lectures will withdraw women from their existing sphere of interest and activity. That they should entertain such a fear is not surprising, after the ex- travagant opinions and schemes which have been lately broached in various quarters. The programme to these lectures expressly disclaims any such intentions ; and I, as a husband and a father, expressly disclaim any such intention likewise. “To fit women for the more enlightened performance of their special duties;” to help them towards learning how to do better what we doubt not they are already doing well, is, I honestly believe, the only object of the promoters of this scheme. Let us see now how some of these special duties can be better performed by help of a little enlightenment as to the laws which regulate them. Now, no man will deny — certainly no man who is past forty-five, and whose diges- tion is beginning to quail before the lumps of beef and mutton which are the boast of a British kitchen, and to prefer, with Justice Shallow, and (I presume) Sir John Falstaff also, “ any pretty little tiny kickshaws ” — no man, I say, who has reached that age, but will feel it a practical comfort to him to know i that the young ladies of his family are at all events good cooks ; and understand, as the French do, thrift in the matter of food. Neither will any parent who wishes, naturally enough, that his daughters should cost him as little as possible ; and wishes, naturally enough also, that they should be as well-dressed as possible, deny that it ; i would be a good thing for them to be prac- | tical milliners and mantua-makers, and, by making their own clothes gracefully and well, exercise thrift in clothing. But, beside this thrift in clothing, I am not alone, I believe, in wishing for some thrift in the energy which produces it. Labour misapplied, you will agree, is labour wasted ; and as dress, I presume, is intended to adorn the person of the wearer, the making a dress, which only disfigures her may be considered as a plain case of waste. It would be im- pertinent in me to go into any details : but it is impossible to walk about the streets of London now without passing young people who must be under a deep delusion as to the success of j their own toilette. Instead of graceful and noble simplicity of form, instead of combina- tions of colour at once rich and delicate, because in accordance with the chromatic 1 laws of nature, one meets with phenomena more and more painful to the eye, and start- ling to common sense, till one would be hardly more astonished, and certainly hardly more shocked, if in a year or two one should pass in Regent Street some one going about like a Chinese lady, with pinched feet, or like a savage of the Amazons, with a wooden bung through the lower lip. It is easy to complain of these monstrosities : but impossible to cure them, it seems to me, without an educa- | tion of the taste, an education in those laws of nature which produce beauty in form and beauty in colour. For that the cause of these failures lies in want of education is patent. They are most common in — | I had almost said they are confined to — those classes of well-to-do persons who are the least educated ; who have no standard of taste ; | of their own ; and who do not acquire any j from cultivated friends and relations : who, * in consequence, dress themselves blindly ! according to what they conceive to be the 1 Paris fashions, conveyed at third-hand through an equally uneducated dressmaker ; in inno- cent ignorance of the fact — for fact I believe ; it to be — that Paris fashions are invented | now not in the least for the sake of beauty, but for the sake of producing, through j variety, increased expenditure, and thereby increased employment ; according to the strange system which now prevails in France of compelling, if not prosperity, at least the signs of it ; and like school-boys before a holiday, nailing up the head of the weather glass to insure fine weather. Let British ladies educate themselves in i those laws of beauty which are as eternal as i any other of nature’s laws ; which may be seen fulfilled, as Mr. Ruskin tells us, so • eloquently in every fiower, and every leaf, in ' 34-6 THRIFT. [Good Words, May i, 1869. every sweeping down of rippling wave : and they will be able to invent graceful and economical dresses for themselves, without importing tawdry and expensive ugliness from France. Let me now go a step further, and ask you to consider this. — There are in England now a vast number, and an increasing number, of young women who, from various circum- stances which we all know, must in after life be either the mistresses of their own fortunes, or the earners of their own bread. And, to do that wisely and well, they must be more or less women of business ; and to be women of business, they must know some- thing of the meaning of the words capital, profit, price, value, labour, wages, and of the relation between those two last. In a word, they must know a little political economy. Nay, I sometimes think that the mistress of every household might find, not only thrift of money, but thrift of brain, freedom from mis- takes, anxieties, worries of many kinds, all of which eat out the health as well as the heart, by a little sound knowledge of the principles of political economy. When we consider that every mistress of a household is continually buying, if not sell- ing ; that she is continually hiring and em- ploying labour, in the form of servants ; and very often, into the bargain, keeping her hus- band’s accounts : I cannot but think that her hard-worked brain might be clearer, and her hard-tried desire to do her duty by every subject in her little kingdom, might be more easily satisfied, had she read something of what Mr. John Stuart Mill has written, espe- cially on the duties of employer and em- ployed. A capitalist, a commercialist, an employer of labour, and an accountant — every mistress of a household is all these, whether she likes it or not : and it would be surely well for her, in so very complicated a state of society as this, not to trust merely to that mother-wit, that intuitive sagacity and innate power of ruling her fellow-creatures, which carries women so nobly through their work in simpler and less civilised societies. And here I stop to answer those who may say, as I have heard it said, that a woman’s intellect is not fit for business ; that when a woman takes to business; she is apt to do it ill, and unpleasantly likewise; to be more suspicious, more irritable, more grasping, i more unreasonable, than regular men of busi- ness would be ; that, as I have heard it put, “ a woman does not fight fair.” The answer is simple. That a woman’s intellect is emi- nently fitted for business is proved by the enormous amount of business she gets through without any special training for it : but those faults in a woman of which some men complain are simply the results of her not having had a special training. She does not know the laws of business. She does not know the rules of the game she is playing ; and therefore she is playing it in the dark, in fear and suspicion, apt to judge of questions on personal grounds, often offending those with whom she has to do, and oftener still making herself miser- able over matters of law or of business, on which a little sound knowledge would set her head and her heart at rest. When I have seen widows, having the care of children, of a great household, of a great estate, of a great business, struggling heroic- ally, and yet often mistakenly ; blamed se- verely for selfishness and ambition, while they were really sacrificing themselves with the divine instinct of a mother for their children’s interest, I have stood by with mingled admiration and pity, and said to myself, “ How nobly she is doing the work without teaching ! How much more nobly would she have done it had she been taught ! She is now doing the work at the most enormous waste of energy and of virtue : had she had knowledge, thrift would have followed it ; she would have done more work with far less trouble. She will pro- bably kill herself if she goes on : sound knowledge would have saved her health, saved her heart, saved her friends, and helped the very loved ones for whom she labours, not always with success.” A little political economy, therefore, will at least do no harm to a woman ; especially if she have to take care of herself in after life : neither, I think, will she be much harmed by some sound knowledge of another sub- ject, which I see promised in these lectures, — “ Natural philosophy, in its various branches, such as the chemistry of common life, light, heat, electricity, &c., &c.” A little knowledge of the laws of light, for instance, would teach many women that by shutting themselves up- day after day, week after week, in darkened rooms, they are as certainly committing a waste of health, destroying their vital energy, and diseasing their brains, as if they were taking so much poison the whole time. A little knowledge of the laws of heat would teach women not to clothe themselves and their children after foolish and insuffi- cient fashions, which in this climate sow the seeds of a dozen different diseases, and have Good Words, May i, 1869O THRIFT. 347 to-be atoned for by perpetual anxieties and by perpetual doctors’ bills ; and as for a little knowledge of the laws of electricity, one thrift I am sure it would produce — thrift to us men, of having to answer continual inquiries as to what the weather is going to be, when a slight knowledge of the barometer, or of the form of the clouds and the direction of the wind, would enable many a lady to judge for herself, and not, after inquiry on inquiry, disregard all warnings, go out on the first appearance of a strip of blue sky, and come home wet through, with what she calls “ only a chill,” but which really means a nail driven into her coffin — a probable shortening, though it may be a very small one, of her mortal life ; because the food of the next twenty-four hours, which should have gone to keep the vital heat at its normal standard, will have to be wasted in raising it up to that standard, from which it has fallen by a chill. Ladies, these are subjects on which I must beg to speak a little more at length, premis- ing them by one statement, which may seem jest, but is solemn earnest — that, if the medi- cal men of this or any other city were what the world now calls “ alive to their own in- terests” — that is, to the mere making of money — instead of being, what medical men are, the most generous, disinterested, and high-minded class in these realms, then they would oppose by all means in their power the delivery of lectures on natural philosophy to women; for if women act upon what they learn in those lectures: — and having women’s hearts, they will act upon it — there ought to follow a decrease of sickness, and 1 an increase of health, especially among chil- dren — a thrift of life, and a thrift of expense besides, which would very seriously affect the income of medical men. For let me ask you, ladies, with all courtesy, but with all earnestness — Are you aware of certain facts, of which every one of those excellent medical men is too well aware? Are you aware that more human beings are killed in England every year by unnecessary and preventable diseases than were killed at Waterloo or at Sadowa ? Are you aware that the great majority of those victims are children ? Are you aware that the diseases which carry them off are for the most part such as ought to be specially under the con- trol of the women who love them, pet them, educate them, and would in many cases, if need be, lay down their lives for them ? Are you aware, again, of the vast amount of disease which, so both wise mothers and wise doctors assure me, is engendered in the sleeping-room from simple ignorance of the laws of ventilation, and in the school-room likewise, from simple ignorance of the laws of physiology ? from keeping the brain too long on the stretch, especially immediately after meals ? from making girls sit on hard forms without any support to the back ? and from many other mistakes of which I shall men- tion no other case here save one — that too often from ignorance of signs of approaching disease, a child is punished for what is called idleness, listlessness, wilfulness, sulkiness, and punished too in the unwisest way by an in- crease of tasks and confinement to the house, thus overtasking still more a brain already overtasked, and depressing still more, by robbing it of oxygen and of exercise, a system already depressed ? Are you aware, I ask again, of all this ? I speak earnestly upon this point, because I speak with experience. As a single instance : A medical man, a friend of mine, passing by his own school- room, heard one of his own little, girls screaming and crying, and went in. The governess, an excellent woman, but wholly ignorant of the laws of physiology, com- plained that the child had of late become obstinate, and would not learn ; and that therefore she must punish her by keeping her in doors over the unlearnt lessons. The father, who knew that the child was usually a very good one, looked at her carefully for a little while ; sent her out of the school-room; and then said, “That child must not open a book for a month.” “ If I had not acted so,” he said to me, “ I should have had that child dead of brain- disease within the year.” N ow in the face of such facts as these, is it too much to ask of mothers, sisters, aunts, nurses, governesses, all who may be occupied in the care of children, especially of girls, that they should study thrift of human health and human life, by studying somewhat the laws of life and health ? There are books- — I may I say a whole literature of books — written by scientific doctors on these matters, which are in my mind far more important to the school- room than half the trashy accomplishments, so-called, which are expected to be known by governesses. But are they bought ? Are they even to be bought, at most country booksellers ? Ah for a little knowledge of the laws of physiology — of the laws of ventilation — of the value of different kinds of food and clothing — of those sanitary laws, to the neglect of which is owing so much fearful disease, which, if it does not produce immediate death, too often leaves 348 THRIFT, [Good Words, May i, 1869- the constitution impaired for years to come ! Ah the waste of health and strength in the young ; the waste, too, of anxiety and misery in those who love and tend them ! How much of it might be saved by a little rational education in those laws of nature which are the will of God about the welfare of our bodies, and which, therefore, we are as much bound to know and to obey, as we are bound to know and obey the spiritual laws whereon depends the welfare of our souls ! Pardon me, ladies, if I have given a mo- ment’s pain to any one here : but I appeal to every medical man in the room whether I have not spoken the truth : and having such an opportunity as this, I felt that I must speak for the sake of children, and of women like- wise, or else for ever hereafter hold my peace. Let me pass on from this painful subject (for painful it has been to me for many years) to a question of intellectual thrift — by which I mean just now thrift of words; thrift of truth ; restraint of the tongue ; accuracy and modesty in statement. Mothers complain to me that girls are apt to be, not intentionally untruthful, but ex- aggerative, prejudiced, incorrect, in repeating a conversation or describing an event ; and that from this fault arise, as is to be expected, misunderstandings, quarrels, rumours, slan- ders, scandals, and what not. Now for this waste of words there is but one cure ; and if I be told that it is a natural fault of women — that they cannot take the calm judicial view of matters which men boast, and often boast most wrongly that they can take — that under the influence of hope, fear, delicate antipathy, honest moral indignation, they will let their eyes and ears be governed by their feelings, and see and hear only what they wish to see and hear : I answer — that it is not for me as a man to start such a theory ; but that if it be true, it is an additional argument for some education which will correct this supposed natural defect. And I say deliberately that there is but one sort of education which will correct it ; one which will teach young women to observe facts accurately, judge them calmly, describe them carefully without adding or distorting : and that is, some training in natural science. I beg you not to be startled : but if you are, test the truth of my theory by playing to- night at the game called “ Russian Scandal,” in which a story, repeated in secret by one player to the other, comes out at the end of the game, owing to the inaccurate and — for- give me if I say it — uneducated brains through which it has passed, utterly unlike its original ; not only ludicrously maimed and distorted, but often with the most fantastic additions of events, details, names, dates, places, which each player will aver that he received from the player before him. I am afraid that too much of the average gossip of every city, town, and village is little more than a game of “ Russian Scandal:” with this difference, that while one is but a game, the other is but too mischievous earnest. But now, if among your party there shall be an average lawyer, medical man, or man of science, you will find that he, and perhaps he alone, will be able to retail accu- rately the story which has been told him. And why? Simply because his mind has been trained to deal with facts ; to ascertain exactly what he does see or hear ; and to imprint its leading features strongly and clearly on his memory. Now you certainly cannot make young ladies barristers, or attorneys, or employ their brains in getting up cases, civil or crimi- nal ; and as for chemistry, they and their parents may have a reasonable antipathy to smells, blackened fingers, and occasional ex- plosions and poisonings : but you may make them something of botanists, zoologists, geologists. I could say much on this point ; but allow me at least to say this. I verily believe that any young lady who would employ some of her leisure time in collecting wild flowers, carefully examining them, verifying them, and arranging them; or who would in her summer trip to the sea-coast do the same by the common objects of the shore, instead of wasting her holiday, as one sees hundreds doing, in lounging on benches on the espla- nade, reading worthless novels, and criticiz- ing dresses — that such a young lady, I say, would not only open her own mind to a world of wonder, beauty, and wisdom, which if it did not make her a more reverent and pious soul, she cannot be the woman which I take for granted she is : but would save herself from the habit — I had almost said the necessity — of gossip ; because she would have things to think of and not merely persons ; facts instead of fancies : while she would acquire something of accu- racy, of patience, of methodical observation and judgment, which would stand her in good stead in the events of daily life, and increase her power of bridling her tongue and her imagination. “ God is in heaven, and thou upon earth : therefore let thy words be few,” is the lesson which those are learn- ing all day long who study the works of THRIFT. Good Words, May i, 1869.! 349 God with reverent accuracy, lest by mis- representing them they should be tempted to say that God has done that which He has not : and in that wholesome discipline I long that women as well as men should share. And now I come to a thrift of the highest kind, as contrasted with a waste the most deplorable and ruinous of all — thrift of those faculties which connect us with the unseen and spiritual world, with humanity, with Christ, with God — thrift of the im- mortal spirit. I am not going now to give you a sermon on duty. You hear such, I doubt not, in church every Sunday, far better than I can preach to you. I am going to speak rather of thrift of the heart, thrift of the emotions. How they are wasted in these days in reading what are called sensation novels, all know but too well ; how British literature, all that the best hearts and intel- lects among our forefathers have bequeathed to us, is neglected for light fiction, the read- ing of which is, as a lady well said, the worst form of intemperance — dram-drinking and opium eating, intellectual and moral. I know that the young will delight — they have delighted in all ages and will to the end of time — in fictions which deal with that “ oldest tale which is for ever new.” Novels will be read : but that is all the more reason why women should be trained, by the perusal of a higher, broader, deeper literature, to distinguish the good novel from the bad, the moral from the immoral, the noble from the base, the true work of art from the sham which hides its shallowness and vulgarity under a tangled plot and melodramatic situations. She should learn — and that she can only learn by cultivation — to discern with joy, and drink in with reverence, the good, the beautiful, and the true ; and to turn with the fine scorn of a pure and strong womanhood from the bad, the ugly, and the false. And if any parent should be inclined to reply, “ Why lay so much stress upon edu- cating a girl in British literature ? Is it not far more important to make our daughters read religious books ? ” I answer, Of course ! it is. I take for granted that that is done in | a Christian land. But I beg you to recollect | that there are books and books ; and that in these days of a free press it is impossible, in the long run, to prevent girls reading books of very different shades of opinion, and very different religious worth. It may be, therefore, of the very highest importance to a girl to have her intellect, her taste, her emotions, her moral sense, in a word, her whole woman- hood, so cultivated and regulated that she shall herself be able to discern the true from the false, the orthodox from the unorthodox, the truly devout from the merely sentimental, the Gospel from its counterfeits. I should have thought that there never had been in Britain, since the Reformation, a crisis at which young Englishwomen required more careful cultivation on these matters ; if at least they are to be saved from making themselves and their families miserable ; and from ending (as I have known too many end) with broken hearts, broken minds, broken health, and an early grave. Take warning by what you see abroad. In every country where the women are unedu- cated, unoccupied; where their only literature is French novels or translations of them — in every one of those countries, the women, even to the highest, are the slaves of super- stition, and the puppets of priests. In pro- portion, as in certain other countries (notably, I will say, in Scotland), the women are highly educated, family life and family secrets are sacred, and the woman owns allegiance and devotion to no confessor or director, but to her own husband or to her own family. I say plainly, that if any parents wish their daughters to succumb at last to some quackery or superstition, calling itself scien- tific, or calling itself religious — and there are too many of both just now — they cannot more certainly effect their purpose than by allowing her to grow up ignorant, frivolous, luxurious, vain, with her emotions excited, but not satisfied, by the reading of foolish and even immoral novels. In such a case, the more delicate and graceful the organization, the more noble and earnest the nature, which has been neglected, the more certain it is (I know too well what I am saying) to go astray. The time of depression, disappointment, vacuity, all but despair, must come. The immortal spirit, finding no healthy satisfac- tion for its highest aspirations, is but too likely to betake itself to an unhealthy and exciting superstition. Ashamed of its own long self-indulgence, it is but too likely to flee from itself into a morbid asceticism. Not having been taught its God-given and natural duties in the world, it is but too likely to betake itself, from the mere craving for action, to self-invented and unnatural duties out of the world. Ignorant of true science, yet craving to understand the wonders of nature and of spirit, it is but too likely to betake itself to nonscience — nonsense as it is usually called — whether of spirit-rapping and mes- 35° THRIFT. [Good Words, May i, 1865k merism, or of miraculous relics and winking pictures. Longing for guidance and teaching, and never having been taught to guide and teach itself, it is but too likely to deliver itself up in self-despair to the guidance and teach- ing of those who, whether they be quacks or fanatics, look on uneducated women as their natural prey. You will see, I am sure, from what I have said, that it is not my wish that you should become mere learned women; mere female pedants, as. useless and unpleasing as male pedants are wont to be. The education which I set before you is not to be got by mere hearing lectures or reading books : for it is an education of your whole character ; a self-education ; which really means a com- mitting of yourself to God, that He may educate you. Hearing lectures is good, for it will teach you how much there is to be known, and how little you know. Reading books is good, for it will give you habits of regular and diligent study. And therefore I urge on you strongly private study, especially in case a library should be formed here, of books on those most practical subjects of which I have been speaking. But, after all, both lectures and books are good, mainly in as far as they furnish, matter for reflection : while the desire to reflect and the ability to reflect must come, as I believe, from above. The honest craving after light and power, after knowledge, wisdom, active usefulness, must come — and may it come to you — by the inspiration of the Spirit of God. One word more, and I have done. Let me ask women to educate themselves, not for their own sakes merely, but for the sake | of others. For, whether they will or not, they must educate others. I do not speak merely of those who may be engaged in the work of direct teaching ; that they ought to be \vell taught themselves, who can doubt ? I speak of those — and in so doing I speak of every woman, young and old — who exercises as wife, as mother, as aunt, as sister, or as friend, an influence, indirect it may be, and uncon- scious, but still potent and practical, on the minds and characters of those about them, especially of men. How potent and practical that influence is, those know best who know most of the world and most of human nature. There are those who consider — and I agree with them — that the education of boys under the age of twelve years ought to be intrusted as much as possible to women. Let me ask - — of what period of youth and of manhood does not the same hold true? I pity the ignorance and conceit of the man who fancies that he has nothing left to learn from culti- vated women. I should have thought that the very mission of woman was to be, in the highest sense, the educator of man from in- fancy to old age ; that that was the work towards which all the God-given capacities of women pointed, for which they were to be educated to the highest pitch. I should have thought that it was the glory of woman, that she was sent into the world to live for others, rather than for herself ; and therefore I should say — Let her smallest rights be respected, her smallest wrongs redressed : but let her never be persuaded to forget that she is sent into the world to teach man — what, I believe, she has been teaching him all along, even in the savage state — namely, that there is something more necessary than the claiming of rights^ and that is, the performing of duties; to teach him specially, in these so-called intel- lectual days, that there is something more than intellect, and that is — purity and virtue. Let her never be persuaded to forget that her calling is not the lower and more earthly one of self-assertion, but the higher and the diviner calling of self-sacrifice ; and let her never desert that higher life, which lives in others and for others, like her Redeemer and her Lord. And, if any should answer, that this doc- trine would keep woman a dependant and a slave, I answer — Not so ; it would keep her what she should be-— the mistress of all around her, because mistress of herself. And more, I should express a fear that those who made that answer had not yet seen into the mys- tery of true greatness and true strength ; that they did not yet understand the true mag- nanimity, the true royalty of that spirit, *by which the Son of man came not to be minis- tered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. Surely that is woman’s calling — to teach man: and to teach him what? To teach him, after all, that his calling is the same as hers, if he will but see the things which belong to his peace. To temper his fiercer, coarser, more self-assertive nature, by the contact of her gentleness, purity, self-sacrifice. To make him see that not by blare of trumpets, not by noise, wrath, greed, ambi- tion, intrigue, puffery, is good and lasting work to be done on earth : but by wise self- distrust, by silent labour, by lofty self-con- trol, by that charity which hopeth all things, believeth all things, endureth all things ; by such an example, in short, as women now in tens of thousands , set to those around them; such as they will show more Good Words, May i, 1869.] A BURIAL AT MACHLERUS. 35i and more, the more their whole womanhood is educated to employ its powers without waste and without haste in harmonious unity. Let the woman begin in girlhood, if such be her happy lot — to quote the words of a great poet, a great philosopher, and a great Churchman, William Wordsworth — let her begin, I say — - “ With all things round about her drawn Prom May- time and the cheerful dawn ; A dancing shape, an image gay, To haunt, to startle, and waylay.” Let her develop onwards — ■ “ A spirit, yet a woman too. With household motions light and free. And steps of virgin liberty. A countenance in which shall meet Sweet records, promises as sweet ; A creature not too bright and good For human nature’s daily food ; For transient sorrows, simple wiles, ' Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.” But let her highest and her final develop- ment be that which not nature, but self- education alone can bring — that which makes her once and for ever — “ A being breathing thoughtful breath ; A traveller betwixt life and death. With reason firm, with temperate will, Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill. A perfect woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command. And yet a spirit still, and bright With something of an angel light.” CHARLES KINGSLEY. A BURIAL AT MACH^ERUS. “And when his disciples heard of it, they came and took up his corpse, and laid it in a tomb.” Lift up the lifeless trunk ; The star of hope that lit the eastern sky Now in deep night is sunk, And all bright visions fade away and die. We dreamt it had been he Should lead us onward to a land of rest, Or give at least to see The wide fair valleys from the mountain’s crest. Half hoped we that at last ITad come the fulness of great joy unpriced, That all the dreary past Would fade before the glory of the Christ. Or had Elijah come With prophet’s garment rough and words of fire, To strike the murmurers dumb, And turn the hearts of children to their sire ? Not so, he told us, no, Nor Christ, nor yet Elijah, was the seer, The friend who thus lies low, Who taught us how to love, and whom to fear. Only a voice, no more, Heard crying in the wilderness, ‘ Prepare,* And then, its one work o’er, Melting in silence of the midnight air. And yet that voice could thrill Through soul and brain with agony intense, Searching each thought of ill, Waking to rapture all the torpid sense,— Could stay the lust of greed In soldier rushing eager on the spoil, Or meet the utmost need Of peasants worn by ceaseless, thankless toil. We listened till we poured In all men’s ears the story of our woes, And kneeling there adored, Where the old river through the reed-bed flows. Then casting off our shame, Naked we plunged beneath the cleansing stream. And lo ! upon us came New thoughts and hopes that were not all a dream. We might not onward press, To where he dwelt upon the mountain’s height, Arrayed in holiness, True priest, great prophet, stainless Nazarite. Yet still from that blest day We strove to curb the promptings of the sense; Taught by him how to pray, We climbed the lower slopes of excellence. And now a woman’s wiles, A girl’s soft movements in the winding dance, A wanton’s wreathed smiles, Stirring the tetrarch’s blood with harlot glance,— These, these, O grief and woe, Have crushed our hopes, and laid them in the dust ; Yes, these have brought him low, The proud Herodias triumphs in her lust. No hero’s death was his, Ten thousand warriors looking on to cheer ; He might not taste the bliss Of those whose heart has known nor doubt nor fear. Weary the slow, slow days, The stifling dungeon, and the sultry air ; Weary the long delays Of hopes that boi'dered almost on despair. Once there had come to him. With brow that told its tale of sinless youth, And speech not dark or dim, That showed Him born true vessel of the Truth, One before whom he bowed, And fain had sought a blessing at His hand ; And lo ! from out the cloud, The voice of power that few might understand. Yea, from the opened sky He heard the words which bade him worship there The Son of God most high, And saw the Spirit hover through the air ; And then, when forty days Had done the work of forty years of life, And, working highest praise, That prophet came victorious from his strife, We heard the witness clear, “ Behold the Lamb that bears the world’s great sin ; ’ And some who saw Him there, W ent where He dwelt, and stayed all night within. And these we saw no more, They left the seer who raised their souls from earth ; And on Gennesareth’s shore Gained, so they said, the gift of second birth. A BURIAL AT MACH^ERUS. [Good Words, May i, 1869. Those men of Galilee, The peasants and the fishers of the lake, They went to hear and see : But we our prophet-guide might not forsake. ¥e saw the crowds grow thin, No more they came by hundreds to the stream ; Hushed was their stir and din, The fame and favour vanished as a dream. We mourned, but he, our guide, Rejoiced in spirit, as the bridegroom’s friend, When bridegroom meets his bride, And love’s long hopes at last attain their end. “ He must increase, but I Am ready,” so he spake, “ to wane and fade, Ready to fall and die, Or wither slowly in the blighting shade. “ Needs must my soul rejoice That now men list to Him their King and Lord, I but a wandering voice, He the true Christ, the Everlasting Word.” So spake he then, but soon Came the sore heat and burden of the day ; As the sun strikes at noon, So fell on him the blasts that smite and slay. He lost the people’s love, And would not turn to fawn upon the great ; With crowned guilt he strove, And earned the guerdon of a harlot’s hate. Then came the weary weeks, The fruitless strivings with a wavering will, The pain of one who seeks To wake to good a soul that cleaves to ill. So in his prison cell He lingered on, not knowing all that passed, If all things prospered well, Or the bright morning were with storms o’ercast. At length, sore vexed and tried, Worn down by dark perplexity and doubt, He called us to his side, And bade us go and ask the question out. Weary he was and faint, And dark clouds gathered round his vision clear, And just the nascent taint Of weakened faith had filled his soul with fear. “ Art Thou,” he asked, “ art Thou The one we looked for, coming to redeem ? Or must another now Rear the proud fa oric of the glorious dream ? “ Why still from day to day Tarry the wheels that should the conqueror bring ? Why this long, long delay, The halting of the chariots of the King ? “ Why leave the prisoners still In dungeon dark and fetters sharp to lie ? Why stays the all-loving Will To set the sufferers free, or bid them die ?” We came and looked, and lo ! Blind saw, deaf heard, and leapt as harts the lame, And a sweet voice and low With gentle words of love to poor men came. We saw the fixed eye Gush with hot tears of love and holiest joy, The man’s heart, seared and dry, Beat with the pulse and passion of the boy. I: 1 Good Words, May x, 1869.] STARS AND LIGHTS. 353 We saw the rough hands clasped, The sighs breathed forth upon the silent air, While many fondly grasped His garment’s hem in agony of prayer. He heard our speech, nor spake One word of anger at the quest o’erbold, Nor would His friend forsake, Nor leave the tale of love and power untold. He bade us look and tell Yet once again to John the things we saw ; And all at last was well, And the old faith was once more clear from flaw. And then a few weeks more, And at the gate we heard the spearman knock, And too soon all was o’er, The shepherd smitten, we a scattered flock. But little time had he For parting words of hope, or faith, or love, And none were there to see, The hero-greatness of his soul to prove. And now the sun is set, The grave is hollowed in the cavern’s side, And we few friends are met That bleeding form within the tomb to hide. Yes, wrap him as he lies ; But little cared he for the spice and balm ; No hireling mourner’s cries Need break the stillness of the sunset calm. The linen fine and clear, Keep that for lordly burials of the great ; As he lived, lay him here ; He needs no pageant, and the hour is late. As he lived, let him lie, That garment rough his only winding sheet, Just veiling from the eye The bleeding trunk, and swathing round the feet. Scarce thirty summers old, His sun goes down ere half the day is done, And as a tale is told, So all his work is ended, scarce begun. And what shall we do now ? To whom shall we in doubt and sadness turn ? Wilt Thou receive us, Thou, Who mad’st our cold faint hearts within us burn ? The old has passed away, The new begins in clouds and darkness veiled ; But we not far shall stray, If we but trust the Love that ne’er has failed. Yes, bearing with us still, Precept, and prayer, and hymn, and fast, and rite, All that our spirits fill With life and truth, with gladness and delight. We to the Christ will go, And bide our time till John arise again ; We will not linger, no, We will not wait till all things are made plain. Enough for us to live As those on whom the light of God has shone, Till He more light shall give, Or through the darkness claim us as His own. E. H. Plumptre. STARS AND LIGHTS; ©r, of Hjs Hhafotts. I. THE EDUCATION OF THE DISCOVERER. In the year 1759 a young Hanoverian, by name William Herschel, came to England to seek his fortune. He was one of a family of ten who had been brought up under strait- ened circumstances, but honourably and with the best of examples within his home. Isaac Herschel, his father, was a professor of music in the city of Hanover, and it is said that all his children acquired great proficiency in that accomplishment. William Herschel brought with him to England but very scanty pecu- niary means, and no influential introduc- tions ; yet a stout heart and that habit of self-reliance which had been successfully fostered at home, and for which, through a long life, he was so eminently distinguished, enabled him to bear up against the dis- couragements and privations which clouded the first two or three years of his residence in England. The first effectual relief that he met with arose from an appointment, which he received at the instance of the Earl of Darlington, as instructor of a military band in the north of England. This post he resigned in 1761, and then supported him- self as a teacher of music, first at Pontefract, X— 24 and subsequently at Leeds. From thence he proceeded to Halifax, where he obtained the situation of organist in the parish church; having previously assisted at the performance of The Messiah , with which the new instru- ment was inaugurated. It was amidst the laborious occupation of a private teacher that he now began to complete that edu- cation of which only the earlier rudiments had been acquired in his native town. He taught himself Latin and Italian, and a certain amount of Greek ; plodding his way with no other assistance than that afforded by the unsympathising aid of grammar and dic- tionary. It is well known that there is no royal road to knowledge, and if William Herschel took the longest, assuredly he took the safest. Independently of genius which was a natural gift, and of self-reliance which had become a habit, he possessed in an eminent degree a nobler quality of mind, which is a characteristic of all truly great men whose work for their fellow-creatures abides the test of time — that characteristic was thorough- ness. By profession he was a musician, and it was impossible for such a man as he to rest content until he had become master of STARS AND LIGHTS. [Good Words, May i, 1S69. ,354 ■ the theory of his art. But the books which treat upon this subject were in his time, as } to the present hour they for the most part . continue to be, difficult and obscure,* and require for their mastery a considerable amount of mathematical knowledge. Hence William Herschel, nothing daunted by the task before him, set to work and added to ; his wearisome study of the dead languages, j that of geometry and algebra. At Halifax jhe persevered in his new study, until he had f sufficiently mastered the principal writings of I Emerson and Maclaurin, and the still more difficult propositions in Smith’s “ Harmonics.” It may here be well to anticipate somewhat the future astronomer’s noble career, in order to show the thoroughness and the success of that educational training to which this great man felt it his duty to submit. It has long been ‘the fruitful custom for mathematicians to chal- lenge each other to the solution of problems involving some peculiar difficulty or novelty of conception ; among these problems was one proposed in the “ Ladies’ Diary ” of 1 779, by the celebrated William Landen, under his usual name of Peter Puzzlem, to the following effect : — “ The length, tension, and weight of a musical string being given, it is required to find how many vibrations it will make in a given time when a small given weight is fastened to its middle and vibrates with it.” This problem, involving a very considerable and varied amount of mathematical knowledge, was satisfactorily solved by William Herschel, and furnishes not only a proof of the proficiency acquired by the self-taught student, but has this ad- ditional interest attached to it, that it appears to have been the first scientific pub- lication of a man, who, for the next forty years, continued to send forth to the world a series of original investigations, discoveries, and speculations, which for novelty and grandeur of conception, have rarely, if ever, been surpassed in the annals of human know- ledge. But we must return from our digression. In 1766 Herschel left Halifax fora similar, but more lucrative, appointment at Bath, and he there became organist of the well-known Octagon Chapel. The demand upon the time of a man in his position must have been incessant. Concerts, promenades, and as- semblies formed the staple of the life of that fashionable watering-place, and the services of William Herschel were required at them all. * To this predication of obscurity I would make one most honourable exception in the case of an admirable treatise on bound and the rudiments of the Theory of Music, such as would naturally be expected from its author, the present Astronomer Royal. Macmillan. 1867. Independently of these occupations, there was a long round of private lessons, to say nothing of the Sunday work at the most popular chapel in the place. One is amazed to think that a man could find time to pursue his own earnest studies in the thick of such employ- ments at once so incessant and so exciting. To William Herschel these studies were not only a refreshment, they were a necessity of his nature. While this indomitable man was thus em- ployed, a circumstance occurred which was destined to change, if not the bias, at all events the whole complexion of his life : that circumstance was the acquisition of a small and indifferent telescope, followed by the sight of the marvels which even such an implement reveals. M. Arago and some other writers have attributed his possession of this telescope to an accident; but we have unquestionable authority for stating that it was not so. On the contrary, it was inevi- table that a man such as he was, should apply the mathematical knowledge which he had acquired to that one branch of science, which, beyond all others, it elucidates and claims for its special domain. Accordingly, in 1773, he purchased a treatise on Astro- nomy and a book of astronomical tables. And here we cannot resist the temptation to pause for a moment, and contemplate the enormous contrast between such astronomical treatises as existed' in the last century, and those which serve to guide and to charm the student and the amateur of the present day ; a contrast very much of which is due to the genius and the labours of William Herschel himself. If the reader is curious on such subjects, let him peruse a few pages of Fer- guson’s Astronomy, such as served for a glimmering, but suggestive, light to the elder Herschel, and then let him turn, we will not say to the noble treatise of his son, but to such a charming little manual as that recently provided by Mr. Lockyer (among others) for even those who are but tyros in this fascinat- ing science. It is this very contrast, this modern accumulation of pregnant facts and grand generalisations, which renders it so difficult for a writer to throw back his mind to the conceptions which necessarily pre- sented themselves to the practical astro nomers of even so recent a period as 1773. But we must resume our narrative. A fortnight after William Herschel had pur- chased and perused his new acquisition, he bought also a small lens, or object glass, of ten feet focal length, which, when fitted by his own hands to a tin tube, and supplied with such STARS AND LIGHTS. Good Words, May i, 1869.] 355 eye-glasses as he could procure, formed an indifferent apology for a telescope, when compared with our own notions of what a telescope really means. But we have here the true indication of the spirit of the man, an instance of that determination which im- pelled him to know all that he could get within his reach, and to permit no difficulties to baffle him which time and perseverance could possibly surmount. But he was soon dissatisfied with the performance of so in- adequate an appliance, and his next step was to hire from an optician, in Bath, a small Gregorian telescope of about two feet focal length — the same instrument, in fact, which M. Arago and others speak of as having fallen into his hands. Such an instrument as this was sufficient to fire, though insufficient to satisfy, the new enthusiasm which at once took possession of the man : it struck a chord within him which ceased not to vibrate while life remained. He became impatient to possess a larger and a better telescope, and instant inquiry was set on foot in London respecting the necessary outlay. Alas ! the price by far exceeded the expectations and the means of the not over-paid organist of Bath. In an ordinary man this disappointment would have effectually chilled the new aspiration; to William Herschel it suggested at once the only possible means by which it could be satisfied. If he cannot purchase, why can he not construct a telescope? It is here that the scientific career of William Herschel may be truly said to have commenced. Few persons are aware of the difficulty of the enterprise in which the enthusiasm and self-reliance of this great man now impelled him to embark. No doubt he was at the first not wholly aware of it himself. When he commenced the construction of a reflecting telescope, he knew little or nothing of the relative adaptabilities of various metallic alloys for the formation of a polished surface, and still less of the means by which they could be ground into an accurate and suitable form. In those days it was the unfortunate habit to be jealously reticent on the methods leading to success in the several branches of art. Even now the folly of this reticence is not sufficiently recognised as in its results espe- cially suicidal. Thus Herschel had to grope his way as best he could. The record exists that in the prosecution of his attempts, he cast, ground, and polished no less than two hundred metallic mirrors of seven feet focal length before he succeeded to his desire. He made also one hundred and fifty trials of | mirrors of ten feet focal length, and about eighty of twenty feet. And then, as to the method by which he proceeded in his work, it is said that he would cast some ten mirrors, and would then work at and polish the whole of them to the best of his ability. The most successful of these ten he retained; again work- ing at the remaining nine until he obtained one which on examination proved to be supe- rior to the first, and so on it was his habit to proceed until his scruples were satisfied. The amount of labour implied in this re- cital may be gathered from an extract taken from a memoir by the celebrated astronomer Lalande to the following effect : “ Each time that Herschel undertook to polish a mirror, it required from ten to twelve or fourteen hours of continuous labour. He did not quit the work for a moment, not even to eat : his food, without which the fatigue could not have been supported, was brought to him by the hands of his sister : nothing in the world could induce him to quit his work : in his judgment to quit it was to spoil it.” Lalande is here speaking of the mirrors which he polished after he had quitted Bath, and before his adapta- tion of machinery to the work, but, of course, the same remarks apply with even greater force to the telescopes which he attempted to construct at the first. Of the noble lady spoken of in this extract we shall have more to say as the narrative advances. Here indeed is a record of patience ; shall we not properly call it a record of genius ? For such patience is more than a habit — it is a gift ; and such patience is allied to prophecy, for it foresees with unshaken confidence the ac- complishment of unknown though adequate results. In Herschel’s case it was prophetic of the immediate discovery of a planet beyond the presumed confines of the solar system, and ulti- mately of the probable construction of the side- real universe, of which at that day nothing was known, and but little reasonably conjectured. Now it is this construction of the sidereal heavens, so far as at present we are permitted to know it, which is to form the subject of the present article, and of such subsequent articles as time and opportunity may enable us to write. The discoveries of the last eight or ten years in this branch of our knowledge j have proceeded to an extent exceeding the bounds of reasonable hope, but the great i foundation of the whole of this knowledge | was laid by the genius and the labours of that great man whose earlier education for j the work we have so far laid before the ; reader. In endeavouring therefore to bring before the readers of Good Words the phy- j sical construction of that universe of which j 356 STARS AND LIGHTS. LGocd Words, May r, xSfo. our own solar system forms a part, we shall proceed in the order of the discoveries suc- cessively made by Herschel, and when the occasion admits or requires it, we shall ex- plain such additions as have been made to his discoveries by our own contemporaries, and his truly worthy successors. By adopt- ing this course of a biographical arrange- ment, we hope to invest our subject with something of a living interest which other- wise to some minds it might scarcely possess. We shall thus not only learn what has been done for the advancement of our knowledge, but we shall see in their actual and native simplicity the several successive steps in the process of discovery, we shall be accom- panied by the precious light of the example of the great man who accomplished it, and we shall enjoy the inestimable privilege of sharing in the thoughts of one of the noblest intellects that ever adorned and illuminated our race. II. THE FIRST DISCOVERY. It was not until the year 1774 that Her- schel succeeded in constructing a telescope which at all satisfied his wishes. We shall defer to a much later stage of our narrative, an account of what had been done up to his time, and what has since been achieved, towards the perfection of what he himself, in one of his earliest memoirs, communicated to the Royal Society, justly calls “this noble instrument.” It is sufficient for our present purpose to state that, in the year 1780, he was constantly using a reflecting telescope of about eighty inches focal length, and of very nearly six and a half inches clear aperture, the most powerful and accurate instrument of which we have any record up to his day : he speaks of it with greater modesty himself in the following terms : “ I believe that, for distinctness of vision, this instrument is per- haps equal to any that was ever made.”* We shall presently see that, although he had much larger instruments at his command, this telescope, or rather the disciplined brain and the tutored eye at the side of it, soon led him to one of the most brilliant of his many discoveries, and thereby to his emancipation from those professional labours which, how- ever conscientiously undertaken, now occu- pied a secondary place in his thoughts. The first communication which he made to the Royal Society was read to that learned body on May it, 1780. It related to the star called “ Mira,” or “ The Wonderful,” situated in the constellation Cetus (The Whale), a large but not very con spicuous configura- * Transactions of the Royal Society, May n, 1780. tion of stars, which, in the evenings of the autumnal and winter months, may be seen 1 in England occupying a considerable space ! low in the south. This .particular star, ever since the year 1596, had been remarked for . the wonderful variations in its lustre ; some- j times it greatly exceeds in brightness the ! most conspicuous stars in its own constella- ' tion, but speedily wanes away, and ultimately disappears to the naked eye. The best 1 observers, Cassini among them, had con- cluded that once it passed through all its gradations of brightness in three hundred and thirty-four days. Newton’s friend, Halley, disposes of it more summarily than accurately, in stating that its period is “ pre- cisely enough seven revolutions in six years, though it returns not always with the same lustre. Nor is it ever wholly extinguished, but may at all times be seen with a six-foot tube.” (?) William Herschel observed this star at various times between October 20, 1777, and February 7, 1780, watching its in- crease from invisibility to the naked eye, until, on November 2, 1779, it approached to a star of the first magnitude, and became again invisible on February 7, 1780. He continued these observations at various in- tervals until October 21, 1790, when it once more attained its greatest lustre. Now, the interval between November 2, 1779, and October 21, 1790, gives eleven periods of j three hundred and thirty-one days. But this interval of time, this number of eleven re- currences, is too small for an average and j for great accuracy, and hence recourse was had i to an old observation of a maximum bright- J ness on August 13, 1596, by Fabricius, and- ;i then the interval between this last date and jj Herschel’s own observation on October 21, ! 1790, gives two hundred and fourteen changes, I each occupying three hundred and thirty-one ! days, ten hours, and nineteen minutes, which I may be taken as the average cycle in which | this remarkable star goes through all the j] variations of its lustre. Such was the sub- |j stance of William Herschel’s first paper to ji the Royal Society in 1780, and of a part of another communication made in the year 1791. It is perhaps needless to say that such first communications to so competent and so critical a body, necessarily form a crisis in the life of any man devoted to the pursuit of knowledge. It will not be supposed that such observa- j tions by such a man were undertaken with a cursory or spasmodic intention ) on the con- ! trary, they formed a part of a comprehensive j plan which, as appears from various expres- 1 Good Wes*, May *, is^j STARS AND LIGHTS. 357 sicns dropped by him in the course of his memoirs, from the very first evidently pos- sessed his mind. It was nothing short of this, that, so far as he was permitted, he in- tended to investigate the general scheme upon which the sidereal universe had been constructed by its Omnipotent Designer. In this attempt we shall see in the sequel that he succeeded to a considerable, and certainly unhoped-for extent; at the commencement of his labours he found our conception of the starry heavens conjectural, indefinite, and vague to the last degree, after forty years of observation and thought, he be- queathed to posterity that conception, based upon logical induction, and comparatively definite and precise. For the prosecution of the plan which he ! had thus proposed to himself, it was neces- sary that he should, if possible, acquire some knowledge of the distances of the stars from our earth, and from each other, and form some notion of the manner after which they are arranged. He imagined that one star appeared to “differ from another star in glory” mainly on account of the difference of the dis- tances at which they are viewed. The brightest, he thought, in the average, to be the nearest, and that decided faintness of lustre indicated in general extreme remoteness. How far he was right or wrong we shall see in the sequel, but we mention it now, because it was partly in connection with this view that he was induced to look carefully into the question of those stars whose changes of brightness are periodical. The question here probably, we may say naturally, arises to the mind of the reader, what possible importance can be attached to the variability of the light emitted by a star ? Is so remote an inquiry worthy to occupy the attention of intelligent men who have to battle with the hourly wants and ever-varying relations of human society? Does not the whole investigation border on solemn trifling ? To these remarks we might give more than one satisfactory reply; we might refer, for 1 instance, to the fact that, within recent : memory, one of the ablest and most practical of our statesmen* occupied such leisure as he could find, in writing a learned and admirable Historical Survey of the Astronomy of the Ancients. We shall, however, content our- selves with observing further, that our own sun is itself a star ; probably, if not certainly, it is a periodical star. Its apparent surface is liable, in a greater or less extent, to an accumulation of spots, many of them extend- ing to dimensions which greatly exceed the entire surface of our globe, and which modem observations prove to recur in a cycle of about eleven years. We shall, in due course, find that Herschel connected the absence or predominance of these spots with the average price of corn, nor is the relation by any means chimerical, whether it be fully established or not. We must remember also that many impor- tant considerations in the physiology of animal life have been suggested by the simpler and, ! in some respects, more accessible physiology of plants ; and, in a similar way, we may reasonably hope to learn something of the laws after which our own sun has been evolved and still exists, if we can catch some glimpse of the more comprehensive law which has been ordained to regulate the constitution of the stars. Nor, as we shall see, has this inquiry been wholly without success. But let us listen to the words of our great astronomer himself. “ By observa- tions on the relative brightness of the stars, we are enabled to resolve a problem, not only of great consequence, but in which we are all immediately concerned. Who, for instance, would not wish to know what de- gree of permanence we ought to ascribe to the lustre of our sun? Not only the stability of our climates, but the very existence of the whole animal and vegetable creation itself, is involved in the question. Where can we hope to receive information upon this sub- ject, but from astronomical observations ? If it be allowed to admit the similarity of stars with our sun as a point established, how necessary will it be to take notice of the fate of our neighbouring suns, in order to guess at that of our own ! That star which | we have dignified by the name of sun, to- morrow may slowly begin to undergo a gradual decay of brightness, like many di- minishing stars that will be mentioned in my catalogues. It may suddenly increase, like the wonderful star in the back of Cassiopeia’s chair, and the no less remarkable one in the foot of Serpentarius. And, lastly, it may turn into a periodical one of twenty-five days’ duration, as Algol is one of three days .... and as many others are of various periods.* .... Many phenomena in natural history ! seem to point out some past changes in our ; climates. Perhaps the easiest way of ac- i counting for them may be to surmise that our sun has been formerly more and some- times less bright than it is at present .... and many hitherto unaccountable varieties that happen in our seasons, such as a general j * For a still more remarkable instance see the author’s ! paper in Good Words for April, 1867, on “ A World on Fire.” 1 * r Sir George Cornewall Lewis. 358 THE HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY. [Good Words, May r >l8 C9 severity or mildness of uncommon winters or burning summers, may possibly meet with an easy solution in the inequality of the sun’s rays.”* And lest it should be sup- posed that subsequent and maturer consi- derations have modified the opinions thus expressed, we shall add similar remarks made by the illustrious son upon whose shoulders the mantle of his great father has worthily fallen. Sir John Herschel, with the pious intention of completing for the southern skies what his father had so well commenced in our northern latitude, after his father’s methods and with his father’s instruments, mapped and compared the relative bright- ness of those stars which are invisible in our own country. He says, “The subject is one of the utmost physical interest. The grand phenomena of geology afford, it ap- pears to me, the highest presumptive evidence of change in the general climate of our globe. I cannot otherwise understand alternations of heat and cold, so extensive as at one epoch to have clothed high northern latitudes with a more than tropical luxuriance of vege- tation ; at another, to have buried vast tracts of middle Europe, now enjoying a genial climate, and smiling with fertility, under a glacier crust of enormous thickness. Such changes seem to point to some cause more powerful than the mere local distribu- tion of land and water (according to Mr. Lyell’s views) can well be supposed to have been.” And then, in a note, he adds : “ It is the demand for not merely a mild but a hot climate, and the absence of winter in high latitudes, which causes the misgiving I have ventured to express.” f We shall only add this one further remark. Observations on the variability of the bright- ness of stars, lie peculiarly within the pro- vince and the capabilities of the intelligent amateur. If any of our readers, who have their evenings at their command, would but devote a part of them, with perseverance and regularity, to the systematic comparison of the lustre of even a moderate number of stars visible to the naked eye, they might, nay, they must, add to our permanent knowledge of the structure of the worlds which surround us. A rich field of discovery herein lies before a good eye and a willing mind. The occupa- tion, once fairly embarked in, would soon fascinate, and not soon be abandoned. The memoir which was read to the Royal Society on the variableness of Mira, was accompanied by another on the height of certain Lunar Mountains. It was inevitable that the possessor of a large telescope should turn it towards the wonderful spectacle pre- sented by the nearest of the celestial bodies. We shall not here occupy the reader’s atten- tion by dwelling on a scene which, from its strangeness and suggestiveness, never tires ; the communication of knowledge has happily become so rapid,* so precise, and so widely diffused, especially on all subjects connected with physical science, that probably the ma- jority of well-educated persons are as well acquainted with depictions of lunar scenery as with those of the remote portions of our own globe. Suffice it to say that, if the photographs of certain parts of the lunar surface, and of certain terrestrial regions, where extinct volcanoes abound, as in the south of France, for instance, or in the neigh- bourhood of Naples, were placed side by side, it is very doubtful whether an ordinary person would be able, on a cursory view, to discriminate between the one and the other. Various attempts have been made to mea- sure the heights, depths, and breadths of lunar craters, but of these we shall speak in another chapter. c. Pritchard. THE HUDSON’S A territory half as large as Europe stretches to the north and west of Canada, from the coast of Labrador, on the east, to the Rocky Mountains, on the south-west, and touching the arctic circle on the north, reaches as far as the boundary line in the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude between British North America and the United States on the south. It embraces within its sweep * Philosophical Transactions, Feb. 25, 1796. t “ Results of Astronomical Observations made at the Cape of Good Hope,” p. 351. The secular variation of the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit seems inadequate to the pro- i duction of this hotter climate. — C. P. BAY COMPANY Hudson’s Strait, Hudson’s Bay, and James’s Bay — an expanse of waters equal to the area of the Mediterranean. From the south-west extremity, an irregular line, trending towards the north-east, divides it from that part of the British dominions which is generally known as the Indian territory. This contains the * At the moment of revising these pages, there lies on the table the print of original drawings of certain lunar craters which have recently formed the subject of much good-natured controversy, presented to the readers of The Student for the present month (April). It is refreshing and hopeful to observe that these drawings were made by a practical optician and instrument maker, Mr. Browning, K of the Minories. They bear the suggestive dates of 1*30 a.m., 4 a.m., and remind us of the days of Stephens and the Elzevirs. Good Words, May i, 1869.] THE HUDSON’S Great Bear Lake, the Great Slave Lake, and Athabasca Lake ; the Coppermine, the Mac- kenzie, and the Great Fish rivers ; and through it, on the western side, runs the mighty range of the Rocky Mountains, which extend from the Arctic Sea to the Gulf of Mexico, and divide the Indian territory from British Columbia. A ridge of table-land running south-west from the coast of Labrador to the source of the Ottawa River, and form- ing the watershed of the rivers which on the one side fall into the St. Lawrence, and on the other into the Hudson’s Bay, may be considered as the south-eastern limit of the territory, although neither on the west nor on the south-east has its boundary been ever accurately traced' or defined. The whole of this vast region — by a very indefinite descrip- tion, but under the name of Rupert’s Land — was granted, by Royal Charter in 1670, by Charles II., to “ the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hud- son’s Bay,” familiarly called the Hudson’s Bay Company, of whose history and policy I pur- pose to give some account in the following pages. But I will first endeavour to describe the natural features of the country itself, of which little more is generally known in Eng- land than that it produces the furs which are so largely used as articles of clothing, luxury, and ornament. It is only on the southern part of the terri- tory that cultivation is possible. This is owing to the rigour of the climate and the nature of the soil. The country to the north of the Saskatchewan River, Lake Winnipeg, and Lake Superior, has been described as a region of rivers, swamps, treeless prairies, and barren hills and hollows, “ tossed to- gether in a wave-like form, as if the ocean had been suddenly petrified while heaving its huge billows in a tumultuous swell.” In the winter season almost the only means of sub- sistence in this dreary region is frozen fish. By far the greatest portion seems destined for ever to remain a sterile wilderness, tenanted by animals whose thick furs enable them to resist the cold, and roamed over by hunters, who, with guns and traps in their hands, pursue the bear, the beaver, the wolf, the fox, the martin, and the mink, and “ Kill them up In their assigned and native dwelling-place.”; Hudson’s Bay — which was discovered by John Hudson, in 1610 — may be considered as the great basin into which the rivers of Rupert’s Land flow. The largest of the in- land waters is Lake Winnipeg, on the south. It is 300 miles long, and in some parts 50 BAY COMPANY. miles broad, distant about 50 miles from the boundary line that divides Rupert’s Land from the United States, and 500 miles from Lake Superior. The next two largest lakes are Lake Manitobah (the “ Evil Spirit ” lake) and Lake Winnipegosis, to the west of Lake Supe- rior, and together nearly of the same length. The Red River, which rises in the Otter-tail Lake, in Minnesota, flows northwards into Lake Winnipeg ; and to the north-east of it is the Winnipeg River, another affluent of the lake, which connects it with the Lake of the Woods, and this again is connected by Rainy River, with Rainy Lake, through which runs the boundary line of the forty-ninth parallel of latitude. The country lying between Lake Winnipeg and the Red River on the east — the south branch of the Saskatchewan on the west — the main stream of that river on the north — and the boundary line on the south — • forms an irregular parallelogram, which is com- puted to contain 80,000 square miles — an area equal to that of Great Britain. And within this area there are upwards of 11,000,000 acres of arable land, and an equal quantity fit for pasture. It is on the banks of the Red River that the Red River or Selkirk Settlement, of which I shall speak hereafter, was formed. The soil is alluvial, and produces crops of wheat, but in the immediate neighbourhood most of the forests that formerly existed have been destroyed by fire, but there is still a large quantity of wood, especially on the east side. The timber, however, is nowhere of great size. It has been said, indeed, that there is not a tree of any description five feet in diameter in the company’s territory east of the Rocky Mountains, and the largest pines there seldom exceed three feet in diameter. But yet, on the other hand, one of the wit- nesses who was examined before a Committee of the House of Commons, in 1857, declared that in the vast area between the north branch of the Saskatchewan River and the Athabasca Lake, in the north, there are trees, “vast and splendid in their growth,” which would bear comparison with “ the magni- ficent trees round Kensington Park.” There are, however, very few trees if any in the plains, and the buffalo hunters are obliged to carry wood with them for lighting fires. Be- tween the Red River and Rainy Lake, to the east, there is an impracticable country full of deep morasses, of which it has been asserted that they never thaw, for below the moist surface there is a stratum of everlasting ground ice. But this, I think, must be a mistake, for the so-called permanent “frozen 360 THE HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY. [Good Woids, May r, iS6>. district ” begins at a higher latitude. Along the banks of the Red River for about the width of a mile there is a belt of land which has more or less been brought into cultiva- tion, but beyond this the soil is extremely thin, and some idea of the nature of the country may be formed from the evidence of Sir George Simpson, who was for many years Governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and who stated before the Committee of the House of Commons that he had paddled over some of the roofs of the houses there in his canoe. These were certainly “lacustrine” habitations of a modern period. Owing to the difficulties of the country the territory has not yet been fully explored, and actual knowledge of its features has been chiefly confined to the region that lies to the west of Red River and south of the northern fork of the Saskatchewan River ; the two forks meeting at a place called Nepowewin or Fort a la Come, and thence flowing in a united stream to Lake Winnipeg, which they enter near its head on the north-west side. An expedition to explore the country watered by the Assiniboine and the Saskatchewan was sent out by the Canadian Government in 1857, and its very interesting reports are to be found in a Blue Book published by order of the House of Commons in i860. The Assiniboine River flowing from the north, turns to the east five miles above Fort Ellice, about 360 miles from Fort Garry. Fort Pelly lies upon it to the north. For the first fifteen miles of its course the land of the valley is light and sandy clay, in many places pure sand covered with a low growing creeper. The grass is very short and scanty, and the aspens, which are the only trees, are small. Further on the country improves for about sixty miles, but it abounds with marshes, swamps, and ponds, round which grow willow and aspen trees. From thence to Fort Pelly the country is densely covered with aspens and willows, but there are open spaces here and there, where, says Mr. Dickinson, one of the officers employed on the Canadian expedition, “ the wonderful luxuriance of the vegetation is beyond description. Lakes and ponds are very numerous throughout, en- circled with large aspens and balsam poplars.” To the east of Fort Pelly lies the Swan River, which flows in a north-easterly course into Lake Winnipegosis. The valley through which it runs is described as containing all the requirements necessary for a settlement, and the timber is plentiful and of a good size. The land for the most part is sandy loam, and is traversed by numerous creeks. The Qu’Appelle, or Calling River, flows from the west, and joins the Assiniboine five miles above Fort Ellice. It rises near the south branch of the Saskatchewan, at a place called the Elbow ; and in the long, deep, and narrow valley through which it runs towards the east, there are eight lakes, of an aggregate length of seventy miles. A scheme has been proposed to send the waters of the south branch of the Saskatchewan down the valley into the Assiniboine, and thence into the Red River, and past Fort Garry into Lake Winni- peg. This would be effected by constructing a dam across the deep and narrow ravine through which the south branch flows, just below the point where the Qu’Appelle valley joins it. The waters of the Saskatchewan would thus be turned into the valley, and en- able steamers to navigate them for a distance exceeding 600 miles between the Elbow and Fort Garry. And the Indians who hunt in that district assured Professor Hind, who had charge of the Canadian exploring expedition, that between the Elbow and the western ex- tremity of the south branch, near the foot of the Rocky Mountains, where the Bow River flows into it, there are no rapids or impedi- ments of any description, except shifting mud and sand bars. I can give no opinion as to the feasibility of this plan, the object of which is of course to facilitate the formation of a highway between Canada and the Pacific ; but it is right to state that Mr. Dawson, in his report dated Toronto, Feb. 22, 1859, mentions one objection to it, which, if well founded, is conclusive. He says, “ The plains of Red River would be converted into a sea, and the settlement swept into Lake Winni- peg.” Professor Hind combats this idea as chimerical; but I am unable to decide which of the two disputants is right. The possibility of such a catastrophe is perhaps sufficient to prevent the scheme from being attempted. The immediate banks of the Saskatchewan are of a poor, sandy, and gravelly soil ; but on the prairie plateau, three miles from the river, the rich soil commences, and in some places extends for a breadth of sixty miles. The Touchwood range of hills lies to the east of the Elbow and north of the Qu’Appelle River, and embraces an area of more than a million acres. “ For beauty of scenery,” says Professor Hind, “ richness of soil, and adap- tation for settlement, this is by far the most attractive area west of the Assiniboine.” Fort Garry, the head-quarters of the settle- ment, lies a short distance to the south of Lake Winnipeg, at the point where the As- siniboine falls into the Red River. The Good Words, May i, 1S69.] THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY. j I 36* Assiniboine valley on the north side, and south of a range of hills called the Big Ridge, comprises an area exceeding half a million of acres, with a soil which has been described as of “remarkable excellence.” The south side of the Assiniboine is covered by a vast forest, varying in width from three to twenty- five miles, and below this there are wide open prairies, where herds of buffaloes range. The grasshoppers are the pest of the region. Professor Hind says, “ At times they would cast a shadow over the prairie ; and for seve- ral hours one day the sky, from the horizon to an altitude of thirty degrees, acquired an indescribably brilliant ash-white tint, and seemed faintly luminous as the semi-transpa- rent wings of countless millions of grasshop- pers, towards the north and north-east, re- flected the light of the sun.” Another traveller says, “ Lying on my back and looking up- wards as near to the sun as the light would permit, I saw the sky continually changing colour from blue to silver white, ash-grey, and lead colour, according to the numbers in the passing clouds of insects. Opposite to the sun, the prevailing hue was a silver white, perceptibly flashing. On one occasion the whole heavens, towards the south, east, and west, appeared to radiate a soft, grey, tinted light, with a quivering motion ; and the day being calm, the hum produced by the vibra- tions of so many millions of wings was quite indescribable, and more resembled the noise popularly termed ‘a ringing in one’s ears,’ than any other sound. The aspect of the heavens during the greatest flight we observed was singularly striking. It produced a feeling of uneasiness, amazement, and awe in our minds, as if some terrible unforeseen calamity were about to happen. It recalled more vividly than words could express the devas- tating ravages of the Egyptian scourges, as it seemed to bring us face to face with one of the most striking and wonderful exhibitions of Almighty power in the creation and susten- ance of this infinite army of insects.” The distance between Canada and the Red River Settlement by the canoe route is more than 500 miles, and 300 in an air line. When I say Canada, I mean starting from Lake Superior, which is generally assumed to be its south-west frontier. But it is only fair to state that the Canadians do not admit this, and lay claim to territory indefinitely to the west of the lake. The fact is, that the western boundary of Canada has never been accurately defined.* It was ceded to Great * In a trial for murder at Quebec, in 1818, the court held that the western boundary of Upper Canada was a line on the Britain by France in 1763, but the exact extent of the territory was not determined ; and there is a certain portion of “ debatable land,” between Lake Superior and the pos- sessions of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which, as I shall show hereafter, has caused disputes and some tragical episodes in the history of the company. There are two routes between Lake Supe- rior and the Red River Settlement. The lower one, from the western side of the lake, proceeds up the Pigeon River, along which runs the boundary line between British Ame- rica and the United States, and then through a long series of swamps and ponds and lakes connected by intervening rivers, to Rainy Lake. But many of the rapids are so furious that canoes cannot live in them, and they must therefore be dragged or carried along the banks for considerable distances, which are known by the name of Portages. Rainy Lake is connected by Rainy River with the Lake of the Woods, and the latter lake by the Winnipeg River with Lake Winnipeg, into which the Red River flows, as I have already mentioned. It would be shorter to cross direct by land from the Lake of the Woods to Fort Garry; but it is a most diffi- cult, if not impracticable country, which has never yet, I believe, been fully explored. Professor Hind, writing in 1859, says, “Up to the date of my departure from Red River last year, no communication had been effected in summer time between the settlements and the Lake of the Woods, except in canoes, although every effort was made to pass through the formidable bogs and swamps which inter- vene. This important link in the proposed line of route is still a terra incognita for a short distance.” The other, called the Kaministiquia lOute, is 63 miles longer than that by the Pigeon River, and lies more to the north. It starts from Fort William on Lake Superior, and proceeds up the Dog River to Dog Lake; then up the Kaministiquia River to the Mille Lacs, or Lake of the Thousand Isles, after crossing which, it traverses a rocky country, through a series of winding waters and grassy swamps, until it reaches the Riviere la Seine, which flows into the Rainy Lake. It is difficult to ascertain accurately the number of the Indian population in Rupert’s Land. It has been estimated at about 43,000 souls ; but this is said to be one-fourth too large. Perhaps we may assume them to be between 30,000 and 40,000. They consist meridian 88° 50' west of London. This would pass through Lake Superior to the east of Fort William. 362 THE HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY. [Good Words, May r. 1869. of different tribes — the Ojibways, the Crees, the Blackfeet, the Sioux (pronounced Soos), and the Assiniboines, The animals which are most valuable to them are the buffalo, the horse, and the dog. The Great Slave Lake is the northern limit of the buffaloes : vast herds of them occupy certain well-known and determinate ranges, along which they emigrate at different seasons in search of food. It is said that the sound of their approach can be recognised, “by applying the ear to a badger hole,” fully twenty miles before they arrive, if the weather be calm. Amongst them are often found blind buffaloes, whose eyes have been destroyed by prairie fires ; but they are more wary and difficult to approach than those possessing sight. The Indians subsist on the flesh of the buffalo, and from its skin and sinews they make their tents, clothing, saddles, bow-strings, and dog- harness. Tea with them is becoming a luxury, and the taste for it ought, by every means, to be encouraged as a substitute for spirits. Their heaven is the Happy Hunting Grounds, “ where buffaloes range as thick as rain drops in summer.” The Church Missionary Society undertook a mission to Rupert’s Land in 1822, and in 1857, they had there thirteen stations. The number of clergymen, including the bishop and the chaplain (whose salaries are partly paid by the company), in that year amounted to seventy ; and it was esti- mated that 8,000 or 10,000 Indians were under Christian instruction. A free passage is given by the company to the missionaries ; and, to use the expression of the secretary of the society, “ they have countenanced the labours of the missionaries so far as they have not interfered with their trading occu- pations.” The bishop, Dr. Anderson, in his evidence before the House of Commons, in 1857, said that the missionaries were very devoted and faithful men, and were doing a vast amount of good. Besides these, there were two native Indian clergymen and Ro- man Catholic priests. Sir George Back stated in his evidence before the committee of the House of Commons, in 1857, that when he was in the territory, he saw nothing but the utmost kindness to the Indians and fairness in dealing ; he never knew an Indian turned away without his wants being sup- plied, whether he had furs to give in return or not : and he saw strong instances of great benevolence on the part of the Hudson’s Bay officers. One fact is very creditable to the poor Indians. I have been assured on the best authority that in courts of justice they may always be relied upon to speak the truth. Perhaps this arises not so much from conscientious motives — for the moral princi- ple must be very weak in untutored savages — as from the awe inspired by an idea of the superior intelligence of the white man, and the fear that as he knows everything, he will be able to confound them if they venture to tell a lie. Many of the Christianized Indians have family worship night and morning, and are quick in learning to read and write. The efforts of the company to prevent the intro- duction of that fatal curse which generally fol- lows in thewake of Europeans — I mean the use of spirits — deserves every praise. One of the rules of the fur trade is “ that the Indians be treated with kindness and indulgence, and mild and conciliatory means resorted to, to encourage industry, repress vice, and incul- cate morality ; and that the use of spirituous liquors be gradually discountenanced in those very few districts in which it is yet indispens- able.” It is stated in a letter, addressed by Sir John Pelly, the then governor of the company, to Earl Grey, the Colonial Secretary, in 1850, that the average quantity of spirits annually imported by the company into the whole of the territories at that time under their control, to the east and west of the Rocky Mountains — if distributed equally amongst the persons em- ployed in their service — would amount to less than two table-spoonfuls daily to each man, and this included the supply furnished to the troops stationed at Red River. I need hardly add that the use of spirits as an article of barter for furs is most strictly forbidden. But it is of course very difficult along such a line of frontier, divided from the United States by only an imaginary boundary, to pre- vent altogether the introduction of spirits. An illicit traffic in furs is carried on between the Red River Settlement and Pembina, which is within the American territory ; and the article of exchange chiefly used is spirits, of which the Indians, like all savages, are passionately fond. * There can be little doubt that if the trade in furs were thrown open the fire-water, like a destroying angel, would exterminate the race of the Red Man. Such is the territory which was granted in the year of grace, 1670, by Charles II. to the Hudson’s Bay Company. The charter of incorporation recites, that whereas “ our dear and entirely beloved cousin” Prince Rupert, Count Palatine of the Rhine, Christopher Duke of Albemarle, * It is a curious circumstance, however, that the numerous tribe of the Chipewan Indians in the north is said not to drink spirits, and they,always refuse them when offered. Good Words, May x, 1869. J THE HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY. 363 and other persons therein named, had at their own great costs and charges undertaken an expedition for Hudson’s Bay, in the north- west part of America, for the discovery of a new passage into the South Sea, and for the finding some trade for “furs, minerals, and other considerable commodities,” the king granted that they should be a body cor- porate and politic, by the name of “ the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson’s Bay,” and have a common seal. It then made provision for the government of the company, and gave and granted to it “ the sole trade and commerce of all those seas, straits, bays, rivers, lakes, creeks, and sounds, in whatsoever latitude they shall be, that lie within the entrance of the straits commonly called Hudson’s Straits, together with all the lands and territories upon the countries, coasts, and confines of the seas, bays, lakes, rivers, creeks, and sounds aforesaid, that are not actually pos- sessed or granted to any of our subjects, or possessed by the subjects of any other Christian prince or state, with the fishing of all sorts of fish, whales, sturgeons, and all other royal fishes,” within the said limits, “ and all mines royal, as well discovered as not discovered, of gold, silver, gems, and precious stones.” It next declared that the said land should thenceforth be reckoned and computed as one of our plantations or colonies in America, called “ Rupert’s Land,” and constituted the governor and company and their successors “ the true and absolute lords and proprietors of the same territory,*' saving always the faith, allegiance, and sove- reign dominion due to us, our heirs and successors, as of our manor of East Green- I wich, in our county of Kent, in free and | common socage .... yielding and paying | to us, our heirs and successors for the same | two elks and two black beavers, wheresoever, | and as often as we, our heirs and successors, . shall happen to enter into the said coun- I tries, territories, and regions hereby granted.” | Hitherto the condition has not been found onerous, for no part of the territory has yet I been honoured by a royal visit, nor is it | likely to be so ; which is perhaps fortunate, ! for possibly the elks might not be forth- I coming. The king then empowered the governor and company to make laws and ' * On a case submitted in 1814 to Sir Samuel Romilly, Mr. J Scarlett, Mr. Holroyd, Mr. Cruise, and Mr. Bell, those emi- 1 nent lawyers said : “ We are of opinion that the grant of the j soil contained in the charter is good, and that it will include all the countries the waters of which flow into Hudson’s Bay.” | It is, however, not altogether easy to determine which waters in their course flow towards Hudson’s Bay and which towards the Arctic Sea, as several of the lakes communicate with each other, and have different outlets. ordinances for good government, to impose pains and penalties and punishments for the breach of them, “so always as the said laws, constitutions, orders and ordinances, fines and amerciaments be reasonable, and not contrary or repugnant, but as near as may be agreeable to the laws, statutes, or customs of this our realm.” The charter next granted that the company should have “ the whole, entire, and only trade ” to and from the territory, and to and from “ all havens, bays, creeks, rivers, lakes, and seas into which they shall find entrance or passage by water or land ” out of it ; and that no part of it should be visited, frequented, or haunted by any of the other subjects of the crown “ contrary to the true meaning of these presents, and by virtue of our preroga- tive royal , which we will not have in that behalj argued or brought in question .” The king then prohibited his other subjects from visiting or trading with the territory, unless by license from the governor and company in -writing under their common seal, under pain of his royal indignation, and forfeiture of such goods and merchandise brought into England or any dominions of the crown, and the ships conveying them. The charter also empowered the governor and company to appoint governors and councils of the plantations, forts, factories, colonies, and places of trade within the territory, who were to have power “ to judge all persons belonging to the said governor and company, or that shall live under them, in all causes, whether civil or criminal, according to the laws of this kingdom, and to execute justice accordingly.” And in case any crime should be committed in places “where judicature cannot be executed for want of a governor and councils there,” then the offenders were to be sent to such, other plantation, factory, or fort where there should be a governor and council, or into England, “ as shall be thought most convenient.” The governor and company were also empowered to make peace or war with any prince or people whatsoever “ that are not Christians,” to erect castles, forts, garrisons, colonies, or plantations within the limits of their territory, and to seize and send to England any of the king’s subjects who might sail to Hudson’s Bay or inhabit any of the countries thereby I granted without the leave of the company. And in case any person convicted of an offence by a president and council in the territory should appeal from the sentence, it was to be lawful for the president and council to seize him and carry him home prisoner to 364 THE HUDSON’S England to the said governor and company, “ there to receive such condign punishment as his cause shall require, and the law of the nation shall allow of.” Notwithstanding the stem command of King Charles, that he would not have his prerogative to grant the right of exclusive trade to the company “argued or brought in question,” the impertinent curiosity of lawyers has scanned the charter, and grave doubts have been expressed whether the crown had the power to confer on any of its subjects a monopoly of trade. The same thing had been done in the case of the East India Company, which was incorporated in the year 1600 by a charter of Queen Elizabeth, and when the question was raised at the end of the reign of Charles II., in the case of the East India Company v. Sandys, in the Court of Queen’s Bench, it was held that the grant was good in law. But the reasoning of the judges, headed by Chief Justice Jefferies, who, according to Roger North, “ espoused the matter with great fury,” is more ingenious than sound ; and few lawyers at the present day would be likely to dissent from the opinion of the late Lord Campbell, who says (Life of Lord Jefferies, “ Lives of the Lord Chancel- lors,” vol. iii. p. 581) that the doctrine is “con- trary to our notions on the subject.” I will not argue the question here, and it is really of no practical importance, for the proprietary rights and powers of government conferred by the charter on the company are unassail- able, and it is not likely that a case will occur in which they will think it desirable to chal- lenge the opinion of a court of law upon the subject.* As owners of the territory and lords of the soil, they are entitled to treat all intruders as trespassers. a t . The company adopted the appropriate motto Pro pelle cutem , “Skin for skin,” which happily and wittily expresses the nature of their trade. The Canadians assert that the territory thus granted by King Charles, in 1670, actually then belonged to the crown of France, and had been previously granted by charter in 1623, by Louis XIII., to a com- pany called La Compagnie de Nouvelle France , “ New France ” being one of the names by which Canada was then known. This charter is said to exist in the archives of the Canadian government, but I have not seen a copy of it, nor am I aware that it has ever been published. * In his evidence before the committee of the House of Commons, in 1857, Mr. Ellice said: “ I conceive that charter to give the rights expressed in it ; some of them maybe doubt- | ful. I ought to be able to express a tolerably fair opinion upon this subject, since I have taken the opinion of every lawyer against the company when I was opposed to them, and for the | company since I have been connected with them.” BAY COMPANY. [Good AVords, May 1, 1869. It has been also asserted that by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, a portion only of the shores of the Hudson’s Bay was ceded to England, and that stipulations were made for the protection of the Company of New France. But on referring to the treaty, it will be found that this is a mistake, and that there is in it the fullest recognition of the I title of the Crown of England to the whole of the territory in question. As the matter is of some importance, I will quote the words of the treaty in the original Latin : — “ Dictus Rex Christianissimus sinum et fretum de Hudson una cum omnibus terns, maribas, oris mari- timis, fluviis, locisque, in dicto sinu et freto sitis, et ad eadem spectantibus , nullis sive terrae, sive maris spatiis exceptis, quae subditis Galliae impraesentiarum possessa sunt, regna et reginae Magno Brittannae, pleno jure in perpetuum possidenda, restituet .” And it was provided that the Company of New France, or Societas Quebecensis as it was called, should evacuate the territory with all their property. Moreover, the king of France agreed to indemnify the Hudson’s Bay Com- pany for all damages they had sustained from hostile incursions and depredations of the French — vigente pace — before the war. So that there could not be a clearer acknow- ledgment that France had no claim except that which recent conquest had given her, for she undertook to “restore” whatever part of the territory she had seized, and to make good all losses sustained by the com- pany at the hands of French subjects while the two were at peace.* As might naturally be expected, the com- pany at first confined their operations to the shores of Hudson’s Bay and the northern parts of the territory ; and it seems that they did not actually occupy the valley of the Saskatchewan until the latter end of the last century, nor the valley of the Assiniboine and the Red River until the beginning of the present. In the meantime, they gradually pushed their forts up the rivers — such as the Churchill, the Nelson, the Albany, and the Moose — that flow into Hudson’s Bay. But in the middle of the last century they possessed only five or six forts altogether. In 1748 a petition was presented to a committee of the Privy Council, complaining that the Hudson’s Bay Company had not effectually or * By the ‘Treaty .Commissioners were to be appointed to determine the limits inter dictum sinum de Hudson et loca ad Gallos spectantia ; but if they were appointed, I do not find that any boundary was ever settled. In 1690 an act (2 William, and Mary c. 15) was passed for confirming to the Hudson’s Bay Company all their rights and privileges ; but the act was to be in force only for seven years, and thence to the end of the next session of Parliament; and it has been contended, therefore, that when the act expired the privileges of the company ceased. But at all events they have been expressly recognised by several subsequent statutes. NOBLESSE OBLIGE. Good Words, May i, 1869.] 3^ in earnest searched for a new passage into the South Sea, and had obstructed its discovery by others ; and that since the date of their charter, they had not taken possession of, nor occupied any of, the lands granted to them, nor made any plantation or settlement except four factories and one small trading- house. The petitioners prayed, therefore, that they might be incorporated “ for finding out the said passage,” and that they might have a grant of all the lands they should dis- cover and settle not already occupied and settled by the Hudson’s Bay Company, with the right of exclusive trade therein. The petition was referred by the Privy Council to the Attorney-General, Sir Dudley Ryder, and the Solicitor-General, Sir William Murray, afterwards Lord Mansfield, who, having heard counsel on both sides, reported that the charges were “ either not sufficiently supported in point of fact, or in a great measure accounted for from the nature or circumstances of the case.” In 1749, a committee of the House of Commons was appointed to inquire into the state and condition of the countries adjoin- ing Hudson’s Bay, and the trade carried on there ; and their report contains some curious matter. It appears from it that the servants of the company in Rupert’s Land were not allowed to converse with the Indians, on pain of being whipped and forfeiting their wages ; and one of the witnesses stated that the governor there forbade him to teach an Indian boy, adding that he had a general order from the company that none of the natives should be instructed. He said that there was no clergyman nor divine worship of any kind in the territory. Lake Winnipeg at this time was called Lake Ouinipique, and the Red River, the Little Ouinipique ; and the country there was described as full of beavers. The Indians were said to use no milk from the time they were weaned, and to hate cheese, “ having taken up an opinion that it is dead men’s fat.” The company must have been doing a good trade at this time, for I find that the average value of their exports during the preceding ten years, was about ,£5,000 a-year, and their yearly sales during the same period averaged £"29,000. In the next article on the subject I will continue the history of the company. WILLIAM FORSYTH “NOBLESSE OBLIG E.” gin tffogltslj jifarg of &o-bag. By the AUTHOR OF < CHAPTER XVI.— THE CLOUD DISPERSES. ARTY WOOLER did not need to tell his mother in so many words of his last failure. “Mother,” he simply said, “ I ought to have been a sailor; and if I were one, I should say my lark on shore shows symp- toms of draw- ing to an end.” Mrs.Wooler looked up with an expression of inquiry, but none of surprise. “Was there ever any whisper of Danish CITOYENNE JACQUELINE.” descent at the old farmhouse of Nunton?” Barty went on. “ But it was too far inland to be the fag-end of Danish colonies, I take it. I must be on the tramp again, however. You must not blame me this time.” He knew that she would not blame him, and, in fact, was vexed because she would not irritate him by questions. “ How will your Uncle Clays like it, when they thought you had come home for good?” was her single objection. “ 111 enough, I daresay,” Barty admitted. “ The old men will grumble, but I do not think they will do more. And even if they should, I cannot help it. But come now, mother, you did not mind their grumbling once upon a time ; and when you have had the spirit to rear a restless dog of an artist son, who has only been a cross and a trial to you, I think you oughtn’t to mind it now.” “ Never you mind the cross ; some folk would rather keep their own crosses than take other folks’ crowns, my lad. But I can understand your hints, Barty, and I tell you I was in luck in my marriage, though some 366 NOBLESSE fools said I might have done better, and he might have done better.” “ I should say it was my father who was in luck there, mother,” answered Barty, as he fingered the end of his scarf, without looking up. “ I don’t know for that,” with a toss of the head; “but all the fine young madams in Wellfield were pursing their mouths and air- ing their long necks and their long words for your father. Even that Queen of Sheba, Miss Rowe, though she had a hard-favoured face as ever was seen, kept what she called a ‘ commonplace-book ’ in those days, and that was none of an account-book, but was written pages on pages of his sermons and lectures. Ay, and under the wing of her match-mak- ing aunt, Mrs. Epp, she had to consult him on her difficulties and doubts, forsooth ! and ask him questions, too, the bold piece.” “ But I thought the Queen of Sheba gained her end, mother?” “ It is little you know, then,” Mrs. Wooler answered derisively. “You do not read your Bible, son Barty, or you read it with much skipping. The man answered her, because he could do no less, when she had come so far out of her road to ask him ; but did he not pack the learned madam off again, and wed princess lasses, two or three of them, who put no questions to him — happen shut his wise mouth when he volunteered to make them wiser, but who, for all that, were his own choice, out of strange country parts?” “ I like your commentary,” said Barty, glad to have his own thoughts diverted, and smiling his frank smile. “As for me,” Mrs. Wooler went on, un- heeding his remark, “ I had never cause to hang my head and lollop wi’ my finger in my mouth for my choice, though it was the Lord’s will to take him from me.” That one home-thrust, amended by its pious conclusions, came so pat to the tip of her tongue she could not resist it. “ But there is one thing I would say,” she urged, “ to show you farther Stop ! Barty, stop ! is that a ball or a bat among the trees ? ” she went off from the point, star- ing out of the window. “ Oh, never mind that, mother,” he said, trying to draw her away. “But I will mind, for the young rascal’s good as well as my own,” she rejoined. “But, you know, boys will be boys,” answered Barty; “they only enjoy the fun as they pass.” “ They make a game at it, do they?” Mrs. W ooler urged energetically ; “ and you would wink at their game ? But I’ll make a game OBLIGE. [Gocd Words, May x, 1869, of bringing them to order. Me and Becky are worth the whole police in the place. Barty,” she went on in a calmer tone, “ you know I’m not a miser-woman, with hooked fingers itching for gold ; yet gold is Merlin’s wand, if it isn’t Moses’s rod. Your Uncle Clays’ fortune being your lawful inheritance, is there a lass in the country, high or low, good or ill, worth the risk you’re fain to run of having to renounce what other men would higgle, and cheat, and lie away their very lives for?” “ Lass or no lass,” Barty quickly negatived his mother’s remark, “ a man’s peace of mind is worth any inheritance, and what is but a trifle for one man to carry may break an- other’s back.” She pressed him no farther. But when he was gone she clasped her fingers together tightly, as she sat watching the boys, and indulged her own stern thoughts. “ That Paston tribe,” she soliloquized, “ is the greatest gang of thieves that have not seen Tyburn. They stole the fruit of my lad’s brains when his fame was to win ; now they have wiled him over once more, and stolen his man’s heart from him. With his strapping body — for he takes after his mother in his make — he is over-true to escape being beguiled by a grand brought-up travelled lass like Phoebe Paston — Lady Dorothy’s play- thing and leaving. No man-body will serve this young brown-faced madam, in whose mouth butter will not melt, but the future Earl himself. And when that match comes to pass, the lift will be ready to fall. Nay, it is pride will have a fall.” Mrs. Wooler’s musings were interrupted at this point by a new object of provocation com- ing within sight. “ Becky,” she screamed, “ I say, Becky, yonder is a school-bag on the tree. Bring it in, and go this minute with my compliments to Mr. Hardy, at the school — Mrs. Wooler’s compliments, and she will thank him to flog any boy who comes with- out his bag and books, for they are hanging high and dry to the cracking of her labur- nums. At the same time, fetch in the bag and books, Becky, and take care you don’t mislay them. I may find an old book of Mr. Barty’s to put in the bag; for, if I’m not mistaken, they belong to that clever son of Crowe, the cripple cobbler, who can ill afford to buy books for his ne’er-do-wells.” Between Barty’s judgments and his mother’s there was the same difference that there is be- tween manhood and age — between a narrow, uncultivated woman’s nature and abroad man’s nature, tilled and fertilised, and bearing die fruits of study and wide intercourse with his Good Words, May i, 1S69.], NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 3^7 fellows. In proof of this difference, Barty thought twice over his project of departure. “ I shall stay over the race-week, mother,” he announced,; “ I have not seen the grand Wellfield festivities since I was an urchin. So you will have your son to be your escort to the course. You have always made a point of attending and supporting the races, because of my grandfather’s Dobbin, and because you are no mean judge of horse-flesh.” “Indeed, son Barty, I may confess to knowing something of a horse’s good points. Why shouldn’t I, brought up as I was amongst them? ” “ Very well, mother; when I make up my stud, I shall depend upon your help. What should a sign-painter know of horses, any more than counter-leapers like the Clays, although they have set up an out-of-date lan- dau, with a pair of spanking greys ? I should not wonder though the old fellows went a- wooing in company, late in the day as it is, just to cut me out of their wealth. If it were for their happiness, poor, dry, crusty old souls, I am sure you and I would not grudge it — eh, mother? We have not lived to stand in dead men’s shoes only. A confirmed vagabond, who thinks of confessing himself a nomad, making all the settlements he ever will attempt Bokhara ways — what has he to do with the sovereignty of Folksbridge ?” Barty had deliberated with himself pri- vately, and, after many pipes of all nations, arrived at the conclusion that it would not be fair to Paston if he were to run off at once. “ I certainly should not like Caleb or any one to think that I bear them malice. Poor old Caleb did his best for me, and it is in his throat that the early wrong has stuck all the time. Phoebe might have done her spiriting more gently ; but she is young and not used to the business, and, fool that I was, I forced it upon her when she was at the height of her pet, and quivering all over with nervousness. I wish she were rid of the philandering young painter-peer. He will not likely stay at Brockcotes beyond the race-week, or if so, he will be engaged with company in the house. Therefore, I shall remain, and I hope the devil may not thank me for it.” In the meantime, Phoebe saw nothing more of Barty except at a respectful distance. Nor did she hear more of his wishes, except a hollow echo of them in the renewed and des- perate devotion with which her father went back to his painting-room, and from dawn to sunset wrestled with his old antagonists on his own field of art. But it was not on the “ Reconciliation of Jacob and Esau” that he was now engaged. Phoebe noticed that he had turned its face to the wall, where it rested — its canvas back offering her a tacit reproach. In other respects, the little thunder- cloud of girlish trouble which had gathered and gloomed over Phoebe’s horizon had broken, and was passing away. CHAPTER XVII. AN UNEXPECTED PLEASURE. The race-week at Wellfield came oppor- tunely for one or two persons. The large party assembled at Brockcotes afforded a sufficient pretext for the slackening of Lord Wriothesley’s attendance in Wooers’ Alley; while the outside excitement covered the mortification of Barty Wooler’s withdrawal, and stifled the clamour with which that un- looked-for turn of affairs might, at another time, have been followed. Phoebe Paston’s refusing to have anything to say to the Clays’ heir, on the one hand, and being kept away from Lord Exmoor’s heir on the other, would have formed such a unique combination of circumstances as Wellfield at an ordinary time could scarcely have been cognisant of and retain its equanimity. Lord Wriothesley had offered a little pas- sive resistance to the mandate which had gone forth. He made a few wistful inquiries whether he were in the way, evidently intend- ing them to be replied to in the negative; and even fell upon sundry ruses to establish a necessity and a precedent for his presence. At last he quietly acquiesced in the embargo laid on his visits to Wooers’ Alley, and reaped his reward by retaining the liberty of paying calls at discreet intervals. Phoebe professed great indifference on the subject. Lord Wriothesley was very clever and good- humoured, like his sister; but Phoebe was still able to mount her youthful high horse, and to regard the bestowal of his company on her family as a serious waste of time to both. The races this year were expected to be particularly good, from the fact of their being patronised by the Marquis of Fairchester, Lord Exmoor’s intended son-in-law. That the event was in anticipation of the greater gala of the Marquis’s marriage with Lady Dorothea was a circumstance, too, which had its effect. Additional flocks of county gentry, with numbers of the remoter allies and adherents of Lord Fairchester, were thus attracted to Wellfield. Phoebe was anxious to see Lord Fairchester, and to judge for herself whether his personal qualities were on a level with his titles and estates, so as to render him a fit match for Lady Dorothea. So anxious was she, that NOBLESSE OBLIGE. ;6S [Good Words, May i, 1869. ! she felt her state of suspense and anxiety must ! be second only to that of Lady Dorothea, who had seen very little of her bridegroom since the two were children. | It was the exciting eve of the race-week. 1 The grand-stand was in process of erection 1 on the course beyond the town. Strangers ; were arriving from all quarters. Phoebe was j j therefore surprised at Lady Dorothea’s escap- | ! ing from Brockcotes and walking in to drink a five-o’clock cup of tea in Wooers’ Alley. “ There are hosts of people coming this j very day to dinner, and to stay for the week. Indeed, our September and October party is | on the point of being completed in the first relay, so many guns balanced by so many cues at billiards and croquet-mallets. Youf cousin, Mr. Hall, does not count on either side, Phoebe, for he fires before his covey ' | rises, and hits out his own ball with his own 1 cue. He is a great deal too much determined to be Caesar or nobody, that young man.” “ I have no doubt your Ladyship is right there,” said Phoebe. “ And this is my last little bit of leisure, Phoebe,” her Ladyship continued ; “I shall Page 372. not have another moment I can call my own, and do not know when I may be here again. It is rather weary work, after all, Phoebe ; and, if you will excuse my saying it, reminds me of the old adage, ‘ Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.’ ” Suiting the action to the word, Lady Dorothea leant back an ex- hausted little head on a cushion, and moved it from side to side with a faint protest. Lady Dorothea was not often heard to murmur at the obligations she took upon her. But she was at this moment labouring under an excess and culmination of worry. The principal members of the Blount family were to arrive at Brockcotes that afternoon, headed, of course, by Lord Fairchester. By a malignant fate Lady Dorothea had missed meeting the Marquis till the decisive moment, in spite of her season and a half in town, and her parties at country-houses. Her clearest recollection of Lord Fairchester was as a prematurely heavy little lord, mingling with other little lords and ladies in the occasional fairy extra- vaganzas of juvenile parties. Nevertheless, as the marriage of this little lord and little lady, who had now reached years of discretion, was an exceedingly desirable arrangement for the great houses of Blount and Latimer, Good Words, 1 t Ma y *> 1869 NOBLESSE OBLIGE.’ NOBLESSE OBLIGE. Good Words, May i, 1869.J it was so far a fixed affair, which would pro- bably take place before the sitting of Parlia- ment. It was not in woman to remain calm and undisturbed under such circumstances. Phoebe hailed the shade of agitation and timidity in her godmother as being in the last degree becoming — as being, in fact, the finishing touch, without which Lady Dorothea might not have been less a fine lady, but certainly less a woman. Black and white were Lady Dorothea’s natural colours — the rich black and white of the swallow, or the spots on minever. The prevailing fashion had even carried the black and the white into her dress. It consisted of soft white muslin and black velvet, and of floating black lace on a black hat with a white feather. This was not so much the result of artists’ work as woman’s simple witchery. But the element of agitation had fought the pearl-white cheek and conquered it, imparting the faint maiden blush which it wore only in the glow and sparkle of even- ing and its company — token sufficient that the flame within the alabaster vase was burn- ing high. To Phoebe’s delight, she thought she had never seen Lady Dorothea look half so lovely and charming. But Lady Dorothea was far from content with herself ; anything like tremour was very foreign to her, and, accord- ing to her code, unsuitable. “ I don’t know what has come over me,” her Ladyship said confidentially to Phoebe, as she sat sipping her tea after Mrs. Paston had left the two together, not caring, save by proxy, to have the honour of an Earl’s daughter’s regard. “ I have as much need of something to steady my nerves as a washer- woman, Phoebe, and I don’t conceal from you that it is about Fairchester. I have been thinking all the morning how nice it would be to be — not a milkmaid, for it strikes me milkmaids stumble on their fate in a manner not unlike our own — but a girl of the middle- class, like you and your cousins the Halls. How pleasant it would be to form acquaint- ances naturally, consulting your own indi- vidual taste, and to go on, with the acquaint- ance ripening into friendship, and by slow degrees into something else !” “ I am afraid girls of every class and grade have their own difficulties and griefs,” said Phoebe, wistfully, more to fill up a pause than anything else. # “ No doubt, my dear child ; but there are difficulties and difficulties, as our French neighbours express it. I can remember, X— 25 369 when I was quite a baby, hearing Harris solemnly informing her acquaintances that I was 4 bringing-up ’ for my Lord Fairchester ; but it is not so pleasant, Phoebe, when one is brought up to the stake.” Lady Dorothea was guilty of inconsistency, like the rest of the world. In her unwonted mood she had forgotten how slightingly she had spoken of the accidents of middle-class marriages on that first day Phoebe had gone up to Brockcotes after her return from Folks- bridge ; and how, on the same occasion, she had dwelt with the most unquestioning worldliness on certain advantages possessed by Barty Wooler — on his being a painter, Mr. Paston’s old friend, and having the solid inheritance of the Clays in store. But though Lady Dorothea had forgotten all this, Phoebe had not. “ My hand is shaking,” cried Lady Doro- thea, in extreme vexation and disgust. “ I declare the next thing will be that I shall drop through the floor when we meet in the drawing-room ; and there will be so many eyes on us. Oh dear!” sighed Lady Doro- thea, as she broke off in a sudden exaspera- tion ; “ you won’t mind my saying it, Phoebe^ since Mr. Hall is our esteemed and invited guest, and we are not likely to forget that we are his obliged hosts, but isn’t it hard to have a press-man here just now ? Why ! Mr. Hall may condescend to write a fashionable novel some day, and may now be taking notes of my costume and conduct to fill an odd chapter. We are never free from our enemies. They hover over us like lovers, and harass us like avenging • furies. I should be the last person to deny that we owe a duty to the public ; but is it not enough to have reporters at our banquets, our battles, our Parliaments, our operas ? Must we also carry them into our family meetings and our withdrawing- rooms?” Phoebe could not help laughing at this spurt at Frank Hall. She said she was sure he would not write a fashionable novel, or a novel of any kind for that matter, since there was no sentiment in his composition. Then she tried to comfort Lady Dorothea by the assurance that she had heard Lord Fair- chester was sensible and amiable ; and that her Ladyship might therefore depend on his doing all that was considerate and kind to support her in the trying position in which she was placed. “ Of course he is good,” Lady Dorothea assented, a little impatiently, “ or the affair would not have been thought of by a good father like the Earl. I. don’t deny that the NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 37° [Good Words, May 1869. Blounts, taking them all in all, have had but indifferent characters, except in the matter of contriving to extend their lands ; still they have not been the very worst of us. They have never committed murder that I have heard of, or turned Turks, or been convicted of robbery, apart from faroe tables and rouge et noir banks. But they have contracted an awkward habit of being expelled from their colleges, and they have once or twice stood a court-martial, which makes one quake for the family reputation when one remembers that Mr. Blount is still in the navy. But all that is past, we trust, and the family are going to make an effort to gain their proper place in the country. The late Countess, a Spencer, w r as an excellent woman. Still, I must con- fess that her son seems to have monopolized her valuable qualities. Lady Penelope and Lady Louisa are headstrong, silly girls. As for Mr. Blount, who is Fairchester’s heir- presumptive, I am afraid he is a desperately mauvais sujet. But he must be borne with ; for it is everybody’s duty to bear with and provide for his or her black sheep.” Lady Dorothea, though high-minded, was tender of the black-sheep of her class. She ignored them when she could, and when she could not, she spoke of them as unlucky and blank supernumeraries, but not as outcasts from their social rank. “You see,” she went on, “it is no longer as in the days when gentlemen had the dangerous capacity for uniting manly ambi- tion with love of pleasure. Fairchester’s grandfather and great-grandfather were four- bottle men, and libertines of the second- water at least. But they were also mighty hunters and zealous place-men. They were never found ^straying from their peers’ benches. They neither missed the division at five o’clock the one morning, nor failed to fill their saddles at the same hour down at their own country-seats the next/’ “You draw a striking picture of the old race, Lady Dorothea, and you are not afraid to throw in the dark shadow in the back- ground,” observed Phoebe. “ But it’s a true picture, Phoebe,” her Lady- ship went on. “ The only thing the Blounts were easy in was as to their own morals and those of their neighbours. Their laxity, which was excessively shocking, left them with the greatest good nature and the finest manners in the world. Do you know, Phoebe, that I think the late Lord Charlton, considerably refined from their grossness, was the very last of the great old men of quality, precisely as the Earl of Warwick was the last of the barons ? But about poor Mr. Blount : he has nothing of his forefathers in him, save their tainted addiction to riotous living. He has none of the Stanhope wit, and is more: like the ill-fated Herveys.” “ But you are not going to marry Mr. Blount, Lady Dorothea,” suggested Phoebe. “God forbid, Phoebe!” her Ladyship ex- claimed, with hasty emphasis. “ That could not have been thought of for a moment in our family, not even though Lord Fairchester had made up his mind never to marry. But he has determined to follow his mother’s advice, and settle before he is thirty. His estates — and you know the lands included in the Ford-in-the-Marsh property fill one little county with their trunk, and extend their limbs into three others — will afford him prac- tice in business ; for, of course, he is a great trader, as well as a landholder. His filling the chair at county meetings may accustom him to public speaking, in anticipation of his taking office under Wriothesley, if he should ever be Prime Minister. Dear ! the men only whisper it as yet, and they would be fit to take off my head if they knew of our talking over these matters ; so take care and keep state secrets, Phoebe. But who can say that such is not Fairchester’s and Wriothes- le/s fit avocation?” Phoebe ventured to break the impressed silence in which she sat by remarking — “ You remember, Lady Dorothea, how often I have agreed with you as to Lord Wriothes- ley’s cleverness ? Of course I don’t know so much about Lord Fairchester.” “Well, Lord Fairchester’s weak point is his public speaking,” Lady Dorothea con- fessed candidly; “his debating-society has not done much for him, although nobody denies that he has his mother’s judgment, and she once redeemed the Sans Pared estate when his mad uncle had put it in jeo- pardy. But as the work has been given Fair- chester to do, I suppose he can wait till his tongue is loosed and he can, metaphorically, speak plain, and then go forward and take his proper post among his peers. Even if he cannot be such a public speaker as to fit him for leader, his immense stake will constitute him a Fin MacCoul of a follower.” “ I think, Lady Dorothea, that it must be a great lot to be such a man’s wife,” said Phoebe. “Yes, my child; it is a great lot,” Lady Dorothea admitted, frankly, with her eyes sparkling and her hands clasped in her lap ; “ to be the means of aiding him in breaking his bonds, and at last fulfilling the pledges Good Words, May i, 1869.] NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 37^ so largely forfeited by his ancestors, and, with the aid of a powerful and honourable con- nection, to help to rescue a great family from the slough in which it has been content to wallow for centuries.” “Yes, it is a great lot,” repeated Phoebe, with bated breath, as thought and enthu- siasm struggled in her mind. Lady Dorothea’s intense matter-of-factness had crystallized into something like a vein of poetry at once homely and heroic, as indeed is the nature of all concentration of idea and purpose. Phoebe Paston looked at her friend in admiration, but not without a species of trouble at the ungirlish sacrifice which Lady Dorothea was contemplating. It was plain she could not make the offering without pain and shrinking. “ As if I were the first bride of Brockcotes who has had her burden to bear,” her Lady- ship exclaimed, impetuously, after a pause, taking herself sharply to task. “ I could give you legends to the contrary, fit subjects for a painter’s daughter — I must not say a painter’s mistress now , Phoebe.” Phoebe winced a little, but as she said nothing, Lady Dorothea went on — “ There was Joan Latimer, married at fifteen to Lord Scrope, who was forced to have the knot tied at once, that he might make sure of her dower lands, though it was but three days- before he was to embark for the siege of Orleans, where he was slain by a shot from a French culverin. There, now, isn’t that something for a painter?” “ It is something for poet as well as painter, in my opinion, Lady Dorothea,” said Phoebe. “Yes, something for a poet, too, though the main interest is pictorial, as one might say. But, to my mind, there was not so much pictorial as pathetic in the case of that Elizabeth, believed to be the great heiress of Earl Evelyn — the same Lady Elizabeth whose portrait in a white hood hangs over the cedar door in the blue bed-room, which her ghost is said to haunt, as if it had not had enough of earth ! But we don’t believe in ghosts. She was only Earl Evelyn’s heiress, till his son Earl Geoffrey was born late in the family. My poor, far-away Aunt Elizabeth had the small-pox the same year, and, being marred alike in fortune and in face, her marriage with one of the sensual, proud Somersets went on notwithstanding, although he never looked on his wife’s scarred face after their miserable marriage, until he had satisfied himself that it lay, without deception, in the coffin. I think, if I consulted my own feel- ings, I should not marry at all.” “ But, Lady Dorothea, did you not say a moment ago that you were just like other girls ?” “Yes, but that was with reference to another thing, you know. It seems to me that I am cut out for an independent, single life. The living woman I envy is Miss Burdett Coutts. We have some old letters from Anne Pitt, Chatham’s sister, and Fanny Pelham, the Duke of Newcastle’s daughter (who both died unmarried), to their sprightly contemporary, Lady Dolly Latimer. And you have no notion how enjoyable these letters read, although you must make abey- ance for the coarseness of the age. Only, Phoebe, Anne Pitt had three pensions, and Fanny Pelham had not only her share of the great Newcastle spoils, but also a portion of her mother’s savings as housekeeper at Ken- sington and Windsor. I declare, Phoebe,” Lady Dorothea insisted, as she put down her cup and saucer in her earnestness, “ I think these offices ought not to have been abolished, and nothing left for us but genteel pauper apartments in Llampton Court. No one can say that I would encourage sinecures. But when you consider what is required of us, I think the means should be provided for maintaining our position in more ways than one. It would not matter to me, because, as an only daughter, it is incumbent on me to marry, and to extend the family con- nection, and the first thing that we are made for is to fulfil our immediate obligations.” Phoebe said nothing to this, because she felt a little conscience-stricken. Some un- defined gain to her father and to art had been contemplated in the prospect of a simple girl like her listening to Barty Wooler; and she had certainly heard of Andrea Mantegna wedding the sister of the Be'llini, and of the widening of schools, and the great achievements, which were the results of that auspicious union. But she had not been able to fully enter into such reasons, far less to allow them to weigh with her for a single moment in her decision. Lady Dorothea proceeded with her lecture more at ease. “ If Wriothesley should have a large family of daughters, I do trust that the old provision will be revived for them, so that they need not all marry or starve upon a pittance. Don’t you see in the newspapers, | child, how spinster daughters of peers come to grief, become bankrupt, and are the prey | of dishonest foreigners? They run into all manner of folly, I grant you ; but this is not 2^2 NOBLESSE OBLIGE. [GoodWords, May i, 1869. so much from the bad blood in them, as because of the desperation to which they are driven. Be thankful that girls like you can work, however against the grain it may be, and however ill it may be to get the work. You are not forced to become hangers-on of some reigning earl and countess, perhaps a selfish younger brother and a supercilious chit. The peer’s daughter ekes out her living by going the round of her more fortunate friends, living a month at this castle, and six weeks at that lodge. She is shown into the draughty bed-room, and set down in the worst seat at table. And not only that, she is soured and slandered ; and if it were not that we, as a class, are, above all, faithful to ourselves, she would be shaken off and thrust out.” “ I really think you are beginning to put too much shadow into your pictures of your class,” said Phoebe. “ Now, now, my child,” her Ladyship went on, “ I have reconciled myself to my oppres- sively splendid lot by contemplating the dreary desolation of the opposite side of the question, and, you will acknowledge, that is not so unwise a process. I have no turn for dreary desolation, and I declare that, with any wit I have, I cannot see a variety of escapes for a girl who is not approachable and susceptible. I shall go while the im- pression is fresh upon me, and meet my Lord for whom I am destined, with the coolness of a martyr, and without much will either of his or mine. If you can walk with me to the end of the Wooers’ Alley without any incon- venience,” Lady Dorothea ended, with a clinging to Phoebe which was a slight depar- ture from the coolness of a martyr, “ I should like it very much, as it may be the last occa- sion for ever so long.” “ I will go with you as long and as far as you will let me, Lady Dorothea,” Phoebe answered fervently. “ But if it is to keep Mrs. Paston from her tea-table, or Mr. Paston from his painting- room, you must not think of it. I left Tommy Perry -with the Countess’s ponies in the High Street ; because you see I did not have a mind to solve all difficulties by break- ing my neck, as well as the ponies’ knees, driving up and down the staircase of Wooers’ Alley. I stole a march upon Chetwynd Dugdale and Bob Bertie, who both came yesterday, and who are now out with Wriothesley trying his new drag round by the ^■°at gateway. I did want to see you, and h° w innocent and eager and happy you ie md have you all to myself for once again, Phoebe.” Her Ladyship wound up with another pressure of Phoebe’s hand. Lady Dorothea stepped along with well- planted steps, not picking them, nor yet making false ones. In her progress through Wooers’ Alley, she excited the never-failing interest which a bird of another hemisphere, alighting and sunning its rich snowy down and glossy raven plumage among the common silver-weed and sorrel of the wayside, never fails to inspire in ordinary birds. Such cus- tomary notice Lady Dorothea received with the unconsciousness of a queen. She had still a warning to give Phoebe. “You are to have the Edgecumbes with you this year as usual,” remarked her Lady- ship. “ Yes, I understand so,” said Phoebe. “ Mrs. Edgecumbe, poor old soul, has had her troubles,” whispered her Ladyship, “ and she lived in an evil day. She comes out with old experiences sometimes, I daresay without exactly thinking what she is saying. Only, a girl like you had better not hear them: don’t let her tell you too many of her stories, Phoebe.” “ Oh, I don’t mind what she says ; and sometimes I think of other things while she is speaking about men and women and things that I have no knowledge of.” “ That is right, Phoebe ; and be sure that you don’t let the old squire go leering at you when he returns from the ordinary. He means no harm either, I believe : it is no more than an abominable old habit with him ; but I don’t like his looks at these times. However, I am wasting my words. Your father and mother, and another person more nearly concerned, will look after you.” The couple reached the pony carriage, but Lady Dorothea’s confidences were not yet exhausted ; so, holding Phoebe’* hand in hers, she said— “Good-bye, dear. You have comforted me, and done me a world of good, by just doing what not one person in a thousand can do effectually — -letting me say my say, and listening with all your heart. But I guess what you want to hear more about, and I will tell you, though it irks me somehow to speak of it, and I am not sure whether it is not an indelicacy to mention it prematurely. Lord Fairchester will drive mamma and me to the course to-morrow as a matter of etiquette, so be there in time to catch the first glimpse of him. He is not to show in silk, as Wriothes- ley does in the last race but one; he leaves that to Mr. Blount and the other young bache- lors. But he will certainly drive mamma and Good Words, May i, 1869.] NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 373 me. I could get you a place on the grand- stand ; but, believe me, it is a vast deal better for you below. It would be all exaltation, stiffness, and vanity to you up yonder. How- ever, if you would care to experiment as to what it is to be a great lady, and to be able to note down the newest fashions for Mrs. Paston’s delectation, telegraph to me through Mr. Hall at any time, and I shall give him carte blanche to fetch and accommodate you.” “ You are very good, Lady Dorothea ; but I had rather not,” declared Phoebe. “ I should be as much out of place there as you would be with the townspeople.” “ I must say I agree with you, Phoebe ; you are a great d’eal too sensible not to see what is best. If you tried the stand once, you would not do it a second time.” And here her Ladyship stepped into the carriage, and drove off with a little wave of the hand. CHAPTER XVIII. — WELLFIELD IN ITS GLORY. Wellfield was at last in such glory as Cinderella was in after the fairy had trans- ported her to the Prince’s ball. One would scarce have known the little dependent town, when private carriages, smart grooms with riding-horses, and groups of county paladins, were for ever stopping the way. It was a season looked forward to alike by the young squire, bent on running his cherished, pad- docked three-year-old, in fond trial for the further honours of the Derby Day and the Oaks ; by the young aristocratic matron, with her esprit de corps and esprit de famille , set upon filling her country-house with good partners and eligible partis for her unmarried sisters and girl friends ; by smock-frocked Hodge, who had bought his last flaming vest and flying neck-tie at the fair with an eye to “ reace-toime,” in which his soul still delighted as the pastime of the year, when his simple Sukey or Sally,, who had dreamt night after night of the race-week, would be dazzled by his smart toggery. Of course, the Wellfield races were only a mild version and small abridged edition of the great races. Indeed, they were almost a private institution of the Exmoor family, maintained by them for the improvement of horse-flesh and horsemanship, and, perhaps, somewhat like the gladiator shows of old Rome, to keep the people in good humour. They were a healthy primitive institution, running a little, of course, into the narrow byway of patronage and partisanship, only, however, to keep the more clear of the flood-gates of riot and excess. But it is due to their patriarchal character to record, that they were in a great measure free from the vices of race- weeks and race-courses. Lord Exmoor used all his influence to confine the Wellfield races to their original intention. The result was, that, though eminently respectable, they would have proved slightly tame dowager races to highly-seasoned palates. But they were sources of simple enjoyment and pride to their noble promoter, and of solid ad- vantage and pleasurable excitement to the Wellfield townsmen, with the speciality that few people connected with them suffered from . a bad taste in their mouths for weeks or even months afterwards. As to sport, the Well- field races bore about the same relation to the Chester week, the Epsom, the Doncaster, or the Newmarket, as an old-fashioned, dis- creet carpet-dance does to a huge heteroge- neous public ball. In the exigency of the inroad of company, Brockcotes and the neighbouring country- houses were literally filled from top to bottom. The Exmoor Arms and the Wriothesley Branch Llotel were likewise crammed. Na- turally enough, the applicants for bed and board did not have recourse to the Temperance Hotel till every other refuge failed them ; and only the bona fide working-men, and indeed ; not very many of them, quartered themselves in the Working Man’s Rights’ Tavern, which uttered its small plucky protest against the tyrannous order of nobles, and dragged out a semi-socialist, semi-chartist, but languishing and spasmodic life, which would have col- lapsed entirely ere this had it not been in- debted once and again to the secret forbear- ance and aid of Lord Exmoor. The private houses of the town were pressed into the service. The best families in Well- field opened their doors on the plea of oblig- ing Lord Exmoor, while they did not repu- diate the liberal pecuniary douceur for their hospitalities. Elderly spinsters like Miss Rowe were thus enabled to indulge without inconvenience in additional kettledrums far the rest of the year ; while large families like the Medlars could afford late sea-side trips and new campaigns in the wide, wealthy field of Folksbridge, and in the wider, wealthier field of London during the winter and the spring. Even people who no longer needed an addition to their incomes, like Mrs. Wooler and Mr. Mossman, did not like to feel stuck- up and unsocial. So they “ let ” their houses to be neighbour-like. All were rewarded by a little high-life experience, both above and below stairs, on which they could draw till 374 NOBLESSE they got a fresh stock next race-time, and which completely superseded and cast into the shade such old sources as those of Miss Rowe with her naval and military autho- rities. Thus, although the people of Wellfield were compressed into back-parlours and attic bed- rooms for six days to admit of accommodating the distinguished strangers, the compression was so universal, and was so magnanimously borne, that it became like the old squeeze at the play and the race-ball — one of the racy, informal charms of the gaiety. On the eve of the Wellfield races the townsmen and their families were quite pre- pared for their full bit of pleasure, and, in the meantime, feasted their eyes and ears on the nicest tit-bits of aristocratic gossip. Mr. Dick Vernon and Miss Dugdale had been seen riding alone together, like brother and sister ; and she was not even his cousin as she was Lord Wriothesley’s ; besides she was spoken of for the last, in the shade and retirement of the Brockcotes Mall, before breakfast. Young Lady Lucy Ingram had positively gone back to Miss Rowe’s in the sulks that morning, and would not enter her carriage, after she had put her foot on the step, because of the smell of cigars, Mr. Ingram having taken it upon him to shut himself up in it and smoke as he returned alone from dining at Brockcotes the evening before. Old Mr. Edgecumbe had swallowed three raw eggs to his coffee, after Mrs. Paston had taken care to provide him with a sweet pigeon-pie and a pair of beauties of cutlets. Phoebe enjoyed the commotion immensely, perhaps all the more because of her girl’s trouble just past, although even this brilliant exceptional life had its rubs for her. Barty Wooler and his loss might sit lightly on her conscience, but Mrs. Paston, though she en- joyed the race-week in her own way, was even more plaintively helpless than usual, and more impressed with her responsibility in having to answer for two persons with minds of their own, and with odd ways. But, notwithstanding this impression of her mother’s, Phoebe, at least consistently, pro- tested that she was exactly like other people. Mr. Paston, who hated bustle and excitement although he loved spectacles, was out of spirits and out of looks, and sometimes his appear- ance struck Phoebe reproachfully in the midst of her inexperience and light-heartedness. By his looks and absent ways, he forced her to think, with a pang, that she, who was his Phoebe, his friend and pet, had thwarted and OBLIGE. [Good Words. May i, 1869. vexed him, however inadvertently and inevi- tably on her part. Phoebe was foolish enough to have a little regret that her family were to have no more novel and interesting guests than Mr. and Mrs. Edgecumbe, of Appleby, who had stayed in Wooers’ Alley for the races almost ever since Phoebe could remember. And this, notwithstanding that the Edgecumbes had been very generous and kind to her, so long as she had been a child, in gifts of flowers and fruit, in coral necklaces and turquoise lockets ; though, it must be confessed, they were not immaculate in other respects, but had been rather a sad couple in their young days, and only passed muster now because of rank and age wiping out follies. Phoebe would have liked that they should have had young Lady Lucy Ingram, the last married county lady, who had come to St. Basils in bridal white silk, and even now wore no wrap more sombre than ermine ; or, when gentlemen preponderated, that they should have had some of Lord Wriothesley’s friends, who would swear less, and drink less, than Mr. Edgecumbe; who would wear delicate French-grey, and picturesque heather-brown morning coats, instead of Mr. Edgecumbe’s faded and battered tweed frock-coat, like nothing in the world so much as a singed sheep-skin ; and who would be gay and gal- lant, with a polite reserve, where Mr. Edge- cumbe was either glum, or, without meaning offence, boisterously free. But although Lord Wriothesley had lots of friends dropping in, for the purpose of killing two dogs with one bone, — by attending the Wellfield races (which might taste a little like cheese-curd), and shooting in the Brock- cotes preserves, about which there could not be two opinions, — he did not bring his friends near Wooers’ Alley, although he had to promenade Wellfield in search of a lodging, with waifs and strays for whom he could not find the form of a resting-place in the loftiest bachelor’s retreat at Brockcotes, and that within five minutes of the first dress- ing-bell. He rather worked upon the fidelity and humanity of Mr. Medlar to allow mat- tresses, mirrors, and basins to encumber the very sacred precincts of the bank, morning and evening, for the first three days. It was not that Lord Wriothesley was resentful at having been gently warned off from the painter’s quarters. Nor did he seem to conclude that the Pastons had no sympathy with aristocratic jockeys. So far from that, he came out of the cigar-shop in the Lligh Street, and stopped Phoebe for Good Words, May i, 1869. J NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 375 three minutes to tell her that in one race he was going to show in silk himself, just to support the jockeys. “Aren’t we right, Miss Paston?” said his Lordship, quite frankly/ “ The Countess does not object. She is to wait till the last sweep- stakes but one to-morrow, for the purpose of seeing her son beaten. Lady Dorothea is to be there, having a notion that races are patriotic and political, like the Olympic Games. She holds that it is worth a man’s while to be a winner, even on the Wellfield course. Remember, Miss Paston, that it is the last sweepstakes but one to-morrow, and that my colours are white and coral, like your jacket and studs.” Still Lord Wriothesley did not humour Phoebe’s girlish hankering for the mere acci- dental association with spirited magnificent race-goers who might frequent Wooers’ Alley. At least he was not tempted by any levity of spirit, or any craving for confirmation of his taste, to transfer Lord Dacre, Bob Bertie, Dick Vernon, Mr. Edmund Blount, or any man save Frank Hall, from the highly-culti- vated artificial pai'terres of Brockcotes to the comparatively virgin soil of Wooers’ Alley. Phoebe did not always know what to make of Mrs. Edgecumbe. She would have the girl in to talk to her when she was by herself, for Mrs. Edgecumbe had a great dislike to getting low. To keep herself from getting low was one of the great objects' of her life, and the public held that she was remarkably successful in this. She would be very con- descending and indulgent to Phoebe on these occasions, but, as Lady Dorothea had said, she occasionally let out strange experiences, which it distressed and scared a young girl to hear. “ Phoebe Paston,” Mrs. Edgecumbe would say, “ I like you because you have an idea in your head. One can see it in your eye, and a very good eye it is, child, if you only knew how to use it.” At this, Phoebe would colour and turn away her head, but this would only provoke Mrs. Edgecumbe to a stronger assertion of her opinion. “ Yes, Phoebe Paston, I have known eyes not half so good as yours draw down showers of diamonds and pearls — real jewels, mind you — as grand as those in the Devonshire tiara, or the Brockcotes necklace they speak so much of. But I must confess to you I don’t know that they made their possessor much richer in the long run. I have heard they all turned to pebbles and slate stones on the green doth. You see she was a French dancer, and she was as fond of play as your cat is of fish. I knew her when she was a friend of Lord Dacre’s father, and he was very soft and sweet upon her. We used to have merry parties all together at Richmond, not very proper, but nobody went in so much for propriety in those days — how could we, when Mrs. Fitzherbert was received -by the court at Brighton, and Lady Conyngham went everywhere ? There was my old man Edgecumbe too, who was not my old man then, for the Dean’s sister had not divorced him yet, and Chin Bagot, my first husband, was not dead, — everybody called him Chin, and I don’t know how he could take it amiss, for his chin, though it was ever so large and knotty, like the handle of a stout blackthorn walking-stick, was after all the most harmless point about him.” Phoebe could not help looking her surprise at the old lady’s manner of speaking, if she did not venture to express any objection ; but Mrs. Edgecumbe put aside looks. “ Tut, child ! what makes you look scared ? Chin Bagot is dead now, poor soul, and we must not speak ill of him. Edgecumbe and I never do, though we do not fear his memory, for the man was his own worst enemy. Oh ! young country lasses of your sort, are like novices, Phoebe Paston; and that is why I am so fond of them, before even my carpet-work and my dog Crab, when they are pretty and clever, like you, my dear. I am as fond of a pretty girl as ever Edge- cumbe was, but a great deal more particular about her being clever. At the same time, Edgecumbe always respected parts in a wo- man, and principles too, where he could find them. He never carried his whiskers and his hands where a woman had either the wit or the will to keep him off — I will say that for him — and so I always knew whom to blame.” “ Oh, Mrs. Edgecumbe !” was all Phoebe could say to this lax speech. “You need not go, Phoebe. Edgecumbe never comes from the ordinary till it is late, and when his son Struan is here, Edgecumbe is the latest of all. He must wait, you know, till the ill-mannered prig has retired, and Edgecumbe can say to his companions, ‘ Now that the old man is gone, boys, we’ll have another cobwebbed bottle. I always send a contribution from my own binns to the or- dinary, so that you need not fear Derby-day champagne or Epsom moselle here.’ His man generally puts him to bed after that, whether drunk or sober. Hughes can ma- nage him — he is easily managed now. And I 376 NOBLESSE OBLIGE. [Good Words, May x, 1869, tell you he would not annoy you, girl, for, rough as the squire is, he was a man of breeding in his day, and knew when he was in the presence of a lady and an honest woman, whether she was his own wife or another’s. Tliat was more than could be said for all kings and royal dukes. But my tongue goes too fast, Phoebe ; I see that by your face. But remember, you little saucebox, that you know nothing of what the world was when a certain terrible old man, blind of an eye, and deaf of an ear, sat, within the memory of people I knew, in his balcony in Piccadilly, with a parasol over his head, and neither decency nor ruth in his one eye. Yet seventy women, of all ranks, were found in England to cover his shameless deathbed with their notes of inquiry and condolence.” Mrs. Edgecumbe’s conversation had a high flavour, and Phoebe really shrank more from it than from encountering the purple-faced, gouty, chuckling, cursing squire. As for Lord Wriothesley’s friends, they merely glanced aside at the painter’s pretty daughter, with a passing wonder, if Wriothesley, made of flesh and blood, were the least in the world smitten by his sister’s friend. Only, it must be confessed, that Mr. Edmund Blount was bold enough to stare Phoebe out of counten- ance, in turning upon her his own swarthy, sodden face, with his moustache a /’ Empereiir. He made Phoebe angry with Lady Dorothea for her partial toleration of him. To think that a girl like Lady Dorothea Latimer could put up with such degradation, and almost make terms with such people, all because they were of her class, and in the persons of Blounts ! The concession, Phoebe felt, was unbecoming and unworthy of Lady Dorothea. Phoebe might have rested content. A hundred, or even fifty years back, this Mr. Edmund Blount would have been dogging her, spying on her, and bribing the giddiest and most stupid of the maidservants in Wooers’ Alley to betray her service. Nay, he might even have been waylaying Phoebe in the dusk in the loneliest road near Well- field, snatching kisses from her, insulting her, and frightening her out of her wits.. Hear how Mrs. Edgecumbe spoke of those gallant adventures in the light of trifles light as air. But all that was over. Mr. Edmund Blount must stoop to much humbler, ruder prey. He must soil himself by the contaminating contact of those who were his equals and superiors in passion, impurity, and grossness, whatever might be their rank, every time he caused a woman to fall either in appearance or deed. The utmost he could do to a girl like Phoebe was to create in her an uncon- querable antipathy, and a vehement indigna- tion, by turning into her cool, brown cheek and olive eyes defiant fires of virtue to meet the unhallowed fires which lay smouldering in his prominent, hard eyes, and in the un- healthy flushed blotches on his smooth, flaccid cheeks, that no honourable cruise on her Majesty’s service, or fresh, free sea-breeze had been able to brace and tan. To think such a fellow, whose antecedents Lady Doro- thea slid over in the generalisation “ one of our black sheep,” should be by marriage en- titled to call himself Lady Dorothea’s kins- man, — near enough, surely, when he was the heir-presumptive of her husband, — and so to affront and disgrace her in the eyes of the country ! But it was not Mr. Edmund Blount Lady Dorothea was to marry, as Phoebe herself had said. And Phoebe, having no right to raise her voice against the match, was in a measure reconciled to Lady Doro- thea’s throwing herself away on a well-dis- posed, powerful, young marquis, with great lands and long descent, but with discredit- able connections, as some of their degenerate fruits. Phoebe gave herself up to a kind of fine despair on the subject. She believed that there never would be found the man and nobleman quite worthy of the stately, win- some, black-and-white little beauty, the high- hearted, sweet-tempered lady and woman, the faithful daughter, sister, and friend. Good Words, June j, 1^69.] DEBENHAM’S VOW. 377 DEBENHAM’S VOW. By AMELIA B. EDWARDS, Author of “Barbara’s History.’ CHAPTER XXVII. PHILISTINES AND FIG-TREES. EBENHAM was off the next day to Squillace, a distance of ten miles by the coast. There he waited upon the British consul, and busied himself with enquiries as to the ways and means by which the Fairy Quee?i might be got afloat again. He consulted the harbour- master, and several ship- owners and shipping agents, about the chartering of a vessel for the transport of the cargo ; but he found no ship-builder in the place, and only a ship-builder could relaunch the Fairy Queen . Unsuccessful, therefore, at Squillace, he had no resource but to go to Reggio on the western coast, some eighty or ninety miles distant. Find- ing himself a mere mark for every kind of extortion at Reggio, he crossed over to Messina. But it seemed to him that, wherever he went, news of his purpose had gone before him. Informed, apparently, of the urgency of the case, Calabrians and Sicilians alike concurred in asking about eight times more than the ordinary tariff for the work he wanted done. Shipping agents, ship-owners, and ship-builders, seemed banded in a con- spiracy against him. Referred from one to another, wearied to death with consultations, bargainings, disputes, estimates, obstacles wil- fully raised, difficulties wilfully exaggerated, and repeated journeyings to and fro by land and sea, De Benham was almost driven to despair. He knew now exactly what it would be necessary to do, and he had taken pains to learn what should be the cost of doing it. Thus armed, he fought the ground over inch by inch, first with one contractor, then with another, till at last, thanks to his uncom- X— 26 promising determination to resist imposition, he succeeded. “You will be glad to know that our worst troubles are well-nigh over,” he said, writing to Mr. Hardwicke from the Albergo del Sole, about a fortnight from the time of his first arrival at Soverato. “ The Bella Lucia of Messina is chartered for the work of re- shipment, and is even now on her way hither; and I have finally concluded with Paoli, of Reggio, for the refitting and launch- ing of the Fairy Queen. He was here nearly all day yesterday with one of his head men, and came in to my terms at last. We signed and sealed before parting. I enclose a copy of both agreements for your perusal. “ The Bella Lucia bears a good character in Messina — a mere cargo vessel — one of Paoli’s build, by-the-way — not a fast sailer, but in all other respects satisfactory — burden 980 tons — commander, one Alessandro Ciardi, a capital seaman, I am told, and, as Sicilians go, trustworthy. He would fain have backed up his owner in extorting another three hun- dred ducats for the hire of the ship, if I could have been brought to give it ; but he would regard this, probably, as no more than his duty, and an orthodox spoiling of the Philis- tines. “ Captain Barclay is making rapid progress towards recovery. He left his room yester- day for the first time, and was sitting this morning in the shade of the good padre’s fig- tree. I trust that by the time the Bella Lucia has taken in her cargo, he will be sufficiently recovered to admit of my sending Macken- zie with Ciardi, to see all safely delivered at the docks. I think this would, for many reasons, be satisfactory and desirable. “ As soon as the Bella Lucia is gone, Paoli will set to work without delay. He says the steepness of the beach at this point is much in our favour, and that, had it been a long and gradual incline, as in the neighbourhood of Montauro and other places hereabouts, the cost of getting the ship off, laying down stocks, &c., would have been immensely increased. “ Since writing the above, the Bella Lucia . I am glad to say, has come in. Ciardi has fortunately found good anchorage in the cove where the Fairy Qiteen is stranded.. To-morrow, at daybreak, we shall begin trans- ferring cargo.” 378 DEBENHAM’S YOW. [Good Words, June x, 1869 Such, with the addition of certain details, technical and financial, was the letter in which Temple De Benham reported progress to his employer, and which Mr. Hardwicke (with some inward consciousness of relief, I but much outward show of foreseen triumph) i handed to his managing clerk to read. “ I think, Mr. Knott,” he said, leaning : back in his chair with a self-complacent ; smile, “ I think you will admit that this j is an eminently satisfactory letter. I think : you will admit that my confidence in this ! young man's abilities has not been mis- placed. You were of opinion that I had acted rashly in this matter ; but even in com- merce, Mr. Knott — even in commerce, where, as a rule, so much precaution is necessary — the power of reading character may occa- sionally be serviceable. I read this young man’s character at a glance — at a glance, Mr. Knott.” The managing clerk returned the letter I without a word of comment. “ Well ? Well ? ” said Mr. Hardwicke, im- ' patiently. “ I don’t like the tone of it,” said Mr. Knott. “ The tone of it ? ” echoed Mr. Hardwicke. He of the relentless eye shook his head, ! coughed a dry cough, and solemnly took snuff. “The tone of it, sir,” he said, “is not commercial. Philistines, indeed ! and fig- 1 trees ! What call has any young man, writing I to his employer on the business of the house, to bring in such topics as Philistines and fig- trees?” “ I am glad you have no greater fault to | find with Mr. Debenham than the vivacity of his style,” said the merchant, with a twinkle | of suppressed amusement in his eye. Mr. Knott gave utterance to a little snort j of scornful indignation* “Vivacity, sir!” he ejaculated. “No young man in this young man’s position has any right to be vivacious. It’s highly objec- tionable. It’s irrelevant. It’s — as I said before — it’s uncommercial.” And with this expression of opinion, Mr. Knott abruptly left the room. Then Mr. Hardwicke laughed — a little quiet, self-complacent laugh, all to himself — rubbed his hands softly together ; folded the letter, and put it away carefully in his desk. That old Knott should disapprove was only to be expected ; that old Knott should even be jealous was also likely enough — old Knott, who was nothing if not commercial — old Knott, who, having lived all his life in the one well-worn groove, would fain bring the rest of the world to the test of his own- narrow gauge, and recognise no other ! Amus- ing enough, all this — ay, and an additional testimony, if such additional testimony were- needed, to young Debenham’s merits. Un- commercial, indeed ! Uncommercial, per- haps, in the sense that a pure Californian nugget, as yet unadulterated by baser admix- ture, as yet unfused in the common mould and filed down to the vulgar standard, is not a legal tender ! But then it is pure gold,, and ready to be converted into coin of the realm — just as this young man, with his- talents, and his energy, and his fine educa- tion, had in him the making bf fifty such commercial machines as old Timothy Knott ! For if Mr. Hardwicke had ever trembled for the results of his experiment, he now en- tertained no doubt that his new employe was- a treasure — a treasure to be appropriated to- his own use, and worked for his own exclu- sive benefit. And he foresaw so many ways in which the treasure might be turned to good account. There was that affair at St. Peters- burg, for instance, given up long since as a bad debt — what if he were to send out this young man, with orders to sift it to the bottom? Why might it not be possible, even now, to recover every farthing? And then, again, that admirable scheme for monopolising the wool-trade of Lassa — a scheme hitherto im- possible of fulfilment, by reason of the laws excluding foreigners from Central Thibet ; but now, if confided to a man fluent in languages, fearless of danger, ready in emergencies .... Mr. Hardwicke drew a deep breath, rose from his chair, and began pacing to and fro between the window and the door. Visions of daring enterprise and brilliant success floated before his mind’s eye, and he resolved to come to some definite understanding with De Benham as soon as possible. He was, in fact, so charmed with his own perspicacity in having been the discoverer of this same treasure, that he was willing to pay for it liberally. “ I will offer him,” said he, half aloud,. “ three hundred a year. An increasing salary beginning at three hundred a year, or at four, if three don’t content him. He’ll never re- fuse that. He knows his own value j but he’ll never refuse that !” CHAPTER XXVIII. PAST AND PRESENT. A changed and a busy life was Temple De Benham’s under the new regime. Mr. Hard- wicke continued to regard him as a rara avis ; and though, in so rapidly achieving a posi- Good Words, June x, 1869/] DEBENHAM’S VOW. 379 tion of high trust and favour, the young man 'found himself not wholly unassailed by those minor perils to which the race of rarce aves are liable in a world of jealous, hungry, fight- ing, commonplace sparrows, he continued, nevertheless, to soar and prosper even beyond his hopes. That he should be an object of envy and mistrust to those city sparrows in Mr. Hardwicke’s employment amongst whom he had suddenly alighted, was only to be ex- pected. But their enmity was of little mo- ment. They could neither injure nor annoy him ; for his work was not their work, and his place was not among them. His work, in- deed, lay, for the most part, far enough away ; and, to the sore trial of that one loving heart that had never borne to be parted from him for more than a few hours at a time, his life was henceforth given up to pursuits that carried him far afield for weeks, and even months, together. And now that tide which governs the affairs of men seemed to have turned in his favour. He had found an employer who knew how to value him, and who was willing to deal with him liberally. For that first trip to Italy, he received, on his return to England, Mr. Hardwicke’s cheque for one hundred guineas. He had never possessed such a sum, nor even the quarter part of such a sum, in his life ; and though he knew that he had earned it well, and that he was not overpaid by it, he could not help marvelling at his own riches. One hundred guineas ! Yes, the tide had turned, and was leading on to fortune ! And yet he had worked hard for his hun- dred guineas. He had been three months in Calabria, toiling at his task by day and night, and putting into those three months the work of six. Then, having reshipped his cargo to England, and got- the Fairy Queen off safe, sound, and thoroughly refitted before he left tlie spot, he succeeded in reaching home just in time to spend his Christmas Day in the little lodging at Canonbury. A happy Christmas Day for her who had been dwelling all solitary in that obscure, unlovely home all these three weary months, living on his letters aud praying for his safe return. Happy, yet not perhaps so happy : as those earlier times when he was yet a youth, and all her own § when no sterner stuff leavened , the rich enthusiasm of his nature ; when his ambition and his genius went hand in hand, and Beethoven and Mozart, Handel, Haydn, Mendelssohn, and Spohr were the gods of his idolatry. Ah, those old college days ! those pleasant winter holidays ! those Christmas examinations, each richer in triumph than the , last, when he, her darling and her pride, used to come home from the crowded hall, pale and exhausted, but always successful, to lay his prizes in her lap ! Then, too, came the joyous 24th of December, when the young men went out to the woods in troops to fetch in the Christmas trees, coming back at dusk with songs and torches, and laden with winter greenery — her boy among the rest, bringing home a young fir-tree to gladden their one sitting-room with the scent and hues of the forest. And then came Christmas Day, ushered in by early carol singing and much ringing of bells, when mother and son used to go to the choral service at the Grand Duke’s Chapel in the morning ; and then after church, if it was fine, walk together in the public gardens, to see all the little world of Zollenstrasse in its holiday smartness — the peasants in their picturesque costumes, the officers in their uniforms, the professors in their gowns. How happy, too, were those little un-English Christmas dinners — the chicken and jam sauce, the braten that betrayed no flavour of beef, the apple kitchen , and the thin red wine which seemed all the thinner for being spiced and mulled in the stove ! And then, when evening came, Temple used to play Handel’s Pastoral Symphony, and the soldiers’ chorus from Beethoven’s Mount of Olives ; and sometimes they read aloud to each other Milton’s Hymn on the Nativity, or a dialogue of Plato, or an act from Shakespeare or Schiller. Those were the Christmas Days of the past, before the tide had turned. It was dif- ferent now. The young eager-eyed musician, whose very soul was in his art, and whose every dream was, as v it were, set to music, was gone. Gone — changed — transformed ; and in his place there sat this bronzed and bearded man, whose talk was of ships, and seas, and foreign shores, and future enterprises leading on to wealth. He had much to tell, and she was never weary of listening. Still, proud as she was of his skill and energy, she looked back and sighed, and inly wondered whether any of this world’s prizes were worth that Eden of poetry and art upon which her wanderer had turned his back for ever ? Time was when Lady De Benham had regarded that very art with eyes of doubt and disfavour; but those prejudices had long since worn themselves away. She had lived eleven years in Zollen- strasse since then — Zollenstrasse, that later Weimar, of which it might almost be said that the cultivation of the fine arts was the religion of the state. Yielding to the in- DEBENHAM’S VOW. 380 [Good Words, June r, 1869. fluences of the place, she had become recon- ciled to music as the profession of her darling’s choice; but to commerce . . . . alas ! not all the gold of Pactolus could reconcile her to this last degradation. That her son, her Temple, the last of the De Benhams, should sell his personal liberty; accept this man’s pay; go east, west, north, or south, at this man’s bidding ; soil his hands with trade and traffic .... these things were intolerable to her. She felt them bitterly. She wept over them in secret. She told herself that no end, however desirable, could compensate for such humiliation. But all this she suffered in silence, and therefore suffered the more keenly. Not for the world, now, would she have advised or expostulated. Pie chose to do it ; deemed it right to do it ; would have done it years ago, had she not withheld the secret from him. Lady De Benham never forgot that half-implied re- proach. Had her son thought fit to drive a cab, or sweep a crossing, or serve behind a counter, she would have broken her heart sooner than breathe one syllable of remon- strance. He had not many days to spend in England — less than a week, indeed ; and was bound next for St. Petersburg. In the meanwhile, having a world of work to get through, and | being detained in the City by Mr. Hardwicke j for several hours each day, he found little I time for home. Now Temple De Benham loved his mother so very dearly that this press of occupation, as it kept him from her in the present moment, and as it threatened to keep him from her in the future, grieved him sorely. Till now, he had never left her. And she was so solitary when he was away .... and he was likely now to be away so often ! She had no friends in London — no acquaintances — not a soul to come and sit with her, if she was ill. The utmost he could do for her was to subscribe to a library, and beg Archie to go and see her very often in his absence. ... No; there was one thing more that he might do, if he would. Pie might give her an acquaintance, a friend, a daughter, in Miss Alleyne. Should he do this ? Would it be wise to doit? He asked himself these questions very often, and could by no means answer them to his satisfaction. At last, being a good deal troubled in his mind, he mentioned the subject somewhat vaguely and circuitously to Archibald Blyth. “ You see, Archie,” he said, “ it’s a delight- ful thing to feel one’s self really moving on ; but it has one drawback. I am obliged to leave my mother so much alone.” They had been down together to the docks, and, coming back up Lower Thames j Street, had turned in by the front of the | Custom House for a breath of open air and a ' glimpse of the river. “ Of course, she misses you dreadfully,” said Archie, not knowing what other reply to make. “ Ay ; but that’s not all,” replied De Benham. “ She knows no one, except your- self, in all London. Not a soul.” “ And I am not particularly well worth her knowing,” said Archie, ruefully. “ However, I can change her books at Mudie’s, and all that sort of thing, you know. I’d call upon her every day with pleasure— only I know I should bore her awfully.” “My dear Archie,” said De Benham, “ you are the best fellow in the world.” And then he paused ; for he did not know how to say what was in his mind. “ But she knows Miss Alleyne !” exclaimed Archie, suddenly. De Benham shook his head. “No,” he said. “I left England, you know, before they came back from Cilling- ford, and — and I’ve only been home three days myself.” “You don’t mean to say you’ve not seen her yet?” “ I mean to say,” said Temple, reddening, “ that till now it has been impossible. You seem to forget how my time has been taken up, and how far it is from Canonbury to Kensington.” “ That fellow Leander used to swim across the Hellespont,” said Archie, with a sidelong glance at his companion. “ But I am going to call there to-day- now, in fact ; before going home.” “And won’t you introduce them before you go away?” “ I don’t know — I scarcely think. . . . You see, Archie, there is no engagement between Miss Alleyne and myself. And I don’t want to — to precipitate matters.” Archie pursed up his mouth, and uttered a prolonged whistle. “ Which, being translated,” said he, “ means that you have seen somebody else out there in Italy, whom you like better.” “It means nothing of the kind,” said De Benham, angrily. “ Well, you have changed your mind, perhaps.” “ Good heavens, no ! I admire Miss Alleyne as much as ever. If I were a rich man, I would ask her to marry me to-morrow. But I am not a rich man. I am a very poor I Good Words, June i, 1869.] DEBENHAM’S VOW. man. I must work hard for years, before I dare think of marriage. Therefore I hesitate about making Miss Alleyne known to my mother. I — I feel I have no right.” “ Then, my dear fellow, don’t do it,” said Archie emphatically. “When a man feels he has ‘ no right ’ to do the decisive thing in a case of this kind, it generally means that he is not quite sure he cares to have that right.” “ If you think I have ceased to love her, Archie, you wrong me,” said De Benham, earnestly. “Upon my honour, you wrong me. My feelings are unchanged. She is the only woman I have ever cared for — or ever shall care for.” “ I’m not blaming you,” said Archie. “ Of course not. Neither should I deserve your blame. There’s not a grain of fickleness in my nature.” And he said this with the utmost sincerity ; knowing that he had never given one look or thought to any other, and believing, for the time, that he loved her as much as ever. “ Then I don’t understand your scruples,” said Archie. “ It may be so many years before I am in a position to marry.” “ But your prospects are better than ever.” “ My prospects,” said De Benham, quickly, “would be ruined, if I were to incur the | responsibilities of ... . there, we won’t talk of it, Archie. Believe me, I am actuated by a stem necessity. You’ll understand it all, : some day.” I And so it was. In all good faith, he be- lieved in that “stern necessity.” It never i occurred to him that the necessity was of his j own making. He was, indeed, long past that | point at which a man is capable of analysing | his own motives, and he had no idea that he f was mled by a passion stronger than love. ! As for Archie, he was silenced and puzzled, and knew not what to think. CHAPTER XXIX. HAD SHE FORGOTTEN? The young men parted company at the i Mansion House, where De Benham hailed a Hansom and desired the driver to take him ! to Campden Hill, Kensington. For those days were past in which he would walk any number of miles to save a cab-fare, and time had come to be of more value than money. It was now nearly four months since he had seen Miss Alleyne ; and during the whole of that time there had been no communica- tion of any kind between them. This, how- ever, was not his fault. She had forbidden him to write to her, and he had obeyed to the letter. He had told himself again and » 33* | again, when he was in Calabria, that he was I not only blameless in so keeping silence, but that he was somewhat hardly used in being j required to do so. It might have been for twelve months instead of three ; it might • have been to Australia instead of Italy; he ! might have fallen sick among strangers, and ! j she would have been none the wiser. Now, I j however, that he was about to see her for the ] j first time in her own home — for the first time r j since that morning in the porch at Cilling- j ford when she had promised to wear his ring, | and think of him “ by day and night” while I they were parted — he began to doubt whether i he had been quite justified in taking her au pied de la lettre. Perhaps, considering the circumstances of his journey, it would have been better had he set that edict aside, and written for once to tell her what had become of him. Yet he well knew that the thought of doing so had occurred to him re- peatedly; but always as a thing which it would be wiser to leave undone. In the meanwhile, what had she thought of his pro- longed silence ? Had she waited, and watched, and wearied for his coming ? W ould she receive him with reproaches ? Would it all be as if they had parted only yesterday ? Or would there be a difference, a restraint, a sense of estrangement ? So absorbed was he in these doubts and questionings, that he found himself rattling through Kensington before he knew that he had passed Hyde Park Corner. It seemed to him that the cabman’s horse must have had wings, or that the road had suddenly grown shorter. He stopped the driver at once, however, and said he would walk the rest of the distance. And then he went into a shop and bought a pair of gloves. These gloves took a long time to choose, and a long time to put on ; and when they were at last . satis- factorily adjusted, he walked very slowly •towards Campden Hill. The locality was strange to him, for he had never been further in this direction than Kensington Church. So he went up and down, inquiring his way, but making no especial haste to find it. He felt, indeed, nervous and embarrassed, and had he not come upon the house sooner than he ex- pected, he would have been glad to turn back again for a few moments, to collect his thoughts before going in. It was a pretty little house, with a long flight of steps leading up to the door, and — although it was winter — flowers in every win- dow. He knocked, and a neat parlour-maid answered the summons. Was Mr. Alleyne at home ? Mr. Alleyne was at home ; but in 3 S2 DEBENHAM’S VOW. [Good Word-, ,u,ex.x8c; 9 . his painting-room, and particularly engaged. Was Miss Alleyne at home? No — Miss Alleyne was out. 1 De Benham had no card to leave — had, indeed, never possessed such a superfluity in his life; but he pencilled his name on the ; back of somebody else’s card, and desired the maid to tell Miss Alleyne that he had been abroad for the last three months, and was leaving England again the day after to- morrow. Then^ he inquired how they were, | and was told that they were both quite well ; and so, with a lingering glance at the statu- i ettes and evergreens in the hall, and the vista of conservatory beyond, he departed by the way he had come. His first feeling, as he turned away, was of relieved embarrassment ; his next, of disap- pointment. Now that she was not to be 1 found, he would have given much to find her. It was surely a hard chance that took her away from home that one only afternoon when it was in his power to seek her there ! A hard, hard chance that took him away from England for the second time without | once again listening to the music of her voice — for he loved her ! Ay, in spite of ! all that Archie had said, he certainly loved her. However stern the hand that Fate had laid upon him (for he would call it Fate) — | however cruel the sacrifices he might be j- called upon to make — he was quite sure that he loved her. He dwelt upon this point, indeed, with so much insistence in his own mind, and repeated it to himself so often during that first half-mile of his homeward | walk, that it almost seemed as if he needed | re-assurance from within. Retracing his steps through a network of j squares, terraces, and lanes, he emerged pre- | sently through a sort of passage upon Ken- sington Palace Gardens, purposing to walk through the Gardens and the Park as far as j the Marble Arch, and thence to take a cab j home to Canonbury. | It was now verging towards three o’clock, and the afternoon was growing grey and cold. The Gardens, as he turned in by the broad walk running east and west beside the palace, j looked chill and deserted. There were a few i pedestrians scattered up and down the main ! walk between Kensington and Bayswater, 1 and a solitary couple by the pond, feeding ducks ; but the children and the boats, the nurses and perambulators, the life-guardsmen ; and the daily loiterers, were all long since gone. He went up to the pond, and stood there for some time watching that solitary j couple and the ducks, in a dreary, discon- tented way, thinking of many things, but chiefly of the long fight that lay before him, and somewhat also of Miss Alleyne. Was it not almost hopeless? Had he not con- demned himself to a life of peril, and priva- tion, and hope deferred ? Would the battle ever be won ? Or, if won, might it not be that victory would come too late ? Of what use to triumph when youth was past, and hair was grey, and the wine of life had lost its flavour ? See that pair — they looked poor, but they looked happy. The man’s hat was shabby, but the girl’s face was bright and loving. A coronet was a fine thing ; but supposing that one had to give up the bright face in order to gain it, might not the shabby hat be better worth the wearing ? Tough questions these; hard to solve — hard even to contemplate without solving ! De Benham gave them up, and turned away with a sigh. As he did so, he saw a lady coming round by the pond, apparently from the direction of Victoria Gate — a lady dressed in some delicate grey material, jacket and dress alike, the skirt looped up over a crimson ' petticoat, and a little white and crimson fea- ther in her hat. The blood rushed to his face, and his heart beat quickly. He recog- nised her at the first glance, long before he could distinguish a feature of her face. It was Miss Alleyne. And now that she was within a hundred yards of him, what should he do ? He had paid his visit — he had left his name and mes- sage — he was confident that she had not yet seen him .... Should he turn away? Would it not be more prudent to do so? Oh, perversity and inconsistency of man ! ; But a few minutes ago, and he was lamenting the hard fate that took him to her door when she was from home ; and now .... Well, now he would not, could not avoid her ! He blushed for the cowardly impulse; cleared his brow by an effort ; and, with a quick, firm step, hastened to meet her. When they were within a few yards of each other, she looked up — saw him — turned very pale — and stopped. He went up to her with both hands extended. “ Juliet !” he said. She let him take her hand, but she uttered no word of greeting. He felt and saw that she was trembling. “ I have just been to the house,” he went on, hurriedly; “but you were out. I was in despair. I have been in Italy ever since we parted, and I came back only three days ago. I am off to Russia the day after to-morrow. I could not bear to go away again with- DkBENHAM’S VOW. Good Words, June x, 1869.] out seeing you. You have not forgotten me?” She shook her head. “ No,” she said, smiling; “ I have not for- gotten you.” But both the words and the smile seemed to cost her an effort. “ It would have been most unjust if you had,” he said; “for I have been thinking of you in all kind of wild and far-away places. You must have wondered what had become of me?” “ No — we knew you were gone away.” “ How could you know that?” “We thought we should like to hear you play, so we went down one Sunday to St. Hildegarde’s — papa and I ; and although the organist played very well, I felt quite sure — at least, we both felt quite sure — that — that it was not your touch. And then, when the service was over, papa asked the pew- opener, and she said you were gone abroad.” All this was said hurriedly, but still smil- ingly — that paleness which had come upon her at first sight of him having given place to a fe verish flush. “ I am glad you detected the difference,” he said, lowering his voice and bending some- what towards her. “ I am glad that no other succeeded in representing me to you in even >so small a matter.” But she drew a little back, and put her hand to her throat, as if she were feeling chilled. “ I should indeed be a poor judge of music, if I had not ear enough for that,” she said. “ But how cold it gets now, after two or three o’clock !” “ Especially just here, with the air coming across that pond. Shall we go down yonder, where the trees are?” “ No, it is late ; and I am on my way home.” “ Then I will see you to the door.” So, Miss Alleyne offering no objection to this arrangement, he turned, and they took the road by which he had just come. “ And all this time,” he said, going back to that first stage in the conversation, “ you only know that I have been abroad ; but you do not know where I have been, or what I have been doing. Would you care to hear the whole story ? ” “ I should like to hear it very much.” So he told the whole story; and the telling of it lasted till they came almost within sight of the house. “ It must be a great change for you — this stirring, adventurous sort of life,” said Miss 383 Alleyne, when he had done. “ I suppose you prefer it to music ? ” “ I prefer it to a life of hopeless poverty,” he replied. “ But it is not all excitement ; and at first I cannot even expect it to be very profitable. Besides, it has its drawbacks. I am obliged, for instance, to be almost con- stantly away from England — from home — from all that I hold dear.” And here Again his voice dropped tenderly, and he pressed closer to her side. “ That is very sad for — for Mrs. Deben- ham.” “ It is very sad for me, too,” he said. “ Very sad, and very solitary. You have no idea of what it is to be alone in such a place as Soverato. I got terribly hipped some- times, and used to fear that you had all forgotten me.” Miss Alleyne made no answer; but De Benham fancied, through the dusk, that he saw the colour deepen on her cheek. “You will think of me sometimes, when I am in St. Petersburg?” he said, presently. “ I should not feel half so lonely, and the distance would not seem half so great, if — if I thought. . . .” He hesitated — not so much from want of words, as from a feeling that it behoved him not to give rash utterance to such as might come first. “Will you not come in, Mr. Debenham, and see papa ? ” said Miss Alleyne. He felt rebuked and uncomfortable. He understood perfectly that she desired to ignore his meaningless, half-uttered tender speeches. “ I don’t like to be called ‘ Mr. Deben- ham’ by you, Juliet,” he said, reproachfully. And then he waited for an answer, or a ques- tion ; but none came. “ However,” he added, with a sigh, “I will not come in. I asked for Mr. Alleyne, and they told me he was engaged. Next time, perhaps, I shall be more fortunate.” “When you come back from St. Peter- burg,” said Miss Alleyne. “Yes. But I hope that may be very soon — in three weeks, perhaps, or a month.” “You are going quite at the right time,” said Miss Alleyne. “ I have heard that Russia should always be visited in winter.” “ By people who know how to take care of their noses.” “ Surely you are equal to that responsi- | bility, Mr. Debenham,” laughed she. “ I really can’t say. I fancy it is more j difficult to keep one’s nose in Russia than to keep one’s heart in most other places.” 384 DEBENHAM’S VOW. |Uood Words, June 1, 1869. “ I have not the slightest doubt that you will succeed in keeping both,” said Miss Alleyne, with her hand on the gate. “ Then you won't come in ? What shall I say for you to papa ? ” “That I am sorry not to have had the pleasure of finding him disengaged, and that I hope soon to bring him the latest news from the capital of the Czar.” “I will deliver your message precisely. Bon voyage /” “Good-bye — good-bye, Juliet,” he said, taking her hand between both of his own. “ But she drew it quickly away, and ran up the steps, smiling still, and repeating, “ Bon voyage .” . He waited till she had opened the door with her latch-key, and gone in ; and then he turned away, somewhat gloomily, and went back again, in the direction of Kensington Gardens. Had she forgotten ? he asked him- self. Had she, indeed, forgotten ; or did she only affect to forget ? How gay she seemed ! how indifferent ! And yet she turned pale when they first met. She turned pale, and he was sure she trembled. Was that cheer- fulness all unassumed ? She was surely thinner than when they parted at Cillingford — thinner, and not, perhaps, quite so pretty. And then he wished that she had not been so gay ; and that she had not smiled so persistently. He would have been better pleased had she been silent, and agitated, and uncomplainingly sad. But she had been nothing of the kind. Granted that she did change colour for a moment, she recovered her self-possession immediately.. Her voice did not even falter when she wished him good-bye. Ah, well ! — she would at least not weary after him as his mother wearied after him. She was spared all those apprehensions and sufferings ; and it was better so. It was, of course, better so. He felt that he ought, for her sake, to rejoice in the turn that things had taken ; and yet it would have been plea- santer to believe that — that she was not heart- less. Was she heartless ? There he paused. Was it heartlessness, or was it womanly pride ? Was it levity? Surely, heartlessness was a terrible thing in a woman ; and levity was almost worse. Repose of manner, too, was so charming ! His mother's repose of manner was perfect. His mother smiled but seldom, and he had never seen her laugh. How dig- nified she was — how quiet — how stately — how worthy to wear and grace an ancient coronet ! Ah, where should he find any to compare with her ? Thinking thus, he went with long strides across the gardens and the park, and resolved in his own mind that he was glad he had not introduced Miss Alleyne to Lady De Benham — at all events, for the present. In the meanwhile, she had gone smiling into the house, and smiling past the trim par- lour-maid upon the stairs, and straight to her own bed-room, where she quietly shut herself in and bolted the door. And then she laid aside her hat and gloves, and stood for a long time looking down at the little heart-shaped ring that Temple De Benham had placed upon her finger that happy, happy morning at Cillingford, only four short months ago. Then she took it off, and kissed it, and still looking at it wistfully, wrapped it in silver paper, and locked it away in her dressing-case. This done, she laid herself down upon her bed, and covered her face with her hands,, and sobbed bitterly. Had she forgotten ? CHAPTER XXX. BROTHER AND SISTER AT HOME. On the morning of the sixth day after his - return to England, Temple De Benham was. on the road to St. Petersburg, where it was his mission to recover a long-standing and almost hopeless debt of fifty thousand rou- bles ; the debtor thereof being a certain great Lithuanian prince, who was reported to have creditors en masse in every European capital ; and who (fenced round by special privileges and immunities) was wont to boast that he had committed every folly under the sun — except that of paying one single kopeck that he owed. Now this was an avowedly bad case, and if De Benham had come back at the end of a fortnight or so, utterly routed, it would have been no more than Mr. Llard- wicke expected. But when the young man telegraphed to the effect that, finding all other means ineffectual, he had carried his case before the British envoy ; that through official channels he had caused a petition to be conveyed to the emperor's own hand ; and that within three days, the recalcitrant prince’s own steward had waited upon him at his hotel and paid up every farthing of the fifty-thousand roubles — then was Mr. Hard- wicke more than ever triumphant over Mr. Timothy Knott, and more than ever con- vinced that he had in truth lighted upon a rara avis in Temple De Benham. “ Music, indeed ! ” he said. “ The idea of a man of young Debenham's powers of mind throwing himself away upon music ! You remember him, Claudia? He came to one of our parties last year, to play the piano*. DEBENHAM’S VOW. Good Words, June i, 1869.] 385! Archie’s friend, you know — the organist at j St. Hildegarde’s — pale young fellow — very | peculiar looking — splendid head.” To which Miss Hardwicke, without lifting ! her eyes from her book — it was after coffee j one evening at Strathellan House, when the brother and sister were alone — replied some- what abstractedly : — “ Yes — I remember we had the organist to play. I did not observe his appearance.” “ He is a remarkable young man,” pursued Mr. Hardwicke; “highly educated — speaks six or seven languages — full of energy and j resource — born to be successful — the sort of stuff that your Raleighs and Columbuses, j your daring soldiers of fortune and bold dis- ' coverers were made of.” “ He played very well,” said Claudia, with ( supreme indifference. “He will make a fortune some day,” said Mr. Hardwicke. “ He means to make a fortune. He told me as much.” Miss Hardwicke laid her book aside, with a faint, disdainful smile. “ A noble ambition ! ” she said. The merchant looked grave. To despise wealth formed no part of his creed. | “ It is a very respectable ambition,” he replied, pompously. “ Very respectable, and very praiseworthy. It is an ambition that the Hardwickes have cherished for — for gene- rations.” “ Say, for three — our genealogical tree being somewhat stunted.” “ You have been rich all your life, Clau- dia,” pursued Mr. Hardwicke, colouring slightly at the interruption. “You have never known what it is to work, and you j have never known what it is to be poor, j Therefore you despise industry, and you undervalue wealth. It indicates — forgive me for saying so — a defect of judgment on your part. And I have the highest respect for your judgment, as you know.” “ And this moral lecture, my dear Josiah, is all apropos of your piano-playing hero ? ” Mr. Hardwicke could not restrain a ges- ture of impatience. “You are in one of your severe moods to- night, Claudia,” he said. And then there was a pause, during which the twin giants came in with tea. This they handed upon silver trays with as much pomp and circumstance as if the Lord Mayor and the whole court of aldermen had been there to partake of it. DEBENHAM’S VOW. 386 [Good Words, June 1, 1869. When they were gone, Mr. Hardwicke, with some folding and unfolding of his even- ing paper, and a little preliminary cough, hazarded another observation. “ I saw Lord Stockbridge’s card,” he said, “ in the hall.” Miss Hardwicke had resumed her book, and again answered without looking up. “ Yes — he called to-day.” “ And you were out? ” She bent her head affirmatively. “ That was unfortunate.” “ Really?” she said, with a slight lifting of the eyebrows, but still with no uplifting of the eyes. “ I do not see why.” Mr. Hardwicke, discomfited again, retired behind his paper. This time, a still longer pause ensued. “ I think,” he said, at length, “ as Lord Stockbridge has called, we might venture to ask him to dinner.” “ Venture?” echoed the lady, haughtily. “Yes — do you object to the word? A plain city merchant who invites to his table .a man of Lord Stockbridge’s rank . . . .” He stopped, suddenly silenced by the look with which she turned upon him. “Lord Stockbridge,” she said, “is no demigod. He is in debt. His estates are mortgaged. And his past life, from what I have heard, seems to have been little better than the life of an adventurer.” “ I know nothing about his past life,” re- plied the merchant, with some spirit. “ He has probably been poor ; for he comes of a younger branch, and has only lately suc- ceeded to the title. But he is every inch a gentleman.” “Yes, he is gentlemanly; and I suppose | no worse than others who have lived beyond their means,” said Miss Hardwicke, as if 1 weary of the subject ; “ but I should certainly not feel disposed to bow down before him, as if he were a superior being.” “ I am not aware that any one ever dreamt of him as a superior being, or had any idea of bowing down before him ! It is certainly no act of homage to ask a man to dinner.” “ Ask him, by all means.” “ And as for aristocratic tastes and ten- dencies, your tastes and tendencies, Claudia, are far more aristocratic than mine. I am not over-fond of City society myself ; but you abhor it, and, if I may be permitted to say so, you sometimes show your abhorrence very openly. Yet you seerp sometimes as if peers and bishops were not good enough for you.” Mr. Hardwicke spoke with warmth, for his sister had dealt hardly by him the whole evening, and he felt aggrieved — in this last matter especially so ; for, in proposing to in- vite Lord Stockbridge, he had laid himself out, as the phrase is, to please her. But Miss Hardwicke only smiled ; and her smile, somehow, was not as pleasant as it might have been — by reason, perhaps, of a certain curve about the beautiful upper lip. “ I believe I dislike all society,” she said. “ And I am not sure that peers and bishops are much less tiresome than aldermen and aldermen’s wives. We must make it a large party, I suppose ?” “ Yes — large ; but very choice. Eighteen, I should say, besides ourselves.” “ Eighteen very choice people, and Parlia- [ ment not yet sitting ! That will be difficult.” “ I don’t know. We should give three weeks’ notice ; and by that time the session will have begun. Sir John and Lady Daw- kins are in town: Sir John called upon me this morning at the office.” “Sir John is only a K.C.B. ; and his wife is a half-caste.” “ Still, they will do. And there’s Cromarty of the Home Office, and the Bishop of Patagonia.” “ Colonial. An English bishop would be better.” “ But he talks so well, Claudia. Besides, we know only one English bishop . . . .” “ True ; and he lives more than two hun- dred miles away. The Bishop of Patagonia will pass.” “ Sir Frederick Howe?” “ A physician !” “ Ay; but a baronet, and a man of science.” “ Well, if we ask Sir Frederick Howe, we must on no account have Colonel Calderon. The Geological Society is enough, without the Geographical.” “ Sir Solomon and Lady Bradfoot ?” “ Impossible. Once introduce the alder- manic element, and the prestige of the whole thing is gone.” “You know that he is returned for Swindle- borough ?” “ Yes ; but I also know that her father was a tailor. No — Sir Solomon might pass; but Lady Bradfoot is simply unpresentable.” And so they discussed the list of their acquaintances till the great ormolu time- piece struck eleven, and then Miss Hard- wicke rose to say good-night. Her brother, always scrupulously courteous, rose to light her candle and open the door. “ By the way,” he said, “ I expect young Debenham back from St. Petersburg to- Good Words, June i, 1869.] DEBENHAM’S VOW. 387 morrow. I think we must make a little dinner for him, and Timothy Knott, and one or two City men, before long.” Miss Hardwicke looked surprised and an- noyed. “ Is that necessary?” she said, coldly. “ Not 1 necessary,’ perhaps ; but, as a matter of business, desirable.” “ Against a matter of business I have, of ■course, nothing to urge.” “ Are you engaged for next Monday week?” “I think not.” “ Then shall we fix it ? We can ask Archie Blyth at the same time.” “ As you please, and when you please.” “ Thanks, my dear Claudia. Good-night.” Saying which, Mr. Hardwicke, as was his nightly wont, touched with his lips her half- averted cheek, and betook himself to his library and his nocturnal cigar. Temple De Benham did arrive in London next day, direct from St. Petersburg ; and Mr. and Miss Hardwicke did accordingly request, by letter, in all due form, the pleasure of his com- pany to dinner at Strathellan House upon the evening of the day agreed upon. But, to their unqualified surprise, he declined the invitation. CHAPTER XXXI. THE RISING OF THE TIDE. The old year had not yet expired when De Benham left England for St. Petersburg ; the new year was verging towards the close of its second month when he came back. And this new year was the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and sixty-one. For him it was the newest of all new years that he had yet known — the first year of an utterly new life. He entered upon it as a voyager enter- ing upon unexplored seas. He entered upon it with new aims, new prospects, new ambi- tions. He entered upon it having, as it were, formally dissolved partnership with the past, .and pledged himself to the future. He felt that he dared not look back, for it seemed to him as if Youth, and Love, and Poetry, and Art, were all dead with that dead old year, and buried in its grave. No ; he must look back nevermore. He must set his face, now, to the unknown future, let that forward path lead whither it might. A portentous new year, this 1861, could one have foreseen all that it was destined to bring forth ! A new year not only fraught with the fortunes of Temple De Benham, but big with the fates of nations, and sacred to the liberties of millions ! Already, in this very month of February, while our traveller was yet in St. Petersburg, the Em- peror of all the Russias had decreed the total emancipation of the serfs throughout the length and breadth of his vast dominions. Already Francis of Naples had retired to Rome, and Victor Emmanuel had been pro- claimed king of Italy. Already, too, had begun that mighty and protracted struggle between the Northern and Southern States of the American Union, which was destined ere its close to wash the stain of slavery from the annals of the New World. The secession of the six slave-holding states was now an accomplished fact; President Davis had been inaugurated at Montgomery; and rumours of a great war were already in the air. Temple De Benham was now definitively enrolled in Mr. Hardwicke’s service, declin- ing, however, to be bound by any kind of annual contract. He would not, he said, dispose of his liberty, or accept a fixed salary upon any terms, however liberal. And yet Mr. Hardwicke tempted him sorely, bidding as high as six hundred pounds a-year for his permanent services. Now, six hundred pounds a-year was a comfortable income — an income upon which a man might venture to marry, and rent a house, and hope to live with some amount of ease, and even of modest luxury. But he told himself it was not a comfortable income that he needed ; it was capital. Were he now to accept six hundred pounds a-year, with even the probability of a gradual increase to eight hundred or a thousand, he must hope for nothing more and nothing better, be the years of his life as many as j they might. Not thus could his vow be accomplished. Not thus might he hope to rebuild the home and win back the lands of his fathers. Such paltry savings as he might succeed in scraping together from an income j of six hundred pounds a-year, would be but as drops of water compared with the Pactolus of his dreams. No ; what he must have now was freedom to watch for, and seize upon, such chances as might present them- selves. Stirring times were at hand. Great questions were even now fermenting in men’s minds ; great interests were trembling in the balance ; great changes were preparing on every side. Already he foresaw, though vaguely, what opportunities might be his, if only he were patient to wait, and proof against present temptation. Surely, he thought, now that the tide had really turned, he should be mad to accept any service that would not leave him free to take that tide at the flood when the precious moment came and the waters were at their highest ! So he declined Mr. Hardwicke’s offer of a salary, as he had declined his invitation to dinner ; I ' i 388 DEBENHAM’S VOW. [Good Words, June x, 1869 . whereupon Mr. Timothy Knott confidently asserted that he was mad. Mr. Timothy Knott’s employer, however, was by no means of that opinion. He recognised in De Benham’s decision only another evidence of self-reliance; and so valued, and coveted, and respected him the more. In the mean- while, the young man went hither and thither, transacting such work as Mr. Hardwicke put before him, earning money easily and plea- santly enough, watching the progress of events, and biding his time. And now the great theatre of action was America. Day by day, week by week, all Europe watched the gathering of the storm, and listened breathlessly to the first mutter- ings of the thunder. The month of March was rife with evil portents. President Lincoln refused to receive the commissioners from the seceding states ; and President Davis, in announcing his intention of preparing for war, demanded a levy of one hundred thousand men. In April, the war began. Fort Sumter, then held for the Union by Major Anderson, was taken by the Confede- rate troops. President Lincoln called upon the Northern States for a contingent force of seventy-five thousand men. President Davis issued letters of marque, and so let loose a swarm of daring privateers. At Harper’s Ferry and Norfolk Navy-yard, the officers of the United States Arsenal, being hard pressed by the Confederate troops, sunk and burned their stores and ships of war. And President Lincoln proclaimed the blockade of the whole line of Southern coast from Virginia to Texas. And now the nations stood by and beheld this sad and terrible spectacle of a great brotherhood suddenly split asunder ; both sides preparing in fierce haste for the dead- liest of struggles ; their strength turned against each other, and their love transformed to bitter hate — a desperate tragedy played on a mighty stage, with all the world for audience. Nor was this audience, though individually passive, affected only through its sympathies with those in the arena. The interests and prosperity of tens of thousands — nay, of i millions — in England alone, were perilled by the conflict. The supply of cotton had suddenly ceased. At the mouth of every port along the shores of the cotton-growing ; states there now lay, armed and vigilant, the war-steamers of the Union. The cotton crop might blossom, and ripen, and be gathered in ; but the North had decreed that the great trade of the South should be i paralysed ; that the planter should not sell, ; and the stranger should not buy, and that no foreign gold should find its way to the treasury of the secessionist government. But in the meanwhile, there were between : four and five millions of British subjects to whom Cotton was Bread. There were ship- owners and seamen, who brought the raw ma- terial from America to England ; merchants, warehousemen, dock-owners and dealers at Liverpool, to receive it; spinners, weavers, bleachers, calenderers, dyers, and printers all over Lancashire and the north, to convert it into fabrics for the public use ; engine-makers, machinists, factory builders, export shippers of yam and manufactured goods, petty traders, workmen, and extraneous hangers-on of every description who found their occupation either suddenly gone, or threatened with a destruction which was none the less certain because it was not immediate. And now those who had store of cotton laid up in Liverpool warehouses, held it back, anticipating great profits to come; mill-owners., foreseeing the time when that store should be exhausted, were already putting their men on “ short time ” work ; newspaper writers were urging the merchants, by every consideration of patriotism and interest, to sell none of their reserve supply to North American or Continental buyers, but to keep it all for home consumption ; speculators and states- men were busy with projects for stimulating the cotton trade of India, Egypt, and Brazil, and for fostering it in all kinds of new districts — in Liberia, Persia, Jamaica, Sierra Leone, Natal, Queensland, the Gold Coast, the Cape of Good Hope, and even the Fiji and Hawaii Islands. And all this time prices were going up, work was getting slack, wages were on the decline, and a great dread and trouble filled the public mind. The season of distress had not yet come; but that it must come ere long, none dared to doubt. The rich foresaw ruin ; the poor, hunger, and cold, and the dis- eases bom of privation. Even Mr. Hardwicke looked grave, well knowing that any great commercial panic, though it might concern a trade with which he had no important relations, must affect him indirectly in ifiany ways. But Temple de Benham, watching only the rising of that tide on which his hopes were staked, knew now that the flood was at hand, and that his time was come. CHAP. XXXI I.— MR. HARD WICKE’S TEMPTATION. “If you are willing to take the risk, I am willing to take the danger.” “ It is a bold proposition,” said Mr. Hard- wicke, thoughtfully. Good Words, June x, 1869.] DEBENHAM’S VOW. 389 i And then there was an interval of silence, 1 which De Benham was the first to break. “ It is a bold proposition,” he said, “ com- ing, as it does, from a man who has nothing to lose — who is not even a seaman. I cannot ! wonder if you decline it.” “ Supposing I decline it,” said Mr. Hard- wicke, “what will you do?” “ Find some one else to undertake it,” replied De Benham, promptly. Mr. Hardwicke looked grave ; for here was the unwelcome possibility that he had fore- seen and tried to guard against from the first. It was out of the question that he should let this young man transfer his talents to the service of another employer. Having once found his rara avis , he could by no means endure to part from it. If, now, he had but succeeded in clipping the wings of that rara avis. . . . but alas ! the creature knew too well the value of his own powers of volition, and would not submit to the clipping for even so high a bribe as six hundred pounds a year. Mr. Hardwicke shook his head. “ No, no,” he said, “ that must not be. We | won’t part, Mr. Debenham, if we can help it.” “ It is not my wish, sir,” said De Benham. “ Let us consider what you would require for this enterprise. In the first place, a jjl ship I “ A steamer,” interposed De Benham. “A • steamer built for speed.” “ Well, a fast steamer, then — a resolute and capable commander — and a crew propor- tioned to the size of the boat. What more ? ” “ A cargo.” “A cargo, of course — consisting of Man- chester goods.” “ Manchester goods, blankets, shoes, hats, •small arms, and ammunition.” “ I cannot say that I approve of the small arm’s and ammunition,” said Mr. Hardwicke, uneasily. “They will fetch almost their weight in gold.” “ But they would increase the risk.” “ Not in the least. The risk cannot be increased. If we are captured — why, we are captured; and steamer and cargo are alike confiscated. Whether we carry milk for | babes, in the shape of Manchester goods, or strong meat for men, in the shape of rifles and revolvers, no worse fate can befall us.” “You speak lightly enough of the chances ! of capture,” said the merchant, looking in- finitely perplexed, tempted, and troubled. “ But the loss, in such case, would be enor- ' mous — fifty thousand pounds, at the least.” “ Pardon me — I admit the magnitude of the risk. I should not dream of advising you to embark in it.” “ Still, you think the thing is practicable ? ” “I am. sure that it is practicable. I know that it has already been done. I have certain information of a small tug steamer — a mere tub of a boat, scarcely sea- worthy — that ran into Charleston from Nassau on the eighteenth of last month. There will be scores of such boats out in the course of the summer and autumn ; but the faster they multiply, the more stringent will the blockade become.” “ And you think those will risk least who are first in the field ? ” “ Undoubtedly. The blockading war-vessels are as yet new to the work ; but their vigilance will get sharpened with practice.” “ Cotton has gone up to one-and sixpence a pound in Liverpool,” said Mr. Hardwicke, biting the end of his pen. “ It will stand at two-and-sixpence before twelve months are past,” said De Benham. And then again there was a pause. “ There is this Morrill tariff, too, hamper- ing all our operations on the Canadian frontier,” resumed the merchant. “ Yes ; there is not much to be done just at present, on the other side of the Atlantic.” “ It would be cheaper than ever now that the market is closed upon them,” mused Mr. Hardwicke. “ From twopence to threepence a pound at Charleston or Wilmington,” replied De Ben- ham, knowing that the merchant’s thoughts had gone back to the cotton question. Mr. Hardwicke dipped his pen in the ink, and jotted down a little column of figures in the comer of his blotting pad. “ Take the average American bale at four hundred and eighty pounds,” said he, half aloud ; “ then fifteen hundred bales would make seven hundred and twenty thousand pounds of raw cotton. And seven hundred and twenty thousand pounds of raw cotton at — say, threepence the pound, would repre- sent an outlay of nine thousand pounds. Now supposing it sold again at — at two and threepence the pound, the lot would fetch .... humph ! eighty-one thousand.” “ Leaving seventy-two thousand pounds sterling for expenses and profits,” added De Benham. “Not a bad speculation, Mr. Hardwicke. Besides, there are the profits on the exported cargo to be considered as well.” “ Still, there is the risk.” “Yes; there is always the risk. It is gambling on a gigantic scale, no doubt.” “And I have never gambled.” DEBENHAM’S VOW. 39° [Good Words, June i, 1869. “ Then let no representation of mine lead you to begin it.” Mr. Hardwicke sighed, and bit his pen again, and altered some of the figures in the corner of the blotting pad. “ Increase the cargo to two thousand bales, and the profits would amount to over ninety thousand pounds,” said he, with a somewhat heightened colour. “And I know at this moment of an iron steamer — a first-rate boat — for sale or hire — three hundred and fifty horse-power — capable of carrying two thou- sand bales at the least. . . . Mr. Debenham, you tempt me sorely !” “ No, sir, I do not tempt you,” said De Benham, in a gravely decisive tone. “I submit my project to you, believing it to be both practicable and profitable. I even con- ceive that it is my duty to do so. But I neither tempt nor persuade you.” “And your own share in this enterprise, Mr. Debenham?” “ Fifteen per cent, upon the profits.” “ The risk being entirely mine.” “ Not so. I risk my personal liberty. I become, if captured, a prisoner of war.” “ Humph ! I don’t know what to say to it. I must talk it over with Mr. Knott.” “By all means,” said De Benham, rising and taking his hat. “ When may I expect your decision?” “ You have not named your idea to any other capitalist, I conclude ? ” “To none at present, except yourself.” “ And you will not do so, of course, while the matter remains in abeyance ?” “ That must depend on how long you take to consider it, Mr. Hardwicke. I am con- fident that the matter should be taken up promptly, if at all. Can I have your answer to-morrow, at this hour?” So Mr. Hardwicke promised his answer the next day at that hour, and De Benham withdrew, tolerably confident beforehand as to the decision that answer would convey. He then plunged into a variety of crowded city thoroughfares, and presently hailing a cab, desired the driver to take him to a certain private hotel in Dover Street, Pic- cadilly. Enquiring here for Mr. fHeneage, he was. shown into a room where sat a sallow, sickly-looking man at a table covered with maps and papers. This man’s name was not Heneage. He was a native of South Carolina, a wealthy planter, a man of high official position in and about Charleston; and he was lying perdu in this quiet Piccadilly hostelry, dreading dis- covery by the Vigilance Committee of the North, and waiting an opportunity to get home by any route, however circuitous, and at any cost, however heavy. De Benham and he were mere chance acquaintances. They had met daily, a few months back, at the table d'hote of an hotel in St. Petersburg — met, and conversed, and parted with that sort of mutual liking that is so pleasant to take up, so easy to lay down, and yet might become friendship, if it had time to ripen. And now, but a day or two ago, they had met again — run against each other, as it were — in a little by-street near the docks, where De Benham had frequent business. And then they had greeted each other and talked freely of many things, the Southern gentleman telling how he was wait- ing under an assumed name for the first chance of a passage out, and De Benham, eager for information on the subject then uppermost in his mind, confiding to him by degrees his project of running the blockade. So now they were allies, bound together by a strong common interest ; and De Benham, had he searched all Europe for the purpose, could scarcely have found an ally in every way so valuable. Mr. Heneage looked up from his maps, rose, and grasped his visitor by the hand. “ Well ? ” he said, eagerly. “Well, I hope by this time to-morrow that I may be able to promise you a passage,” replied De Benham. “ I will give you a thousand pounds for it,” said the Southerner. “ Half down, before we start.” “ Give me your advice, and all the infor- mation you can think of that is likely to help me. We will settle the rest hereafter.” And then they sat down with a plan of Charleston harbour between them, and Mr. Heneage pointed out the probable position of the blockading ships ; explained all about the lights and the bar ; and went over the names of the different beacons — Lawford Beacon, Morris Beacon, Charleston Beacon, and the rest. “Not in vain have I for the last fifteen years owned the fastest yacht in Charleston harbour,” said he, laughing. “ There is not a pilot along the whole line of coast who is more familiar than myself with every shoal, and current, and sounding of that difficult estuary.” “ What good fortune for me to have you as a passenger ! ” said De Benham. “ Heaven grant that your capitalist may not become faint-hearted on reflection ! ” sighed the exile. Good Words,! Good Words, June i, 1869.] HEBENHAM”S "VOW. 39 ^ Now it is quite possible that Mr. Hard- wicke might have become faint-hearted, had he taken counsel only with himself. But he chose to “ talk the matter over ” with Mr. Timothy Knott, and that excellent man be- trayed so much righteous horror at the pro- position, and opposed it so vehemently, that Mr. Hardwicke at once made up his mind to undertake it. His courage needed some little spur before so bold a leap, and Mr. Timothy Knott was obliging enough to fur- nish that gentle stimulus at the right moment. CHAPTER XXXIII. THE “ STORMY PETREL.” It is about three hours after daybreak — a light breeze coming and going; the water sparkling, flashing, breaking into ripples that scintillate as if each drop were a glowing sap- phire ; the sea-birds skirling round and about on rapid wing ; the sky already one blaze of sunlight — when that excellent, English-built, double-screw steamer, the Stormy Petrel , Captain Frank Hay, from Liverpool, steams into the' port of Nassau, having made the run out in the short space of thirteen days and eleven hours from the moment of lifting anchor at Birkenhead. The history of the Stormy Petrel may be told, and her portrait sketched, in a few lines. Built for Messrs. Bodger and Twelvetrees of Leadenhall Street, and originally known to the commercial world by the less euphonious name of the Molly CareW , this boat had, for : some five years past, plied as a merchant steamer between Liverpool and the Mauri- tius. She was an iron boat, trim and graceful enough, of 1,070 tons burden, and 350 horse power. Her length was 279 feet; her breadth of beam, 35 feet ; her ordinary rate of speed, thirteen and a half knots (i.e., fifteen miles) an hour. She drew eleven feet of water when loaded, and six feet four inches when un- loaded ; and her consumption of coal at half- speed was just twenty tons in twenty-four hours. At her fullest speed, she consumed about thirty. She carried coal for twelve days. Such was the Molly Carew ; such, with cer- tain novel peculiarities lately superadded, is the Stormy Petrel. For the Molly Carew has changed owners, been re-christened, and, with a view to the new class of work in which she is now about to be employed, has undergone sundry alterations and repairs, tier speed is now increased to fifteen and a half knots an hour. She used to carry passengers and “ an experienced sur- geon;” but now her cabin accommodation is of the scantiest, every spare inch of space be- low decks being given up for the stowage of cargo, and everything above deck being cleared away so as to bring down the visible proportions of the Stormy Petrel to the lowest minimum. Her coal -bunkers, by means of an ingenious contrivance .originated by De Benham himself, are disposed in the form of upright recesses lining the hull on either side of the waist of the vessel ; thus , as it were, armour-plating with coal that im- portant part where the engines are placed. Her spars are reduced to a light pair of lower masts with only a “ crow's-nest ” on the fore-mast for the watch, and no cross yards whatever. Her boats are lowered to the level of the gunwales. Her funnel, of the “telescope” kind, lies low and raking aft. And her hull is painted of a dull, bluish, sea-green hue, which even by day- light is scarcely distinguishable from that of the waves, and by night, or in the lightest fog, is wholly invisible. The Stormy Petrel 7 it should be added, bums only anthracite coal, which yields neither smoke nor sparks ; and her engines are so constmcted that, in case of a sudden stop, the steam can be blown off noiselessly under water. Such are the outward lineaments and cha- racteristics of the vessel which steams into Nassau harbour this glorious, early morning In the month of June, 1861, seeking fresh coal and a pilot ; and a more stealthy-look- ing craft, or one more closely adapted to thread the perilous ways of a blockaded coast, never dropped anchor in that wild far-away British port. For the Stormy Petrel is bound for Charleston, having on board an assorted cargo of Manchester goods, ready- made clothing, and munitions of war; and this is her first trip in the character of a blockade-runner. Not the boat alone, however, but her cap- tain and crew are alike new to the work. In- deed, the work in itself is new. Blockade- running, so soon to develope into an organized system, has as yet scarcely begun ; and the Stormy Petrel is the first well-appointed boat in the field. But her commander has been accustomed to the navigation of these waters before ever the war was dreamed of on either side, and knows the whole, coast and all the West India isles by heart. He is a West of England man — a born sailor — short, active, hairy, broad-shouldered, taci- turn, cross-grained, fearless as a lion, and about forty-four years of age. This officer, with three mates, a chief engineer, two assist- ant engineers, eight firemen, six seamen, supercargo, and one passenger, are all the souls on board. ji 39 ; DEBENHAM’S VOW. [Good Words, June r, 18G9. j That passenger (who puts up, by the way, with a mattress and nig in the supercargo’s cabin, and enjoys none of the usual pas- sengers’ comforts) is a certain ex-senator, magistrate, and planter of South Carolina, now stealing home to Charleston under the assumed name of Heneage. That supercargo (charged with the care and sale of the present cargo, and with the purchase of as much raw cotton as the boat can carry back from Charleston to Nassau) is Temple De Benham. And now the Stormy Petrel anchors, for the nonce, not far from the lighthouse at the mouth of the harbour, keeping well away from the quays, which, however, are soon alive with spectators. De Benham hangs over the ship’s side, sweeping the shore with his glass — that low-lying palm-fringed shore, with its stunted shrubs, whitewashed houses, and dazzling coral-sands all ablaze in the sunshine — watch- ing the little silver fish that keep perpetually leaping and springing along the surface of the water; inhaling the soft and perfumed air ; and revelling in this his first glimpse of the New World. The captain at once despatches his first mate to the town to purchase fuel, but permits none others of his crew to go on shore. The Stormy Petrel , however, is soon beset by a swarm of small boats filled with free niggers of both sexes, clamorous, grinning, importunate, who offer bananas, alligator pears, pine-apples, cocoa-nuts, shad- docks, and other tropical fruits for sale. To- wards midday, the Stormy Petrel is brought in closer to the shore, and moored alongside a private wharf, so as more conveniently to take the coal on board. The crowd upon the quays, though con- stantly shifting and changing, continues, meanwhile, to increase. Here are sailors, soldiers, English officers wearing white linen hats with a flap behind the neck, porters, free niggers, and all the miscellaneous loungers of a small British West India station. A motley crowd, gathered together, apparently from every quarter of the little town — a crowd to whom this low-lying, sea-green steamer is evidently an object of the intensest curiosity. And now, towards evening, when the cooler breeze is beginning to set in from the sea, and the band is playing in front of the bar- 1 racks, and the harbour is gay with pleasure boats, the Stormy Petrel , having taken in her coal, moves out again to her former anchorage, and there awaits the arrival of her pilot — a seasoned, experienced New Englander, native of a certain well-known whaling-station yclept Martha’s Vineyard, on the coast of Massa- chusetts — one Zacjiary Polter by name, who comes off presently in a row-boat with his wife, and has a private interview with the captain before bidding her good-bye. This man’s price for running the Stormy Petrel into Charleston and back again to Nassau is seven hundred and fifty pounds for the round trip, and half the money down before starting. His risk is great, and there- fore his pay is high. He will be roughly dealt with, if the Stormy Petrel falls in with one of the Northern block.aders on the way. So he has five minutes with closed doors in the captain’s cabin before starting, and there receives across the table three hundred and seventy-five pounds in good and true Bank of England notes. These he stows carefully away in the recesses of a well-worn pocket- book, which he hands over to his wife, who puts it carefully in her bosom. A hard-faced, weather-beaten, rough fellow of a pilot, ready to take his life in his hand ; but tender-hearted withal, and not ashamed to draw his sleeve across his eyes and kiss his wife at parting ! This over, she goes away quite quietly and steadily, rowed by a stalwart young nigger in a striped jersey; and when she is some little way from the steamer, puts her handkerchief to her eyes, and looks back no more. “ And now, Mr. Polter,” says the captain, “ what have we to expect out yonder ? The Federals, I suppose, are on the look-out for visitors ?” Mr. Zachary Polter, regarding the deck in the light of - a monster spittoon and behav- ing accordingly, replies drily : — “ Wa’al, cap’n, I guess our people hev skinned their eyes pretty clean for the work, this time.” “ What ships have they now off Charleston Harbour ? ” “ The Wabash , the Seminole , and the Roanake; not keowntin’ all kinder little wasps o’ gun-boats and other small fry,” says Mr. Zachary Polter. “ Humph ! Only three ships of war.” “ Wa’al, cap’n, I won’t swear to that. The Pawnee and the Pocahontas hev been off that coast, I know ; and thar’s bin a whisper afloat this last day or tew, that the Ironsides is expected to jine.” “ There is not a more formidable armour- plated vessel in the Federal service,” ob- serves Mr. Pleneage, standing by. Struck by the voice, the pilot turns and looks at the last speaker. “ Hallo ! ” he ex- claims. “ Senator Shirley, sir, is that you ? Wa’al, sir, I’m glad to see you. And they’ll be glad to see you in Charleston, sir. And DEBENHAM’S VOW. Good Words, June i, 1869.] 393 Xhn uncommon pleased to hev the job o’ takin’ you home again, sir.” Saying which, Mr. Zachary Polter puts out a gigantic mahogany-coloured paw and shakes the ex-senator’s hand till he winces. “ My name is Heneage till I get back into Charleston,” says the South Carolinian, good- humouredly. “ Sir, all right — Heneage it is ; but, I take it, we’ll give you yer right spellin’ afore we’re forty-eight hours older.” “ This is not your first attempt at running the blockade, Mr. Pilot,” says the captain, sharply. “ Why, no, cap’n. It is the second time. I ran a rotten old Mississippi tug-boat over, jest three days arter them ships had come down ; and pretty smart work it was, tew, with a crack in hir steam-pipe big enough to let in a dollar piece edgeways.. But it’ll be smarter work this time. There’s more ships out; and them Parrot guns dew hit at a con- founded long range.” “ Psha ! we can afford to laugh at the Parrot guns, if only we keep well away from ’em,” says the captain, contemptuously. To which Mr. Zachary Polter (still labour- ing under that little misapprehension with regard to the deck) replies in his driest manner : — “ Wa’al, cap’n, I guess it ain’t exactly a pleasure trip we air takin’ together. We’ll laugh, if you please, when we git back agin into this here harbour.” And now the rapid dusk comes on. The men are at their posts ; the captain gives the word ; and the Stormy Petrel , which has been busily getting up her steam for the last hour or more, swings slowly round and works out of port as composedly and unobtrusively as she had worked in. The chain of lamps along the quays, the scattered lights sparkling along the shores of the bay, the steady fire of the beacon at the mouth of the harbour, fade, and diminish, and are lost one by one in the distance. For a long time the Stormy Petrel skirts the coast line, keeping in with the Bahamas, and pursuing her way through British waters; but a little after midnight (the crescent moon now dropping down the west, and a light breeze blowing from the south-east) she stands out to sea. A lovely night ! the horizon somewhat hazy after the heat of the day, but the sea breaking all over into phosphorescent smiles and dimples, and the heavens one glowing vault of stars. The Stormy Petrel , her steam being now well up, rushes on with a foam of fire at her bows and a trail of molten diamonds X— 27 I in her wake. Now and then, a shark plays round her in her course, distinctly visible in the light of his own progress, and then shoots off like a meteor. Thus the night wears, and at grey dawn the boy in the crow’s-nest reports a steamer on the starboard quarter. Scarcely has this danger been seen and avoided than another, and another, is sighted at some point or other of the horizon. And now swift orders, prompt obedience, eager scrutiny are the rule of the day; for the Stormy Petrel is in perilous waters, and her only chance of safety lies in the sharp- ness of her look-out, and the speed with which she changes her course when any pos- sible enemy appears in sight. All day long, therefore, she keeps doubling like a hare ; sometimes stopping altogether, to let some dangerous-looking stranger pass on ahead ; sometimes turning back upon her course; but, thanks to her general invisibility and the vigilance of her pilot, escaping unseen, and even making fair progress in the teeth of every difficulty. And now the sun goes down, half-gold, half-crimson, settling into a rim of fog-bank on the western horizon. Lower it sinks, and lower ; the gold diminishing, the crimson gaining. Now, for a moment it hangs, a bloody shield, upon the verge of the waters, and the sky is flushed to the zenith, and every ripple crested with living fire. And now, suddenly, it is gone — and before the glow has yet had time to fade, the southern night rushes in. An hour or so later, the wind drops and the Stormy Petrel steams straight into a light fog, which lies across her path like a soft, fleecy upright wall of cloud. “ This fog is in our favour, Mr. Polter,” says De Benham, pacing the deck with rapid steps ; for the night has now turned some- what chill and raw. “ Wa’al, sir, that’s as it may be,” replies the pilot, cautiously. “ The fog helps to hide us ; but then, yew see, it likewise helps to run us into danger.” And the event proves that that sagacious renegade is right; for at a little after midnight, when all seems to be solitude and security, and no breath is stirring, and no sound is heard save the rushing of the Stormy Petrel through the placid waters, there suddenly rises up before the eyes of all on board a great, ghostly, shadowy Something — a Phan- tom Ship, vague, mountainous, terrific — from the midst of which there issues a trumpet- tongued voice, saying : — “ Heave-to, steamer, or I’ll sink you.” 394 THE HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY. [Good words, j^e x, ** THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY. Part II. At the end of the last century Earl Sel- kirk, a benevolent young Scotch nobleman, visited the Highlands, which were then a terra incognita to tourists, and finding that emigration to the United States was going on to a considerable extent, he thought that it would be desirable to turn the tide into our own colonies. Having matured his plans, he headed a body of settlers, who sailed for Prince Edward’s Island, and established themselves there in 1803. The success of the experiment induced him to make a bolder venture, and in 1811 he obtained from the Hudson’s Bay Company a grant by deed of a portion of their territory in the vicinity of the Red River. Here he planted a Settlement of Scotch emigrants, and be- came a sort of patriarchal governor. In 1817 he made a treaty with the Chippe- way and Cree Indians, in order to extinguish any rights they might claim over the land oc- cupied by the Settlement. The instrument was signed, or rather marked, by four chiefs of the tribes, who each scrawled under it the rude figure of an animal ; and they thereby ceded to “ our Sovereign Lord the King ” a certain tract of country in the Red River, on condition that Lord Selkirk, his heirs and successors, should pay annually to the chiefs and warriors of the two tribes “ one hun- dred pounds weight of good merchantable tobacco.” The geological nature of the land of the Settlement is the limestone formation, and the soil is composed of the debris of granite and limestone, with a large proportion of decayed vegetable matter. It is extremely fertile, and when well cultivated yields large crops of the finest wheat. But the colony did not prosper. It was too far removed from the operations of commerce, and had no means of market or export except by the difficult and at certain seasons impracticable route of the Nelson River to York Fort on Hudson’s Bay. Half of the original settlers abandoned the Red River, as they found that they had no market for their produce. They were scorched by the heat in summer and frozen in the winter, and they more than once took refuge in Pembina. The late Mr. Edward Ellice said in his evidence before the Committee of the House of Com- mons, “ It was an unwise speculation settling people in a country where they could send no produce to market, where they could be in communication with no neighbouring set- tlement, and accordingly it has failed.” The Settlement was purchased back from Lord Selkirk or his heirs by the company in 1834, and since that time it has remained in their possession. It now occupies in a straggling manner about fifty miles of the course of the Assiniboine, and twenty miles of the course of the Red River, and the population may be estimated at about 12,000 souls. Fort Garry is the principal station, or rather there are two forts — an upper and a lower one. The lower fort occupies three or four acres, but the upper one is not quite so large, and they are both surrounded by stone walls, flanked by towers. In their amusing book, called “ The North-West Passage by Land/’ Lord Milton and Dr. Cheadle say : — “From Red River to the Rocky Mountains, along the banks of the Assiniboine and the fertile hills of the Saskatchewan, at least sixty millions of acres of the richest soil lie ready for the farmer when he shall be allowed to enter in and possess it. This glorious country, capable of sustaining an enormous population, lies utterly useless, except for the support of a few Indians, and the enrichment of the shareholders of the Last Great Monopoly.” This last remark is not quite fair, for that part of the territory contributes little or nothing to the exchequer of the company, as the fur-bearing animals hardly exist there, and no trade is carried on in that region from which the company derives benefit. I have mentioned that the western frontier of Canada has never been authoritatively defined, and on one occasion, in 1818, when a question of jurisdiction was raised in a criminal trial at Toronto, under a commis- sion from Lower Canada, the court directed the jury to return a special verdict, stating that “ they could not see from any evidence before them what were the limits of Upper Canada.” The Chief Justice said, “ I do not know whether from 90° to ioo° or 150° forms the western limit of Upper Canada.” Soon after the cession of Canada by France to England in 1763, traders from Montreal began to push their way towards the west in search of furs. They followed the Pigeon River route from Lake Superior, and in spite of King Charles’s charter encroached not only upon the territory but the privileges of the Hudson’s Bay Company. In 1784 these traders formed themselves into a Company, and for many years a civil war raged in Rupert’s Land between the two rival com- Good Words, June i, 1869.] THE HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY. 395 panies, in which sanguinary battles were fought and many lives were lost. Before long a second Canadian company, called the X. Y. Company, came into the field, and the confusion was worse confounded. I All readers of Washingtonlrving’s “Astoria” must remember the account which that de- lightful writer gives of the North-West Com- pany, which, as he says, “for a time held a lordly sway over the wintry lakes and bound- less forests of the Canadas, almost equal to that of the East India Company over the voluptuous climes and magnificent realms of the Orient.” They had in their employ two thousand persons, and the principal partners resided in Montreal, where, as Washington Irving says, they formed a kind of commercial aristocracy living in lordly and hospitable style. Two or three of them used to meet every year at Fort William the superinten- dents of the trading posts in the wilderness, who came there with a body of retainers, like chieftains of the Highland clans. “ The councils were held in great state, for every member felt as if sitting in Parliament, and every retainer and dependent looked up to the assemblage with awe as to the House of Lords. There was a I vast deal of solemn deliberation and hard Scottish i reasoning, with an occasional swell of pompous decla- mation. These great and weighty councils were ; alternated by huge feasts and revels, like some of the old feasts described in Highland castles. The tables in the great banqueting-room groaned under the weight of game of all kinds, of venison from the woods and fish from the lakes, with hunters’ delicacies, such as buffaloes’ tongues and beavers’ tails, and various luxuries from Montreal, all served up by experienced cooks brought for the purpose. There was no stint of generous wine, for it was a hard-drinking period, a time of loyal toasts and bacchanalian songs, and brimming bumpers.” Such was the company of the “ mighty North-Westers,” at whose board the youthful Washington Irving often sat, and who for many years were a thorn in the side of the Hudson’s Bay Company. The effects of the contest have been described as “ the demoralisation of the Indians ; liquor was introduced as a medium of trade throughout; there were riots and breaches of the peace continually taking place, and the country was in a state of great disorganization.” Sir John Richardson made the following statement to the Committee of the House of Commons in 1857 of what he saw in 1819, when he accompanied Sir John Franklin on his first expedition : — “ Landing at York Factory, we found several of the members of the North-West Company prisoners in the fort ; they had been captured shortly before we arrived there. One of them, a Mr. Frobisher, escaped with some men and perished ; he died for want of food in attempting to make his escape We found both parties supplying the Indians liberally with spirits. The Indians were spending days in drunken- ness at the different posts, and a contest altogether shocking to humanity was carried on.” Lord Selkirk naturally took the side of the Hudson’s Bay Company in its contest with the Canadian interlopers, and he became a very active partizan. He treated the North- West Company as poachers, and warned them by proclamation that they had no right to kill any animals on his land. Scenes of bloodshed were frequent, and in June, 1816, a battle was fought on the Frog Plains, near the Red River, when a wild body of “ North- Westers,” consisting of half-breeds and Indians, attacked the Settlement, and the governor and twenty of his followers were killed. The whole colony were driven from their homes, and took refuge at Norway House, on the north of Lake Winnipeg. Earl Selkirk was at this time on his way from Montreal, at the head of a motley body of disbanded soldiers — chiefly foreigners — and in retaliation he seized on Fort William, at Lake Superior, which was then the head- quarters of the North-West Company, and arrested the principal partner, Mr. McGil- livray, taking possession of all the property. Actions of trespass were brought against him in the Canadian courts by different parties, and verdicts for heavy damages were given. Criminal proceedings were also instituted, and a bill of indictment was preferred against him and his associates. The colony was brought back to the Red River, and soon afterwards Lord Selkirk left the settlement and did not return to it. Earl Bathurst was at this time (1820) the Colonial Secretary, and being at his wits’ end to know how to deal with the belligerents, he availed himself of the shrewd sagacity of the late Mr. Ellice, who had been one of the most influential members of the North-West Company. Under his able management, a union of the two companies was effected on the basis of equality, so far as possible, amongst the respective shareholders. In 1821, an Act (1 and 2 Geo. IV. c. 66) was passed, authorising the Crown to grant a license for the exclusive privilege of trading with the Indians in such parts of North America as were not part of the territory granted to the Fludson’s Bay Company, or of any of the British “provinces” in North America, or “ of any lands or territories be- longing to the United States of America;” but the license was not to be given for more than twenty-one years. Under this Act, the Crown, at the end of 1821, granted to the 3 9 6 THE HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY. [Good Words, June r, 1869. Hudson’s Bay Company, and to William and Simon McGillivray and Edward Ellice, who represented the North-West Company, a license for the sole exclusive privilege of trading with the Indians for twenty-one years within the above-named limits; and it pro- vided that they should give security in the penal sum of ^5,000, for ensuring the due execution of criminal process and civil pro- cess, where the matter in dispute exceeded ^200, “by the officers and persons legally empowered to execute such processes” with- in the territories included in the license. They were also required to submit, for the royal approval, such rules as might appear to the Crown to be effectual for gradually diminishing, or ultimately preventing, the sale of spirits to the Indians, and for promoting their moral and religious improvement. The Hudson’s Bay Company acquired, by agreement, all the rights and interest of the North-West Company in 1824; and it was therefore unnecessary to continue the trading partnership with the Messrs. McGillivray and Mr. Ellice ; but the license remained in force until 1838, when it was surrendered to the Crown, and a new one was granted to the Hudson’s Bay Company alone, for another period of twenty-one years, on similar terms as before. There was, however, an important proviso added to the new license, which shows that the Government had in view the possible creation of a colony or colonies in the licensed territory. It was, that nothing therein contained should prevent the esta- blishment, “within the territories aforesaid, or any of them,” of any colony or province, or annexing any part of them to any existing colony. The proviso, also, for ensuring due execution of civil process was extended to all suits, whatever might be the amount in dis- pute. This last license expired in 1859, and has not' since been renewed. There seems to have been a general impression that the company were bound by their license to send civil and criminal cases that arose in I the licensed, as distinguished from the char- tered territory, to the courts of Canada for trial. But this is a mistake. There is nothing in either of the licenses about the Canadian courts ; and, according to them, process was to be executed by the officers and persons legally empowered within the licensed terri- tories. But, by the Act 43 Geo. III. c. 138, passed in 1803, it was enacted, that all offences committed within any of the Indian territories, or parts of America not within the limits of Canada or the United States, should be tried as if they had been committed within the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada ; and offenders were to be arrested and con- veyed to Lower Canada, to be tried there, or in certain circumstances in Upper Canada. Further, by the Act 1 and 2 Geo. IY. c. 138, passed in 1821, civil and criminal jurisdic- tion over the same region was given to the courts of Upper Canada ; and the Crown was empowered to appoint, by commission under the Great Seal, justices of the peace, to hold their courts of record, for the trial of civil and criminal cases, “anything in the charter of the Governor and Company of Merchants and Adventurers of England trading to Hudson’s Bay to the contrary notwithstanding.” It seems, therefore, that the Canadian courts, and the Rupert’s Land courts, if established by commission under the Great Seal, have concurrent jurisdiction ; but I believe that no such courts have been created. In 1839, ^e company took on lease from the Russian Government a strip of coast, on the seaboard of the Pacific, between Fort Simpson and Cross Sound, for which they agreed to pay a rent of 2,000 otters a year ; but this was afterwards commuted into a rent in money. Before the treaty between Great Britain and the United States in 1846, which made the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude the boundary between the territories of the two Governments, the Hudson’s Bay Company were in occupation of lands south of that line, in what are now the States of Wash- ington and Oregon ; and it was expressly provided that their possessory right, as well as that of “all British subjects who may be already in the occupation of land or other property lawfully acquired within the said territory, shall be respected.” And the late well-known American statesman and lawyer, Mr. Daniel Webster, said, in an opinion he gave, that he entertained no doubt that the company had a vested proprietary right in the lands. The matter was referred to arbitra- tion before a commission, sitting at Washing- ton, and has, I believe, not yet been decided. In 1849, Vancouver’s Island was granted to the Hudson’s Bay Company, under certain restrictions and conditions, which I need not detail, but which, to use the language of Mr. Ellice, “ ensured from the beginning an abso- lute failure of the whole scheme.” The truth is, that a trading company is wholly unfit to carry out a system of colonisation, and the experiment is not likely to be again attempted. In 1857, the Select Committee of the House of Commons, to which I have so often re- Gocd Words, June i, 1869. j THE HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY, 397 ferred, was appointed, “ to consider the state of those British possessions in North America which are under the administration of the Hudson’s Bay Company, or over which they possessed license to trade.” It consisted of Mr. Labouchere, then Colonial Secretary, Sir John Pakington, Lord John Russell, Mr. Gladstone, Lord Stanley, Mr. Roebuck, Mr. Lowe, and others ; and, after examining a great number of witnesses, and obtaining much valuable evidence, they made a short report, in which they said that they consi- dered it essential to “ meet the just and rea- sonable wishes of Canada, to be enabled to annex such portion of the land in her neigh- bourhood as may be available to her for the purposes of settlement, with which lands she is willing to open and maintain communica- tions, and for which she will provide the means of local administration.” They recom- mended, also, that the connection between the Hudsons Bay Company and Vancouver’s Island should cease : — “ As to those extensive regions, whether in Rupert’s Land or in the Indian territory, in which, for the present at least, there can be no prospect of permanent settlement, to any extent, by the European race for the purposes of colonisation, the opinion at which your committee have arrived is mainly founded on the following considerations : The great importance to the more peopled portions of British North America that law and order should, as far as possible, be maintained in these territories ; the fatal effects which they believe would infallibly result to the Indian population from a system of open competition in the fur trade, and the consequent introduction of spirits in a far greater degree than is the case at present ; and the probability of the indiscriminate destruction of the more valuable fur-bearing animals in the course of a few years. For these reasons, your committee are of opinion that, whatever may be the validity or otherwise of the rights claimed by the Hudson’s Bay Company under the charter, it is desirable that they should continue to enjoy the privilege of exclusive trade, which they now possess.” Soon afterwards Vancouver’s Island was wholly withdrawn from the administration of the company, and erected into a colony ; and at the same time the colony of Columbia was established on the mainland opposite, to the west of the Rocky Mountains. In 1863, a change took place in the pro- prietary of the company. Their capital was half-a-million ; and, by an arrangement with the International Financial Society, ^1,500,000 was paid by that society to the then existing shareholders, and a new stock was created to the extent of two millions, which was offered to the public, in shares of £20 each. By this means a new proprietary was created, which constitutes the present company ; but no change was made in the charter, and all the rights and privileges which had been granted by Charles II. re- mained unaffected. In their prospectus the International Financial Society stated that the landed territory of the company com- prised an area of more than 1,400,000 square miles, or upwards of 896,000,000 acres ; and that the southern district (which is sometimes designated the Fertile Belt) would be opened to European colonisation, “ under a liberal and systematic system of land settlement.” It was shown that the average net annual profits of the company (after setting aside 40 per cent, as remune- ration to the factors and servants at the posts and stations in Rupert’s Land) for the pre- vious ten years had been 16 per cent, on the old capital of half-a-million, and would, therefore, amount to 4 per cent, upon the new capital of two millions. During the last few years a negotiation has been going on between the company and the Colonial Office, with reference to the surrender of their rights in the southern portion of their territory, either to the Crown or to Canada, with a view to colonisation. One important question was the amount of compensation to which the company would be entitled. Canada, however, denied their legal title to an important part of the territory. In a report of a Committee of the Executive Council of Canada in June, 1866, they say that “ they do not admit that the company have a legal title to that portion of the North-Western territory which is fit for culti- vation and settlement. This fertile tract is a belt of land stretching along the northern frontier of the United States to the base of the Rocky Mountains, and Canada has always disputed the title of the company to it.” But notwithstanding this, the Canadian government were prepared to admit generally the claims of the company, and would them- selves have opened negotiations for the ex- tinction of those claims if the Confederation scheme had not been brought forward, when it was thought that the question ought to be reserved for the consideration of the Con- federate government. In December, 1867, the parliament of the Dominion of Canada agreed to an address to her Majesty, praying that she would by Order in Council under the powers of the act by which the Confederation of the British North American Colonies was established, unite Rupert’s Land and the North-Western territory to Canada. This would embrace British Columbia, and make the new Domi- nion extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific, j The address stated that in the event of the 398 THE HUDSON’S transfer to Canada of the jurisdiction and control over the region, the government and parliament of Canada would be ready to provide that the legal rights of any corpora- tion, company, or individual within its limits should be respected and placed under the protection of courts of competent jurisdic- tion. But the Hudson’s Bay Company were not likely to accede to this proposal. It would, if carried into effect, have handed over to Canada their territory, and placed their rights at the mercy of the tribunals of a government which had gone far to deny that they possessed any legal rights at all. It was like conveying a property to a purchaser, and giving him the absolute power of de- termining whether he should pay anything for it or not. Sir John Macdonald, the present prime minister of Canada, said in the course of his speech on the subject in the Canadian Parliament : — “ What would the title of the company be worth when it was known that the country belonged to Canada, and that the Canadian government and Canadian courts had jurisdiction there, and that the chief protection of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and the value of their property, namely, the exclusive right of trading in those regions, were gone for ever ? The value of the company’s interest would be determined by the value of their stock, and what would that be worth when the whole country belonged to Canada ? ” The address from the Parliament of Canada was not acted upon so far as it prayed for an annexation of the territory by an Order of Council ; but an Act called “ The Rupert’s Land Act, 1868,” was passed last year for enabling her Majesty to accept a surrender, upon terms to be agreed upon, of the lands, privileges, and rights of the Company, and for admitting the same into the dominion of Canada. And quite recently the present Colonial Secretary, Lord Granville, has pro- posed that the company shall surrender to her Majesty all their rights of government and property in Rupert’s Land and other parts of British North America, which will be trans- ferred to the Dominion of Canada upon Canada paying the company ^300,000 as compensation. It is proposed that the com- pany shall retain their rights of trade, their stations, and blocks of land adjoining them; and they shall, moreover, be allowed to claim one-twentieth of the land in every township or district within the Fertile Belt as it is set out for settlement. Looking forward to the future it was impos- sible not to see that a change must take place in the destination of Rupert’s Land. It could not always remain merely a hunting ground for traders in furs. Indeed the BAY COMPANY. [Good Words , June i, 1869, southern part no longer affords to the same extent a supply of those articles ; for the animals are decreasing in number,, and the valuable trade is in the northern portion. There the climate and the soil are alike unfit for tne habitation of civilised men, and the land must for ages be the abode of the bear, the beaver, and the fox, with a few wandering tribes of wretched Indians. But the south is more or less suitable for colonisation, and many considerations point to Canada as the country to which it ought to be annexed. In the report of a committee of the Executive Council of Canada they say : — “The government looks forward with interest to the day when the valley of the Saskatchewan will become the back country of Canada, and the land of hope for the hardy youth of the province when they seek new homes in the forest ; and it anticipates with confidence the day when Canada will become the highway of immigration from Europe into those fertile valleys.” There are, no doubt, serious difficulties to overcome in making such a highway and effecting a ready means of communication between Lake Superior and the Red River. Colonel Crofton, who commanded a body of troops that were sent to Rupert’s Land in 1846, stated before the committee of the House of Commons that it would be utterly impossible to make a road for waggons there on account of the swamps. But the word “ impossible ” is said not to be found in the dictionary of engineers, and the idea of a railway from Canada, even as far as the Pacific, has long been seriously entertained. It has indeed been asserted that a Canadian swamp is “ about the best ground that nature ever made for a railway track,” for what is called a “ swamp ” there, is a level tract, with a thicket growing upon it, which keeps the ground damp by excluding the sun’s rays, and there is generally a stiff clay bottom.* A private trading company like that of the Hudson’s Bay has not authority or power to preserve order and good government amongst a large population, composed as it un- doubtedly will be before long in a great mea- sure of immigrants from the United States, by no means disposed to submit patiently to law, and least of all to the law of a foreign nation. They would require the strong hand of a powerful government, and would set at nought the feeble authority of a council of factors and traders. The Indians sometimes give trouble enough. In a letter from Mr. Mactavish, the governor * See the evidence of Mr. McDawson before a select committee of the Canadian House of Representatives, printed in the Blue Book; Report, Hudson’s Bay Company, 1857 Good Words, June x, 1869.] THE HUDSON’S of Rupert’s Land, dated 31st July, 1866, he says that a band of Salt Indians, from Red Lake in Minnesota, had murdered four Sioux within sight of Fort Garry, and then im- mediately retired within the American bound- ary. And at Fort Pitt, on the Saskatchewan, a band of Blackfeet forced the inner gates of the fort and plundered it. They then met in their way a party of the Company’s ser- vants returning from the plains, and after firing on them took away their horses. The close proximity of the United States makes it very desirable that a transfer of the territory should take place with as little delay as possible. In the report of the committee of the Canadian Government, to which I have before referred, they say : — “ The close relations springing up between the Red River settlers and the Americans of Pembina and St. Paul, and the removal of many Americans into the territory, render it doubly expedient that a settled government under the British Crown should be established in the country at an early date.” Next adjoining the southern frontier of Rupert’s Land lie the States of Minnesota, Dakota, and Montana, divided from it by only an imaginary line, across which the straggling waves of the advancing tide of population will slowly but surely flow. It may be said, and with truth, that these States are as yet only partially occupied, and that many years must elapse before they are filled with a population which would require any expansion of space towards the north. But we must bear in mind an important fact. It is quite true, as a general rule, that popu- lation does not migrate to seek distant lands for cultivation, so long as good land in suf- ficient quantity can be had near at hand; but there are numbers of restless spirits in America whose vocation may be said to be to act as the vanguard of material progress. They dislike a settled life, and when they have made a clearing in the wilderness, and begun to cultivate the soil, they throw down the spade for the axe, and seized with an irresistible impulse, travel onwards. “I hear the tread of pioneers Of nations yet to be; The first low wash of waves where soon Shall roll a human sea.” It is thus that, before Iowa was settled, Min- nesota was invaded ; and, although that State is only scantily peopled, Dakota and Montana have since been added to the United States. In 1864 the inhabitants of the Red River Settlement were so alarmed by the threaten- ing attitude of the Sioux, that they strongly pressed Mr. Dallas, the governor of Rupert’s Land, to invite American troops across the 1 frontier ; and certainly, to use the expression BAY COMPANY. of the late Sir Edmund Head, who was governor of the company in England, the fact of the Queen’s subjects “ looking for pro- tection to the United States, was one of grave importance with reference to the na- tionality of the settlement and the territory.” The year before last Mr. Adams, the American Minister here, applied on behalf of his Government to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Stanley, to know whether arrangements could be made for allowing the troops of the United States to follow Indians who infested the emigrant road in Dakota, and committed every kind of atrocity, into the British terri- tory, where they took refuge. It seems to be rather doubtful whether this particular territory belongs to the company or the Crown, as there is a narrow belt of land run- ning to the north of the forty-ninth parallel — the boundary line — which is supposed to be watered by streams which do not find their way into Hudson’s Bay, and if so, this was not included in the grant made by the original charter to the company. Besides, gold has been discovered in the Saskatchewan region, and in a pamphlet pub- lished in America in 1866, and addressed to the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, the following significant passage oc- curs : — “ Rumours of gulches and ledges in the Saskat- chewan district, .yielding even greater prizes to the prospector, are already rife, and will soon precipitate ‘ a strong, active, and enterprising people ’ into the spacious void. What is called the Americanisation of the Red River Settlement has been slow, although sure, since the era of steam navigation, but this Americanisation of Saskatchewan will rush suddenly and soon from the camps of treasure-seekers in Mon- tana.” I will now say a few words on the constitu- tion and government of the company. In England, it consists of a governor — Prince Rupert’s chair at present is occupied by Sir Stafford Northcote — and a body of directors, who represent the shareholders. In Rupert’s Land there is an acting governor, who is assisted by a council composed of the chief factors, sixteen in number, and sometimes of chief traders, and by a recorder, who was first appointed in 1839. The chief factors are not paid by salaries, but are admitted into a sort of partnership with the company, on the fol- lowing principle : the profits are divided into one hundred shares, of which forty are allotted amongst the officers in the territory in certain specified proportions. This forty per cent, is debited to the fur-trade, and is, of course, so much deducted from the fund available for dividend to the shareholders. It is, in fact, part of the working expenses of the concern, 4 oo THE HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY. which must be paid before the net profits can be ascertained. Besides the chief factors, there are twenty-nine chief traders, and the number of servants in permanent employment is about 1,200. The number of forts or posts in Rupert’s Land is sixty-six. At the north end of Lake Winnipeg is the fort calle’d Norway House, which is the central station of the upper country. Here brigades of boats receive annually their supplies for the different posts, and proceed on their winding voyages along rivers and lakes, bringing back furs which are then conveyed to York Factory, on Hudson’s Bay, and shipped to England. At Norway House also there is annually a meeting of the factors who have charge of the different posts, and who there consult together on the in- terests of the trade. The currency of the country is the beaver- skin, as tobacco used to be in Virginia. It is the unit of value according to which all barter is computed. Thus, ten musk rats go to one beaver, and a beaver is equal to a blanket. Four or five beavers go to a silver fox, and a certain number of silver fox-skins are given for a gun. The way in which the trade is carried on is this. When an Indian hunter arrives at one of the posts with a bundle of furs, he proceeds to a room, where the superintendent separates the furs into lots, and, after adding up the amount, delivers to him a number of little pieces of wood, which indicate the number of beaver-skins to which his furs are equal in value. The Indian then goes to the store-room, which contains the articles he wants, such as blankets, coats, guns, powder-horns, and knives. Each of these has a fixed and known value m beaver- skins, represented by the pieces of wood, and the hunter pays them away just as if they were cash for whatever article he fancies. At Red River, however, the Hudson’s Bay Company issue notes to the extent of £ 9,000 or ^10,000, which act as a circulating medium in the colony. When the furs arrive in England they are stored in the company’s warehouses in Lime Street — part of the buildings of the old East India Company — and they are sold in lots by auction, in the spring of the year. There, in the different rooms may be seen vast piles of skins of bears, foxes, wolves, wolverines, martens, minks, otters, and even skunks — which last are used on the Continent (where I suppose the olfactory nerves are not so sen- sitive as ours), for the lining of cloaks. A story is told of the late Prince Gortchakoff, that when he was in England a short time before the Crimean war, he went to see a fox-chase, and as the hounds approached they suddenly made a rush at him and gave tongue loudly. They were with difficulty whipped off by the huntsman, and it turned out that the Prince was wearing a cloak lined with the skins of foxes, so that the dogs natu- rally attacked him. If they had pulled him down, the Russians might never have crossed the Pruth, and the world would not have heard of the siege of Sebastopol ! It seems paradoxical that the highest prices in proportion to their value should be given for the inferior furs. But the reason is this. If the company were to pay for the finer furs at the same rate as they pay for the less valuable ones, the Indians would hunt up the animals that bear the best furs and destroy the race, as has, in fact, been the case along the southern frontier. The silver fox and the beaver would soon disappear, and only musk rats, and raccoons, and martens be left. Since the beginning of the present century, the col- lection of furs has much increased, but the company pay the Indians more for them, and thus there is a larger trade in them than ever, but with less profit. The valuable trade is in the remote and colder districts, where, there being no interference by the efforts of civilisa- tion, the animals are preserved like game in England, and the Indians are encouraged to kill them only when the fur is in season, and to spare the females when they are breeding. But if the trade were thrown open, it is obvious that wanton destruction would ensue, and the supply of furs would soon cease to exist, for it would be the interest of every trader to secure as much in as short a time as possible, and, to use a homely phrase, the goose would be killed to get the egg. I have now endeavoured to give an account ^ of the constitution and history of the last of the great proprietary companies of England, i to whom a kind of delegated sovereignty was granted by the Crown. It was by some of these that distant colonies were founded, and one, the most powerful of them all, established our empire in the East, and held the sceptre of the Great Mogul. But they have passed away — fuit Ilium et ingens’ Gloria Teucrorum— and the Hudson’s Bay Company will be no exception to the rule. It may continue to exist as a Trading Company, but as a Terri- torial Power it must make up its mind to fold its (buffalo) robes around it, and die with dignity. WILLIAM FORSYTH. Good Words, June i, 1869.] PASSING PLEASURES. 40 ,£m*i % PASSING PLEASURES. These blessed passing pleasures ! We need not let them waste, We need not leave their treasures Behind us in our haste. We need not doubt their fitness Where earth’s deep shadows fall ; God giving, He is witness That we shall want them all. Amid the old sad story Of human shame and sin, If He gives gleams of glory We ought to let them in. And oh, when brought before us Where heart and soul can see, How mighty to restore us Love’s little signs may be ! A bird, a tree, a flower, A creature just as frail, Will take us in His power To Him within the veil ; Will come, if He has bidden, Amidst the darkening fight, And leave us safely hidden Behind a shield of light. Perhaps His angels see us Disquieted in vain ; Perhaps His watch would free us From some ensnaring pain ; But only He can measure Who sees our nature through The good that in His pleasure A passing joy may do. If but for one bright minute Through gathering clouds it break, There is a token in it That He would have us take. And His least sign obeying, No wealth our hearts shall miss, Even when we hear Him saying, “ See greater things than this ! ” For He the dull ear gaining, Meeting the dim weak sight, Our faith is gently training To bear the perfect light. And while His mercies guide us, We in one sure belief May trust the joy beside us Even as we trust the grief. A. L. WARING. 'T JACOB. 402 [Good Words, June 1, 1869. HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. By the BISHOP OF OXFORD. VI.— JACOB. The life of Isaac succeeds to that of Abra- ham in the sacred record like the vision of some peaceful lake into which the full waters of a giant river have poured their majestic flow; and which mirrors motionless back the sky above and the mountains round it. Still- ness, instead of wandering, was the new con- dition of his outward life ; and the inward answered to it. A calm, meditative, unim- passioned man, conscious of possessing a life given as a marvel, of being the channel of promises which should reach on to the ends of time, his religious character seems to have been summed up in Jacob’s words, “ The God of my fathers, the God of Abraham, and the fear of Isaac ” (Gen. xxxi. 42); he dwelt all his days under the safe shadow of the fear of God. All his life, as often happens, was figured forth in that great act of self-sacrifice which marked his early manhood. For such was his willing ascent of the mountain of Moriah at the bidding of Jehovah, and his unresisting submission to being bound for sacrifice on the wood of the burnt-offering which he had meekly borne up the mountain- side. It is the nature of such a life of early devotion to God to be free from the great crises, trials, and agonies by which later conversions and renewals are effected and brought to perfection. It is one long period of unbroken restfulness, leaving, from the very tranquillity with which it was blessed, little to record for others ; and tending to de- velop in the man himself a character of peace rather than of strength. These features w r e may trace in Isaac. He was a quiet, pros- perous, religious man. He sowed and “ re- ceived an hundred fold, and the Lord blessed him ; he waxed great, and went forward, and grew until he became very great, for he’ had possession of flocks, and possession of herds, and great store of servants, and the Philis- tines envied him ; ’ (Gen. xxvi. 12- — 14). In the midst of this envy he was unwarlike and peaceable, trusting in God’s protection, and little disposed to self-assertion. Thus, time after time, he yields to the herdsmen of Gerar the wells that he has digged, till they cease to strive for them (Gen. xxvi.). And the same character reappears in his patient ac- quiescence in the contentions which in later years disturbed his family. This life of calm was for the most part spent in the neighbour- hood of that spring of water which the angel of God had shown to Hagar when she was sent forth with Ishmael from the tent of his father. “Isaac dwelt by the well Lahai-roi.” There, it seems, when he was himself sixty years old, and twenty years after his marriage,, his twin sons, Esau and Jacob, were born. God’s prophetic answer in interpreting the struggling of the unborn children had already foretold to Rebekah the great issue of that birth, in the two nations which should spring from it, of which “the one people should be stronger than the other, and the 1 elder should serve the younger” (Gen. xxv. ] 23). The different characters of her two j sons soon declared themselves. The calm I quietness of Isaac’s tent was irksome to her ; firstborn, Esau. He cared not for the pas- tures which fed his father’s many flocks. The wild grounds of the neighbouring desert, with the excitement of the chase of its game, and of conflicts with its beasts of prey, were more- congenial to his spirit ; and into these he cast himself, mingling in them freely with the children of the land, amongst whom he was soon a leader, as he grewup “a cunning hunter, a man of the field.” Closer connection with them naturally followed ; and when he was j forty years old he took two wives- of that Canaanitish blood with which the family of Abraham had never mingled, and “which were a grief of heart and bitterness of spirit unto Isaacand Rebekah.” The touches which sketch his character are few, but they are most expres- sive. We see before us the bold, wild, impetu- ous, generous, spirited, popular Arab, full of impulse, unsuspicious, uncontrolled, reau to purchase immediate gratification at any price; unable to appreciate the distinctive spiritual blessings which belonged to him as the heir of the great father of the faithful. In him, even more plainly than in Ishmael himself, the Arab son of Abraham, the dis- tinctive unworldly character of the separated Friend of God seemed to have lapsed back into the mere son of the world. And so it is a rise in his position when by another sud- den act of his impulsive nature, on Jacob being sent to take a wife of the old stock of the Abrahamic family, he, as though to retrieve the character of his married life, takes a third wife of the family of Ishmael, the son of the bond-servant. This essential worldliness of JACOB. Good Words, June i, 1869.] 405 character was connected, as it so often is, especially in youth, with many attractive qualities. Wherever we meet him there is about him a generous recklessness which, though really compatible of union with the highest reign of thoughtless selfishness, yet wears to one who does not look below the sur- face an aspect of unselfishness which at once wins for him a great amount of sympathy. Jacob’s character was in almost every respect the opposite of Esau’s ; and in youth at least far less naturally attractive. He was “ a plain man, dwelling in tents.” Whichever of its disputed meanings we attach to the epithet plain, it does not greatly alter the aspect of Jacob’s character; perhaps the highest is the nearest to the truth ; he was a cultivated as his brother was a rough man ; a man of the tent, as the other was a man of the forest, the hill- side, and the waste. His taste was for the flocks and herds, for domestic cares and pur- suits. As the natural result of the common instincts of our nature, he was the mother’s, as Esau was the father’s favourite. The somewhat inactive character of Isaac delighted in the daring of his hunter son, whilst the mother found in her more civilised child a companion- ship and sympathy which she could never taste in the company of the wild man of the desert, the husband of Hittite wives whom she abhorred. Though, moreover, in Jacob’s early life there is no more mark of godliness than there is about that of Esau, yet there must in the younger son have been always present that substratum of affectionateness of heart which is the special character of his after years, and which is ' always so dear to a mother’s soul. Jacob’s natural character combined remark- ably the distinctive features of both his parents. It repeated much of his father’s musing, medi- tative temperament, whilst the stronger pas- sions of his mother’s nature stirred its depths to bursts of feeling unknown to Isaac, and whilst there was joined with it the shrewd business powers which seem to have pervaded the ! family of Laban. His unenterprising home j life was in him probably in part the conse- ! quence and in part the cause of a certain timidity of nature : which must have shrunk from very close contact with his rough and daring brother. The visits of Esau to the tent beside the waters of Lahai-roi could have been no time of enjoyment for Jacob. Doubtless they drew closer together the bonds between himself and Rebekah, whilst he felt himself eclipsed in the view of the old patriarch, who ate gladly of his favourite son’s venison, and listened with wondering admiration to the stories of the adventures and the risks through which Esau’s quiver and his bow had secured the welcome game. Thus the mother’s influence would be great with Jacob, and it would almost surely tend to evil. Such a man must be sorely tempted to gain by intrigue what natural force secured for his brother — and the spirit of intrigue is an inherent attribute of the Arab woman. As the desert nourished the fierce independ- ence of Esau’s nature, so would Rebekah nurse the lurking subtlety of Jacob’s heart. There would be, moreover, a certain aspect of piety about it. Deep in the mother’s heart lay the old prophetic utterance, “The elder shall serve the younger;” it was the Will of God that this beloved son, who cowered before his braggart brother, should live to be his lord. She had not learned that deep lesson of faith, the leaving God to work out His Will in His own way. She must help for- ward its accomplishment. She would possess^ the mind of Jacob with the same idea. In their after converse, in times of peace and hope, still more, perhaps, when Esau’s un- welcome presence drove them into closer and yet more intimate relations, she would fill his heart with visions which belonged to that yet to be accomplished prophecy which Isaac perhaps had never heard, perhaps had long since forgotten. The securing the fulfilment of this prediction by any means would by little and little become with him, as with her, the ruling idea with which his mind was full. Its first recorded outbreak was when at thirty- two years of age he tempted his hungry brother to sell his birthright for the savoury mess of lentile pottage. Here the opposite characters of the two men stand out in the boldest relief. The impulsive Bedouin hunter, returning half-famished from some unsuccess- ful chase, saying under the counter-influence of appetite, “ What profit shall this birthright do me ? ” and so for a momentary enjoyment sacrificing the religious and the temporal rights which by patriarchal use belonged to the first-born ; acting herein as a “ profane person,” as a thorough man of this world, yielding up the future, even the spiritual future, for the immediate and the carnal. Jacob, on the other hand, thoughtful, and given to anticipations of the future ; eager to please the mother whom he loved, seeing an opportunity of securing what she had taught him that God meant him to possess, and so with a meanness bred of a subtle intellect, misleading affections, a timid temper, and a debased religiousness, tempted his brother to a sin by which he was himself to | profit. Here is the cunning hunter, the man I 404 JACOB. [Good Words, June x, 1869. of the field outwitted, as he always is, by the polished man dwelling in the tent. The next great scene of the two lives, five-and-thirty years later, is when by another act of subtlety he steals away the blessing as he had meanly purchased the birthright of the first-born. Here all the lines are darker. Rebekah is yet more visibly the tempter. Her more timid, perhaps less deceitful son, shrinks from the perfidy of abusing the darkened sight of his aged father. But she overbears his resistance. She has now per- suaded herself that it is well to lie for God, that the great just God of Truth can be helped in the government of His world by a cunning, devil-born falsehood; and she suc- ceeds in her plot, and the younger son secures the blessing. Here again Esau’s character breaks out into most indicative revelations. The wild despair, the passionate pleading, the cry for another blessing, with no apparent sense of the greatness of his higher loss, but with a keen perception of the present evil, and so the cry for a temporal if he could not have the ^spiritual blessing. Here are the evident utterances of a character all impulse ; venting its sadness in the unspoken thought that when | the old man, whose heart it would grieve, was at rest, he would slay his traitor brother, and so wipe away at once the injury and the insult. It needed no speaking out of the revengeful purpose to alarm Rebekah. The dark, silent, strong-willed woman used to watch with that keen eastern observance of hers every turn of countenance and tone and manner in her strange wild son of the desert, read it all at a glance. She had gained her point ; Jacob had won both the birthright and the blessing, but she had imperilled his life, and she must save it. There is a deep strain of artifice in her .next device. She wakes up in the old father’s heart its aching remembrance of Esau’s un- holy marriages, in order to exalt her younger born. Rebekah said unto Isaac, “ I am’ weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth : if Jacob take a wife of the daughters of Heth, such as these which are the daughters of the land, what good shall my life do me? ” (Gen. xxvii. 46). Again she succeeds. Isaac sends away his son from the threatening danger which he knew not of, to find a wife from the daughters of his mother’s house. She succeeds, but at what a cost ! She loses the son of her love ; has to bear henceforward a solitary life ; has to live alone ; to die alone. For those eyes, it seems clear, see the beloved one again no more for ever. She is not men- tioned on his return, and the presence of Deborah, her nurse, with the family of Jacob, as they come back from Padan-aram, goes far to prove the previous death of her mistress. The busy, scheming head was laid low in the dust, it may be weighed prematurely down by the sorrowful harvest she had sown in deceitfulness to reap in anguish. A new reach of Jacob’s life opens with his separation from his mother. The hand of God had taken him into the wilderness there to plead with him mightily. It was a long and a bitter pleading. His own old sin returns before him time after time, as if its haunting presence never would leave him. He had sinned by treachery against his near of kin, and the treachery of those near of kin to him embitter all his life. First, there is La- ban’s great and often-repeated perfidy. As he had consented to his mother’s voice, and lied to his blind father to win the elder brother’s portion, so his mother’s brother lies to him to win for the elder daughter the marriage he offers to the younger. Into this one master fraud were gathered up for him the seeds of all the long sorrows which darkened his after life. From this came the other great deceit which whitened before the time the hairs of his head ; when his own elder sons, hating their younger brother, the child of his beloved Rachel, because his own heart is bound up with the life of the lad, sell Joseph into Egypt ; and as he had deceived Isaac with the flesh and the skins of the kid, so they deceived him by dipping in the kid’s blood the coat of many colours. Surely God was purging out of the soul of his servant this close-clinging evil even by the hotness of the furnace fire. For coincidently with these retributive sorrows God was giving to him another and a yet deeper teaching. The griefs and injuries of life, if sent alone, might only have hardened and embittered him. But this inner teaching gave to them their special character and power of moral healing. That inner teaching begins at once on Jacob’s separation from his mother. Half his life was now spent — spent amidst the enervating and lowering influences of in- action, and want of responsibility, of timidity, favoured by a certain natural subtlety en- couraged by the mother, whose influence over him was supreme. With all these ele- ments of weakness abounding in him, he is cast suddenly forth into the wilderness, the perils of which his martial brother loved, but which he had always dreaded. The home- loving, timid, thoughtful man is forced to JACOB. Good Words, June i, 1869.I 405 rely upon and act altogether for himself. On one misty, ill-apprehended belief alone can he at all rest his anxious spirit. There is a future before him. In himself the great pro- mises for which Abraham had wandered and Isaac had waited, now surely centred. He had the birthright and the blessing. To that mysterious future his mother’s voice, with all her faults, had ever taught him to look for- ward. Here was the point of difference be- tween himself and Esau. Esau lived for the present, he lived for the future. That dim, uncertain outline ever before his eye gave to life in him a meaning and a depth which it could never have in the clear, bright, dancing, sunlit, but shallow, waters of his brother’s objectless, being. That worldly spirit lacked utterly the receptive faculty to which higher communications could address themselves. Jacob’s soul was ready for them. And they were given to him. As he journeys towards Haran, he lights at eventide upon a certain place. The red sun, like a wearied giant proudly flinging himself to rest, goes down with sudden speed below the wide horizon. The benighted wanderer makes the hasty preparation which alone is possible, and prepares his hard pillow of the desert stones. The bright stars fade away before his weary eyes, and he sleeps. Then the vision wakes. He sees the mystic ladder joining together earth and heaven; he marks with wonder the ascending and descending angels, and he hears the voice of the personal God ; with him there in the waste as much as in the tent of Isaac; putting into shape and form that misty future on which his , mind had ever dwelt; and above all, pro- mising to him a perpetual presence and a constant guard. “ I am with thee, and will keep thee. I will not leave thee until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of” (Gen. xxviii. 15). He awoke with a sense of God’s nearness to him, which made the very place dreadful. The vision of the night- watches had changed everything around him. There was no loneliness now in that un- peopled waste : it was full of God. Its monotonous stillness was gone. The morn- ing breeze which swept over, the leaves which rustled under its breath, the brawling waters of the brook, all re-echoed the voice which still rung in his ears. The track of the sunbeams as it lay broad and bright upon the land, spoke to him of the glorious pathway of light which had joined together the heaven and the earth. Everywhere God was around him. Everywhere God was close beside him. The great training of his spirit had begun. That close, perpetual presence of the personal God made life another thing. It was not for him to weave cunning schemes with sharp, dishonourable subtlety in order to bring to pass the purposes of the great God, who had said to his inmost spirit, “ I will not leave thee until / have done that which I have spoken to thee of.” The an- swer of Jacob’s heart is immediate, though it betrays much remaining darkness. There is the “ If God will be with me and bring me again, then the Lord shall be my God.” The light of God’s verity is breaking through, and manifestly scattering the darkness. With this new light, he goes on his journey, and reaches “ the people of the east.” Then follows his long service with Laban ; his own practical experience of what deceit is : by it all he is driven to rest himself on that myste- rious presence which is now shed around his being ; and as he communes with that, he sees the stains upon his own life, the weakness of his own heart. And so the work within ad- vances. For one-and-twenty weary years he labours and toils at Padan-aram : the ; drought consumes him by day, and the frost j by night, until the hand which others saw j not seemed through his reading of Laban’s altered countenance to beckon him to de- part. He sets out on his return. Some remains of his old self-trusting subtlety, | not yet purged out of his heart, lead to j his secret flight, and bring on him at once I the threatening pursuit of Laban. From | this great danger God’s direct interference I alone delivers him. The recollections of the long past, God’s visitation, God’s pro- mises, the revelation of his own feeble- ness and sin — these crowd around him as he retraces his way. He needs them all, for his life is full of peril. He must I pass beside the border of the hill country, ! in which Esau, his injured brother, had grown into a warlike tribe. Now would come, his heart whispered to him, the long-delayed day of reckoning. The more he had learned to see the true character of his own faithless false- 1 hood, the more terrible that danger must have looked. He prepares' for it as best he may ; but his heart, made tender by disci- pline, bled for the wife of his love and the I children God had given him. But his God had j not forgotten his servant. He saw and pitied I the weaknesses of his child. At Mahanaim he j is met by the angelic host, whose footsteps he I had seen upon the heavenly ladder, one-ai*d- j twenty years before. But he needs more j strength yet, and a greater vision is before ; him. At the ford Jabbok he sends on ' JACOB. [Good Words, June t, 1869. 406 before him his wives, his eleven, children, and 1 all that he has, and remains himself alone behind — doubtless for unwitnessed, undis- turbed communion with his God. It was not in vain that he was led to wait for it. “ Jacob,” is the mysterious record, “ was left alone, and there wrestled a man with him till the breaking of the day,” when the unknown stranger said, “ Let .me go, for the day breaketh.” But the mighty one who wres- I tied with him strengthened him for the un- earthly struggle, and the opened and enno- bled heart of the long-tried patriarch put forth its last strength in that passionate cry for aid, “ I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.” The loving discipline of the Almighty had done its work. Close and yet closer his God had drawn to him; and by- that near presence, the work of purifying his inmost spirit had been mercifully accom- plished. A new name, given him by God, sealed his new character ; the meanness of the supplanter was gone ; the royal spirit was come. Jacob, “ the supplanter,” was turned into Israel, “a prince with God.” Though the sorrows which chastised his early sin were not yet exhausted ; though he had yet to bear the shame of Dinah’s fall, the grief of his heart at Simeon’s and Levi’s cruel and treacherous vengeance ; yet from this time •a new atmosphere is round about him : he is delivered from Esau ; he reaches safely his father’s house ; he joins with Esau in the solemn burial of Isaac. Again the solemn cave at Machpelah is opened ; again ' united brothers bear into its shadows the aged form of another father. Isaac is at rest; and Esau and Jacob are at peace; they meet and they part in concord. Each of the brothers had, indeed, received that to which their separate instincts all along had pointed. For the spiritual blessing Esau had never longed. Temporal prosperity and earthly power were the inheritance which he had connected with the birthright and the blessing ; and these had come to him, and he was content. Jacob, even in the darkness of his earlier years, had longed for the spi- ritual gift which still hung in misty outline before him ; and all, and more by far than all, to which that desire had pointed had been vouchsafed to him ; and for it he wa;s well content to have endured those search- ing, cleansing years of sorrow, the sharp handling of which he had known. The two brothers part to meet no more, but they part in peace. They share between them their father’s goods; the old Jealousy and wrath have died out, even of memory : | the planter of a new tribe, the head of the future race of the Edomites, takes his “wives, and his sons, and his daughters, and all the souls of his house ; and his cattle, and his beasts, and all his substance which he had got in the land of Canaan, and went into the country from the face of his brother Jacob ; for their riches were more than that they might dwell together. . . . Thus dwelt Esau in Mount Seir ; Esau is Edom.” But the great patriarch’s course was not yet accomplished. Few and evil, as he after- wards, on retrospect, esteemed the days of the years of his pilgrimage, he had yet twenty- five of them to spend. Chequered they still were with many sorrows. The punishment of “ the supplanter’s ” subtlety lasted on after its guilt had been forgiven to the Prince with God. He- had yet to weep over the jealous hatred of the offspring of Leah and the handmaid to Rachel’s beloved son ; he had yet, when the cruel deceitfulness of the ten brethren, that fruit of Laban’s treachery, had sent him the coat of many colours, stained, as he believed, with Joseph’s blood, to mourn sadly forth his sorrow when “he refused to be comforted, and said, For I will go down into the grave to my son mourn- ing ;” he had yet to part with Benjamin, and say, “ If I am bereaved of my children, I am bereaved.” The especial character of these last years of the patriarch’s life is one of deep and lively affectionateness. This is traceable at every turn, and gives its colour to the whole scene. There is an intense humanity about his character which wakes up in every heart a filial feeling of reverential love towards the aged man. We see this in the conduct of the great Pharaoh towards his vizier’s father. How grand in its simplicity is the inspired record of this remarkable meeting between the old desert chief and the haughty Pha- raoh ! The king’s question seems to point to the stamp of extreme age as set already on those venerable features-— “ How many are the days of the years of thy life?” “Few and evil ” the old man pronounces them to have been ; and then, with the eastern solemnity of age, gives to the Egyptian king the blessing of J ehovah. How in point of picturesque interest have the two sons of Isaac now changed their places ! Esau in his youth is a far more attrac- tive character than Jacob. But who ever dwells on his later years, as we fashion them forth to ourselves in his strongholds on the Mount Seir, the rich, successful, mighty Arab chief, as we rest on those of Jacob? It is the true, Good Words, June i, 1869.] PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. 407 ever self-repeating history of the world’s ban- quet ; the best wine is that which is first, and afterwards that which is worse. The very lands of the two brothers’ inheritance seem to catch up and repeat the mighty truth. The red ranges of the mountains of Edom shine forth gloriously under the blaze of the morning sunshine ; but the calm shadows of evening sleep peacefully on the grassy uplands of Judah. There is a differ- ence deep as eternity between natural attrac- tiveness and the true character of redeemed I humanity wrought by however slow degrees I in the servant of God by the regenerating, renewing influences of the Holy Ghost. It is best, after all, to be indeed on God’s side in His world. Brightly as the morn- ing of the man of the world may glow with all the glorious colours of the molten light, it must end in darkness. Showy and attractive as are youthful frankness, joyous- ness, and daring, there is a poison which pervades and at last destroys all worldly things which are not sanctified by the pre- sence of God ; whilst the path of those who walk with God is like the shining light which shineth ever more and more unto the per- fect day. And though we are indeed taught as to Esau himself nothing more in his “ find- ing no room for repentance ” than that his repentance was too late to bring back to him the blessing of his father’s birthright which he had profanely bartered away for the mess of pottage, we are in parable instructed that there may come to every one a time when his probation is over; when for him too it is too late ; when the bitter cry cannot unlive the life which has been spent in sin • when the heavenly birthright has been lost, and cannot be re-won. “ Watch by our father Isaac’s pastoral door — The birthright sold, the blessing lost and won Tell Heaven has wrath that can relent no more. The grave dark deeds that cannot be undone. We barter life for pottage ; sell true bliss For wealth or power, for pleasure or renown ; Thus, Esau-like, our Father’s blessing miss. Then wash with fruitless tears our faded crown . ”* As Jacob draws nearer to his end, the halo round his withered brow glows with yet brighter colours. The sorrows of the past are a departing vision ; the bitter breaking up of his life from the tent of Isaac, and the companionship of his mother; the cruel treachery of Laban ; the loss of Rachel, the well-beloved wife ; the quarrels and the scandals of his family — all, one by one, melt away in the distance. The one remaining and ever increasing idea of that life is the presence of God with it ; the vision before his going down into Egypt gradually expands over and covers the canvas ; other voices die away ; this only he hears — “ I am God, the God of thy father ; fear not. I will go down with thee into Egypt ” (Gen. xlvi. 3, 4). Seven- teen years he spent there in that blessed companionship; seeing Joseph’s greatness and the wonderful multiplication of his seed : and then “ the time drew nigh that Israel must die.” And round his dying bed the powers of the world to come arrayed them- selves, and there fell on him the breath of clear, exalted prophecy. From the shadows of his own coming end, his eye ranged on along the ages until, in prophetic foresight, he saw the Conqueror of death. A stranger himself, tarrying for a season in the land of ancient sovereignties, he speaks of his own, as yet subject, race as royal, and of its rule as universal : “ The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come, and unto Him shall the gathering of the people be” (Gen. xlix. 10). What more, after such an utterance, could he do than “ gather up his feet into the bed, and yield up the ghost, and be gathered unto his people?” (Gen. xlix. 33). PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. By the EDITOR. VI. — MISSIONS IN SOUTH INDI& — CONJEVERAM. Some of my readers may possibly be dis- posed to pass over this chapter, when they observe from its title that it treats of Christian missions, and may even wonder how men of common sense, common honesty, and some knowledge of the world, can seriously believe in Christian missions, and earnestly advocate them. Persons of this way of thinking are not rare in modern society. But surely I may be allowed to take advantage of another characteristic of our times, — the respect which is yielded to every form of opinion, earnestly held, or of speculative thought seriously followed — and ask, why should not the claims of missions to the heathen abroad,! * “ Christian Year.” Second Sunday after Trinity, f The constant argument against foreign missions, that “we have enough to do at home,” is not satisfactory, (i.) It is evident that if we do nothing abroad until there is nothing more to do at home, the wilfully ignorant and wicked at home will indefinitely postpone all missions abroad. (2.) This was Sculptured Pillars at Conjeveram. oft-repeated arguments that the church of I not the principle upon which the Apostles acted, or there j would have been no “Christendom.” (3.) India is so ,far j “ home,” that it is a portion of our empire, for whose good we are responsible. (4.) May not the increase of our spiritual pos- sessions at home, and the success of our labours at home, be in - | creased as well as evidenced by giving rather than by withhold- ! ins'? (5-) Do we not less require efficient missionaries, or ministers at home than a truer and deeper spirit among those we have ? less of sectarian selfishness in seeking our own things rather than the things of Christ? and more of the un- paid but wisely directed agency of Christian men and women especially among the educated classes ? (6.) But : let it be known, at least, what is actually done at home. And, in order to do this, I will quote from an admirable little work by Dr. Mullens, the well-known Indian missionary, now Secretary to the London Missionary Society. There is spent in London alone, annually, not for religious purposes strictly so called, but for upwards of five hundred charities, about one million sterling! But all the missions, from all the Protestant churches to the whole heathen world, do not cost more than Christ ought to recognise this as one of her the half of this sum ! Again, there are in Great Britain about thirty-six thousand ordained clergy of all denominations, with tens of thousands of Christian schools, more than a third of a million of Sunday-school teachers, with thousands of lay mis- sionaries, and Christian agencies so varied and so many as to baffle every attempt to arrange them statistically, far less to measure their influence in humanising the country, and pre- paring it for the reception of Christianity. But in all India, with its myriads of people, there are only six hundred ordained missionaries ; and should all our clergy, and all our Christian agencies, be transferred to Bengal alone, and these have handed over to them for Christian instruction a population equal to that of Great Britain, there would still remain iiz Bengal about fourteen millions of people without a single missionary, and in India more than one hundred and fifty millions in the same condition. Does such a comparison as this so deepen our belief that the portion of our empire called India, gets more than a fair share of the spiritual blessings bestowed on Britain, as to warrant us sending them no more but keeping all to ourselves ? PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. [Good Words, Tune 1, 1869. of it, and took some pains to know about it. They might even come to see at last that it was the greatest work on earth, so great, indeed, that not only has India, as is held by many, been given to us for the end that it should be Christianised, but also that for this same end alone is the world preserved and governed. The duty of “ teaching all nations,” and of “ preaching the Gospel to every creature,” needs no vindication to professing Christians. Nor is it necessary to fill- pages with the as well as preaching the Gospel to the igno- | rant and irreligious — who are practically heathen — at home, be heartily acknowledged by every professing Christian? Missions may have been a failure, or they may have j been conducted on wrong principles. It may be, too, that the time has not yet 1 come when the “ Lord’s house should be ! built ” in heathen lands. But it may be the | case also that those who think thus are mis- ! informed ; nay, more, that this work would j interest them greatly, if they only thought Good Words, June i, 1869. j PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. 409 most important functions. To know God as our Father, and His Son as our brother and Saviour, involves the duty and privilege of communicating this unspeakably precious possession to all mankind. Missions are thus, apart from all other considerations, the necessary expression of all true religion. Their object is not to destroy, but to build up ; not to condemn, but to save ; not to proselytize from one form of “ religion ” to another, but to draw men from ignorance and misery into the knowledge of the living God and Jesus Christ whom He hath sent, and “ whom to know is life eternal.” Our missions to the heathen, whether at home or abroad, are the outpouring of sympathy with God, who has created all men for good and joy, and who desires us to be fellow-workers with Himself, that we should fulfil the end of our creation and redemp- tion by becoming his sons and daughters through faith in Himself, as revealed in his Son. To make known God in Christ being thus Temple and Tank at Conjeveram. our highest duty, to withhold this knowledge when it can be given is our greatest crime. Still one hears it sometimes said, “ Settle at home what Christianity is, before sending it to India.” Does this mean that we are to delay revealing what we ourselves see as light, and giving what we ourselves know to be life, until every one in this country opens his eyes to this light and receives this life ? Are the demands of unbelief, or the claims of faith, to determine our duty? Is the Christian Church to be hindered from going forth on its high mission, until every caviller is satisfied, and the Positivists consent to honour us with a passport? The apostles did not delay their enterprise until they had made every cavilling Sadducee, every bigoted Pharisee, or every contemptuous Roman, accept the cross. Nor will the living church now be kept from following their example. It cannot wait until men cease to speculate, and doubt, and criticize, and raise objections. Let those who will not join us by all means remain behind, until their u honest doubts ,r are satisfied, their objections answered, or their crotchets disposed of ; but those who know their own faith to be real, and more reasonable than doubt, must preach the 4io PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. [Good Words, June i, 1869. I gospel to every creature, and, with assured hope, “ bide their time.” On the other hand, I must enter my pro- test against any missionary carrying to India his small one-sided ideas, and putting them in the place of essential Christian doctrine. Long, minute, and intricate theological con- fessions, thirty-nine articles, High Church or Low Church systems, ought not to be thrust before Hindoos, or made the rally- ing-points of Christian fellowship. If sec- tarian opinions must be admitted, let them i be so, but let the glorious sun of heaven be | so revealed as the light of life, “ the light that I lighteth every man that cometh into the world,” that no man who enjoys it will be able to discover the small sectarian stars, but with the aid of his largest theological telescope. The south was the first spot in India se- lected for missions, and nowhere else in Hin- dostan have such continuous labours been carried on for the propagation of Christianity. The first Protestant missionaries, Ziegenbalg and Plutscho, were sent out by Frederick IV., of Denmark (1706). The former of these, on his return for a short visit to England, had an interview with George I., who addressed to him a letter, encouraging him in his translation of the Bible into Tamil. These pioneers were followed by Schultze, Jaenicke, Gericke, and, above all, Schwartz.* Schwartz laboured without interruption for nearly half a century (from 1750 till 1798), and died at the age of seventy-two. His success was very remarkable in respect to conversions, but not more so than in respect to the im- pression which his noble character made upon the natives. Take one example : the fort of Tanjore was about to be besieged, and a famine was imminent — -the people in its neighbourhood refusing to supply it with grain from the fear, grounded on experience, that they never would be paid for their sup- plies. Schwartz pledged his word for the payment, and abundant supplies were forth- with sent. It is also well-known how Hyder Ali would not negotiate a treaty with any one but the humble missionary. “ Send me Schwartz,” he said ; “ I will treat with him, for him only can I trust” It is worth remem- j bering, too, that after his death, and until the mission was vigorously taken in hand by England, all its missionaries were supported solely from the interest of ^10,000 which he * The interest which Denmark took“in missions during- the whole period of her connection with India is greatly to her honour, and affords a striking contrast with the timid policy of England. As far back as 1714, the King of Denmark esta- blished a college for missions in Copenhagen. bequeathed to it. Yet the name of this man, and- of others like him, may be searched for in vain among the hosts of those . of small men in our popular encyclopaedias ! Alas ! how little is known, and how little is remembered, of those noble men who, alone and solitary, amidst lawless and fana- tical heathen, held up ' the banner of the Cross, and were, in God's sight, the salt of the earth and the lights of the world ! Never was there a more fearful time in South India than that in .which these Pro- testant missionaries laboured after the death of Aurungzebe, and the consequent dis- solution of his empire. Speaking of the Mah- rattas, who then infested Southern India and Tanjore, Macaulay says: “ Wherever their kettledrums were heard, the peasant threw his bag of rice over his shoulder, hid his small savings in his girdle, and fled with his wife and children to the mountains or the jungles, to the milder neighbourhood of the hyaena or tiger.” Yet, in Tanjore the missionaries were then translating the Bible, and in these terrible years of cruelty and anarchy, received upwards of seven thousand souls into the Christian Church. From the time when Clive landed in India (1748) up till the im- peachment of Warren Hastings (1791), a noble missionary, John Philip Fabricius, laboured and suffered, now flying from the enemy, now escaping in disguise, suffering heavily from nakedness, famine, and sword, but ever, as God gave him an opportunity, preaching in German, Dutch, Portuguese, and Tamil, teaching schools, composing hymns, many of which are yet sung, and revising from the original languages the trans- lation of the Bible, which has almost been the sole version in use for a century.* Surely, these heroes are as well worth being remem- bered and honoured by a Christian people as Lord Clive or Warren Hastings. We arranged for a pa?i-mis sionary meet- ing assembled in Madras, at which the secre- taries of the several missionary bodies labouring in South India should report as to the state of their respective missions. Our chief object was to demand contradiction upon the spot , if such could be given, to the truth of the reports annually sent home to Europe. The meeting was held in “ the Memorial Hall ” — so called from the circum- stances under which it was erected after the Mutiny — Madras having been exempted from those great sufferings. The excellent bishop presided; the Governor, Lord Napier, and * See Church Missionary Record for February, 1868. PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. 41 1 Good Words, June i, 1869.] most of the presidency officials attended, with the representatives of the native and European press, and large numbers of all classes of society in Madras. Reports were made by the representatives of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the Church Mis- sionary, the London Missionary, the Wesleyan Missionary Society, and others. I will not trouble my reader with minute details, such as were published in the local papers; but I may state one or two general results of mission labour in South India, so far as these can be expressed by mere sta- tistics. For example, thre.e of the societies — the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the Church Missionary, and the London Missionary — have in Southern India alone 80 European missionaries, 72 (or- dained) native clergy, 759 native preachers .and catechists, 17,400 communicants, 95,168 baptized adherents, 6,757 boys, and 7,012 girls at school ; while the native Christians have contributed, in one year, upwards of £2,600 towards the support of the ministry. These results have been gained chiefly by means of preaching to the adults, combined with the preparatory work of school teaching. But it must be borne in mind that the people who have thus been gathered together do not, as a rule, belong to any of the Hindoo castes, but are no-castes ; so that the great success which has unquestionably attended the missions does not at all affect the ques- tion as to the best method of dealing with the real Hindoos — the Brahmins, or indeed, with any of the other castes which compose the vast majority of the population of Hin- dostan. Hindooism proper is the citadel of the land — all other tribes and races lying out- side of it. What indirect effect the conver- sion of the aboriginal races may ultimately have — especially, if they receive such an edu- cation as will enable them to compete with the Hindoo in the race for wealth and social position- — I shall not now pause to inquire ; but, as far as one can see at present, it is quite possible that, even were they all to be- come Christians, the great fortress of Hin- dooism might still remain in their midst as proud and impregnable as ever. My convic- tion remains strong, that it is education alone which has effected the breach in its walls that has been made, and prepared the way for the evangelist; and this it has done most effectually. And it is delightful to think that so far from there being any signs of retrogression, the reverse is the case. Since we left Madras, I have learned certain facts with great satis- faction. The increase during 1867-8, of the Church Missionary Society alone, has been 870 baptized, 1,500 under instruction, 500 communicants, and 500 pupils. Another most interesting fact is this — that the Bishop of Madras, after due examination, ordained in connection with the same Society, on January 31, 1869, no fewer than twelve per- sons, ten of them natives, to priests’ orders, and twenty-two persons, all of them natives , to deacons’ orders in South India. I have never heard of another such addition being made in one year to the native ministry in connection with missions to the heathen. It may not be uninteresting to the reader to know something of the character of those native Christians. We may rely upon what has been published on this point by one who has laboured for years among them, whose judgment is trusted by all, whose candour is wholly above suspicion, and whose learning is known to every scholar in India. Dr. Cald- well, of Tinnevelly, in seeking to form a just estimate of the character of the converts in South India, insists that the native Christian community should be compared, not with a select congregation at home, but with an equal portion of the community 'at home — 80,000 in the India district, with 80,000 in any dis- trict in England ; that the same classes should be compared in both cases ; that the real and not the ideal in both- should be kept in view, and the characteristicvices of the one balanced against the characteristic vices of the other — such as drunkenness against lying. He thinks that the result would be favourable to the professing Christians in India. He defends the testimony of missionaries, as they alone know the real state of society — its good as well as' its evil. He thus remarks : — “ Indian Christianity neither rises so high nor sinks so low as English. England is a country of bright lights, and of deep shadows. In India, or rather in the Indian Christian community, bright lights and deep shadows are almost unknown, and we see generally instead the equable grey light of a dull day. If there are fewer specimens of great excellence in the native community than in the English, there are also fewer specimens ©f great depravity. The great gifts which God has bestowed upon the English race are oftentimes turned by the devil into great crimes. The Indian race, less highly gifted, possessing less to answer for, has a smaller reward to expect and a lighter punishment to fear. “I can bear testimony from my own personal knowledge — and my testimony is that of a person who has long had excellent opportunities for ascer- taining the truth of what he says— I can bear testi- mony from my own personal knowledge to the existence amongst the Christians of this country of a class of persons, small in number, but ‘ precious in the sight of the Lord,’ who have a right to be regarded as real Christians. They are a small, but an 412 PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. [Good Words, June i, 1839. increasing class ; and I hold, that taking fairly into consideration the educational disadvantages and the comparatively low social status of most of their number, they will bear a comparison with any Chris- tians belonging to a similar station in life in England or anywhere else. Remembering that we never can know the private life of any class of people in England so well as we know the private life — if that can be called private which is perfectly public — of native Christians in this country, I maintain that the real earnest Chris- tians of our Indian Missions have no need to shrink from comparison with the real earnest Christians in a similar station in life and similarly circumstanced in England, or in any other part of the world. The style of character they exhibit is one which those who are well acquainted with them cannot but like. I think I do not exaggerate when I affirm that they appear to me in general more teachable and tractable, more considerate of the feelings of others, and more respectful to superiors, more uniformly temperate, more patient and gentle, more trustful in Providence, better church-goers, yet freer from religious bigotry, and in proportion to their means more liberal, than Christians in England holding a similar position in the social scale. I do not for a moment pretend that they are free from imperfections ; on the contrary, living amongst them as I do from day to day, I see their imperfections daily, and daily do I ‘ reprove, rebuke, exhort,’ as I see need; but I am bound to say that when I have gone away anywhere, and look back upon the Christians of this country from a distance, or compare them with what I have seen and known of Christians in other countries, I have found that their good qualities have left a deeper impression in my mind than their imperfections. I do not know a perfect native] Christian, and I may add that I do not know a perfect English Christian ; but this I see and know, that in both classes of Christians may be traced distinct marks and proofs of the power of the Gospel — new sympathies and virtues, and a new and heavenward aim. “ I will add a fact which must necessarily appear a very convincing one to myself. There lived a native Christian a few years ago — rather I should say there lives, for he still lives with God — with respect to whom I am able to say, and I say it without any disparagement of Christian brethren of my own nation, that I derived more benefit from my daily intercourse in daily labour with that ever earnest, ever humble, ever spiritually minded man, than I did from any other person whatever during the whole period of my labours in these parts. I boldly say therefore that I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, or of the efforts that are being made for its propagation in India. I see that here, as elsewhere, ‘ it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that 5 believeth,’ and my only anxiety is to see the number of persons that really believe increased.” We think this a fair account of the young Christian Church in every part of India. Let us glance now at the Roman Catholic missions in Southern India, which were the first undertaken by the Latin Church after the Reformation. The Portuguese on the conquest of Goa (1510) established an eccle- siastical hierarchy, and a mission under its • auspices was immediately begun by the Fran- ciscans and Dominicans, yet the first mis- sionary of any name was the famous Xavier (1542) .and after Xavier the most famous was Robert de Nobili, nephew to the Pope Mar- cellus II. But my space forbids my going into historical details. The Roman Catholic Bishop of Madras, Dr. Fennelly, is an Irishman, but void of Fenianism. He gave me the impression of being a kind-hearted devout man— out and out Roman , I should think, as a priest, but catholic as a man. We did not learn much from him. This, however, from no fault of his, but rather from the delicate position in which we were placed, and our unwilling- ness, as strangers, to put minute questions regarding the state and prospects of Roman Catholic missions. We thought it possible that information might have been offered on the subject; but as this was not done, we had to fall back on what is published in the “ Catholic Directory.” From it we learn that, there are in the Presidency of Madras 7 bishops, 565 priests, 683,218 of a Catholic population ; while in addition to these there are 72 priests, and upwards of 90,^00 people under the Archbishop of Goa. How many heathen children baptized when dying, we should rightly reckon “ con- verts” it is difficult to determine. Xavier was much encouraged by the number of infants he baptized in articulo mortis. He informs us that in one year he baptized 1,000 infants when dying. To obtain spiritual blessings, he writes, “We may reckon as our intercessors the prayers of the infants and children whom I have baptized with my own hand.” I learn also from the “ Catholic Directory” (p. 221), that in one year with- in the Vicariate of Coimbatore, in South India, “ 1,456 children of heathens ” were baptized “in danger of death,” and I presume that number's as large received the same sal- vation in other districts. I see also from an account of the Propaganda , written by a Roman Catholic, that there is a society among the young in France, called the “ Society of the Holy Childhood, for secur- ing the baptism of dying heathen children,” which collects yearly upwards of ^18,000. From twenty to thirty thousand are so baptized every year in China. “We pray,” writes a Vicar Apostolic, “ some Christians, men and women, who are acquainted with the com- plaints of infants, to go and seek out and baptize those whom they will find to be in danger.” How far the same “ Apostolic ” practice is followed in South India I know not. Nor can I say what amount of knowledge is re- quired, what test of character is applied, to determine who should be received into the Good Words, June i, 1869.] PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. 413 Church from among the heathen. Neither can I learn to what extent the Roman Catholic Church is increased from the heathen as distinct from the additions made to it from the half-caste Portuguese and Catholics by birth. I had no opportunities of acquiring such information on these points as would warrant me in giving any opinion. Few men have known India as the Abbe Dubois did. Flying from the French Revo- lution, he laboured with indefatigable self- denying zeal as a missionary in South India, for a quarter of a century. A friend of mine knew him well, and describes him as an urbane gentleman, in whose truthfulness all had con- fidence. His work, “ The Character, Manners, and Customs of the People of India,” * was written in 1806, and because of its excellence was printed at the request of the Governor and Council of Madras. Lord William Bentinck expressed his admiration of it. Its transla- tion was commenced under the sanction of Charles Grant, then Chairman of the Court of Directors. His “ Letters on the State of Christianity in India/' were written at different times. The translation from which I quote was published in London in 1823. These letters are cited by Cardinal Wiseman as an authority. Some portions of them, not those of course which are unfavourable to Rome, are also quoted in “ The Annals of the Pro- pagation of the Faith,” as by “ une autorite recommendable.” On the Abbe’s return to France he was appointed director of the Seminary of Missions in Paris. This is his account of the labours of Xavier : — “Xavier soon discovered in the manners and pre- judices of the natives an insurmountable bar to the progress of Christianity among them, as appears from the printed letters still extant which he wrote to St. Ignatius de Loyola, his superior, and the founder of the order of the Jesuits. At last Francis Xavier, en- tirely disheartened by the invincible obstacles he everywhere met in his apostolic career, and by the apparent impossibility of making real converts, left the country in disgust, after a stay in it of only two or three years.” Xavier was succeeded by the priests “ By degrees,” he says, “those missionaries intro- duced themselves into the inland country. They saw that, in order to fix the attention of these people, gain their confidence, and get a hearing, it was indispensably necessary to respect their prejudices, and even to con- form to their dress, their manner of living, and forms of society; in short, scrupulously to adopt the cos- tumes and practices of the country. “ With this persuasion they, at their first outset, announced themselves as European Brahmins, come from a distance of five thousand leagues from the western parts of the Djamboody, for the double pur- pose of imparting and receiving knowledge from their brother Brahmins in India. Almost all these first missionaries were more or less acquainted with astro- nomy or medicine ; the two sciences best calculated to ingratiate them with the natives of every descrip- tion. “ After announcing themselves as Brahmins, they made it their study to imitate that tribe ; they put on a Hindoo dress of cavy, or yellow colour, the same as that used by the Indian religious teachers and peni- tents ; they made frequent ablutions ; whenever they showed themselves in public they applied to their forehead paste made of sandal-wood, as used by the Brahmins. They scrupulously abstained from every kind of animal food, as well as from intoxicating liquors, entirely faring, like Brahmins, on vegetables and milk.” The success of these compromises was great, but not permanent : — . “ It appears from authentic lists, made up about seventy years ago, which I have seen, that the number of native Christians in these countries was as follows, viz., in the Marawa, about 30,000 ; in the Madura, above 100,000 ; in the Carnatic, 80,000 ; in Mysore, 35,000. At the present time hardly a third of this number- is to be found in these districts respectively.” The priests of Pondicherry — “accused the Jesuits of the most culpable indul- gence, in tolerating and winking at all kinds of idola- trous superstitions among their proselytes, and with having themselves rather become converts to the ido- latrous worship of the Hindoo, by conforming to many of their practices and superstitions, than making In- dians converts to the Christian religion.” Then began quarrels with the see of Rome : — “ This disgusting contest, which was carried on in several instances with much acrimony, lasted more than forty years before it came to an end.” The result of these labours is thus de- scribed : — ‘ ‘ The Christian religion, which was formerly an object of indifference, or at most of contempt, is at present become, I will venture to say, almost an object of horror. It is certain that during the last sixty years no proselytes, or but a very few, have been made. Those Christians, who are still to be met with in several parts of the country, and whose number (as I have just mentioned) diminishes every day, are the offspring of the Converts made by the Jesuits before that period. The veiy small number of proselytes who are still gained over from time to time, are found among the lowest tribes ; so are individuals who, driven out from their castes on account of their vices or scandalous transgressions of their usages, are shunned afterwards by everybody as outlawed men, and have no other resource left than that of turning Christians, in order to form new connexions in society ; I and you will easily fancy that such an assemblage of the offals and dregs of society only tends to increase the contempt and aversion entertained by the Hindoos against Christianity.” The conclusion to which the Abbe came was that neither Roman Catholic nor any other persuasion would ever make any converts, * Second edition, large 8vo., with notes, corrections, and additions, by the Rev. G. U. Pope. Madras : Higginbotham, 1862. . 414 PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. LGood words, w 1, 1869. for he asserts that up till then all had failed. The difficulties of conversion he regarded as insuperable. In fact, according to the Abbe, India is doomed, and is under the curse of God for its sins; for if any Church could affect them it would be the Roman Catholic, as being alone commissioned to preach to all nations, and having ceremonies so well adapted to the wants of the Hindoo. He thus describes the likeness between Romanism and Hindooism : — “ If any of the several modes of Christian worship were calculated to make an impression and gain ground in the country, it is no doubt the Catholic form, which you Protestants call an idolatry in dis- guise ; it has a Pooga , or sacrifice (the mass is termed by the Hindoos Pooga , literally, sacrifice ) ; it has pro- cessions, images, statues, tirtan , or holy water, fasts, tittys , or feasts, and prayers for the dead, invocation of saints, &c., all which practices bear more or less resemblance to those in use among the Hindoos. Now, if even such a mode of worship is become so objectionable to the natives, can it be reasonably ex- pected that any one of the simple Protestant sects will ever prosper among them ? ” And what has been the result of this adapta- tion of ceremonial ? “ This Hindoo pageantry is chiefly seen in the fes- tivals celebrated by the native Christians. Their pro- cessions in the streets, always performed in the night time, have indeed been to me at all times a subject of shame. Accompanied with hundreds of tom-toms (small drums), trumpets,' and all the discordant noisy music of the country ; with numberless torches and fireworks, the statue of the saint, placed on a car which is charged with garlands of flowers and other gaudy ornaments , according to the taste of the coun- try, the car slowly dragged by a multitude shouting all along the march, the congregation surrounding the car all in confusion, several among them dancing, or playing with small sticks, or with naked swords ; some wrestling, some playing the fool ; all shouting, or conversing with each other, without any one ex- hibiting the least sign of respect or devotion. Such is the mode in which the Hindoo Christians in the in- land country celebrate their festivals.” For aught I know, earnest priests may have changed the state of things here de- scribed. But these extracts prove how little had been effected by the Romish missions during upwards of two centuries , when they had the country all to themselves. They may also help to meet the attempts often made by the ignorant to sneer at Evangelical missions and their successes as compared with those of Rome. They will also give a vivid impression of the utter hopelessness felt by the Romanists as to missions ever in- fluencing the genuine Hindoo, especially the Brahmin, and that too immediately before the time when Protestantism entered the field with vigour, and more especially when Chris- tian Mission Schools, whose apostle was Dr. Duff, began a different system of attack upon the citadel of caste. On Christmas eve I attended worship at one of the Roman Catholic chapels. What the eye saw was a church crowded by natives, with the usual spectacle and cere- monies seen at such times in Europe. There were gaudy altars, pictures of the Virgin,, a blaze of light, prayers in Latin, bowings, crossings, incense offerings, &c. One could: not gather from the stolid look of the con- gregation how far their minds had advanced beyond the pooga and similar ceremonies which were taking place in the heathen temple opposite. It is quite possible that some of my readers- may feel that I have said too much on mis- sions. But is not the way in which we estimate the relative importance of things curiously interesting ? The nose of one horse gets some inches before the nose of another horse on Epsom Downs, and forthwith the fact is telegraphed over England, and even over the civilised world. Excitement reigns in the Punjaub and in Canada, not to speak of the ferment among all ranks in this country, as to the great result ! But the progress of missions ! I repeat it is curiously interesting the way in which we estimate the relative im- portance of events ! Let us leave Madras now, for a day, and visit Conjeveram, which is about sixty miles off. This is one of the “ holy cities of India, yet one of the vilest, in point of morals. The railway enabled us to go and return the same evening. We were accompanied by our friend, the Rev. Mr. Stevenson, of the Free Church Mission, Madras, who acted as inter- preter. The scenery is uninteresting, the country being a dead flat. When we reached Conjeveram, we found preparations had been made for our reception. Two small wooden conveyances awaited us, but they were not built to such measurement as I could have wished to secure room. But what was of some interest was a highly respectable-looking elephant, who had been sent by the temple authorities to bid us Welcome. On our ap- proach he obediently took a gentle hint given him by his rider to kneel to us, and to honour us by a valiant snort from his trumpet proboscis. Then turning round, he led the way to the temple with pompous steps, as if sinking in sand. Poor old fellow ! It was some relief to be conducted thither by one so innocent of all evil. This civility relieved one also from the thought of any opposition from the fanaticism of the Brahmins. We entered the temple by the door shewn in the illustration. There are houses on each Good Words, June i, 1869.] PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. 4I5 | side, occupied chiefly by the priests. Hitherto we had not visited any of the great heathen pagodas. No country in the world has ever had so many temples as India. There is one in every village, in every hamlet. Thou- sands, hundreds of thousands, are spread over the land. And as for holy places of prayer — in the form of a stone daubed with red paint, or a holy tree, consecrated as the abode of Deity — they are innumerable. Still great temples are comparatively rare, and, to a remarkable extent, are confined to South India. All buildings in India are constructed ac- cording to principles laid down in the religious books of the Hindoos, which profess to assign to each man “his work.” The most illustrious and the most servile are equally revealed, because “religion” includes every- thing. The mason as well as the priest works by the “rule” prescribed by God. It is easier for a writer to describe temples or anything else as he himself has seen or remembers them, than for a reader to under- stand such descriptions. Fortunately I am not dependent on word-pictures, thanks to the photographic illustrations which accompany my narrative. There are certain great features which, without going into detail, irresistibly attract both the attention and admiration of the visitor. There are the great gateways, or goparams , piled up storey above storey, with quaint imagery of grotesque-looking gods and goddesses breaking up every inch of the surface with carving, in a way unknown in the old temples of heathenism beyond India, unless, perhaps, in Mexico. The holy apes who creep and leap and jabber among these carved mountains, only add to their wild grotesqueness. As we enter by the great gateway, we find ourselves in paved courts within courts, with quaint-looking buildings around a tank like a small lake, with steps descending to it. There is an island temple in the midst ; a grand hall formed of a forest of carved pillars, with full access to the air from every side. Stone bulls squat all alone, waiting for devotees to honour them, and here and there are pillars or obelisks, sacred as spots for worship. Acres on acres are covered with such buildings, hoary with time. The first impressions made upon one on entering these courts are those of religious retirement, learned leisure, holy abstraction. The imagi- nation would willingly believe that all this has to do with a religion pure, real, and possibly reaching deeper down than its symbolism ; and ideas are suggested the very opposite of those which knowledge brings and experience con- firms. For it is sad to learn how so much architectural grandeur and beauty are con- nected with what is ignorant, vile, and thoroughly filthy and disgusting. In no place do stern realities so thoroughly destroy the delicate pictures of imagination as in a Hindoo temple. The last and furthest building in the court within the court, is the shrine of the god. There he sits, in darkness ; for no windows exist, and the light is admitted by the narrow door only. There he sits — Vishnu or Siva — besmeared, black, filthy, with the outpour- ings on him of ghee or oil ; every new anointing being an additional garment of piety. There he sits — a hideous-looking monster ! As we stood before the inner temple shrine, we heard wild, monotonous, and dis- cordant music — the hard beat of the tom-toms 7 and the shrill squeaking of the wind instru- ments. The performers were unseen. But by-and-by, from one side of the stage, as it were, and in the gloom of the temple, we could see a white-robed procession slowly advancing with lighted torches, the music coming nearer. In a little, the image of the god was seen advancing, carried along on the shoulders of the priests. The whole scene formed an ideal picture of heathen worship. The wild music heard from within; the light from the torches streaming out of the darkness, and illuminat- ing the white-robed figures as they slowly came into view ; the contrast between the intense glare of the sun without and the gloom within the house of the god — the god himself, the unattractive centre of all these piles of building, and the object of devotion to his attendants; the vacant, vulgar, de- graded look of the priests, together with the known character of the women, who, like priestesses, took part in the ceremony — all combined to heighten the impression.* Seeing the god on his throne, with the fans of peacock feathers and the large umbrella over him, as he is being carried on the shoulders of the priests, while hymns are sung to him, prostrations made before him, the procession all the time moving round the temple (by which its consecration is daily renewed) — one cannot but have suggested to him by this, as by other heathen ceremonies, what is seen in * These women are supposed to be married as pure virgins- to the gods— the gods being represented by the priests ! But they are the vile slaves of all castes. From their birth, they are often consecrated by their bigoted parents to -1 the service of the temple and its votaries. They alone of all women in India are permitted to read, dance, and sing. Te all virtuous women these accomplishments are thus made a dis - | grace. But these “ priestesses” take part twice each day in the religious duties of the temple, and are supported by its funds in addition to what they derive from other sources. J TEMPLE AT CONJEVERAM. ' Good Words, June i, 1869.] many a hoary cathedral in Roman Catholic countries. The priests showed us the jewels of the temple, the value of which has been estimated at ^50,000. They never omit to point out with pride a rich present made to their god by Clive, and another by Mr. Glass, whoever that brittle Christian was. These were the days of what was considered wise and Chris- tian toleration. Not that they have passed away either ; as I am persuaded that but for public opinion there are many in India who would patronise this religion, while despising that of their own country. These jewels are all used as ornaments for dressing up the gods on great festal occasions. Some of my readers will remember similar treasures exhibited in one of the rooms in St. Peter’s, with which, on certain feast days of the church, the statue of St. Peter and others are adorned. On our way to visit another great temple of the same kind a mile or so distant, we passed a procession in the street. A crowd was carry- ing a great image of one of their gods, ac- companied by music. As we passed, they halted, and, like children proud of a big toy, placed it so that we might get a good look at it. There was no appear- ance of reverence, or of excitement in the mob. They seemed to be per- forming an amusing yet meritorious duty. In the absence of every sign of European influ- ence, we seemed at Con- jeveram to breathe for I the first time the whole I atmosphere of heathen- ism without foreign or alien mixture of any kind. We also noticed here, for the first time, speci- mens of those Fakirs, or j Sunyassees,. whose devo- I teeisrn consists in carry- ing the water of the Ganges to wash or sprin- kle the images in cele- brated temples. They 417 travel hundreds of miles on foot, and live by begging. They appear to be a set of idle, unprincipled fellows, more knaves than fools. The architecture of this second temple we visited was even more impressive than that of the one we had left. Some of the carvings were magnificent; and when it was in its glory, and crowded with worshippers, the effect of the whole upon the senses and imagination of the masses must have been such as no humble Protestant place of wor- ship could hope to produce. In this respect indeed heathenism has surpassed Christian worship so called. The temples of Thebes and Luxor in the day of their full splendour and on their high and holy festivals, must have surpassed anything the world has yet seen as mere spectacle ; and what of the Parthenon on a day of victory, with all its surroundings of art and nature ? We cannot compete with “ this mountain or that ” in sensuous worship, but we can surpass them all in the worship of the Father in spirit and in truth. But this great temple in Conjeveram is deserted. Its walls are going to decay. Thousands of bats occupy the recesses of its grand pagoda. It is fast passing into the land of dreams. The Free Church has an excellent school here, taught by a converted native, and superintended by the mission at Madras. This school was a sight to cheer the heart — a bright ray of a brighter future for poor degraded Con- jeveram. Little can ever be print- ed to give even the small- est impression of what that degradation is. But as the Abbe Dubois remarks — and he has said all that can be said in defence of the Hindoos — “a re - 1 ligion more shameful or indecent has never ex- isted among a civilised 1 people.” PEEPS AT THE FAR EAST. X-29 418 STARS AND LIGHTS. fGood Words, June i, 1S69. STARS AND LIGHTS; r, Utatittte oi % Hibrnal Hhafrm. III. — THE DISCOVERY OF THE GEORGIUM SIDUS'. In our last chapter we left William Herschel applying the powers of his newly- constructed telescopes to the measurements of lunar volcanic hills. The method of so doing is in principle the same as that by means of which the height of any terres- trial object may be determined, viz., by measuring the length of its shadow, and the angular altitude of the sun at the time. Owing to the absence of, at all events, any appreciable atmosphere in the moon, there is no diffused or scattered light, such as that which forms by far the greater part of our own common and available day- light, to interfere with the shadows of lunar objects. Accordingly, these shadows appear with an intense blackness and sharpness, of which ordinarily we have little conception. In a far lesser degree, we may sometimes have witnessed somewhat similar effects in the presence of burning magnesium, or the electric light. The length of these lunar shadows are consequently measurable by proper instruments, to a high degree of pre- cision. The altitude of the sun also, at any moment, on any particular lunar horizon, is a calculable quantity by astronomical processes of no great intricacy ; and hence modern observers speak with considerable and well- grounded confidence of the heights of lunar objects, even when they do not exceed some fifty or sixty feet. The predecessors of William Herschel had, from a variety of causes, — inaccuracies, for instance, both of methods and of instruments, — greatly exagger- ated these heights. He quotes a passage from the most popular astronomical treatise in his own time (Ferguson’s Astronomy), in which it is roundly and fearlessly stated that “ some of her (the lunar) mountains, by com- paring their height with her diameter, are found to be three times higher than the highest hills on our earth.” Herschel, from his own observations at Bath, computes the height of a few of them, and, as the general result, he says, “-I believe it is evident that the height of the lunar mountains is, in general, over-rated ; and that, when we have excepted a few, the generality do not exceed half-a-mile in. their general elevation.”* In * Transactions of the Royal Society, May 11, 1780. The best account in English of jthe marvels of the Lunar Surface his estimate our great astronomer appears to have been somewhat mistaken ; for although such altitudes as those mentioned by Fer- guson and by Keill are unknown on the lunar surface, modern investigations clearly indicate a much more considerable average elevation than Herschel supposed. Beer and Madler’ have measured thirty-nine, whose heights ex- ceed that of Mont Blanc ; and the walls of one of the volcanic craters (Newton) rise nearly 24,000 feet above the bottom of its floor • the ramparts also of one of the most remarkable of these craters (Copernicus) are elevated a full half-mile above the general level of the surrounding districts, while the gulf of the terrific crater itself descends a full mile and a half below it ! We shall return to this subject on the occasion of another memoir presented to the Royal Society re- garding the Lunar Surface. Early in the following year, 17.81, William Herschel made his third communication to the Royal Society, and, as on the two former occasions, in the form of a letter addressed to his friend Dr. Watson, a distinguished physi- cian resident in Bath and a fellow of the fore-mentioned learned body. The object of it was to lay the foundation for a method of ascertaining whether the length of our ter- restrial day had been and continued to be equable. The mode by which he set about this important inquiry was characteristic of the peculiarly comprehensive and philo- sophical mind of the man. It had long been known that the planets rotate upon their axes : he proposed to ascertain whether these motions were equable, and he pro- posed to effect that by making each one of them a standard for the others. In order to do this it was necessary to ascertain with great exactness the times of their present rotations, and then leave it for future astro- nomers, at some distant period, to repeat the observations, and thus discover whether the rotations had been perfectly equable or not during the interval. This equability, or the contrary, would naturally lead to a reasonable conjecture respecting the permanence of the time of the rotation of our own planet, and would thus lead to the adoption, if necessary, will be found in an unpretending but extremely valuable little volume, by the Rev. T. W. Webb, “ Celestial Objects for Common Telescopes” (Longmans). There is also an admir- able, and very graphic little work by Mr. Lockyer, “ Elemen- tary Lessons in Astronomy ” (Macmillan). Good Words, June r, 1869.] STARS AND LIGHTS. 419 of other methods of investigation. The in- struments used by his predecessors were necessarily greatly inferior to those which he now brought to bear upon the work, for he employed not only his favourite seven-foot re- flector, but others of ten and twenty feet focal length, constructed, as we have seen, by his own hands ; thus armed with more powerful ap- pliances, he hoped to remove that uncertainty and vagueness with which the planetary rota- tions had hitherto been expressed. Keill, for instance, who collected for his lectures the results of all previous inquiries, says, “Venus rotates in about twenty-three hours; Mars in twenty-four hours, forty minutes ; Cassini found the time in which Jupiter com- pletes his rotation about nine hours and fifty- six minutes.” The method which Herschel pursued was the same as that adopted by his predecessors ; indeed it is the only method practicable for the object in view, namely, the observation of the times which intervene between the appearance and return of definite spots, either dark or bright, on the apparent body of the planet, to the same relative position. It would be out of place here to enter upon the particulars of the observations : they are peculiarly difficult on account of the want of permanence and stability of the spots them- selves. They shift about on the planetary discs in a provoking manner, as if borne onwards by currents of wind or vapour ; and although Herschel’s results are more accurate and trustworthy than any heretofore obtained, it cannot be said that they are to be regarded as final; or that, however interesting, they are at all suited for that very delicate inquiry for the purpose of which they were originally instituted. The particular planet to which Herschel now directed his attention, for the purpose of ascertaining the period of its diurnal rotation, was the planet Mars. Although Venus is larger, and periodically approaches nearer to us than Mars, nevertheless she is surrounded by an atmosphere of peculiar density, which for the most part veils from us such land- marks as are necessary for the determination of its axial motion. With Mars the case is more favourable ; and it is possible, with the aid of a powerful telescope, and the experi- ence of a patient eye, to discern with con- siderable accuracy the form of the distribution of land and water on its surface. Much has recently been effected in this direction by the successful labours of MM. De la Rue, Las- sell, Lockyer, Phillips, and others in our own country, and by Father Secchi at Rome; and as some of their delineations have been made at very short intervals, it has become both possible and interesting to watch the hourly changes in the telescopic pictures, caused partly by the rotation of the planet and the laws of perspective, and partly by variations in the atmosphere which surrounds it. By watching these changes, and by ob- serving the time which elapsed between the apparitions and the returns of certain features j to the same position relative to the observer, Herschel determined the time of the diurnal ‘ rotation of Mars to be 24b. 39m. 2i7sec. . This element, by the combination of ancient with recent observations, has latterly been obtained with somewhat greater accuracy; but we shall return to the subject when we bring before the reader’s notice another me- moir, which was presented to the Royal Society three years later than the one which we have now discussed. We cannot avoid being struck by the cir- cumstance that the genius of this remarkable man led him at once to attack the most diffi- cult problems of astronomy : he is not content with being a gazer at the stars, to which the magnificence of his instruments formed a strong temptation, nor is he satisfied even at the first with simply repeating the observa- tions of his predecessors, but proceeds steadily with a settled purpose, and enters with the confidence of a master into the very penetralia of the science : even his failures are instruc- tive, and though his inquiries sometimes miss the object at which they aim, they invariably bring with them important accessions to our knowledge, and are full of suggestion. It here becomes necessary to inform the reader that very considerable light has been thrown upon the important question of the equability and permanence of the length of our day, by investigations which have been set on foot since the time that Herschel attempted j his own. While he was devoting the powers j of his mind to the instrumental scrutiny of the mechanism of the sidereal heavens, Laplace, j another philosopher, endued with a genius probably as great, but so diverse from his as happily to make comparison impossible, was endeavouring to reduce the whole planetary system to the dominion of a new and unrivalled analysis. This accomplished mathematician, on comparing the dates of certain ancient eclipses with calculations founded on the pre- sumed motions of the sun and moon, ascer- tained that consistently with the time elapsed, it was impossible that there had been any appreciable change in the period of the earth’s diurnal rotation during the long time that 420 STARS AND LIGHTS. [Good Words, June i, i860. had intervened since those ancient dates. This mathematical investigation by Laplace ap- peared to settle the question of the equability of the day, which Herschel had unsuccess- fully attempted to solve by instrumental means. Strange to say, a very few years ago, another theoretical astronomer, every way worthy to be a successor of Laplace, dis- covered a flaw in the analysis of the great French philosopher. The recent investiga- tions of Professor Adams, confirmed also by other mathematicians of the highest eminence, indicate a motion of the moon which is con- sistent neither with the calculations of Laplace nor with the recorded and actual times of the eclipses themselves. In this dilemma we are in a manner compelled to draw the conclu- sion that the length of the day itself has been very slowly but certainly increasing ; and M. Delaunay, another mathematician of the very highest order, has pointed out a cause which he considers adequate to produce this effect. That cause is found, not where William Herschel presumed it might be, namely, “ in some resistance of a very subtle medium in which the heavenly bodies perhaps move,”* but in the grind or friction of the tides on the bed of the ocean as they follow the lunar and solar motions. The adequacy of this cause has been shown to be at least extremely probable by the investigations of the Astronomer Royal and Mr. Adams. If this be true, then, after the lapse of ages, the length of the day may be ex- pected ultimately to become a year! but not in our time. The precise amount of this increase of the length of the day, from this cause, is not yet precisely known, but at the outside it cannot (we believe) exceed six seconds in the course of a million years, an alteration which, it is needless to say, would, for all ordinary circumstances, be utterly inappreciable ; but if, on the other hand (we beg our readers to observe this if), our planet has existed as it now exists, furnished with an ocean and its tides, not merely for a few hundreds of mil- lions of years, but for millions of millions of years, and if it shall continue so, in a 1 secure future,’ for millions of millions of years to come, and which some philosophers and philo- sophies seem to demand, then, the effects of the accumulation of even so insensible a quan- tity indicate, equally with respect to the earth’s past and future existence, simple destruction.! But we must arrest this flight of speculation. * Philosophical Transactions, Jan. n, 1781. t The argument is this : — The earth’s diurnal rotation is, and has ever been, in .process of retardation by the action of the tides, so long as the earth has been surrounded by an ocean ; but if so, and if that ocean has existed already for millions of millions ol years, then, seeing that the time of We have already explained that it was the intention of William Herschel to examine for himself and compare the brightness of every star in the heavens visible to the naked eye. His objects were definite and twofold : first, to ascertain the relative distance of the stars, and then to discover the laws of their distri- bution. In this way his mind became disci- plined and his eye tutored to discern slight stellar differences. While prosecuting this most laborious self-imposed labour of love, he thus writes : — “On Tuesday, the 13th of March (1781), between ten and eleven in the evening, while I was examining the small stars in the neighbourhood of rj Geminorum, I perceived one that appeared visibly larger than the rest. Being struck with its uncommon magnitude, I compared it to 4 Geminorum and the small stars in the quartile between Auriga and Gemini, and, finding it so much larger than either of them, suspected it to be a comet. “ I was then engaged in a series of observations on the parallax of the fixed stars (which I hope soon to have the honour of laying before the Royal Society), and those observations requiring very high powers, I had ready at hand the several magnifiers of 227, 460, 932, 1,536, 2,010, &c., all of which I have success- fully used on that occasion. The power I had on when I first saw the comet was 227. From experience,* I knew that the diameters of the fixed stars are not proportionally magnified with higher powers, as the planets are ; therefore I now put on the powers of 460 and 932, and found the diameter of the comet increased in proportion to the power, as it ought to be, on a supposition of its not being a fixed star, while the diameter of the stars to which I compared it were not increased in the same ratio. Moreover, the comet being magnified much beyond what its light would admit of, appeared hazy and ill-defined with these great powers, while the stars presented that lustre and distinctness which, from many thou- sand observations, I knew they would retain. The sequel has shown that my surmises were well- founded.” f Upon further examination, this supposed comet proved to be a new primary planet; and the above is the language in which the discoveiy of the Georgium Sidus was origin- ally announced. rotation now is only twenty-four hours, at some remotely ancient period the rotation must have been so rapid as to imply universal destruction by the agency of the centrifugal force. This consideration seems to set a limit to the exti'eme antiquity of the ocean, as measured not by millions of years, but by millions of millions : it also sets a similar limit to an extremely prptracted duration for the future. The reader who is curious to ascertain, from original sources, what has. been written on this part of physical astronomy, will find it in an admirable address delivered by Mr. De la Rue to the Astro- nomical Society, on presenting their Gold Medal to Mr. Adams in 1865, and in the Monthly Notices of the same year. * This is remarkable, for the philosopher’s experience here anticipates an important result of the undulatory theory of light, unsuspected in his day. The spurious discs of stars are in fact magnified equally with the real discs of planets ; but the light of star-discs diminishes so very rapidly towards the edges, that much amplification by the eye glass practically extinguishes the feebler light, thus leaving the visible disc virtually unmagnified, or but little magnified. With Herschel’s experience, Neptune was just as discoverable the first fine night it was looked for as was Georgium Sidus, without the aid of any Berlin star-charts. t Philosophical Transactions, April 26, 1718. Good Words, June i, 1869.] STARS AND LIGHTS. 421 IV. — RECOGNITION AND EMANCIPATION. The mode in which William Herschel was led to the discovery of this new celestial body has probably disappointed many of our readers ; they may have regarded it as unexpectedly prosaic, and feel disposed to attribute it, if not to a mistake, at all events to an accident. Without entering here upon the question whether any true discoveries of importance have ever been, or can ever be, in all their accessories, purely accidental, — a question which we should have slight hesita- tion in answering by a negative, — we shall content ourselves by stating that Herschel was by no means the first person who had seen this denizen of the heavens. It had been observed at least nineteen times before it came under the ken of the intelligent patience of the amateur astronomer of Bath. Flamsteed, Bradley, Mayer, and Lemonnier had recorded its existence as a star of the sixth magnitude, and consequently visible to the naked eye. The first of these able astronomers had five times observed it at Greenwich ; the last had observed it no fewer than twelve times, and of these obser- vations several had been taken in the course of one and the same month. M. Arago very naturally comments on this want of system displayed by Lemonnier in 1769; had he but reduced and arranged his observations in a properly constructed register, his name instead of Herschefs would have been at- tached for all times to one of the starry host ; but Lemonnier was not a man of order, his astronomical papers, are said to have been a very picture of chaos, and M. Bouvard, to whom we have long been indebted for the best tables of the new planet, narrates that he had seen one of Lemonnier’s observa- tions of this very star, written on a paper bag which had contained hair powder ! But the habits of the English astronomer were widely different, his eye was better tutored, and the instruments, which he had with mighty per- severance constructed, were incomparably more accurate and powerful than any that had heretofore been directed to the heavens. Moreover, he was all the time on the actual look-out for slight differences in the appear- ances of the stars ; his object being to find pairs of close stars (double stars we now call them), one of which in each pair should be much smaller than the other, and this with the view of ascertaining, as he hoped, the distance of the larger ones from the earth. But Herschel did more than gaze upon the suspicious ap- pearance of this tiny disc of light, he examined it with patience, and after a few hours of skilful watching, he detected a slight alteration in its position relative to certain small telescopic stars which were in its neighbourhood. The methods, and even the instrument by which he measured the movement of this presumed comet were his own ; and, indeed, in the very same paper in which he announces the discovery, he describes the new form of micrometer which he had devised. We may form some conception of the difficulty which attended these delicate measurings from a letter which was written from Paris to our countryman by Messier, who was celebrated beyond all other observers of the day for his success in discovering telescopic comets. Delambre tells us that La Harpe gave to Messier the name of the Comet Ferret. In a note to the memoir addressed to the Royal Society in 1781, Herschel says : — “A gentleman well known for his remarkable success in detecting comets, seems to be well aware of the difficulty of discovering a motion in a heavenly body by the common methods when it is very small ; for, in a letter he favoured me with, speaking of the comet, he says, ‘Nothing was more difficult than to catch it, and I cannot conceive how you could have hit this star or comet several times, for it was abso- lutely necessary for me to observe it for several days in succession before I could perceive that it was in motion.’ ” Having thus far ascertained the apparent angular magnitude, the position, and the amount and direction of the motion of this. newly-discovered body, Herschel very properly consigned it to the care of those professional astronomers who possessed fixed instruments of precision in properly constituted observa- tories ; to Dr. Maskelyne, for instance, who was then the Astronomer Royal at Greenwich, and to Lalande, who presided over the ob- servatory in Paris. The problem which Herschel had proposed to the professional astronomers proved in the event very difficult to solve. Nothing was further from their thoughts than the sus- picion that the new body was in fact a member of the planetary system. From the measures assigned to its apparent magnitude the conclusion was fairly drawn that the comet on April 18 was at only about half the dis- tance from the earth that it had been on March 17, the day of its discovery. This circumstance was inconsistent with any- thing like ordinary planetary motion, but not so striking or unusual in the case of a comet. It is true that this new body had neither the ornament of a hairy appendage ichevelure) nor of a tail, but there had been many precedents for telescopic comets making 422 STARS AND LIGHTS. [Gocd Words, June 1, 1869. their first appearance in this shorn condition. Suffice it to say, that the most celebrated astronomers of Europe made .assiduous at- tempts to compute its orbit, among them Laplace, Mechain, Boscovich, and Lexell, and, not the least, President Saron, whose skill in computing orbits was unsurpassed. No parabolic* orbit would satisfy all the observations made at Bath ; nor, indeed, were the observations of the professional astronomers less at fault than those of the great English amateur ; on the contrary, those of the English Astronomer Royal, and of Lexell and Mayer, were more discordant still. We are here speaking of the apparent alterations of the diameter of the supposed comet, and not of its positions. At length President Saron cut the knot by setting aside all the measures of diameter, and by showing that no parabolic orbit could satisfy the observed motions of the comet, unless its nearest approach to the sun exceeded fourteen times that of the earth. But so remote an approach at once removed the new body from the category of comets, and at once raised the suspicion that the newly-discovered body might after all be a planet. This broke the ice, and in due time Laplace, Lexell, and Lalande showed that a circular orbit of which the radius is about nineteen times that of the earth's orbit, satisfied with sufficient exactness the various observations made up to that date. But if this were true, then it was at once conclusive that the new body was a primary planet exterior to Saturn. Saron’s orbit, and the consequences which followed upon its improvement, were made known to the scientific world about two months after j Herschefs discovery of the planet, and the excitement produced by the announcement resembled that which prevailed on the dis- covery by Galileo of Jupiter’s satellites. Every one who possessed a telescope or a pair of good eyes turned them towards that mysterious little spot of light, which to the intelligent was so suggestive of grand asso- ciations. We shall have conveyed an entirely erro- neous impression to the mind of the general reader, if from what we have stated he is led to suppose that the calculations of astro- nomers in any degree resemble guesswork. We have designedly taken him behind the scenes, and have exhibited to him the trou- bles and perplexities which more or less sur- round the verification of a new discovery at its birth, and we have introduced him to the first conceptions of great minds. He will therein recognise an instance of that slow- ness of progress which seems to be an essential element in the attainment of all exact knowledge : it commences with here and there a glimmering streak, first discerned by the patient intellectual vision of him who is on the look-out, then gradually passing through the dawn, and growing clearer and brighter, it culminates at last in the fulness of meridian light. Now the determination of the orbit of this new planet was, from the very circumstances of the case, necessarily troublesome at first. Its presumed distance from the sun was beyond any precedent in the solar system, which was then supposed to be limited (and some thought necessarily limited) by the orbit of Saturn ; consequently, the motion of the new body was extremely slow ; only twelve days before its discovery it was actually sta- tionary ; and thus the approximate calcula- tion of an orbit from a month’s observations, when the whole circuit requires eighty-four years for its completion, is a signal proof of the genius and skill of the men who were engaged in the task. It was something like attempting to grasp and control a long ladder, when only a single round or two at the extremity are within reach of the hand. The new planet having thus been accorded its place in the solar system, it became necessary to assign to it a name ; and various suggestions were freely offered. M. Arago, in his valuable and entertaining “ Scientific Notices in the Annuaire for 1842,” has recorded ; several of these propositions. Lalande, he says, proposed, and for several years adopted, the name of the discoverer himself, calling it the planet Herschel — herein following the precedent afforded by anatomists and botan- ists, who call their discoveries after their own names. Prosperin proposed Neptune; for Saturn, he said, would thus be placed be- tween his two sons, Jupiter and Neptune. A late learned and facetious admiral remarked that this name would certainly have carried the votes of the nautical savans. Lichten- berg urged the propriety-of Astrcea; for the goddess of Justice having in vain attempted to establish her reign upon the earth, might naturally take refuge in that globe which was most distant from our own. Poinsinet con- sidered the claims of Cybele to be irresisti- ble. The fathers of the gods, Jupiter and Saturn, had from time immemorial occupied * By a parabolic orbit is meant one which does not re-enter into, itself, as a circle or an oval does ; on the contrary, a parabolic orbit comes from an unknown remote distance, then turns rather closely round the sun, and passes rapidly away again into unknown space amidst the stars, never to return to our sun. Such, for the most part, are the orbits of comets. Good Words, June i, 1S69.] STARS AND LIGHTS. 4^3 a seat in the heavens; it was impossible, therefore, to refuse a seat to their mother, now that there was a vacant chair. Bode finally proposed the name of Uranus , and that with the utmost confidence. He urged that some sort of reparation was due to the most ancient of the deities ; and those regions which were the most deeply plunged in the extreme recesses of our system were admir- ably well suited for the abode of the respect- able old gentleman. And Bode prevailed. Meanwhile there was one person who, beyond ail others, had a right to be heard in this matter, and that was the discoverer him- self. But in order to understand one of the motives which led him to the selection of a name for the new planet, it is necessary to refer to the important change whicfy had occurred in the position and employments of this eminent man soon after the publication of his discovery. George III. was dis- tinguished for his encouragement of men of eminence in every branch of learning, in particular he had himself imbibed a taste for astronomy, and had established a private observatory at Kew furnished with admirable instruments by the ablest artists of the day. The fame, the ability, and the success of his Hanoverian subject soon reached his ears, and he proposed that he should come and establish himself in the neighbourhood of Windsor, as his Majesty’s private astronomer, j assigning such a stipend to the office as i would enable Tim henceforth to pursue his researches without the anxiety and distrac- tion of other professional labours. Never was encouragement more wisely or deservedly bestowed. Accordingly Herschel removed from Bath and settled at Slough, within easy reach of the royal palace. The banner of the grand old castle waved not the less proudly as it cast the shadow of its protection over the philosopher who abode beneath. i It is this circumstance which explains an ! expression contained in the letter which he addressed to Sir Joseph Banks, the Presi- dent of the Royal Society, announcing the name which he desired to attach to the new 1 planet. We subjoin the letter itself, not only I on account of the interest which naturally associates itself with every circumstance connected with so remarkable a discovery, but because it is pleasant to throw our j thoughts backwards a century, and review with calmness the progress of those events I which have so materially contributed to much that is best and most elevating in our own times. The letter to Sir Joseph Banks is as follows : — “ Sir, — By the observations of the most eminent Astronomers in Europe, it appears that the new star, which I had the honour of pointing out to them in March, 1781, is a Primary Planet of our Solar System. A body so nearly related to us by its similar condition and situation in the unbounded expanse of the starry heavens must often be the subject of the conversation, not only of astronomers, but of every lover of science in general. This consideration, then, makes it neces- sary to give it a name, whereby it may be distinguished from the rest of the planets and fixed stars. “In the fabulous ages of ancient times, the ap- pellations of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn were given to the Planets as being their prin- cipal heroes and divinities. In the present more philosophical oera, it would hardly be allowable to have recourse to the same method, and call on Juno, Pallas, Apollo, or Minerva for a name to our new planet. The first consideration in any particular event or remarkable incident seems to be its chro- nology ; if in any future age it should be asked when this last-found Planet was discovered ? it would be very satisfactory to say ‘ In the reign of George III.’ As a philosopher, then, the name of 'GEORGIUM SIDUS presents itself to me as an appellation which will conveniently convey the information of the time and country where and when it was brought to view. But as a subject of the best of Rings, who is the liberal protector of every art and science — as a native of a country from whence this Illustrious Family was called to the British throne — -as a member of that Society which flourishes by that distinguished liberality of its Royal Patron — and, last of all, as a person now more immediately under the protection of this ex- cellent Monarch, and owing everything to his un- limited bounty, — I cannot but wish to take this opportunity of expressing my gratitude by giving the name of Georgium Sidus — 1 Georgium Sidus ' — -jam nunc assuesce vocari,’ to a star which, with respect to us, first began to shine under his auspicious reign. “By addressing this letter to you, Sir, as President of the Royal Society, I take the most effectual method of communicating that name to the Literati of Europe, which I hope they will receive with pleasure. ‘ ‘ I have the honour to be, with the greatest respect, Sir, “ Your most humble and most obedient servant, “ W. Herschel.” CHARLES PRITCHARD. ( To be continued.) 424 CHOICE. [Good Words, June i, 1869. CHOICE. % gramafix JSHldj. By the AUTHOR OF “LADY GRACE.” PERSONS. Cyril. Mrs. Vere, his Mother. His College Friends. Lady Emma Lord Stanerly His Mother’s Friends. Scene I. — Cyril’s Rooms at College. Scene II. — His Mother’s Drawing Room in London. Scene I. — Cyril’s rooms. After supper. Cyril and his Friends. First Friend. So, having crowned you for the second time, We say good night. Cyril. How for the second time ? First Friend. You were crowned first when these astonished airs Took such a crowd of “ Cyrils ” from our lips. ! Echo was crushed among them; when we heard Your name in its own place, the top of honour ; Working its little miracle at once, For Grey was pleased, and Essingdon sur- prised — Two sights our Cambridge never saw be- fore ! Second Friend. Surprised? You wrong my judgment and his fame. First Friend. Well, you reared up your eye- lashes, and said | 'Good AVords. Jine i, 1869.] CHOICE. 425 , “Cyril? Indeed!” When made you such a speech Eoodless, till now? I knew you had not lunched ! Second Friend. Tut ! tut ! I had some tea. Cyril. 0 ! that explains it. I thought the tea-light glistened in your eyes, Warming you with unwonted eloquence ! But not the less I thank you. My success 1 Reveals a world of hidden love. Good night. v [They take leave. Third Friend. No satire after supper, by your leave ! ’Twill spoil your dreams. Cyril. I have no need to dream. Third Friend. Ay, Cyril, a proud word ! He needs not dream Who has achieved. I’m sorry for the world, Because achievement ever means farewell, And one may weep in parting from a dream. Cyril. “ Farewell is as a shield whose other face Bears the strong word “ Advance.” Ihird Friend. I lose my breath ! Where will this going spirit take you ? First A heap of unconsidered scholarships, Last year the Craven, — senior wrangler now — Both sides of knowledge scaled ! Vouchsafe to rest On the clear summit — pass not while we gaze 1 From Alp to Andes. Cyril. Fie ! you do but mock i My dumb ambitions with such hyperbole ! Third Friend. In your vocabulary, hyper- bole Is construed into fact. Cyril. No, no. Good night. [Exit Third Friend. Fourth Friend. That which you worked for, Cyril, you have won. But I must spur you with reproachful praise To labours half completed. You were once The fairest promise in my crew — you ceased Just when by two short weeks of guided toil You might have gained that hold upon the water ! (I flatter not) you ceased before you gained it. ’Tis not too late — you will have leisure now — If once you get that grip upon the water, I’ll say you are the foremost man alive ! Cyril. Well, captain, you shall write my epitaph, And say “ he might have been.” Fourth Friend. I should be loth To give you such a “flnis.” Think of it ! [Exit Fourth Friend, after shaking hands. A group advances to take leave. One. Good-bye, old fellow. Another . When you’re chancellor, Make me your secretary. Another. Not his line — He speaks too well to wait. Afiother. Ay, when St. Stephen’s Resounds with him, and in the streets men ask, “Have you read Cyril’s speech?” “When do you think He was most great — now, or in that assault Which hurled the cabinet to earth last year?” We shall behold each other, and recall The first young roarings of his thunder-talk In our debates. Another. And some of us will smile To think how well we thought we answered him. Our monarch in disguise, only not crowned, Because he had not stretched his hand out ! Another. Cyril, You shall hear clarions in your sleep to- night ! [Exeunt all but one Friend and Cyril. Friend. You are sad, Cyril. Cyril. Only tired. Friend. But I, Who see your heart, can see how ill they read it. Deciphering out the titles of your fame, Blind to its import. Cyril. Speak, interpreter; Reveal the thought they missed. Friend. The thought is Home ; For when a wind sweeps over life, the chord That answers first is still the chord of love. Till you have seen your glory by the light Of those soft faces in Northamptonshire You are afraid of it. I know you, Cyril ; The mother’s joy, the sister’s sunny boast, The boy’s roused hope and brother rivalry, These are your chorus. Our acclaiming voices, Till these have sounded, are impertinent, Like stray orchestral tunings that affront His ears who waits for Joachim. (Cyril covers his face with his hands.)) Forgive The rashness of my sympathy. You shrink Because I turn the handle of your heart ? Nay, I’ll not enter. Ere I made a step There was an open window in your eyes That showed me all. Cyril. Ay, did it show you all ?' That were a window worth the looking, through ! Friend, you know more than I. Frietid. ’Tis possible Ships have I seen that rode the tempest out. Yet stranded in the calm. I’ll counsel you, Being your friend, be wary of the calm ! That shallow stillness drifts you to a shoal f CHOICE. 426 [Good Words, June 1, 1869. And tells you, all the while, you have not moved. Let the dear home embrace and let you go, But not entangle you. There lies your peril. Cyril. You think so? Friend. Nay, I know it. Never think I scorn that ease which I would sting you from. The lovely danger and the tender sleep Spread between you and greatness. For the heights Your soul was born, therefore I bid you mount ; Let not the tranquil virtue of your love Become temptation. Cyril. O, you speak blind words ! Blind as a poniard which perceives no wound Though its point touch the heart. Yet will I thank you ; For words, ay, and the winds that carry them, Are full of seeds ; we breathe them as we walk, Nor see what swiftness of unconscious growth We take into our souls. I’ll talk to you Another time. Good night. Friend. What, have I vexed you With frank good-will ? Are you so soon a king Who must be answered but not questioned ? Cyril, Beware of pride ! Cyril. Good night. Friend. Why, then, good night, Since you dismiss me. I am sorry for it. Cyril ( taking him by the shoulders good- humouredly, but resolutely ). Take your intolerable kindness hence ; I’ll beg your pardon when we meet again, Now I want peace. Friend. I knew you did. Good night. [Exit. Cyril ( after standing silent with clasped hands for a ti??ie). A little helpless, soft, three-summered child* Working for bread ! A man of fourscore years Dying before he hears the name of Christ ! Of Christ who died two thousand years ago With prints of children’s kisses on His hands Beside the nails — and died for only this, — That men should love each other and know Him. O ! in the darkness of our Christendom To wander eighty years without a star, And die bewildered, as you hear of life For the first time ! It might have been myself, And I, who know it, am alive, awake, Strong, full of victory — what can I do ? What is there left for me to do, but go And pour the sweetness of my Master’s name * This is a i'act, taken irom the Bethnal-green reports. Into these bitter depths, which groan for Him ? This dreadful Christian land, which sets her babes To toil, and thrusts away her wearied hearts Without a hope of rest, and flaunts her cross Before the nations, like a self-crowned saint, And buys, and sells, and prospers, and is cruel ! If I should say I heard Him in the night Cry, “Follow me !” men would believe me mad, Ay, shake their heads, and make allowance for me Because I hear when they are deaf. I think It was not only by Gennesareth That He cried, “ Follow me 1” O ! in that land, That milk-and-honey land, compassionate Of all her children by necessity, Because God made her flowing for their need, How spake He of the poor ! Why, all His words, His tender wisdom, sorrowful rebuke, Trumpet of hope, or thunder of command, Or mighty whisper from the Vast of Truth, Which no man sees and lives, were in- complete Without that cadence, “ Care ye for the poor !” What would He say in England, where skies freeze And cities starve the nakedness of want ! What of our souls that perish at church doors, Our harvests rotting while the reapers feast ? Receive me, few that labour ! Not by choice, By force I join you, having seen these things, Henceforth unable to avert mine eyes, But grateful for this mist and help of tears t Whereby the vision grows endurable ! | [A pause. I do suppose this is the sacrifice Required of me, that I should slay their hopes, Gathered around my feet confidingly, Too joyful for a doubt. I grieve for it More than I should ; it is so small a thing To give ; a cost not worth the counting — yet All that I have. I quote the widow’s mite, And wonder if she left a son at home Who grudged it. That would make the giving hard. [ A pause. A man is happy, having two dear homes, Though he leave both. And. this the first, consoled For my departure, yet not cold to me, Wise, beautiful, benignant, and beloved ; Left, but not lost — a root from which I grow, CHOICE. Good Words, June i, 1869.] 427 Not a mere ground to leap from — Ah, fare- well ; I feel not how the presence of this time The shadow of these fanes, this friendship- world, Gladness of toil, and glee of holy day, Hope, difficulty, failure, fault, and glory Can pass into remembrance ! But from these I move and linger to the deeper home Lying within my life, there still to lie Though the life change. Now, while my triumph shines On these soft faces in Northamptonshire, I think about the cloud which I must bring. If I had grieved them sooner, I could bear Better to grieve them now ; but I, who made Their Paradise, must drive them out of it, Although they have not sinned. It must be done. I would my heart were broken into words That they might read it piece by piece, and feel What I must do, and put away their dreams, Too fragile for the fire of this resolve ! Scene II. The Drawing-room of Mrs. Vere (Cyril’s ?nother). Mrs. Yere, Lady Emma, Lord Stanerly. Lady Emma . You shine beneath your lustre of good news Like a ring stirred in sunlight. If I talk Till you drop down with listening, half my )°y Is still untold. I knew him from a child — A month between my soldier’s age and his — Ah, when they went so grievously to school, Who thought the little pale-face had such brains ? Mrs. Vere. He was before his elders. I can see How the class towered beside him. I was vexed, Until I found the youngest of his mates Had two years more of growth. Lady Emma. My Alfred’s height Served but to make conspicuous idleness — Well, it becomes him now. Mrs. Vere. He looks so well In regimentals. Lady Emma. Make no fair pretence To grace him with a thought ! Me he con- tents. (Poor boy, I wish he were beside us now !) Your themes are greater. When your victor comes, Tell him how glad I am. Mrs. Vere. He has a heart Quick to discern a friend. Lady Emma. Blanche told us first ; Rosy and breathless with her news, she broke Upon my toilette — I forgave it her — All the dear glories of her playfellow She counts her own ; you should have seen the child ! Mrs. Vere (to Lord Stanerly). You have said nothing yet. Lord Stanerly. I think the more. I waited for this day. Now he fulfils Uttermost hope; ’tis no mere student-crown, Marking a life for leisure ; this is power ; I tested, and am sure of it — this hand Will do whate’er it finds, triumphantly ; You’ll trust him to me ? Mrs. Vere. Do you ask for him ? Lord Stanerly. Hark, in your ear — the chief has heard of him ; Give me one year to pave his working-path, And it shall lead him to the cabinet ! Mrs. Vere. What — a career ? You promise it ! Lord Stanerly. I swear it ; You need not thank me; we are proud of him ; I speak with knowledge. Mrs. Vere. All my dreams at once ! I tremble with this weight of joy. Lord Stanerly. We leave you To grow familiar with it. Lady Emma. When he comes, Give him my love. Will he remember Blanche, Sprung into womanhood, but losing not The careless magic of those childish hours When he heaped meadow gold about iier feet And called her “ little wife ” ! Mrs. Vere. You are too kind With such remembrances ! [ They shake hands. Exeunt Lady Emma a?id Lord Stanerly. Mrs. Vere (alone). His “ little wife ” ! Not big enough for such great honour now; I’ll not remind him. Strange, that she should like To mention her inglorious Alfred here; There’s no accounting for these mother- hearts ! I should be lenient, being set myself Above all need or reach of charity. 0 ! I am happy ; in my splendid sky There’s not a threatening finger-breadth of cloud ; 1 fear to fall asleep lest I should die Full-handed, in the leisure of my glory, Ere I have time to taste. He should be here ; [Looks at her watch. Ah — the dear step ! Enter Cyril. She hurries to meet him. My king ! My pride ! My darling ! 428 CHOICE. [Good Words, June 1, 18691. Cyril. Dear mother ! [They embrace. Mrs. Vere. You are pale — you have done ALL, And have our full permission to be tired ! You must rest now, my Cyril — for a month You shall lie down in fern, and watch the clouds, And sigh among the singing of the birds, And see the sweet flower-problems solve themselves Without your help, and never think at all, But keep a novel ready by your hand, Turning no page; so shall you come re- freshed Where that impatient Future pants for you To mount, and rein, and ride it ! Cyril. I am glad That you are pleased. Mrs. Vere. You are so like a man ! Ashamed to show that you are satisfied. Are you too proud for this ? Come, let me coax you ! Confess your triumph like a fault, and make Decent excuse : say that you could not help it, Being born wise ; or that you worked so hard Because the work was easy ; that success Comes more by chance than merit — talk your fill Of nonsense, smooth your conscience into smiles, — I’ll question nothing if I see the smiles. I’m pining for them. Cyril. Mother, be content ! This day is yours — it shall be all for joy ; A rose upon the threshold, which we lift To our hearts before we enter. Mrs. Vere. Ah, you reach After new crowns. I know what lies for you Beyond that threshold ! You shall enter, Cyril ! So would I have a man, afire for work ! Women should arm their knights, but times are vile When the soft hand of service and caress Is forced to sting the loiterers ; you shall find I have made ready for you. Cyril. Tell me, how. Mrs. Vere. Lord Stanerly was here, your father’s friend, Whose eye has watched you with expectancy Slow kindling into welcome. You are his, Or rather he is yours, among your honours He too was mastered. He has pledged his word, He makes you Cyril, do not laugh at me, You shall have office while the year is young, But I pass through this present brilliancy Into more light — you shall be Premier, Cyril ; I say it, I your mother, ere I am old All men shall glance and whisper where I pass, “ That is his mother !” Cyril. Would he had been dumb ! I’ll ask you — have I done my best ? Mrs. Vere. You have done Best of the world ! Cyril. Then have I wrung from life This guerdon, say this justice, that my choice Is uncontrolled. Mrs. Vere. Why, Fortune lackeys you, Assiduous, anxious, she forestalls your choice With more than it dared dream of. Cyril. So she does ; But not as you would have her. Dearest mother, Give me the right to mould my life ! Mrs. Vere. What mean you By this strange harping upon “ choice,” and “ right ?” Cyril. O! not my right, dear mother, but my need ! I speak, because we are alone. I pause On the first height to draw my breath and gaze — I see but two things — misery, and God. Mrs. Vere. I hear you not aright. Cyril. Beside our path There lies a lovely world ; blue distances Whose softness penetrates the nearer ways, Making the merest grass-blade at our feet A promise and a mystery. How full Seems growing Earth of Heaven ! There’s not a tint But tells us how the sunshine tempered it ; How all the stems reach upward, uttering Their protest against Darkness ! Everywhere We tread on revelations and appeals, And for the soul that sees and construes them, Nothing is lacking — this would be to walk Through beauty into holiness. But O ! Hosts of blind souls are dying everywhere Out of the limits of our natural day — Prostrate in depths, knowing of this sweet earth Nothing but stains and thorns. They are half the world For which Christ died; we, the bright other half— We, on the heights — we, in the happy airs, What can we do but stretch our hands to them? Mrs. Vere. I would not check your gene- rous pity, son. Give what you will. Cyril. But I will give myself ! Little enough : yet it may save a child, Or comfort a worn woman. Mrs. Vere. You are wild ! Was it for this you toiled, and won your wreath ? Good Words, June i, 1869.] CHOICE. What would you do ? Cyril. Mother, there is a place Where little helpless infants work for bread, And old men die without the name of Christ. You would not wish to keep me from that place Which cries aloud for me ? Mrs. Vere. This is a fever ; You must be soothed, and saved from reck- less acts Till you are calmer. Such a heat as this, In the first blundering ages of the world, Made monks and foolish hermits. Cyril. Nay, not so ; For those recluses were the cowards of God ; They loved, but could not trust Him ; they beheld The tumult of that sea whereon He walks And fled ; but I will cross the waves to Him, Making my very faithlessness a prayer, Sure of Him, though I sink. Mrs. Vere. Alas, alas ! How shall I reason with you ? You have heard Some strange fanatic. Only grant me this : Wait for the teaching processes of Time ; You shall convince yourself; your wiser thoughts Will temper these conclusions. Test them thus : If all men dreamed like you, God’s goodly world Would be a desert. Cyril. O, a Paradise, Where those who take His bounty with one hand Would give it with the other, and grow poor By making many rich. Mrs. Vere. I would. I knew What man it is who has bewitched you thus ! Cyril. Why should it seem incredible that God, j Who made me, speaks to me ? You think He made me ? Mrs. Vere {weep mg). I know what havoc of familiar duty This mad religion makes ! You are too good For plain commands, like honouring your mother ! Cyril. O, gentle mother ! never wroth till now, Now in love only, pardon, as you used To pardon all our wrongs and waywardness, — The gay ingratitude of childish hearts Counting no cost because they feel rfo pangs ! No preacher but yourself converted me ; You led me up to God. 429 Mrs'. Vere. I, Cyril ! Cyril. You ! I knew it not till lately, when I found This, in that silent treasury of gifts Poured from your ceaseless hand. How long ago I cannot tell — I see myself a child To whom infinity, and life, and death, Were like a great lawn in a parable Beside a pleasant river. As I walked On our own lawn, half-conscious of such thoughts, Stirring like sap that shall force out the flower When the time comes, you caught me from the grass, And showed where I had nearly set my foot On some slight miracle of tiny life ; “ God made it,” so you said, “ destroy it not '!” I, loving that kind lesson, answered you In wonder, “ Are all children in the world Taught to be tender, or do these things die Under a thousand careless feet ?” Perchance, I thought, if so, what use in saving one ? But you, with deeper logic, “ What I say Is for yourself. You see, and you are taught, And you must save !” O ! mother, pluck the fruit Of your own seed — whate’er I am is yours ! As in the street, by venerable walls Some passer strays, and hears the softened choir, And takes a sweet psalm-fragment on his lips, Singing it as he walks, but knowing not Where it was learnt, till suddenly he wakes, And in the city’s heart remembers it, And fits the tune with holy words, amazed To find himself at worship — so am I. Out of the music of your life you gave One note, which I have murmured till it swells To a litany of angels. Mrs Vere ( falling upo?i his neck). Ah, my son, Die not from me because you are so good, Live only, and I cross you not ! Cyril. Your word Abides, and I who see and know, must save All that I can. But you who taught me first Will help me now. If I be any worth (I dare not think so), mother, if my toil Have won what you and I suppose a crown : Nay, not a crown, a sword — we cast it low At those dear Feet, and take it from those Hands, And use it in that service with great joy. I 43 ° RIGHT VIEWS OF LIFE. [Good Words, June i. 1663,. PAMPHLETS FO By the DEAN OF IY. — RIGHT VI It has occurred to me, in looking out over the world, that there are many things con- nected with religion and our duties, besides the observance of days, with regard to which I do not know how better to express the mind of people, than that it is out of joint ; or if we might use a common phrase in a geological sense, “ at fault .” The stratum of opinion runs along at the top of the cliff, very clearly marked ; pure in colour, a line of goodly stone or bright fine sand : when lo, on a sudden it breaks off : you look down, down, down ; and you find it" again with some difficulty in the gutter, fouled and obliterated : and that is the stratum of action. Now the top of a cliff is a useful institu- tion — breezy and open, and with an exhilarat- ing view, good for pleasure walks, and pro- menades, and sea marks. But so is the gutter a useful institution as well : nay, per- haps it might prove, before a jury, the more useful of the two. And that the stratum should form the side of the sewer may be a better employment for it after all, than to flaunt its streaks up there to be looked at. So that, here again, we must not at once pronounce opinion to be right, and action at fault. It is only the relation of the two that is somehow at fault, in the sense which we have been illustrating : out of joint : so that when we are in action, we have to crick our necks to look up at opinion : and when we are meditating, we are tempted to hold our noses, if we happen to look down upon action. In the first place, some may perhaps be disposed to doubt whether it will really be doing good service to point out this difference between theory and practice : whether it be not always well that we should have some- thing to look up to higher than that to which we can attain, and so be ever drawn onwards and upwards. But in this view of the matter there are two mistakes. First, that of imagining the opinion which we profess as to any duty, and the loftier pattern of its fulfilment at which we aim, to be the same thing, whereas they are very dif- ferent things. This may be plainly shewn by almost any example. Our ideal pattern must of necessity be unattainable ; always far ahead of even the best among men. Be- R THE PEOPLE. CANTERBURY. EWS OF LIFE. tween this and our practice will always be a gulf which cannot be bridged over. And there will be no danger, when we attempt to reconcile men’s professed opinions with their notorious practices, that, with any good man, ideal perfection should thenceforth be lost sight of. Next, that of assuming the majority of mankind to be striving onward and upward at all. Among the curious experiences of one who has migrated from the northern or mid- land to the southern counties of England, is this, that he finds the “working classes” in the latter districts altogether without ambition. The desire of bettering oneself in life is almost unknown from the Foreland to the Hamoaze. West of the Tamar, it begins again : for the Cornish smack more of the north, though furthest removed from it. Now just as our southern population is deficient in social ambition, so are men in general deficient in moral ambition. The very fact that “ striving after an example ” is a common phrase in Christian ethics and from the pulpit, is of itself ail illustration of the discrepancy between current words and current acts. For not one man in a thousand ever sets a pattern before him, or strives to do anything which does not come easy to him. We jog along in life, with an eye to the main chance above all things, but also with an eye to our fellow-travellers, right and left. Not to provoke criticism; to observe the current maxims ; to be found where we are expected to be; to give in charity what others of our station and census give ; this is for the most part all we make a point of. Very few men ever “go out of their way” for any consideration. Happy is he who is reckoned “safe” in youth, “highly respect- able ” in manhood, “ well to do ” in life’s decline ; and if these things be present, the less there is beyond them the better. Now the men who bear these characters are highly useful. They form the great inert mass of society, upon which, we take for granted, depends the stability of dynasties and institutions. Almost all of them have an ideal, and a supposed pattern of life ; and a portion of their vocabulary is devoted to setting forth the same. The words found in that part of their dictionaries do duty at GooJ Words, June x, 1869.] RIGHT VIEWS OF LIFE. 43 1 family prayers, and on Sundays. No one ever heard their sound at a meal, or in an office, or during walks by the way. To use them at such times would be as absurd as to appear in a suit of rainbow colours : and might eventually conduct their utterer to Hanwell, or to Colney Hatch. The moment anything really serious is the matter, these words begin to be heard. If a death hap- pens in the family, it is forthwith discovered, that the departed thought all his life on these words ; the house sounds with little else for about ten days; and then all is as before, till some one else is going to die. It is a life led for the most part in the gutter, with ten days once in ten years on the top of the cliff. Now this is an odd life for a reasonable man. If these rare words are true, why not use them to live upon ? If they are false, why use them to die upon ? There is another strange thing. Let any one living after the inert fashion just de- scribed be suddenly “ pulled up,” and asked his or her opinion about the right way to live, that opinion will instantly and plainly condemn the life the respondent is leading. Yet that condemnation will simply consume breath, and vitiate atmospheric oxygen : it will not produce the slightest effect on its utterer; it will not even bring about one “ compunctious visiting ” in his thoughts. Which does not seem to be good for a man. Moreover, in this peculiar form I suspect the inconsistency to be almost limited to Christians ; and, of Christians, to be far most prevalent among us here in England. Is its reason this, that, with our absolute freedom of thought, we are drifting ever further away from what was once known as orthodoxy in our heart of hearts, while for decency’s sake, and for the sake of upholding our institutions, we still maintain said ortho- doxy in profession ? I think not, or at all events not wholly. And for this reason : that the inconsistency is found, and found most glaring, among people who never in- dulged in what is called free thought, and who as far as they go, are entirely orthodox. For this reason also : that the inconsistency, if that be the name for it, has certainly not increased, but on the contrary has very much diminished of late years, and coincidently with great advances in freedom of thought. True as the above description of the majority of ordinary people may be, it would have to be veiy much exaggerated in its contrasts, if it took in the generation which is last past, — and more still, if it . were to apply to the generation before that again. Owing to some cause or other, there has been a visible approximation of faith to practice during our own lifetime ; and that, in its turn, was only a continuation of a movement begun before we were born. Far as the unseen things of faith are from having won recognition in public or social life, there yet seem to have gone forth from the unrecognised and deeply lying convictions of men’s hearts certain rays of light, so to speak, which have lit up, and by lighting up, purified certain dark and foul places in the nation’s former practice. There are many more such dark spots, needing to be lighted and purified yet. And the problem for us in treating of “ right views of life,” is, how this may best be set about. Will it be, to return to our old figure, by breaking up the gutter and building it on the top of the cliff? Will it be by taking down the cliff to the level of the gutter? Or will it be by teaching men that both are well as they are ? by widening their range of sight so as to take in both the cliff-top and the gutter in one consistent view ? The former of these has been tried more than once in our history. Notably, by our old Puritan age. With what result ? Doubt- less, with a good many results : foremost among which we may place Whitehall under Charles II. Clearly the gutter at the top of the cliff was not the thing. Moreover it could not perform its function : the filth did not get away. Again, men tried this, but with somewhat sadder and wiser thoughts, at the end of the last century. And again, with many results : some, good and to be thanked God for. But among them was a remarkable one — quite to be expected, and often prophesied, yet in its marked character gone past expectation and ahead of the most adverse prophecy. I mean this — that these good men, the fathers of the Evangelical movement, as it is called, themselves living at the very top of the cliff, among the airs of heaven and touching the bright stars, proved utterly unable to bring up their families like themselves : that the following generation of many an honoured name of this sort have gone off all ways, and can hardly be men- tioned but as warnings to mankind. Moreover on the large scale too some such consequence has followed that our last great Puritan movement. It has carried very big words in among our commonplace thoughts and acts. That blessed word “Mesopo- tamia,” of which the old woman said that her eyes were filling before that came, but RIGHT VIEWS OF LIFE. [Good. Words, June r, 1869. then she could hold her tears no longer, — I was going to say, would that all blessed words of as many syllables had been as inno- cent in their consequences ! But I am afraid that some of them have gone with such a splash into our common life, that they have fouled with the spatterings of the gutter even the bright stratum at the top of the cliff. Some of these long words have become Shibboleths, and have served no other earthly use, if indeed that use be earthly : not one soul in ten that uses them having any notion of their meaning, or ever changing one thought or habit of life because of holding them and fighting for them. There are places, where their assertors are the gayest of the gay, the most reckless of the reckless. There are places, where all the real soul-work is done by the other party, and none at all, assignably, by these great doctrine medicine- men of the pulpit and the platform. So then, please, we will not raise our gutter to the top of the cliff. We prefer it where it is, doing its own work. Let life be life, not fighting for long words. Well, shall we try over our second proposal ? How will it be to knock down the cliff and let the gutter carry it away ? We did try this over in the first number of these papers. “Why should not men do without religion ?” we asked. And we found the answer to be, just because they will not and cannot. They want religion, and they will have it. And we saw reason to believe that they were right. Besides, no human creature surely would consent to sacrifice all that is above our common life, just because it is out of its reach. It seems like wasting paper to write down such a proposal. And I should not write it down, were not many in- sisting on doing, and striving to do, the mis- chief which is indicated by it. This, or that, is not seen now : therefore it never was seen. There is no break in nature now : therefore nature never had a beginning, and never will have an end. A personal will is not now seen to interfere with human affairs : therefore there is no personal will as great First Cause. What is all this, but battering down the cliff and flinging it away down the gutter ? So we will not take this course either. No good has ever come of it. All really noble' and beneficent acts in the history of man have been done by other sort of people than those who advocate it. The grand crisis of its trial took place from seventy to eighty years ago, only nine hours south of where I am writing. And the result was not encourag-,. ing. Well, suppose then we try the third course mentioned. And to what will it amount ? I expressed it before, “ teaching men that both are well as they are.” This expression however must be taken as meaning in kind , rather than in degree. “As they are that is to say, it is good for us to have a life on the cliff-top, fresh and breezy, and with its wide look-out : and it is good for us also to have a life in the gutter, down among the common things and even among the defile- ments of this earth in which our lot is cast. It will not be good for us, if our lofty pro- menade on the cliff fill us full of aery vanities; nor will it be good for us, if our common life glue us to the common things of the world, so that our hearts cannot rise. In both there is temptation, and they want cor- recting the one by the other. But we must not be surprised if they never amalgamate, or even approach each other very near. If we are of sound hearty mind, and practical habits, we shall always live a life which, if judged by our religion, will daily invest the General Con- fession with meaning for us : and we shall always confess and maintain a faith which prescribes a life infinitely out of our reach. Now in saying this, let me not be mis- taken. The continual desire for amendment, the continual effort to amend, both these are of course presupposed : but my present en- deavour is, to direct that desire and effort to real and practical results. And I am per- suaded this will best be done by taking a larger and more tolerant view of actual life than many good men may seem disposed to do. The lofty life of Christian theory, the humble and disappointing life of Christian practice, these will be the lot of every man who on the one hand worthily apprehends Christ’s teaching and example, and on the other, watches and examines himself. Doubt- less, the co-existence of the two ought to give rise to seasons of repentance and considering our ways : it was for this very reason that the lofty teaching and example were given us. But their co-existence ought not to induce an unreal twofold kind of life, angelic in words and wishes, and contentedly selfish and torpid in action : nor on the other hand ought it to bring about a fretful discontented life, doubting God’s mercy and our part in Christ because the very summit of our ideal is not reached. Let us now give some examples of the wider and better view of things which we are recommending. And first as to our- selves. Bad as it is for us to be using exaggerated Good Words, June i, 1SC9.] RIGHT VIEWS OF LIFE. 433 words about our own vileness which we cannot feel, it is yet one of the most whole- some lessons which a man can learn, to be inwardly and practically convinced that he ! cannot be what he would. To make the best of defeat is better generalship than to lose the head with success : and such will ever be the tactics of the practical Christian man. The enemy means, that failure shall strike dismay. Let us not carry out the enemy’s desire. To “commit the keeping of the soul to our faithful Creator ” sounds a very common-place matter : but it is, in fact one of life’s most important lessons. On the one side lies torpor, indifference to failure, f acquiescence in short-coming : on the other, lies fretfulness and uncertainty, and their constant accompaniments, indecision and un- profitableness. And as belonging to this Scylla and Cha- rybdis peril besetting the sale path, there are certain wholesome rules, not commonly pro- claimed from pulpits, but very usually acted on by wise Christian men. One is, never to introduce among the realities of our daily lives an impossible standard of duty : but to take well our own measure in all our practical maxims and endeavours. You must learn, to reserve the perfect Pattern for necessary and profitable meditation — for the walk on the cliff when time shall serve : and you must also learn to appreciate, and tolerate, the repellent things of the lower life which your own disposi- tion and habits compel you to lead. Another is, to bear in mind what every one of mature experience must have found, that the blessed influence of God’s grace does not, as sometimes represented, eradicate natural tendencies, or revolutionize the in- dividual character : but blesses, harmonizes, and ameliorates its already existing elements. Learn to distrust great and rapid changes. Learn to deprecate in yourself all sensational religion. There are of course exceptions : but I am striving to lay down a rule. Then again, we should avoid morbid self- introspection. Not self-examination, which is a very different thing. The latter is con- ducted, like all sound examination, by the rules of evidence ; the other, by no rule, but by the caprice of a disordered fancy, and self-tormenting conceit. What a blessing it would be to thousands of poor suffering crea- tures, if they could but for one day forget themselves ! How can a plant prosper, if you are everlastingly pulling it up to see whether it is growing? How can a building go on, i if, instead of working upwards, you are for 1 X— 30 ever knocking out the foundation-stones to see whether the cement is setting ? And then as to right views of life with re- gard to others. Here I take it, we must, more than elsewhere, make the cliff-top and the gutter approximate. The speaking of evil and bitter and depreciatory words about other men, is the besetting sin of every form of religious society ; and we certainly do let it beset us with a vengeance. It may be doubted whether the whole annals of the Church can produce anything so definitely and purely unchristian as the files of certain newspapers now current amongst us. I remember passing some very high land in the south of England, respecting which a fellow-passenger remarked, that it was in the last degree damp and unwholesome. Upon my expressing astonishment, he informed me that beneath the surface of this upland coun- try, there was a stratum of small pebbles, welded tight together, and absolutely imper- vious to wet. So that there was no natural drainage. And sure enough at the next cut- ting, we saw these little foes of human life and health, black as demons, tight cuddled up in their anti-sanitary resolve. And I was re- minded of these same “religious journals:” breathing the highland air, enjoying the hill- side view, but hopelessly undrained and pes- tilential : with the lurid stratum of little grudges and petty spites between them and a clear conscience ; and in consequence, spreading moral contagion and death wherever their circulation extends. All this, a positive tangible evil, needs positive tangible reformation : needs what I rejoice to Bee is becoming not uncommon, a stern resolve among Christian people that these journals shall never appear upon their tables, nor enter their houses. Of all the cures of un-charity among us, this one would be the most deci- sive and effectual. For with thousands of outlying persons and families, the order of belief is : newspaper first, neighbours next, anything you like third, Gospel last of all. “To his own Master he standeth or falleth.” This wants remembering infinitely more than it is remembered. Let other folks alone : or rather, transfer your assiduous in- terest for them to a quarter where it may really be useful. Try to take for granted to begin with, that they are as good Christians as yourself. If they have one failing which you see, probably you have a corresponding one which they see. As the present balance of contempt (thanks to the religious journals) is equal, so let the future balance of chari- table allowance be equal, and let the journals 434 SHORT ESSAYS. [Good W ords, June i, 1S&9 go hang. Talk of thunders of the Vatican ! all are but popguns, compared to the fulmi- nations which daily go up from Protestant England. Protestant truly, in a sense little hitherto deemed of : all vigorously protesting against one another. If we could translate subjective and mental into objective and cor- poreal, what a curious picture for men and angels this our England would present ! Each half of our worship-going population with fists clenched, heels uplifted, lips compressed for spitting, at the other half : and all for the honour and glory of God. Truly we have not far to look for right views of Christian life as regards others about us. Then lastly, as regards the public and public matters. Now here it does strike me that fast as we are going on to the better, we ought to be going a little faster : that the balance wheel is somewhat too heavy for the spring. It is a sad sign, that evermore, as the great progress towards good goes on, a num- ber (may I not say, the greater number ?) of really good men set up a weeping and wail- ing over every step of that progress, as it becomes imminent, and do all in their feeble power to withstand, and when accomplished, to mar it. Thank God, they are not able to do either of these. Look backwards up the memory of any one of us who is fifty years old, and the road is full of incidents of this kind : — proposal made of some salutary and necessary change : thereupon excellent men wringing their hands and howling : pulpits denouncing : and scores of pamphlets, sheets of newspaper articles, reviling, threatening, demonstrating all manner of horrible things. Then, in due time, the measure carried. Then a lull. Then the same excellent men, one third, the sensible ones, convinced and thankful : another third, the incurable con- servatives, reviling the change past, as they reviled it future : the last third, claiming the change as a conservative measure, and assert- ing that they always knew it would be. And all this process is repeated at each step of the nation’s advance towards good. Even now it is going on, ten hundred parson power, throughout the land. Flocks look up, piteous in face to see, longing for some crumb of good food or counsel about the things which concern them most : and they have to sit and listen their half hour to dire forebodings of what is coming on us, if cer- tain promised public measures are passed. Why, my masters and doctors, what folly and child’s play is this ! Awake (St. Paul’s word is one inexpressible, except at the hazard of coarseness — wake out of your wine) to righteousness, we beseech you, — we, who feel that this great people is hindered on its march towards good, beseech you who ought to be forwarding it but are keeping it back, — cease your unmanly howling, and join us in the fight against evil. As to public matters, the one great right view at present for us all is, to leave off utterly the fashionable hankering after the past, and to put away discouragement as to the future, and take intensely the practical line — what is first ? What is, on a fair appreciation of wants and difficulties, the measure required? Any one of us may be wrong — but we shall, in our wrong, be at all events nearer right than the mere clamourer for keeping things as they are. And so it will be with us, in reference to any great changes now contemplated. The greatest and most imminent of them all is an ; absolute requirement of the simplest justice. The question for any one of us in the court of our conscience before God is not, “ Shall it be ? ” but, ■“ How may it best be ?” 1 And I hope that many who read these pamphlets will feel, with their writer, that when this is so, the effort on our parts ought to be to hold, not convenient views, not pro- fitable views, not party views, of public duty : but to acquire right views, — and, having acquired them, to grasp them firmly and further them manfully — for they are our life. SHORT ESSAYS. By the AUTHOR OF “ FRIENDS IN COUNCIL.” FIFTH INSTALMENT. There are two or three marked peculiarities in the vice of calumny. In the first place, considering the mischief it does, there is very little punishment to the person practising it. Personal vices are dearly paid for, even in this world; and most of us learn, through bitter experience, and by dire remorse, the sin and mischief of our wrong-doings. Then, there is the thorough ignorance, for the most part, on the part of the calumniator, of the mischief and the misery that he causes by calumny. A good easy man, or one who Good Words, June i, 1869.] SHORT ESSAYS. 435 believes himself to be such, may have been a steady propagator of injurious reports deeply affecting other people ; and the poor man goes to his grave in the confident belief that he has been a most exemplary member of society. The most unfortunate fact about calumny is, that you seldom witness the sufferings you create by calumniating. Your other cruelties you know about, and often see the issue of them ; but the agonies you cause by every form of calumny, detraction, disparagement, and erroneous statement, rarely come to your knowledge, or to the knowledge of any human being, except the person who is calumniated. A certain humourist is wont to contend that the sum of misery in human life is always the same. He says the sum of forces in the material world is always the same, the quan- tity of motion is always the same, and so is the amount of human misery. It is in vain that you urge against him that everything has become milder in the world; that wars are conducted with less cruelty and less destruc- tion of property ; that religious persecution has, comparatively speaking, ceased to exist ; that there is an immense advance in medical skill ; and that, generally, humanity is in the ascendant. He is pleased to admit your statements ; but contends that all these good things are counterbalanced by more sensitive- ness on the part of the human race, and by their caring more and more for what is said and written about them ; and also that there is so much more talking and so much more writing. In short, he maintains that the pro- gress of calumny, and the severity with which it is felt, will always counteract any advan- tages that are gained for the human race. A strange thing, too, he observes, is this — that the less truth there is in the calumny, the greater are the sufferings of the person calumniated. “ You would think,” he says, “ that when a man hears that something has been said or written of him that does not apply to him, any more than it would to the inhabitant of another planet, he would not take the calumny to heart. But no : this only makes him more furious and more vexed. If it did apply, he could then bear it, as he should deserve it ; and so in this case the pointless arrow inflicts the severest wound.” Moralists have exhausted their energies in denouncing the vices of detraction and back- biting. With the exception of St. Paul’s grand words about charity — which embrace the whole subject — perhaps the most practical remarks that have been made -upon it are those which have been made by the writer who goes by the name of Thomas a Kempis. After denouncing the evil of uttering injurious statements known to be false, which, however, is comparatively rare, he goes on to say that you should not soon pour out to the ears of others those injurious reports even that you do believe. “ Nec audita , vel credita , mox ac aliorum aures effundere .” Over particularity, or even reasonable par- ticularity, in trifles causes a great deal of social discomfort and restraint. The man who, to use a common phrase, wishes a thing to be “ just so,” and not otherwise, is generally somewhat of a nuisance. People are for the most part very good-natured in these matters, and very anxious to please others ; and they will make a great effort to satisfy the person who wishes to have things “just so.” But they do not, on that account, love him, or he*;, the more. For any person to be thoroughly popular and liveable with, there should be a little touch of untidiness and unpreciseness, and indifference to small things. An unpunctual person is often very selfish, and causes much trouble and vexation ; but still, cceteris paribus , he is generally more liked than a punctual person. The rigid Pitt is not so much beloved as the careless, easy-going Fox. This is very wrong, of course, but it cannot be helped; for, as Artemus Ward has well said, “After all, there is a great deal of human nature in man.” For people who are of that eager spirit that they must contend with something, or somebody, there are always the great men of former days to contend with, and, if possible, to be surpassed : and also, there is nature to be wrestled with, who will not yield her “ open secrets ” without much compulsion, and who is an antagonist always at hand, offering full scope for our utmost energy and mettle. In a company of learned men there was talk about posthumous fame. Some said j that it was a strong motive to exertion with many persons. Others maintained that its potency as a motive was very small indeed, except with a few half-crazy people, like Alexander the Great. All agreed that it was j a foolish motive as applied to the mass 43^ SHORT ESSAYS. [Good Words, June i, 1869. men, because anything that was worthy of the name of “fame” was unattainable for them. A man writes an elaborate work upon a learned subject. In a few years’ time, another man also writes an elaborate work upon the same learned subject, and is kind enough to allude to the former author in a foot-note. Twenty or thirty years afterwards, this second man’s work is also absorbed in a similar manner, and his labours are chronicled in a foot-note too. Now the first man’s fame, if you come to look at it carefully, is but small. His labours are kindly alluded to in a foot- note of a work which is also kindly alluded to in a foot-note of a work published forty or fifty years hence. Surely this fame in a foot-note is not much worth having. Then take the fame of a soldier — of any but the few distinguished generals whose names may be numbered on your fingers. Take the officer who is mentioned in a despatch. It is no doubt a great thing for him in the present day to be so mentioned ; but fifty years hence, nobody will know any- thing about the battle, much less about the despatch, except that it was a battle lost or won by a certain general. It is a great chance if the name of the principal general on each side is remembered by the same person. Surely the fame to be gained by having .one’s name thus embalmed in a despatch is scarcely worth the loss of a limb, to say nothing about the risk of one’s life. One of the few things which give one a high opinion of the world, is its splendid favouritism. This man may leap over a ditch, when he ought to have kept on the hither side of it : he may run, instead of walk, when walking is the proper thing : he may even be caught munching apples in his neigh- bour’s orchard — I speak metaphorically — and the world declines to see that he has done anything wrong. It puts up its telescope to its blind eye, because he is a favourite. Then there is another man, who shall always have the right quantity of starch in his shirt-collar; shall obey all the nine rules of propriety ; and shall be of, apparently, unim- peachable virtue : yet the world, though it would not say so openly for the world, thinks him an ass, a pedant, and, perhaps, even a thoroughly bad fellow. Just let him, in a weak moment, disobey only one of the nine rules of propriety, and see how soon the world will be down upon him, for he is not a favourite. Some of our Transatlantic cousins (that most thoughtful man, Emerson, for instance) would, doubtless, explain this phenomenon by talking of the “ over-soul,” or some such great affair; but, at any rate, the phenomenon in- dicates that there is something which looms larger in the minds of men than the outer aspect of a man or his doings, or even their own forms, and rules, and proprieties, which yet they pretend to set such store by. That “ something ” is probably a great, fertile, and sympathetic nature in the favourite, which is perceived by all men, and heartily, though often but secretly, appreciated by them. The famous Duke of Buckingham always seems to me to afford the best type of a favourite, having been a person of such a winning nature that his influence was equally potent with two men of such different cha- racters as James the First and Charles the First — the one, moreover, being the reigning monarch, and the other the heir-apparent, two personages that are seldom inclined to favour the same person. Everybody, who is fond of investigating character, seeks for tests. Now, there are tests which, at first sight, seem to be good, but are really worth nothing. You may search for ever, and be for ever wrong, to find the crucial test of a man’s character in his choice of a wife, of a house, of furniture, even of his friends, or of any of his many surroundings, for that which surrounds a man is not necessarily sympathetic with him. Tests of this kind fail, because of the in- fluence of circumstances, which influence you can seldom eliminate. Take, for instance, his friends. Friendship is often the result of the merest accident. One cannot but have some liking for one’s schoolfellows and college companions, whe- ther they are especially suitable to one or not ; and, indeed, throughout life, friendship depends much upon vicinity. To find a certain test, you must have something that assuredly proceeds from the man himself — something that he says, or does, when freed from the influence of others, and when uncontrolled by circumstances. Authors are far better understood than other men, because they cannot help betraying their real thoughts and opinions, as, when they write, they often forget who they are, with whom they live, and even what is expected of them. Good Words, June i, 1869.] SHORT ESSAYS. I 437 In minor matters, it is often easy to find a good test. For example, if you want to ascer- tain what is to be ascertained of the character of a man from his style, open his book any- where, and you are nearly sure to discern at once the peculiarities of his style. He never can conceal them. If a man means to do a thing, and does not do it, you have a sure test. To take writing, again, as an instance : you can see that in such a sentence a man meant to do something forcible and telling, and to pro- duce a great effect ; but, perhaps, it is merely fine writing or bombast. You have at once a measure of the man’s powers in that direction. What he blames, what he praises, are good tests of his character. What he plays at, what he laughs at, are still better tests. All serious work is, to a certain extent, compul- sory; but gamesomeness and laughter are, for the most part, involuntary. The serious beaver is always building his house ; but, in that constant work of his, shows no peculiarity of beaver character. It is better, in some respects, to be admired by those with whom you live, than to be loved by them. And this, not on account of any gratification of vanity, but because admiration is so much more tolerant than love. If you are admired by those who surround you, you have little to explain, or to justify. They believe in you. And this makes the wheels of life go very smoothly with you. Of course love often infers admiration ; but there are many in- stances in which the two things are utterly dissevered. If superior beings regard the world, and are curious in the observation of character, how few instances they will be able to dis- cern of any vice, or virtue, or quality being thoroughly carried out ! There certainly have been some splendid specimens of consistent cruelty amongst mankind, such as Judge Jeffries. But, for the most part, the charac- ters of men are of a mottled description. The envious man is not always envious ; the jealous not always jealous; and, as for good qualities, I suppose we must own that they are seldom carried to a surpassing height. But there is one class of character, happily not very common, which is often raised to the highest perfection in this planet. It is difficult to describe this character by any single epithet ; but it is the character of one who, wherever placed, or into whatever circumstances he may be thrown, succeeds in bringing around him an atmosphere of con- tradiction, contention, and vexation, which may be said to be complete. This character has never been well drawn in fiction, for it is not a dramatic character. It does not create dramatic incidents : it causes no signal murders, nor robberies, nor disasters of any kind : it only makes a number of people miserable : it only brings into light whatever is seamy, sordid, and un- pleasant in all those with whom it is brought into contact. Wherever it is, there are plenty of quarrels. It is generally in the wrong; but is, if possible, more hateful when it is in the right. That fine line of Byron’s — “ And where he gazed, a gloom pervaded space ” might be parodied thus : — “And where he gazed, a seam pervaded space.” Everybody knows the astonishing effect that may be produced by a little canful of oil poured upon the waters, and how a film of wondrous thinness, and yet of marvellous potency in stilling a tempest, may thus be produced. From such a character as I am describing, there emanates a subtle fluid of an exactly opposite description. I almost think that such people might have an effect upon inanimate nature ; and that if they were to talk to the Bay of Biscay, the Atlantic waves would bound in upon the shore with additional indignation, and retire from it, grating and rasping among the pebbles with an increased spitefulness and irritability. It is a remarkable fact, that grandeur of religious ideas does not appear to have been developed by civilisation. The three most civilised nations of antiquity were, un- doubtedly, the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans. How poor were the religions of each of these three great nations ! The Egyptians worshipped, in the most abject manner, animals of such an inferior nature, that they have not even been chosen as emblems of chivalry ; for what knight has ever chosen a cow, or a crocodile, as a support to his shield ? Again, to estimate the gods of Greece and Rome, take the scene in Olympus, described at the end of the first book of Homer. Strip it of the grand language of the poet, with his many-junctured adjectives, and what a mean idea it gives one of his gods ! There is a vulgar conjugal squabble between 43 S SHORT ESSAYS. [Good Words, June i, 1809. Jupiter and Juno, the like of which may be heard any day in Ratcliffe Highway. The king of the gods even threatens to lay a heavy hand upon his queen ; whereupon her son Vulcan brings a goblet of wine to his mother, and suggests that peace may be made in this very common-place way of making-up quarrels. Then there is inextinguishable laughter at a comical circumstance which would hardly amuse the British House of Commons — namely, a lame person performing the part of cup-bearer. The affairs of Troy are forgotten ; and the evening is wound up with feast and song and jollity. Compare these gods and their worship- pers with the deities in pristine America and their worshippers. Study the noble prayers of the Mexicans; the simple, yet splendid, | worship of the Peruvians ; the noble ideas of j the Great Spirit which pervaded even the humbler tribes in North America ; and, above all, note the high conception of the functions of a deity which had been formed by the greatest people in America — the Araucans. They maintained that prayer was needless, because their gods were so beneficent, that they were sure to confer upon man all things that it was good for him to have. At the same time the Araucans showed their grati- tude for this goodness by humble offerings, never touching life. Then, again, look at India. As far as one can understand Buddhism, it may be a re- ligion of little hope ; but there is no meanness in it. Viewing all forms of life as so much separation from the deity, the Buddhist is only anxious to get creditably through the various forms of life he has to encounter, and then, as a final reward, to be for ever united with and lost in that deity. A very different religion this from that which worshipped tricky gods and discredit- able nymphs and goddesses, endowed with larger powers than those of men or women, but having a full share of all their follies and their vices. There are vast hopes for mankind in the future, especially if men could only get a little spare time to look about them and to think, and if more persons could have greater free- dom for observation and for thought. It is thus that the statesman could do so much for us. It is not that he can invent, that he can observe profoundly, or think out with nicety great and difficult questions. But he can smooth the path of life for those who can do such work in the world. And what would he not do for mankind if he could let loose some of the thought which is now employed in pre- paration for war, in the interpretation of con- fused heaps of undigested law, in meeting the vexatious incidence of taxation, and, gene- rally, in contending with needless difficulties created by men in the acquisition of the means of living ! This ought to be his main idea, — how he can render life more facile to all the people he has to govern, and so give them more time for thought, for enjoyment, and for discovery. There are very irrational views about roy- alty in the present generation. They have put aside the notion of kings and queens governing by Divine Right, and of their being very different from other men and women. At the same time they will not al- low that kings and queens are very like other men and women. They demand from them that they should conduct their joys and sorrows in a very different- manner from that of other people. The poor kings and queens are therefore in a very awkward position. They have neither the advantage of being considered to be different from other people, nor the advantage of being considered to be like other people. There is hardly any matter in which there is more necessity for tolerance and wisdom than in our apprecia- tion of the rights, duties, and privileges of royal persons in modern times. There is such a love of compromise in modern times, that the highest order of men, if they be shrewd men, can hardly be distin- guished from the owners of badly managed shops in their tendency to demand terms much larger than those which they mean to accept. And thus the time of the world is squandered. There has hardly ever been such an in- stance of important results following from the investigation of minute and apparently unimportant phenomena, as Fraunhofers lines afford. Who would have thought that the fact of there being some dark lines across a ray of light, when dispersed by the prism, should be the means of discovering the constitution of the stellar bodies, and should have proved with almost certainty that Good Words, June i, 1869.] NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 439 Sirius has a proper motion of its own to the extent of one hundred and forty millions of miles in the course of a year ? Doubtless the material world is crowded with minute phe- nomena involving similar great results, which phenomena we pass by with unregarding eyes every day of our lives. How Lord Bacon would have rejoiced to see such a grand result as that above alluded to, of which the basis was the observation and recording of this minute phenomenon by the German optician ! “NOBLESSE OBLIGE.” ga* Slotg of Co-bag. By the AUTHOR OF “ CITOYENNE JACQUELINE/ CHAPTER XIX. — ON THE COURSE. CEBE was at the course in good time on the first day ; although she had a struggle to accomplish this. Mrs. Paston, who was curiously balancing her- self in a series of breathless difficul ties, would fain have detained her with ques- tions and ob- servations till it was too late. Would it be the thing to wear her lace or her French cashmere shawl? Ought it to be a worked or a plain cambric handkerchief she should hold in her hand to wave when the horses came in at the winning post? Such were the problems with which Mrs. Paston teased Phoebe, who had announced that she wished to put on her white pique gown with the green ruches like riband grass, and held to her original idea (“ rash, headstrong girl as she was in every act of her life ”), though her mother suggested the China silk, which, to be sure, had short sleeves, or the blue grenadine, that was so badly torn the last time she wore it. Mrs. Paston, of course, deemed it a matter of deep and engrossing interest, nay, something affecting the credit of Wellfield and the tone of the races, that she and Phoebe should appear in becoming garb. Phoebe did not choose to avail herself of Lady Dorothea’s pass to breathe the air of the grand-stand. With her mother and the wives of the civic dignitaries of Wellfield, she took her place on a lower stand, from which, in the dignity and ease of simplicity, she could command a fair sight of the course. The scene was charming to her. She had not arrived at the invidious superiority of the “forty Miss Medlars,” who, having caught and culled a young man from one of the sets located at some distance, proudly wore the honour on the occasion. This precocious specimen of a Folksbridge spermaceti mer- chant had run up to town so many times that he had lost count of the number, and freely reckoned that he had gone in a swell break every season to the Derby. He had come provided with a blue veil hanging down from the brim of his white hat, for which there was no call in the green meadows of Wellfield. This bit of dress it was which chiefly caused him to be pointed at by the Wellfield youngsters as a walking instance of man-millinery ; whilst he was supposed, by older and more reflective people, to have borrowed one of the Miss Medlars’ veils, which surely argued a degree of intimacy pointing to a marriage among the Miss Medlars at last. Of course the young man was disgusted. There were no favours, neither did the colours of popular riders appear in scarfs thrown across the shoulders of man or woman; and hardly anything of the horses was known by the innocents who boasted of having their races every year, and came out to gape at them like so many women and children. There was nothing in the way of betting, save what was of the safest and tamest, for a young mercantile gentleman, whom it was impossible to con- found either with aristocrats or black-legs. No inducement would make him stay for another day, notwithstanding that Mr. and Mrs. Medlar and the Miss Medlars were very kind, and he highly appreciated their hospitalities. Phoebe, not having the disadvantage of being experienced and fastidious, had seen no- 440 NOBLESSE OBLIGE. [Good Words, June i, 1869. thing on the Grand Tour to disqualify her for admiring the Wellfield races. The course was no longer two or three rural fields divested of their June wild-flowers. It was infinitely gayer than when striped and flecked with poppies and bugloss. It had living brilliance and perpetual motion of men, women, and children, aristocratic and rustic, in carriage and cart, on horseback and foot. It was a scene cool and grey in its English soberness of costume and bear- ing, but by no means wanting in warm, juicy bits of colour, and of eager, vigorous action. Yet it was a scene sufficiently animated to a novice. Phoebe, it is true, could not pre- tend to Bella Medlar’s glib use of technical terms, and smart criticisms of Vixen’s stride and Highflyer’s withers. Neither could she Page 443- hope to equal the solemn monotone in which Milly Medlar accompanied Bella’s tittering treble as she prated and prosed about the unlawfulness of race-courses, and ques- tioned whether they were rendered more desperately dangerous by bettings of five to one. Milly had been led to believe that there were as many as twenty to one taken on Bluebottle. She recited the vices of the turf, as she sat there, a prominent spec- tator. She drew gusty sighs, shook her head portentously, and never ceased to con- sult the out-of-sorts young man, and to take his opinion on the lawfulness of the diversion, till he asked himself, in a panic, whether the head of the forty thieves were not flying at him, in thus conspicuously electing him her conscience in the room of the High or Low Church parson. The Brockcotes party came upon the NOBLESSE OBLIGE. Good Words, June x, 1869. ^ 44 i ground early, without any effort at eclat , but with the impressiveness inseparable from those who were the sovereigns — the first ob- jects of the field after the horses and the jockeys. Phoebe had a little solace for her troublesome doubts as to whether Lady Doro- thea, who could not err, was doing well for herself, in recognising and being able to point out Lord Fairchester in his place of honour in the Countess’s phaeton. She even began to have a kind of pleasure in the sight of the couple, and to take herself to task as a fault-finding girl, whose private and selfish motives were at the bottom of her carping objections to the severance of the old tie between her and her friend. At the second or third glimpse, she decided that the heavy- featured, sandy-haired young man might have sense and worth, as well as prestige and great possessions. The Countess, to avoid all fuss, took up her position at once in the central front seat of the grand-stand ; and then Lady Dorothea drove Lord Fairchester round the course. Lady Exmoor might, in this case, have saved herself all precaution, for the occupants of the carriage were the real attrac- tion. A withered, elderly woman, were she thrice a countess, could not for the time have competed with such a pair. But Lady Ex- moor did not want to compete, proud woman though she was reputed. Clearly, her greatest pride this day was in yielding the palm to her daughter, whose progress she was in- tently following with her glass in a true mother’s style. Lord Fairchester submitted to be driven, if not in triumph, yet certainly as a conquered conqueror. He sat with his arms crossed, and now and then stooped to listen with a half-smile to Lady Dorothea, who was very much herself, as she tickled the ears of the Countess’s grey ponies, con- ducting the conversation in an eager mono- logue — what Lord Wriothesley called her favourite fashion — doing the honours of the field, and pointing out local celebrities. When Lady Dorothea discovered Phoebe, the acknowledgment was made with some- thing like a radiant flash of consciousness, in addition to the hearty greeting. Accom- panying the nod and the smile, there was a little special separate speech to Lord Eair- chester, who then looked at Phoebe, not at all as his cousin had done, but with a courteous and kindly interest. Now and again, when the phaeton got into the thronged parts of the course, or into the neighbourhood of animals more restive than the docile ponies, Lord Fairchester put down a hand to be ready to touch the reins, without, however, exerting his mastery till it was needed. Phoebe, in her loyal fondness for her friend, keenly appreciated Lady Dorothea’s remem- brance of her at such a moment ; and was fain to persuade herself that Lord Fairchester and her Ladyship might prove reasonably suited to each other, and that their progress round the course might be typical of their progress through life. Next to Lady Dorothea and Lord Fair- chester, Phoebe and the world of Wellfiekl gazed with most curiosity on Miss Dugdale of Summerley. She sat in the Countess’s party fully aware that she was one of the very select circle — spoken of by public-spirited Lady Dorothea herself, as being Countess in the bud — to whom Lord Wriothesley might jus- tifiably, and with the consent of all in autho- rity, fling his handkerchief. Phoebe at once recognised the favoured young lady at the corner of the stand. She was surrounded by a group of gentlemen, and was amiably interesting herself in their bet- ting, till, to initiate so charming an amateur in its mysteries, they became condescendingly graphic in the details. Lord Wriothesley was not prominent among these gentlemen, and nobody made way for him when he joined the group, so that there was no plain an- nouncement of a second family alliance, with the prospect of its speedy fulfilment. Phoebe unhesitatingly hoped this match, with all that depended upon it, would fall to the ground. She looked at Miss Dugdale critically, and she did not like to think of her as the future Countess. Everybody around Phoebe was cap- tivated with the young lady’s beauty, or style, or suavity. The Medlars and the Staceys especially were in raptures. Even the Medlars’ discon- tented friend went the length of owning that Miss Dugdale was a passable girl. Phoebe, ere she could get peace to think, had to answer at least a dozen questions as to whether she had seen “ Miss Dugdale — the Countess’s young cousin, and Lord Wriothes- ley’ s intended, you know. And no wonder ! Such a duck, such a darling, such a jollily beautiful fine lady of a dear !” Phoebe heard this chorus on every side. Miss Dugdale was the popular beauty. She was far before Lady Penelope and Lady Louisa Blount, who both had a share of Lord Fairchester’s heavy irregularity of feature, and of Mr. Edmund Blount’s empurpled swarthi- ness. It required all their blood and breed- ing, the freshness of their first and second seasons, and two pairs of great wide open black eyes, to carry off their disadvantages, NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 442 [Good Words, June 1, 1869. and prevent them from being unmistakably plain young women. Miss Dugdale was even higher in public opinion than the young matron Lady Lucy Ingram, whose frizzled crop of hair struck the ignorant Wellfield natives as untidy in the dressing, and un- common closely allied to carrots in the hue. Indeed, the mass of the spectators disappointed and offended Phoebe very much by thinking little, spirituelle , black-and-white Lady Dorothea not fit to hold the candle, so far as mere beauty went, to languid, ivory-and- carmine tinted Miss Dugdale. Straight were Miss Dugdale’s black, silky brows, straight her delicate nose, straight the scarlet thread of her lips. But Phoebe, by one of those instincts which women possess to a larger extent than men, and which some women have in a higher degree than others, did not care for the set form and colour of the beauty, and disliked its set expression of mildness and softness. She watched Miss Dugdale, as in her sweet way she was evincing an immense appetite for general admiration and particular attention. Not- withstanding the regularity of the features, and the vividness of the colouring, Phoebe thought she saw, as if peeping out behind a lovely mask, a certain hard sensuousness, indicating a contracted, mean, and stubborn character. This subtle effect existed in spite of the contour, which was round with youth. The chin was even inclined to fulness, while the only palpable defects of the face were the nearness of the eyes, and a shade of some- thing cynical in the shortness of the upper lip. Phoebe was glad that Lord Wriothesley was not playing the youthful Merlin to this Vivien, and that, when he did pass through the group to address her, his own face — a very different face, as Phoebe had described it, a face all eyes and forehead and shady hollows, as it had struck her that evening when she was so silly as to mistake Lord Exmoor’s heir for a litterateur or an artist — by an irresistible impulse, made a half comical protest of drawn-down corners of the mouth and elevated eyebrows. It did not follow that the young Lord might not be false and faithless to himself in time to come ; that he might not shut his eyes, yield to the baser part of his nature, and lend himself a tool to a family arrangement ; but at least his eyes were open to begin with. CHAP. XX. — LORD WRIOTHESLEY’S COLOURS. The pleasures of the day were beginning to pall upon those spectators to whom neither successful winnings and hedgings, nor yet chicken and tongue, or bread and cheese (as an excuse for champagne and sherry, or “heavy wet”) were the principal ingredients. Phoebe was almost exhausted in attempting, for the hundredth time, to make her mother , understand, so as to save her from appealing to any other person for an explanation, that the jockey and the horse who were first at the goal going, but who were last in returning, were not entitled to the Wellfield Cup or the Exmoor Sweepstakes; that the situation of the townspeople’s stand before the one great shady sycamore in the meadows, and not be- hind it, was an inevitable sacrifice to a view of the course, and bore no reference to favour shown to the grand-stand, or contempt on the part of the workmen towards the respect- able middle-classes. There was only one great difference between the stands, and it was of a nature which would have gently titillated and highly gratified Lady Dorothea. Both stands were exposed to the sun, which, for the season, blazed unusually, so that what in the morning was regarded as a golden boon, rising higher and higher in the sky, became after noon a brazen bane. But the occupants of the first stand could remain firm under fire, while those of the second could not. The peeresses and the right honourables, the squires’ wives and daughters, stood or sat heroically enduring the heat, the glare, and the dust, with no further protection than that given by their white silk or lace parasols, and here and there by a real ser- viceable great black-and-red Spanish or Cana- dian fan. The wives of the bankers, the attorneys, and the rich tradesmen, on the other hand, perspired at every pore, struggling fatuously, with loosened bonnet-strings, open shawls and jackets, as they plied toy-fans, flowers, and handkerchiefs against their in- tangible foes. The posting for the race of gentlemen- jockeys, for which many persons were wait- ing, restored relish to the discussers of the programme. The occupants of the carriages and the grand-stand were themselves in a flutter, and craned long necks, and uttered animated encouragement or advice to depart- ing sons and brothers. The lower ten thou- sand also were excited, and enamoured of seeing their betters disport themselves, or possibly make fools of themselves, for the benefit of a grinning, gaping public. The race in itself was deserving of praise, though not altogether so enthusiastic as that which it received. It might have had the “ not bad ” which John Ball is proud of bestowing on the Good Words,! [June x, 1869 NOBLESSE OBLIGE. NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 443 ■ I Good Words, June i, 1869.] fine arts, not as mere applause, but as a kind of sedative, with its composing phlegm and pinch of wholesome scorn. Mr. Paston, who had come out on purpose to see the race, and should, have known the merit he attri- buted to it, called it exceedingly picturesque. And what with the flood of sunshine in which it was bathed, the beauty of the horses, the half-unconscious mixture of pluck and grace in the riders, the semi-fantastic, yet suf- ficiently English jockey-dress, here seen to the best advantage, with its boots and tops, buckskins and silk jackets — it must be con- fessed that there was much to justify Mr. Paston’s opinion. Certainly Lord Wriothesley was , there in white and coral-red, like Phoebe’s jacket and studs. The ladies on the ground, who mounted white and red rosettes in honour of Lord Wriothesley, were three to one against those who mounted blue in honour of Mr. Ingram. It is needless to say to which set Miss Dugdale belonged. Phoebe was flattered — how could she be otherwise ? — by the simple suggestion of secret, innocent gal- lantry implied in Lord Wriothesley’s choice of colours. There was, and there ever will be, a lurking flattery in young princes’ regard for maidens more or less humble, as, on the other side, there is a fascination for princes in the maidens who are not royal, and for that very reason have a last, best chance of uniqueness and novelty added to their other attractions. Small blame then to Phoebe and Lord Wriothesley, however much trouble might gloom for them in the future. Notwithstanding that Lord Wriothesley, within sight of the original wearer, sported the colours he had fancied for her sake, he was neither first nor second in the race. Stout Mr. Ingram, riding stones heavier, was the winner. Other riders besides came in before the heir of Brockcotes. Though he rode well to look at him, riding was not his business, and his short sight was against him in winning races. He was his own chief-mourner, and went first to condole with the Countess on her son’s being “ no- where.” A little while afterwards he hap- pened to pass below the town-stand. Phoebe was not so wise as not to feel a tumult of vanity, of honest pleasure, arch conscious- ness, and perplexed doubt- — a genuine girlish mixture of sensations. When Lord Wriothes- ley stopped to speak to Mrs. Paston and Phoebe, he saw at a glance Mrs. Paston’s grievance, which Barty Woofer, with all his hardy good-nature, would either have over- looked and undervalued, or regarded as a matter of jest. The poor woman’s weak eyes were shedding involuntary tears, and her thin pink skin was blistering in the unwonted exposure. She could not, like the grand dames, remain long under fire and make no sign : but perhaps she was more easily made the happiest of the happy, though she was not allowed to retain the cause of her hap- piness. Lord Wriothesley hailed one of the considerable supply of John Thomases on the ground, and sent him, with gingerly step, to procure and unfurl a carriage-umbrella for Mrs. Paston’s benefit. But Mrs. Paston’s companions on the stand naturally refused to tolerate the innovation, although, it must be said, most of them did not at first see the introducer. Anyhow there soon arose a chorus of cries : “ 1 can- not see for you, ma’am,” “Your spokes have torn my veil,” “ La ! you are in my eye, Mrs. Paston.” Phoebe, thus besieged, got her mother to resign the umbrella, and could scarcely resist shaking her- head and laughing at Lord Wriothesley’s inopportune service and his chagrined demand — •“ Is it no use, Miss Paston? Cannot peace be made?” While he closed with the whisper, “Tell them Lady Ogle has unfurled her brother-in-law’s great Eastern shade which he carried to the very steps of the throne of the Nizam.” Mrs. Paston, at all events, had the conso- lation of dwelling on the young Lord’s kind intentions, which must have impressed every one within ear-shot; and she enjoyed the diversion of teasing Phoebe, during the hour that remained of the day’s races, upon the propriety of taking steps to return the um- brella — quite a new and handsome one — to its owner. In the meantime Lord Wriothesley lin- gered talking to Phoebe, and looking right up into her dimpling face, wonderfully set off, as only a brown face can be, by a little white bonnet, light as a feather, and without any adornment except a few sprigs of heather, which would not have looked out of place on the grand-stand, and which had arrived just the night before from the Folksbridge Paris-visiting milliner employed by the Halls. “ I am no worse, thank you, Miss Paston,” said his Lordship, as he leant against the post, cynosure of a galaxy of admiring eyes. “But I do not need to set your mind at rest,” his Lordship corrected himself, as he twirled between his fingers a bit of common briony which he had had in his jacket. “ I | have not the good luck to belong to you. NOBLESSE OBLIGE. [Good Words, June i, 1369. and had it, to my gain, been otherwise, I should rather have congratulated you on being here to pity me, which is the office true women like best. Dolly denies the soft impeachment. She desires all who belong to her to come back in the conqueror’s car, with their conquered enemies kicking up the dust at their heels. But you are not so awfully matter-of-fact and thorough-going, and I don’t belong to you — the more’s the pity for me.” At this speech Phoebe could not help looking the least in the world confused, and his Lordship had the good sense to prevent an awkward pause by asking — “ Do you admire our hedge briony, Miss Paston ? I think we have not so glorious a flower in all our conservatories.” His Lordship, however, did not offer it to her, but went away to discharge some of the many duties incumbent upon the heir of the Brockcotes family in the race-week, with the flower still in his hand. “ Now, I call that a specimen of very par- ticular fine manners,” said Mrs. Medlar, as good-humoured as her bouncing daughters, and forty times blowsier and stouter. She was very full blown, indeed, as she sat there in her peach moire, and a pink crape bonnet, inevitably of some volume, when inside and outside its wearer displayed a preference for the “ genteel geranium,” the camelia and cactus blossoms, which his Lord- ship had slighted. Mrs. Medlar had been finding an excuse for taking a most minute inventory of the details of Lord Wriothesley’s person and dress. Thus she could inform the world, not only that the hand in which his Lordship had held the bunch of briony berries was furnished with “ one of those supple, bent-back thumbs,” but she could also add, without the pretence of a whisper, “ Medlar, you may depend upon it he had no braces, my dear.” “ I call it a specimen of very partial fine ‘ manners,” answered Miss Rowe with a tartish cough, and a lynx eye for her scandal-bag. “ My brother the Major used to say that what distinguished and redeemed the royal family — the late royal family, I mean — and proved their breed (he was a great man for horses, the Major, and horsey in his terms, as they say now) was the Royal Dukes never forgetting a face, and misbehaving themselves, with universal urbanity. Lord Wriothesley’s first tutor was the Major’s second wife’s nephew, and the heir of Brockcotes was wont to be in my brother’s house every time he was in Wellfield. I remember he had to be regularly taken to see the scimitar which the Major brought from Chillah wallah, and hear over again the story of its capture.” No one ever ventured to dispute Miss Rowe’s right to dilate on the events of her own family history. So now her hearers looked helplessly from one to another when she paused ; and she, taking this, as was her wont, for a sign of keen interest and zealous questioning, went on again : “ Yes, the little Lord Wriothesley used to say that it was the only thing worth seeing and hearing about in Wellfield ; for he did not care for queencakes, or plums, or pictures, having such loads at home ; but he did not have the Major’s scimitar — and certainly I may be allowed to call it an article of high value, though Miss Adelaide Coke has turned up her nose at it as a rusty, crooked barrel- hoop. I hope there is still enough of old English gentlemanly and military spirit in the t land to prefer the Major’s scimitar, which was bought with a brave man’s blood, to Mr. Coke’s ebony chairs and ivory elephants, obtained by selling wormy biscuits and horse- flesh for beef. But anyhow, Lord Wriothesley don’t have the Royal Dukes’ memory for faces, or their discrimination of rank either.” It was seldom that Miss Rowe’s spirit was so sore ; and Phoebe, feeling that Miss Rowe was doing injustice both to herself and to Lord Wriothesley, rashly thought to explain and smooth matters : “ Lord Wriothesley does not forget the name or the history of any inhabitant of the town ; but he does not know people unless he is quite near them.” “I am standing at your elbow, Miss Paston ; . and, may I ask, is he so sure of you that you feel bound to make apologies for him ? ” Phoebe drew back, hurt, affronted, and uncomfortable. Miss Rowe, though she accepted her situa- tion, and, in her best moods, was frank and cordial, held herself and her family far above most of the Wellfield families, especially families of the single generation of a man of genius, like Paston. She was apt, when the temptation came upon her, to fly somewhat testily in the face of her neighbours. The two best things about such a habit were its candour and its universality, which robbed it of a special application. CHAPTER XXI. — CONSCIENCE-STRICKEN. At this moment, Phoebe caught a glimpse < of Barty Wooler, and recalled Miss Rowe’s sneer ; and, coupling it with Barty’s warning to her father, she brimmed over with tenfold NOBLESSE OBLIGE. G;oJ Words, June i, 1869.1 more resentment against him. The prolonged chances of an encounter with him were vex- ing and worrying her, and doing more to spoil her perfect enjoyment of the race-week at Wellfield than any other element in it. However innocent in intention, and however powerless she was to act otherwise than she had done, she could not rid herself of the conviction that she had wronged Barty Wooler, while she was so far just as to exonerate him from bearing unmanly malice. Why, it was he who handed her mother and her down from the stand at the close of the day’s performance ; and his mother having gone home early with some country friends, he walked part of the road to Wooers’ Alley with the Pastons, as he had done that even- ing when Phoebe had drunk tea for the first and the last time in the house behind the laburnums. He praised the day, the com- pany, the running, and the riding quite good- humouredly, helping out Phoebe’s mono- syllables and the elaborate little speeches which she was under the dire necessity of composing and repeating to him, in order to keep up a polite conversation. Mrs. Paston, on her part, put on a long face, and looked askance at him as at a man who did not know his own mind, since he submitted to be set at nought and dismissed without valid reason by a chit of a girl, and took the thing quietly, too, when once it was done. Phoebe knew in her guilty conscience that he acted in this manner to put her at ease ; and that he had resolved to put a generous restraint upon himself, in order to render her hard lines, which he had been the means of creating, so much the easier for her. She knew that she owed him gratitude for keeping up appearances by conducting himself as if nothing whatever had taken place between him. In her proud maidenly code, reticence in this matter was a duty as real and as binding on her and her family as Noblesse oblige was on Lady Dorothea. To her idea, it was even somewhat of a shame for a girl not to have been able to foresee and to prevent a man’s exposing himself to mortification in her eyes. Shame to her, then, if she became the means of exposing Barty Wooler and his disappointment to the world. Cut to the heart, Phoebe had burnt with anger at the behaviour of girls who boasted of their conquests, and who led on men to their undoing. She was indebted to the magnanimity, the mature sense and consider- ation of Barty Wooler, for doing his best to give the world the general impression that it 445 had made a mistake in its vague conclusion respecting the Woolers and the Pastons. But the debt was only an additional burden to her. Frightened, grieved, and worried, she asked herself, had she injured this man in any degree? had she wrought an evil beyond remedy to her father’s friend? and was her tenderness of heart to be wrung by the fancy, whenever it occurred to her, all her life afterwards ? Rover though he had been, Barty had impressed her with the sincerity and stead- fastness of his passion. The full-grown tree might break, but could not bend like the twig. When love took possession of a grey-headed Mark Antony, or a furrow-faced Othello, it was apt, if crossed, to become a fatal posses- sion. Had she completed the worldly ruin of a life which had been sufficiently wasted already? Yet she was persuaded that she did not love Barty one bit as girls love — that she was more or less offended with him, and aggrieved at him, though he was now doing what he could to make up to her for his folly and rashness. Still he troubled her. She had a very distinct perception that, in spite of all his failures, there was still in him the making of a man ; and that it was very likely she would never see his like again. In reality she would no more have compared a beaming, elegant, aristocratic lad in a gentleman-jockey’s costume to robust, plain- spoken Barty Wooler in his work-a-day tweed, than she would have compared the Countess’s slender, tricksome Italian grey-hound Rogero to Lady Dorothea’s handsome but solidly- built spaniel Diver. Barty Wooler was going his own way, getting over his short furlough of the race- week, chewing the bitter cud of his reflec- tions and imaginations, totally unconscious of the degree in which he was troubling Phoebe, and the burden of care he was cast- ing upon her. Knowing little of the true quality, save from the old pages of George Selwyn and Horace Walpole (which, more than Burke or Debrett, should be the Englishman’s text- book), Barty supposed the race had neither improved nor degenerated greatly since then, but had only accommodated itself to the march of time and the progress of the world. He was ready to allow that there must have been something exquisite and unapproach- able in the good-nature and sang-froid of those exceedingly depraved young men, whose ingenuousness surpassed their vicious- ness, and whose character in its composition was rounded off to strange heights and NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 446 [Good Words, June 1, 1869, depths of good and evil. He had no doubt that Lord Wriothesley was of such a set, white-washed and virtuous, as became a Latimer, but man enough to have his indi- vidual tastes, although peer enough to hanker after forbidden fruit. Lord Wriothesley could not have Phoebe Paston anymore than the Prince of Wales could have had her ; but he could admire her, court her, and dangle after her in a dilettante, virtuous, Latimer fashion, only robbing her of her virgin fancy, her maiden meditations, the first bloom of her heart. But to Barty she was the bright particular star whom he might not hope to wed, yet could not help worship- ping to the end, and beyond the end, of his half-spent mortal life. Such was the way of the world. Paston could not foresee the harm nor hinder it. The girl’s mother was a fool; and such an affair, even though it closely affected her dear Wellfield god- daughter and friend, was very far below a Lady Dorothea’s notice. Barty himself, instead of arresting it, as he would have gone through fire and water to do, had accelerated it and brought it to a climax. Lastly, he was assured, that if he told any man or woman, even his old mother, of his agonies of mortification, suspicion, and jealousy, he would very soon come to be regarded as stark, staring mad. It was not all tranquillity and sunshine to those who shared in the gaieties of the race- week at Wellfield ; but thanks to the elasticity of youth, with its worst crosses, it was never- theless to Phoebe a season of enchantment. CHAPTER XXII. NOT TO BE BEATEN. It had been the custom that both a ball and a concert should take place at Wellfield during the race-week. These were provided and patronised by the Brockcotes family for the entertainment of the troops of visitors. The ball was usually on Thursday, and the concert on Friday. On Tuesday, the second day of the races, Lady Dorothea, while en route for the course, had herself set down in the High Street, and made her way to Wooers’ Alley without troubling Lord Fairchester for his attendance. Her purpose was to beg Phoebe’s assistance to lift the family off the horns of a dilemma. “What do you think the singing people we ordered from town have done, Phoebe?” began her Ladyship, adding without giving Phoebe time to answer : “ They have quarrelled among themselves, and broken their engage- ment as a company. Where would be the use of Titiens alone ? Only Charles Mat- thews undertakes to be an entire chorus. 1 told Mr. Hall I never could bear profes- sionals — they were so overbearing. But the opera would have behaved better than this music-hall. We think of having none of the offenders, but of leaving them to be sorry, and making faster friends together at their leisure.” “ Then you will have to give » up the plan you had fixed on ? ” “No, no, we are not going to fail in our programme ; you need not look as if we j were. Some of us would rather die than dis- \ appoint our neighbours, and break our word like those singing people. We have got some good voices in our own party, and we will press our friends into the service. Lady Louisa Blount will sing alone, and Miss Dugdale with Mr. Vernon. The Miss Ham- monds from Eastwich will execute one of their difficult pieces, and I think Miss Coke will do something also, if I ask her. I don’t doubt but I shall muster a full private com- pany after I have walked over the course to-day. We flatter ourselves that the Well- field people, who know us so well, will be good-natured and friendly, take the will for the deed, and not prove too critical.” “ O Lady Dorothea ! ” exclaimed Phoebe, with encouraging enthusiasm, “ I am sure it will be a thousand times better than the pro- fessional concert in the Town Hall. I am certain all Wellfield will congratulate itself on the change. But will it not be a dreadful trouble to the family ? ” “ Not at all, Phoebe. I hope it may be our forte , as well as our calling, to minister to the public, in spite of what Messrs. Bradlaugh and Co. may say. The worst of it is, that be- sides being pinched for time — although Lady Louisa, Chetwynd Dugdale, and the rest, will have two nights and mornings to scream themselves hoarse at rehearsals — we our- selves can contribute nothing but the room. The truth is, there is no music to be got out of me, whatever may be in me. It would be a gross imposition on my neighbours to pre- tend to witch them in that way: But why don’t young men of rank like Wriothesley continue to practise the flageolet and the musical glasses, as they did in Sir Charles Grandison’s day, without being laughed at for their pains ? It is more necessary for them now than ever to take, not only silly women, but the world by storm. How can they do it, when comical ascents of Mont Blanc, in poor Albert Smith’s style, and feux d' artifice, are no longer good for race-weeks? The more’s the pity; because abstracts of the Good Words, June i, 1869.] NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 447 lives of Watt and Stephenson, so curtailed as to fall flat, stale, and unprofitable on Me- chanics’ Institutes, are not appropriate here. Wriothesley says he could play tableaux vivants , and a bright idea has struck us, about which everybody at Brockcotes is wild. I suppose its audacity is its attraction. You remember the Beauty end of the picture- gallery, Phoebe, which contains the beauties of all the centuries, portraits of whom had been stolen by, or strayed to, the Latimers ?” “ Yes ; and I fancy I am not likely to forget it, Lady Dorothea,” said Phoebe, in hasty anticipation. “ Well, we want to get up a series of living representations of the famous beauties in costume and character. We hopq, in acknowledgment of our attainments in cos- tume (we have lots of old clothes in the wardrobes, if Thorpe and Thorpie could only get at them), the spectators will not mind such trifles as deterioration in beauty and discrepancy of complexion.” “ It will be perfectly charming ; as good as a fancy-ball, or an old masquerade,” de- clared Phoebe, clasping her hands, already seeing the novel spectacle with dazzled eyes. “ Well, I don’t know about it’s being as good, but I trust it won’t be -as bad ; — and only consider that Wriothesley’s supineness on this occasion might cost him his election at some future period, were our good little town to turn its coat and become a prey to ultra-liberals, or unwarrantable, unprincipled place-seekers in any guise. But all that I bargain for in the meantime is, that we may eke out our amateur concert so cleverly that nobody will miss anything. We adjourned to the Beauty corner of the gallery last night, after the tiresome singing people’s telegram came, and Wriothesley hit on this device, and made a selection on the moment. I am to be the Rose of Raby — Cicely of York, you know — in a horned head-dress of Richard II.’s time, very curious and striking ; and Fair- chester is to be Richard III.’s father.” “ Oh, but won’t the last be a pity, Lady Dorothea?” urged Phoebe. “Why?” demanded her Ladyship, coolly. “Lady Penelope Blount is to wear a yellow wig, and be her own ancestress, Lady Rich, to Lord Dacre’s Mountjoy. Wriothesley would not hear of a desecration of Sir Philip. I fancy he thought nobody would be tender of the character but himself ; and Lady Penelope had settled to be Lady Rich with Lord Dacre. Lady Louisa is to sing : be- sides it would be too heavy a tax on people’s imagination to impose her also on them as a j beauty without any particular ancestress to carry off the liberty. Chetwynd Dugdale is a beauty, therefore it is a necessity she should both sing and act. We omitted Mary Queen of Scots for Chetwynd, as the personation is hackneyed and stagey, in addition to being in the same generation as Lady Rich. We must vary our epochs, for in such an affair if we have not variety we have nothing. We passed over Sarah of Marlborough, because this would have been outrageously a dove personating a hawk. We pitched upon Ve- netia Lady Digby, to an unknown Sir Kenelm. We half think we’ll talk over Mr. Halloas he doesn’t mind a bit being stuffed out to get up the ‘ greasy ’ bulk of Sir Kenelm, if that were all.” “I should think not. Mr. Hall won’t be very much out of character, Lady Dorothea, for I always tell him that, like the rest of his class, he is already mentally stuffed out.” Both girls laughed, and Lady Dorothea resumed : — “ But, Phoebe, Mr. Hall shows courage in this adventure. Every one else minds such a thing, and Wriothesley would expire of the weight of the stuffing which he would have to stand. Wars of the Roses, Elizabeth’s and Charles’ reigns,” continued Lady Dorothea, checking off the periods on her fingers, “ pre- sent a wide field for telling distinction ; but we require something nearer the last centuries to complete our show. Now, Phoebe, Wri- othesley is of opinion that you could do Molly Lepel, who would be preferable to the “ charming Nancy,” Countess of Exmoor of that date. Indeed, Wriothesley sees a like- ness between you and Harding’s picture of Molly Lepel. He would feel honoured to support you as Lord Fanny.” “ Oh, dear ! but I’m afraid I could not do such a thing,” objected Phoebe, on the spur of the moment, colouring brilliantly, and drawing a long breath. “ It would not be like doing it among strangers, you know,” insisted Lady Doro- thea. “We are going to beg your father to come up and give us the benefit of his taste. Your cousin, Mr. Hall, is there, and I expect will form one of the company. Surely, with me and Wriothesley you are not a stranger either. I would not ask you to do anything which I thought would be unsuitable for you or disagreeable ; and I must say I see no ob- jection, and the Countess sees none ; at least she does not disapprove of you joining us. You would only have to come up this evening and help us to arrange matters ; and when you are there, you had better stay, for we NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 448 1 women are going to beg off from the races to-morrow as much as possible, to study the groups and the general plan. We shall have a cabinet luncheon, and a dressing-gown tea, and that part of the play will be quite easy. Thursday, the day after to-morrow, is that of the hurdle-race and the ball, and we shall get no good of it, so we will let each other off from it. But I think you might come up on the Friday morning again, to be ready for the evening.” “ I should be glad to go to Brockcotes, and help you to prepare the tableaux .” “ As to that, Phoebe, I could easily get ' more help. You niust take a part, for we | cannot do without you. Of course there would be a dress prepared for you, and I 1 should see to Thorpe’s looking after the I making of it. Molly Lepel’s is a very quiet, | nineteenth-century dress, even to the very doing of the hair — only a square-cut body, with pretty breast-knots and shoulder-knots, and an open skirt and petticoat, to render it out of the common ; nothing like the Rose of Raby’s, I can tell you, with her horned head- dress and sleeves trailing down to the ground. However, if you don’t like to take an active share in our programme, do not hesitate to tell me, Phoebe, because I won’t mind it at all ; only remember, it is not like regular acting — there is not a part to be learnt, nor a word to say. But there is not a moment to be lost, my dear child ; and if you don’t mind, I should much prefer you to any one else, when it is for the credit of the race-week at Wellfield — perhaps the last race-week I shall cater for.” It was clear that Lady Dorothea had set her heart on tableaux, and if tableaux, why, of course, the best of the kind, so far as she could make them. Hence her anxiety to find it perfectly practicable that pretty, clever Phoebe Paston should be one of the per- formers. Phoebe hated to disappoint Lady Dorothea, just because Lady Dorothea bore the dis- appointment so admirably, never uttering a word of vexation, or, indeed, saying another word on the subject. Again, it must be confessed, Phoebe secretly hankered after the fine doings and the fine people. She longed to be just for once in the centre of Lady Dorothea’s circle, to try the effect of the high rarefied atmosphere. She thought that, after all, she could undertake what was required of her, if it were only to do as the others did — stand up with Lord Wriothesley, and make a picture for a few minutes. She did not allow herself to encourage any considerations which [Good Words, June 1, 1869. could render it a difficulty, when Lady Dorothea ignored such scruples. She did not think that her father would object to her going up to Brockcotes, when he and Frank Hall were with her. There was nothing con- spicuous in that, and the Countess had con- sented to it. If her own mother objected, Phoebe knew very well the objection would not hold for a day. She could easily recon- cile her mother to the step. Besides, she had as much vanity as to like to think of appear- ing as one of the Brockcotes company before all the assembled world of Wellfield — the Medlars, the Staceys, Miss Rowe, and even Miss Adelaide Coke, who did not think Phoebe of rank sufficient to visit at the White House. This, Phoebe felt, would be a tri- umphant proof of the esteem of the Exmoor family towards her father. And she would show her independence of Barty Woolen — the man towards whom she bore a grudge, because he had compelled her to do him a wrong. Phoebe said yes, conditionally on receiving her father’s consent, and sent Lady Dorothea away to walk over the course, not only in good heart (since she never lost heart), but in high spirits, and confident assurance of attain- ing a great success. Mr. Paston did not say no to the proposal. He had grown to have great faith in the discretion which characterized all the Brock- cotes arrangements for Phoebe, the force of Barty Wooler’s protests against them having faded away with his right to make such pro- tests. Mr. Paston, during all his artist life, had been in the habit of treating invitations to Brockcotes like royal mandates, a result arising as much from the formality as from the grateful loyalty of the man. Mrs. Paston the one moment asserted that Phoebe ought to go, and the next that she ought not. At the last she agreed to Phoebe’s going, reserving to herself the right of com- plaining, in boastful lowness of spirits, to every ready ear which she could secure for a day or two of the expense, the exposure, and the risk inseparable from the boldness and the eccentricity of her husband and daughter. Phoebe’s promotion had one disadvantage. She was so full of the performance to which she was. invited at Brockcotes, that on the second day she lost her appreciation of the races, and attended them as a matter of course, and a little as a task. She was full of impatience to have done with them, to get up to Brockcotes, and pass the rubicon, making her appearance among the players in the tableaux . Good Words, July i, 1869.] DEBENHAM’S VOW. 449 DEBENHAM’S VOW. By AMELIA B. EDWARDS, Author of “Barbara’s History. CHAPTER XXXIV. — “ THE ATHENS OF PERICLES.” T may be re- membered that Temple D e Benham, smok- ing his after- dinner pipe in the porch of a certain river- side hostelry, chanced, one memorable evening, to overhear some fragments of a sufficiently un- § important dia- logue in the ad- joining parlour. The speakers were Mr. and Miss Alleyne ; and almost the first expression of opinion to which De Benham heard the painter give utterance in the course of that brief conver- sation, was his dislike to the painting of com- mission pictures. To hundreds — nay, to thousands — of strug- gling artists such expression of opinion would sound like affectation or insanity ; but in Mr. .Alleyne’s case it was literally true. He loved to paint a picture for his own pleasure — to take his own time about it — to feel himself unfettered alike in the choice and treatment of his subject. Then, and then only, he used to say, it was possible for him to do full jus- tice to the power that was in him. Then only, as his daughter would admit when ap- pealed to for confirmation of the fact, he was wont to work with genuine industry. Yet Mr. Alleyne seldom found leisure to produce more than one such picture in the year, and there were sometimes years when even that one was not forthcoming. His hands, in truth, were always more than suffi- ciently full of those commissions which he professed to hate. Hate them as he might, however, and grumble over them as he might, he was bound either to accept them or forfeit his connection. Now Mr. Alleyne was not a popular painter. He was not an R.A., nor even an A.R.A. He exhibited very little; for his works, being executed to order, went X — 31 home to their owners, for the most part, as soon as finished. His reputation, in short, high as it was, scarcely strayed beyond the limits of a certain small circle of aristocratic patrons; and Mr. Alleyne' was not the man to give up that “audience, fit though few,” for the wider arena but less certain issues of public favour. He knew the value of his connection, and fully appreciated the advan- tages accruing thereunto. It maintained him in comfort, and, had he cared to work harder and spend less, would have maintained him in affluence. It ministered to the gratifica- ' tion of his tastes ; and it opened to him the sort of society he liked best to mix in. For about seven months out of every twelve, for 1 instance, Mr. Alleyne would be staying at the j country place of one or other of his patrons, ! painting park glades, ancestral oaks, Eliza- j bethan halls, terraces, galleries, and all those wonderful landscape and architectural sub- jects in which our old English homes are rich beyond all parallel. Treated on these occasions with all the honours of a guest, he rode, and drove, and dined, and was invited out with his hosts, and fared like a prince. At other times, when not actually staying at the great house, he would lodge at the steward’s ; or some neighbouring farm; or establish himself, as at Cillingford, in the village inn, and have his daughter with him. In the winters he stayed at home, still painting commissions from sketches made upon the spot, dining out frequently, and spending most of his evenings at his club. Mr. Alleyne, in short, led a very pleasant, easy life, and amused himself by grumbling at the sources of his prosperity. Still, as it has already been stated, the artist did occasionally make time to produce what he called a “holiday picture ;” and this holiday picture, if not bought up before it left his studio, was sure to be sold the day of the private view. It had not happened to him, indeed, for many a long year — not, perhaps, since he had become a father and a widower — to have one of these pictures left upon his hands. Now it so fell out that during the early spring of 1861, Mr. Alleyne solaced himself in the intervals of his other labours by taking up a certain neglected canvas that had been standing with its face to the wall for years ; and, falling into a sudden enthusiasm for the DEBENHAM’S VOW. 45 ° [Good Words, July 1, 1869. subject (as one is apt to do with a sketch or poem long laid aside and forgotten), he finished it at a white heat, and got it off in time for the Academy. Having been at work upon it with closed doors up to the last moment, he did not, this time, sell it off the easel ; but it was sold, and the red star was on the frame, before the rooms in Tra- falgar Square had been thrown open more than an hour to that favoured multitude whom the President invites to the private view. And the purchaser of the picture was Mr. Hardwicke. It happened, of course, through the mere accident of taste. Mr. Hardwicke knew nothing of Mr. Alleyne, except by reputa- tion ; and Mr. Alleyne knew nothing of Mr. Hardwicke, except that he remembered to have heard the name, but could not tell in what connection. “The picture is sold, Juliet,” he said, when he went home that afternoon. “ Of course, it is sold, papa,” replied his daughter, lovingly. “ I never doubted that. Has Sir Edwin Fletcher bought it?” “ No — a stranger. A Mr. Hardwicke. I fancy I know the name. Do you remember anything about him?” Miss Alleyne turned to the window, and began plucking the dead leaves Irom her geraniums. “ Where does he live?” she asked. “ He is down in the Red Book for a house in the Regent’s Park, a place in Kent, and some warehouse in the City.” “ Then I think I know. He is a cousin of Mr. Archibald Blyth.” “ Ay? — a man of some position, too.” “ I believe he is very rich,” said Miss Alleyne. And then there were some moments of silence. “ By the way,” said Mr. Alleyne, presently, “ is it not to this Mr. Hardwicke’s employ- ment that that other young fellow, Deben- ham, has betaken himself?” Miss Alleyne bent over her flowers. “ I — yes, I think so,” she replied. “ A strange turn for a young man of talent to take ! I fancied he was devoted to his art.” Miss Alleyne made no reply. “ But it’s a self-indulgent, money-making, degenerate age,” said the painter, philoso- phically, “ and the true spirit of art is well- nigh extinct. I think, my love, I will take a cup of strong coffee and a chasse of curagoa before I go up to dress.” “To dress?” said Miss Alleyne. “I thought you dined at home to-night, papa.” “ Ah, I forgot to tell you before— Captain Bathurst has asked me to join him at the Carlton. You are not disappointed, my love?” Miss Alleyne smiled, and would not allow that she was in the least disappointed. “ You know of old,” she said, “ that I do not mind dining alone.” She did not add, however, that, accus- tomed as she was to his absence, she had of late so lost her old buoyancy of spirits, that she had come almost to dread the recurrence of these solitary evenings. “He is a gentlemanly-looking man,” said Mr. Alleyne presently, while sipping his coffee and curagoa. “Who, dear papa?” “Mr. Hardwicke.” “ Did you see him?” “ For a moment. I went up to learn who had bought the picture, and the secretary pointed him out to me as he was leaving the- rooms.” “ I hope he has the taste to appreciate it,” said Miss Alleyne. “Well, he has had the taste to buy it,” said the painter. “That proves nothing. It may have taken his fancy ; or some one may have ad- vised him ; or he may have been to the* place, and bought it for the association.” “ Qu’ imported His cheque will be none the less valid.” “ Nay, papa, — your best picture !” Mr. Alleyne, rising to go, pinched his- daughter’s ear, and said smilingly : — “Ah, pussy, you always think the last picture is the best !” “You always think it is the worst.” “Just so. The artist desponds, missing his ideal — the loving woman by his side (wife or daughter, as the case may be) sees his work with the eyes of her heart, and finds no flaw. That is one of the few pleasant laws that hold this uncomfortable world together.” “Generalise as much as you like, papa,' ” said Miss Alleyne, with something of her old, pretty, wilful manner, “I maintain that ‘ The Athens of Pericles' is the best picture you ever painted.” . Mr. Alleyne stopped with his hand on the- door. “By the v/ay,” he said, “did you ever hear young Blyth speak of his cousin’s sister,. Miss Hardwicke ?” “ I did not even know that there was a Miss Hardwicke. What of her?” “What of her? Simply that she is the most beautiful woman I ever saw in my life.” Good Words,] [July r, i DEBENHAM’S VOW.’ Good Words, July 1,1869.] DEBENHAM’S VOW. 45 1 And with this he closed the door, and was gone. . Miss Alleyne looked after him as if scarcely- realising the full meaning of his words. The most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life ! It was a sweeping assertion, — such an assertion as one accepts, for the most part, with a certain degree of silent qualifica- tion. Perhaps Miss Alleyne was so quali- fying it in her own mind ; at all events, she sat for a long time grave, and pale, and earnestly thinking. Then, having the dead geranium leaves in her lap, she began slowly shredding them to pieces — shredding them to pieces, and casting the fragments into the fireplace one by one. The most beautful woman he had ever seen in his life ! Ay, and probably one of | the richest women, too. Beautiful — and rich - — and Mr. Elardwicke’s sister ! Her mind kept travelling round those three facts with a persistency that was painful to herself. She went over them again, and again, and again. And so the dusk came on and found her still thinking. CHAPTER XXXV. — RUNNING THE BLOCKADE. “Guess it’s the Roanoke ,” observed the pilot, calmly. Even as he said the words, the American loomed out distincter, closer, within pistol- shot from deck to deck. The captain of the Stormy Petrel answered the hostile summons. “ Ay, ay, sir,” he shouted through his speaking-trumpet. “ We are hove-to.” And then he called down the tube to those in the engine-room, “ Ease her ! ” “You won’t stop the boat, Captain Hay?” exclaimed De Benham, breathlessly. “ I have stopped her, sir,” snarled the captain. Then thundered a second mandate from the threatening phantom alongside. “ Lay-to, for boats !” To which the captain again responded : — “ Ay, ay, sir ! ” De Benham ground his teeth. “But — God of heaven ! man,” he said, scarcely con- scious of his own vehemence, “ do you give in thus — without an effort ? ” The captain turned upon him with an oath. “ Who says I’m going to give in ? ” he an- swered savagely. “ Wait till you see me do it, sir ! ” And now the Stormy Petrel, her steam being suddenly turned off, had ceased to move. All on deck stood silent, motionless, waiting with suspended breath. They could hear the captain of the cruiser issuing his rapid orders — trace, through the fog, the out- line of the quarter-boats as they were lowered into the water — hear the splash of the oars, the boisterous gaiety of the men .... De Benham uttered a suppressed groan, and the perspiration stood in great beads upon his forehead. He was powerless ; and the sense of his powerlessness was intolerable. “ Will you let them board us ? ” he said hoarsely, pointing to the boats, now half-way between the two vessels. The captain grinned, put his lips again to the tube, shouted down to the engineer, “Full speed a head !” and with one quiver- j ing leap, the Stormy Petrel shot out again I upon her course, like a greyhound let loose. “ There, Mr. Supercargo,” said the cap- tain grimly ; “ that’s my way of giving in. Our American friend will hardly desert his boats upon the open sea in such a night as this — even for the fun of capturing a blockade- runner.” At this moment, a red flash and a tremen- dous report declared the prompt indignation of the Federal commander. But almost be- fore those rolling echoes had died away, the Stormy Petrel was half a mile a-head, and not an outline of the cruiser was visible through the fog. “ Wa’al, now,” said Mr. Zachary Polter. “ that’s what I call sinful extravagance. I calc’late them chaps will come to want good powder and shot some day, afore they die.” De Benham went up to the captain with extended hand. “ Captain Hay,” he said, frankly, “ I spoke just now under excitement — I beg your par- don.” The captain grunted, and 3uelded his hand somewhat unwillingly. “ It is not the supercargo’s place, Mr. Debenham, to question the discretion of the captain,” he said with some asperity — and turned away. De Benham accepted the rebuke in silence, knowing that he had deserved it. The night passed over without further in- cident, and by five o’clock next morning, the Stormy Petrel was within eight hours of her destination. Both captain and pilot had cal- culated on making considerably less way in the time, and had allowed a much wider margin for detours and delays : so that now they were not a little perplexed at finding themselves so near the end of their journey. To go on was impossible ; for they could only hope to slip through the cordon under cover 45 2 DEBENHAM’S VOW. [Good Words, July i, ia&). ! i 1 of the night. And yet to remain where they were was almost as bad. However, they had no alternative ; so, after some little consulta- tion, they agreed to lie-to for the present, keeping up their steam meanwhile, and hold- ing themselves in readiness to repeat the manoeuvres of yesterday whenever any vessel hove in sight. The fog had now cleared off. The day was brilliant ; the sky one speckless dome of intensest blue ; the sun, an intolerable Splen- dour fast climbing to the zenith. The blockade-runners, who would have given much for dark and cloudy weather, revenged themselves by saying uncivil things of the glorious luminary ; till presently a long, black, horizontal cloud on the horizon warned them of a steamer in the offing, whereupon they edged away in the opposite direction as quickly as possible. And now their troubles had begun again. Sometimes it was a frigate, sometimes a mer- chant ship, sometimes a steamer, sometimes a sloop of w r ar — but it was always something ; and the Stor?ny Petrel was perpetually sheer- ing off to one or other point of the compass. Towards sunset, Mr. Zachary Polter began to look grave. “ Guess we shan’t know whar we air if this game goes on much longer,” said he. “It aren’t in natur not to get out of one’s reck’n- ing arter dodgin’ and de-vi-atin’ all day long in this style.” Still there was no help for it. Dodge and j deviate the Stormy Petrel must, if she was to ! be kept out of harm’s way ; and even so, with ; all her dodging and deviating, it seemed well- ! nigh miraculous that she should escape ob- servation. At length, as evening drew on and the sun j neared the horizon, preparations were made i for the final run. Both captain and pilot, by j help of charts, soundings, and so forth, had I pretty well satisfied themselves as to their I position, and Mr. Zachary Polter, knowing at j what hour it would be high tide on the bar, I had calculated the exact time for going into | the harbour. “ ’Twouldn’t be amiss, cap’n,” said this i latter, “if you was to change that white j weskit for suthin dark ; nor if you, sir,” turn- i mg to De Benham, “was to get quit o’ that j light suit altogether for the nex few hours.” I The captain muttered something about “unnecessary nonsense;” but went to his cabin, all the same, to change the obnoxious garment. Whereupon Mr. Zachary Polter gave it as his opinion that if the captain and all on board were to black tire whites of their eyes and put their teeth in mourning, it would not be more than the occasion warranted. After this, an unlucky cock which had travelled with them in the character of a deck-passenger all the way from Liverpool (but was addicted to crowing lustily about midnight and the small hours of the morning) was hurried by the steward to an untimely end. And then, the brief twilight being already past, the engineers piled on the coal ; the captain gave the word ; and the Stormy Petrel steered straight for Charleston. And now it is night ; clear, but not over clear, although the stars are shining. Objects, however, are discernible at some distance, and ships are sighted continually. But as none of these lie directly in his path, and as he knows his own boat to be invisible by night beyond a certain radius, the captain holds on his course unhesitatingly. In the meanwhile, the hours seem to fly. The Stormy Petrel, now clearing the waters at full speed, stretches herself like a racer to her work, flinging the spray over her sharp bows and speeding onward gallantly. About midnight, the stars begin to cloud over and the night thickens ; but there is still no mist upon the sea. Towards two in the morning, their patent lead tells that they are nearing shore. Then the pilot gives orders to “ slow down the engines ” — a breathless silence pre- vails — every eye is on the watch, every ear on the alert — and, momentarily expecting to catch their first glimpse of the blockading squadron, they steal slowly and cautiously on their way. And now the sense of time becomes sud- denly reversed. Up to this point the hours have gone by like minutes ; but now the minutes go by like hours. Beacons there are none to guide them, for the harbour-lights have all been abolished since the arrival of the enemies’ ships outside the bar ; but those on board begin to ask themselves whether some outline of the coast ought not, ere this, to be visible. And then comes that other question — have they indeed so “ dodged and de- viated ” that the pilot has lost his reckoning ? Still the Stormy Petrel creeps on — still each fresh sounding brings her into shallower water — still those eager watchers stare into the darkness, knowing that the tide will turn and the dawn be drawing on ere long, and that after sunrise neither speed nor skill can save them. At length, when suspense is sharpened almost to pain, there comes into sight a faint, indefinite something which presently resolves itself into the outline of a large vessel lying Good Words, July i; 1869.] DEBENHAM’S VOW. 453 at anchor, with her head to the wind and a faint spark of light at her prow. Mr. Zachary Polter slaps his thigh trium- phantly. “ That ar’s the senior officer’s ship,” he whispers. “ She lies jest tew mile off the mouth 0’ Charleston harbour — an’ she’s bound, yer see, to show a light to her own cruisers. Darned, now, if we ain’t fixed it uncommon tidy this time !” And now, not one by one, but, as it were, simultaneously, the whole line of blockaders comes into sight, some to the right, some to the left of that which shows the light. Of these they count six besides the flag-ship, all under way and gliding slowly, almost im- perceptibly, to and fro in the darkness. Between some two of these the Stoi'my Petrel must make her final run ; and upon this point there ensues a momentary alterca- tion between captain and pilot — the former insisting that the widest passage lies between two cruisers a little way off to the right, and the latter preferring to go in between the flag-ship and the nearest blockader on the left. “Tell yer, cap’n,” says he emphatically, “ yer downright wrong this fit. I guess we shall git threw as right as a fiddle ; but if we air cotched sight of — wa’al, then, we know that one of the tew’s at anker and can’t run arter us. Besides, the flag-ship allers lies nighest in with the channel.” So the captain gives in sulkily, as is his wont ; steam is again got up to the highest pressure ; and the Stormy Petrel rushes on at full speed. Then the two ships between which lies her perilous path grow momen- tarily clearer and nearer, and a dark ridge of coast becomes dimly visible beyond them. And now the supreme moment is at hand. Straight and fast the good boat flies, her pro- pellers throbbing furiously, like a pulse at high fever, and the water hissing past her bows. Now every man on board holds his breath. Now flag-ship and cruiser (the one about half a mile to the right, the other about half a mile to the left) lie out a few hundred yards ahead — now, for the briefest second, the Stormy Petrel is in a line with both — now she has left them as many hundred yards astern — and now, all at once, she is in the midst of the current, and rushing straight at that long white ridge of boiling surf which marks the position of the bar ! “ By Jove !” says the captain, drawing a long breath, “ we’ve done it.” “ Don’t yew make tew sartin, cap’n, till we’re over the bar,” replies Mr. Zachary Polter. “ We ain’t out o’ gunshot range yet awhile.” Over the bar they are, however, ere long, safe and successful. And now the steam-whistle is blown twice, shrill and fearlessly, and two white lights are hung out over the bows of the vessel ; for their pilot has been in before, and knows the signals necessary to be observed inside the cordon. Were these signals neglected, the Stormy Petrel would be fired upon by the Confederate forts. And now, too, lights are lit, and tongues are loosened, and even Captain Frank Hay un- bends for once, promising the men a double allowance of grog, and inviting De Benham and Heneage to a bottle of champagne in his own cabin. A long irregular line of coast has meanwhile emerged, as it were, into the grey of dawn ; and just as the first flush of crimson streams up the eastern sky, the Stormy Petrel casts anchor under the sand- bag batteries of Morris Island. CHAPTER XXXVI. THE FIRST NUGGET. Morris Island, seen by broad daylight, proved to be an unattractive place enough, low and flat, diversified by rolling mounds of sand, patches of starved grass, and bitter salt-water marshes. There were tents pitched here and there among the sand-hills ; and just against the beach, long banks of sand- bag batteries, surmounted by a line of black parapet, port-holed like a ship’s side, with the muzzles of the guns grinning through. Sullivan’s Island — a long tongue of land running out some way lower down on the opposite shore — partook apparently of the same low, sandy, marshy characteristics, re- lieved, however, by the noble water-front of Fort Moultrie ; while midway between both shores, the stars and bars flaunting gaily over- head, rose, as it seemed, sheer out of the broad waters of the estuary, the battered, eyeless walls of Fort Sumter. Yellow and turbid as the Tiber at the foot of St. Angelo flowed river and tide, now fast ebbing out to sea. White and dazzling stretched the sandy shores on either side. A hot wind blew, oppressive as the Italian scirocco, and thick with sand as the winds of the Egyptian desert. Half-choked, half- blinded, with smarting eyes, parched lips, and burning throats, the crew of the Stormy Petrel agreed together that the bold de- fenders of these harbour forts must have a disagreeable time of it. No sooner was the camp awake and stirring on Morris Island than the beach was • ■ , ■ ■ t : 454 DEBENHAM’S VOW. [Good Word&vJiiSy i, 1869. crowded with Confederate officers and soldiers, all dressed pretty much alike, in coarse grey cloth, with worsted braid, and yellow facings, and palmetto-tree buttons. Their eagerness, their enthusiasm, their excitement knew no bounds. About a dozen officers put off in a boat and came on board at once, shaking hands with everyone, pressing them to land, and breakfast, and make the tour of the batteries ; asking a thousand questions, and volunteering all kinds of hospitalities. “ By Jove ! gentlemen, you are the first who have ventured to run the blockade with a steamer of this size,” said one. “ An almighty plucky thing to do, cap- tain,” exclaimed another. “ I reckon now, you’ve brought a cargo of Enfields, to help us whip the Yankees !” cried a third. A fourth went round addressing himself in the same words to the captain, supercargo, and passenger. “You’ll dine with me to-morrow, sir, at the Mills’ House. Seven sharp. My card — Colonel Drummond, at your service.” “ Every brave Britisher who runs the blockade of this harbour is the guest and brother of every man, woman, and child in Charleston city !” “ Darn my eye-teeth, gentlemen, if I let you go on to Charleston without first coming over to my tent for a bottle of Madeira !” Resisting all this, however, and much more to the same effect, the captain of the Stormy Petrel succeeded at last in getting rid of his military visitors ; and so, running up the Union Jack, prepared to be gone. Then the battery saluted him with a single gun at parting; Fort Moultrie followed up the compliment with another ; and, acknow- ledging each civility with a dip of her flag, the blockade-runner, thus greeted, steamed on for Charleston. Fort Sumter was now passed— pitted, and seamed, and blackened from the shelling it had gone through. Then came Fort John- son, on another sandy promontory to the left — then, lying well off the land just at that point where the Ashley and Cooper rivers meet and mingle, Shute-s Folly Island with Castle Pinckney (a huge round fort, like a gigantic martello tower) showing a bold front towards the sea — then, on a sandy delta between the mouths of the two rivers, sparkling, many- coloured, many-steepled, presenting a stately show of wharves and quays, white domes, green trees, and public and private buildings | of every description — Charleston. News of her arrival having in the mean- while been telegraphed from Morris Island, the Stormy Petrel, as she steamed in, was met by an excited, huzzaing, welcoming . multi- tude, which greeted the blockade-runner as enthusiastically as if she were fresh from the scene of some great naval victory. On they came, running along the quays as- the boat drew on, and gathering about the landing-place as soon as she was made fast alongside — soldiers, townspeople, women, children, and niggers, waving caps and handkerchiefs, clanking spurs and sabres, shouting, laughing,, elbowing, surging to and fro, and wild with that sort of excitement which, in revolutionary times, pervades the air like an inflammable gas, and is ready to flame out upon the smallest provocation. The gangway once adjusted, it became no easy matter to keep the crowd at arm’s length. Having issued orders, however, that no one j should be allowed to come on board except ; the municipal authorities, or persons having business with the supercargo, the captain sta- tioned two men at the top of the gangway and one at the foot, and so kept off all in- truders. Mr. Heneage, or, as he should more pro- perly be called, Senator Shirley, had in the meanwhile seized the first opportunity of landing ; and, being instantly recognised, was seen by those on board struggling to shake a hundred hands at once, now carried this way, now that, and finally swept away by a compact body of fellow townsmen, all bois- terously cheering. And now, captain and pilot, mates, engi- neers, and half the crew, having done so much of their work, were free to go ashore and make merry ; but the supercargo’s work was only just beginning. An anxious day was it for Temple De Benham. In none of those business transactions upon which he had been employed by Mr. Hardwicke had he as yet been called upon either to buy or sell; and now, for the first time in his life, he found himself responsible for the sale of property to the value of j many thousands. He fully appreciated the | weight of this responsibility. He knew that j for the due fulfilment of his task, he should need all his coolness of head and all the presence of mind he could command. He knew that he must be prompt, but not pre- cipitate ; bold, and yet cautious. Above all, he knew that he must betray no sign of the commercial novice. To assume experience though he had it not, was almost the first necessity of his position. Having thought it out, and resolved Good Words, July i, 1869.] I with himself beforehand that his best plan would be to remain on board for the trans- action of all business relating to the present cargo, he had cleared his little cabin and turned it into a temporary office. A table and a couple of chairs, a ledger and order- book, a despatch-box, a pile of blank in- voices, a large inkstand, blotting pad, and so forth, gave the tiny place quite a business- like air. Then the young man tried to transform himself in like manner, that he might look as business-like as his cabin. It was well that he had made all ready before- hand, for his customers were pressing to come on board long enough before the cap- tain was willing to admit them. The Stormy Petrel left Morris Island while the day was yet young, and so reached her moorings by eleven a.m. Before two p.m. De Benham, had he so pleased, could have sold every item of his cargo ; but he hung back, testing his market and holding out for the highest prices. By five p.m. he had sold every item — at a profit of from nine to twelve hundred per cent. ! Several thousand pairs of men’s flannel shirts, for instance, bought wholesale at a great Manchester warehouse for something like fifty-four shillings the dozen, were taken by a single purchaser at the rate of ten dollars each shirt. A like number of clump- soled boots for men, costing five shillings the pair, were sold en masse at two pounds eighteen shillings. Ten cases of revolvers by Boissy of Liege, for which Mr. Hardwicke paid about six hundred francs (or twenty-four pounds English) per dozen, were sold by De Benham at the rate of twenty pounds for each weapon. The rest of the cargo, con- sisting of hats, hosiery, cotton goods and the like, went at prices bearing the same propor- tion to their original cost; and as for the blankets and Enfield rifles, they realised the heaviest profit of all, being at once bought up on account of the Confederate Govern- ment by the Superintendent of the Military Store Department. When the last “ trade ” was done and the last buyer had left the ship, De Benham shut himself up in his cabin and set to work to draw out a rough balance-sheet of the day’s transactions. Allowing a broad margin for expenses, this balance-sheet, at the end of two hours’ hard calculation, proved a clear profit of about eighty-seven thousand pounds English. The supercargo did not wait to consider what his own per centage on this sum would come to. The result once mastered, he locked up his ledgers and papers, seized his portmanteau, landed, called the first hack that came in his way, drove to the great hotel in Meeting Street known as the Mills’ House, and went straight to bed with the worst headache he had ever had in his life. Being waked, however, somewhere about midnight by a braying of trumpets and trom- bones, a trampling of many feet in the street below, and a tumultuous chorus shouting the refrai?i to “ Dixie’s Land,” he sat up in bed rubbing his eyes, wondering where he was, and for the moment forgetting what had happened since he was a poor art-student at Zollenstrasse am- Main. Then it suddenly flashed upon him that he was poor no longer — that he was on the high road to wealth — that he was entitled to fifteen per cent, on the profits already realised. And then, bad as his headache was, he could not help cal- culating his gains. They amounted to no less a sum than thirteen thousand and fifty pounds. He could not believe it. He went over it again and again in his head, and still with the same result. At last he was convinced. Fifteen per cent, came to one hundred and fifty pounds in every thousand ; and eighty-seven times one hundred and fifty amounted, be- yond all question, to thirteen thousand and fifty. After that, his chances of sleep went sud- denly down to zero, and he never closed his eyes again till it was broad daylight. CHAPTER XXXVII. NOT A BAD BARGAIN. The next day or two in Charleston was given up to unlading the Stormy Petrel \ delivering the goods to their several purchasers, and receiving payment for the same. De Benham was careful, by the way, to stipulate for the latter in the shape of bills upon English houses. He could not bring himself, some- how, to put much faith in bran new Con- federate bank-notes, which, like the fairy gold in the Irish legend, might, he thought, in a single night turn suddenly to a mere heap of withered leaves. Then came the main business of all — the buying of the cotton. The supply then actually in the town was, they told him, scanty ; for, in consequence of the stagnation of the trade, it was yet lying at the plantations up the country. But there was plenty of it for De Benham’s purpose in the long, low lines of open sheds along the quays — plenty and to spare for the freightage of a whole fleet of Stormy Petrels. Some of these sheds were still stacked with cotton bales, each bale in its “bagging” of Indian 456 DEBENHAM’S VOW. mood words, juiy 1, 1869. canvas. On the wharves were piles of cotton bales, ready for removal. But the removals were now few and far between, and the trade was already at a dead lock for want of buyers and a market. There was something singu- larly melancholy in the sight of all this precious produce upon which so much human labour had already been expended, and for want of which so many millions of workers must be thrown out of employment. De Benham could not help saying so once or twice; but those to whom he spoke — hot- blooded Charleston merchants turned soldiers, with jingling brass spurs, and clanking sabres, and the palmetto tree embroidered on their caps — only smiled, boasting of how soon they meant to “ whip ” the Yankees, drive off the blockaders, and astonish all creation. “ Besides, sir,” said one, a tall, lanky man in uniform, with a pen behind his ear, “ it’s all very well for you Britishers to preach about non-intervention, but you can’t stick to that long, sir. You have between four and five millions depending on us for their daily bread ; and you’ll pretty soon find out that it must be cotton or a revolution. Sir, I reckon you won’t risk a revolution. We shall have your ships of war in Charleston harbour before Christmas day comes round, and then I rather think the Yankees will find them- selves nowhere ! ” Said another : — “ No, sir — your Govern- ment will have acknowledged us, and every bale of that cotton will be in Liverpool, before the fall. You will have come over to us as allies, sir, by that time — if we haven’t already polished off the Yankees without your help ! ” To such replies De Benham could oppose only a grave protest or a civil silence. But all protestation was in vain. That the policy of Great Britain was a fixed policy, not to be reversed by any pressure of discontent or distress at home, was what they could not and would not believe. As for their gay, reckless, hectoring self-confidence, it only struck him, stranger as he was, as the very saddest phase of all this fatal struggle. He saw from the first that it was a doomed cause, and that all these hot hopes and valorous impulses must end in defeat and death, and humiliation more bitter than either. It was not to the warehouse of the mer- chant, however, but to the office of the broker that De Benham went for his home- ward cargo ; for cotton is bought and sold like stock “down south” as it is at Liverpool, and in its mere transfer supports an inter- mediary class. Dingy; remote ; odorous of the almighty dollar ; odorous also of tobacco ; lurking ‘ in gloomy ground-floors or dingy first-floor j flats in Eastbay Street, were then, as now, to ; be found the counting-houses of the Charles- ton cotton brokers. How silent they seemed, these haunts seething with business but a little while ago ! how deserted those stair- cases and passages, but lately echoing to the daily tramp of hundreds of eager footsteps ! Mr. Hardwicke had recommended his super- cargo to employ an eminent cotton-broking j firm with which his house had long had deal- 1 ings — the firm of Harper, Prideaux, and | Barbuckle — and to the offices of Messrs., j Harper, Prideaux, and Barbuckle, De Ben- ham repaired accordingly. These he found r after some little difficulty, on the first floor of an immense gloomy building, which j harboured dozens of firms on every flat. A strange sort of office, too, when found, and curiously unlike those tiny dens sacred to the stockbroking world of Threadneedle Street and Austin Friars — an office consisting of one large barren room, like a second-class waiting-room at a railway station, with a little space railed off at one end for the clerks, and another little space railed off at the other end for the principals ; carpetless, of course, and painfully suggestive of the utility of spittoons ; with hard, uncomfortable chairs standing about ; and a huge black stove in j i the middle of the floor ; and grimy windows ; j and framed advertisements of Emigration j Agencies, Fast-sailing Lines of Packet-boats, I Celebrated A 1 Clipper Ships, patent Steam- j ploughs, Steam-thrashing Machines, and other agricultural implements, hanging on the walls. There was but one clerk in this cheerful apartment — a sallow, sandy, youth of about eighteen — whom De Benham surprised in the act of practising the broad-sword exercise by himself with great energy. He desisted in some confusion at sight of a stranger, and apologized for his occupation by saying that he had lately joined that famous corps known - as the “ South Carolinian Invincibles.” De Benham then explained that his own j business with the firm of Plarper, Prideaux, and Barbuckle was not military, but commer- cial ; whereupon the “ Invincible” hung his weapon on a peg behind the door, snatched up his cap, and “ reckoning he should find the major on parade,” vanished precipitately, j The major came in due time — a puffy, j watery-eyed, stolid-visaged man buckled in much too tight at the waist, and considerably embarrassed by his sword. He proved to be the Prideaux of the firm; and commenced proceedings by unbuttoning and unbuckling DEBENHAM’S VOW. Good AVords, July i, 1869.! 457 as much as possible, and vociferating furiously for “ Boker’s Bitters” — a marvellous com- pound much beloved by Charlestonians, which was promptly brought by a white- headed old negro whom De Benham had seen sitting on a stool in the entrance hall. De Benham tried to excuse himself from partaking of this beverage at so early an hour in the day — the American clock on the chimney-piece was then pointing to twenty minutes past nine a.m. — but the major would not hear of it. “ Sir,” said that commercial warrior, “ there are two things which can-not be cultivated in this climate without the aid of cool drinks ; and those two things are Trade and War. If you and I are to do a trade together, sir, we must sure-ly drink together — and cotton, let me tell you, is a powerful absorbent.” “ There seems to be no business doing of any kind,” said De Benham. “ No, sir. How should there be business doing, with our ports shut up, and our young men all gone over to the ranks of the army, and these cursed Yankees still upon our hands ? But, sir, we don’t take Page 451. much account of business at a time like this. We are a commercial people, it is true ; but we are also a military and a pa-triotic people. We are burning just now, sir, with military ardour. Our souls are in arms, and our swords thirst for the blood of the in- vader. What quality of cotton, now, do you think of buying ?” And plunging thus abruptly from the heroic to the commonplace, the gallant major suddenly scrambled upon a very high, spindle-shanked office-stool, and produced from a drawer in his bureau a number of little wooden bowls containing specimens of ; raw cotton. Upon these, their quality of j fibre, length of staple, and so forth, he then proceeded to discourse with great earnest- j ness, recommending his “ Bowed Georgia ” [ for one excellence, his “ Middling Uplands ” i for another, and getting quite enthusiastic on | the subject of “Sea Island.” Burning with military ardour as he was, | however, and thirsting for the blood of the invader, the major proved to be an uncom- monly keen man of business, quoting the highest prices, and something over and above j the highest prices, in the market — if, indeed, | j it could be said that there was now any 45 S DEBENHAM’S VOW. fC-'-'d Words, July i, 1805. market at all. But De Benham had not been three days in Charleston without getting himself acquainted with all these particulars. He knew quite as well as Major Prideaux to how low an ebb the price of cotton had come, and of how much importance such an | order as he had to give must be, at this time, I to any house in that city. I “I may as well tell you once for all, j Major Prideaux,” he said at length, “ that I am here to buy the best article I can find in Charleston at the lowest price for which it can be bought — and I mean to buy on no other conditions.” “ And, sir, I offer to transact it for you at seven and a half cents — the lowest price quoted on Charleston ’change this sum- mer.” “ That was a month ago, major,” said De j Benham. “ Sir,” replied the major, with dignity, “ I am not telling you that prices have risen since then ; but I do tell you that not a cent lower has been quoted.” “ I imagine that is because no more busi- ness has been done,” said De Benham. “ Prices can hardly be said to have fallen 1 when there is no buying or selling going on : j but the staple becomes more and more of a drug for all that.” “ Sir,” said the major, “ the firm of Harper, Prideaux, and Barbuckle . . . . ” “ I beg your pardon, ’’interposed De Benham, rising as if to go ; “ but what I mean to give is five cents per pound for the best Middling Uplands, of which I will take two thousand bales. If you think you can do it for me at that rate, I shall be happy to leave the matter in your hands-— if not, I have the honour to wish you good-morning.” The major dipped his pen in the ink as promptly as if there had been no chaffering about the matter, and, filling in an oblong memorandum-paper, said : — “ Same as sample number four, I take it, sir ? ” j “ The same as sample number four,” re- plied De Benham. Then followed some last words as to deli- very and packing, and the affair was con- cluded. “Well, sir, I don’t think you’ll get your wisdom-teeth twisted out in a hurry,” said the major, with an admiring twinkle in his eye, as they shook hands at parting. “You have done this trade at the lowest figure that has been reached yet — but I reckon you wouldn’t get along quite so slick if there was ere another buyer in the market ! ” 9 CHAPTER XXXVIII. LORD STOCKBRIDGE. With the dinner party given at Strathellan House in honour of Lord Stockbridge, we have here no immediate concern. The Hard- wickes were already famous for their sump- tuous entertainments ; and of this entertain- ment it need only be said that it was as sumptuous as the most lavish display of gold and silver plate, hair-powder, and gorgeous liveries could make it. There was, beside, a fair sprinkling of minor titles, and the inevit- able Bishop — that clerical course, without which no state banquet of the period is complete. This dinner-party, however, was important in its results, in so far as it converted Lord Stockbridge into an assiduous habitue of the big house in the Regent’s Park. Now, Lord Stockbridge was all that Miss Hardwicke had described him to be — and more. He had lived by his wits from his youth upward; and for the last fifteen years had eked out that precarious capital by trading upon his probable succession to the estates and titles of a childless second cousin. He was in debt ; and his debts were not all of the most creditable kind. Homburg, Baden Baden, Spa, Wiesbaden, Ems, Monaco, knew him for their own. Upon the turf, wherever there was a turf, far and wide, at home and abroad, he had — a reputation. His contem- poraries (especially his continental contem- poraries) laid more vices to his charge than could, perhaps, be fairly proved against him ; yet there were one or two dark stories current in the hells of Paris and Vienna, one or two disagreeable whispers afloat at Chantilly and Newmarket, which Lord Stockbridge would have done well to silence, if, haply, it had been in his power to do so. That he did not silence them, was taken by his detractors as proof positive of their truth. Of these things, however, Miss Hardwicke knew nothing. She had heard no more than that he was extravagant, that he had spent most of his time abroad, and that his affairs were supposed to be embarrassed. The truth was that Lord Stockbridge's affairs were a very slough of embarrassment. He was steeped to the lips in mortgages, and from a rent-roll of seven thousand a year touched less than as many hundreds for his personal maintenance. The spendthrift’s common resource, how- ever, was open to him ; and he was minded to rehabilitate himself, if practicable, by means of a wealthy marriage. Thus it happened that Lord Stockbridge Good Words, July i, iSSg.j DEBENHAM/S VO IV. 459 was, as he elegantly expressed it when in j familiar converse with his club cronies, “ for J sale, a bargain/’ Thus, also, it happened | that the splendour of his reception at Strath- : ellan House was not without its effect. Being “for sale,” he conceived that here, if anywhere, he might fetch his price. Not to l be mistaken on this point, however, he took ! occasion one morning to direct his steps eastward, and dropping in for an hour or two at Doctors’ Commons, amused himself by turning over the wills of Hardwicke pere , and Hardwicke, Alderman and sometime Lord Mayor of London ; and very pretty reading he found them. When, besides the wealth conveyed to Miss Hardwicke under these two interesting documents, he also learned that she inherited a third fortune from her mother, this worthy nobleman invoked the aid of the gods, and resolved that the great prize should be his if skill and perseverance, a persuasive tongue, the remains of a fine person, and a coronet, might avail to win it. For he had been a particularly handsome man in his time, and was handsome still, though preserving only the wreck of his former beauty. His age at this time was exactly forty-nine ; and though he looked worn and dissipated, yet society was dis- posed, on the whole, to credit him with fewer 1 than his actual years. A slightly bloated look about the lips and jaw; a figure inclining to become heavy, but belted into bounds; an eye apt to be bloodshot, and a hand some- what given to tremulousness early in the day, were traits and tokens significant enough to such as knew how to read them. But then society never saw him till after two p.m. Now Lord Stockbridge yawning over his breakfast at mid-day in dressing-gown and slippers, alone, jaded, brooding, off his guard, with the remains of last night’s headache upon him, was a very different person from Lord Stockbridge dressed to perfection and mounted on a neat park hack at five or six, retailing piquant scandals between the courses at nine, or gliding from room to room with a camellia in his button-hole at eleven. The Hardwickes, of course, saw him only at his best. Always urbane, always amusing, he came and went ; called on the brother at his office in the City ; rode beside the sister’s carriage in the less crowded drives of the park ; fell in with Mr. Hardwicke’s pompous manner; accommodated himself to Miss Hard- wicke’s coldness ; and slid, somehow, into the position of a frequent and favoured guest. Such was the state of affairs at Strathellan House when Temple De Benham started on his first expedition to the Southern States. Lord Stockbridge had just begun to pay open homage to the great City heiress ; Miss Hard- wicke, haughty and impassible as ever, neither encouraged nor discouraged his attentions; and Mr. Hardwicke, charmed to have a lord constantly at his table, was still more charmed by the evident possibility of having that lord for a brother-in-law. “ Lord Stockbridge is a very pleasant per- son,” said Mr. Hardwicke to his sister, as they came strolling slowly homeward from the “ Zoo” one glowing Sunday afternoon — that very day, by the way, that the Stormy Petrel was doubling to and fro in those peri- lous waters that lie between the Bahamas and the coast of South Carolina. “ Lord Stock- bridge is a very pleasant person, and improves upon acquaintance.” “ Do you think so?” said Miss Hardwicke. “ I fancied he would have been at the Gardens this afternoon,” continued the mer- chant. “ Perhaps he was there,” said Miss Hard- wicke. “ No, I am sure he was not. I looked for him in every direction ; and when you were sitting down, I asked the man at the gate.” “ I should not have thought the fact was worth so much trouble to ascertain.” “ He admires you very much, Claudia,” said Mr. Hardwicke. Miss Hardwicke looked supreme indiffer- ence, and answered nothing. “It is, indeed, something more than mere admiration,” he went on. “ If I am not greatly mistaken — and I do not think I am often mistaken in my estimate of motive-^- Lord Stockbridge is actuated by a far deeper feeling.” “Very probably,” said Miss Hardwicke, with a scornful smile. “ I am rich.” “ In personal attractions, my dear Claudia ; and in mental acquirements — not only in money. I am prepared to admit that Lord Stockbridge is probably obliged to consider the question of money — would be unable, perhaps, to marry without money ; but it does not follow, because your fortune might pos- sibly weigh with him, inter alia , that his sentiments . . . .” “The topic is not worth discussion,” in- terrupted Miss Hardwicke. “ You would not reject a man of birth and position, simply because you were rich and he was poor?” “ I cannot tell.” “But . . . .” “ But Lord Stockbridge has given me no 460 DEBENHAM’S VOW. [Good Words, July 1, 1869. opportunity of either accepting or rejecting him, and is likely to give me none. I should be sorry to have the alternative forced upon me.” “You surprise me, Claudia. A man like Lord Stockbridge — elegant, accomplished “ Am I to understand that he has retained you for his special pleader?” asked Miss Hardwicke. “ He has never opened his lips to me upon the subject.” “ Then oblige me by following his example. This sort of conversation is distasteful to me.” They had now come to a wicket leading into their own grounds. This gate Mr. Hardwicke unlocked, and held open for his sister to pass through. “ It is not wonderful that I should wish to see you a peeress, Claudia,” he said, pre- sently ; “ even though I should have to part from you.” Miss Hardwicke smiled at him, almost tenderly. “ You are the best brother in the world, Josiah,” she said; “but that pleasure might be bought at too high a price.” Coming round to the front by a path through the shrubbery, they found one of their own grooms leading a well-known bright chestnut up and down the drive. “ He is here,” said Mr. Hardwicke. And as they entered the hall, one of the twin giants stepped forward to say that Lord Stockbridge was in the drawing-room. They found him looking out of the window, and whistling softly to himself. His quick ear, however, caught the faint rustle of the lady’s dress. “The servants told me you were at the Gardens,” he said, as they shook hands : “ but I feared to miss you by the way. Was the ‘ Zoo’ very gay this afternoon ? ” “ Crowded,” replied Mr. Hardwicke. “ We looked for you.” “ I had intended to be there ; but dropping in at Lady Chetwynd’s eti passant , I lost so much time that I thought it best to come here direct. Miss Hardwicke, I bring you a card for Lady Chetwynd’s fancy dress ball. I hope you care for the sort of thing, for I have broken all the ten commandments, and well-nigh committed suicide, to get it for you.” Miss Hardwicke, superbly dressed in some kind of delicate silk covered with costly lace, and lying back in a low long chair, with her back to the light, looked up and smiled languidly. “ Many thanks,” she said ; “ but I do not know Lady Chetwynd.” “ That is nothing. There will be at least a hundred others in the same position. Givers of crowded parties in these times don’t ex- pect to know half their guests ; and in such a case as this, people beg cards for themselves and friends in every direction.” “ Such persons must be lost to all sense of self-respect,” said Miss Hardwicke. “ I mean, of course, those who beg for themselves.” Lord Stockbridge shrugged his shoulders. “ Everybody does it,” he replied. “ I know a certain lady — a peeress in her own right — who would go on her knees to Lady Chet- wynd’s groom of the chambers for that card in your hand.” “ What a fortunate person I am, then, and j how grateful I ought to be ! ” said Miss | Hardwicke, somewhat disdainfully. “ Yes, if you were a mere woman of I fashion, with no other object in life than to jjj be seen everywhere, and be paraded daily in j| the columns of the Morning Post.” “It will be a very brilliant party, I sup- I pose?” “ The event of the season. Lady Chet- j j wynd does these things very well, and means j f | this time to surpass herself. Besides, the j Prince is going.” Miss Hardwicke looked down, and put j control upon her features ; but she could not | ! keep back a faint flush of rising colour. She | had sat once or twice at a great civic ban- j quet graced by the presence of a royal duke ; but it had never yet befallen her to meet royalty thus, in the ordinary way of 1 1 society. Too proud to give expression to : [ her pleasure ; too proud even to let it be M seen that she was pleased, Miss Hardwicke could not keep down that flush of gratified 1 , ambition. Lord Stockbridge, on the watch j for some such token, saw it, and scored a point, mentally, in his own favour. “ I could not go alone,” said Miss Hard- 1 wicke. “ A chaperone is easily found. There is 1 my aunt, for instance — Mrs. Cadogan. She j would be charmed.” “ What dress will you wear, Claudia ? ” j asked Mr. Hardwicke. “ The very question I would have asked,, j ! if I dared,” said Lord Stockbridge. “ I ought to wear sackcloth and ashes, if j such a catalogue of sins has been committed for my sake,” replied Miss Hardwicke. “ But is a fancy costume indispensable ? ” “ Not absolutely, of course ; but it pleases one’s hosts. When people give a character DEBENHAM’S VOW. Good "Words, July i, 1869.] 461 } j I ! ,1 I ball, they like all the court cards they can get.” “ What do you say to Cleopatra ? ” asked Mr. Hardwicke. “ Highly effective, if the asp were real ; but therefore inconvenient.” “ Medea ? ” suggested Lord Stockbridge. “ Medea and Ristori are one in the eyes of the world ; and I could not undertake to look like Ristori.” “ Queen Guinevere — Medora — Dido ? ” Miss Hardwicke shook her head. “ I should not think of assuming a charac- ter,” she said. “The utmost I could do, would be to adopt and accurately carry out some old Italian dress, after one of the Venetian pictures.” “The lady in crimson by Bordone, for instance, in the National Gallery,” said Mr. Hardwicke. “ No; I am thinking of a portrait at Genoa — a lady dressed in white and gold brocade, with pearls in her hair, and a fan of peacocks’ feathers in her hand.” “ It sounds charming,” said Lord Stock- bridge ; “ but can you trust your memory for the details ?” “ No ; I must have a sketch made of it, or a coloured photograph. There will be time enough ; the ball, I see, is six weeks hence.” “ Shall I go to Genoa, and get it done for you ? ” Miss Hardwicke smiled incredulously. “What would you do, if I were to say Yes?” j “Start to-night by the mail-train.” ji “What a paladin ! No, my lord, I will ; not put your chivalry to so severe a test. I I know of a certain copyist at Turin, who will | go to Genoa gladly at my bidding ; and I ! -shall have the drawing in a fortnight.” Some question then arose as to the author- 1 ship of the original picture, Mr. Hardwicke I maintaining that it was a Tintoretto, and n Miss Hardwicke being of opinion that it was a Paul Veronese. At last she referred the matter to her note-book, and went to fetch it ; Lord Stockbridge holding the door as she passed out. He stood for a moment, and watched her | out of sight ; then drew a deep breath ; came j back into the room; and, laying his hand familiarly on Mr. Hardwicke’s arm, said : — “ By Jove, Hardwicke, I cannot tell you how much I admire your sister. I never admired a woman so much in my life — never, upon my soul ! ” “ That is saying much, my lord,” said Mr. ; Hardwicke, bowing. “ Not more than I mean — not half as much as I mean, my dear fellow.” “ But, having no doubt seen most of the court beauties of Europe . . . .” “ I never saw one fit to hold up Miss Hardwicke’s train,” interrupted Lord Stock- bridge, emphatically. “ Besides, it’s not only her beauty, egad ! it’s her style — her style ; her personal dignity ; what our fathers used to call ‘ the grand air,’ you know.” “ Many persons think my sister’s manner too haughty,” said Mr. Hardwicke. “ Ah, that’s just what I like — that noli me tangere manner. She’s a woman who might be born to the purple, by George ! But I’ve no business to say all this to you, Hardwicke.” “It is very gratifying to my feelings, my lord,” replied the merchant, with another bow. “ It’s confounded bad taste, anyhow — but a man can’t help speaking, sometimes, when he’s in earnest.” At this moment Miss Hardwicke came back. “ Well, is it Tintoretto or Veronese?” asked her brother. “ Neither,” she replied. “ It is a Palma Vecchio.” And then they talked about painters, and paintings, and foreign galleries, till Lord Stockbridge started up, protesting that he had no idea it was so late. “ Will you dine with us, my lord ?” said the merchant. “ Thanks — I wish I could ; but I am pledged to some fellows this evening at the club. Miss Hardwicke, pray remember that I’m the most devoted of your slaves, — and that I am quite ready to go to Genoa, or Timbuctoo, if you please, at an hour’s notice. My dear Hardwicke, pray don’t take the trouble to come down with me !” But Mr. Hardwicke, of course, disregarded this entreaty, and accompanied his guest to the hall. Then, returning to the drawing-room, he closed the door behind him, and, with some appearance of mystery, said : — “ Claudia, believe me, I was not mistaken in what I said to you just now.” “ But I am sure you are mistaken,” Miss Hardwicke replied. “ I have not only entered it in my note-book as Palma Vecchio, but I have underlined the passage in Murray. See, here it is — “Number two hmidred and twelve , portrait of a lady — Palma Vecchio.'” “ Pshaw ! I am not speaking of the picture,” said Mr. Hardwicke ; “ but of Lord Stockbridge.” “ Of Lord Stockbridge ? Surely we have 462 DEBENHAM’S VOW. [Good Words, July 1 , i35c>. had enough of Lord Stockbridge for to- day V “ That coronet is at your feet, Claudia, if you will but stoop to pick it up.” Miss ITardwicke, deep in the pages of her note-book, made no reply. “His admiration for you is boundless,” continued the merchant. “ He told me that he had never admired any lady so much in his life.” Miss Hardwicke looked at her watch. “The dressing-bell ought to have been rung before now,” she said, rising. “ I am so glad we dine alone to-day. Are not you ? ” “ I should have been very happy if his lordship could have stayed to dine with us,” replied the merchant. Miss Hardwicke frowned. “ Pray oblige me, Josiah,” she said, “by not calling the man ‘ his lordship.’ You are not a footman, remember. And do me the favour not to mention Lord Stockbridge’s name again to-night.” Saying which, she swept from the room, leaving Mr. Hardwicke snubbed and dis- comfited. CHAPTER XXXIX. SENATOR SHIRLEY SPEEDS THE PARTING GUEST. De Benham had reason to be satisfied with his bargain. He had bought two thou- sand bales of the best “ Middling Upland ” at the rate of five cents American, or two- pence-halfpenny English, per pound. Now, the ordinary American bale contains about four hundred and eighty pounds of cotton; so that his two thousand bales represented some nine hundred and sixty thousand pounds of the raw material, costing in round numbers twenty-four thousand American dol- lars, or nearly five thousand pounds in Eng- lish money. This cotton, he knew, was already worth in Liverpool one-and-sixpence per pound,* and would rise in value daily. It would realise, if sold at once, a gross profit of sixty-seven thousand pounds ; but then, he told himself, the temptation to sell must be resisted. Mr. Hardwicke would be sure to incline towards an immediate sale, and Timothy Knott would be equally sure to urge him upon that course ; but De Benham thought he could rely upon his own influence so far as to induce Mr. Hardwicke * The author has been unable to ascertain at what rate “Middling Uplands ” was selling in this country during the first summer of the American Civil War. The actual market price of “ Middling Orleans ” (which is the staple most in demand for manufacturing purposes) was not , however, at this time quite so high as is. 6 d. per lb. ; though it soon after reached that standard. In October, 1862, it rose to 2s. 3d. per lb. in Liverpool ; and in 1864, though not generally quoted above 2 s. 7§^., did occasionally fetch as much as 2 s. 8 d. to adopt, for once, a bolder policy. His brief experience had already shown him that the war must, and would, go on for a j long time ; probably for years. He knew j the power and resources of the North; he had the reckless enthusiasm of the ! South before his eyes. He saw that every spark of brotherly love was extinct between the belligerent factions, and that they already 1 hated each other with a sound brotherly hatred. That the war should now come to any sudden ending was impossible. The time for reconciliation, or even for compro- ■_ mise, was too evidently gone by. They must fight it out. They were bent on fighting it out. And when a war is carried on, not by two opposing armies, but by two nations in arms, the campaigns are likely to be many, and the struggle is certain to be long. And therefore De Benham resolved to exert his utmost influence in persuading Mr. Hard- j wicke to hold back the cotton. The war j would go on ; and so long as the war went ! on, the supply of cotton would be cut off. A time must come, he argued, when there 1 would be absolutely no American cotton . in the market; and if prices were so high now, when the stock in hand was not yet j nearly exhausted, what would they be then ? ■ In the course of that memorable conversation ] during which he had proposed this present ! enterprise for Mr. Hardwicke’s consideration, he had predicted that cotton would go up : eventually to two-and-sixpence per pound ; '1 but he believed now that it might go higher j still — perhaps to twice two-and-sixpence. Who could tell ? But this was mere wild speculation, not to be acted upon— not even to be spoken in words. Let the cotton once touch two-and- , sixpence, or even two-and-threepence per pound, and he would not himself desire to see it held back for a single hour. And then he calculated that, sold at the rate of two-and- threepence per pound, these two thousand bales would fetch ;£io8,ooo ; of which sum, ; when the five thousand was deducted for cost here in Charleston, ^103,000 would remain for expenses and profits. And besides all this, he meant to run the blockade again, and again, and perhaps again — supposing always that he had luck, and that Mr. Hardwicke was willing to go on. Why should not the two thousand bales be- come four, or six, or ten thousand? Why should not the profits be multiplied over and over again ? Already, upon the single cargo that he had brought in, they amounted to ^87,000. Take, say, ^80,000 as the pro- l ' ■ 1 '■ 11 - _ 1 E" — V. __ ' % Good Words, July 1, 1869.] DEBEMHAM’S VOW. 463 bable average profit upon each cargo, import and export alike, why should he not make five round trips and bring that profit up to a total of ^800,000 ? These were bold dreams ; but there was a dream still bolder lurking all this time in a dark corner of his busy brain— a dream which he had not as yet permitted himself to define or dwell upon ; but which, if he had chosen to put it into words, would probably have re- solved itself into some such proposition as this : — Elis own claim on Mr. Hardwicke amounted already to something over ;£i 3,000, and it was reasonable to conclude that when he next ran into Charleston with a similar cargo, it would be with a similar result. Granted, therefore, that both the cotton cargoes remained for the present unsold, he would still be entitled, at the end of the second journey, to some ^26,000. And then why should he not, with that £ 26,000 , buy a little steamer of his own, hire his own captain and crew, lay in his own cargo, and go on running, the blockade for his own exclusive benefit ? Supposing that he ran it five times on Mr. Hardwicke’s account, with Mr, Hard- wicke’s money, bringing up the profits to ^800,000, his own share at fifteen per cent, would come only to ^120,000; whereas with his own boat and his own cargoes he might make three or four hundred thousand for himself alone ! But then there was always the chance of capture ; and capture meant confiscation for cargo and steamer, and some weeks of a New York prison for all on board. It was an evil chance that might befall the Stormy Petrel this very first trip, on her way back to Nassau, and then Ah, then, indeed, it would be all over with him, and he would have to begin again at the first rung of the ladder ! Whenever his thoughts reverted to this side of the picture, De Benham would smile a bitter smile, and tell himself that he was like the barber’s fifth brother in the dear old story of the Arabian Nights — building a palace and marrying a beautiful princess upon the possible profits of a trayful of glass, which is presently kicked down and shivered to atoms ! In the meanwhile, it was important for two reasons that the new cargo should be shipped as speedily as possible — the first reason being that it was now high tide after dark for going over the bar; and the second, that more blockading vessels were rumoured to be upon the eve of leaving New York. So De Benham hastened all his preparations, urged on the immediate delivery of the cotton ; hired a gang of expert stevadores to pack it, and so got ready for sea in less time than would have been possible in any country where people were not accustomed to live and work at per- petual high pressure. It was marvellous to see the skill and speed with which these stevadores disposed | of the great cotton bales, each bale already reduced by hydraulic pressure to a com- | pact mass, apparently as solid as marble. First, of course, they stowed the hold ; stow- ing the bales the way of the ship’s length laying each bale as regularly and exactly as if it were a block of granite in the hands of the builders ; and so covering the whole floor one tier deep, all except an opening under each hatchway. Into this opening they pre- sently inserted wooden “ toms ” or blocks, ta which they applied the patent worm-screw — an agent of tremendous force, by means of which the cotton-bales were driven back into- about two-thirds of the space they at first * occupied. The room thus gained was then j filled in, and the same process repeated till j the whole was packed so close and firm that even a mouse must have been crushed be- tween them, had any sea-going mouse been luckless enough to find its way there. Then, upon the floor thus laid, they built a fresh tier, filling up the hatches last of all, and ap- plying the screw as before, till the hold was quite full and the hatches were battened down. After this, every spare inch between decks was temporarily crowded with cotton and lastly the spar deck itself was packed, a tier of bales being laid fore and aft, leaving only a narrow lane or two leading to the cabins, the engine-room, and the men’s forecastle ; and on the top of this tier, another somewhat narrower ; and then, still tapering pyramidally as the structure rose, another. When all this was done, and the bales on deck had been firmly lashed to their places, the Stormy Petrel looked like a ship roofed in for an I arctic winter. De Benham spent all his days on board while the work of stowage was going for- ward, but slept at the Mills’ House, and was so overwhelmed with invitations that he might have dined three or four times over every day, between the hours of five and nine p.m. A hospitable, hot-headed people, these Charleston citizens, welcoming the j strangers with open arms, and passionately desirous of being favourably reported of “ on the other side. 5 ’ “Tell your countrymen, sir,” said a beau- tiful girl, Diana Ashby by name, one of three 4 charming sisters, the daughters of a certain Colonel Ashby at whose house De Benham ! was dining one evening ; “ tell your country- men that you saw the Stars and Bars waving j over Fort Sumter ; and whether they help us, or whether they abandon us, there is not a ! man in the Southern States, nor a woman either, who for the honour of that flag is not ready to die twice over.” “ I have five sons in the army,” said ! another lady, on another occasion. “ They are all with the Army of the Shenandoah, under General Johnston ; and I have a sixth son, who is only sixteen. But, should the war last another year, and should his brothers have all fallen in the course of it, he will then, please heaven, be old enough to join, and avenge them ! ” Such, universally, was the enthusiasm of the women ; such, in rougher fashion, was the reckless valour of the men. In the home, in the streets, in the camps, it was everywhere the same — at night, bands of young men traversing the city, shouting to the tune of “ Dixie’s Land,” or the “ Mar- | seillaise;” by day, waving of flags, and march- ing of volunteers, and eager crowds gathered round street orators, of whom there were scores ready to jump upon an empty sugar cask, and declaim by the hour together on the smallest provocation. To sober English- men full of their own risks and profits, and i bent on utterly practical ends, as were the i captain and supercargo of the Stormy Petrel , it seemed as if they were suddenly landed in the midst of a people one half of whom were mad and all intoxicated. At length, all being ready, the time came for starting. The Stormy Petrel having taken in her coal, had gone down to a point a little below Fort Pinckney, to be searched and smoked — a process to which every vessel leaving a Confederate port was at this time subjected by the military authorities. De Benham, not caring to be smoked with his cargo, had been dining with Mr. Shirley, who lived at a place called Hampstead, a little way out of Charleston, in an exquisite little green-shuttered, verandahed, luxurious, bache- lor’s cottage — a bijou of a place, buried in trees ; stocked with the choicest books, pic- tures, and bric-a-bracarie that a refined taste ! could bring together; and surrounded by well- kept grounds, washed on one side by the j waters of the Cooper river, fragrant with I magnolia blossoms, and the haunt of hum- ming birds by day and mocking birds by I night. It had been a pleasant party, consisting of j some ten gentlemen, most of whom were planters and merchants, one the editor of a Charleston newspaper, and all volunteers. They had been lounging in the verandah after dinner, smoking and taking coffee, and talking, as usual, war, politics, and cotton ; and now the far-away chimes of St. Michael’s Church were heard, and the city clocks struck eight, and De Benham, who had ordered the gig to be round at the steps at the bottom of Mr. Shirley’s grounds at that hour, rose to take his leave. His host went down with him to the water-side, where they found the boat in readiness, and the men resting on their oars. “ I shall not soon forget this scene,” said De Benham, looking back at the house, with its background of dark trees and its fore- ground of undulating sward studded with beds of scarlet, white, orange, and violet flowers, about which the fireflies were already flitting in myriads. “ But for you, Mr. Debenham, I think I should never have set foot in the little place again,” said the planter. “ I am a sickly man, and I was dying by inches when you met me in London. Another month or six weeks in Europe would have killed me.” And as he said this, he tried to press a small pocket-book into the young man’s hand. “ What is this ? ” said De Benham, draw- ing back. “It contains five thousand dollars — my passage-money from London.” De Benham shook his head. “ I have no right,” he said, “ as far as my owner is concerned, to refuse your passage- money altogether, but I cannot, even on his account, accept such a sum as five thousand dollars. The information you gave me in London was so valuable that, if the ship was my own, I would accept nothing, and yet | think myself well paid. As it is, you shall pay whatever is a fair price for a very com- fortless passage, and not a cent more.” Mr. Shirley urged and persuaded ; but in vain. “You will accept at least a thousand dol- lars for your owner, and a thousand for your- self,” he said, after offering eight, and six, and five thousand successively. “ I will take two hundred and fifty dollars on account of Mr. Hardwicke,” replied De Benham; “and that is far too much. For myself, Mr. Shirley, I can only thank you for your hospitality, and wish you farewell.” The planter coloured painfully. “ If you do not accept some little token of DEBENHAM’S VOW. Good Words, July i, 1869.] my friendship, sir/’ he said, taking a ring from | his own finger, “ I shall fear I have offended j you. You won’t refuse to wear this for my ! sake?” I De Benham took the ring without looking | at it, and thrust it into his waistcoat pocket, i “Not when it is offered in friendship, Mr. j Shirley,” he said, smiling ; “ and now it must I be good-bye ; for the clocks have just gone ; another quarter, and we must be over the bar I I before midnight.” I “ Good-bye, then, and good luck go with | you !” I So they shook hands heartily, and parted. In another moment De Benham had taken his seat ; the rowers had bent to their oars ; and the gig had shot out upon her way like ; a sea-bird on the wing. When he remembered this incident of the | ring — which was not till nearly a week after — i and took it for the first time out of his waist- coat pocket, he found that it was a magnifi- cent brilliant, large as a large pea, limpid as a dewdrop, and radiant as a little lump of live sunlight. By half-past nine, the Stormy Petrel was steaming out at a rapid pace in the direction of Morris Island. The moon, which was but a crescent when they ran into Charleston some ten days be- | fore, was now waning, and would go down 1 about eleven. The pilot had, therefore, so i timed it that they should slip out a little before I midnight with the ebbing tide, and make use j of the next four hours of darkness to get as far upon their way as their engines at full j speed could carry them. Every moment ' was, therefore, of importance. ; And now, with a clear sky over head, and the moon growing brighter as the night deepens, and myriads of stars, like diamond I tesserae, inlaying the vault of heaven, they I speed on towards the coast. Castle Pinckney is soon left far astern, and Fort Johnson is passed upon the right. Then comes the long white front of Fort Moultrie, gleaming ghostly ! in the moonlight — then Fort Sumter, dark | and isolated in the midst of the broad stream, ! like a monster ship at anchor. The tide is now running out with a smooth, swift current; the moon is going rapidly down ; and a tender, silvery sheen lies upon the water, seeming to permeate the very air, so that the night is scarcely night at all, but I rather a denser twilight. And now the moon j has sunk quite out of sight ; and now it is | midnight, and they are fast nearing the mouth 4^5 of the harbour. Now Morris Island and the sand-bag batteries, where they cast anchor coming in, are gained and left behind. And now the mouth of the harbour lies before them, widening out to the open sea; while yonder, cruising solemnly to and fro about half a mile beyond the bar, loom some six or eight dark hulls, each an armed sentinel. And now the same breathless suspense, the same silence, the same intense watchful- ness as before reigns on board the blockade- runner. Slowly and stealthily, the muffled thump of her propeller beating like an anxious heart, the Stori?iy Petrel crawls on towards the bar, making for the same point between the flag-ship and the blockader next in shore. The pilot’s whispered orders come hissing through the still night air. The captain stands by silent, with folded arms, his eyes riveted upon the Federal ships a-head. A faint creak is audible now and then from the engine-room. A single spark flutters now and then from the funnel. And now, the tide beginning to run low, the Stormy Petrel plunges into the surf, scraping and grinding as she strikes the bar — and now she is fairly out ; and the whispered order comes, “ Full speed a-head ;” and away she flies into the very teeth of the danger, trusting even less to the chance of escaping unseen than to her own speed and daring. Scarcely, however, has she dashed in be- tween the two outer ships and cleared the line of the cordon, than a rocket shoots up into the darkness from some point about half- way to the shore, is answered by another from one of the more distant vessels, and instantly followed by the prolonged roar of a heavy gun. “Give her way!” shouts the pilot, all caution being at an end ; and now there is a tumultuous rush to the engine-room — the utmost pressure is put on — the propeller revolves at the rate of seventy to the minute — and the Stormy Petrel plunges on headlong, making desperate way, tearing up the foam at her bows, and leaving a boiling furrow in her wake. Nor is her speed put on one moment too soon. Out from the midst of the blockading squadron shoots a small, black, dangerous- looking craft, pouring a torrent of red sparks from her chimney — out from among the sand islands lying off the coast to the right, whence the first rocket rose, rushes another — and now the chase begins in earnest ! “Gun boats, by God !” exclaims the cap- tain ; and the words are scarcely out of his lips before two more shots are fired, one of A BLIND INVENTOR. 466 [Good Words, July x, 1809, which passes clean over the ship’s bows and splashes heavily to leeward. “Shift some of this cotton aft,” says the pilot, with a stamp of his foot. And instantly, all of the crew who are not at work below fall upon the cotton-bales, De Benham and the captain lending each a hand, and bear about a score of them away to the only vacant space abaft the funnel. The screws being now more deeply immersed, this increase of weight is followed by an im- mediate increase of speed ; and, laden as she is, the Stormy Petrel with her two powerful engines answering gallantly to the strain, and her boilers all but priming over from the tre- mendous pressure, soon shows that she is more than a match for her pursuers. On they come ; but the blockade-runner distances them at every turn of her screws — they fire ; but their shots each time fall shortei and shorter of the mark. And now those- two black outlines seem to stand still. They diminish, they grow dim — they are swallowed up and lost in the darkness — and the Stormy Petrel , once more out of danger, is alone upon the open sea, and running straight for Nassau. A BLIND INVENTOR. Blindness, with all the privations it entails, and the happy necessities to which it gives rise, is a trial little understood but by those who have to endure it, or who have carefully watched its sudden incidence and the fruit it bears in actual life. A man does not become blind by merely shutting his eyes. The thoughts and associations that were his as he looked on the world about are still his when his eyes are closed. He still sees the glowing picture or the loving face, the printed page or the bright and sunny landscape, on which his eyes just now rested. He may, indeed, even close his eyes to enjoy over again, with keener vision, that which has just gratified his outer sight. But to the blind man mental pictures of this kind are in a great measure unknown, if not utterly beyond his reach. The cloud of physical darkness which hems him round in his daily path may be but a tithe of the darkness which besets him. His mental eyesight, his spiritual discernment, may be as dull as his bodily vision, and his calamity be doubled by the mere fact that he j | is unconscious of its intensity. He writes, I speaks, thinks of many things of which he has but an imperfect and scanty knowledge, ! he is apt to draw pictures the outline of which is inaccurate, and to form conceptions which, however real to himself, are after all vague and unreal when compared with the truth; and of this unreality he is uncon- scious, and therefore is slow to believe it. A blind man, in this unhappy condition, is often looked upon almost as an inferior being, help- less, and little worthy of cultivation in mind or body. His case is compared with the brightness and fresh intelligence of Huber or the cheerful activity of Gough, the* mathe- matician and naturalist ; and wonder is ex- pressed that men similarly afflicted should be so different in appearance, manner, know- ledge, and wit. Whereas the men differ simply as the wild crab-apple differs from the ribstone pippin ; one has grown neglected in the hedge, and the other has been well cared for in the garden. And in most cases the line which divides the blind man from his- fellow-men with eyes is not a whit more substantial. The blind man’s faculties and endowments are pretty much on a par with those of others in the class of life to which he belongs. He may be ignorant or vicious, shallow, conceited, self-willed, and ungrate- ful, just as his neighbour who has eyes; or he may be the very reverse. Blindness alone neither makes nor mars him. It is true that loss of sight may fall on him as a heavy blow, and shatter his whole being into a state of weakness and inferiority, temporary or per- manent; but this must mainly depend on the care or neglect with which he has been treated, the light or darkness suffered to grow up within as well as about him. In his - case, as in that of other men, the field of the heart gets choked with weeds or crowned with golden harvest, just according to the work and will of those who have most power over the soil. This in a great measure accounts for the wide gulf between Huber, the famous natu- ralist, and Blind Johnny, who exhibits a tame rat in the Tottenham Court Road; between . the blind fiddler who tortures the ears of j Leather Lane, and Stanley the organist, to whom Handel used to listen with delight as ! he played the people out of St. Andrew’s Church; between John Gough, the blind . tutor of senior wranglers, and the half-starved ; youth who offers to solve questions in the 1 rule of three on Waterloo Bridge : though it is far easier to see how the one has sunk, than to see how the other has risen, to be what he is. What we really want is to know Good Words, July i, 1869. j A BLIND INVENTOR. 467 how, when the dark cloud begins to settle ; down on a blind man, he manages to escape; to what shifts and devices he is put ; how he meets the difficulties in his path, and how he conquers them ; how the sense of touch is gradually educated to such a degree of exquisite and finished keenness as to take the place of sight. It is this keenness which, in’ average cases, enables the blind boy to read a chapter in St. John as fairly and cor- rectly as if he saw it; which, in cases of higher genius, enables one like Saunderson to detect genuine coin from false, or Gough to distinguish the different species of a rare plant by applying them to the tip of the tongue. We are led into this train of thought by the recent Life of a blind man,* who possesses some of the most marked characteristics of his class, and a few of the less common ones. He tells us little or nothing of that special information which we need; and, perhaps, less for the one reason that for some years he enjoyed the advantages of sight. He is clearly of an eager and impetuous turn of mind; thirsty in the pursuit of knowledge, which he gathers in a desultory fashion ; and apt to talk of many things with that easy fluency which sometimes marks shallow knowledge, . and verges on dogmatism ; and much that his biographer has to say is interesting. But we should like to have heard in the blind man’s own words the exact way in which blindness befel him ; the gradual settling down of the cloud on his path ; how the light waned ; how difficulties, wants, and fears were overcome, remedied, or scattered ; how long the impres- sion of seen things remained with him; how far his old knowledge, acquired in the light, served to help him in the darkness ; how he set to work at things new and strange ; and how matters apparently easy proved to be curiously hard. Of these things only a blind man could have fully told us ; and of these the biography says little or nothing. Yet Dr. Gale is a self-made man. He has won his way to his present position by his own perseverance, and, as the inventor of the “ non-explosive gunpowder,” holds a place among the foremost blind men of the century. On these grounds it is worth while to glance briefly at his life. He was born in the year 1833, at a little village near Plymouth, his father being the “ manager of an extensive coal-shed,” but not able to do very much for his son’s education. While a child he went to live at Tavistock, on the borders of Dart- moor, famous for the beauty of its hills, woods, * Memoir of Dr. James Gale, M.A., by J. Plummer, 1868. and valleys, of which he retained a glowing j recollection through many a future year of | darkness. He grew up with a natural and boyish love for all sports and games ; but he ! was neither coarse nor cruel. He loved birds’-nesting, but yet walked a mile or two through heavy rain to restore a young bird to its nest ; though he knew this would insure his getting a good thrashing from his father for loitering on the road. He had some of that gentleness which is allied to true courage. He twice saved the life of a drowning com- panion ; being once rewarded with the mag- j nificent sum of a penny, and in the other case j with a smart blow from a stick, with a stern | caution that “ if he had not been there, there I would have been no bathing.” He was as full of mischief and fun, however, j i as of courage ; and nothing pleased him j better than tying old women’s knockers to- j gether, or playing ghost or bogie to frighten a companion. But he began to pick up a few waifs and strays of knowledge, and when he went to purchase a penny bun was never content until the mistress of the shop “had ; turned over a new leaf” for him in some of j the little books on the counter. At the ! British School, though in a select class “for the higher branches,” he was counted a slow coach. But if slow, he was sure. His me- mory was keen ; and books within reach being few in number, he made the utmost use of all he could get ; and in after years — when print j was blotted out of his sight — he would amuse j his friends by repeating whole pages of the 1 old Tavistock spelling-book. This brought him great credit for wonderful memorial powers as a blind man, — as if the direct fruit of blindness, — whereas he simply culti- vated his memory in youth, and thus it bore j good fruit in manhood. While yet a youth, too, he began to show a taste for scientific matters ; dabbling with chemical experiments in true schoolboy fashion ; gases in pickle- bottles, and explosive mixtures that terrified his family out of their wits. A little later, j and he is all agog for romance of the fiercest j kind, which with food of a more ponderous J kind, in “ Dick’s Material Universe,” he de- I voured wholesale ; soon becoming famous as a story-teller on wet days and winter evenings. j Such was the state of things when the dark J cloud began to overshadow his bright sky, so gradually, however, that none suspected its j approach. He had met with a heavy fall j while swinging with his head downwards on the churchyard railings ; but no ill effect was anticipated until the boy began to tell of a shadowy vagueness that blurred the outline j [ I 468 A BLIND INVENTOR. [Good Words, July t, 1869. of the summer clouds, or of the glowing coals in which he loved to gaze for imaginary pic- tures. Objects appeared as if seen through a misty glass ; now and then with double out- line, one just below the other, thus : — When playing at leap-frog, he miscalculated | distances, often missed his aim, and so got j some heavy tumbles, which amused his com- panions and annoyed the sufferer. But still, unwilling to be beaten when at play, he would place a white handkerchief on the back of the boy over whom he had to leap ; and when indoors, would jokingly borrow a pair of spectacles to help his failing sight, and, if possible, to hide from his friends the calamity he began to dread. At school, he was slower than ever, but still too proud and high-spirited to confess the reason. He would even learn by rote the whole of his reading-lesson over-night, so that he might at school pretend to read with ease what seemed to him a mere confused mass of words. But disguise like this could not last. The family doctor was called in, and, to work a cure, something was dropped into his eyes, which merely served to hasten the calamity. Reading, however, was not given up ; and | Gale being mad or silly enough (like Huber) I to try reading by moonlight, all books were soon strictly forbidden. On the last page which I he ever looked at, the final word was Cour- tenay. That word was treasured up in his memory for many a year, until he vowed that if he ever married and had children, his first- born son should bear that name. And the vow was kept. Step by step the darkness stole on him, until, in his seventeenth year, he became hopelessly blind. Like Saunderson the ma- thematician, Gale was at first disposed to rebel against his sad trial : “ Why should I be blind ? ” And it was in vain that his kind]y doctor did all he could to cheer his patient. “ Who knows,” said the old man, “ but that I may be blind also ! My sight is fail- ing, as yours is.” “You have seen the world,” was the youth’s reply ; “ I have yet the world to see. You can feast your mind on what you have seen ; I have no such treasures to fall back on.” Such a spirit of fierce discontent was natural enough : but after a time, better thoughts prevailed. Repining and lamenta- tion were useless ; and, the loss once felt to be irreparable, he resolved to bear it with a good courage, in the spirit of Milton’s grand words — “ Yet, I argue not Against Heaven’s hand or will, nor bate a jot Of heart or hope.” He would “ conquer fate,” and prove that he was cast in the true mould. “ If God wills it, He knows best ; and will lead me by a path I know not.” To this brave and wise resolve Gale adhered. Blind he might be ; helpless he would not be. His natural vivacity and flow of spirits were here of good service ; and, with the help of a ready reader and scribe, he managed to carry on his studies much as before. Gradually learning to rely on himself, he grew more independent as his own powers from exercise came out into | sharper life. His hearing grew keener ; and j he soon learned to tell, as many a blind man j does, by a tap of his stick, whether a room was full or empty, and, after a few minutes’ talk with a stranger, to make a good shot as to his height, age, and station. Coming home one dark night in the carrier’s van, across the moor, he told the driver that the horses had missed their way. Jehu was incredulous, the other passengers were deri- i sive, but the blind man held to his assertion, j He offered, “ if they would wait for him, to i get down in the dark and find the right road.” To this they agreed; and in a few minutes the blind man had tested his posi- tion by a loud shout, the echo of which from a well-known neighbouring rock told him where he was. A cautious step or two showed where the smooth down joined the stony road, and, tracing this back to the sign-post, he soon proved that he was in the right. From this time Gale’s self-reliance never deserted him. He helped in the management of his father’s business ; he wooed, won, and married a wife, though he never saw the woman of his choice. He mingled freely in all the concerns of daily life, and seemed to know all that was going on. “ And why not ?” as he justly asks. “ The shutters may be up, but that is no reason why the side-door should be closed also. Through these side-doors of mine I communicate with the outer world. ; Thus obtained, my information is conveyed to the brain and stored up in the workshop of the mind, as busily as if the windows had never been darkened.” Armed with such a spring of hope as this, many a blind man has fought bravely against the cloud overhanging Good Words, July i, 1869.! A BLIND INVENTOR. 469 his path. Thus, Metcalfe, the blind guide, engineer, and road-maker, when nine years old found his way about the village ; at thir- teen, rode fox-hunting ; and could swim and dive for lost property. At twenty he rode a race on his own horse, and came off the winner. In 1745 he enlisted in Thornton’s troop, and took part in the battle of Culloden. Possessed of the same unwearied spirit, Hol- man, the blind lieutenant, retained all the pluck and trimness of the boldest sailor. He would “ spring into the chains ” with other middies, and throw the lead as truly as any of them ; and once in every voyage he went aloft, to “ keep his hand in.” He climbed were in store for him. As a boy he had been a great maker of fireworks ; and it was in the manufacture of these fiery delights that he sowed the seeds of a great discovery. He had made a squib of coarse-grained powder, and, wishing to lessen its rapid combustion, had mixed with the ingredients some fine dust from the workshop. The result was, that the squib absolutely refused to go off. His purse was empty ; the gunpowder spoilt. What was to be done ? The question was soon answered. As he had mixed sand and gunpowder, he might surely unmix them. Slow and difficult work, no doubt; but still it might be done. To Adam’s Peak, some 7,000 feet above the sea ; \ work he went with an old pair of bellows, a and, on the topmost ridge, says, “ I felt all its beauties rush into my heart of hearts.” No wonder, therefore, that a man like Gale was able to undertake the practical manage- ment of his father’s business, though it involved an extensive use of chemicals. He often made journeys with his father’s travellers, and thus “ saw,” as he says, most of the cities in j England, extending his travels more than j once to the shores of France. But trade was ; not his only pursuit. He laboured diligently in the cause of teetotalism ; served as an active Guardian of the Poor, fighting against the workhouse girls being hired out by publicans ; j and lending a good hand towards founding the Plymouth Blind School. Nor were his favourite scientific studies neglected. He worked hard on the subject of medical elec- tricity, and at last determined to give up his business at Plymouth and embrace that of a medical electrician. A man who professes to have a royal road to healing is sure not to lack patients ; and, for a time, Gale found plenty who wished to be freed from their pains. How many were really cured, we have no means of judging ; but these studies and facts connected with his great invention before long led him to London, where a blind medico-electrician is not likely to attract much notice among “ the healers of men.” But he was not the man to be idle ; and so work went on in other directions. In 1866 he becomes Fellow of the Chemical Society at Burlington House, as well as of the Royal Geographical, and even aspires to the degree of M.A. from the illustrious University of Rostock, in Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Candi- dates for the degree have to produce an essay on “ abstruse questions in natural philo- sophy ; ” and Gale’s first attempt was a failure. But, nothing daunted, he set to work again, passed even a more stringent ordeal, and was successful. But better things than Rostock weight, and a fire-shovel. Through a ring attached to the weight, which rested on the shovel full of powder and dust, he passed the nose of the bellows, and then began softly puffing. The dust, being lighter than the powder, rose up in little clouds ; but the pro- gress was wearisome and slow. This soon drove him to fasten a string to the handle of the bellows ; and by working this like a lathe, with a loop round his foot, the winnowing process was complete, and the work was soon done. Years passed away, and the dusty mixture was all but forgotten, when the Russian war broke out and set many men thinking of gunpowder who had never smelt it. Dr. Gale was not proof against the general epidemic ; and presently we find him making experiments to test how far earth- works could resist shot. One of these was a heap of impalpably fine dust, having inside it a heap of gunpowder to represent the maga- zine. While trying to send a shot through this barrier, the gunpowder and dust got mixed, and refused to explode. Then flashed on his mind the recollection of that old. stub- born Tavistock squib, and the idea, “ Can this be made useful in saving life ?” While sifting the explosive from the non- explosive parts of the compound, he began to speculate as to what material could be best mixed with the gunpowder, so as not to injure it. After some scores of experiments, he decided on powdered-glass as the best, as well as being most easily separated from the in- flammable material. This mixture, in certain exact proportions, is proof against all chance of explosion. Barrels full of it have been placed on open fires ; have been stirred up with red-hot pokers ; and the loose mixture has been thrown by shovels full into the fire, — but no explosion has ever followed. The invention has been subjected to the severest tests which science or military incredulity 1 I 470 THE YOUNGEST COLONEL IN THE SERVICE. can suggest, and has always succeeded. The impenetrable deafness of the Horse Guards has been partly overcome by the non-explo- sive gunpowder ; while royalty and secreta- ries of state, savafis and generals on both sides of the Channel, have witnessed a trial of its wondrous properties. Pure gunpowder placed in the midst of the mixture has been lighted, when the powder at once exploded, but left the mixture unchanged. The prin- ciple of the invention is like that of Davy’s safety lamp. The gauze wire, in the midst of explosive air, divides one portion of in- flammable gas from the other ; and, so far, acts the pant of the glass flour among the grains of powder. If the foul air inside the lamp ignites, the flame will not spread to the gas outside it. Just so each grain of powder ignites singly ; and a bowl of the mixture either refuses to ignite at all, or burns slowly out — the isolation and difficulty of combus- tion depending on the fineness and coarse- ness of the protecting dust. The advantages of the invention are, that gunpowder, in any quantity, can be sent by rail, or stored up in arsenals, without the possibility of explosion. The sifting process is easy, cheap, and expe- ditious, and the powder remains uninjured. Dr. Gale next turned his attention still fur- ther in the same warlike direction, and the result was the invention of the Ammunition Slide and Rudder-ball Cartridge, by means of which a gun will discharge 140 shots per minute. Armed with weapons of, say, half this power, a regiment 800 strong could discharge 50,000 bullets against the advanc- ing foe within one minute; and few men would relish facing weapons which gave to each man seventy shots per minute as his own chance of death. But, besides all these deadly contrivances, we have perilous salt- petre in a shape more villanous and deadly than ever — as fog-shells , to robe a whole ship in dense and suffocating vapour; balloon- shells , to blow the enemy into infinite space ; to say nothing of electric alarm clocks , to wake the sleeper at any hour ; with fire and thief detectors , to keep him in safety, whether awake or asleep. The busy, restless, inquiring mind of the boy has thus ripened into the eager, inven- tive faculty of the man. The “ happy neces- sities of blindness,” as we termed them, have driven him to think and contrive for himself, and he has been no less happy in contriving for others. Whether his great invention — for great it is — will win the battle against red tape in our day remains to be seen ; if not in ours, the day cannot be far off To save men’s pockets, as well as human life, is too great a power to die. But, however this may be, the inventor has won for himself a place among the discoverers of the age. Here and there in his biography may be detected a little desire to blow the trumpet of his own fame ; but their own trumpet is an instru- ment on which most men like to sound a few choice notes, and there is no reason why a blind man should not be allowed equal freedom with one who has eyes. After all, the strain is short and harmless. His bio- grapher’s chatter about Aristotle and Scribo- nius Largo, Greek fire, Appollonius, Thya- nseus (sic), Eustathius, and a dozen more such themes, is altogether out of place. To trace the rise of a man like Gale from the little British School on Dartmoor up to his present position would have been more than enough for such a pen. Imperfect as it is, the present record is one more proof that patient toil ever wins its due and happy re- ward; that the darkest cloud has a silver lining ; that every man has power to do the work set for him by the Master ; that despair and discontent are foolish and cowardly ; and that work is a blessing — tenfold to the man who thinks of others as well as himself. B. G. JOHNS. THE YOUNGEST COLONEL IN THE SERVICE : A MEMORIAL OF ALEXANDER ROBERTS DUNN, V.C. Canada is entitled to the first place among our colonies for the warlike, patriotic spirit it has displayed. Of all the dependencies of the Crown, it alone has contributed a regi- ment for the defence of the mother-country, and the 100th, or Prince of Wales’s Royal Canadian Regiment, will always be asso- ciated with the name of the gallant young soldier whose brilliant career and untimely 1 end form the subject of the following me- moir. Alexander Roberts Dunn was descended, on his father’s side, from an old and well- known Northumbrian family of that name, and, on his mother’s, from the Robertses of Glastonbury. He was born at Toronto, in 1833, and was the second son of the i Honourable John Henry Dunn, who for I Good words, July 1 , 1869.] THE YOUNGEST COLONEL IN THE SERVICE. 471 more than twenty years held the high and responsible office of Receiver-General of Canada. After the Union he resigned that appointment, and became a member of the Legislative Assembly, where he took an active interest in all that concerned the wel- fare of his adopted country. As a public man he was highly esteemed for his political con- sistency, while his private worth and many virtues endeared him to all who knew him. His second son, Alexander, was intended for the army. It was his desire almost from childhood to enter the service, and he was 'educated in England, chiefly at Harrow, with .a view to his future profession. In 1852, before he had completed his nineteenth year, he was gazetted to a cornetcy in the nth {Prince Albert’s Own) Hussars, a regiment which can boast of a hundred and fifty years’ ■service, and of “ Egypt,” “ the Peninsula,” “ Waterloo,” and “ Bhurtpore,” inscribed on its colours. Our young soldier, while at Harrow, without neglecting his studies, delighted in all those j manly sports and exercises which are prac- tised there, and on joining his regiment he devoted himself, with equal ardour, to mas- tering the details of his new profession. He was a splendid swordsman, a skilful rider, and an unrivalled marksman. A friend, who witnessed it, has given us a singular proof of his almost unerring aim. He placed a small cap-case on the head of a favourite servant, > and fired at it with his pistol at the distance of sixteen yards. Out of forty shots, he hit the cap-case thirty-six times, and the servant stood as steady as a post. This eccentric feat, recalling the days of William Tell, might appear incredible, but it was actually wit- nessed by our informant. It must be borne in mind that Mr. Dunn was at this time a , very young officer, and, we may venture to ' add, that this proof of his skill is more to be admired than imitated. The servant must cer- tainly have had great confidence in his master ; before he would submit to such an ordeal. ; The honour of his regiment is dear to the ! young soldier, and Cornet Dunn was resolved, ‘ on joining the nth Hussars, to prove, if the l occasion ever presented itself, that he was ' worthy of the rank he held. He had . not long to wait for that occasion. In less than two years after he was gazetted, he landed with his regiment in the Crimea, and took part in the first skirmish we had with the enemy. Our cavalry division was under the command of the Earl of Lucan ; it was divided into two parts — the Light Dragoons under the command of the Earl of Cardigan, and the Heavy Dragoons under the command of Brigadier-General Scarlett. The nth Hus- sars belonged to the Light Cavalry Brigade. On the 19th of September, 1854, Lieu- tenant Dunn (he had now attained that rank) was under fire for the first time. On the afternoon of that day, while our army was on the march, and before it had reached the Bulganak, curling wreaths of smoke were seen on the south and east, marking the spots where the Cossacks had set fire to the houses of the poor Tartars. Then, on the distant hills, appeared dark bodies of cavalry, drawn up as if to check the advance of the Allies by attacking them on the left flank. Lieu- tenant Dunn was one of the party of light cavalry that dashed forward, under the com- mand of Lord Cardigan, to drive the Cossacks from their position. The latter remained in possession of the brow of the hill ; they were thrice the number of the English, and could only have been attacked at great disadvan- tage. Lord Cardigan was about to charge up the hill, when Lord Raglan, deeming the odds, both in numbers and position, to be too great, gave orders to recall the skir- mishers, and retire slowly. On this the Cossack squadrons separated, and some guns, hitherto concealed, began to play upon our cavalry as they retired ; a few hussars and dragoons were wounded, but no lives were lost. There was a feeling of disappointment, not confined to Lieutenant Dunn, that our hussars had not had an opportunity of mea- suring swords with the enemy, but there can be no doubt that an uphill attack against such superior numbers must have been at- tended with serious loss. From the skirmish at Bulganak we hasten on to the battle of Balaklava, where the 1 1 th Hussars gained for themselves an imperish- able name, and Lieutenant Dunn proved himself the bravest of the brave. It would be foreign to our purpose to try to describe the battle, but we must trace the course of the nth Hussars till we reach the point where Lieutenant Dunn, forgetful of his own safety, displayed a chivalrous courage and noble humanity, in saving the lives of his comrades when they were at the mercy of the enemy. The Turks had been driven from the re- doubts by the enemy. The 93rd High- landers, under the command of their gallant old chief, standing in double rank only, had repelled the attack of the Russian cavalry. The Scots Greys and the Inniskillings had made their gallant and successful charge, de- scribed by a French general as “ truly mag- I nificent — the most glorious thing I ever saw.” 472 THE YOUNGEST COLONEL IN THE SERVICE. [Good Words, July i, 1869. Then came the most brilliant episode in the whole campaign, the fatal charge of the Light Brigade. It was a blunder, but that detracts nothing from our admiration of those who took part in it. The first duty of soldiers is obedience ; beyond that they have no respon- sibility. Lord Cardigan was not the man to reason, to cavil, or to doubt. “ I re- ceived an order, and I obeyed it.” Before advancing down the valley, the front of the Light Brigade was narrowed, and the. nth Hussars removed from the first line and stationed so as to act in support. The officers of the regiment present on this occa- sion were Colonel Douglas, Captain Edwin Cook, Lieutenants Trevelyan, Alexander R. Dunn, Roger Palmer, and George Powell Haughton. A.t first it formed the left of the first line, but when the order was given, “ Forward the Light Brigade ! Charge for the guns ! ” it advanced in support of the 17 th Lancers. When Lieutenant Dunn heard that order, he grasped his sword more firmly and rode steadily on. He heard Nolan’s death- cry : he saw his horse rush riderless away. The havoc in front was j fearful ; it could not be called fighting ; our i soldiers were powerless till they reached the j battery. As the saddles in front became empty, there rose the steady cry, “ Close in.. — close in to the centre — close in !” and every gap was at once filled up. The front became narrower as they neared the battery, but there was no vacant place. Horses with empty saddles, guided by the habit of discipline, retained their places, or fell back and joined other troops. The Russian artillerymen stood to their guns, and fought with obstinate Good words, juiy i, 1869.] THE YOUNGEST COLONEL IN THE SERVICE. 473 courage ; only a few lay hid beneath the tumbrels to escape the sabres of our troopers. The right troop of the nth Hussars was con- fronted by the battery ; little resistance was offered, as most of the gunners were already cut down. The other troops outflanked the line of the battery, and rejoined the right troop, which had now reached a clear space beyond the limbers and tumbrels. At this point a Russian colonel, imagining that all was lost, gave up his sword to an officer of the nth Hussars, but there was no time to make prisoners. As the smoke cleared away, several squadrons of Russian lancers were seen drawn up a little in advance ; they lowered their lances as if about to charge, but when the nth Hussars rushed forward to attack them, they retreated and were followed into the gorge between the aqueduct and the eastern base of the Fedoukine hills. On approaching the bank of the aqueduct, the Hussars found themselves confronted by large bodies of Russian cavalry. A mere handful of men, they could do nothing against such overpowering numbers ; their only chance of safety was to fall back. At some distance they met the 4th Light Dragoons, who also fell back, aligning* with the nth Hussars. The collision, so to speak, of the two regi- ments necessarily caused some degree of con- fusion, and if the enemy had attacked them at that moment, the loss might have been very serious. They failed to do so, and order was soon restored. When the two regiments (numbering only seventy troopers in all) wheeled round and presented a bold front to the enemy, the Russian cavalry, panic-struck by their audacity, halted, and began to fall back. At this moment a large body of cavalry appeared on our left rear, and a joyful cry | rose from the little band : “ Hurrah ! it is the I 17th.” A closer inspection soon proved that j it was not the 17th Lancers, but a large body of Russian cavalry, consisting of five or six I squadrons, drawn up to cut off their retreat. I They were then placed between two bodies j of the enemy, so that to advance or to retreat j became equally difficult and dangerous. If j the Russian cavalry had known their advan- tage, and how to profit by it, they might have closed up and crushed our handful of troopers by the mere weight of numbers; but they seem never to have recovered from their first surprise- on seeing the audacity of our attack. At this moment 4 our troopers were fronting the enemy in the rear, when the order was given to go about ; it thus happened that when this movement was effected the rear rank were in front and the officers behind. This inversion of the usual order of things gave them one advantage ; they could see all that happened to their own men. The danger was greatest for the first few yards, but fortu- nately the Russian cavalry failed to attack them in the rear. As they advanced two in front and three in depth, the Russian guns opened fire on them. But this was rather an advantage, as it served to distract the atten- tion of the cavalry. If the Russian lancers had only kept their ground, they would have broken our small band as a rock breaks the wave that dashes against it, for they were ten times their number ; but at the moment when collision seemed imminent, the Russian com- mander wheeled his squadron half back so as to flank our line of retreat. This movement was effected in such a way that the enemy’s right flank was thrown forward, and our right flank moving at right angles was brought into direct collision with the enemy’s front. Then came the tug of war : the Russian cavalry used their lances; our troopers charged them with their swords. What followed may be best described by one of the actors in that glorious scene : — “ It was a genuine blood-hot, all-mad charge from the moment we dashed at the enemy. I know nothing but that I was impelled by some irresistible force onward, and by some invisible and imperceptible in- fluence to crush every obstacle which stumbled before my good sword and brave old charger. I never in my life experienced such a sublime sensation as in the moment of the charge. Some fellows speak of it as being ‘ demoniac.’ I know that it was such that it made me a match for any two ordinary men, and gave me such an amount of glorious indifference to life, as I thought it impossible to be master of. Forward — dash — bang — clank — and there we were in the midst of such smoke, cheer, and clatter as never before stunned a mortal ear. It was glorious. I could not pause. It was all push, wheel, frenzy, strike, and down, down they went.” We have traced the course of the nth Hussars up to this point, so as to make the part which Lieutenant Dunn acted in the midst of this melee intelligible. All discipline was now at an end ; every man fought for his own hand ; his safety depended on his own individual prowess and skill. In such a struggle the young Canadian soldier possessed physical qualities which gave him an immense advantage over most of his fellows. His great height (he was six feet three inches) and powerful arm, joined to his skill in the use of his weapon, made him one of the most for- midable swordsmen in the British army. And then there is no exaggeration in affirming that he was, and to the hour of his death continued to be, an absolute stranger to fear. He was one of those few men so peculiarly constituted as never to have experienced that unpleasant IK — 474 THE YOUNGEST COLONEL IN THE SERVICE. [G? odwo^^ sensation. It might be said of him as of Bayard, he was sans peur ct sans reproche. He was as cool and. collected in the hour of danger as that model of French chivalry him- self. In such a moment the bravest soldier might have been justified in consulting only his own safety, but Lieutenant Dunn was too generous to refuse his aid to a comrade in distress. Wherever he saw a hussar attacked by superior numbers, he flew to his assistance, and soon caused his presence to be felt. No wonder that the men he rescued spoke with -enthusiasm of his unselfish and devoted cou- 1 rage, when the hour of danger was past : with- | -out the aid his strong arm brought them, i some never would have lived to say, “We i also took part in that gallant charge.” The •old troopers of the 1 1 th Hussars still tell with kindling eyes how the young lieutenant, see- ing Sergeant Bentley of his own regiment at- tacked from behind by two or three Russian lancers, rushed upon them single-handed and -cut them down; how he saved the life of Ser- geant Bond; how Private Levett owed his safety to the same friendly arm, when assailed by a Russian hussar. Kinglake relates in his usual dramatic style, how a young cavalry officer, a mere youth almost fresh from school, was seized with a sort of sczva indig- natio — a fierce rage against human life — an almost rabid desire to destroy it ; how he in- ; veighed against it in words, and accompanied his words with such deeds that more fell be- neath his sword than that of any other who took part in this fierce contest. He adds, also, that when his warlike fury was over, and he saw the havoc he had made, the reaction set in, and he wept like a child. There is nothing improbable or incredible in the story itself. Certain men, certain races even, are known to be subject to such outbursts of fury in the hour of danger, and tears have often been shed after and during a battle ; it is all a question of temperament. If the story has any foundation in fact, it could apply only to Lieutenant Dunn, who, it is certain, killed more Russians than any other man in the field, but it could apply to him only in that respect. He was not at all an excitable man, given to sudden outbursts of fury in war or in peace; to shed human blood for the mere pleasure of shedding it was foreign alike to his character and principles ; when he struck down the Russians it was the humane desire to save the life of a comrade which lent force to his arm. Nor was he at all addicted to the melting mood ; he was as little demonstrative in the expression of emotion as we should ex- pect any other young Englishman to be. He was naturally shy and reserved, espe- cially with strangers, and averse from saying much about what he did on that day. When it was alluded to in society he changed the subject at once. Even in the bosom of his own family, and among his most intimate friends, he showed a certain uneasiness when it was spoken of. “ It was nothing; I only did my duty,” was his usual remark ; oftener he made no remark at all. If speech be silvern and silence golden, there was infinitely more gold than silver in his composition. The charge of the six hundred was a mis- take, but there was a certain moral grandeur and sublimity about it. The national pulse beat faster when the intelligence reached England : the age of chivalry seemed to be restored. The words of our Queen expressed the general sentiment of admiration, when she said, “ The brilliancy of the charge, and the gallantry and discipline evinced by all, have never been surpassed by British soldiers under similar circumstances.” The services of the nth Hussars were not forgotten: “ Balaklava” is inscribed on their colours in memory of what they did and suffered on that day. A Victoria Cross — the Queen’s own Cross of Valour — was also placed at the disposal of the regiment, to be given to the soldier they deemed most worthy to wear it. There was no doubt or hesitancy : it was unanimously voted to Lieutenant Dunn, who thus obtained the distinction of being the only cavalry officer who obtained this decora- tion. It was expected that there would be a still more substantial recognition of his merits when the first opportunity presented itself; but he was doomed to bitter disappointment, such as none but a young soldier can under- stand. The slaughter at Balaklava, and sub- sequent losses by disease, rendered it neces- sary to augment each of the Light Cavalry regiments in the Crimea by two troops. The nth Hussars was so augmented, and one troop in it was given to the first Lieutenant, but Lieutenant Dunn, who was second, was passed over. He was too proud to stoop to ask a favour, or to use influence to obtain what he might justly claim as his right. If any man deserved promotion, assuredly he was that man. He had never been absent from duty a single day in the Crimea, and was left on several occasions in command of the regiment ; yet he was superseded. Hence the general outcry in the regiment and else- where against the injustice with which he was treated. The troop which belonged to him of right was given to an officer on the Staff, who had no previous connection with the Good Words, July 1,1869.] THE YOUNGEST COLONEL IN THE SERVICE. 475 regiment. That officer may have deserved even higher promotion, but he had no claim to the command of that particular troop, which belonged of right to Lieutenant Dunn. The injustice was all the more glaring, because in other regiments — the 13th Light Dragoons for example — the vacant, or augmentation troops, were given to the senior Lieutenants, though, in one case at least, the officer thus promoted had remained at home, and taken no part in the campaign. Our young soldier had carved his way to fame with his sword — he had done enough for glory ; and he had too much self-respect to remain in the service after being treated with such neglect. He could leave it without any imputation on his courage, and his ample fortune made him independent of his profession. The career so brilliantly begun seemed already to have reached its close. Soon after the battle of Balaklava, Lieu- tenant Dunn sold out, and returned to Eng- land. He could not remain in the regiment with another man unjustly, as he thought, placed over his head. It was not without a j struggle that he gave up his profession and all the ambitious hopes he had fondly cherished in his youth. He had loved his mother-coun- try, he had fought bravely in her defence, and she had treated him with all the harshness and injustice of a step-mother. He returned home brooding over his disappointment, resolved to renounce for ever a service in which influence was everything and merit counted for nothing. Such was the view he then took of the matter ; but we cannot avoid thinking he was wrong to leave the j service. We never yet met an officer, young or old, who had not a grievance, real or imaginary. The older hands learn to grin ! and bear it : the young and inexperienced alone think of giving everything up in dis- gust. We have met scores of officers who had left the service early in life because it had not answered their expectations. There was not one of them who did not bitterly regret the step he had taken, and who would not willingly have made any sacrifice to be replaced in his former position. And the sequel will show that Lieutenant Dunn’s quarrel with his profession was only a lover’s quarrel, soon to be repented of, soon to be made up. A life of enforced idleness soon became j intolerable, and Lieutenant Dunn left for the Rocky Mountains on a hunting expedition, in company with an officer of his former regiment. The wild life of the prairie, the society of the half-caste trappers, the occa- sional encounters with hostile Indians, the buffalo-hunt, the midnight bivouac, the rough fare of the backwoods, — were not without their attractions to a man of his tempera- ment, but still he was restless and dissatis- fied. He was born a soldier, and his heart was still in his profession. Wherever he went he carried with him the longing desire to resume the career he had so brilliantly begun and so rashly abandoned. He carried this feeling with him to Canada, when he re- visited his native province towards the close of 1857 ; and it gathered strength from the reception he everywhere received. The courage he evinced in the charge of the six hundred was not forgotten : he had shed lustre on his native province. The Indian mutiny was still going on, and troops were being hurried from England and elsewhere to aid in its suppression. Why should not Canada raise a regiment to assist the mother- country in the struggle ? The enterprise was not without its difficulties in a colony where men are scarce and the price of labour high. Lieutenant Dunn was, perhaps, the only man who could have undertaken it with success. Llis name, the influence of his family, his military fame, the cross of valour which the Queen had placed on his breast with her own hand, and his ample means, entitled him to expect success where others might have failed. General Eyre approved of the pro- posal, and Lieutenant Dunn entered on his task with enthusiasm. It was mainly owing to his efforts that another regiment — the 1 ooth, or Prince of Wales’s Royal Canadian Regiment — was added to the British army. Several of our Highland regiments were raised by private gentlemen ; but they were raised at a period and in a land where men were abundant and labour cheap. They cost little ; but it was different with the Canadian regiment. Lieutenant Dunn alone expended many thousands ; and when his task was completed, he was gazetted as junior major of the regiment. The appoint- ment met with universal favour. Soon after this he was promoted to the lieutenant- colonelcy, in consequence of the retirement of Baron de Rottenburg, who originally held that appointment. Lieutenant-Colonel Dunn thus, by a happy conjunction of circum- stances, found himself in command of a regi- ment when he had barely completed his twenty-seventh year. His youth and inexperience had been adduced as an excuse for not giving him his troop. The firmness and judgment with which he discharged the duties of a com- O 476 THE YOUNGEST COLONEL IN THE SERVICE. [Good words. July,,;**. manding officer proved that he was qualified for the still higher office which he now held. He was a strict disciplinarian, and yet con- trived to gain the affections even of those whom he was compelled to punish. The story is told of an Irishman, whom he had sentenced to a week’s extra drill for some military offence, exclaiming, on hearing his sentence, “ Shure, Colonel, I had rather have a month’s drill from you than a week from any one else.’ 5 He was kind and familiar in his bearing to his officers ; but none of them would ever have ventured to take any liberty with him. The distinction he had gained at Balaklava disarmed the envy which might otherwise have been excited by the promo- tion of one so young ; his regiment was proud of him, and he was equally proud of his regiment. His great ambition was to raise it to the highest state of discipline, and to make it one of the crack regiments of the service. Soon after his appointment to the majority of the iooth Regiment, he was presented with the sword of General Wolfe. This interesting relic, so closely associated with one of the most glorious episodes of Cana- dian history, could not have been placed in more deserving hands than those of the young Canadian soldier, whose career was destined to be as brief and almost as brilliant as that of its original possessor. It was exhibited in the Canadian department of the Great Exhibition of 1862, and was examined by thousands with that tender respect which everything connected with the young hero who fell on the plains of Abraham ought ever to excite. It was highly valued by Colonel Dunn, and is now in the possession of his brother-in-law, Mr. Thurlow Dowling. Colonel Dunn accompanied his regiment to England. Their first station was Aider- shot, but after some time they were re- moved to Gibraltar. There much of his leisure time was spent in yachting, of which he was passionately fond, and on more than one occasion he had a narrow escape from drowning. One or two illustrations may be given of his generous courage, his dauntless disposition, and great powers of endurance. On one occasion several of his brother officers had accompanied him on board his yacht ; a favourable breeze sprang up, all sail was set, and they skimmed joyfully along before the wind. The yacht leaned over considerably, so that the sea almost touched the deck. One of the officers, Captain Coul- son, happened to bend forward, the vessel gave a sudden lurch, he lost his balance and fell overboard. “ Put her about,” he cried, “ or I am lost !” On seeing his friend in the water, Colonel Dunn rushed forward, and was about to leap overboard to try to rescue him, when the other officers, knowing that he could only lose his own life without aiding the drowning man, seized him and held him I down by force. An oar was thrown to and 1 seized by the officer in the water; the yacht was put about, but when they reached the spot he had disappeared. This incident shows how generous were his impulses, how little store he set by his own life, and horv ready he ever was to rush to the assistance of others without weighing the consequences to himself. On another occasion he was caught in one of those sudden gales so common in the Mediterranean. There were none on board the yacht but himself and two or three attend- ants. The gale increased to a hurricane ; every effort was made to save the yacht, but she at length became unmanageable, and all hope of safety was given up. Colonel Dunn • told his men that nothing more could be done, and descended to the cabin. The crew remained on deck expecting that every moment would be their last. At length, to their great joy, a Spanish vessel hove in sight, they hoisted a signal of distress, and the ship kept them in sight till the hurricane had sufficiently abated to admit of a boat being j lowered. On descending to the cabin they found Colonel Dunn sleeping as soundly as if there had been no danger, and loudly expressed their surprise that he could go to sleep under such circumstances. “ Why not?” was his answer; “we had done all that could be done.” It seemed to him perfectly natural to go to sleep when nothing else remained to be done. Tired at times of the monotonous life on the glowing rock at Gibraltar, he visited the opposite coast of Africa, and made his way into the interior in search of sport. Such adventures were not without their danger, as the Moors are extremely jealous of strangers, and ready to attack them if they think they can do so with impunity. The next station was Malta. Here Colonel Dunn had the misfortune to lose his half- i brother, an officer in the regiment, who died of fever. He nursed him most tenderly ! during his illness. And his letters at this period prove that with all his reserve and seeming coldness, he had a warm and affec- tionate heart. He caused his brother to be buried in full uniform. It was an idea of his that a soldier, like a monk, should wear in Good words, July x, is6g.] THE YOUNGEST COLONEL IN THE SERVICE. 477 the grave the garb he wore in life. While stationed at Malta, he had another almost miraculous escape. He had been dining at Government House, and was driving home in his carriage with his servant, and his coachman seated on the box. Part of the road lay along the precipitous shore from which it was separated by a species of em- bankment. The night was dark, and part of the embankment had been broken down. The coachman mistook the way, and the carriage and horses were precipitated over the cliff ; Colonel Dunn, with some difficulty, contrived to reach the shore, but the horses were drowned and the carriage destroyed. On this occasion he lost his Victoria Cross and all his Crimean medals, and had much difficulty in having them replaced. From all that has been said it might be inferred that Colonel Dunn bore a charmed life — the sequel, alas ! will show that the charm ex- tended only up to a certain point. On the 20th of December, 1864, Lieu- tenant-Colonel Dunn was gazetted as full colonel — the youngest colonel in the British service. His active mind and adventurous spirit soon led him to long for a larger field of action than Malta, and he exchanged into the 33rd Regiment, which was then stationed at Poona, in the Bombay Presidency. India has always been the nursery of military repu- | tations, the field where our bravest soldiers have carved their way with their swords to rank and fame. The 33rd is known in the service as the Duke of Wellington’s Own I Regiment, and the name may have been suggestive of a similar career in India. On joining the regiment he was only second colonel, but Colonel Collings having been made Brigadier-General, Colonel Dunn was left in sole command of the regiment. After some time, finding that he was about to be superseded by the return of his senior | officer, he began to think seriously of return- | ing to England ; but after he had made | every preparation for going home, and had ' secured his passage, and all but embarked, his leave of absence was revoked, and he re- mained in India. An inadvertency on his part, the omission of a simple act of courtesy, is said to have been the cause of the with- drawal of his leave of absence — on such trifles does the future of a- man’s whole life often hinge. It would be idle to speculate what Colonel Dunn’s destiny might have been if he had returned to England; it is sufficient to remark that he remained in India, still retaining the command of the regiment. About this time he made the acquaintance of the present Lord Napier of Magdala, who knew how to appreciate his noble, chivalrous character, and strove to meet his wishes in every way. The 33rd Regiment was stationed at Kur- rachee when they received instructions that they were to form part of the Abyssinian expedition. None but a soldier stationed in India can conceive the boundless joy with which these instructions were received. To escape from the dreary monotony of a tropical life our men are ever ready to go anywhere and do anything. While Colonel Dunn shared in the general exultation, cer- tain facts, which we are not at liberty to divulge, prove that he had a presentiment I that he would never return alive from that expedition. Some may regard it as a proof of weakness to attach any importance to such a feeling ; but it is an undoubted fact that some soldiers are favoured with a pre- sentiment of their impending fate, and act upon it with as much assurance as if their doom were irrevocable. It would be a mis- take, however, to suppose that this fore- knowledge interferes in any way with the faithful discharge of duty ; a truly brave man will meet death none the less cheerfully because he knows death to be inevitable. This feeling was not confined to India — Colonel Dunn carried it with him to Abys- sinia. A few days before his death, on meeting an intimate friend, a colonel in the Indian service, he told him the presenti- ment was still present to his mind that he would never leave Abyssinia. This feel- ing was all the more singular, inasmuch as it was already known that the expedition was not likely to be attended with much loss of life. On the 2nd of February, 1868, the fol- lowing passage appeared in the Times’ Own Correspondent’s letter from Abyssinia : — ‘ c Senafe, Jan. 28. — I found Senafe on my arrival yesterday full of a terrible tragedy, which has cast a gloom over all the camp. One of the most popular and promising officers attached to the Abyssinian force, Colonel Dunn, of the 33rd Regiment, had two days before accidentally shot himself. He had gone out with his rifle after game, and from the account of his native servant, who was the only person with him when the accident happened, it seems that as he was stooping forward over a ditch to get some water both barrels suddenly went off and lodged their contents in his left side. His death must have been instantaneous. He was just able to say, ‘ Run for a doctor,’ and then dropped dead.” More minute details of his melancholy J death are given in the following extract from ] a letter written by the officer who accom- ‘ panied him : — 473 THE YOUNGEST COLONEL IN THE SERVICE. [Good words.. “ Senafe, Abyssinia , 31^ Jan., 1868. — It is with feelings of deepest regret I write to announce to you the death of our beloved commanding officer, Colonel Dunn, V. C., 33rd Regiment, which melancholy event occurred last Saturday, the 25th instant, by the acci- dental explosion of his rifle when out shooting deer. “ I accompanied him in the morning to shoot, but in the course of the day we got separated from each other, and I never saw him alive again. The bearer, or gun-carrier who accompanied him, states he wan- dered far after some deer, got tired, and sat down on a stone. He asked the bearer to give him his brandy flask, which he did, but just while in the act of open- ing it his rifle slipped and exploded. The contents of both barrels (it is believed) passed through the same opening in the chest. He jumped up suddenly, when the bearer caught him in his arms and laid him down. Colonel Dunn told the bearer to take off his coat and lay him on it, which he did ; he then told him to take off his shirt and put it over his face to keep off the sun. When he had done this, Colonel Dunn told him to run into the camp and tell the officers, and bring out a doctor. The bearer did so, and on returning the colonel was found, with the cloth over his face, just as he was left, and quite dead — apparently about an hour. The immediate cause of death was internal haemorrhage. He was buried on Tuesday, the 27th of Jan., under a high rock at Senafe, and his funeral was attended by all the camp, sorrowing, for he was universally loved, and had not an enemy. “ In this sad manner has the regiment lost the best commanding officer it ever had, or ever could have ; he was beloved by men and officers, and considered the pride of the regiment by all.” We give an extract also from a letter mitten by another officer to Colonel Dunn’s sister : — “ In no regiment was ever a commanding officer so missed as the one we have just so unhappily lost, such a courteous, thorough gentleman in word and deed, so thoughtful for others, so perfect a soldier, so confidence-inspiring a leader. Every soldier in the regiment misses Colonel Dunn ; he was a friend, and felt to be such, to every one of them. The regiment will never have so universally-esteemed a commander again. We all feel that. For myself, I feel that I have lost a brother who can never be replaced. I can scarcely yet realise that the dear fellow is really dead ; and as I pass his tent every morning I involuntarily turn my head, expecting to hear his usual kind salu- tation, and to see the dear handsome face that has never looked at me but with kindness. I breakfasted with him on the morning of the 25th, and he looked so well as he started off with our surgeon for a day’s shooting. Little did I think that I had looked on his dear old face for the last time in life I cannot describe to you what a shock the sad news was to every one, both in my regiment, and indeed to every one in the camp. Our dear colonel was so well known, and so universally liked and respected. “Next day, Sunday, the 26th of January, he was buried about four o’clock p.m. I went to look at the dear old fellow before his coffin was closed, and his poor face, though looking so cold, was yet so handsome, and the expression of it so peaceful and happy. I cut off some of his hair, which lately he wore very short, a lock of which I now send you, keeping one for myself as the most valuable souvenir I could have of one I loved very dearly. And I knelt down to give his cold forehead a long farewell kiss. “ He was buried in uniform, as he had often ex- pressed a wish to me to that effect. Every officer in the camp attended his funeral, and, of course, the whole of his own regiment, in which there was not a single dry eye as all stood round the grave of their lost commander. He has been buried on a piece of ground near where our camp now stands, at the foot of a small hill covered with shrubbery and many wild flowers. We have had railings put round the grave, and a stone is to be placed there with the inscription : — “ IN MEMORY OF A. R. DUNN, V.C., Col. 33RD Regiment, WHO DIED AT SENAFE ON THE 25TH JAN., 1868, AGED 34 YEARS AND 7 MONTHS.” Wolfe’s lines on the burial of Sir John Moore will apply almost word for word to the lonely grave beneath the wild peak of Senafe : — “No useless coffin enclosed his head, Nor in sheet nor in shroud we wound him,. But he lay like a warrior taking his rest, With his martial cloak around him.” Two soldiers of his own regiment were buried near the same spot. On the following day his “kit” was sold by auction, as is usually done when an officer or a soldier dies in the field. If he has been popular, his comrades are always anxious to secure something at the sale as a souvenir. Everything belonging to Colonel Dunn was sold at an extravagant price ; an old pair oi hunting spurs fetched three pounds ; a copper wash-hand basin the same amount. No one lamented the death of Colonel Dunn more sincerely than Sir Robert Napier, who saw in him one of the most promising officers in the British army. He arrived at Senafe two days after the accident, and in reviewing the troops he complimented the 33 rd on their efficiency, and expressed his regret that they would not be led by the gal- lant officer whose loss he and they deplore. We give a copy of an extract from his next dispatch : — “ Senafe, 30th January, 1868. — By the death of Colonel Dunn, the 33rd Regiment have lost an excel- lent commanding officer, and the service a very valu- able and promising soldier. (Signed) “R. Napier.” His Royal Highness the Commander-in- Chief, on learning the sad intelligence, has- tened to express his sympathy with Colonel Dunn’s family, in the loss they had sustained. The following letter was written by the Mili- tary Secretary, General Forster, to Thurlow Dowling, Esq., by command of H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge : — “Horse Guards, 22 nd Feb., 1868. “My dear Sir, — I am desired by the Field- Marshal Commanding-in-Chief to express to you, and to request you will communicate to his relations, His Royal Highness’s deep regret at the melancholy death of Colonel Dunn, V.C., 33rd Regiment. “ His Royal Highness would offer, through you to Good words, July,, 1869.] THE YOUNGEST COLONEL IN THE SERVICE. 479 his family, his sincere condolent sympathy in the loss of an officer who hacl distinguished himself in the service, and whose antecedents in the army led to the anticipation that, had his life been spared, he would have become still more distinguished in his profession. “Although I could not boast of intimacy with Colonel Dunn, still my knowledge of and friendship for him will, I trust, warrant my requesting you will accept my participation in His Royal Highness’s feel- ings upon this sad occasion. ‘ ‘ I enclose an extract from the report of His Excel- lency Lieut. -General Sir Robert Napier announcing his death. — Believe me, my dear sir, “ Yours very truly, “ W. F. Forster. “ Thurlow Dowling, Esq.” Colonel Dunn’s regiment, the gallant 33rd, highly distinguished themselves at the capture of Magdala. It seemed as if they were still animated by the presence of him they had loved so well. When the head of the column of attack was checked by the obstacles at the gate, a small stream of officers and men of the 33rd Regiment and an officer of Engi- neers, breaking away from the main approach to Magdala, and climbing up a cliff, reached the defences and forced their way over the wall and through the strong and thorny fence, thus turning the defenders of the gateway. The first two men to enter, and the first in Magdala, were Drummer Maynard and Pri- vate Bergin of the 33rd Regiment. For their conspicuous gallantry on this occasion, both were decorated with the Victoria Cross. But amid all the exultation of final success, in the very moment of victory, there was but one feeling pervading the whole regiment — a feeling of regret that their beloved young chief was not there to lead them on, and share in the laurels they gained. u Flow proud poor Dunn would have been leading his regiment !” was the universal remark among the officers; while still more kindly and affectionate terms were heard from the ranks. It was certainly a remarkable circum- stance connected with this highly successful expedition, that while not a single British sol- dier was killed in battle, a simple accident cost us the life of one of the most distinguished and generally popular officers in the whole expeditionary force. It was for this reason, doubtless, that the national grief, which might have been diverted into a thousand different channels, as it was during the Crimean war, was concentrated on Colonel Dunn alone. No young officer has ever been so much lamented since the death of General Wolfe, whose sword he possessed. Not only the military journals, but journals of all kinds and shades of politics united in giving expression to the universal grief which the nation felt at the loss of one in whose person seemed to be revived the spirit of the chivalrous ages. This feeling of universal regret even found its way into the House of | Commons, usually so cold and dispassionate. When the thanks of the House of Commons were given to General Sir Robert Napier and the army which had taken part in the Abyssi- nian Expedition, on the 2nd of July, 1868, Mr. Gladstone expressed this feeling with his usual eloquence : — - “ Perhaps it may not be going too far from the sub- ject to utter in this august assembly one word of regret for a gallant officer — Colonel Dunn — I believe the only field officer whose life has been lost, although not by the direct result of military operations during the ex- pedition ; who had proved in the deadly charge at Balaklava the courage with which he was inspired ; who had received at the hand of his Sovereign the honour of the Victoria Cross ; who had' sought active service as the commander of the gallant regiment that made the assault upon Magdala — the 33rd — and who has now found a grave in that distant country, wiffi a place of honour in the recollection of his fellow-citizens.” j The unanimous applause with which these eloquent words were greeted, proved how deeply the House sympathised with the feel- ing they expressed. It was one of the wise maxims of antiquity that no man should esteem himself happy till the hour of his death. Of all the gallant officers who landed in Abyssinia and took part in that expedition, Colonel Dunn might justly have been pronounced the most fortu- nate. At an age when most young men are still at school or college, he gained in the deadly charge at Balaklava a name that was known wherever the English language is spoken or deeds of bravery admired. At the age: of thirty, he attained the rank of Colonel, and assumed the command of one of the finest regiments in the service. In that regiment he was universally popular with all, from the senior officer down to the youngest recruit. Nor was his popularity confined to his own regiment. There was a charm, a fascination, in his manner, which disarmed jealousy and converted envy into friendship. A less lovable ’ man might have been disliked because he was so fortunate, but no one complained of ■ his rapid promotion. A colonel at thirty, — the youngest colonel in the British service, — ; he would have obtained the rank of Brigadier- General before he had completed his thirty- j fifth year, for his name was next upon the j list. Known as a dashing officer, distin- j guished for his personal bravery, a Colonel at ; an age when other men are captains or sub- ; alterns, possessed of every gift of fortune, ; there was no rank or position in the army ; which he might not have been predicted to attain ; and yet, by a simple accident, this , , 4§o THE SAILOR BOY. [Good Words, July i, 1869. j brilliant soldier, beloved and admired by all, was arrested in the full career of success, and * laid in a lonely tomb among the rocks at Senafe. In his case as in many others, “ The path of glory leads but to the grave.” It was a belief among the ancients that an early death is a proof of divine favour ; and there is nothing in revelation to contradict that belief. He had lived long enough for his own glory, if not for his country’s good. The highest honours of his profession could not have invested his name with a brighter halo than it already possessed at the hour of his death. Such men never die altogether : they live in the hearts of those who have known and loved them. Such was Colonel Dunn, the very model and bean-ideal of a British soldier — tall, handsome, chivalrous, generous, almost to a fault. Mo- dest and unassuming, he loved more to hear of the brave deeds of others than to recount his own. Shy and reserved with strangers, in the bosom of his own family, or in the society of his own officers, he showed all the fresh light-hearted gaiety of a boy, ready to please and to be pleased with everything. And yet, in those hours of social freedom, no one would have ventured to forget that he was a man born to command ; possessed of the mysterious gift of attracting and influenc- ing others without an effort. The tears shed over his grave at Senafe, the aching hearts which still lament his loss, prove how largely he possessed this power. It may be said that he was proud because he was never seen at the levees of princes or in the antechambers of the great; but his was that noble pride which respects itself ; which stoops to nothing base or mean ; which abhors the language of flattery, and refuses to bow before the idols of the hour. Now that our task is ended, we bow with tender respect before the memory of this gallant young soldier, to whom the beautiful language of Bacon may be aptly applied : — “ The death of such persons is wont to be followed by infinite commiseration ; for of all mortal accidents, there is none so lament- able, none so powerful to move pity, as this cropping of the flower of virtue before its time ; the rather because their life has been too short to give occasion of satiety or of envy which might otherwise mitigate sorrow at their death, or temper compassion.” P. BEATON. THE SAILOR BOY. By one of the AUTHORS of “ CHILD-WORLD. O SAILOR BOY ! this is the day ; We count each hour and each minuh Our hearts are as light and as gay As the ship that brings you in it. The house is merry with flow’rs ; The hearth is blazing with light ; We live through the glorified hours, And laugh to think of to-night. The minutes and hours slip on ; Alas ! they have passed into days ; The beautiful rapture is gone, And only a weary hope stays. A hope that weeps in our eyes, As silently, by-and-by, Each blossom we gather’d dies, And with each a hope must die. Good Words, July i, 1869.] THE SAILOR BOY. 481 O sailor boy ! when will you come To turn all our grief to feting ! O sailor boy ! sail to your home, Our hearts are so tired with waiting ; Your mother’s step is so sad, Her heart is heavy with pain ; Oh, darling ! she would be glad To see your sweet face again ! And when we were eager with joy, Adorning the room in our bliss, And saying fond things of our boy, Disputing who’d get the first kiss, Listening for steps on the path, Smiling with tremulous lips, The wicked storm in its wrath Was slaying our ship of ships ! Our darling was dragg’d on the wave, (Oh, had we dreamt of it only !) The sea is a wonderful grave, So wide, and deep, and lonely. With a wild and dreadful shock, — The wicked storm was so proud, — It drove the ship on a rock, And changed her sail to a shroud ! And when he could never come back, And our hearts were ready to break, And even the baby wore black For his dear sailor brother’s sake; There came a hope and a cry, A joy that was almost pain, And our darling — who did not die ! — Was clasped in our arms again ! X-33 LAUGHTER. 482 [Good Words, July r, 1869. LAUGHTER. J3. Sontributimt io Ibc florals of ilje Subjttf. “ Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with joy.”— Psalm cxxvi. 2. Notwithstanding the troublous character of the times (and what times are not trou- blous in this great battle-field of mighty evil and mightier good — this world?), and the many critical questions of vital importance which are occupying the minds of men, I scarcely think it needful to apologize for selecting for somewhat careful treatment the above subject, to the consideration of which circumstances have led me. It may per- haps be thought that to treat in such times of such a topic is too much to imitate him who was not ashamed to “ fiddle while Rome was burning.” But I trust that readers who favour me by reading to the end of this article will absolve me from this charge. In such matters everything depends upon the manner of treatment of the subject, — the point of view from which it is contemplated, — the object aimed at by the writer. That laughter has great effects upon the tone of men’s minds, and upon the forma- tion of character, will probably be denied by no one. In the principal nations of the earth there are periodical publications of extensive circulation and great moral influence, devoted very much to the excitement of the peculiar state of mind and feeling that expresses itself in this manner. In England our distin- guished fellow citizen, Mr. Punch , has many humbler followers, — Judy , Fun , and others ; in France there is the Charivari ; in Ger- many the Kladderadatsch ; besides which, there exist jest-books of various kinds and degrees of importance. And I do not hesi- tate to call it a considerable national blessing that under the present editorship of our English periodicals of this kind, their moral tone and their standard of good taste is, on the whole, so pure ; in this respect so very favourably contrasted with the deplorably impure character of many of their foreign “analogues.” With this preliminary and well-deserved bow to Mr. Punch, I proceed to my subject. It has from ancient times been always felt that laughter is a great power in the world. “ Ridentem dicer e verum quid vetat ?” (“ What hinders serious truth from being conveyed under ludicrous forms?”), said a moralist of old times. “ Ridiculum acri fortius ac melius plerumque secat res ” (“ The ludicrous gene- rally” — rather say, often — “cuts into the heart of things more forcibly and with better effect than the grave and serious ”),* said the same eminent writer. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that times of laughter, like all other parts of human life in which we dare even for a moment to throw the reins upon the neck of our impulses, and to “ give them their head ” freely, are times of special danger, against which, therefore, it is most important to guard. It is not all men who can be trusted with much freedom of jesting; it is only good men, and all of us only so far as we are good, with whom “joy is its own security,” f and the free “ abundance of the heart ” is sure not to sin against good taste and good feeling, or even against some of the most sacred laws of God. “Now let us be grave,” said Dr. Johnson to Boswell, “ I see a fool coming.” You must know your com- pany before trusting yourself to unrestrained laughter. I propose to consider, first, what laughter is, — as a mental and physical phenomenon ; secondly, one or two of the principal pas- sages of Scripture with regard to it, and its lawfulness in general ; and, lastly, some cau- tions with regard to it. 1. Laughter, as a mental and physical fact, is a singular phenomenon. Tears and laughter are part of the uni- versal language of human kind — the language of looks. Since Babel, men, dispersed over the face of the world, do not understand one another’s speech. But this one inarticulate language remains intelligible to all mankind ; it requires no interpreter, it is legible to those to whom even “ the three R’s ” are still a mystery ; infants newly-born seem to bring some understanding of it with them into the world ; it may be read by a black man in the face of a white; it would have been appre- hended in Robinson Crusoe, by his man Friday on the desert island; it is even in some degree legible by a marvellous instinct by the lower animals in the face of man. For a strong man can flash a spirit-quelling command out of the bodily windows of his soul, his eyes, into the half-waking “ spirit of a beast.” A Borrow can thereby assert his authority “ by right divine ” over an enraged dog.f * Milton seems to have had these words in his mind when he wrote, in his inimitably forcible English, in the Animad- versions on the Remonstrant — “ This vein of laughing hath ofttimes a strong and sinewy force in teaching and confuting.” t Wordsworth’s “ Hymn to Duty.” j See The Bible in Spain. Good Words, July i, 1869.] LAUGHTER. 4^3 It is a touching proof of that deep underly- ing unity, which, amidst all their infinite differences, binds together in the deeper regions of their being all the far-separated races and families of Adam’s children, that all men do, in this way, understand one another’s looks. If I land on an unknown island, whose inhabitants speak a language, — in the ordinary sense of that word, — quite un- intelligible to me, and yet see there a human face , whatever be its colour or shape, lighted with a smile, or trembling into tears, my heart, if it is not dead within me, will answer to what I call its expression , though I cannot in the least tell how I gather any such know- ledge from that sight. We may plead, there- fore, for the deep interest of these two pheno- mena, tears and laughter, on this ground among others, that they are part of the universal and distinctive characteristics of our brother men, of every race and clime. Laughter is visible principally in that mystic border-land between matter and spirit, “ the human face divine.” How it does so, who shall say ? For what is a face? It is a region but a few square inches in extent ; and yet this is all the in- strument, or much the principal one, with which, in the mystic processes of Nature, all the varieties of thought, feeling, emotion, of which we become aware in looking at another human being, are in some way or other effectively conveyed to us. Its com- ponent parts have, it is true, a marvellous power of ceaseless, most subtle movement - — ■ a most important attribute. “ That,” says Lord Bacon (Essay on Beauty), “ is the best part of beauty, which a picture cannot ex- press; no, nor the first sight of the life, decent” (i.e., becoming) “and gracious mo- tion.” Still, it is through this apparently simple instrument, a face, that, in some way or other, thought, feeling, emotion, are ex- pressed, to a degree really marvellous. And who knows not the actual light (is it phy- sical ? or is it spiritual in its essence ? — we cannot say) that may flash into our souls from the lines of flowing beauty round the mouth, the dancing gleams in the lengthening eyes, the innumerous twinklings and beam- ings of the countenance, when it is really laughing ? Still, it is not only in the face, or even in the domain of sight, that the spiritual condi- tion which causes laughter is perceptible in others. The blind, who never looked upon a face, yet know of laughter in others through that other bodily doorway into the presence-chamber of the soul, the ear; and the feelings called up in the soul of the blind by peals of laughter (peals, as of some gladsome and brilliant bells in the spirit- world), must be much the same as those stirred in those deprived of hearing, by the sight of a laughing face, and of the shaking sides, — the arms, it may be, flung into the air, the head thrown back, or the hands en- thusiasticallyhubbed together, — of one who is undergoing that strange seizure rightly called a fit — for a true fit, or physical seizure it is — of laughter. Whatever it may be in its in- most nature and central spring in the soul, its effects are general over the whole body. Probably there is not the remotest corner, or little inlet of the minute blood-vessels (life-vessels) of the body, that does not feel some wavelet from that great convul- sion shaking the central man. The blood moves more livelily — probably its chemical, electric, or vital condition is distinctly modi- fied — it conveys a different impression to all the organs of the body as it visits them on that particular mystic journey when the man is laughing, from what it does at other times. And so, we doubt not, a good laugh may lengthen a man’s life, conveying a distinct stimulus to the vital forces. And the time may come, when physicians, attending more closely than at present unfortunately they are apt to do, to the innumerable subtle influences which the soul exerts upon its tenement of clay, shall prescribe to a torpid patient “ so many peals of laughter, to be undergone at such and such a time,” just as they now do that far more objectionable pre- scription, a pill or an electric or galvanic shock ; and shall study the best and most effective method of producing the required effect in each patient.^ Having considered laughter as a physi- cal phenomenon, we might naturally next inquire into its causes and its effects — intel- lectual, moral, spiritual. But before doing so, it may be well to clear out of our way an objection which if valid is fatal. Some pas- sages in the Bible may seem totally to con- demn, not, indeed, laughter in itself, but at any rate much laughter. Now, I am far indeed from denying that there is such a thing as “excessive laughter,” or that it may be, and often is, a source of serious mischief. But many of the passages in the Bible that relate to this subject are often much misinterpreted and twisted from their true meaning. 2 . With regard, then, to the question, * On the Physiology of Laughter there is an able and original essay by Mr. Herbert Spencer (2nd series). LAUGHTER. 484 [Good Words, July r, 1869. whether or no Scriptural morality allows much freedom to laughter in a perfect human character in mortal man, it must first be said that it is a priori exceedingly improbable that it should not do so. For it is a very principal characteristic of Christian religion, that it leaves room for the free and strong play of all primitive impulses of human nature. It never puts its veto upon the use, nor even upon the hearty and free use (let it be remembered that “ freedom ” is a word of very different signification from “ li- cence 5 ’) of any faculty or original impulse of our nature, but only claims for it right guidance. According to St. Paul’s great anti-Manichean principle, Christian consci- ence “ knows and is persuaded of the Lord that there is nothing unclean of itself ,” but only in its abuse. Let us hold it fast as a main point in the Magna Charta of our liberty, as redeemed children of God, that with regard to all primitive instincts of human nature, our Divine Lord “came not to destroy, but to fulfil 55 — not to suppress life, but “ that we might have it more abundantly,” only I guided and inspired aright ; that sin is a dis- | cord of notes good in themselves — “sweet | bells” now, it may be, “jangled out of ; tune,” but which were originally, and may be j made again, wholly sweet. Our Lord came ! to proclaim a “ law of liberty ” under which the primeval beauty and perfection of human nature as a whole, and of this world altogether, should be manifested, to the glory of the great Maker, by the full use of every one of the faculties and forces of our nature, and of every one of the objects, forces, and primi- tive arrangements of external nature. Not heaven only, but “heaven and earth 55 are to be “ full of the glory of God.” It is as a principal instance of this large and joyful freedom of Christian morality that I think it well worth while to vindicate the full lawfulness of laughter. It is no true in- terpretation of the Divine religion which would make it nip off with relentless scissors every free-budding growth of spontaneous nature, and which, because the Divine Law- giver has said that “for every idle word 55 which is the free “ abundance of the heart,” men “ shall give account,” therefore concludes that for every such word they shall be con- demned. On the contrary, the result of such “account” may sometimes be, not condem- nation, but praise. Agreeable with this is the honour put by our Lord and his Apostles upon children and the child-like mind. “ Bubbling fountains of iniquity ! ” exclaimed the great Calvinist Toplady, unworthily of himself, as he passed a group of children at play ; — “ And of such is the kingdom of heaven ! ” might some one have answered him ! The two together would have made up a strange picture of heaven ! “ The great mistake we have made in educa- tion,” said a very different person, Lord Pal- merston, “ is that we have forgotten the truth, that all men are bom goodd Lord Palmer- ston, it should be remembered, had no chil- dren in his house. Otherwise, he would have seen outbursts of naked selfishness, — -perhaps also of ferocity of temper, and revenge, and of various other serious faults, which his genial though, in some respects, deplorably lax conscience would have found it hard indeed to reconcile with his theory. But if we strike the balance between Toplady and Palmerston, we may get some great truths. Surely, that which belongs to all children, as children, and appears to us so to be a part of the child-nature, that we are obliged to believe that it is independent of the Fall, must be good. There is a great saying of Schiller, somewhere quoted by the author of Friends in Council , “ Death cannot be evil, since it is universal 55 (that may be twisted into a perilous falsehood, but let it be taken in good part). It was beautifully, as well as characteristically, asked by that great preacher of a true and Christianised natural religion, by “ him who uttered nothing base,” the great William Wordsworth : — - “ Who would check the happy feeling That inspires the linnet’s song ? Who would stop the swallow, wheeling On her pinions swift and strong ? ” And he was no rebel against the restraints of divine morality, but only a rightly trustful child of the Most Holy, when he wrote the conclusion of another beautiful poem — “The Kitten and Falling Leaves;” and when in one of the noblest and most inspired poems in the English, or in any other language, he says, speaking of birds and beasts rejoicing in the spring, — r ‘ Yc blessed creatures, I have heard the call Ye to each other make ; I see The heavens laugh with you in your j ubilee ; My heart is at your festival, My head hath its coronal, The fulness of your bliss, I feel — I feel it alt. Oh, evil day ! if I were sullen AVhile Earth herself is adorning, This sweet May morning, And the children are culling On every side, In a thousand valleys far and wide, Fresh flowers ; while the sun shines warm, And the babe leaps up on his mother’s arm : — I hear, I hear, with joy I hear ! ’ I do not therefore fear to affirm that laughter, even the free and boundlessly joyous laughter of children and child-like ■ — — f — Good Words, July i, 1869.] LAUGHTER. 485 souls, cannot be forbidden by Holy Scrip- ture rightly understood; — single texts must be misinterpreted which are thought to forbid it.* 1 Let us, then, examine one of these texts. It may be asked, “ Does not our Lord say, ‘ Woe unto you that laugh now , for ye shall weepV ” Yes; but, as has been well replied, t He also says, “ Blessed are they that weep now : for they shall laugh .” The act, the habit, which in one place is con- demned, is in the other made characteristic of the state of the victorious happiness of the children of God. All depends on context, proportion, and the place in the order of human life, which it is made to occupy. Placed first or uppermost, it is mischievous ; and akin, at least, to many kinds of sin. They whose life may be described as funda- mentally one of laughing, are on the road to misery, — the end of that mirth is heaviness. But he whose life is in its great object, tendency, and effect, a faithful service of God and of men, shall be free to laugh ; and his laughter, like all other acts of his — so far as he is such as has been described — shall be blest. The solid earth, full of mines of gold, and iron, and ten thousand useful and precious products, may yet afford to bring forth also on its surface innumera- ble wild flowers, for beauty and for joy. And so I humbly trust I am not wrong in believing that the true meaning and intended resultant of the two sentences above quoted of our Divine Lord is not ill expressed by the following lines of one whom no one will accuse of unchristian wantonness — the poet Cowper : — . . . . “ Let no man charge me that I mean To clothe in sable every social scene, And give good company a face severe, As if they met around a father’s bier, (But) tell some men that pleasure all their bent, And laughter all their work, is life misspent. ”t These great sayings of our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount were as a powerful yeast cast into the thoughts of men, teach- ing great truths, but to be interpreted by the free Spirit of God within us, in harmony with divine laws revealed elsewhere. It is by the * “ If it be harmful to be angry,” says Milton, “ and withal to cast a lowering smile, when the properest object calls for both, it will be long enough ere any be able to say why those two most rational faculties of human intellect, anger and laughter, were first seated in the breast of man.” — Animad- versions on the Remonstrant. t “ They who weep are declared to be blessed, not because they weep, but because they shall laugh ; and the woe threatened to the laughers is in like manner, that they shall mourn and weep. Therefore, they who have this spirit in them will endeavour to forward the blessing, and avoid the woe.” — Guesses at Truth, first series, p. 340, in an admirable little essay on my subject, to which I am indebted for many quotations. X Cowper' s Poems : — Conversation. balance, the resultant of the whole, that our practical course and our belief must be^ guided.* 3. On the above principles I will venture even one somewhat hazardous step further, and humbly, yet confidently, affirm that no part of the Divine warning against those that “laugh now” need apply (though doubtless it often does) even to those whose work and business in life is the right guidance of laugh- ter, — as for instance the editors of publica- tions having that for their object. I say it need not do so. For the application, as I humbly venture to think, of that Divine warning is intended to be to such as make laughter, levity, selfish or heartless mirth, the main stuff and substance of the great “now;” to whom life on earth is food for a cynical or a frivolous mirth. But what if some men, being gifted thereto, feel it their impulse and inward calling to deal with this great human manifestation, this broad fact in the existing order of things, laughter, with all its con- comitant effects, which exists whether we will or no, and “ seeing this move coming ” take it in hand to “ head it,” — to guide its activity and manifold forceful life into fruitful or beneficial instead of poisonous or barren fields? What if some one, like young Richard II. , seeing a motley crew of somewhat wanton creatures running riot, and likely to work mischief, does not frown wrath upon them, but generously and in good temper fronts them with an offer, not unrespectfully made, —“I will be your king?” — or, like David and his Adullamites, fears not to go to live among these wild sons of nature, not to give way for an instant to their wills in so far as they are evil or wanton, but rather with the wish and hope to win them by divine arts of government, and with the light hand of sym- pathy and firmness combined, to more civil- ised ways ? — then, I say, although a churlish and blind-hearted Nabal may see no merit in such a man, every nobler Abigail will feel and proclaim that he deserves well of mankind in doing a work which greatly needs to be done. And we humbly believe that he will receive, not only absolution, but even a deserved praise at the hands of the unerring justice and love of Him who came to bless our human life as a whole, and who has opened a j wide place in His kingdom for every harmless ! form of human life, activity, and happiness. Of course — and of this it is all important * The author of this paper has endeavoured to set this forth at length in No. 12 of the “Tracts for Priests and People” (Macmillan), on the “ Testimony of Scripture to the Authority of Conscience and of Reason.” 486 LAUGHTER. rGood Words, July 1,1869. that we should take earnest heed — if this good result is to follow from such men’s efforts, and this blessing to attend them, the said editors must guide — and guide aright. King Richard must not become himself a W at Tyler, nor princely David a scape-grace, like those with whom for the time he associates ; his object must be to raise, ennoble, purify, — or, at any rate, to avoid every baser misdirec- tion of the natural joy of human kind. It is, then, I venture to affirm, a poor, a thin, a meagre, and an unchristian morality which does not acknowledge that some kinds of die heartiest and freest mirth is not only harmless, but directly and even deeply bene- ficial to the whole life of the spirit of men, tending to the kindling of love in the place of selfishness, of warmth in the place of cold- ness, of life and play of every joyful faculty of human nature rather than the stiffness and rigidity which is akin with, and is in the way to produce death. One topic more I must touch before pro- ceeding to speak of the sins and dangers of laughter. It is worth while to affirm here that hearty laughter ?ieed not be in the least against good manners. Of course there are kinds of laughter which are so ; and there are many occasions when much laughter is so. But the whole notion that hearty laughter is in itself something coarse, that “ refined ” persons, or those of gentle blood and gentle manners, would not indulge in anything more than “a smile,” and even think it necessary to apologize for that — as when men say they could “scarce refrain from a smile ” — is a strange delusion, and a piece of mischievous worldliness. It is part of the tyranny with which the “ customs and traditions of the world ” cramp and stifle the free and strong life of the heart and spirit ; and cover over God’s living work in nature with a miserable Rachel-ena?nel of so-called “ polite ” manners, under which no breath can any more be freely breathed by the spirit of a human being, than a physical breath can under the pressure of those murderous abominations, with which girls are allowed to kill themselves — tight stays. But this notion of the impropriety of any but the faintest laughter in “good society” prevails fatally, especially in “ young ladies’ seminaries,” within the soul-withering dominion of those “ prim ” manners against which Dickens has in his whole writings waged so effective a war, especially where, with his peculiar and inimi- table inspiration of wit, he makes a professor of “ deportment ” instruct a young lady, be- fore entering a room, in order to bring her t* ' -- — — - - - mouth into the correct refined shape, to recite the words, “ Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes, and prism.” These artificial and forced manners are the fruitful source of those in- tolerable pests of social life “ primness ” and “ stiffness,” tending to turn free human beings into artificial dolls moved by rigid springs and wires. And by too violent a reaction it is also the parent of the contrary extreme, the coarseness, lawless, and ungentle wanton- ness, and “ tomboyishness ” of the “ Girl of the Period.” Had proper freedom and naturalness been allowed to childhood and youth, such abortions of good manners could not have invaded the land. The “ prism ” manners wither all originality and- freshness of character at its root, rub off all corners, clip down all men and women to* one uniform standard of artificial shape, and turn the fresh and noble forest-land of the world, which the Almighty Maker filled with, an endless variety of strong-growing trees and shrubs, into the likeness of a cockney tea-garden, in which the beauteous products of nature, the shrubs and even trees, are cut into the form of peacocks and tea-pots. The manners of most foreign countries are- much freer, though at the same time much more truly “refined.” The French say of us English that we only laugh “ du bout des ffivres” (with the tips of our lips), the true “prism” caricature of a laugh A 4. I proceed now to another most essential and necessary branch of the subject, the sins and dangers of laughter. The principal reason why laughter is a region of danger for fallen beings is that, as Milton has said, Mirth is a twin-sister of “the: * It is related of a great man, 'taken from us some'years back,, that, being admitted, late in life, to court, he felt himself at first in difficulties from scruples about laughter He believed that hearty laughter was hardly proper in those celestial “ circles ; ” and yet, having a strong sense of the ludicrous, he was often tempted, during the free and pleasant conversations he held there, to that unseemly manifestation of amusement, as he believed it was considered. When, therefore, the temptation came upon him, he suppressed the natural expression of his feelings by physical force — applying his knuckle with energy to his upper lip ! — of which the result was a sound something akin to that which might be produced by a semi-stifled penny trumpet — much to the loss of the great man’s dignity. When- he had lived longer in those empyrean regions, he no doubt must have learnt a greater and more genial freedom. Indeed, it may be said generally, that there is less of affectation of any kind in those highest regions of English society than anywhere else amongst us (unless it be among hearty and noble sons of the soil), which great blessing, like so many others relating to the tone of our domestic and family life, has been conferred upon us mainly by the example of the highest lady of the land. No one has a greater dislike to affectation or insincerity of any kind than our most gracious sovereign Queen Victoria, whom may God preserve. Let not anything here said be twisted into any justification of the coarse and ill-mannered laugh, which wantonly forces its rude presence into unsuitable times and places. Nor let it be understood to defend the roughness and reckless defiance of good taste sometimes to be deplored in even otherwise gentle women. Certainly when a woman loses gentleness and becomes boyish and rude, she loses her fairest ornament, and much of the grace which is a woman’s true “ decoration.” Good Words, July i, 1869.] LAUGHTER. 4^7 mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty;” and Liberty in fallen man is continually perverted into Licetice — a totally different thing. What exactly the difference between these two, Liberty and Licence, is, it may not be easy in exact words to define. But perhaps it may be said that Liberty is the freedom of a child of God, governed and restrained, not by iron rules from without, but by its godlike in- stincts, whereas Licence has no such instincts. Liberty, as a true child of the Most High, may be trusted to play in its Father’s house ; but Licence is as a little fiend, or soulless imp, or brute-creature, let in there by mistake, and sure to be guilty, if not of gross, yet of continual slight, offences against good feel- ing and good taste ; and so the authorities have to expel him with shame, or to keep him under iron rules of discipline till, per- chance, he may become a law to himself, and attain to the “ glorious liberty of the children of God,” guided securely by its divine in- stincts of purity, of love, and of gentleness. I must now endeavour to instance defi- nitely some of the kinds of licentious laughter, and denounce them. “Jesting,” says Fuller, in his admirable little essay in The Holy and Profane State , “ is not unlawful, if it trespasseth not in quan- tity. , quality , or season .” (a.) In quantity. This I do not understand of intensity of laughter, but only of the extent it covers of time and of subject. For the intensest laugh, even to tears, may be harm- less. Nay, it is, doubtless, in its place and time , not only lawful, but excellent; but then it must be limited to its proper place and time. Such laughter entirely unrestrained, say in a royal presence, if pardonable, yet certainly would need pardon; probably for this reason, that it is immodest, and therefore wrong, in an august presence to draw general attention to oneself. But yet the thing in itself is good ; and we have seen laughter, even to floods of tears, restrained within narrow bounds as to noise, that would have been harmless, not to say praiseworthy, in the most celestial of earthly “ circles” at proper times. Excess of laughter is to be found, as I have said, not in the intensity, but in the extent of subject or of time that it is allowed to cover. Laughter pulls out a stop in the organ of con- versation and social intercourse, — what maybe called the Levity stop. Hence, no doubt, its great use at times, as in turning an incipient quarrel into a joke, or in lightening the pres- sure of subjects taken more seriously than they deserve, leading men to find — “ E’en in things by sorrow wrought. Matter for a jocund thought,” — opening safety-valves whereby superfluous steam may escape harmlessly. But hence also its danger. What more provoking than men who will persist in pulling out that stop in the midst of serious and profitable discus- sion, whether at public or private meetings, and so let off, not superfluous, but most use- ful steam, which otherwise might have done invaluable work ? And generally, when it ab- sorbs much time, it is surely mischievous and a snare. It is not good, as says Fuller, “ where it is a master-quality, but only where it attendeth on other perfections.” Excuse may be made for some who err in this way, because their laugh is involuntary, the result of a morbid state of nerves, and a let- ting off in an at least comparatively harmless way, and by a kind of defiance, of some in- ward and oppressive pain, and so to the patient the lesser of two evils ; still to others it is an evil, even in some cases a serious one. “Make not jests,” said Fuller, “ till thou hecomest one ” Limit laughter strictly in time and place, lest it displace nobler things. ( b. ) Of all dangers in laughter, of course, none is greater than that of its trespassing upon sacred ground. Why laughter is wrong in sacred places and sacred times, it may not be easy to say ; but that it is so an im- perious instinct in the soul of every man of sound heart absolutely declares. “Jest not,” says Fuller, “ with the two-edged sword of God’s Word. Will nothing please thee to wash thy hands in hut the font ? or to drink healths in hut the church chalice ? Dangerous is it to wit-wanton it with the majestie of God; wherefore if, without intention , and against thy will, by chatice medley thou hittest Scripture in ordmary discourse, yet fly to the city of refuge, and pray to God to forgive thee!' “But,” it may be objected, “do you mean to affirm that all jests which turn upon any words of holy Scripture, — even such as merely touch what may be called its external covering, the mere earthen vessels wherein the heavenly treasure is contained, and in no way even graze the blessed and holy Name, or any of the great verities of Divine religion, — do you mean that all such jests as take their material only from the mere outside of Scrip- ture, and make ‘ Pulpit Table-Talk ,’ such as truly reverend names have at times, and within strict prescribed limits, sanctioned — are to be branded as profane?”* * “ It is to be observed,” says Archbishop Wliately, in his Annotations on Bacon’s Essays (Essay xvi., Atheism ), “ that we are not to be offended as if sacred matters were laughed at, when some folly that has been forced into co7inexion with them is exposed. When things really ridiculous are mixed up with religion, who is to be blamed ? Not he who shows that they are ridiculous, but those who disfigure truth by blending 438 LAUGHTER. It would be great arrogance for any one in the face of the authorities that may be pleaded for the practice, to do so. That cannot be in its nature profane in which such men’s consciences have allowed themselves. Of course whenever any one transgresses such limits as I have assigned for such jests, as when the matter of them is taken from the heavenly treasure itself, not from its earthen vessel, it is then inexcusable; but other- wise, perhaps it is harmless. The golden sceptre may be, and I believe is, often held out to such transgressors. But, at any rate, it is a dangerous practice ; and while we cannot condemn those who allow themselves in it, if only the Spirit of holiness and of love is allowed to assign strict limits to such liberty, ' yet we can scarcely doubt that those of us who | have hitherto allowed themselves some — it may be pardonable — licence in this matter, and in so doing have not done ill, would yet do better were they henceforth to “ take the pledge” of a voluntary, but yet- “total ab- stinence.” As to wantonly laughing in sacred places, — as in the midst of a congregation gathered for Divine worship, — it is the sin of poor, of shallow, of unworthy, or of over youthful souls. The sight of a wanton boy, or a silly wench, or of men and women who have not outgrown their childishness, wilfully laughing in church, suggests the thought of a monkey who, in I illicit ways, should have climbed the walls of Heaven, and intruded his ignoble chatter and soulless sport among the august Presences there. And it should receive the treatment which that would merit, — the expulsion of the offender with sharp decisiveness, and a de- served ignominy. If in jesting you are led into dancing over the lines of the Divine morality, and of Divine reverence, and so fall down some precipices of the Divine ven- geance, or lead others to that result, it will be i poor comfort to reflect that you were dancing i when you did so. (c.) Impure jests, by which I mean all such as tend to loosen morals (I am not speaking of such as offend against canons of taste, which may without offence vary in different countries and in different individual men), are a gross offence in laughter. “Wanton, jests,” says Fuller, “make fools laugh and wise men frown. Seeing we are civilised Englishmen , let us not he naked savages in our talk!' There are some men whom if you hear laughing loud, you feel an almost certain conviction that the jest is falsehood with it. . . . A tree is not injured by being cleared of moss and lichens ; nor truth by having folly and sophistry torn away from around it.” [Good Words, July i, 1859. something that had better not have been said ; its spice, such as it is, is wanton, and tends to the practice of some heartless or degrading wickedness ; nothing but immorality really amuses such persons — the joke was of the nature that “ makes fools laugh in the ale- house.” Of forerunners , and preparers of the soil, for sin, none is more effective than loose talking; the “ foolish talking and jesting which is not convenie?itf denounced by St. Paul. Vile, disgraceful in any gentleman even, but a dark crime in any professing Christian, is such talk, crying to heaven for vengeance upon its per- petrators. Execrable also is the taste which offends us often at “ Penny Readings,” and in conversation and popular songs, which takes in hand the relations between the sexes as matter for a merely heartless and foolish levity. The wretched vulgarities anent “ the ladies,” to which one is at times exposed to listen, are serious evils, against which it be- hoves all Christian men and women to set their faces sternly. Do women like, or ought they to like, to be considered mere playthings? What folly and vulgarity is worse, or more odious and contemptible, than this miserable flippancy ? % I must beg permission here to put in a protest also against making drunkenness a subject for laughter, at least in mixed com- panies. It only tends to make that a subject | of amusement which to every Christian — in- I deed, I might say, considering the immeasur- able miseries of which drunkenness is the prolific parent, to every man of the slightest benevolence — should be an object of disgust and loathing. (. d .) There are many sins committed, in laughter, against love. Such is any, even the slightest real mockery of other men’s sufferings, deformities, calami- ties. How beautiful is Fuller’s warning — “Scoff not at the natural defects of any, which are not in their power to amend. O ’ tis crueltie to heat a cripple with his own crutches. Neither flout any for his profession if honest, though poore and painfulle. Mock not a cobbler for his black thumbes .” “ Some,” he says, elsewhere, “ think their conceits, like mustard, not good except they bite.” * The love of men for women, and of women for men, is the most beautiful of human affections ; but corruptio opti?ni pessima. Let innumerable wounded, embittered, even broken hearts, and those sometimes the gentlest of hearts, be allowed to utter their terrible warning against heartless flirtations, which are felt to receive a kind of spurious absolution from society, by the levity of a silly and vulgar flippancy of treat- ment of such subjects. Let it be remembered that the style of jesting in which men allow themselves on the relations of men to women, is a most important element in the education of the general mind on subjects of which it is scarcely possible to exaggerate the importance with reference to human happiness and human morality. Good Words, July x, i86j,] THE BUCKINGHAMSHIRE LABOURER. 489 Against love, that kind of wit consisting ! of playful personalities called chaff is apt in some hands to sin — it is an edge-tool that I can only be trusted in the hands of love and mutual respect. Where “ hearts are of each other sure,” such playfulness is one of the pleasantest exercises of the heart’s affections, jj It is no true friendship that cannot stand or I does not delight in it. But there are cats | that seem unable to play in this style without I letting the claws through the velvet ; and on the claws there will be a little — what the French so happily call a soup^on — of poison. The domestic cat has, in such cases, a little of the wild cat — some even of its blood-thirst — still | living in it. So are there some people who cannot use this “ play ” with safety ; and many other grave and serious persons who do not under- stand it. But in others it is graciousness itself. All depends upon spirit. The Pente- costal spirit of love and purity, rather than any laws written on stone,* must decide where it is safe and where dangerous, or ungentle. With such cautions and limita- tions, laughter may be made not only harm- less, but profitable. The following graceful lines on Nonsense admirably express some of the lighter uses of sportiveness : — Though to praise thee can’t be right. Yet, Nonsense ! thou art exquisite 1 When for long and weary hours We have sate with patient faces, Tasking our exhausted powers, To utter wise old commonplaces ; Hearing and repeating too Things unquestionably true, Maxims which there’s no denying, Facts to which there’s no replying; Then how often have we said, With tired brain and aching head, “ Sense may be all true and right — But, Nonsense ! thou art exquisite ! ” When we close the fireside round, When young hearts with joy are brimming, While gay laughing voices sound, And eyes with dewy mirth are swimming In the free and fearless sense Of friendship’s fullest confidence. Pleasant then, without a check, To lay the reins on fancy’s neck. And let her wild caprices vary Through many a frolicsome vagary, Exclaiming still, in gay delight, “ Oh, Nonsense ! thou art exquisite ! ”* And so I beg to conclude, hoping that it will not have been altogether useless to have attempted in this brief essay, principally written during festive, days of Christmas-time, to reconcile, on this subject, the instincts of good men and child-like souls, with the Divine precepts of the Book of books; and to vindicate our Christian liberty, at Christ- mas, as at other joyous times, to rejoice with a free mind ; with a well-founded conscious- I ness that mirth and laughter need not jar in the least degree (though, alas ! from the lack of true guidance they so often do) against the most sensitive purity, the most wakeful love, or against any of the sacred instincts of “ the princely heart of innocence.” W. H. LYTTELTON. Nonsense ! thou delicious thing, Thought and feeling’s effervescence Like the bubbles from a spring, In their sparkling evanescence ; Thou, the child of sport and play, When the brain keeps holiday. When old gravity and reason Are dismissed as out of season, And imagination seizes The dominion while she pleases — TOILING AND MOILING. ^omc gitcomd of am Slorkiir^ g topic, anfr goto ffffre. By “ GOOD WORDS ” COMMISSIONER. IV. THE BUCKINGHAMSHIRE LABOURER. The English hind is best off in some of the northern, worst off in some of the south- ! coast counties. The Buckinghamshire la- i bourer, however, may be taken with tolerable ; fairness as a type of the English peasant. | Bucks is a good deal nearer to Dorsetshire | than it is to Northumberland, and the average I of agricultural wages in Bucks is nearer the ! Dorsetshire than the Northumbrian average ; * The Day of Pentecost among the Israelites was, according ! to tradition, the day of the giving of the Law from Mount I Sinai. When the Spirit of God descended upon the Church : on that day, it was thereby very clearly signified that a free, though a perfectly Holy, Spirit was, under the perfect dispen sation, to take that place in the government of the_ children of God, which had before been occupied by a set of inflexible rules or laws written on stone. X-34 but, for that very reason, the Buckingham- shire labourer may all the more fairly be selected as a type of the class who receive corduroy breeches as rewards of virtue. The average wages of an agricultural labourer in Buckinghamshire are about ioj-. a week, with, in some parts, a shilling extra on Sundays for milking. In exceptional cases, men get as much as 15.L a week, and such men eat meat twice a day. The average physique of the Buckinghamshire labourers, however, is not suggestive of high living. A market-day * By the late Mrs. H. Venn Elliott, published in the Life of her husband. 1 490 THE BUCKINGHAMSHIRE LABOURER. |g 0 dd words , 1 affords a good opportunity of comparing them with their masters. The rinderpest has temporarily injured Aylesbury market, but smock-frocks still muster there on Saturday in force — smocks the colour of a cabbage- leaf, intricately embroidered on the shoulders, back, and breast, and sometimes decorated at the corners of the broad turn-over collars with blue glass buttons ; smocks once green, bleached by the weather almost white ; now and then a blue smock ; and black smocks, for even the coal-carters in Buckinghamshire are smock-frocked. Along the roads and over the meadows the smock-wearers slouch into town — some of the old men looking rather droll in spectacles and tall black hats — to moon amongst the green-marked sheep, the black pigs, and the horses with straw- plaited tails in the Market Square, and to twist calves’ tails and to stand at the head of beasts in the Cattle Market. As a class, the patient-eyed clodhoppers seem a grass- hoppery, feeble, shrivelled race, beside the square-shouldered succulent-fleshed farmers. One poor old gaffer whom I saw, dangling his long thin legs from the footboard of a carrier’s cart, was a “ perfect anatomy.” There is not much piece-work in Bucking- hamshire now, mowing machines, &c., being pretty generally employed. The subsidiary industries of straw-plaiting and lace-making are not what they once were either, and the early age at which children have been put to them tells injuriously upon their prospects now that they have grown up mistresses of nothing but those crafts. In a Buckingham- shire parish with a population of 8oo the majority of the women can neither read nor write (the men are not much more accom- plished), and the schoolmistress has only 35 pupils — the eldest not more than twelve years of age. “ Plaiting,” said the school- mistress, “ is not so profitable as it used to be, and big girls would be glad to get places, but they cannot take them, because they do not know how to do even plain sewing. The plaiting school is the only school they have been at. Little things not much more than twelve months old go to the plaiting schools. When they can hardly toddle, you see them with bits of straw in their hands, trying to twist them in and out.” As to these plaiting schools, however, ac- counts differed. I was told, on one hand, that the parents received their children’s earnings ; on the other, that they constituted half of the income of the mistress. By an informant who held the latter view I was told that he lived close by a plaiting school, “ and the little uns love it — they’re always at the door before time. They’d far rather go there than to a National or a British school, where half the time is spent in idleness. Bless you, they are taught reading at the plaiting schools,, and writing, too, sometimes, I think.” Accord- ing to this authority, no child was admitted to a plaiting school under eight. When asked whether there was much dis- tress in her neighbourhood — a fairly typical one — the slighted schoolmistress answered with rather eager emphasis, “ The people live well. The man pays for rent and bread, | and so on, and then his wife and daughters’ plaiting pays the rest. Girls who plait pay 2s. 6 d. a-week to their parents for their keep. They dress quite fashionably.” I found, however, in more places than one that Buckinghamshire people, who spoke proudly of there “ being no distress to speak > of about there,” when more closely questioned, were ready to admit (as if it did not at all affect their previous statement) that “some had hard times in the winter,” and that some were still in receipt of out-door relief ; “ widows, and poor men out of work, and so on, getting a shilling or two a-week, and a t loaf of bread or so, according to families.” The only persons whom I saw in Bucking- hamshire that plainly, or probably, belonged to the tribe of professional “ cadgers,” I may add, were a red-faced female tramp openly begging, a peripatetic pamphlet-seller at Buck- ingham Market, a lemon-coloured gipsy woman professedly hawking tin-ware, and a. bronze-faced gipsy woman offering cord for sale in the same style. A good many of the thatched Buckingham- shire cottages look very picturesque, and, running right into the towns as they do, they link town and country together in a quaintly piquant fashion ; but if a man has a family, there is small provision for comfort or decency in those brick-floored, scantily-furnished, often only two-roomed, and generally gardenless hovels, although they do look “ bits” — barring the lack of garden — for Birket Foster. A little way off the noble, green-swarded double j avenue of trees, with far-stretching roots, j showing taut as cables above ground, which j sweeps down to ornamented lodges almost s inside the town that gives the owner of Stowe his title, there is a cluster of cottages. If an artist had his choice, he would, I think, rather paint the cottages than the prim pala- tial faqade to be seen through the arch at the top of the avenue — in spite of the interven- ; ing lawns dotted with fallow-deer. But, so : far as the comfort of their tenants is concerned, Good Words, July i, 1869.] THE BUCKINGHAMSHIRE LABOURER. 49 1 what a strange contrast there is between the two masses of building so near each other ! Perhaps, however, I shall best enable my readers to “get at” the Buckinghamshire labourer by writing out a few notes of his surroundings and of conversations with him and his. I started to talk with him in his home, and on both sides of the hedges, in the golden spring weather, which prematurely bloomed out between rain and snow in Fe- bruary. On the main line the long train, bound from black, busy London to the black, busy north, puffed and rattled away on the sun- gilt metals, and silence once more brooded over the station. In the leisurely style which characterizes even railway manage- ment in agricultural districts, the branch train got under way, and rumbled most decorously out of the Hundred of Dacorum into equally rural Bucks. On both sides the flat, greenly fat country spread in sunny peace. Half-a- dozen men, employed in building what looked like a village “ cage,” knocked off work to watch the train go past. Little lambs gal- loped away from the line fences on long black legs. A sweep’s pony, standing at a level-crossing gate, took fright, turned tail, and scampered down a lonely lane with its soot- sack laden cart, and two black familiars after it. In the train the talk was of old-fashioned seasons come again, promising old-fashioned haymaking in May. The town at which the train stops — in spite of the good-looking new buildings and plate-glass shop-fronts in which it has broken out, in spite of more than one railway-station and a canal wharf, in spite of street-lamps (economically not lighted when the almanack says that it ought to be moon- light), and its multitude of signs, hung out like banners, seems almost as sleepy as the country round. It is not market-day, and a bashful stranger might feel inclined to blush at having to walk alone across the bright, broad, bare market-square, watched as he goes with sleepy curiosity by trades- men basking at their shop-doors. A quiet, sunny, old-fashioned red street leads up to the green, many-graved churchyard, begirt, in cathedral -close fashion, with quaintly-picturesque old houses, ripe-red and | yellowish-white. In the middle of the church- yard rises the fine cruciform church, a land- mark in the fertile Vale of Aylesbury, part of it .as fresh-looking as when just finished, and the other part under the tools of workmen who are chipping off the rough plaster which i still disfigures its stone, in the leisurely style which seems to be the characteristic (save in sport, volunteering, and duck-hatching) of the latitude. But, if the town is quiet, the country outside it seems — to one who was in London an hour or two before — almost sound asleep ; that is, so far as human life is concerned. Larks are singing by the hun- dred, in their “ privacy of glorious light •” visible, plump, brown thrushes are also sing- ing all around ; glossy rooks caw, circle, drop, strut, and then rise in pettish alarm, to drop again, and strut again, with clerical stateliness, on both hands ; now and then a cow lows, a bullock sulkily soliloquises, a sheep baas like a hoarse basso , a lamb bleats plaintively, a sheep-bell rattles its muffled tinkle, or a far-off' dog barks and bays ; but a man’s shout across the brown and green fields is so rare, that it sounds startling. The eye wanders over lonely field after lonely field without lighting on a roof. Beyond the fat, low land rise the still lonelier-looking Chiltern Hills, with single trees upon their sky-line, pall-like dark woods sweeping down their sides; and chalky, unwooded, furze- dotted pastures beneath the woods, that make one think of the shorn, tufted lower limbs of poodles. On the highway, the silent road- mender gazes for five minutes after the pedes- trian who passes him, or the hip-booted horseman who gallops past, or the taxed cart, to which the fat old lady gives a “ list to port,” or the half-tilted miller’s waggon, slowly drawn by a pair of plump dappled greys, whilst the white-powdered miller’s man beguiles the tedium of his journey by pitching fragments of his lunch to the white-' and-liver spaniel that is leaping and whining at the cart’s-tail. When the waggon has ground out of hearing, there is nothing to remind the road-mender that there is any man besides himself astir in the world, ex- cept the sullen thud of the flail, that comes from the long, low, black barn a field off. Lanes branch from the highway at right- angles, with white finger-posts indicating the distance of the villages to which the lanes lead in miles and furlongs. These lanes are even more lonely than the road. In one of them stands a smock-frocked little boy, holding the halter of a rough-coated horse that lies upon its side, twitching its lips, and now and then giving a convulsive little kick. He watches it stolidly, like a statue of puzzled patience. “ What’s the matter with your horse?” he is asked. “Pretty near dead.” “ And what are you going to do ? ” “ Doan’t know, sir, unless summun comes along.” And then he resumes his silent sentry, staring straight at nothing like a 492 THE BUCKINGHAMSHIRE LABOURER. L Good words, juiy t, 1869. mounted Horse Guards sentinel. Presently, another little boy is fallen in with. He is coming from a farm in whose dank straw- yard, trodden into deep mud near the horse- pond, half-a-dozen white and brown bullocks and a chestnut colt, with a long silver tail and mane, are feeding out of grey and yellow structures like unpainted four-post bedsteads without tops, whilst a white-legged tortoise- shell cat is daintily picking her way through the drier rick-yard. He is a very thin, “weedy” little boy, with pale brown face and languid brown eyes. He wears a peak- less cap, an old, red comforter, and a faded, tattered smock. He pants as he propels his two-wheeled barrow, and shovels horse-dung into it with a rusty spade. He looks as if he must be very badly off, but he does not turn out to be so, according to the general notion of the state of things in the South Midlands. This is the account he gives of himself — each item pulled out, like a cork, by a separate question. . “ I’m gooin’ thir- teen, sir. Yes, I goo to school. To the chapel school. It begins at nine a-Sundays. No, I don’t goo to no school a-weekdays. I have meat about twice a week. Meat such as I eat (said very proudly) costs ninepence a pound — tenpence sometimes. Beef and mutton both. I’m pickin’ up dung for Mr. . Iget him a cartload a week. Twobarrers- full a day. Each on ’em takes me about a hour. Miles, I s’pose, I walks. He gives me y. 6d. a-week. Little boys (said very super- ciliously) as goos crow-keepin’ an’ such, gets y. a-week, sometimes y. 6d. — that’s what they gets. Rest o’ my time I’m plaitin’. I get three-halfpence a score * for that. Can’t say a score o’ what. We call it a score. Don’t know what you mean, sir. I can do any kind o’ work (said with unlimited confi- dence in the universality of his genius). Yes, sir, I should be glad to get summut else to do.” On again through the lonely lanes. The brown hedges are sprinkled with bursting buds, yellow catkins dangle from them, and “ palm” branches are buttoned with silver- grey floss-silk. Little wrens run in and out of the hedges like mice, homely brown sparrows chirp inside, and in the fields beyond, larks, singing as they go, are making painful efforts to rise, like young poets. The furze is in blossom, the hedge-side grass is starred with dandelions, and just a^bove the ditches the cuckoo-pint raises its glossy spear-heads. Some of the fences are of dead thorn-branches — sometimes sliced from the live stems which show their transversely truncated torsos close * Of yards. by — arranged in zigzags. Beside others lie faggots of brushwood, a tumbril-load of which a tiny Hodge, in Jim Crow, smock, and buskins, is driving off as seriously as if he was a grand- father. Little brooks, spanned by little plank bridges, cross the road. The gates have a park-like look, being almost all painted white. Under the clipped hedges, and on the brown furrows, smock-frocks squat, with their legs apart like the legs of compasses, munching their bread and cheese in sociable silence. One man eats his all alone in the middle of a meadow blotched with old mole- hills. Over a ploughed field, littered with lumps of chalk, toils another smock-frock, lifting up his legs as if his goal lay, in Yankee phrase, “somewhere on the other side of eternity.” After the rush of city life, there is something very refreshing in the leisureli- ness of country life. Clod hopper seems a very inappropriately jerky name to give to ploughmen. As the cochineal insect takes its colour from the opuntia, so country- people seem to take their tone from the crops in the midst of which they live. The grass and the com do not hurry — and why should they ? In a wide meadow, ruled with wheeled sheep-troughs, two other men are plodding, in equally leisurely style, from the far-off yellow litter and cut plum-cake-like stack, with pitch- forked loads of straw and hay upon their backs. Here a plough rests, as if asleep, between the furrows ; there a plough, drawn by a tandem of four black horses, or three brown horses with black manes and tails, turns the sparsely-green soil into bristly-brown clods. The plough is steered by a man in neutral- hued monkey-jacket and corduroy breeches, and a little fellow in a grey-green smock cracks his big whip as he walks backwards alongside his team. Yonder a dim-blue, single-horsed, two-manned plough goes back- wards and forwards. In the next field two or three men are stooping over the dark soil, dibbling holes with one hand whilst they dip the other into their leather seed- pouches. In another field a brown and a white horse are drawing harrows, driven with cord reins by a man in a red shirt, which blazes like a poppy on the brown clods : an old fellow, in a rusty velveteen shooting- jacket and dingy white hat, trudging at the same time, with his gun under his arm, over the barren-looking square. But now there are signs of a village. Plump, snowy-white ducks are paddling in the ditches; and a man is forking manure into a tumbril from the “ farmer’s short-cake ” that raises its straw-bristled tableland above THE BUCKINGHAMSHIRE LABOURER. Good Words, July i, 1869.] 493 the roadside turf. The village is a cluster of cottages ; some two-storied, with red brick walls and slated roofs ; some of yellow-washed timber-panelled brick, with high low-hanging roofs of mossy thatch ; and others of white- washed brick and flint, both showing through the wash, with cracked grey shutters that hang down like table-leaves, and tiny quasi-dormer windows in the low thatched roofs. At some of the cottage doors women stand plaiting straw. In the churchyard the sexton is turfing a grave, but jealous for his village’s reputation in a sanitary point of view, he anxiously explains that it is an old grave. He invites the wayfarer to enter the vestry to see the church’s “lions” — the carved closet in which the surplices are kept, and a painting of Moses and Aaron. Hard by the church is a sleepy, cosy old mansion, with an avenue of trees in a green paddock begoldened with Lent lilies ; and hard by that, the red rectory with an ivy-clad, bee- hived lodge. In the outskirts of the village stands a square, low, old-fashioned farm- house, with fruit-trees trained upon its walls. There are old grassy orchards here and | there, in one of which hangs a public-house ! sign. Altogether the village seems an “ idyl- lic ” kind of place to live in ; but let us hear how its inhabitants do live in it. At another public-house, labourers are taking their mid- day rest and beer. One of them is picked out by his fellows to give the information required, as being most familiar with all kinds of agricultural labour. He has scanty, iron- grey hair, moistly wisped down on his weather- beaten forehead, and white stubble on his chin. He wears corduroy trousers and a bone-buttoned fustian jacket, and his brick- dust-coloured throat is bare. This is what he says, spontaneously and in reply to ques- tions : — “ Yes, sir, I can do any kind o’ hag- ricult’ral labour. Ast anybody that knows me — I don’t care who ye ast. I’ve worked for Mr. and Mr. close by ; an’ you can goo to them when you’ve done talkin’ to me. I’ll goo from the plough even to the buildin’ an’ thetchin’, an’ that takes it all through. I’ve been a prizeman at the buildin’ an’ thetchin’. Law bless ye, sir, it ain’t con- fined to this parish ! Men comes from thirty and forty miles round — t’other side a long way o’ the Chilterns : 15^. is the first prize, and 1 2s. 6d. the second. I can’t say what the third is. I never got so low as that. I get 5 s. the square, naked work, a-thetchin’, an’ 3s. 6d. the other. P’r’aps I’m better off than some — moor so than many be. The work’s in my hands, an’ I know how to do it, an’ so they can’t take it out. A plough- man hereabouts may get 14^. a week, an’ a shepherd the same, but, take it all round, wages is 10 s. or 11s. Some of the far- mers let out their work at haytime and harvest, an’ then you may get moor. But then you’re days and days out o’ work in the year. I reckon I don’t get moor than eight months out o’ the twelve ; an’ my boys don’t get that. Yes, you may call me an 1 odd man,’ if you like — I’ll turn my hand to anything. An’ so’ll my boys. One on ’em’s sixteen, an’ the other’s quite growed up. An’ I’ve had to keep them two great boys all winter — an’ will if I can. Yes, all the winter I have — ’cept when there come a machine, an’ they got 2s. or is. 6d. a day, for takin’ away the straw and chaff - . They’ll goo crow-keepin’— sixpence they’ll push in for ; and what’s moor, they’ll bring it home. That’ll buy a loaf o’ bread. Half a loaf, we say, is better than none — much moor a whole ’un. If they could but earn a shillin’ a week each certain, that ’ud be summut. Some- times my youngest son gets a job pig-drivin’ to Aylesbury, but the soldiers is al’ays at him, an’ that makes him rusty, an’ he swears. He don’t want to be forced to goo for a soldier. He’s a great tall chap, an’ so’s his brother. You see, sir, he ain’t eighteen yet, an’ so his time wouldn’t count, would it, sir ? I want him to try for the police, but he says, ‘ No, father, I’ll never be a bobby — not if I starve.’ I’m six in family, sir — -four gals, youngest is eight. All on ’em plaits, but that’s like throwin’ one ’a’-penny arter another. You buy sixpenn’orth o’ straw, an’ you gets 9 d. for it when it’s done, an’ it takes you four or five hours to do it. Some, p’r’aps, can do the thirty yards in three and a half — that’s accordin’ to quickness. 2d. a week is what’s paid at the plaiting schools. If I’d to pay that for my gals now, it would pull me all' to pieces. There’d be Sd. a week goin’ out — see how that would muddle me. A penny a week, I think, is what they pay at the parish school. I’ve no wish to speak ill o’ hanybody, but my opinion o’ parsons mostly is, that what they’ve got they’ll keep. There’s no lace-makin’ just here. There may be about Buckingham — I never was so far. No, you won’t see women workin’ in the fields here, ’cept, p’r’aps, a wife reapin’ with her husband at harvest. No, sir, I’ve no wish to hemigrate — not as I knows of. Of course, if I could get such wages as them you tells me on in — where was it? — an’ house an’ food too — I’d take ’em, if I could get to ’em. There’s people 494 THE BUCKINGHAMSHIRE LABOURER. [Good Words, July i, 1869. here that get out-door relief, but I can’t tell ye much about that. I don’t suppose I could get so much as a parish-doctor to come j to me. Yes, we’ve a club — it’s held here — sixteenpence a month. Whit Monday’s our club-day. Live, sir ? We live as we can, an’ not as we would. I’ve had turnip-tops, an’ nothing else, an’ them begged. Bless you, we’ve no garden-ground — not so much as we j could put a plant in. Pigs ! There ain’t j many pigs about here. If we could keep I ’em, we ain’t able to get ’em. There was a I deal o’ distress here last winter. For four days I’d nothing — next to nothing to eat, though I ! was in work — I was clearin’ off a score. If we’d had sickness, God A’mighty only knows where we should ha’ been. Arter all, the Lord al’ays provides somehow. If He hadn’t put that there gift o’ mine to do any- thing into my hands, how would my poor children ha’ got on? I don’t know who ye are, sir, or what ye are; but I’ve told ye more about myself than I ever told any man afore. If I was to tell ye all, it would fill that there black book ye’re writin’ in.” And next for a talk with a shepherd. He is a ruddy, robust young fellow, standing in the midst of his ewes and lambs in a hurdled oblong of turnips; and when he sees a stranger suddenly turn aside from the road, climb the hedge bank, stride over the low thorn fence, and straddle across the hurdles, the stalwart young shepherd takes his hands from his pockets, and looks very much in- clined to knock the stranger down, under the impression that such eccentrically auda- cious proceedings can only spring from rabid ovine-kleptomania. But the shepherd’s pipe is empty, and the stranger professes to want a pipe-light. The production of a tobacco-pouch on one side, and the striking of a lucifer held, when alight, between hollowed hands, on the other, are the preliminaries of peace; and when a little lamb, which the shepherd has been obliged to take from its mother, runs up bleating first to him, and then takes its stand between the stranger’s legs, rubbing its white ears and black face against his muddy boots, the shepherd relaxes into conversation. Close by us a pied wagtail runs in and out j under the sheep’s bellies without the least alarm. Its remarkable tameness is remarked | upon ; but it does not interest the shepherd : ; he professes even not to know the wagtail under that or any other name. His sheep are half-breds, he says ; but he cannot tell between what. “ That’s a Down,” he adds, pointing to a plump, broad-backed, black- faced ewe ; but he cannot say what “Down.” He gets 14.5-. a week, thinks others get as much. Carters and ploughmen get 13s. any- how. He has lived in the neighbourhood six years, and was never three months out of work. He never heard of any distress “ to speak on” thereabouts. “What we eat or what we buy, sir, do you mean?” he cross- questions, when asked how often he gets meat. “I get meat twice a day,” he goes on, “ an’ I expect most o’ the people here- abouts gets it once or twice a day. Meat here’s 8 d. and get. Couldn’t get pork last winter under 8\d. The price o’ bread makes a diff’rence. When bread’s down, the mas- ters lower the wages. Yes, I’ve a pretty sight o’ lambs, an’ I haint lost a yow this ’ear — that’s pretty good, we reckon. Yes, them Australian wages ain’t bad ; but I suppose they don’t do much else than shepherd in them parts. But I must be gettin’ on — it’s pretty nigh milkin’ time.” A little brown-faced fellow in a blue-and- wliite neckerchief, buskins, and a very ragged jacket, is asked what he has got in the bas- ket on his shoulder. “ My old coat,” he answers, looking his interrogator sturdily in the face, as if determined to defend that trea- sure at all hazards against felonious appropri- ation. “ How old are you, my boy ? n “ Just gone ten.” “ And what are you doing?” “ Stone-pickin’ in the fields.” “ When did you begin ?” “ I’ve been at it a ’ear.” “What do you get?” “ 2 s. 6d. a week.” “ Do you go to school ?” “ No, I doan’t goo to school — no” answers the small boy, with scornful emphasis, as if he thought such a mode of spending time would be very puerile for a person of his manly, wage-earning importance. Another white finger-post points the way to another whity-brown village church, with an embattled tower. Green-powdered beech- boles (the Sylva of Buckinghamshire — the shire of the ham in the midst of boc — still justifies its name) rise in the green graveyard flush with the top of the roadside wall. Green, | white-and-yellow speckled tombstones, lean back in the hushed sleeping place — a very dif- ferent KOLjxrjrbpiov from the Tower Hamlets’ Cemetery, with its ever rushing and rumbling trains on the straddling viaducts hard by. A little farther on is another quiet, quaintly- named, and quaintly-built jumble of Bucking- hamshire cottages — lichened gables, mossy Good Words, July 1,1869.] THE BUCKINGHAMSHIRE LABOURER. 495 thatch, red brick, yellow brick, dusky plaster, i timber parallelograms, white, grey, green, and black weatherboard. The roar of the black- smith’s bellows, the rhythmical cadence of the hammers on the anvil, in the low black forge, ►are almost the only sounds of human life throughout the place. A cottage-door stands *open. Two or three children are squatted before the hearth-fire, on the pitted, lanky- bricked floor of the only lower room. A young woman is ironing on a low, unpainted table, the chief piece of furniture, placed jj beneath the back window. An attempt to | obtain “social statistics” is made by the stranger who has stepped in, but the young woman takes alarm. “ If you please, sir, I’d rather not do it,” she says ; and fidgets about like a hen, when a hawk is hovering over a farmyard, until the intruder beats an apolo- getic retreat. A neighbour is less cautious, and more communicative. He is a very feeble old man, with a grey-bristled chin, and limbs that seem to be rather hoisted up and down by halyards, with half-jammed blocks, than moved by spontaneous volition. I’m seventy-six,” he pipes. “ Yes, I s’pose I’m past work. I’ve put my shoulder out ; but I was just gooin’ to try to walk into Buck- in’am. The duke may be a very good land- lord, for aught I know, but I don’t live under Tim. My cottage belongs to Mr. . We’ve only the lower room, and one above. Yes, there’s a good many like that. Some, by chance, may have two rooms over. Yes, men with ever so many children lives the same. Me an’ my old woman gets three shil- lins a week from the parish, an’ three loaves ; and a shillin’ has to goo out o’ that for rent. There’s been hard times here last winter. Lace ? Lace makin’ ain’t what it was. Little uns may get 2 d. a day, and big gals, mayhap, 6 d. Yes, a good many on ’em make it here- abouts — yes, both in Buckin’am an’ the vil- lages ; but it’s a poor livin’.” There is nothing “ sensational ” in the English peasant’s life — except when he turns poacher, and shoots the keeper through the head, or gets knocked down and taken up himself. He is not a piquant subject for a character-sketch. He bears his “ prosperity” at 14J. a week, and his semi-starvation on is. and a loaf and a-half a week, with appa- rently equal stolidity. It must be admitted, too, that a good many of our town poor — to say nothing of country air — are worse lodged than the peasant, are as badly oft', in a pecu- niary point of view, as he is at his worst, and would think his receipts at his best a little fortune. But, still, there is something specially pathetic in the way in which the hard-up farmer’s man speaks of his lot. He grumbles, of course, but he does not grumble like the hard-up in towns — as if he had an undoubted right to a great deal better fate ; he accepts his destiny in a quiet, half-stunned fashion, as if he felt that he could not have been born to anything better, however dis- agreeable it may be. It is normal for him to live from hand to mouth, with no hopes of better things beyond. He does not turn a Jacobin, like the town-proletary. Slower wits, no doubt, have something to do with the peasant’s sullen resignation. If he were not so apathetic, he could find better markets for his labour. Still, there is something re- spectable in the unenvious way in which the peasant speaks of his “ betters.” He has to acknowledge “ social superiority ” far more constantly than the town poor are compelled to — it is, indeed, painful to see a hard-work- ing Hodge touching his hat, under a sense of duty, as if he were still a serf, to any one who passes him “dressed like a gentleman,” j although clothes may be the sole point of I superiority which the touched-to can claim over the toucher ; and in all manly virtues, and real gentlemanlike feeling, the one who has obeisance done him may be far inferior to the one who does it. But still Hodge goes on touching his hat ; and his way of thinking of those “ above him ” is sweeter-blooded, so to speak, than that of the town straggler. Hodge would naturally like to be better off, but he does not want to rob others, in order to become so. He still reverences the squire, and all kinds of spiritual and secular pastors and masters ; that is, unless he has had his somewhat slavish deference sapped by a sojourn in towns. He sometimes learns ultra-democracy there : ecce signum — I over- heard a Buckinghamshire bumpkin describ- ing his experiences in some hospital from which he had recently been discharged — not the County Infirmary : Buckinghamshire people boast of that as a model institution which “ Londoners might take copy from.” “ The doctor come to me,” said the dis- charged patient, “ and ‘ Young man,’ says he, £ you’re a deal better.’ ‘ Ex cuse me, sir,' says I, ‘but you’re a fool!’ Yes, I did, though he was a doctor.” “ But that was cheeky,” said the patient’s companion. “ An’ wouldn’t yon ha’ been cheeky ?” was the rejoinder. “ Don’t a man know his own in’ards better than another man ?” 496 THE WAY. [.Good Woxds, July i, r66a THE I said, “ O Guide, go forth : I will follow Thee any whither.” And behold, as we went out over the earth, WAY. It was all June together ; The sun steeped half the world in bliss, And the shadows steeped the rest in quiet- ness. And I said, “ I have heard of Thy way, O Lord, How that it goeth dark through the dark, — Fire and water, tumult and blood, The sun steeped half the world in bliss.” Woes to be suffered and foes withstood. I have heard that the only way to the ark Is over the flood ! Good Words, July x, 1869. J THE WAY. 497 “ And the shadows steeped the rest in quietness.” And whispering said, “It was better with me — Oh, better ! — out on the sunny lea.” But He answered, “ This is thy best, That thou follow me here, and into my rest.” I said, “ O Master, how shall I know When my best is gladness or woe ? How shall I learn what Thy ways be ?” And He said, “ Leave that to me. Follow me only whither I go, Through chilling shadow and scorching glow, Through the desert dust and the battle din, Till the goal be reached, and finished the test, Till the sorrow is past, and the joy is best, — Till I say, ‘ This is my rest ; Enter herein/ ” B. B. B. “And now, O Lord, is this the way? For, behold, I tread smooth paths to-day. What if I loiter and fail to win?” But He said, “ This is the way ; Walk ye herein.” 11. I spoke again, and said, “ I have heard That our joy-times here are quickly past, That the smooth paths are not long to tread, With smile of the sun and with song of the bird ; But, Lord, how long shall this last ? ” “ Not long,” He said ; “ And see thou follow me afterward.” Even at that moment I slipped and sank, Slipped and stumbled down the bank, — Down the bank to a path beneath, Chill and dank as the shadow of death. “ Lord,” I cried, “ I have stumbled astray ; Lead me back, Lord, into Thy way ! Out of the pitfall, out of the gin, Far from terror and safe from sin, Hold Thou up my goings therein !” But He said, “ This is the way;. Walk ye herein.” hi. I went along in that shadow of death, Going and weeping, under my breath, THE TWO BREATHS. [Good Words, July i, 1869. THE TWO BREATHS. A LECTURE DELIVERED AT WINCHESTER, MAY 3 1, 1 869. Ladies, — I have been honoured by a se- i cond invitation to address you here, from the I lady to whose public spirit the establishment I of these lectures is due. I dare not refuse | it : because it gives me an opportunity of speaking on a matter, knowledge and igno- l ranee about which may seriously affect your health and happiness, and that of the children with whom you may have to do. I must j apologize if I say many things which are well ! known to many persons in this room : they : | ought to be well known to all ; and it is gene- | rally best to assume total ignorance in one’s i hearers, and to begin from the beginning. I shall try to be as simple as possible ; to | trouble you as little . as possible with scien- tific terms ; to be practical ; and at the same ; time, if possible, interesting. I should wish to call this lecture “The Two Breaths ” — not merely “ The Breath,” and for this reason : Every time you breathe, i you breathe two different breaths ; you take ; in one, you give out another. The com- position of those two breaths is different. Their effects are different. The breath which has been breathed out must not be breathed in again. To tell you why it must not would lead me into anatomical details, not quite in place here as yet : though the day will come, I trust, when every woman entrusted with the | care of children, will be expected to know I something about them. But this I may say j — Those who habitually take in fresh breath, will probably grow up large, strong, ruddy, cheerful, active, clear-headed, fit for their work. Those who habitually take in the Breath which has been breathed out by themselves, or any other living creature, will certainly grow up, if they grow up at all, small, weak, pale, nervous, depressed, unfit for work, and tempted continually to resort to stimulants, and become drunkards. If you want to see how different the breath breathed cut is from the breath taken in, you have only to try a somewhat cruel experiment, but one which people too often try upon themselves, their children, and their work-people. If you take any small animal with lungs like your own — a mouse, for instance — and force it to breathe no air but what you have breathed already ; if you put it in a close box, and while you take in breath from the outer air, send out your breath, through a tube, into that box, the animal will soon faint ; if you go on long with this process, it will die. Take a second instance, which I beg to press most seriously on the notice of mothers, governesses, and nurses : If you allow a child to get into the habit of sleeping with its head under the bed-clothes, and thereby breathing its own breath over and over again, i that child will assuredly grow pale, weak, and I ill. Medical men have cases on record of ! scrofula appearing in children previously healthy, which could only be accounted for from this habit, and which ceased when the habit stopped. Let me again entreat your attention to this undoubted fact. Take another instance, which is only too common : If you are in a crowded room, with plenty of fire and lights and company, doors and windows all shut tight, how often you feel faint — so faint, that you may re- quire smelling-salts or some other stimu- lant. The cause of your faintness is just the same as that of the mouse’s fainting in the box : you and your friends, and, as I shall show you presently, the fire and the candles likewise, having been all breathing each other’s breaths, over and over again, till the air has become unfit to support life. You are doing your best to enact over again the Highland tragedy, of which Sir James Simp- son tells in his lectures to the working-classes of Edinburgh, when at a Christmas meet- ing, thirty-six persons danced all night in a small room with a low ceiling, keeping the doors and windows shut. The atmosphere of the room was noxious beyond description ; and the effect was, that seven of the party were soon after seized with typhus fever, of which two died. You are inflicting on your- selves the torments of the poor dog, who is kept at the Grotto del Cane, near Naples —to be stupified, for the amusement of visi- tors, by the carbonic acid gas of the Grotto, and brought to life again by being dragged into the fresh air; nay, you are inflicting upon yourselves the torments of the famous Black Hole of Calcutta ; and, if there was no chimney in the room, by which some fresh air could enter, the candles would soon burn blue (as they do, you know, when ghosts appear), your brains become disturbed, and you yourselves run the risk of becoming ghosts, and the candles of actually going out. Of this last fact there is no doubt ; for if, instead of putting a mouse into the box, you will put a lighted candle, and breathe into •Good Words, July x, 1869.] THE TWO the tube, as before, however gently, you will in a short time put the candle out. Now, how is this? First, what is the dif- ference between the breath you take in, and the breath you give out ? And, next, Why ! has it a similar effect on animal life and a I lighted candle ? I The difference is this. The breath which | you take in is, or ought to be, pure air, com- posed, on the whole, of oxygen and nitrogen, with a minute portion of carbonic acid. The breath which you give out is an im- pure air, to which has been added, among other matters which will not support life, an excess of carbonic acid. I That this is the fact you can prove for ! yourselves by a simple experiment. Get a little lime-water at the chemist’s, and breathe j into it through a glass tube, your breath will | at once make the lime-water milky. The car- j j bonic acid of your breath has laid hold of the i lime, and made it visible as white carbonate j of lime — in plain English, as common chalk. Now, I do not wish, as I said, to load i your memories with scientific terms : but I beseech you to remember at least these two — ■ | oxygen gas and carbonic acid gas; and to re- member that, as surely as oxygen feeds the fire j of life, so surely does carbonic acid put it out. I say, “ the fire of life.” In that expres- sion lies the answer to our second question : I Why does our breath produce a similar effect upon the mouse and the lighted candle ? j Every one of us is, as it were, a living fire. Were we not, how could we be always warmer I j than the air outside us ? There is a process I going on perpetually in each of us, similar to ; that by which coals are burnt in the fire, oil in I I a lamp, wax in a candle, and the earth itself in a volcano. To keep each of those fires alight, j oxygen is needed ; and the products of com- bustion, as they are called, are more or less the same in each case — carbonic acid and steam. These facts justify the expression I just j made use of (and which may have seemed to ! some of you fantastical), that the fire and i the candles in the crowded room were ' breathing the same breath as you were. It j is but too true. An average fire in the grate I requires, I believe, to keep it burning as I I much oxygen as three human beings do ; ; each candle or lamp must have its share ; ' of oxygen likewise, and that a very consi- - derable one ; and an average gas-burner — j | pray attend to this, you who live in rooms ! lighted wuth gas — consumes as much oxygen j ; as six candles or eleven men. All alike | are making carbonic acid. The carbonic acid I of the fire happily escapes up the chimney BREATHS. in the smoke : but the carbonic acid from the human beings and the candles remains to poison the room, unless it be ventilated. Now, I think you may understand one of the simplest, and yet most terrible, cases of want of ventilation — death by the fumes of charcoal. A human being shut up in a room, of which every crack is closed, with a pan of burning charcoal, falls asleep, never to wake again. His inward fire is competing with the fire of the charcoal for the oxygen of the room ; both are making carbonic acid out of it ; but the charcoal, being the stronger of the two, gets all the oxygen to itself, and leaves the human being nothing to inhale but the carbonic acid which it has made. The human being, being the weaker, dies first ; but the charcoal dies also. When it has exhausted all the oxygen of the room, it cools, goes out, and is found in the morning half-consumed beside its victim. If you put a giant or an elephant, I should conceive, into that room, instead of a human being, the case would be reversed for a time ; the elephant would put out the burning charcoal by the carbonic acid from its mighty lungs ; and then, when it had exhausted all the air in the room, die likewise of its own carbonic acid. Now, too, I think we may see what ventila- tion means, and why it is needed. Ventilation means simply letting out the foul air, and letting in the fresh air : letting out the air which has been breathed by men or by candles, letting in the air which has not. And, to understand how to do that, we must remember a most simple chemical law, that a gas as it is warmed expands, and therefore becomes lighter ; as it cools, it contracts, and becomes heavier. Now the carbonic acid in the breath which comes out of our mouths is warm, lighter than the air, and rises to the ceiling ; and therefore in any unventilated room full of people, there is a layer of foul air along the ceiling. You might soon test that for your- selves, if you could mount a ladder and put your heads there aloft. You do test it for yourselves when you sit in the galleries of churches and theatres, where the air is prov- ably more foul, and therefore more injurious, than down below. Where, again, work-people are employed in a crowded house of many storeys, the health of those who work on the upper floors always suffers most. In the old monkey-house at the Zoo- logical Gardens, when the cages were on the old plan, tier upon tier, the poor little 500 THE TWO BREATHS. [Good Words, July i, 1869. fellows in the uppermost tier (so I have been told), always died first of the monkey’s con- stitutional complaint, consumption, simply from breathing the warm breath of their friends below. But since the cages have been altered, and made to range side by side from top to bottom, consumption (I under- stand) has vastly diminished among them. The first question in ventilation, therefore, is to get this carbonic acid safe out of the room, while it is warm and light, and close to the ceiling ; for if you do not, this happens. The carbonic acid gas cools and becomes heavier — for carbonic acid, at the same temperature as common air, is so much heavier than common air, that you may actually (if you are handy enough) turn it from one vessel to another, and pour out for your enemy a glass of invisible poison. So down to the floor this heavy carbonic l acid comes, and lies along it, just as it lies often in the bottom of old wells, or old brewers’ vats, as a stratum of poison, killing occasionally the men who descend into it. Hence, as foolish a practice as I know is that of sleeping on the floor ; for, towards the small hours, when the room gets cold, the sleeper on the floor is breathing carbonic acid. And here one word to those ladies who interest themselves with the poor. The poor are too apt in times of distress to pawn their bedsteads and keep their beds. Never, if | you have influence, let that happen. Keep ! the bedstead, whatever else may go, to save the sleeper from the carbonic acid on the floor. How, then, shall we get rid of the foul i air on the top of the room ? After all that ! has been written and tried on ventilation, I know no simpler method than putting ! into the chimney one of Arnott’s ventilators, 1 which may be bought and fixed for a few | shillings, always remembering that it must be | fixed into the chimney as near the ceiling as possible. I can speak of these ventilators from twenty-five years’ experience. Living . in a house with low ceilings, liable to become overcharged with carbonic acid, which pro- duces sleepiness in the evening, I have found that these ventilators keep the air fresh and pure ; and I consider the presence of one of these ventilators in a room more valuable than three or four feet additional height of ceiling. I have found, too, that their working proves how necessary they are, from this simple fact — You would suppose that as the venti- ' lator opens freely into the chimney, the smoke would be blown down through it in high winds, and blacken the ceiling: but this is just what does not happen. If the venti- lator be at all properly poised, so as to shut with a violent gust of wind, it will at all other moments keep itself permanently open, proving thereby that there is an up-draught of heated air continually escaping from the ceiling up the chimney. Another very simple method of ventilation is employed in those excellent cottages which her Majesty has ! built for her labourers round Windsor. Over each door a sheet of perforated zinc, some eighteen inches square, is fixed, allowing the foul air to escape into the passage, and in the ceiling of the passage a similar sheet of zinc, allowing it to escape into the roof. Fresh air, meanwhile, should be obtained from outside, by piercing the windows, or otherwise. And here let me give one hint to all builders of houses — if possible, let bedroom windows open at the top as well as at the bottom. Let me impress the necessity of using | some such contrivances, not only on parents and educators, but on those who employ work-people, and above all on those who employ young women in shops or in work- rooms. What their condition may be in this i city, I know not : but most painful it has been to me in other places, when passing through warehouses or work-rooms, to see the pale, sodden, and as the French would say, “ etio- lated” countenances of the girls who were passing the greater part of the day in them ; and painful, also, to breathe an atmosphere of which habit had, alas, made them uncon- scious, but which to one coming out of the open air was altogether noxious, and shocking also ; for it was fostering the seeds of death, not ; only in the present but in future generations. Why should this be ? Every one will agree that good ventilation is necessary in a hospital, because people cannot get well without fresh air. Do they not see that by i the same reasoning good ventilation is ne- ; cessary everywhere, because people cannot remain well without fresh air? Let me i entreat those who employ women in work- rooms, if they have no time to read through such books as Dr. Andrew Combe’s “ Phy- siology applied to Health and Education,” and Madame de Wahl’s “ Practical Hints on the Moral, Mental, and Physical Training of Girls,” to procure certain tracts, published | by Messrs. Jarrold, Paternoster Row, for the j Ladies’ Sanitary Association ; especially one which bears on this subject, “ The Black Hole in our own Bed-rooms Dr. Lankes- ter’s “ School Manual of Health or a manual on ventilation, published by the Metropolitan Working Classes Association for the Improvement of Public Health. Good Words, July i, 1869.] THE TWO I look forward — I say it openly — to some period of higher civilisation, when the acts of parliament for the ventilation of factories i and workshops shall be largely extended, and made far more stringent; when officers of public health shall be empowered to enforce the ventilation of every room in which per- sons are employed for hire ; and empowered also to demand a proper system of ventila- tion for every new house, whether in country or in town. To that, I believe, we must come : but I had sooner far see these im- provements carried out, as befits the citizens ! of a free country, in the spirit of the Gospel rather than in that of the law — carried out, not compulsorily and from fear of fines, but voluntarily, from a sense of duty, honour, and humanity. I appeal, therefore, to the good feeling of all whom it may concern, whether the health of those whom they em- ! ploy, and therefore the supply of fresh air | which they absolutely need, are not matters for which they are not more or less respon- sible to their country and their God. And if any excellent person of the old school should answer me, “Why make all this fuss about ventilation ? Our forefathers got on very well without it ” — I must answer that, begging their pardons, our ancestors did nothing of the kind. Our ancestors got on usually very ill in these matters : and when they got on well, it was because they had good ventilation in spite of themselves. First, They got on very ill. To quote a few remarkable instances of longevity, or to tell me that men were larger and stronger on the average in old times, is to yield to the old fallacy of fancying that savages were pecu- liarly healthy, because those who were seen were active and strong. The simple answer is, that the strong alone survived, while the majority died from the severity of the train- ing. Savages do not increase in number; j and our ancestors increased but very slowly | for many centuries. I am not going to dis- gust my audience with statistics of disease : but knowing something, as I happen to do, of the social state and of the health of the middle and Elizabethan ages, I have no hesitation in saying that the average of disease and death was far greater then than it is now. Epidemics of many kinds, typhus, ague, plague — all diseases which were caused more or less by bad air, devastated this land and Europe in those days with a horrible intensity, to which even the choleras of our s times are mild. The back streets, the hospi- tals, the jails, the barracks, the camps — every place in which any large number of BREATHS. 501 persons congregated, were so many nests of pestilence, engendered by uncleanliness, which defiled alike the water which was drank and the air which was breathed ; and as a single fact, of which the tables of insur- ance companies assure us, the average of human life in England has increased twenty- five per cent, since the reign of George I., owing simply to our more rational and cleanly habits of life. But secondly, I said that when our ances- tors got on well, they did so because they got ventilation in spite of themselves. Luckily for them, their houses were ill-built, their doors and windows would not shut. They had lattice-windowed houses too, to live in one of which, as I can testify from long experience, is as thoroughly ventilating as living in a lantern with the glass broken out. It was because their houses were full of draughts, and still more, in the early middle age, because they had no glass, and stopped out the air only by a shutter at night, that they sought for shelter rather than for fresh air, of which they sometimes had too much ; and to escape the wind, built their houses in holes, such as that in which the old city of Winchester stands. Shelter, I believe, as much as the desire to be near fish in Lent, and to occupy the rich alluvium of the valleys, made the monks of old England choose the river-banks for the sites of their abbeys. They made a mistake therein, which, like most mistakes, did not go un- punished. These low situations, especially while the forests were yet thick on the hills around, were the perennial haunts of fever and ague, produced by subtle vegetable poisons, carried in the carbonic acid given off by rotting vegetation. So there again they fell in with man’s old enemy, bad air. Still, as long as the doors and windows did not shut, some free circulation of air re- mained. But now, our doors and windows shut only too tight. We have plate-glass instead of lattices ; and we have replaced the draughty and smoky but really wholesome open chimney, with its wide corners and settles, by narrow registers, and even by stoves. We have done all we can, in fact, to seal ourselves up hermetically from the outer air, and to breathe our own breaths over and over again ; and we pay the penalty of it in a thousand ways unknown to our ancestors, through whose rooms all the winds of heaven whistled, and who were glad enough to shelter themselves from draughts in the sitting-room by the high screen round the fire, and in the sleeping-room by the 502 THE TWO BREATHS. [Good Words, July 1,1869. thick curtains of the four-post bedstead, which is now rapidly disappearing before a higher civilisation. We therefore absolutely require to make for ourselves the very venti- lation from which our ancestors tried to escape. But, Ladies, there is an old and true proverb, that you may bring a horse to the water, but you cannot make him drink. And in likewise, it is too true, that you may bring people to the fresh air, but you cannot make them breathe it. Their own folly, or the folly of their parents and educators, prevents their lungs being duly filled and duly emptied. Therefore, the blood is not duly oxygenated, and the whole system goes wrong. Paleness, weakness, consumption, scrofula, and too many other ailments, are the consequences of ill-filled lungs. For without well-filled lungs, robust health is im- possible. And if any one shall answer, “We do not want robust health so much as intellectual attainment. The mortal body, being the lower organ, must take its chance, and be even sacrificed if need be, to the higher organ, the immortal mind : To such I reply, You can- not do it. The laws of nature, which are the express will of God, laugh such attempts to scorn. Every organ of the body is formed out of the blood; and if the blood be vitiated, every organ suffers in proportion to its deli- cacy ; and the brain, being the most delicate and highly specialised of all organs, suffers most of all and soonest of all, as every one knows who has tried to work his brain when his digestion was the least out of order. Nay, the very morals will suffer. From ill-filled lungs, which signify ill-repaired blood, arise year by year an amount not merely of disease, but of folly, temper, laziness, intemperance, madness, and, let me tell you fairly, crime — the sum of which will never be known till that great day when men shall be called to account for all deeds done in the body, whether they be good or evil. I must refer you on this subject again to Andrew Combe’s “Physiology/’ especially chapters iv. and vii. ; and also to chapter x. of Madame de Wahl’s excellent book. I will only say this shortly, that the three most common causes of ill-filled lungs, in children and in young ladies, are stillness, silence, and stays. First, stillness ; a sedentary life, and want of exercise. A girl is kept for hours sitting on a form writing or reading, to do which she must lean forward ; and if her mistress cruelly attempts to make her sit upright, and thereby keep the spine in an attitude for which Nature did not intend it, she is thereby doing her best to bring on that disease SO' fearfully common in girls’ schools, lateral curvature of the spine. But practically the girl will stoop forward. And what happens ? i The lower ribs are pressed into the body, ! thereby displacing more or less something inside. The diaphragm in the meantime, which is the very bellows of the lungs, remains- loose; the lungs are never properly filled or emptied ; and an excess of carbonic acid accumulates at the bottom of them. What | follows ? Frequent sighing to get rid of it; heaviness of head; depression of the whole nervous system under the influence of the poison of the lungs ; and when the poor child gets up from her weary work, what is. j the first thing she probably does ? She j lifts up her chest, stretches, yawns, and j breathes deeply — Nature’s voice, Nature’s instinctive cure, which [is probably regarded as ungraceful, as what is called “lolling” j is. As if sitting upright was not an attitude 1 in itself essentially ungraceful, and such as no artist would care to draw. As if “lolling,” which means putting the body in the attitude of the most perfect ease compatible with a fully expanded chest, was not in itself essen- tially graceful, and to be seen in every repos- ing figure in Greek bas-reliefs and vases; graceful, and like all graceful actions, health- ful at the same time. The only wholesome attitude of repose, which I see allowed in average school-rooms, is lying on the back on the floor, or on a sloping board, in which case the lungs must be fully expanded. I have seen that plan work much good, not only with girls, but with delicate boys, especially when combined with moderate reading aloud. This last word brings me to the second mistake, enforced silence. I said moderate reading aloud, because where there is any tendency to irritability of throat or lungs, too much moderation cannot be used. You may ! as well try to cure a diseased lung by work- j ing it, as to cure a lame horse by galloping : him. But where the breathing organs are of average health, let it be said once and for all, that children and young people cannot make i too much noise. The parents who cannot bear the noise of their children have no right to have brought them into the world. The ; schoolmistress who enforces silence on her pupils is committing — unintentionally no doubt, but still committing — an offence against reason, worthy only of a convent. Every shout, every burst of laughter, every song; nay, in the case of infants, as physiologists j ! Good Words, July i, 1869.] THE TWO BREATHS. 503 well know, every moderate fit of crying, con- duces to health, by rapidly filling and empty- ing the lung, and changing the blood more rapidly from black to red, that is, from death to life. Andrew Combe tells a story of a large charity school, in which the young girls were, for the sake of their health, shut up in the hall and school-room during play hours, from November till March, and no romping or noise allowed. The natural consequences were, the great majority of them fell ill ; and I am afraid that a great deal of illness has been from time to time contracted in certain school-rooms, simply through this one cause of enforced silence. Some cause or other there must be for the amount of ill-health and weakliness which prevails especially among girls of the middle classes in towns, who have not, poor things, the opportunities which richer girls have, of keeping themselves in strong health by riding, skating, archery (that last quite an admirable exercise for the chest and lungs, and far preferable to croquet, which involves too much unwholesome stooping). Even playing at ball, which has been popular ever since the time of old Homer, who makes the Princess Nausicaa and her maidens play it on the sea-shore, after they have washed the garments of the royal household — even a game of ball, I say — if milliners and shop-girls had room to indulge in one after their sedentary work — might bring fresh spirits to many a heart, and fresh colour to many a cheek. I spoke just now of the Greeks. I suppose you will all allow that the Greeks were, as far as we know, the most beautiful race which the world ever saw. Every educated man knows that they were also the cleverest of all races ; and, next to his Bible, thanks God for Greek literature. Now these people had made physical as well as intellectual education a science as well as a study. Their women practised grace- ful (in some cases even athletic) exercises. They developed, by a free and healthy life, those figures which remain everlasting and unapproachable models of human beauty : but (to come to my third point) they wore no stays. The first mention of stays that I have ever found is in the letters of dear old Synesius, Bishop of Cyrene, on the Greek coast of Africa, about four hundred years after the Christian era. He tells us how, when he was shipwrecked on a remote part of the coast, and he and the rest of the passengers were starving on cockles and limpets, there was among them a slave girl out of the far East, who had a pinched wasp- waist, such as you may see on the old Hindoo sculptures, and such as you may see in any street in a British town. And when the Greek ladies of the neighbourhood found her out, they sent for her from house to house, to behold, with astonishment and laughter, this new and prodigious waist, with which it seemed to them it was impossible for a human being to breathe or live ; and they petted the poor girl and fed her, as they might a dwarf or a giantess, till she got quite fat and com- lortable, while her owners had not enough to eat. So strange and ridiculous seemed our present fashion to the descendants of those who, centuries before, had imagined, because they had seen living and moving, those glorious statues which we pretend to admire, but refuse to imitate. It seems to me that a few centuries hence,, when mankind has learnt to fear God more, and therefore to obey more strictly those laws of nature and of science which are the will of God — it seems to me, I say, that in those days the present fashion of tight lacing will be looked back upon as a contemptible and barbarous superstition, denoting a very low level of civilisation in the peoples, which have practised it. That for genera- tions past women should have been in the I habit — not to please men, who do not care about the matter as a point of beauty — but simply to vie with each other in obedience to something called fashion — that they should* I say, have been in the habit of deliberately crushing that part of the body which should be specially left free, contracting and dis- placing their lungs, their heart, and all the most vital and important organs, and entail- ing thereby disease, not only on themselves, but on their children after them — that for forty years past physicians should have been telling them of the folly of what they have been doing : — and that they should as yet, in the great majority of cases, not only turn a. deaf ear to all warnings, but actually deny the offence, of which one glance of the phy- sician or the sculptor, who know what shape the human body ought to be, brings them in guilty — this, I say, is an instance of — what shall I call it? which deserves at once the lash, not merely of the satirist, but of any theologian who really believes that God made the physical universe. Let me, I pray you, appeal to your common sense for a moment. When any one chooses a horse or a dog, whether for strength, for speed, or for any other useful purpose, the first thing almost to be looked at is the girth round the lower ribs, the room for heart and lungs. Exactly in proportion to that will be the animal’s 504 THE TWO BREATHS. [Good Words, Ju'y i, 1S69. general healthiness, power of endurance, and value in many other ways. If you will look at eminent lawyers and famous orators, who have attained a healthy old age, you will see that in every case they are men (like the late Lord Palmerston, and others whom I could mention) of remarkable size, not merely in the upper, but in the lower part of the chest ; men who had, therefore, a peculiar power | of using the diaphragm to fill and to clear i the lungs, and therefore to oxygenate the ! blood of the whole body. Now it is just ! these lower ribs, across which the diaphragm | is stretched like the head of a drum, which | stays contract to a minimum. If you advised j owners of horses and hounds to put their | horses or their hounds into stays, and lace ! them up tight, in order to increase their i beauty, you would receive, I doubt not, a I very courteous, but certainly a very decided i refusal to do that which would spoil not ! merely the animals themselves, but the whole | stud or the whole kennel for years to come. And if you advised an orator to put himself into tight stays, he, no doubt, again would give a courteous answer ; but he .would reply (if he was a really educated man) that to com- j ply with your request would involve his giving up public work, under the probable penalty 1 of being dead within the twelvemonth. : And how much work of every kind, intel- | lectual as well as physical, is spoiled or hindered — how many deaths occur from con- sumption and other complaints which are the • result of this habit of tight lacing, is known j partly to the medical men, who lift up their voices in vain, and known fully to Him who i will not interfere with the least of his own ! physical laws to save human beings from the consequences of their own wilful folly. And now — to end this lecture with more pleasing thoughts — What becomes of this breath which passes from your lips? Is it merely harmful — merely waste ? God forbid ! ! God has forbidden that anything should be I merely harmful or merely waste in this so I wise and well-made world. The carbonic acid which passes from your lips at every ; breath — ay, even that which oozes from the i volcano crater when the eruption is past — is a precious boon to thousands of things of which you have daily need. Indeed there is a sort of hint at physical truth in the old fairy tale of the girl, from whose lips, as she spoke, fell pearls and diamonds ; for the carbonic acid of your breath may help hereafter to make the pure carbonate of lime of a pearl, or the still purer carbon of a diamond. Nay, it may go (in such a world of transformations do we live) to make atoms of coal strata, which shall lie buried for ages beneath deep seas, shall be upheaved in continents which are yet unborn, and there be burnt for the use of a future race of men, and resolved into their original elements. Coal, wise men tell us, is on the whole breath and sunlight — the breath of living creatures who have lived in the vast swamps and forests of some primaeval world, and the sunlight which transmuted that breath into the leaves and stems of trees, magically locked up for ages in that black stone, to become, when it is burnt at last, light and carbonic acid, as it was at first. For though you must not breathe your breath again, you may at least eat your breath, if you will allow the sun to trans- mute it for you into vegetables ; or you may enjoy its fragrance and its colour in the shape of a lily or a rose. When you walk in a sunlit garden, every word you speak, every breath you breathe, is feeding the plants and flowers around. The delicate surface of the green leaves absorbs the carbonic acid, and parts it into its elements, retaining the carbon to make woody fibre, and courteously return- ing you the oxygen to mingle with the fresh air, and be inhaled by your lungs once more. Thus do you feed the plants, just as the plants feed you, while the great life-giving sun feeds both ; and the geranium standing in the sick child’s window does not merely rejoice his eye and mind by its beauty and freshness, but repays honestly the trouble spent on it, absorb- ing the breath which the child needs not, and giving to him the breath which he needs. So are the services of all things constituted according to a Divine and wonderful order, and knit together in mutual dependence and mutual helpfulness. — A fact to be remembered with hope and comfort : but also with awe and fear. For as in that which is above nature, so in nature itself ; he that breaks one physical law is guilty of all. The whole universe, as it were, takes up arms against him; and all nature, with her numberless and unseen powers, is ready to avenge herself on him, and on his children after him, he knows not when nor where. He, on the other hand, who obeys the laws of nature with his whole heart and mind, will find all things working together to him for good. He is at peace with the physical universe. He is helped and be- friended alike by the sun above his head and the dust beneath his feet : because he is obey- ing the will and mind of Him who made sun, and dust, and all things ; and who has given them a law which cannot be broken. CHARLES KINGSLEY. Good Words, Ju»y i, 1SC9.J JOSEPH. 505 HEROES OF HEBREW HISTORY. By the BISHOP OF OXFORD. VII.— JOSEPH. The narrative of Joseph’s life is the con- necting link in the sacred volume between the story of a single life and the history of a people. In his day the covenant life spread itself into wider circles. In Abraham it was summed up in one man : when Isaac was born it flowed on into him. In Jacob it enlarged itself into the family : in the days of Joseph it swelled out into the dimen- sions of a tribe. Yet though he was mainly instrumental in this development, he was not the head of the tribe, nor was it through his line that the blessing to convey which to all nations Israel was constituted a separate people, came to the family of man. And so it is the history of the man, and not that of the tribal head, which rivets us in the life of Joseph. He comes before us overshadowed by the great love of his father Jacob. He was the son of Jacob’s old age : he was the child of the beloved Rachel. When his history begins 1 Benjamin was too young (but one year old), ! to bear the great weight of that passionate | affection. Still to the old man’s feelings Joseph was the son of “ Rachel my wife.” This love for Rachel threw a golden light over the old patriarch’s last years. Deep, enduring, absorbing, unselfish love, especially for those parted from us by the dark veil which sepa- rates us from the unseen world, exalts hu- manity. And this is always showing itself in Jacob. The bitter lamentation for Deborah, and the planting over her grave the terebinth of tears, because she had been Rachel’s nurse, and was the last living link left of those maiden days of youth and beauty, is a lively mark of the old man’s enduring love : so is the description of her as “ My wife, who bare me two sons” (Gen. xliv. 27), as if she alone and her offspring rose up to the true dignity of the family life. So is the pouring out of his heart on that sick bed to which Joseph brought his two sons for their parting blessing. The old man looks upon their young strength, and the past years, fleet as their wont is before his failing eyes, until the one thought, which was never far distant, rises before him, and as though from that sad day his life of lives was spent, he sums up all in the plaintive utterance, “And as for me, when I came from Padan, Rachel died by me in the land of Canaan in the way, when yet there was but a little way to come unto Ephrath : and I buried her there in the way X-35 of Ephrath ; the same is Bethlehem.” It was as if again the old deceit looked in on his soul in those thoughts of sadness. For he had been sent to bring his wife from Padan to Canaan, and he came back with her to the border she was not to pass ; came back to enter his father’s tent alone, having left Rachel at Bethlehem ; and to find Rebekah laid before her at Mamre. Of all this great love Joseph was the natural inheritor, and in the wild Arab family which had grown up round Jacob he was the only one whose personal qualities in any way fitted him for so rich a pos- session. The discord, the license, the sen- suality, and the cruelty which so disfigured the sons of Jacob, were but a reflection of what might have been seen in all the com- mon life of the world around them in still darker colours. No doubt it was a great falling back towards heathendom when it is compared with the family life of Abra- ham and of Isaac. This was the inevitable consequence of that great curse of Jacob’s life, the marriage with Leah palmed on him through Laban’s treachery. The sons of that ill-matched union, of the rival sisters and their rival handmaids, had lost from before their eyes that true aspect of the life of the family which had shown so fair in Isaac’s tent. To Joseph only was it shown in that strong transferred affection which almost made his dead mother stand as though still alive before him. To him that old man was ever in his tender love as well mother as father. This of itself tended not a little to elevate and purify the young heart of the motherless son. Beyond this, the father’s love evidently succeeded in stamping upon , the boy the impress of his own spiritual life. \ The distinguishing feature of Jacob’s reli- gious character was his enduring sense of God’s perpetual presence with him. The lesson of the heavenly ladder dwelt ever in his , heart. This stole early into Joseph’s inmost spirit with the accesses of his father’s love, and we shall find it reappearing at each crisis of his life as the father’s grace repeated in the son. When at seventeen years old he is suffered to leave that father’s side, and begin his own life-work of tending the flocks on the low plains or wild uplands of Canaan, it is with the sons of Zilpah and of Bilhah that he is sent, as being the nearest to himself in age. JOSEPH. 5 °6 [Good Words, July i, 1869. But his moral sense is already above theirs ; God’s presence makes their youthful sins in- tolerable to him, and he brings unto his father the report of their evil doings. Such a course was of itself sufficient to stir up against him the angry passions of such brothers as were at this time the sons of Jacob. Their father’s conduct increased the evil. His fondness for Joseph broke out into irritating manifestations of partiality. Whilst they were habited in the ordinary dress of Arab shepherds, for the favourite son was provided the long-sleeved tunic, which in that eastern land belonged to superior rank ; and all Jacob’s conduct manifested the same peculiar and distinguishing affection. All these angry feelings were exasperated by Joseph repeating to them two dreams which he had dreamed. In the first of these, as they bound sheaves together in the field their sheaves gathered round and did obei- sance unto him ; in the second the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obei- sance to him. The first of these seemed to foretell that he should be the chiefest of all the family, and that all his brethren should bow down to him. This moved their indig- nation greatly; and their wrath knew no bounds when this dream was followed by the second, both because, according to the no- tions of those days, its repetition of the leading idea marked the fulfilment of the first as certain, and also because it added the new prediction that his father and his mother would unite with his brethren in doing homage to him. Even the loving heart of Jacob was stirred by this, and he reproved with some sharpness what seemed to him the ambitious imaginations of his favourite son. The father’s words seem to imply that he felt it as some indignity to that memory of the dead mother which as a sacred lamp within a sepulchre burned evermore in his widowed heart; and though he could not but “observe the saying,” yet he rebuked the dreamer. The brethren saw in it the fulfilment of all the fears which their father’s over-partiality, and especially the gift of the vest of honour, had aroused in them. They knew, doubtless, the story of the birthright stolen through Rebekah’s craft from the first-born of the last generation : and that craft was still being punished in the hard thoughts which now rose in their minds against both their father and their brother. He who had consented to violate the rights of his own elder brother might easily, they thought, be led to break through the same rights again in another generation to gratify his partial fondness for the son of his old age. So with a new and an embittered aversion “they hated Joseph yet the more for his dreams and for his words.” But what shall we say of the dreams them- selves, and of Joseph’s conduct with regard to them? Are we to take them as direct revelations, as one of those visions from God which have, we know, ere now fallen upon his servants, and ordered and guided their way ? It is not said so in Holy Writ, and there is no such declaration as that God ap- peared unto Joseph in a dream. We are left, therefore, to gather from the context what their character was ; and we cannot settle this without having some idea concerning all dreams ; and not concerning dreams only, but concerning those waking visions which visit our own minds and the minds of others ; which seem bred of no suggestion from the immediate present, but arise in them spectre- like and unbidden, — the clear air fashioning itself into strange forms, and the heart’s silence breaking into words which to the inner con- sciousness seem almost articulate. Whence come these, and what are they ? Are they the mere Teachings forth of our own spirit; prophecies of the future because they are the utterances of our own present capa- cities and deepest longings ; unborn acts, stirring in the womb of the imagination, and waiting their time of birth ? Or are they often more than this? Are they purposes and desires of good or of evil which have • been wakened up by the sweeping over the waters of our soul of the breath of the unseen enemy, or of the gusts bred of past passions ; or, on the other hand, by the sweet, healing, and enlightening presence of that blessed Spirit which bloweth where it listeth ? Who can read the secret of these hidden influences ? Who can separate the voice of his own inner being, as original creation framed it, and as past life has moulded it, from the stirring of its sleeping chords, by the sweep over them of these invisible airs ? Here, then, we may come to some clearer idea of the true character of the dreams of Joseph. All those mighty gifts of govern- j ment which his after life developed, were , even now lying seed-like and half fashioned within his soul. Over that soul swept the Spirit of his father’s God, ripening for perfection, and half awakening these . dor- mant faculties; and as they were thus stirred, j the busy, creative imagination caught their j shapes and consequences, and cast them in their coming colours upon the receptive half- j consciousness of the soul in sleep. To this ; half-natural fore-reaching of his spirit, the j JOSEPH. Good Words, July x, 1869.] t 507 higher Spirit, we may well believe, added for him, whose after life would so greatly need such supports, a clearness of perception not its own, and which, if it was not directly pro- phetic, savoured of prophecy. Whilst, then, we must not class the dreams of Joseph with those visions of Daniel, in which the strong and direct breath of the Divine Spirit swept before his sleeping eyes the course of dynasties and empires and ages; nor separate them altogether from the inborn prophecies wherewith great minds forecast their own future ; neither can we altogether deny to them the character of being inspira- tions from the Spirit of God. Only, in so ac- counting of them, let us duly realise the truth that such a view ought not, in our estimate, so much to divorce the supernatural from Joseph’s life as to wed it to our own ; that it ought to enable us better to comprehend the unity which exists between the patriarchal dispensation and the Christian; to see how that which afterwards for a stiff-necked gene- ration was fixed and almost congealed into the Urimand the Thummim, floated for those earlier saints, and floats for us, an ever- present, impalpable, but most real Power, round about our bed and our path, acting according to its own spiritual laws upon our own inmost and essential spirits. Have we not ourselves known young hearts which seem so to have been visited ? The youth of after greatness not rarely has upon it some mark of such a presence. The lad is in- comprehensible to his fellows. The frivolous, the sensual, the hollow, the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, feel his very presence to be the sending up of their evil report to the Great Father. They would that he were like themselves. “ Mad” they call him in our schools and colleges ; for he lives apart from full companionship with others. If every now and then he joins with a spasmodic earnest- ness in their games and recreations, for the most part he keeps aloof from them ; is full of speculation ; wanders objectless over the play- ground, wondering within himself at the life that is stirring in his breast, — wondering whether it so stirs in others; trying to track its laws; dreaming of its development, until the sun, the moon, and the eleven stars, seem to do obeisance to him in some unknown future which spreads out mist-like before him. Such, then, we may apprehend the dreams of Joseph to have been. His ready divul- gence of them agrees exactly with this view. His own soul was full of them ; he craved for sympathy. They prefigured he knew not exactly what. He hardly realised in the vista they opened to his eyes, that his elevation was, to a certain extent, the subjection of the rest ; and so, with none of the pettiness of vanity, and very little of the chastening of prudence, he told them openly, and thus ag- gravated his brethren’s hatred, and drew upon himself what was harder yet to bear— the blighting frost of his father’s displeasure, nip- ping the tender buds of his yet half-formed anticipations. Neither he nor his father could fathom the depths of his brothers’ hatred. In no portion of his life had Jacob been tempted to it, and the loving spirit of his old age knew nothing of such darkness. And so, when the brethren had been some time away feeding their flocks upon the as yet unappro- priated plains and uplands, the father fear- lessly sends his darling to inquire after their welfare; and Joseph, unconscious of the deep grudge he had engendered, undertakes with ready dutifulness the distant mission. He goes first from Hebron to Shechem, seeking them. They were not there. He learns from a wayfarer, as he wanders about searching for them, the direction of their track, and follows them on, some twelve miles north of Samaria, nigh to Dothan. He comes upon them with all the freedom and affection of a brother’s heart. But it is only to waken up, by his very aspect, from malicious lips, the evil greeting, “ Behold, this dreamer cometh.” Then when they saw him afar off, even before he came near unto them, awoke the sinful consultation : “ They conspired against him to slay him.” There were, indeed, as is the wont of such com- panies, various degrees of wickedness amongst' its members. There were there men in whose tents the “instruments of cruelty” were ready. There were also the sensual softness of Reuben and Judah’s uncertainty of pur- pose, as well as the ruder violence of more hardened offenders, who would at once “slay him and cast him into some pit, and say some evil beast hath devoured him, and we shall see what will become of his dreams ” (Gen. xxxvii. 20). Reuben’s counsel to “shed no blood” succeeds, and so they seize him, tear from him the hated vest of honour, cast him into a dry pit, and sit down to eat bread. As they make their meal, the huge forms of the “ ships of the desert,” the camels of the mer- chant’s caravan, rise on their sight. A cara- 1 van of Ishmaelites is journeying from Gilead through the plain of Dothan to join the great track which passed from Canaan by Gaza into Egypt. At once the uncertain mind of Judah, trembling with horror at the JOSEPH. 5°8 thought of the great sin of leaving Joseph to perish in the pit, and yet not brave enough to propose his absolute release, seizes on the thought of a safe compromise, and pro- poses to sell him to the merchants of Midian. In Reuben’s absence, who had intended privily to release the lad, the sale is effected. The merchants pay for him the usual price, and carry him away. When Reuben, on his re- J turn, finds the pit empty and his scheme frus- j trated, he rent his clothes and cried, “ The child is not, and I, whither shall I go?” , Whether from the struggling of a natural pity, I or from fear of bringing down with utter grief ! to the grave the grey-haired man at home, whose life he knew was bound up with the lad’s life, he alone enters into all the horror of the tragedy. He does not over-rate the agony which was about to tear that loving heart. They dip the vest of honour, with which it had been the old man’s delight to clothe Joseph, in the blood of a kid, and with a triumph, which they cannot but give vent to in their veiy words, they send it to him with the lying message, “ This have we found : know now whether it be thy son’s coat or no.” Too well the father knew it : too surely did it seem to him that he inherited afresh the sins of his youth, as he cried, “ An evil beast hath devoured him ! Joseph, no doubt, is rent in pieces.” Many days he mourned, refusing to i be comforted ; and groaning forth, “ I will go | down mourning into Sheol, that dark land of I shadows, where my son has passed before me.” | Whilst Hebron echoes these groans of a j broken heart, Joseph is carried down into I Egypt, and finds a ready purchaser in Poti- ; phar, the captain of the executioners of Pha- raoh’s house. His master’s name, when read in the light which the study of hieroglyphics throws upon it, seems to make it clear that the town of On, devoted to the worship of I “Ra,” the sun, was the spot of Joseph’s I servitude. Here he wins at once, because | “ the Lord is with him,” the favour and ! trust of his master, and is employed in an | universal oversight of his concerns. The sculptures of old Egypt depict his life : there we may see the trusted servant overlooking all ; entering with minute care, as a patient ! scribe, every part of his master’s property in its daily administration ; recording the grain, the fish, the linen, the mass of precious metal, which pass through his hands. Under Joseph’s administration all things prospered. It was not only that his great gifts of govern- ment were used in his master’s service, j Beyond this, a higher power was prospering | all he touched. “ From the time that Poti- [Go©d Words, July x, 1869. phar made him overseer in his house and over all that he had, the Lord blessed the Egyptian’s house for Joseph’s sake; and the blessing of the Lord was upon all that he had in the house and in the field” (Gen. xxxix. 5 ). But this life of busy, honest, successful labour was not to last. His master’s wife, too true to the type of old Egyptian womanhood, as every ancient chronicle depicts it, first tempts him to sin, and then, infuriated at his holy resistance to her evil will, slakes her utter- most vengeance by throwing, through a false accusation, not, as it seems, entirely believed, nor wholly disbelieved, the too faithful slave into the dungeon where the king’s prisoners were bound. How grand a display all this is of the power of a living inward sense of God’s per- petual presence in ennobling the soul of man ! For what condition could be more open to temptation than that of this Hebrew lad? How natural would it have been for him, when smarting under the keen sense of his brethren’s perfidious cruelty, and its seeming success, to have cast away all belief in right and truth, and so to have sunk down into the despairing slough of utter godlessness and sensuality ! What temptations, too, to such a course must have gathered them- selves up against him in the absolute lone- liness of his first Egyptian life ! Home associations, the voice of love, the watch- ing eye of tender care, the acting up to an already established character — what helps are these ! and these seemed to be gone from him altogether. How noble to be the same without them, to have no lowering of the standard from the loss of all outward safe- guards, no sapping of the foundations of moral responsibility from his loss, as a stran- ger, a foreigner, and a slave, of the elevating sense of personality, and the preserving love of character ! How grand still to have, like some lustrous diamond gleaming inwardly on his lonely spirit, the talisman of the one thought — “ How can I do this great wicked- ness and sin against God 1” This thought was strong enough so to quicken his con- science, that it still connected indissolubly this broken disconnected present with that old past of his younger life, and whilst he moved amidst the new temptations of the house of the Egyptian, he still lived in thought, and love, and faith, in the old tent at Hebron, and saw the fond face of his aged father, and bowed with him anew before the God of Israel. This was a safeguard which outward change could not touch ; and in the king’s dungeon, Good Words, July i, 1869.] JOSEPH. 509 j therefore, Joseph still was what he had been in the house of the captain of the executioners. Great, indeed, at first was the trial of his faith. That he escaped with his life from such an accusation' implies, probably, that some doubt of his guilt crossed his master’s mind. But it was hard, to bear without dis- content and murmur, the dungeon and its cruelty, to have “his feet hurt with fetters, and to be laid in iron” (Ps. cv. 18), as the reward of faithfulness, chastity, and truth. In such a time the evil one was sure to whisper, “ Where is thy father’s God, and His remem- brance of thee ? Curse thy God and die.” But the darker the natural gloom, the brighter shone that ever-present inward memory of the God whom he had served at Hebron. He wore the talisman on his heart, and he was safe. Moreover, besides this talisman within the shrine of his own spirit, there was with him an external guardianship which nothing could break through. How magnificent is the simplicity of its announcement ! — “Joseph was there in the prison. But the Lord was with Joseph, and showed him mercy, and gave him favour in the sight of the keeper of the prison. . . . And whatsoever they did there, he was the doer of it. . . . because the Lord was with him, and that which he did the Lord made it to prosper” (Gen. xxxix. 3 1 — 33). How long he remained in the prison it is impossible to say with certainty. There and in the house of Potiphar together he spent thirteen years, probably the larger share of them in the prison. Thirteen years of training and perfecting ; thirteen years in which the weeds of vanity and self-exaltation were being killed ; in which faith and hope and tenderness for other sufferers were ma- tured ; in which was the slow ripening of the genius and the gifts of conduct which were soon to be shown forth upon so high a stage of earthly greatness. And now, when “ the word of the Lord” had indeed “ tried him ” (Ps. cv. 19), his time came. Two chief officers in Pharaoh’s house- hold are put in ward in the prison where Joseph was bound ; and Joseph is set by the captain of the ward specially to attend on these great men. How long the attendance had lasted we know not, but it was long enough to form those kindly relations which ever grew up between Joseph and those round him. Accordingly, as he waits upon them he notices one morning their saddened countenances, and with kindly youthful sympathy he asks as to their grief. They answer that they have each dreamed a dream, and they are troubled because there . in the dungeon they can consult no inter- preter to tell them the meaning of the visions. The Hebrew captive’s answer soars at once into a higher sphere — “ Do not interpretations belong to God ?” “ May not He” (he suggests), “ the mighty Elohim, send you an answer even by my lips? Tell me the dreams.” The chief of the cup-bearers tells his dream of restoration to royal favour, the master of the household his dream of coming doom; and both are fulfilled within three days, on the birthday of the Pharaoh. Joseph’s en- treaty to the chief officer of the cup-bearers, and the promise it had won of his making mention to Pharaoh of the unrighteous keep- ing of the Hebrew youth in the dungeon, are both forgotten in the ecstatic joy of the cup- bearer on his restoration to liberty and power, and so two full years pass on with their weary length, and Joseph, now thirty years of age, and still in prison, has spent thirteen since he was stolen away out of the land of the Hebrews. But now the days of these sot- i rows were numbered. Pharaoh’s two dreams, and his sore trouble at finding no interpreter, bring back to the remembrance of the chief of the cup-bearers the Hebrew slave of the captain of the executioners, and his true reading of the two dreams which had been told him in the prison. From him Pharaoh hears of Joseph, and snatching eagerly at the hope so strangely offered him of obtaining an interpreter, he sends for Joseph from the ward. With such hasty preparation as was possible, the young Hebrew stands before the ( dreaded throne of Egypt, whether, as seems jl not impossible, the great Sesostris, or before a monarch of another of the ancient dynasties of Egypt, it mattered little then to him. : His life was in his hand ; nor easier or | more lightly might a man cast a cup of water on the ground, than might that life .be j thrown away by one frown of the despotic j king. Yet unawed and untrembling the j youth stands up before the king, because the hidden strength was his. “ I have heard say l of thee,” begins the eager monarch, “that thou canst understand a dream to interpret it.” “It is not in me,” answers Joseph; “God shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace. God,” he boldly declared, “ God hath showed Pharaoh what He is about j to do,” and he reads plainly out to him !/ the riddle of the night’s visions. The seven ' coming years of plenty and the seven follow- ing years of famine are declared, and the policy of Pharaoh is marked out for him with , an unfaltering tongue. Again the question rises, which Joseph’s l 5io J QSEPH. [Good Words, July r, 1869. own dreams suggested, whence was this in- sight he possessed into these four visions, and to what did it amount ? Again it must be said that it is nowhere written of Joseph as it is of Daniel, “ God made Daniel to understand all visions and dreams ” (Dan. i. 17) ; and though Joseph with a natural piety attributes all his power to the “ Elohim,” and though Pharaoh so receives it, and justifies to his courtiers the promotion of Joseph to the highest place by the fact that the Spirit of God is in him ; yet neither do Joseph’s words, nor does the effect on Pharaoh indicate that direct revelation of Jehovah’s power, which in the case of Daniel bowed down the proud heart of Nebuchadnezzar to the wonderful acknowledgment, “Your God is a God of gods and the Lord of lords.” Narrow indeed, perhaps almost imperceptible, are the barriers which divide the direct illu- mination vouchsafed by the Revealerof secrets ;o Daniel from the more ordinary enlighten- ment given to the holy, thoughtful son of Jacob ; and it is well to note how the one passes into the other ; as bringing common life more nearly into that august presence with which the heavens are bright, and so adding to it a sacredness and wonder which some would look upon as withheld from or- dinary men, and fenced off within the mystic bounds of immediate inspiration. Looking thus at the record of Genesis, may we not see that God who gave all to Joseph gave him, by means which we call natural, however unusually quickened, the in- aiition to read what would have been illegible ; to a shallower or less observant or less enlight- 1 ened mind ? His natural gifts had enabled ! him to gather first from his communion with the state prisoners whom he tended the pro- ! bable restoration of the one, the probable exe- cution of the other ; to know that the birth- day festival would almost necessarily bring to its final issue the fortune of each of these great court officials, and so, when the dream of each presented to his eye in airy imagery the shadow of the coming crisis, the heavenly light fell upon its folds, and he was enabled to read it out with an unfaltering clearness. Pharaoh’s dreams themselves, though they rise higher out of the region of simple natural- ness in their conception, possessed the same natural tendency to self-explanation when scanned by one who evermore associated his thought of God with the events and des- tinies of national life, who had learned to understand the great truth that the God of Abraham was the Lord of all, ruling as much over the court of Egypt as in the tent of Hebron. Every field would set before him the thin ears or the fruitful : every reedy pas- ture by the river bank, that natural image of the whole power of Egypt, the lean kine or the fat, and the cherished secret of God’s holy sovereignty might link for him the coming event with the prefiguring image. As the counsel founded on the interpretation, so the interpretation itself, was full of natural insight, though quickened doubtless by the powers of a higher light. Joseph’s life was full of God, and so the light of God. poured into it ; the sinner’s life is the shutting out of God, and so his understanding becomes darkened. With this special gift of insight the long trial of the faithful man passed away, and now dawned the day for which he had so long been trained. The Hebrew slave, yesterday a prisoner in the dungeon, by a change of fortune familiar to Orientals, is to-day Grand Vizier of Egypt, and next only to Pharaoh, its supreme autocrat. In true Eastern fashion, Pharaoh took off his- ring (the mystic signet) from his hand, and put it upon Joseph’s hand, and arrayed him in vestures of fine linen, and put a gold chain about his neck, and they cried before him, “ Bow the knee.” Further, he united him, by a marriage with the daughter of the prince-priest of On, to the aristocracy of Egypt. In the name which Joseph gave to her, and in the names of the two sons she bore to him, Joseph testified his resolution, even in that far land, to bind up his family life with the race of Abraham, whilst they speak of his grateful sense of God’s care of him in teaching him to forget his sorrows, and in mak- ing him fruitful in the land of his captivity. And now all his gifts of government are drawn forth, into action. He goes during the years of plenty through the land, and stores up with careful industry the fruits of the earth whilst it brought forth by handfuls. Then came the years of dearth. Egypt has always been liable to famine. A time of drought at once produced it ; and as she was the storehouse of the neighbouring peoples when the same cause exhausted their supplies, they turned to her for help. So it was now. And Joseph, with a wise liberality, opened his stores for them, as well as for Egypt. He would enrich with foreign trade the land which had adopted him, whilst at home he used the opportunity to change and equalise — retaining only the exemptions of the priestly class — the taxation of Egypt. But wider consequences were to follow from these years of famine. By Him who in His mysterious sovereignty brings His counsels to pass through the natural acting of secondary JOSEPH. Good Words, July i, r86g.] 5H causes, they were meant to bring down Jacob and his family to Egypt, attd so prevent that mixture of the chosen family with the Canaan- itish blood, which would have been inevitable if for these early centuries they had remained within the land of promise. Already Judah had mingled the holy seed with the evil race ; and had they not been walled in within the land of Goshen, the separation of